Time for possibly my most ambitious project yet, as I attempt a three week Deutschland-Tour! Germany is one of only a handful of countries with the right sort of size to do a three week GT where most of the country can be covered, yet the route can change and give us different opportunities every year (unlike, say, my three-week Volta a Portugal, which is comparatively hamstrung by the limitations of the size of the country), especially bearing in mind that with short trips across the border you can have some serious Vosges mountain stages, plus the Swiss and Austrian Alps are close at hand. I have been surprised at how much similarity has been shown between some of my route and Bavarianrider's route from the very early days of the thread. There are a few things that mark this race out as being a bit different to the other GTs. Germany, it may not have escaped your attention, does not possess large quantities of Alps comparable to those of France and Italy, and it finds itself lacking entirely in Pyrenees. This means that while mountain stages (including four summit finishes) are sprinkled liberally around the race, there is a certain focusing of the high mountain stages into fixed areas. Happily, though, the country does love its wintersports, so there are plenty of places that can host said stages. However, there are large swathes of countryside which are mostly flat, and it wouldn't be a real Deutschland Tour without including these. In order to make this as challenging a GT as possible and to enliven these stages (nobody wants a week of continual sprints), I have looked to spice the competition up.
Four jerseys are up for grabs in the race. The first is the General Classification jersey, the obvious one that we are all familiar with. The second is the Points Classification, which will award equal points for all stages. The third is for the Bergkönig, as you might expect, for the rider who has accumulated the most points over the 89 categorised climbs in the race. The fourth jersey is the joker in the pack, the jersey for the Kopfsteinpflasterkönig, or, the King of the Cobblestones. Yes, there will be a number of stretches of cobbles in the race. Many of these will just be easy city-centre cobbles mid-stage, so the troublesome sectors will pay double points. These will award points for the first riders at the exit of cobbled sectors on the route, so it could be an interesting mixture of 'jersey for the breakaway' and 'jersey for the specialist rouleur'.
Over the 21 stages, almost all of the Länder will be covered, with a couple of excursions on to foreign soil. There are three ITTs, zero TTTs, four MTFs, and two 'special attraction' experimental stages with unusual formats.
And the first stage is one of those experimental stages.
Stage 1: Hamburg - Hamburg (Staffel), 9x9,0km
Kopfsteinpflaster:
Sector 1: Adenauer Allee
Sector 2: Berliner Tor
Sector 3:
Steindamm
Sector 4:
St Georgstraße
As you may have guessed from previous posts, I am quite interested in the Peace Race. And something that caught my eye when looking through its history is that there were occasionally some unusual stages; 1970 had a points-criterium in Leipzig on the penultimate day, 1971 had two time trials on the same day, one flat one mountainous, and 1981 saw the race open with a "Parallel Time Trial", whatever the hell that is. I'm harking back to 1975, however, when the race opened with the "Staffel der Nationen" - a relay race. In that event over 42km (6 riders on a 7km circuit) each rider was given their own individual time, which seems bizarre, and it meant Hungary's István Szlipcsevics got to wear the leader's jersey on stage two despite Italy actually winning the race.
It often makes for entertaining racing in other sports to see a relay, and in cycling it could well be fun, as teams will need to work out the order of their riders to make best use of the terrain, as after all nobody will have any teammates out there. We will instead see 20-22 riders, each on different teams, take on a 9km circuit around downtown Hamburg, close to the finish of the Vattenfall Cyclassics race. The start/finish/exchange area is in front of the Hamburger Rathaus, with a 300m exchange zone on Reesendamm. After all, if they can get by in a Madison on a 250m track then this should be fine. The first part of the circuit is straight and mostly built for power, but then it gets a bit more technical with a couple of stretches of city centre cobbles (one point only will be available for winning these cobblestone stretches on each lap) and some tight corners, before opening out again. Each rider only has a short ride to do, but bearing in mind nobody will have any teammates it is unlikely that we will see a whole train of riders bringing attackers back; if a strong rider for the terrain like Cancellara goes early in the race for their team, they could well pick up a gap, and then it's up to the rest to chase back their teammates; meanwhile a guy like Cavendish is going to need to police the attacks if they're going on leg 9 and looking for the sprint win, because they have nobody to lead them out or do that work on their behalf. And if it all goes wrong and the racing is ultra conservative, well, the race is only 81km long so it should be over relatively quickly anyhow.
Teams will be scored in the order they arrived and then the jersey will be received by the rider on the winning team who set the fastest lap of the team. The points classification will award points based on the fastest lap regardless of team.
This could be highly artificial, and I wouldn't want it to be anything other than a one-off special attraction type of race, but it makes for something unique and is a bit more interesting than simply beginning with a prologue or TTT.
Hamburg Rathausmarkt:
), and will both be the first time that it is climbed from the west, as well as being the final climb. The first 4.5 km of the descent from Pailheres is with many (19!) switchbacks, but only a few for the rest of the descent.
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