Vaughters 10 point plan

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Comments

  • pedro118118
    pedro118118 Posts: 1,102
    Problem is, cycling is very different to other spectator sports - it's free to watch for a start!

    F1 is a technical challenge - where equipment largely dictates the winner. With football, fans make an emotional investment over generations, which generally pickles their brains and removes all rationality when it comes to the time/money/effort they are prepared to spend on following it.

    There is also the tribal thing and with cycling being a travelling circus with teams having no fixed abode it will never happen. Yes the Dutch, Belgies, Basques, Tifosi etc are very proud/partisan, but on nothing like the same scale as football/rugby/cricket etc. And the same certainly doesn't apply elsewhere across the globe for fans of bike racing.

    By all mens improve what we have, but re-invention? I don't see it.
  • edhornby
    edhornby Posts: 1,780
    as far as race radios go, why not have just a single announcement from the commisaires to all riders for safety announcements and rough time checks for breakaways (30sec increments similar to the old chalkboard on the motorbike) - and the riders can talk to the car for food / drink / mechanical but the DS doesn't have response rights so they can't control breakaways via laptop analysis

    TTTs? no good if they skew the GC of a big tour, whay not have the prologue as a TTT but just a cash prize for the riders (no link to individual GC rankings) and open racing on the first stage
    "I get paid to make other people suffer on my wheel, how good is that"
    --Jens Voight
  • skavanagh.bikeradar
    skavanagh.bikeradar Posts: 1,097
    Haven't the forms of racing below Pro Tour, certainly age related racing, been doing without radios for a while now? As far as I know they haven't been crushed by the weight of the sky falling in.

    I'm also sure that following a F1, Premiershite, Golf or Tennis model will be eqivalent to the rabid beatings of a murderous mob attacking cycling and it's long, proud history.

    Eindhoven TTT. Enough said. Nobody, nobody wants this other than Garmin, Sky and Specialised.

    Cycling is hard to understand for many new to it and for passers by with an interest in sport. I'm split on this one. On the one hand having to learn the races, the tradition, the history, the flow of a season, etc make it worth doing. But it does make it a bit inaccessible. I don't know how you fix this. Or even if you'd want to.

    Two things ought to be top of any list:

    doping
    racing (making it more exciting)

    The first takes up enough space so I'll move on. The second likewise recently too. As some have said the World Rankings ought to better reflect results and stop people valuing 13th in the Tour or even 27th. Funnily enough the older Classic and Semi-Classics might be some of the more dangerous races, but nobody moans too much. But put a bit of that in a GC and suddenly it is an issue for riders and DSs at least. But last years Roubaix stage of the Tour and the mud roads of the Giro were good to watch, the later a proper classic stage. I think routes can get more inventive then.
  • Tusher
    Tusher Posts: 2,762
    Lionel Birnie makes some excellent points here-
    http://www.cyclesportmag.com/news-and-c ... r-cycling/
  • blazing_saddles
    blazing_saddles Posts: 22,725
    Yes, LB gets bout 8 out of 10 compared to JV's low score.
    I don't agree about the TDF determining the best rider though.
    That means a guy who races a month out of the year is better than say, Phil Gilbert, who is winning races in Feb/March and is even more kick ass, in October.
    "Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.
  • Tusher
    Tusher Posts: 2,762
    I would agree with you there, Blazing Saddles.

    It niggles that a particular rider could be perceived as the Best in the World Ever merely by winning the Tour de France more than, say, six times.......
  • geebee2
    geebee2 Posts: 248
    Hmm.. I would give him 2 out of 10 for at least broaching the subject.

    But really the idea that people who don't cycle will ever be interested in cycling as a sport seems doubtful to me. Maybe the French are, I dunno.

    In a funny way what I like about cycling is that it is a strange mostly non-commercial mix.

    Anyone can go and stand by the road and watch the Tour de France without paying anything.

    It's an antidote to all the other super-commercialised sports.

    Of course if you are a pro trying to make a living, that's tough.

    But there are TV rights.
    My new bike

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