Tour of Britain 2023 (September 3-10)

[Rob5091]

Remember Farage and the bus and BoJo and Dom Cummings? Well ...
https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling...e-route-amidst-criticism?comment=795#comments
Race director Mick Bennett speaks,
A smaller race was also another point of concern with just 96 riders in the peloton at the start of the race. This problem at least, has a simple answer believes Bennett. “It's purely and simply Brexit,” he said. “Just to give you an example, it took some teams five hours that rode the World Champs to get their vehicles, technical teams through customs at Dover, and that was only three weeks ago. And they go, 'Hang on. You know what? It's not worth it'. So they didn't, but that's purely and simply down to Brexit.”

 

[ashhutch1997]

I don't want to get political on here, but it's not Brexits fault that they literally went out of their way to avoid any climbs on the stage to Gloucester.... They could of had 4 tough climbs in the last 40km, hardly going off route but they didn't. Just awful route planning..

Remember Farage and the bus and BoJo and Dom Cummings? Well ...
https://cyclinguptodate.com/cycling...e-route-amidst-criticism?comment=795#comments
Race director Mick Bennett speaks,
A smaller race was also another point of concern with just 96 riders in the peloton at the start of the race. This problem at least, has a simple answer believes Bennett. “It's purely and simply Brexit,” he said. “Just to give you an example, it took some teams five hours that rode the World Champs to get their vehicles, technical teams through customs at Dover, and that was only three weeks ago. And they go, 'Hang on. You know what? It's not worth it'. So they didn't, but that's purely and simply down to Brexit.

 

[Rob5091]

Well, Mick Bennett brought that up as another point (which has already been discussed here which is why I didn't quote it) and basically blamed it on the local authorities lack of money.
From same link/article -
"Race director Mick Bennett however, has hit back amidst some heavy criticism of the route.

“It’s hard to hear,” Bennett said in conversation with Cycling Weekly. “I can’t stand it because they don’t understand the bigger picture that we have had to deal with. “Because the country is in such a difficult financial situation, we're in such a state now that local authorities are being bled of the funds from central and local government."

Five flattish stages to start the race were all won by Jumbo-Visma, causing some critics to label the race 'boring'. “They don't have the funds to commit to closing the roads and lots of lots of these stages, Suffolk for example, put an amazing amount of resources in and you'd think you're on totally closed roads, but they're still rolling," defends Bennett. “Because the country is in a situation where, you know, local authorities are prioritising spending elsewhere, they're going to say, well, that's our priority and we fully understand that.”

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Well, also the British domestic scene - never really a place of strength - has been pretty much decimated as well. There was a pretty decently-attended crit series a few years ago, now I know that one of the issues for British cycling was that the scene was largely dominated by track and crits and so finding and nurturing the talents for international cycling was a bit harder (people like Carthy showed in a few overseas races and got contracted to overseas teams as a result) but at least there was a scene of domestic pros and experienced riders there that padded out the startlist of the ToB and gave some colour to the race in actual fights for the breakaway prizes.

There are four UCI teams registered in Britain this season. Obviously Ineos is one, then there's three Continental teams, Trinity, St. Piran and AT85 (who appear to have gone bust mid-season). Ten years ago there were seven - and Sky's vice-like grip over the top British riders was bigger then. This year's race has 16 teams of 6 for 96 riders, and 2013's had 19 teams of 6 for 114 riders. So hang on... three extra teams in the race that year, with three extra British-registered teams? Doesn't that mean... actually the number of overseas teams was the same?

