Dr. Maserati said:
To be fair - that is a lame response and I would expect better if your point has merit.
I was going to ask similar questions to CapCav - but instead I will highlight one part you mentioned.
Why?
The prestige of the event is what makes it competitive.
If it was about only having the best champion win than an overall point system would be far more appropriate.
Dr. Maserati have you ever raced? Raced much? Because you are blathering a bunch drivel here that evidences a fundamental ignorance and misconception about the sport.
Whereas I can only resort to exasperated, lame responses when a point that has every bit of merit to it, bounces off people who are like rubber walls.
In the pro road racing circuit hierarchy the definition of
class (which implies something beyond the mere statistical data of wins and losses and thus relates to a higher athletic dimention) would go something like this:
Primo numero uno: A Tour winner (followed by other grand tour champs)
Secondo grado: Hilly classic winners, with Liege-Bastone-Liege ranking at the top (although one could put, I think, a Liege winner in the first category if he's also very competitive in a grand tour like a Valverde or Vino, though not Rebellin who's not of their class)
Terzo grado: A Worlds title holder (if the course was demanding, while if it was an exceptionally hard circuit then he is equal to a second category racer for sure and at times, in such cases, is the actual Tour winner himself a là Merckx, Hinault, Lemond, Roche and so is among the first)
Quarto grado: Any up-and-down ("mangia e bevi") race tied with one who can kick a$$ over the cobbles. (Just because races like Paris Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders have become too much of specialists' events in contemporary cycling) I have difficulty in placing a pure time trialist here too, because if he isn't merely a specialist and can also climb well enough, or win a hard classic, then he obviously should be bumped up several categories. But let's not over evaluate the thing to death.
Quinto grado: any flat, unchallenging course or circuit for the pure sprinters.
Now of these five grades, excluding the third for redundancy sake, the first, second and fourth produce a world champion that has any relationship to the actual rank and file of the sport. The fifth, by contrast, should only be labeled as World Champion with an asterisk.
* But the course was lame and flat.
Thus if we ask between a Tour winner and the top sprinter who is the faster
velocista? The answer is easy. But if we ask who is the greater cyclist? That's a now brainer too. Or if it isn't then one is asking the ignorant.
In regards to your other point: the prestige of an event is not exclusively based on who participates. While this may have much truth to it in a grand tour - for instance the Tour is more competitive among the type of rider who can win it than the Giro and is thus greater, even if the latter's route is often objectively much harder in its terrain (because at the Tour usually all the Bigs who can possibly win are present, which isn't true at the Giro, and in any case a grand tour is just damn hard with or without Monte Zoncolan) - it is not at all the case in a classic or a world's circuit, for which the course itself plays a protagonist's role in determining difficulty and hence prestige, which in the latter case can varry greatly from year to year. This is also why Milano San Remo is really not as prestigious as Liege for all but Italians perhaps, but only for nationalistic reasons.
For the layman a Worlds title holder is a Worlds title holder and that is that, but for the non-ignorant fans and those with more than just a superficial knowledge of the sport the event is a case for which it's understood that
the circuit maketh the man. And thus who is a real prince from who was merely a glorified pawn on that day. If a Worlds' course allows for, or makes it highly likely that, a category V rider wins: then it simply lacks the luster (and in my opinion prestige) of one from which he is prohibited from getting the result because he only has the sprint option, unlike a category I and II racer, who has other cards to play and so can win on various course designs and conditions including theoretically a competely flat course with a well timed attack and if the other teams have botched the finish. I think, however, the Worlds course should be inclined toward allowing the more complete riders with more options to get the winner's prize. For this reason they shoudn't be total pancakes. At the same time a World's course with too much climbing is not really desirable either, so it should be ballanced, but hard enough to weed out all but the most resistent sprinters.
This is why the likes of Contador and Evans, as well as other proverbial Bigs of the sport, didn't bother racing it this time since they had no options, or else an extremely tenuous one, to work with; and could have easily turned their TV's on just for the last ten minutes before the finish to have gotten all that a race on this circuit had to say about the guy who won it. To put it another way: the World's is made or broken by the course much more than by the riders in the field, while the best World's events are made by both being robust. This year both were
weak.
In short, the prestige of an event is a combination of who is in the field and how the demands of the course have bearing on which type of rider can win it and who is excluded from this possibility, be it in the grand tours, classics or Worlds, which also largely determines the five grades I proposed above. Otherwise we break everything down in to sub- genres like: classiest grand tour riders, classiest classics riders, classiest time trialists, classiest sprinters and so forth; which is fine, but it doesn't allow as to at all understand what type of stuff the word champion of a given year is actually made of, whether a fine Chateau Lafite Rothschild or Coca Cola, and causes confusion, for which we are quite rightly forced to go with the survey outlined above, or something close to it.
Finally they don't call Paris-Brussels the "sprinter's World Championship" for nothing, as if the sprinters need an event that adds merit and prestige to their category (which they do); nor can we put such a classic in the same rank with the major classics, precisely because it is primarily a sprinters' festa.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram