When does a race become too extreme?

[Gigs_98]

This issue has probably never been more topical than now.
We had a weekend with two olympic road races which both were decided by crashes on the final descent, there have been numerous crashes throughout the whole race and even some riders who didn't go down said that it was the hardest race they have ever ridden and maybe even more than borderline. In the same week there is a series of races called the Napoleon Games Cycling Cup and one of the races, Dwars door het Hageland, is on a hilly course full of unpaved roads, so difficult that even the winner said it's probably too much in a week without a rest day. And only a few weeks earlier a tour de pologne stage took place in such horrible weather that half of the peloton had to abandon.

Yes, all that doesn't sound very bad but while one would now think those were horrible races actually the exact opposite was the case. The Olympic road races where two of the most dramatic races of the year and provided great entertainment for hours. Basically the same counts for Dwars door het Hageland and the chaotic conditions in Poland gave a rider the possibility to make an absolutely crazy 70 km solo. It looks as if a super hard race almost automatically causes an entertaining race but still there are some people who complain about them because they are dangerous for the health of the athletes.

This raises a question. Where is the point on which a race becomes too extreme. Where those races mentioned above okay or too dangerous? Is a race in which half of the riders abandon nonsensical or exactly the kind of brutal and pitiless competition you want to see in a cycling race? Are descents like in Rio unreasonable or are the riders themselves responsible for how many risks they take?

 

[Red Rick]

They've been great races, and frankly, apart from that descent, the parcours was absolutely perfect. 5 man seem to be perfect, though I'd settle for 7 man teams if it would be done soon. I think the problem with this descent was just the importance of the race. So much on the line, and a number of riders that can't win Olympic gold unless they risk their lives on that descent, and any descent can be dangerous if you try hard enough. Was it a hard descent? Sure, but I don't think that it was that much more than things we see in the stage races very regularly.

 

[The Barb]

Re:

They've been great races, and frankly, apart from that descent, the parcours was absolutely perfect. 5 man seem to be perfect, though I'd settle for 7 man teams if it would be done soon. I think the problem with this descent was just the importance of the race. So much on the line, and a number of riders that can't win Olympic gold unless they risk their lives on that descent, and any descent can be dangerous if you try hard enough. Was it a hard descent? Sure, but I don't think that it was that much more than things we see in the stage races very regularly.

I agree with this, although I shudder to think what that descent would have been like with a bit of rain.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

I don't think that there was anything wrong with the design of Pologne, it was just freak weather. As for the Olympics, the two RRs had parcours that were absolutely amazing, with the sole but important exception of a final descent that left the strongest riders in both races in hospital.

It's important to differentiate between two different types of "extreme" race: Those that are tough and those that are dangerous. Tough is great and I have little sympathy for riders complaining about it. Dangerous is different. Dangerous can be exciting, as with downhill ITTs or the last descent at the ORR but it isn't necessarily so (see Scheldeprijs). When riders say something is too dangerous, I have a lot more sympathy. Cycling is dangerous enough without adding course elements that invite mass hospitalisation.

It's the difference between courses that are designed to make those who want to win suffer on the bike and courses that seem designed to make those who want to win end up off the bike with broken bones.

 

[luckyboy]

I don't think a descent with kerbs like that (and so many trees so close behind) has a place so close to the end of a race. Maybe it would be safer if it wasn't at a point when riders are going all out and risking more, but it doesn't look safe wherever you put it.

Apparently the kerbs like that are everywhere in S.America but surely there is somewhere they could use instead? I'd rather just lose the climb and go around the other circuit that see this again.

Riders will always take risks and push the limits but on this descent if you make any mistake there is literally nowhere to go to avoid an injury.

