Your favourite/most memorable short stage races?

[pman]

The Österreich Rundfahrt already had big problems fiding towns that are willing to pay for stages and a lack of interest from the general public in Austria. Covid was the final nail in it's coffin. Maybe if Konrad and Mühlberger would have lived up to their u23 results and become actual gc riders for gts things could have gone different. Or maybe Austria should have just tried finding it's own version of Roglic among all of it's washed up ski jumpers...

Back to the main topic, there are a few great editions of Tirreno-Adriatico in the last 10 years. 2013, 2019 and 2021 were all great races.
The most underrated one has to be the Tour of Utah. That race always had great routes and delivered.

I've often made fun of the race, like many here, but in 2018 the Tour of Cali was actually really good. The Gibraltar road MTF, the hilly Laguna Seca stage, the over 34km long ITT where Bernal lost the jersey to TJVG and had to attack afterwards and the South Lake Tahoe mountain stage that was an actual mountain stage at altitude and resulted in Bernal destroying his opponents. That was a great short stage race.

I never got into the Tour of California but I feel like that was my loss. It seemed like a great race in another beautiful location. It's a real shame it's no longer on the calendar.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I never got into the Tour of California but I feel like that was my loss. It seemed like a great race in another beautiful location. It's a real shame it's no longer on the calendar.

Utah is definitely the best US stage race, almost every edition I remember delivered. I don't recall the original incarnation with the domestic pros only but from about 2012 onward it had a lot of good racing.

Except 2018. That was a tragic year.

 

[HelloDolly]

I thought the Itzulia Basque 2022 was a preet good race

Although Paris Nice rarely disappoints I really really liked the 2016 version

Also 2014 Volta a Catalunya wasa great vesion as was the Dauphin ein 2014

 

[tobydawq]

Utah is definitely the best US stage race, almost every edition I remember delivered. I don't recall the original incarnation with the domestic pros only but from about 2012 onward it had a lot of good racing.

Except 2018. That was a tragic year.

Lol.

Utah was not definitely better than California, you just don't like Sagan.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Lol.

Utah was not definitely better than California, you just don't like Sagan.

California had a lot of tedious stages and self-important bluster born out of the determination to present something it was always going to struggle to deliver, though it got better in later years at recognising how to make a stage work rather than mistaking height metres for difficulty regardless of placement (take for example the excellent run-in in the last 25km or so of the Laguna Seca stage which was won by... oh yea, Peter Sagan). Utah just got on with producing a good stage race, was happy with its niche and delivered consistently. The ridicule of California over-promising and under-delivering was at its zenith back when it first moved to May and Sagan was still a new face in the sport.

 

[Offline]

The best stage race on the calendar is Tirreno-Adriatico. For sure!

 

[firefly3323]

Utah is definitely the best US stage race, almost every edition I remember delivered. I don't recall the original incarnation with the domestic pros only but from about 2012 onward it had a lot of good racing.

Totally agree. Lots of good routes, the finale into Park City (with climb over Empire pass) was always fun. 2014, Cadel Evans with a sweet descent of Empire to take the stage is one that sticks out to me.

Except 2018. That was a tragic year.

LOL. I was thinking that that was a personal favorite.

 

[pman]

The fields were obviously better in California. The winners were better in California but I agree that the overall difficulty of the stages were stronger in Utah. Either way, it's a shame that the US doesn't have a true regularly run stage race raced at the highest level, anymore. Not the US, but the Canadian Classics are definitely success stories. I thought the Montreal race was one of the races of the season.

 

[Kaptain Kool]

In the meantime, Poland remains WT. Super-weak field, 7 stages with none worth watching more than the last km. Yet this year was still a comparative success because no one was critically injured or killed.