Solutions to make classics less boring

[Kwibus]

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.

This. The pace is so high that attacking is impossible. The bunch has such a ahigh speed all the time.
I wonder if a ban on SRM meters will help regarding this. The riders pulling know that if they stick to, for example, 350 watts they can keep it up for a long time.

 

[veji11]

This. The pace is so high that attacking is impossible. The bunch has such a ahigh speed all the time.
I wonder if a ban on SRM meters will help regarding this. The riders pulling know that if they stick to, for example, 350 watts they can keep it up for a long time.

This is why less riders per team is necessary, because nowadays the teammates are so good compared with the leaders (there is a real parity in the field compared to the 80s and before : a teammate is nowadays 95% as strong as his leader, it used to be 75/80%) they can rein in a leader who attacks.

We have seen that this year the Movistars and BMCs and other were able to bring back anyone until the foot of St Nicolas, after 255ks of racing ! Even the leaders can't cope with that. Only way they can is if the race exposes the inner strength of each rider and spas the peloton/draft advantage : cobbles or apocalyptic rain...

To combat this there aren't too many solutions : less riders per team, less backloading.

I am positive that a LBL made a lot harder at its centre (2/3 hills before Wanne, but mainly making it a rollercoaster between Haute Levée and la Redoute) and ridden with teams of 6 could happily dispense with St Nicolas and yield exiting and open racing.

 

[Master50]

Stick to X games. Road racing is watching paint dry. It always has been. Nothing exciting happens. Someone accelerates and rides 200 meters off the front? A small group gets 2 minutes or 10?
Road racing lost all its romance the day the first TV camera arrived. Hours of watching riders pedal. So exciting.
If you want spectator excitement watch the track.
Radios are the biggest red herring ever. Amateur racing is just the same with more chaos. The problem was not radios, it was EPO.
I am only partly serious but road racing has always been like this. Hours of nothing interspersed with 10 minutes of drama. It is a game of patience and strategy. Like Chess it is not much of a spectator sport. That said, after 25 years behind the peloton I still find it the only sport that interests me and I fast forward to the last 25 KM.
Put fast forward on the PVR as an option

 

[Arnout]

Stick to X games. Road racing is watching paint dry. It always has been. Nothing exciting happens. Someone accelerates and rides 200 meters off the front? A small group gets 2 minutes or 10?
Road racing lost all its romance the day the first TV camera arrived. Hours of watching riders pedal. So exciting.
If you want spectator excitement watch the track.
Radios are the biggest red herring ever. Amateur racing is just the same with more chaos. The problem was not radios, it was EPO.
I am only partly serious but road racing has always been like this. Hours of nothing interspersed with 10 minutes of drama. It is a game of patience and strategy. Like Chess it is not much of a spectator sport. That said, after 25 years behind the peloton I still find it the only sport that interests me and I fast forward to the last 25 KM.
Put fast forward on the PVR as an option

Your views are quite extreme, but it is funny that I like sports that are, on the face of it, boring most of the time: road cycling and Formula 1. However, both sports have stuff going on behind the scenes that I find absolutely fascinating. Either that, or I'm just a boring person

 

[kiilike]

I was thinking and I got some crazy heretic idea. Riders should start with gaps, which they take from previous year (like pursiut race in biathlon)

 

[hfer07]

Options 1, 2, 4 and I add LENGTH to all of them, so breakaways get a greater chance to survive.

 

[scholar]

Hours of nothing interspersed with 10 minutes of drama.

If LBL had had even 10 minutes of drama I don't think anyone would be so disappointed.

 

[CycloAndy]

Voted smaller teams but not 100% convinced it would help and could just leave a lot of riders seeking employment at a lower level. Has anyone got any evidence (or examples) of races with smaller teams being consistently more exciting?

 

[Netserk]

OGRR and Pologne. I can't remember many other races with fewer riders per team.

 

[veji11]

Voted smaller teams but not 100% convinced it would help and could just leave a lot of riders seeking employment at a lower level. Has anyone got any evidence (or examples) of races with smaller teams being consistently more exciting?

Races with less riders tend to be less controllable. In France for example (where I come from) it often leads to a big breakaway forming, made of many leader (15 to 30 riders), more akin to a small peloton after some battling, and then the main bunch usually sort of folds and later hills help decide the outcome of the race.

In stage races it works quite well as well in races like le tour de l'ain in august. It was also tested on the tour of Poland last year and we saw things we hardly see anymore : Phinney winning a stage as a poursuiteur, resisting the peloton after an attack around the 5k mark, and the then leader Riblon attacking on a hilly stage to make some time and going with Atapuma who he let win the stage.

Again it isn't a miracle solution, but a necessary part of the package : The teammates are now very strong compared to their leaders, since you can't make them bad again, reduce their numbers.

 

[VO2 Max]

Stick to X games. Road racing is watching paint dry. It always has been. Nothing exciting happens. Someone accelerates and rides 200 meters off the front? A small group gets 2 minutes or 10?
Road racing lost all its romance the day the first TV camera arrived. Hours of watching riders pedal. So exciting.
If you want spectator excitement watch the track.
Radios are the biggest red herring ever. Amateur racing is just the same with more chaos. The problem was not radios, it was EPO.
I am only partly serious but road racing has always been like this. Hours of nothing interspersed with 10 minutes of drama. It is a game of patience and strategy. Like Chess it is not much of a spectator sport. That said, after 25 years behind the peloton I still find it the only sport that interests me and I fast forward to the last 25 KM.
Put fast forward on the PVR as an option

It's the best way to watch racing, 6x or 12x on Sky+ and hit play any time there's some drama. Except for the Montalcino stage in 2010 when I started doing this when we got home at 10.30 expecting maybe 30minutes of speeded-up cycling and I was still there at 2 in the morning because the whole stage was drama.

It's a professional sport now. Just like you get football teams who are really defensive, parking the bus because it suits them, so it is with cycling. Yesterday was terrible but no worse than all those GT MTFs where everybody watches each other until such a time when if you attack and subsequently blow up then it's too late to lose any time instead of thinking of it as too late to gain any real time. So we see the trends for searching out mega-climbs, Angliru, Zoncolan, anything to try to take the tactics out of it. We even saw them go steady up the Mortirolo in 2012 ffs. Honestly I don't see any sensible resolution - you have to look at crazy rule changes to try to slow things down so that drafting has less effect, things that wouldn't be conducive to the sport's role of product placement for the industry's products.

 

[Vino attacks everyone]

for classics 5 men teams, in gc might be 7.

 

[Red Rick]

I'm wondering if maybe LBL should be made made easier. Now everyone's waiting for the others to drop and intrinsic qualities fade when a race is so exhausting. AGR and FW should just get the **** off with the cauberg and mur.

 

[Red Rick]

for classics 5 men teams, in gc might be 7.

so much this

 

[qwerty16]

Everyone seems to agree smaller teams will change things but I think smaller teams won't change a thing, at least not in the classics. The big teams will still field their strongest riders who will be on form too.

The reason it seemed to work in Poland was because teams in Poland are mostly filled with weak(er) riders and/or riders who are either building towards a peak or are winding it down after a peak.

 

[Netserk]

Everyone seems to agree smaller teams will change things but I think smaller teams won't change a thing, at least not in the classics. The big teams will still field their strongest riders who will be on form too.

The reason it seemed to work in Poland was because teams in Poland are mostly filled with weak(er) riders and/or riders who are either building towards a peak or are winding it down after a peak.

Are the OG also filled with bad riders? 2008 was a really good race with some strong, but small teams.

 

[SKSemtex]

Everyone seems to agree smaller teams will change things but I think smaller teams won't change a thing, at least not in the classics. The big teams will still field their strongest riders who will be on form too.

The reason it seemed to work in Poland was because teams in Poland are mostly filled with weak(er) riders and/or riders who are either building towards a peak or are winding it down after a peak.

If we have WT stage race every week or two WT one day races in one weeks teams will have to use the most of their riders not just the "strongest".


Teams would have to pick up carrefully the target race with strongest team.

I know it would be extremly expensive project but ........

 

[qwerty16]

Are the OG also filled with bad riders? 2008 was a really good race with some strong, but small teams.

Olympics Games does not tend to have to deep fields, yes, with only a very small number of strong squads, who where all represented up front. More than half of the field in 2008 is nowhere near the level required for a long hilly race.

An Olympic Road Race is by no means comparible to a classic with 10 to 15 teams consisting of 6 strong guys.

 

[Afrank]

...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

I agree with the bolded, especially #8 . plus this.

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

But ultimately, I think it comes down to the riders and how they decide to race. That doesn't mean that these things can't help us to have more exciting races and it would be great if these things were done. But ultimately, in the end, sometimes the riders just need to grow some balls.

 

[el_angliru]

Is it really a problem? Yes! When the bunch is still more than 40 riders 500 meters up the St. Nicolas - more than 255 km into the race - then there's definetely something wrong. Especially after climbs like Redoute and Faucon. Today's average pro-riders have become much better than in the past. And the teams are so strong with plenty of super doms able to kill any breakaway.

In soccer, FIFA implemeted a new (unpredictable) ball a few years ago in order to make goal scoring easier. There has also been changes on passive play, off-side, and passing to the goalkeeper. And they've talked about making the goals larger. Sometimes changes are necessary. It's about time UCI adjusts the rulebook in order to bring today's cycling on level with the progression of the pro cycling of the last decades. Smaller teams, longer distances, ban radios (for the DS; race radio can be used for safety reasons).

I don't think the parcours have anything to do with it. Sometimes we have wonderful parcours when the riders choose not to use it (Bertie/Andy standstill). On other occasions the parcours seems useless but still gives us exciting races.

If only these options were realistic/implementable :
a) Worse weather (rain/strong crosswinds etc.)
b) No wheelsucking

 

[del1962]

You have the time trial for no wheelsucking

 

[icefire]

Ban smooth tarmac and round wheels

 

[Roderick]

Bring back Roger De Vlaeminck

 

[Red Rick]

Thing with the olympics is that everyone rides for the top 3, nobody cares about an olympic certificate or top 10. I think that's the way the classics should work

 

[Peccio89]

little less riders, not so extreme team still needs to play a big impact( 7 riders per team will just work probably) and add more KMs( at least 20 more per monuments).