 

[Gigs_98]

And because I think it fits to the topic a story from another sport.
In Alpine skiing the downhill is the most dangerous discipline, where skiers reach speeds of way more than 100 km/h and jump over 60 meters wide. However due to many crashes the course setters made more and more turns to make the race slower and less dangerous. A few years ago the race director for this discipline changed and the new race director announced that he wants to change the courses for the races. He wanted to do the opposite and made the slopes faster and the jumps wider and even made some sections intendedly extremely icy and bumpy. He did that because he wanted to make the athlethes ski more advisedly because it's simply impossible to risk everything on such a dangerous slope because that would always go wrong.

In many races this worked perfectly and there were spectacular races without any bad crashes. But then there were races like in Kitzbühel last year. That race had one turn which was so dangerous that many riders including the two pre race favorites crashed out and the jury decided to interrupt the race because it was simply unacceptable to let the athletes ski on that slope.
And what has this to do with cycling? It shows that no matter how dangerous a descent in a cycling race is, there will always be riders who risk absolutely everything. The idea that riders will just stop going all out on descents only because it's dangerous doesn't work. A descent is too dangerous or it isn't, that doesn't depend on the riders and in the case of the ORR this year I think it was too much. I love attacks on descents more than anything else in cycling, but when so many riders crash it's not a coincidence anymore.

Ps: I agree though that there is a big difference between a dangerous and a tough race. I also think Pologne this year was great but I know there are people who disagree and say such a hard race is ridiculous.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I understand the reason for kerbs like that, and they are prominent in many places in South America, but given the scale of the event, the prominence and that this parcours was known for many months ahead of time, could they not have put grilles over them, like they do in Briançon to cover the guttering? It wouldn't stop people crashing, because it was still a tough descent (and had it rained, the grilles themselves would have been slippery) but it would have meant you could control your fall better and wouldn't be as likely to be thrown violently. The other alternative is ski netting; will this prevent people getting hurt? Of course not, it doesn't prevent people getting hurt in skiing either, but it would prevent them being hurt as badly as a tumble into the netting is infinitely preferable to somersaulting into a tree.

Another factor is simply that the elite péloton does not race on this kind of road often enough for them to have been comfortable dealing with that type of guttering. There are descents on roads with that type of kerb in many races in South America and those riders routinely deal with them; the Olympic test event passed without incident, perhaps if it hadn't the story would be very different. The other factor is the way you race in a test event vs. the way you race when the real thing hits town, because the stakes are higher, and the risks you are willing to take are greater (plus because of the type of road, a risk you might be able to take and get away with on roads in, say, the Tour de Suisse or the Vuelta al País Vasco, to pick two races with often very tricky descents in them, especially with weather in the latter's case as well, is a greater risk on roads like in Rio because of the margin for error being less).

 

[samhocking]

The Rio course as designed with that final descent was simply too much physical risk for a race that only comes around 2-3 times in a riders career and maybe only once on a course that suits their ability. With once in a lifetime opportunity to so many riders and the pressure so high to make that opportunity count, riders needed to make the big difference on a descent and this isn't my idea of entertaining road racing. I don't take pleasure watching medals won based on random events like who didn't break parts of their body racing down a mountain. I'm not arguing for finishes without descents in the last 15km, but that entire descent given the conditions and curbs in Rio should have had foam barriers around all corners from top to bottom and all those rain gutters should have been temporarily filled in when they laid new tarmac. We would then have seen the race that was panning out for the previous 95% of the race actually materialise itself at the finish line.

 

[Cannibal72]

The races which have had the worst results over the past few years in terms of rider safety have been races with not especially dangerous parcours or circumstances, but races where the motos and cars have injured riders. I thought the motorcycles were reasonably OK at Rio in terms of giving the riders space to descend, although there were probably too many, which raises Gigs' point: if I've understood him correctly, the race director's point was that, on a technical course, the athletes have to pay more attention and are thus safer, which also seems to apply to the moto drivers.

On weather conditions: as long as it's physically possible to ride a bike, I don't really think any conditions are 'too extreme', because there's always the opportunity to abandon if it gets too much for you. Neige-Bastogne-Neige famously finished with 25 riders, after all, and while Hinault hardly chose to get frostbite, the option of abandoning was always open to him. This obviously doesn't apply to treacherous descents in the rain, though.

