benpounder said:
Probably not; or more specifically, probably only for two seasons for after that, they would be repeating the course. There just aren't that many suitable high mountain roads.
In Europe, the mountains have been populated for centuries, thus the roads today typically follow a path originally used by foot and beast of burden. And they are everywhere. In the states, the high mountain roads are far more sparse, and typically following a path suited for trains and trucks. And because of the infrequency of paved roads through the mountains, they need to be kept open during the winter and thus they are not, on average, that steep.
I think this is a problem for the US, as well as the, as mentioned before, being built with better technology. Even many of the steeper roads feature more constant gradient than their equivalents in Europe. However, that isn't exactly to say that the climbs can't still be tough - 5,6km @ 9,4% is going to hurt in anybody's book, regardless of how consistent or not it may be.
But it's true, the state of California has the
geography to sustain a three week Grand Tour, but perhaps not the roads to do it, unless they invest a lot of money into making mountain tracks passable for the péloton the same way as RCS has done with places like Kronplatz, the Rifugio Gardeccia and Monte Crostis in recent years.
It will be interesting to see what kind of crowd is drawn in by the mountain finish - there have been excellent crowds thus far, but the finishes have been in urban centres, where the crowd is usually better since they don't have to go out of their way to see the race (this is often a burden on placing interesting finishes in races in countries without an ingrained cycling culture, such as at the Tour of Britain or Turkey).
I'm not keen on giving out HC status on anything other than a crazy hard climb. 6,9km @ 8,4% is hard. It's very hard. But is it really "beyond categorisation"? If this was the Vuelta a Murcía or somewhere else pretty flat, maybe. But not in California. The Tour of Austria (Austria!!!) only gives out 2 HC categorisations - Kitzbüheler Horn and the Großglockner. Portugal gives out one - Torre. Looking at the California parcours, I feel like today's HC climb looks pretty paltry in comparison to Glendora Ridge Road and Mount Baldy. Give those HC, sure, as a special prize similar to the bonus points available for the Cima Coppi in the Giro, and one selected climb in the Vuelta (Bola del Mundo last year, Angliru this year). But then the rest of the categories should be shuffled accordingly.
Finally, though I would consider myself among the naysayers for the Tour of California, let's do a bit of a compare/contrast exercise.
This is today's stage in California:
This is the final mountain stage of the Vuelta a España:
Sierra Road: 5,6km @ 9,4%
Peña Cabarga: 6,0km @ 9,4%
California's stage has a tougher climb earlier in the stage:
Mount Hamilton: 6,9km @ 8,4% (HC)
The Vuelta's has a less tough, but longer climb earlier in the stage:
Puerto de Alisas (from Arredondo): 9,5km @ 5,4% (cat.2)
But the Vuelta makes up for this with 80km of extra length and another smaller climb earlier on.
I think the Vuelta's stage is harder - but only marginally. This isn't a Big Bear "lots of climbing but none to be decisive" stage, it's a proper climber's race.
GMT???
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