Zinoviev Letter said:
You say attitude, I say professionalism and organisation.
But when professionalism and organisation detracts from the spectacle, something has to change in order to maintain the sport. Look at the way F1 viewing figures declined during the Schumacher domination era. Was it highly professional? Sure. Well organised? Extremely. But declines in ratings figures in 2002 ranked between 8% and 20% in many markets, because people were not being entertained.
Yes, it's a sport, and yes, these people are beholden to win (or to place highly, for their teams' rankings and for bargaining power in contracts), but we as fans watch to be entertained, and the less we find it entertaining, the less we are likely to go out of our way to watch. Cycling is fine for now, but a prolonged period of disappointing racing could cause problems down the line.
The problems with the courses right now are not too great, other than that we are getting joke routes like the Dauphiné once in a while, and too many courses focus on the same kind of rider. We are in an era of tightly controlled racing, hence why I would like to see course designers take that into account and produce routes that make it harder to control. The problem with that is overkill; Zomegnan's response to harsh criticism of his 2004 and 2009 routes, and chronically poor viewership for flat and ITT stages in comparison to mountain stages, was to cram more and more mountains into the race until it was farcically unbalanced. But Zomegnan was always willing to try something new, and many fans loved him for it. Sometimes he was heading in the wrong direction, sometimes he completely screwed up. But at least he was trying. Too much of the time the Tour is all about doing the same old same old. They've used some of the new climbs that people were begging for this year... but they've made sure they aren't going to be too decisive. A brand new climb like Grand-Colombier? Zomegnan would have made that a big issue. Ignore that he would probably have put an MTF on it on a stage climbing it by three different routes whilst personally throwing barrels down the road to add to the challenge like a lunatic Italian Donkey Kong; he wouldn't waste a new climb as tough as that by putting 60+ flat kilometres after it.
But the Tour, much as though I dislike it, is not my major gripe. It is the Dauphiné. There are plenty of races that have had routes that have disappointed me in their lack of selectiveness given the level of control and the general high standard of top teams in today's péloton; several of the stages in California and Switzerland could have been great in years gone by, but now they're just fodder for a reduced bunch, where Sagan inevitably wins. The Dauphiné isn't like that. The ASO, since purchasing the race, have set out deliberately and consciously to kill it as an independent spectacle. It now always has a direct Tour visua stage, and its route is almost totally based on being preparation. It's always been a race used as preparation, but now they are intent on killing any other function for it; it's a reconnaissance ride with UCI points. The last good Dauphiné was 2009, but that was only because Valverde couldn't be at the Tour. If he hadn't been there it would have been group rides in all the main stages; on Ventoux Gesink and Fuglsang hit for home out of pure boredom. 2010, 2011 and 2012 were sorted out by the ITT, but at least in 2010 and 2011 the TT winner (of the GC candidates, allowing for Martin finishing ahead of Wiggins in the 2011 long TT) had to fight to earn their win. This year? Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Wiggins would have won anyway, his form was stupendous. But by the time they got to the one relevant climb, everybody other than Wiggins and Evans had been declared irrelevances anyway.
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