Solutions to make classics less boring

[Duke_S]

...instead of a bunch sprint or attack in the final km.

1. Ban race radios/one way radios - always good racing when there aren't race radios (eg. 2014 Omloop)
2. Smaller teams - 6 riders per team (eg. 2013 Tour of Poland)
3. Ban power meter/SRM - riders ride on instinct rather than what their meter says (eg. Pre 1990s era)
4. Harder parcours - more selective course = harder racing? (possibly MSR 2015?)
5. Remove hill top finishes - riders forced to attack from further out (eg. not Fleche Wallone)
6. Less backloading - start the real racing from further out, ie. include tough sections with 100km to go (eg. PR, Lombardia)
7. Allow moto pull for 30s - more incentive to attack... (eg. Cancellara)
8. Ban head turning - riders not allowed to look behind... just commit to your attack please (eg. Everyone)
9. Other... please post

Or is there really no hope, no matter what changes... new breed or riders, new era, no balls/guts to attack from far out, everyone looking at each other in the final even if someone is still ahead, handing them the win. I'd rather lose than pull (insert Sprinter) to the line attitude.

 

[rghysens]

I think you mentioned most possible solutions. In descending order of importance, they are (imo):
1) Ban race radios
2) Remove (semi-)hilltop finishes (FW, AGR)
3) Parcours changes, not necessarily harder. I think most races should have a really difficult section from 60km to 15km before the finish. The new RVV has such a parcours: from the 2nd passage of the Oude Kwaremont to the final climb with 13km to go, and then a stretch of flat roads to the finish. PR has something similar from Orchies to carrefour de l'Arbre. I think LBL would benefit from a sequence Wanne - Stockeu - Haute Levée - Rosier (via descent of cote de neuville, not via francorchamps ) - Vecquée - Beauregard - Redoute - Forges - Roche au Faucons - descent+flat, finish again on boulevard de Sauvinière.
4) Smaller teams
5) Make WT points less of an issue, by attributing way more or way less of them: more races with WT points (a bit like the former UCI points) or only for top 3's in big races and stage winners for stage races.

 

[SKSemtex]

Team radio ban and smaller team (5 max for one day race) can do the magic for this sport I think.

They need to change the UCI points system completly. I know they are going to change it soon but I was lazy to read it so far. There should be much more races in World Tour calendar. With smaller team it could be possible. Teams need to be motivated to hunt the UCI points. UCI have to find the way how to motivate them both positivly and negativly.

 

[Netserk]

Ban UCI points. Protour teams decided on long term financial stability and some other factors. Fewer PT teams and more invites.

 

[SafeBet]

Ban the effing hill finishes. I've had enough.
And smaller teams of course. One day races with 6, GTs with 7/8.

 

[classicomano]

Ban WT points and remove the 50% rule.

 

[T-Nielsen]

Leave them be and start enjoing them. This is not actionmovies, not every second has to be packed with tension and impact.

 

[hrotha]

The key is having smaller teams.

UCI points can be good, you just need to make sure winning pays off. In the old World Cup, the winner got 100 points, which was, what, double what the 2nd got?

 

[Netserk]

The key is having smaller teams.

UCI points can be good, you just need to make sure winning pays off. In the old World Cup, the winner got 100 points, which was, what, double what the 2nd got?

Fair point. Imo placings outside top-5 shouldn't award any points.

 

[rghysens]

the key is having smaller teams.

Uci points can be good, you just need to make sure winning pays off. In the old world cup, the winner got 100 points, which was, what, double what the 2nd got?

100-70-50-40-...iirc.

 

[hrotha]

100-70-50-40-...iirc.

Ah, thanks. It wasn't as good as I remembered, but still better than what we have now.

 

[fauniera]

So reducing team sizes is the solution? From 8 to 6, if that doesn't work down to 4 or what? Why not abolish teams altogether then? I don't buy into that at all. Yesterday's "race" wouldn't have been any different with 6 men teams. Leaders need support, there is nothing wrong in that. All you achieve by reducing team size is that luck will play a bigger role, there will be more undeserved winners who simply got lucky. And it won't prevent wheelsuckers from winning monuments.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

Two low hanging fruits:

Reduce team size
Eliminate team radios

But it requires team owners/managers/DSs recognize and accept we have a problem in the first place.

Give these two changes some time to have impact in the races (i.e a few years) and then go after other issues if the problem still exists.

 

[del1962]

5 man or even 4 man teams, but no extra teams, so size of Peloton is reduced.

