Trade teams in 2012 Worlds

iainf72

Well, for a TTT event anyway

http://velonews.com/article/98314/uci-p ... am-in-2012

Not sure it'll work too well, but whatever. But then I find people riding under their flag for 2 days a year a pretty odd concept.

micron

Trade team TTT and the male juniors are back, too - the 2012 worlds in Limburg also conflict with the Vuelta in its current position - what to do? Shorten to 15 days? Move to April?

What it does mean is that the baleful influence of the TTT aint going away any time soon :roll:

JC.152

will they all get a rainbow jersey for the next year?

afx237vi

Junior races, yes. Although then I ask myself what's the point, when there's not even any TV coverage of the U23 race on Saturday.

TTT for trade teams? Possibly the stupidest idea I've heard in years. Will they get a rainbow jersey each too? What if we had it this year and Barloworld won? "It all falls into line with our concept of promoting the globalization of cycling," added McQuaid. How, Pat, hooooow?

Why not just put it as a separate race in the calendar and keep it in the same city each year? Eindhoven is my nice.

takethehighroad

To be fair to Pat I think he's talking about inviting teams from Asia for this is good in the long run, as is setting up new races in Canada (rather than just saying you're going to Russia then not saying anything else) which it is really. After all, the more get a chance to take part the better eh?

I can't wait to see Uzbekistan et al off the front on Sunday, it's all part of the development

afx237vi

I'm all for the expansion of cycling, but I'm not entirely convinced a trade TTT will help anyone. TTTs are based on extremely specialist equipment and extensive training in a discipline that is not really that beneficial to an aspiring cyclist.

You only need to look at a race like the Tour of Qatar, where the TTs and TTTs are done on regular road bikes because the smaller teams / federations don't have access to the equipment.

Same goes for whenever the UCI invents a new race for the Pro Tour. How does something like the Tour of Turkey help Turkish cycling? A bunch of PT teams send in the b-list riders, they have a race, there's maybe one local team that gets their arses whipped, then the PT boys fly home and no-one has learned a thing.

If the UCI wants to expand world cycling, they should concentrate on helping the continental calendars get stronger, maybe by part-funding more professional teams in Asia or Africa.

takethehighroad

Yeah I guess you're right, 'cos I hate TTTs so lord knows what some kid in China thinks of them. It's not exactly the best way to encourage young kids to take up the sport. Like you say it should be about expanding races and introducing new ones in places that don;t have them at the moment, which is kind of what they've done in Canada.

I satnd by what I said about Sunday though, I love to see smaller nations getting themselves in the break to make a name for themselves

GroupOfOne MkII

Fair enough introduce a TTT, but why not for nations? And then to try and solve the problems about equipment, times etc, just invite the top 20 nations (or even less, top 10 or 15, and make it non-compulsory to ride so smaller nations don't have to take part), and make it six man teams.

I think by having ProTeams involved it'll suddenly dilute the Worlds as a national team event, and even more complicate the issue about team/country loyalties. For example Millar could be riding on the Wed for Garmin, and then the Thurs and Sun for GB...how do you explain that to the casual fan?

Admittedly there is a slight bias as I'd quite fancy a GB TTT squad's chances of winning Gold (Millar, Wiggins, Cummings, Thomas, Stannard + 1 or 2 would be in with a fairly good chance one would think!).

Kléber

A bit odd with the TTT. Why? The UCI seems obsessed with the TTT. Instead, why not bring back the 100km 4-man team time trial, now that was a man's race.

As the others say, it means the venue will be full of riders in national and team conflict, for example some teams might want to win the team event but national coaches will want their riders to take it easy before the road race etc.

TTTs don't really help the development of the sport, they are highly specialist and reward squads with bling gear and windtunnel access. As AFX says, better to fund races around the world, for example get a title sponsor for the Pro Tour and use the cash to fund races in Africa etc.

bikerZA

So how will it work in regards to world champs jerseys?

Will the riders who rode in the TTT be eligible to wear a world champion jersey, but only in a TTT event? (say the TdF TTT?) Or would the trade team itself be the holder of the world champs jersey, so anytime that trade team raced in a TTT, all of the riders involved, regardless of whether they were in the worlds winning team, eligible to wear a world champs jersey?