I had basically announced this thread months ago but due to RL workload I had to postpone it. Now that I finally finished writing a paper and the idea of more writing doesn't make me puke, I'll go for it.
In the last months the routes of the 2015 GTs have been presented. As for everything, there are users in this forum who care particularly for this kind of news and others who believe it has no importance whatsoever, so if you belong to the latter group you may consider to stop reading this thread now.
…
Ok, for all the others, let's proceed.
Every year there are complaints about routes, and users complaining about other users complaining. This triggers always the same convos about the very same topics. The idea of this thread is to have a single place where to discuss the noble topic of “route design”, without having to repeat the usual basic arguments over and over.
So let's begin from the very start. Why should we care about routes?
Well, they're part of the sport. The same cycling race changes over the years, sometimes dramatically. Many races have a winners' list full of very different kinds of riders. This is not by chance. It is because many races changed completely their “scope” over the years. GTs are not different in this regard. If anything, they're the best example.
Then, if they are a naturally variable thing, why should people complain about routes?
There are many cycling fans in the world who have approached this sport since relatively few years. For them, the “modern cycling” is all there is. For these people it is probably unthinkable that cycling used to be... better... than it is today (especially GTs). But anybody who is old enough, and anybody who simply saw some old footage (and by old I mean last century, 90's included, so not that old after all), has clear in mind that it is the truth. Cycling was better back then. And it was way more popular in the historical cycling countries. As an Italian I can provide the example of Italy, but I'm sure the same can be said for France and other European countries as well. There have been times when cycling was the most popular sport in Italy, on par with football. I'm talking about the 50's in particular. There are people claiming that the collective madness about cycling prevented a civil war in Italy after WW2. It is probably bull****, but you get what I'm saying. Still in the 90's, cycling was hands down the second most popular sport in Italy.
Now it is not.
Part of the cause is related to doping scandals, but the key issues, from my point of view, is simply that cycling is not what it used to be. Most of the cycling fans still cling to this sport just because of the memories they have about when it used to be really good.
So in what terms was it better than it is today? All in all, I think the most striking difference is time. Nowadays the average cycling fan watches a GT race for the last 20 minutes. And he is pretty much guaranteed that he won't miss anything of note. Back to its roots, cycling used to provide hours of entertainment. It still does, but very rarely. Too rarely. There are many reasons for this. In general, the improvements of the athletes and of the teams made the differences smaller, so that races are more controlled and riders tend to risk the least possible. What's more, the possibility for team directors to directly control their riders via radio has severely limited the “instinct factor” in races.
But there's another problem: the routes. They're not what they used to be. Grand Tours were named like that because they were a challenge. Originally, finishing a GT was meant to be tough. The hardest stages in cycling history were raced when riders were not half as fit as today. Yet, if today a stage is longer than 250 km and has more than 5000m of gain is deemed as “inhuman”. 100 years ago, riders who were not aliens could complete stages which were at least 50% harder than anything we have seen in the last 15 years. I am talking about 300-400 km long mountain raids, most of them in dirt surfaces, many of them in horrible weather conditions. None of that was inhuman back then. Conditions were bad for everyone, and the goal of a GT was to find the best rider, a hero on wheels. As simple as that. It was not meant to be another day at the office. This aspect was a key part of the charm of cycling.
Why has this changed? Riders today are better trained, they have better equipment, and yet stages are ridiculously easier than the past, and bad weather conditions are often a reason to suspend or cancel them. Cycling has become a huge business, and those who run it want to limit as much as possible risks and chances, and to increase the control they have over the race itself. It is of course a legit reason, but the downside is that the best part of cycling is disappearing.
Users complaining about routes don't necessarily want to go back to the ancient times, but they do think that many routes of today are not acceptable.
Race organizers have provided many excuses for this change. The most popular of these excuses involves doping. I think there are enough threads in the Clinic to debunk that, so I won't here.
Another excuse is the “we design short stages because they are fast and harder to control” line. This couldn't be more wrong. The more a stage is fast, and the shorter it is, the easier it is to control. High speeds favor big groups (=more importance to draft) and short lengths make sure domestiques will always be available to help.
But we're not asking for “just” harder stages. There's more than that.
There are other two “cancers” of modern cycling: the fall of the time trials and the rise of mountain top finishes.
Nowadays time trials (and TT specialists) are considered “boring”, and race organizers tend to limit their length and relevance more and more. The 2015 Tour will be the end result of this trend. Let's face it, a time trial is surely more boring than other kinds of stages. Point is, that time trials are necessary for the success of a GT route as a whole. This is because should provide balance between “heavy” and light climbers, ideally giving a chance for the former category to win the GT. Unfortunately nowadays, race organizers, as well as many fans, seem to prefer the GTs to be won by a 50 kg climber, because pure climbers are more popular than other kinds of riders. I'm not gonna dispute that, but the problem is that not only heavy climbers deserve a shot at the GT (which would be meant to be a competition for the best rider as a whole, not for the best climber), but also their presence in the mix is a very important premise for the spectacle. Their presence force the pure climbers to attack. Besides the light/heavy riders dichotomy, there's another, more generic point: TTs the safest way to create gaps among riders. Organizers and fans nowadays are terrified by gaps. They believe that having 5 riders in 1 minute in GC is sign of a spectacular race. As such, stages are engineered in order to create the shortest gaps possible. These people fail to realize that a GC with short gaps in a GT with stages creating short gaps is just as open as a GC with big gaps in a GT with stages creating big gaps. In fact, it is less open, because many riders feel (mistakenly) they have a chance to win it by simply surviving and hoping to get always good placements and time bonuses. In a GC with big gaps, you must attack if you want to win, and you must do it from far away. And this is what “old school” fans want to see. A longer, perhaps slower, spectacle.
Along the same lines we can talk about MTFs. They are a safe (thus liked by directors and riders) way to win by short attacks. The rise of this type of stage has reduced the importance of “long-range-attack-suited” stages, as the latter are not necessary anymore. Why should climbers attack from far, when they have 8 top finishes where they can gain 20 safe seconds each time? It would be stupid.
Let's make this clear, I'm not against all kinds of MTFs. I am against all those MTFs that are hard enough to give riders the possibility to play all their cards in the last 3 km. And I am against their ever increasing number. One or two, in a GT, are enough. The other mountain stages should feature hard climbs at a certain range from the finish (optimally 30-40 km away) and a descent or an easy climb in the last kms. Almost none of the great stages that have survived history had a very hard climb in the end. This is because a stage featuring 5 kms (at best) of action is hard to remember. It is simply a very short and cheap entertainment that will soon be forgotten. I am not sure cycling can survive this way. It probably will, as a second tier sport. Not what it used to be.
Then, discussion open. If you spot typos in my post please tell me... it's monday morning after all
If you want to provide examples of “good” stages, feel free. I probably will too, later.
PS: Wonder who'll be the first to post “too long, didn't read”...
In the last months the routes of the 2015 GTs have been presented. As for everything, there are users in this forum who care particularly for this kind of news and others who believe it has no importance whatsoever, so if you belong to the latter group you may consider to stop reading this thread now.
…
Ok, for all the others, let's proceed.
Every year there are complaints about routes, and users complaining about other users complaining. This triggers always the same convos about the very same topics. The idea of this thread is to have a single place where to discuss the noble topic of “route design”, without having to repeat the usual basic arguments over and over.
So let's begin from the very start. Why should we care about routes?
Well, they're part of the sport. The same cycling race changes over the years, sometimes dramatically. Many races have a winners' list full of very different kinds of riders. This is not by chance. It is because many races changed completely their “scope” over the years. GTs are not different in this regard. If anything, they're the best example.
Then, if they are a naturally variable thing, why should people complain about routes?
There are many cycling fans in the world who have approached this sport since relatively few years. For them, the “modern cycling” is all there is. For these people it is probably unthinkable that cycling used to be... better... than it is today (especially GTs). But anybody who is old enough, and anybody who simply saw some old footage (and by old I mean last century, 90's included, so not that old after all), has clear in mind that it is the truth. Cycling was better back then. And it was way more popular in the historical cycling countries. As an Italian I can provide the example of Italy, but I'm sure the same can be said for France and other European countries as well. There have been times when cycling was the most popular sport in Italy, on par with football. I'm talking about the 50's in particular. There are people claiming that the collective madness about cycling prevented a civil war in Italy after WW2. It is probably bull****, but you get what I'm saying. Still in the 90's, cycling was hands down the second most popular sport in Italy.
Now it is not.
Part of the cause is related to doping scandals, but the key issues, from my point of view, is simply that cycling is not what it used to be. Most of the cycling fans still cling to this sport just because of the memories they have about when it used to be really good.
So in what terms was it better than it is today? All in all, I think the most striking difference is time. Nowadays the average cycling fan watches a GT race for the last 20 minutes. And he is pretty much guaranteed that he won't miss anything of note. Back to its roots, cycling used to provide hours of entertainment. It still does, but very rarely. Too rarely. There are many reasons for this. In general, the improvements of the athletes and of the teams made the differences smaller, so that races are more controlled and riders tend to risk the least possible. What's more, the possibility for team directors to directly control their riders via radio has severely limited the “instinct factor” in races.
But there's another problem: the routes. They're not what they used to be. Grand Tours were named like that because they were a challenge. Originally, finishing a GT was meant to be tough. The hardest stages in cycling history were raced when riders were not half as fit as today. Yet, if today a stage is longer than 250 km and has more than 5000m of gain is deemed as “inhuman”. 100 years ago, riders who were not aliens could complete stages which were at least 50% harder than anything we have seen in the last 15 years. I am talking about 300-400 km long mountain raids, most of them in dirt surfaces, many of them in horrible weather conditions. None of that was inhuman back then. Conditions were bad for everyone, and the goal of a GT was to find the best rider, a hero on wheels. As simple as that. It was not meant to be another day at the office. This aspect was a key part of the charm of cycling.
Why has this changed? Riders today are better trained, they have better equipment, and yet stages are ridiculously easier than the past, and bad weather conditions are often a reason to suspend or cancel them. Cycling has become a huge business, and those who run it want to limit as much as possible risks and chances, and to increase the control they have over the race itself. It is of course a legit reason, but the downside is that the best part of cycling is disappearing.
Users complaining about routes don't necessarily want to go back to the ancient times, but they do think that many routes of today are not acceptable.
Race organizers have provided many excuses for this change. The most popular of these excuses involves doping. I think there are enough threads in the Clinic to debunk that, so I won't here.
Another excuse is the “we design short stages because they are fast and harder to control” line. This couldn't be more wrong. The more a stage is fast, and the shorter it is, the easier it is to control. High speeds favor big groups (=more importance to draft) and short lengths make sure domestiques will always be available to help.
But we're not asking for “just” harder stages. There's more than that.
There are other two “cancers” of modern cycling: the fall of the time trials and the rise of mountain top finishes.
Nowadays time trials (and TT specialists) are considered “boring”, and race organizers tend to limit their length and relevance more and more. The 2015 Tour will be the end result of this trend. Let's face it, a time trial is surely more boring than other kinds of stages. Point is, that time trials are necessary for the success of a GT route as a whole. This is because should provide balance between “heavy” and light climbers, ideally giving a chance for the former category to win the GT. Unfortunately nowadays, race organizers, as well as many fans, seem to prefer the GTs to be won by a 50 kg climber, because pure climbers are more popular than other kinds of riders. I'm not gonna dispute that, but the problem is that not only heavy climbers deserve a shot at the GT (which would be meant to be a competition for the best rider as a whole, not for the best climber), but also their presence in the mix is a very important premise for the spectacle. Their presence force the pure climbers to attack. Besides the light/heavy riders dichotomy, there's another, more generic point: TTs the safest way to create gaps among riders. Organizers and fans nowadays are terrified by gaps. They believe that having 5 riders in 1 minute in GC is sign of a spectacular race. As such, stages are engineered in order to create the shortest gaps possible. These people fail to realize that a GC with short gaps in a GT with stages creating short gaps is just as open as a GC with big gaps in a GT with stages creating big gaps. In fact, it is less open, because many riders feel (mistakenly) they have a chance to win it by simply surviving and hoping to get always good placements and time bonuses. In a GC with big gaps, you must attack if you want to win, and you must do it from far away. And this is what “old school” fans want to see. A longer, perhaps slower, spectacle.
Along the same lines we can talk about MTFs. They are a safe (thus liked by directors and riders) way to win by short attacks. The rise of this type of stage has reduced the importance of “long-range-attack-suited” stages, as the latter are not necessary anymore. Why should climbers attack from far, when they have 8 top finishes where they can gain 20 safe seconds each time? It would be stupid.
Let's make this clear, I'm not against all kinds of MTFs. I am against all those MTFs that are hard enough to give riders the possibility to play all their cards in the last 3 km. And I am against their ever increasing number. One or two, in a GT, are enough. The other mountain stages should feature hard climbs at a certain range from the finish (optimally 30-40 km away) and a descent or an easy climb in the last kms. Almost none of the great stages that have survived history had a very hard climb in the end. This is because a stage featuring 5 kms (at best) of action is hard to remember. It is simply a very short and cheap entertainment that will soon be forgotten. I am not sure cycling can survive this way. It probably will, as a second tier sport. Not what it used to be.
Then, discussion open. If you spot typos in my post please tell me... it's monday morning after all
If you want to provide examples of “good” stages, feel free. I probably will too, later.
PS: Wonder who'll be the first to post “too long, didn't read”...
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