Volta Ciclista a Catalunya 2025, March 24-30

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Libertine Seguros

Libertine Seguros

Feb 20, 2010
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Armchair Cyclist said:
It seems a shame for such a race to be decided by bonus seconds, but it'll be worse if it comes down to countback.

Although we will at least have the comedy of Kirby and McEwan acting as though it is a calculation that is beyond the capability of normal humans.
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It can be a good thing and a bad thing.

The 2010 edition of Tirreno-Adriatico, for example, was a brilliant race which came down to three nicely-designed classic Tirreno-Adriatico ramp stages in the Marches which were all well-raced and created action, especially the 240km stage to Chieti won by Michele Scarponi. On the final day with a flat circuit, he had a matter of seconds over Stefano Garzelli, and the intermediate sprint bonuses became a hectic mess as the Acqua e Sapone guys tried to lead out Garzelli while simultaneously preventing Scarponi getting any, meanwhile the Androni guys were trying to lead out Scarponi while simultaneously trying to get in front of Garzelli who was a stronger sprinter than Scarponi, in order to minimise Garzelli's gains. In the end they were equal on time and Garzelli won out on countback, and it turned what would have been a miserable flat circuit stage into a genuinely interesting one, at least for a while.

On the flip side, you have the 2012 edition of the Volta a Catalunya, another of the peak lols of that year's miserable racing; snow caused the queen stage to Port-Ainé to be abridged, cutting the Port del Cantò and the MTF out of the race, placing a finishing line (won by Janež Brajkovič) on the lower slopes of Cantò in a small village called Canturri. This change was announced while the race was already ongoing and the break had a huge lead, so despite the break building a large gap of around 8 minutes, the organisers annulled all gaps after the stage. Unfortunately, that was the only stage with significant climbing close enough to the finish to create action (the next most mountainous stage had Montserrat 30km from the line) and as there were no time bonuses, there was no ITT (as this was the era where Joaquím Rodríguez was the biggest name Catalan pro rider, the organisers were avoiding TT mileage like the plague) and the break had been allowed to take a 90 second lead on stage 1, the chances of recovering that time was reduced to almost nil. Save for 2 seconds gained on stage 6 by Samuel Sánchez, the entire GC field came in on the same time, and positions 3 through 15 on GC were set on countback.

The former isn't ideal, bonus seconds settling the GC, but is infinitely preferable to the latter situation, where the entire GC mix were trying to get up in the thick of the sprint fields throughout the second half of the race because finishing a couple of places higher up could be the difference between a podium and an anonymous top 10 - this kind of thing would also be even more important now with the UCI points system.
 
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