Running between those, the number of British Continental teams vs. number of teams in the race:

2013: 6 of 19
2014: 5 of 20
2015: 6 of 20
2016: 7 of 21 (including ONE Pro, who were ProConti that year but did very little higher level racing so were in effect an expensive Conti team)
2017: 6 of 20
2018: 6 of 20
2019: 6 of 20
2021: 5 of 18
2022: 4 of 18
2023: 3 of 16

So the number of overseas teams entering the race has been pretty consistent, in fact, totally 13-14 all of those years bar one (2014). Blaming Brexit for the loss of teams or route options is not only "not entirely accurate", it is actually almost entirely false.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Five flattish stages to start the race were all won by Jumbo-Visma, causing some critics to label the race 'boring'. “They don't have the funds to commit to closing the roads and lots of lots of these stages, Suffolk for example, put an amazing amount of resources in and you'd think you're on totally closed roads, but they're still rolling," defends Bennett. “Because the country is in a situation where, you know, local authorities are prioritising spending elsewhere, they're going to say, well, that's our priority and we fully understand that.”

That argument doesn't hold water with me either, since they also rode straight past a couple of the only actually categorisation-worthy hills in Suffolk too. Like, literally they rode past the base of the climb, it was in the same council area so would not have been a matter of jurisdiction holding sway, and it would have required about a 2km detour at most. And the Women's Tour did the exact same thing last year. If they asked any cycling club in the county they could probably have pointed them to that hill and a couple besides. There aren't many climbs you can use to train on in East Anglia so I'm sure most clubs will use the same ones or at least be aware of them for hillclimb competitions and the likes that the Brits tend to have a decent amount of.

The route design in the British races (other than Tour de Yorkshire which ASO organised) is very, very lazy, just doing a dot-to-dot of the places that are willing to have them without any attention to topography, and then getting upset when people call the race boring when they've expended no effort at all to make the race interesting.

 

[Rob5091]

Although the Brexit vote was in 2016, the actual "leaving" from the EU was Jan 1, 2021. (see https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887 )

 

[Izzyeviel]

No-one doubts the huge negative impact on the British cycling scene at all levels, but you'd think if the problem really was one of a lack of funding for route closures, instead of finding the money to close a hundred miles of road, you'd close a lot less and have some more circuits going on.

 

[VO2 Max]

The route design in the British races (other than Tour de Yorkshire which ASO organised) is very, very lazy, just doing a dot-to-dot of the places that are willing to have them without any attention to topography, and then getting upset when people call the race boring when they've expended no effort at all to make the race interesting.

I presume it's commercially impossible for Bennett to admit if they were asked by sponsoring towns to make sure they got exciting sprint finishes at the expense of any action along the way. But if that's not what's going on then for sure some of the routes are weird and clearly lacking local input. But you know, the whole thing is a bit of a mess, there were two climbs on the route yesterday tougher than anything else in the rest of the week that didn't even get noted in the road book - did they only had enough banners for a couple of KOM points per stage or too embarassed to have that competition entirely decided on one day?

 

[awavey]

theres an element of Bennett just listing all his woes, he missed out Boris/Truss, climate change, bankers and war in Ukraine, in the hopes one of them chimes with the media reporting on him and its readers who nod sagely and then dont prod any deeper and look behind the curtain.

fwiw Id always thought the ToB was a bit of a second tier event, it doesnt sit in a good place in the pro tour calendar, used to be argued it was good prep for worlds, but the worlds have nixed that too now, the routes have always been lacking somewhat and compounded when they had additional competing events which meant you couldnt go to certain areas, because stage partners usually only had one pot of cash to spend per year and you are largely constrained to go where the money is.

I mean I literally saw someone complaining that they should have visited Glasgow again in this race, as the worlds last month had shown they could create a good course. they spent what 60million hosting those champs, you think theyve got 350k spare to bring another cycle race in ???

So its rarely attracted the top teams or the riders, Sky have largely looked to attend as a sufference for being the "Brit" based pro level tour team the past decade, and the top riders often look bored to be there, and some treat it as just a week riding with mates near the end of the season.

And we forget it actually disappeared completely at the turn of the millennium for five years, due to lack of interest, money, sponsors etc, the current Sweetspot edition only resurected itself in 2004, as just a five stage event.

These really arent new problems theyre encountering.

But their biggest problem is lack of title sponsor. If the race costs 3million to put on now, they need a sponsor willing to cover half of that I reckon, and the reality is for 1.5million you can get alot better coverage for your company even just in cycling through other sponsorship avenues.

I think they said the points jersey at the TdF thesedays costs 3million to sponsor, and thats 3 weeks of global coverage.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Although the Brexit vote was in 2016, the actual "leaving" from the EU was Jan 1, 2021. (see https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887 )

Sure, but Bennett was quoted as blaming Brexit for the reduced péloton size:

A smaller race was also another point of concern with just 96 riders in the peloton at the start of the race. This problem at least, has a simple answer believes Bennett. “It's purely and simply Brexit,” he said. “Just to give you an example, it took some teams five hours that rode the World Champs to get their vehicles, technical teams through customs at Dover, and that was only three weeks ago. And they go, 'Hang on. You know what? It's not worth it'. So they didn't, but that's purely and simply down to Brexit.”

I looked up the fields for the last 10 editions of the race and the number of overseas teams entering the race has remained more or less consistent, and it's a drop in the number of domestic pro teams that is the main driver of the reduced entry list.

Now, if he were to say that Brexit had made racing overseas more difficult for the British teams and with the dwindling national calendar that made it harder for them to survive, that would be one thing, but he was saying that Brexit was responsible for the dwindling field due to teams not wanting to come to the UK because of the hassle... but of the four team reduction on the pre-pandemic numbers on the entry list... three of those missing teams are UK domestic teams that have folded or gone amateur, so the problem of the field size seems to me to be driven more by the anæmic national calendar than the race becoming less desirable for overseas teams.

 

[awavey]

I presume it's commercially impossible for Bennett to admit if they were asked by sponsoring towns to make sure they got exciting sprint finishes at the expense of any action along the way. But if that's not what's going on then for sure some of the routes are weird and clearly lacking local input. But you know, the whole thing is a bit of a mess, there were two climbs on the route yesterday tougher than anything else in the rest of the week that didn't even get noted in the road book - did they only had enough banners for a couple of KOM points per stage or too embarassed to have that competition entirely decided on one day?

well its a bit chicken and egg how that works I think, they sell the race to the councils hosting stages on the basis it will attract visitors to the area, who spend money, they send out those surveys and do some interesting maths and you always get this the stage brought so many millions boost to the local economy.

which most of these councils understand, but to attract visitors to something, they recognise packed finishes for a sprint in easy to get to locations in town/city centres. not a couple of goats and a few hardy climbers up a mountain.

so I dont know that the councils specifically demand it, or expect it, or its just the dream Bennett sells them that they sign up to, the promo videos always show bunch sprint finishes, and I think its just the way bike racing in the UK is sold to the general public thats what you get, so it favours that approach. Theyve said theyd want it ideally to be more sprint/mtf/sprint/mtf/sprint/mtf/itt kind of mix up, but how you stitch that kind of race together I dont know.

but the routes then largely are about delivering the bunch sprint, though I think they have a habit of using NCN routes to avoid disrupting main roads too much, NCN routes invariably dont tackle all the hilly bits. So yep they keep passsing Watsons hill on these routes through Suffolk, which might not sound on average steep but its enough of a hit to make things more interesting.

I didnt understand why on the route this time both the sprint and kom were over before theyd passed halfway on the stage, and there was nothing for 115km to give anyone in the race any interest, exemplified by ITVs highlights who completely cut that part out, and the 2nd KOM has been used before as a lead in to a sprint. which shows how not a real climb it is.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Stage 3 could easily have placed this around 10km from the finish while not changing the stage fundamentally otherwise. Not enough to guarantee it prevents a sprint, but offer something for puncheurs and baroudeurs to try something:

Stage 1 would have been better looping west from Altrincham and doing the hilly part backwards to re-enter Manchester from the east, but even going the way they did they could have put this about 15km out:

Coming from the opposite side they could have had this:

Again - the objective here is not to fundamentally change the characteristic of the race and make it a climber's race. They could still have their finish in the city centre. But this would make the run-in interesting because the question will be about which sprinters survive those climbs, and also with six man teams, do any of those teams have to sacrifice too much to protect the sprinter to be able to catch breakaway groups?

