Plan De Corones

redddraggon

So it's in the Giro again next year. What are peoples thoughts to it?

Personally as a spectator I think it looks good. It's riding up a not so rough track, something I often do myself in north Wales, so why do some people think it's a bit of a joke?

dave milne

some people moan about everything. I loved the 2008 stage

moray_gub

redddraggon wrote:

So it's in the Giro again next year. What are peoples thoughts to it?

Personally as a spectator I think it looks good. It's riding up a not so rough track, something I often do myself in north Wales, so why do some people think it's a bit of a joke?

It would be better if it wasnt a TT and the peleton raced up it, i just hate mountain TTs feel they are a total waste of a Mountain Top finish. The last one up there won by Pellizotti had loads of fans etc but the racing was devoid of any excitement . Check Finestre in 2005 to see how a race up a road like that should be.

thomasmc

It seems that tactics & riders riding within themselves have diluted some of the big mountain stages & mountain top finishes in grand tours in recent years. When it looks on paper that a stage is going to produce fireworks & be balls out from the bottom of the climb, it has often turned out to be quite dull. In turn you have stages like Verbier in this year’s tour which turned out to be crucial in deciding the GC.
With the TT up Plan De Corones there will be no tactics or taking it easy, the GC contenders will be giving it 100% and it should prove a great spectacle.

Kléber

It's a spectacle and as said by some in Italy, and copied in this month's Pro Cycling, we need to be careful. The Giro isn't the X-Factor and it should not be reduced to stunts, gimmicks and circus-style stages.

LangerDan

Kléber wrote:

It's a spectacle and as said by some in Italy, and copied in this month's Pro Cycling, we need to be careful. The Giro isn't the X-Factor and it should not be reduced to stunts, gimmicks and circus-style stages.

I think an X-Factor approach to stages races is exactly whats required at the moment. The viewing public should be entitled to vote off riders who sit on their arses, make one attack and then ride conservatively for the rest of the race.
They could also invite former riders to race individual stages

I also have a plan involving team time trials and packs of Segway-riding Bonobo monkeys (An "outer-chimp" idea inspired by Brailsford) that I'm attempting to sell to Zomegan, but its still in the development stages.

FJS

A TT on unicycles down Plan de Corones
Bike messenger style alleycat race through Venice
A mass start race of one 300 meter lap of the Palio course in Siena
An unlit race through the catacombs of Rome

The opportunities are endless.

The Giro has always been the race that can be relied on to keep pushing the boundaries between spectacle and sport.
Doesn't always produce the most exciting racing though.... the Ronde van Vlaanderen is mostly decided on some insignificant little incline, not on de Muur or Koppenberg...

teagar

FJS wrote:

.

The Giro has always been the race that can be relied on to keep pushing the boundaries between spectacle and sport.
Doesn't always produce the most exciting racing though.... the Ronde van Vlaanderen is mostly decided on some insignificant little incline, not on de Muur or Koppenberg...

But without the Muur and Koppenberg, those insignificant climbs would be dealt with very differently.

It's up to the organisers to try and combat the trend towards conservative cycling. This year's Vuelta was the best example. They tried to make it so tough that the terrain would force the spectacle but that left riders so intimidated by the terrain that the winner became the rider who made the least mistakes. This year's tour tried to leave the racing close, but that just meant no-one did anything till the end of week 3.

It' a fine line. People do remember the Corones stage, at the very least, even if it hurts the rest of the tour. I'm not sure if it does or not though.

Big tours arn't won with big massive attacks with 60km to go anymore, because the racing has got much closer.

Can't say i'd be any better at deciding a route. It must be fiendishly difficult.

disgruntledgoat

teagar wrote:

Big tours arn't won with big massive attacks with 60km to go anymore, because the racing has got much closer.

But why not? Those are the races everyone remembers. Who was the last GT contender (Flandis excepted) who staked everything on a massive, long range attack? I can think of Pantani in 2000 and Chiapucci in 1992.

Could part of the problem be 9 man teams? If you increased the number of teams in the race and limited the number of riders in each to 7, wouldn't you make it harder for any one team to control the race AND spread the talent about more evenly?

FJS

teagar wrote:

But without the Muur and Koppenberg, those insignificant climbs would be dealt with very differently..

Of course, but it shows that rather than making routes as tough as possible somtimes leaving a relatively flat easy stretch in between tougher obstacles works better than filling that with more hills/cobbles/etc.

Extreme, spectacular climbs are an interesting part of racing, but I feel that having both Corones and Zoncolan in one Giro is a bit too much.

teagar

disgruntledgoat wrote:

teagar wrote:

Big tours arn't won with big massive attacks with 60km to go anymore, because the racing has got much closer.

But why not? Those are the races everyone remembers. Who was the last GT contender (Flandis excepted) who staked everything on a massive, long range attack? I can think of Pantani in 2000 and Chiapucci in 1992.

I think because it's not efficient to do that. With better training etc, the differences between riders become smaller.
Without bringing the dreaded d-word into it, but a lack of that probably also makes the differences between riders much smaller. Look at Ricco's epo fuelled rocket up the mountains in 2008.
Di Luca, juiced as he was tried a long range attackin the 2008 giro without much luck.

You might be onto smething with the smaller teams though. However, i recon they'd have to be substantially smaller to have an effect. I think Saxo Bank and Astana this year wouldn't have partiuclarly lost out with 1 or two less riders.

teagar

FJS wrote:

teagar wrote:

But without the Muur and Koppenberg, those insignificant climbs would be dealt with very differently..

