UCI *should* cancel Tour of Beijing

[maltiv]

Run the route through the Himalayas and call it the worlds highest stage race. Make it a week of absolutely crazy climbing and super high passes. Watch as the race draws the best climbers in the world to try and destroy each other on the super high climbs. If you make it hard/beautiful, then people will come.

Then they'd had to change the date though, because I doubt anyone would want to do such a hard race in the middle of October.

 

[Caruut]

Then they'd had to change the date though, because I doubt anyone would want to do such a hard race in the middle of October.

Ag2r, Euskaltel and FdJ might turn up with strong squads really wanting a win for the WT points. One of the few good things about the WT system is that some team, somewhere, will care about every race.

Much of the rest of it stinks, however.

If I were trying to set up a new system that combined security for teams and promoters yet didn't end up with ridiculous race schedules, I would organise it like so:

2 tiers of WT teams - 1st tier and 2nd tier, with the second tier split into two separate divisions, one-day and stage races, call them WT1, WT2.1 and WT2.2 respectively. I would have 8 riders in each of WT1, WT2.1 and WT2.2

The top tier would have 8 big teams who can (and want to) send a sensible squad to every race. Sky, Astana, BMC, RadioShack, Katusha, RaboBank, Liquigas and Garmin, for example.

The teams in tier 2 would be the rest of the WorldTour and some of the better ProConti squads. They would go either into the one-day division or the stage race division.

This would give 16 teams signed up for each WT race automatically (WT1 plus the relevant WT2 division) leaving the organisers free to have more control over who goes to the race and end the stupidity of seeing EE riding PR.

 

[gustienordic]

Then they'd had to change the date though, because I doubt anyone would want to do such a hard race in the middle of October.

True, but it is a long flight so it would be better at a later time...