Time gaps would still be small, you're still using the same municipalities, but you're creating intrigue. I honestly think that the British crowd on site would be just as excited about a finish where they see a lone rider or a small group coming in but with the péloton bearing down on them by a few seconds and you don't know whether they make it or not, because that's all it would likely be since I'm not asking them to create a saw-toothed 20-climb Amstel Gold Race-alike. The small vs. the large is a very easy narrative to sell.

 

[Wyndbrook]

Sure, but Bennett was quoted as blaming Brexit for the reduced péloton size:



I looked up the fields for the last 10 editions of the race and the number of overseas teams entering the race has remained more or less consistent, and it's a drop in the number of domestic pro teams that is the main driver of the reduced entry list.

Now, if he were to say that Brexit had made racing overseas more difficult for the British teams and with the dwindling national calendar that made it harder for them to survive, that would be one thing, but he was saying that Brexit was responsible for the dwindling field due to teams not wanting to come to the UK because of the hassle... but of the four team reduction on the pre-pandemic numbers on the entry list... three of those missing teams are UK domestic teams that have folded or gone amateur, so the problem of the field size seems to me to be driven more by the anæmic national calendar than the race becoming less desirable for overseas teams.

I think the difference maybe is that previously space was always reserved for British teams, after some controversy one year, a selection criteria was published and used. Now these teams no longer exist there is a gap to fill. I believe applications from European mainland teams were often refused because the maximum number had been reached.
Now it appears to an opposite situation.

 

[Rob5091]

Sometimes it's good to know when to stop talking ...
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...ing-crisis-for-boring-tour-of-britain-cycling
“frustrating … when you get criticised by the so-called cycling cognoscenti who think we are just purely there for their entertainment”.

Bennett complained that the volume of criticism was “hard to hear”.

(Ok, I don't think the volume was hard to hear more like hard to bear, and what the heck is sport if not entertainment? )

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Sometimes it's good to know when to stop talking ...
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...ing-crisis-for-boring-tour-of-britain-cycling
“frustrating … when you get criticised by the so-called cycling cognoscenti who think we are just purely there for their entertainment”.

Bennett complained that the volume of criticism was “hard to hear”.

(Ok, I don't think the volume was hard to hear more like hard to bear, and what the heck is sport if not entertainment? )

Yes, it's a strange criticism. Sport is a bit of a double edged sword because it is a legitimate competition for those within it, but it is viewed mostly for entertainment purposes by those outside it. Because the riders are paid to win, not to entertain, if strangling racing and making it really boring is the best way to win, that's what they'll do (just look at, say, the 2009 Tour of Britain and HTC-Columbia) - but then the race organisers' job is to make it as hard as possible for those teams and riders to make it boring.

Certainly they weren't helped by a very weak sprinting field - usually in this kind of sprint heavy opening of many races, time bonuses are an easy solution that adds a bit of intrigue early on, but if the course is very flat and too many editions get settled on bonus seconds, or a rider who gained time on the road loses out to a rider who never left the péloton, that can reflect badly too. The Women's Tour is a particular offender for this (Marianne Vos over on-the-road winner Rossella Ratto in 2014 and Lisa Brennauer over on-the-road winner Christine Majerus in 2015 being examples - also in 2018 Coryn Rivera managed to win both the GC and the intermediate sprints jersey without ever leaving the péloton once) but the men's race has examples too (Edvald Boasson Hagen over Kai Reus in the aforementioned 2009 edition). So I get not having those bonus seconds, and given the dominance of Kooij and JV I don't think they would likely have added much here either.

I just feel that a bit more effort in the route planning would have gone a long way. There are obstacles, maybe not especially interesting ones but ones that at least offer a platform to attack from, close to some of these finishes. Just using one or two of these to liven up the balance between the breakaway and the péloton such that people have reason to believe the sprinters could be foiled. They don't even need to necessarily succeed, but people need to be able to believe an outcome other than a sprint is possible.

And by "people" I don't just mean the people watching on the screen, I also mean the people on bikes and in team cars.