Of course, but it shows that rather than making routes as tough as possible somtimes leaving a relatively flat easy stretch in between tougher obstacles works better than filling that with more hills/cobbles/etc.

Extreme, spectacular climbs are an interesting part of racing, but I feel that having both Corones and Zoncolan in one Giro is a bit too much.

Maybe. I don't think comparing a classic to a tour works in this case though. In a classicit's absolutely flat out for the win - nothing else. Big Tours are about getting around in the smallest time as efficiently as possible. A reason why I prefer the classics!

disgruntledgoat

quote="teagar"]

disgruntledgoat wrote:

teagar wrote:

Big tours arn't won with big massive attacks with 60km to go anymore, because the racing has got much closer.

But why not? Those are the races everyone remembers. Who was the last GT contender (Flandis excepted) who staked everything on a massive, long range attack? I can think of Pantani in 2000 and Chiapucci in 1992.

I think because it's not efficient to do that. With better training etc, the differences between riders become smaller.
Without bringing the dreaded d-word into it, but a lack of that probably also makes the differences between riders much smaller. Look at Ricco's epo fuelled rocket up the mountains in 2008.
Di Luca, juiced as he was tried a long range attackin the 2008 giro without much luck.

You might be onto smething with the smaller teams though. However, i recon they'd have to be substantially smaller to have an effect. I think Saxo Bank and Astana this year wouldn't have partiuclarly lost out with 1 or two less riders.[/quote]

I don't think the differences between the level of riders are any different than they were in the 1970s or 80s, it's just we have more coverage, we can see and read about every race out there on demand. Look at the number of individual GT winners in each decade as a guide... I've taken these as an average of the number of winners of each of the grand tours for each decade since the 1950s.
50s- 7.5
60s- 8
70s-7
80s-7.6
90s 7
00s- 6.6

So the number remains constant at between 7 and 8 across all the GTs until the 2000s when it dips to 6.6, largely down to Armstrong. This says to me that the distribution of talent has remained pretty even throughout hte last half a century, and that (based on the manner in which he won his tours) the role of Time Trialling, particularly equipment advances) and use of the team in a 3 week race has increased.

By way of an example as to the "smaller team" argument, take a look at CSC's 2008 Tour squad...

C. Sastre
A. Schleck
F. Schleck
S. O' Grady
F. Cancellara
K. Asle Arveson
J. Voigt
V. Gustov
N. Sorenson

So ;ets say they had to drop 2... The obvious contenders are O' Grady, Gustov, Sorenson or Arveson... But then they all took big pulls on what turned out to be the decisive stage. Surely limiting the amount of time a team can spend controlling the race, or making a smaller number of helpers work for longer, increases the opportunity for team leaders to test each other and earlier in proceedings?

teagar

disgruntledgoat wrote:

teagar wrote:

disgruntledgoat wrote:

teagar wrote:

Big tours arn't won with big massive attacks with 60km to go anymore, because the racing has got much closer.

But why not? Those are the races everyone remembers. Who was the last GT contender (Flandis excepted) who staked everything on a massive, long range attack? I can think of Pantani in 2000 and Chiapucci in 1992.

I think because it's not efficient to do that. With better training etc, the differences between riders become smaller.
Without bringing the dreaded d-word into it, but a lack of that probably also makes the differences between riders much smaller. Look at Ricco's epo fuelled rocket up the mountains in 2008.
Di Luca, juiced as he was tried a long range attackin the 2008 giro without much luck.

You might be onto smething with the smaller teams though. However, i recon they'd have to be substantially smaller to have an effect. I think Saxo Bank and Astana this year wouldn't have partiuclarly lost out with 1 or two less riders.

I don't think the differences between the level of riders are any different than they were in the 1970s or 80s, it's just we have more coverage, we can see and read about every race out there on demand. Look at the number of individual GT winners in each decade as a guide... I've taken these as an average of the number of winners of each of the grand tours for each decade since the 1950s.
50s- 7.5
60s- 8
70s-7
80s-7.6
90s 7
00s- 6.6

So the number remains constant at between 7 and 8 across all the GTs until the 2000s when it dips to 6.6, largely down to Armstrong. This says to me that the distribution of talent has remained pretty even throughout hte last half a century, and that (based on the manner in which he won his tours) the role of Time Trialling, particularly equipment advances) and use of the team in a 3 week race has increased.

By way of an example as to the "smaller team" argument, take a look at CSC's 2008 Tour squad...

C. Sastre
A. Schleck
F. Schleck
S. O' Grady
F. Cancellara
K. Asle Arveson
J. Voigt
V. Gustov
N. Sorenson

So ;ets say they had to drop 2... The obvious contenders are O' Grady, Gustov, Sorenson or Arveson... But then they all took big pulls on what turned out to be the decisive stage. Surely limiting the amount of time a team can spend controlling the race, or making a smaller number of helpers work for longer, increases the opportunity for team leaders to test each other and earlier in proceedings?

I meant the differences between the good riders and the best riders - rather than between the best riders. I don't think looking at the spread of GT wins really illustrates that.... Looking at the time spread for the top 20 over, say 20 years might.

I agree that limiting teams would possily be a solution, but I think it would have to be more than two in my opinion to mke a big difference. We'd certainly get more stories about riders pulling in favours etc.