Tour de Pologne, 30 July - 5 August, 2.UWT

[RedheadDane]

Poland. A Mads Würtz win is always nice to watch

Yeah... I doubt that's gonna happen.

 

[tobydawq]

I'd say Poland too. But it's quite annoying that they don't put the good mountain stages on week days where there is no other sport to watch (yes, I know the races finish Friday and Saturday and that there are no good stages at all in Poland).

 

[search]

Yeah... I doubt that's gonna happen.

the gaps displayed are between the groups, so it's a bit more than you would assume - but yeah, probably not enough

 

[Filippo_3467]

Don't think Higuita is right. Probably should take him out of the race. But we will see for sure in the MTT.

 

[Oliver]

Boring race... another sprint coming up..

 

[Samamba]

Another sprint in Poland another crash

 

[Samu Cuenca]

This new week-long Scheldeprijs format is pretty exciting...

 

[search]

Another sprint in Poland another crash

same as last time when they used this finish. Back then it was wet at least

 

[AlfaLum]

This race should be off the WT calendar. What an absolute sh*tfest. Increasingly by the year also.

 

[Aimar16]

Cycling races should be banned in Poland. What *** roads these people have

 

[Ilmaestro99]

Can someone explain me why there are always so many crashed in Poland Tour every stage , year after year?

 

[BR2]

I can't believe this... this crash was so coming. The race needs to be taken from the WT, I'm sorry for Poland, but there seems to be no interest in making this a good or relatively safe race.

 

[Filippo_3467]

Kick Poland out of WT as their race organizers are completely garbage. Give the Deutschland Tour their slot back as they are headed by ASO and have a competent race concept.

 

[postmanhat]

Apart from the inflatables and nice Polish countryside, would it be missed at all? Especially as no one else in the world can see it now. Just seems to be an assault course for the riders. Honestly, the only things I can remember when we could watch it, were crashes, and that freaky storm a few years back that brought trees down during the race.

 

[Potomac]

What are you guys blaming today's crash on? Did you see it?

 

[BR2]

What are you guys blaming today's crash on? Did you see it?

An almost 90° turn inside the final kms after another turn, also road seemed to be getting tighter. I definitely saw it coming before it happened and I'm not exactly psychic.

 

[Filippo_3467]

Late right hand turn with high speed, road not sufficient wide enough. This finsih screams crash when ridden by a whole peleton going 4 and 5s wide in the sprint.

The polish organisers are known for many years for their reckless behaviour when it comes to sprint finishes, consequences should have been already made before the Jakobsen crash as it was known to riders and officials before how dangerous their finishes are.

 

[yaco]

It continues to be a strange race in where it's hard to analyse the form of riders - Poland continues to throw up tricky and technical finishes - At least today the stage was less than 200km.

 

[railxmig]

I will quote my post from the Burgos thread as i believe it's as relevant here as it's there.

I was thinking of writing it in the Pologne thread but i guess this might be a better place. Welcome to the world of "road management". It's designed to slow down vehicle speeds or even force people out of their cars to walk or cycle. I am a lazy car driver but i understand it. The most car dependent a place is the worse living experience is. In the future you will have such speed bumps, road islands, roundabouts or other such road features literally everywhere. For some here with a much weaker heart and nerves this may conclude in there being absolutely no place to host a professional cycling race outside of the highest mountains or car-infested Americas. Cycling races and especially bunch sprints needs roads with no obstructions but local governments want as many of such obstructions as possible to control the traffic for better car safety, pedestrian safety, walkability and generally better liveability.

Within next weeks Vuelta starts in the Netherlands. This country is absolutely horrendous when it comes to hosting professional bike races (famous one-lane wide motorways) but it's also possibly the best in the world when it comes to traffic control and recreational biking/walking. Thanks to it there's a much smaller congestion on the roads so the country doesn't need any Katy Freeway disasters to move it's people from home to a destination (work/school/shop). It's crucial for economy because people have easier/faster access to their workspace. But... it's a disaster for bike races because they need the least such obstructions as possible.

If this trend continues and for higher economic growth it should continue i believe professional cycling races may be reduced to finishes outside of host cities which already starts to show with more and more finishes on their very outskirts, because that's where you have the most parking space (most large commerce & sport/industrial facilities are outside of city centers) and (for now) the least obstructed roads. An alternative is to move more and more towards uphill finishes which seems to be more and more common.

I looked at the map of Villadiego. The main problem i see is that it's in a valley and all connecting roads are downhill. There was a possibility of moving the finish line up to 700m away but i believe there still would be a huge crash in that particular place. There could be a possibility of reaching the town the other way around (CL-633 from Arenillas de Villadiego) which would result in a wide, straight and non-obstruct finishing straight but it would be quite visibly downhill. I don't now what i would do if i was the race director but i guess i would move the finish to that small commercial hub NE of the center and hope that shaky roundabout section won't cause a crash. I think i will still argue it was not as horrendous of a finish as last year's Pontivy or potentially this years Arenberg were but that's just a surface level estimation.

Was there a better option for yesterday's Sanok finish? Yes. That loop in the city was unnecessary as you could reach the finishing climb directly from the east. Was there a better option for today's finish in Rzeszów? Looking at the map i would argue that... nope. You could try to move the finish to the east side of the river on Tadeusza Rejtana street as it's a fast two-lane straight w/o any obstructions and place the finish facilities on one of the crossings like it had been often done in either the Netherlands or even Nowy Sącz. The slope seems to be table-surface straight or possibly slightly uphill in N direction so you could approach it from south to north.

I'm stopping here... my head hurts...

 

[tobydawq]

I guess naZi were right and the "untermenschen" should cease exist.

Eh?

 

[Samamba]

I have a feeling the organizers actually stupidly thought yesterdays and todays stage were hard enough to not get a bunch sprint. Like these last k's both yesterday and today were ridiculous and a child can that they weren't made for a huge bunch to go through at 60k/h

Found a positive thing about LTS going down to PCT level. They don't need to ride this horrorshow anymore from next year onwards.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Can someone explain me why there are always so many crashed in Poland Tour every stage , year after year?

A combination of:

• Irresponsible choice and planning of the finishing areas and corner cutting actions by the organisers (for example, the downhill Katowice finish (at least I believe it was Katowice and don't feel like hunting out the footage to confirm) was already dangerous before the organisers decided that bricks were a good material to shore up the stability of the structure and made it even more dangerous should a rider be flung into them at high speed.
• A péloton larger than would be suitable for this type of finish due to the WT status; these types of finish can often be done with far less trouble in either more selective stages or in races like the Tour of Britain and Danmark Rundt where you frequently have around 16 teams of 6 riding, rather than 25 teams of 7, so around 80% more riders than those other races trying to make their way through
• A race which is lacking in other GC-relevant stages, meaning that there are far fewer riders who are in a position where it simply doesn't matter if they lose time so they don't need to worry about placement coming into the finish. Take the Bury St Edmunds finish in the Women's Tour that had the farcical crashes and the crazy narrow chicane about 200m from the line - they negotiated that exact finish safely in 2014, when it was on stage 5 and in bright sunshine and so only a handful of people were contesting it - those up in the GC and those contesting the sprint (and many of them were one and the same), everybody else could just do their bit to lead out, then cruise back and not worry about placement. This year, it being stage 1 and everybody still having something to protect (plus the weather being worse) meant that far more riders were trying to get into the mix, both GC riders and sprinters, and the finish's dangers were exacerbated as a result. In the Tour de Pologne, frequently the only GC-relevant days are backloaded, so you have everybody still with something to play for trying to keep themselves ahead of any incidents. That isn't all the fault of the organisers - Poland's problem is like that of France but amped up to the maximum - the only terrain available to create a selective race is way over in the south along the borders with the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with a few small punchy hills near Kielce, Szczecin and Gdańsk. If none of those three cities wants to host, you're left with several days relying on the weather to give you anything but large bunch sprints before anything (other than a crash) happens that might reduce the number of people contesting that finish. Larger team size than at comparable races parcours-wise also makes controlling the race easier for sprinters' teams increasing the likelihood of sprints happening even if there are obstacles, if they aren't punishing enough.

Largely flat stage races with only one or two hilly stages can be done in a way that works. However, the races that handle that format best tend not to be races with 175 mostly WT level riders in them, and more races like the Danmark Rundt (with the Vejle stage) or the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque (with the Mont Cassel circuit), which have a mix of levels and often smaller teams. The TdP was at its best when it was able to use either the Krkonose or the Tatra mountains to give us some selective medium mountain stages - not so much that it's "win the MTF win the race", that's no better than the old "win the TT win the race" events like Bayern Rundfahrt and Tour de Missouri, but where you had things like the Bukowina circuits or the old Karpacz split stages which take us back to Peace Race days.

 

[railxmig]

Eh?

Just a very dark joke (i love dark humor) and a sad trend (or it may just be my personal observations) of Poles having very successfull people but not being the best at holding onto the success due to slopiness.

 

[screaming fist]

Just a very dark joke (i love dark humor) and a sad trend (or it may just be my personal observations) of Poles having very successfull people but not being the best at holding onto the success due to slopiness.

Neither making light of Nazi crimes nor comparing them to the post in question has anything to do with any kind of humor.

 

[railxmig]

Neither making light of Nazi crimes nor comparing them to the post in question has anything to do with any kind of humor.

In a normal world it shouldn't have to do with humor but my world isn't necessarilly normal and sometimes i like to screw with people either on the web or in the real life. Worry not, i wasn't punched but i do consider it as a potential risk.