 

[Ferminal]

Smaller teams and psychotherapy will do. The race profile has become pretty irrelevant in recent years hence the potential appeal of the Vuelta formula to the pragmatic follower. G-W, AGR, FW, L-B-L, Worlds, Lombardia... they are all "fine" routes on paper. Each with their own special characteristics, but what they all share is that they are more than raceable, yet the opposite is true in practice. Luchon - Pau is also great in theory. Look at the two chained stages in the Tour last year, or the 2012 Giro. ALL of these routes are either too easy, too hard, too far from the finish, too backloaded. Whatever, you're barking up the tree on that one if those are your views. What they all share is the common denominator of utterly uninspiring approach to racing of almost every top100 rider.

 

[hrotha]

So reducing team sizes is the solution? From 8 to 6, if that doesn't work down to 4 or what? Why not abolish teams altogether then? I don't buy into that at all. Yesterday's "race" wouldn't have been any different with 6 men teams. Leaders need support, there is nothing wrong in that. All you achieve by reducing team size is that luck will play a bigger role, there will be more undeserved winners who simply got lucky. And it won't prevent wheelsuckers from winning monuments.

I guess you didn't watch the Olympics, where the saddest parcours provided a very entertaining race because no one could control it.

 

[Anderis]

So reducing team sizes is the solution? From 8 to 6, if that doesn't work down to 4 or what? Why not abolish teams altogether then? I don't buy into that at all. Yesterday's "race" wouldn't have been any different with 6 men teams. Leaders need support, there is nothing wrong in that. All you achieve by reducing team size is that luck will play a bigger role, there will be more undeserved winners who simply got lucky. And it won't prevent wheelsuckers from winning monuments.

Sometimes it would be nice to see some "undeserved" winners to spice things up.

Although I think "deserving" riders would find a way to adapt and maximise their chance of winning. They would just have to take more risk here and there. Which is what most of us would like to see.

Also less riders per team means you can invite more teams and have more team-leaders in the peloton to spice things up.

I'm also all for ban of race radios (or there could be one radio for all teams to warn riders about dangerous situations, but there are already some races with radios banned and it proves not to be a big issue for safety), and maybe even ban of power meters. I find lack of randomness becoming a problem, not only for cycling, but for the sport overall (simillar patterns appear in F1, which is what I also watch). I tend to chose my favourite sport disciplines on a basis of how unpredictable they are. The more I'm proving myself that I'm able to imagine all possible scenarios of an event before it happens, the less I enjoy watching the sport. I think there are many people with simillar state of mind.
But strongest teams are always looking for the way to may things more predictable, because they want to maximise their chance of winning. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but there's some level of randomness that have to be achieved to keep some people interested.
So I think balancing that team's pursuit to make things more predictable through the ban of some technology that helps making races more predictable could be good. All of the best stages and races I've seen happened, when the race went out of control of some of the strongest teams. Giro 2010 with that L'Aquila stage, Paris-Roubaix 2011, when Cancellara was unable to control all of that second-row contenders' attacks, that windy stages when some teams are unable to avoid losses for their leades, or that stage when Froome was isolated during last TdF. I find it infinetely better than races when a stong team has everything under control, riding his leader with no effort into the place where everybody knows he will attack and he attacks there.

 

[fauniera]

I guess you didn't watch the Olympics, where the saddest parcours provided a very entertaining race because no one could control it.

Oh, i did watch it.

The reason this race was entertaining was the fact that the british team had to go real slow on Box Hill not to lose Cavendish. That's highly unusual, normally the hills are raced fast, often followed by a lull in the action. Here the hill was raced slow every time, which enabled a huge number of riders to get away. Team size was not the crucial factor here. Even with ten riders they still would have to go slow on the hill. A bigger british team might have catched the escape group after the last hill, but keep in mind that with bigger teams the escape group might have been bigger and stronger as well.

 

[Bavarianrider]

Bring Back Edgar Allen Poe.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

snipped...

Also less riders per team means you can invite more teams and have more team-leaders in the peloton to spice things up.

snipped..

This just adds costs and offers very little value. More pretenders in the peloton will not solve the problem. Instead reduce the number of WT teams and invite more WCs. Keep the number of teams around 20-22.

 

[scholar]

Vino option.