 

[luckyboy]

re: kerbs - padding surely would've helped?
Possibly impractical but if anyone can do it then surely the billionaire IOC can

Have said elsewhere that putting such a descent 10km from the finish of a quadrennial all-or-nothing one-day-race probably wasn't too wise.

 

[samhocking]

It's the damage that gets caused after the crash. Crashing is part of the sport, but that descent apart from netting to prevent riders simply riding out into thin air and killing themselves wasn't managed at all in terms of what can be done to prevent injury when riders crash on this corner, or into this gutter, this concrete wall or this tree just a few cm from the road edge. Simply not managed at all by whoever signed-off that descent as acceptable from the point of view of risk to life of those pushing to win on the descent.

 

[El Pistolero]

When it's pan flat with not a single obstacle.

 

[ice&fire]

Has Cancellara said anything on the matter?

 

[hrotha]

Complaining about the curbs, I can see. But about the hardness of the race itself? Come on.

 

[thehook]

The Riders MAKE the race. Seeing as the discussion is about the Olympic Parcours. Just ride the darn race and be a PRO!!!! HTFU!

 

[The Barb]

The Riders MAKE the race. Seeing as the discussion is about the Olympic Parcours. Just ride the darn race and be a PRO!!!! HTFU!

Yeah! Anyone who's worried about a high risk of broken bones and a bit of bleeding on the brain is just plain soft!

 

[therhodeo]

A guy like Nibali who has won races on descents knows that he can lose races on them just the same. It was bound to bite him at some point.

 

[Kwibus]

Not a well informed post.

Ronde van het Hageland is part of the Napoleon games, a serie of one day races across the entire year so it's not a stage race. Also the winner didn't complain at all, he enjoyed himself, and said that they don't have to make it any crazier then it is now with a smile on his face.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re:

Has Cancellara said anything on the matter?

It was only a matter of time

Let's hope that he doesn't join some sort of parcours committee following his retirement

Though having said that, I would like to seem more ITT kms!

 

[DFA123]

Re:

When it's pan flat with not a single obstacle.

Many of the worst crashes happen on flat and straight stages. 200 riders in very close proximity, all getting bored out of their minds for five hours, lapsing concentration - then ending in a chaotic bunch sprint. In those kind of races, riders often crash and break things through doing absolutely nothing wrong themselves. At least on a technical downhill, most riders who crash are responsible for their own actions.

Looks like we should just cancel cycling.

 

[Billie]

A course is never too extreme. Every rider can decide for himself how much risk he's willing to take. No one forced Nibali, Henao, Porte, Van Vleuten to go down that descent that fast. Abbott was't comfortable taking those risks so she went down much slower and had no problem staying upright.

 

[42x16ss]

A course is only too extreme when Angelo Zomegnan has sole, unrestricted authority over the design.

 

[samhocking]

Crashes are to be expected in all races and is part of the sport, I think the riders accept this, but HTFU is not the issue on the Rio course. The issue with the Olympic course is the risk to life wasn't managed or even considered at the points of the descent where there was a real possibility someone pushing to win could end up dead if they lost control. It's pure luck Van Vleuten or any of those that crashed heavily aren't paralysed or dead. Relying on luck to prevent injury and death isn't acceptable at this level of competition with the whole World witnessing the lack of care from race organisers, which we assume are CBC & UCI.

 

[Netserk]

So I guess we should never use Aubisque as a pass again?

 

[CheckMyPecs]

Re:

On weather conditions: as long as it's physically possible to ride a bike, I don't really think any conditions are 'too extreme', because there's always the opportunity to abandon if it gets too much for you. Neige-Bastogne-Neige famously finished with 25 riders, after all, and while Hinault hardly chose to get frostbite, the option of abandoning was always open to him. This obviously doesn't apply to treacherous descents in the rain, though.

Lightning is.