Making Grand Tours more exciting and aggressive

Kléber

Call me old fashioned but I don't see the need for change. It's a three week sporting event, the only competition in the world where people get a haircut halfway through, and you race for four Sundays in a row and all the days in between.

You can't try to create two hours of non-stop action every day, it has to be about some sleepy stages and a few decisive moments during others. The riders are very close to each other in performance terms and no amount of hills or removing radios can change this.

Prudhomme's looking at some new ways and the upcoming Tour looks interesting, especially with the Ventoux stage right at the end.

But it's I rather like the way the race evolves during the three weeks, it's for the riders and circumstances to dictate the race and I don't want TV producers setting the terms too much.

iainf72

I'm with Kleber on this one.

For me, the Tour (specifically) means a prologue, few days of flat stages for the sprinters (yawn), perhaps an ITT, couple more days of flat / rolling stuff. Then either 2 or 3 days in mountains, transisition stages, another couple of mountain stages. And a final ITT.

The flat stages warm you up for the mountain stages - It's a building process. Sometimes you get a successful break, sometimes you get a sprint.

What I liked about the last few Giro's (not this one) is the hardness of the first week without it being impossible. Perhaps one proper summit finish.

victorponf

2 .- More climbs (in the Vuelta 2009 there are lots of them)

Enjoys the staunch fans, with arrivals up to the sprint and escapes more or less the consent of the flat stages
. But for occasionals fans, who are the vast majority of spectators, have little interest in such stages and tend to be those where the riders fighting for the general involved in the battle, which almost never occurs in the flat.

There is evidence that audiences climb mountain in stages, because it is precisely when they are expected to move favorites or in the worst case can always expect something from battle when the road is steep even if only by brokers side.

The more mountain pass and the more likely it will be hard to get the audience.

SpaceJunk

Let them all take drugs so they can be like the "Everyready rabbit" and incessantly attack all the time.

mercsport

cycleNoodle wrote:

Just ditch all radios and any communication with the team directors, scrap wheel and bike changes and make them ride with no support like the old days, then we would see who the real cyclists are!

Lest 'cycleNoodle's' idea gets submerged here on this thread, I'll butt in and declare : he's right . I don't expect there'll be a response to this either but I didn't want the lad to think he was alone in his ruminations on here .

I'd suppose , now I'm here , I should have to try and attach some sort of logic - if unconvincing - to what is after all , only gut instinct . The main fault with modern road racing has been the elimination of the individual and making it into yet another ruddy 'team game ' like football , of which the world is awash . Ultimate simplicity would be my key to making racing more interesting ( to me) . No teams , no bag carriers and workers to the guys on big money , just solo , relentless , head to head racing . Also , keep time trials out of road racing . The TT ethos is alien to head to head , elbow to elbow RR , and always spoils a good grand tour .

Sorry , got to go ... but , you get my drift I expect .

moray_gub

Kléber wrote:

Call me old fashioned but I don't see the need for change. It's a three week sporting event, the only competition in the world where people get a haircut halfway through, and you race for four Sundays in a row and all the days in between.

You can't try to create two hours of non-stop action every day, it has to be about some sleepy stages and a few decisive moments during others. The riders are very close to each other in performance terms and no amount of hills or removing radios can change this.

Prudhomme's looking at some new ways and the upcoming Tour looks interesting, especially with the Ventoux stage right at the end.

But it's I rather like the way the race evolves during the three weeks, it's for the riders and circumstances to dictate the race and I don't want TV producers setting the terms too much.

+1

Like all annual sporting events you get exciting editions and some not so exciting ones its the nature of sport. I see no need to radically change the GTs becuase of one or two less than exciting editions. Next year GTs could be explosive i mean who would have thought the 2005 Giro would have turned out the way it did.

moray_gub

mercsport wrote:

[racing has been the elimination of the individual and making it into yet another ruddy 'team game '

I disagree team tactics and wondering who did what and why is all part of the game, and is what makes it such an engrossing sport

eh

Looking at the overall classification is missing the point, in some ways this is closer than ever before; Hinault, Merckx and others all won by big amounts in the past. No what keeps the race interesting is the sub-plots over the weeks e.g. the sprinters or climbers jerseys, the odd breakaway that stays the distance etc.

The only 2 changes I'd consider are:

1) A slight re-think of the climbers jersey, although I think the TDF have looked at this.

2) Maybe banning radios on specific mountain or rolling stages.

edeverett

On the last day, the top ten riders in a city crit race with bonus seconds for sprints?

Anonymous

Make 'em all do it on Raleigh Choppers.

Magners in bidons.

Do all riding at night time, with a helicopter following the peloton with a big searchlight.

After a cut off time in each stage, each rider after the time gets a 1lb weight attatched to frame of bike.

Give them machetes.

Destroy all bridges on-route and let them do river crossings.

Long cobbled sections on every stage.

Anonymous

ooohhhh