 

[Arnout]

I was thinking during the race (I rewatched it today, didn't have a chance to catch it yesterday), we have seen average speeds go up and up (despite clean peloton clinic issues blah blah blah those are the facts), are we arriving at a point where wind resistance will mean a group is becoming too strong compared to a smaller group? Obviously stuff like this changed the race of for example MSR already (which used to be a solo ride for the winner but is a bunch sprint more often than not for some decades already) but it seems the hilly classics are experiencing the same problem at the moment. The power of a group is simply too big compared to the power of an individual. As wind resistance increases exponentially I wonder if we passed the cross point for this type of races, maybe it's simply impossible for riders to ride away in future.

 

[veji11]

there is no silver bullet, but several reforms could work in conjunction. In order of decreasing importance :
1/ Smaller teams. the biggest problem today in cycling is that between draft making it advantageous to stay in the bunch + gregarii that are 90 or 95% as strong as their leader (as oppose to 70 or 80% until the 90s), teammates have become too important, the incentive to ride together too strong. In this LBL, teammates have played a key role until the foot of St Nicolas (255ks after the start, 7ks to the finish). This is a massive problem. Teams of 6 for all races and 7/8 for GTs.
2/ Ban radios : They play less of a role in one day races usually, but they tend to make riders switch the brain off. Put the rider back at the center of his sport, make him make decisions, some will be good ones, others will be blunders. give an edge again to the tactical riders whose watts might be lower.
3/ Ban access to power data in race : Prihibiting recording of race data makes no sense, but banning access to this date by the racer in race makes sense. Again the goal as in 1/ and 2/ is to put back the individual rider/leader on centerstage. Know you body, race with your head, make mistakes (blow a casket trying to follow an attack), but stop riding like a robot.
4/ Try to use narrower more winding roads. Big wid roads are death for attackers, encourage bunch riding because of draft. Limit that as much as possible;
5/ Making many races longer again. Cycling used to be a matter of wearing down the opponents. Until the mid late 80s all champions won not because of extra explosiveness, but because they were stronger and could wear down their opponent. It was a sport on resistance, not explosion. The ban on more than 200ks for non WT races makes no sense for example.
6/ Variety in routes : This is important, there are trends. To avoid too many sprints we have had an epidemic in MTFs... the downhill finish is about gone now (which I very much regret). To me there should be more variety, including less backloading : If in LBL the rollercoaster started in km 80 instead 165, it would make for better racing. long stages, short stages, taxing routes, mtfs, descent finishes, narrow roads, even some dirt/cobble bits. Organisers should be encourage to use the widest array of possibilities.

No silver bullet, but in conjunction, many measures could have an effect.

 

[SKSemtex]

there is no silver bullet, but several reforms could work in conjunction. In order of decreasing importance :
1/ Smaller teams. the biggest problem today in cycling is that between draft making it advantageous to stay in the bunch + gregarii that are 90 or 95% as strong as their leader (as oppose to 70 or 80% until the 90s), teammates have become too important, the incentive to ride together too strong. In this LBL, teammates have played a key role until the foot of St Nicolas (255ks after the start, 7ks to the finish). This is a massive problem. Teams of 6 for all races and 7/8 for GTs.
2/ Ban radios : They play less of a role in one day races usually, but they tend to make riders switch the brain off. Put the rider back at the center of his sport, make him make decisions, some will be good ones, others will be blunders. give an edge again to the tactical riders whose watts might be lower.
3/ Ban access to power data in race : Prihibiting recording of race data makes no sense, but banning access to this date by the racer in race makes sense. Again the goal as in 1/ and 2/ is to put back the individual rider/leader on centerstage. Know you body, race with your head, make mistakes (blow a casket trying to follow an attack), but stop riding like a robot.
4/ Try to use narrower more winding roads. Big wid roads are death for attackers, encourage bunch riding because of draft. Limit that as much as possible;
5/ Making many races longer again. Cycling used to be a matter of wearing down the opponents. Until the mid late 80s all champions won not because of extra explosiveness, but because they were stronger and could wear down their opponent. It was a sport on resistance, not explosion. The ban on more than 200ks for non WT races makes no sense for example.
6/ Variety in routes : This is important, there are trends. To avoid too many sprints we have had an epidemic in MTFs... the downhill finish is about gone now (which I very much regret). To me there should be more variety, including less backloading : If in LBL the rollercoaster started in km 80 instead 165, it would make for better racing. long stages, short stages, taxing routes, mtfs, descent finishes, narrow roads, even some dirt/cobble bits. Organisers should be encourage to use the widest array of possibilities.

No silver bullet, but in conjunction, many measures could have an effect.

Very good post.

 

[Buffalo Soldier]

We need more guys like Boonen, Sagan, GVA, Nibali. Guys who want to ride because they love riding, attacking.