How would YOU beat Froome?

yourpaceormine

RichN95 wrote:

I'd take most of these figures with a pinch of salt. SKY puplish there finances and it was £24.5m last year. Vauters said Cannondale only had $16m, but that's still a lot more than 10m euros.

Earlier in the year £24.5m was worth 35m Euros. It's now worth 29m Euros. Still we got our country back didn't we. :roll:

iirc the way Sky are funded their funding can be paid in GBP or €. Think that was on the innering article about how they were funded. So whilst our holiday money rate is pants, Sky are alright thank you very much.

above_the_cows

You're not allowed to talk about the repercussions from a vote by 37% of the British electorate on here.

And if you insist on doing so please do not refer to people using derogatory ovine language.

hypster

Above The Cows wrote:

You're not allowed to talk about the repercussions from a vote by 37% of the British electorate on here.

And if you insist on doing so please do not refer to people using derogatory ovine language.

Is that opposed to bovine language, Above The Cows?

At least I tried to turn the discussion back to matters relevant to the TdF.

tailwindhome

Let's change direction slightly

If you were organising the route for next year what would you do to beat Froome/make the race more exciting?

Is it possible to have a 21 stage 3 week tour which doesn't have the key skill as 40 minute efforts at 6.5(?) w/kg

Is it possible to have a tour which Sagan, Tony Martin, Dan Martin and Froome can all have a chance of winning the overall and it still be a Tour De France?

rick_chasey

TailWindHome wrote:

Let's change direction slightly

If you were organising the route for next year what would you do to beat Froome/make the race more exciting?

Is it possible to have a 21 stage 3 week tour which doesn't have the key skill as 40 minute efforts at 6.5(?) w/kg

Is it possible to have a tour which Sagan, Tony Martin, Dan Martin and Froome can all have a chance of winning the overall and it still be a Tour De France?

Exact Tour of Flanders route followed by the exact Paris Roubaix Route.

That'll sort the men from the boys

mfin

I would start by running 26mm tyres like Sky do. 26mm tyres have proven lower rolling resistance together with lower pressure. I run them and the bike handles much better and I find them faster.

Lanterne_Rogue

Rick Chasey wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

Let's change direction slightly

If you were organising the route for next year what would you do to beat Froome/make the race more exciting?

Is it possible to have a 21 stage 3 week tour which doesn't have the key skill as 40 minute efforts at 6.5(?) w/kg

Is it possible to have a tour which Sagan, Tony Martin, Dan Martin and Froome can all have a chance of winning the overall and it still be a Tour De France?

Exact Tour of Flanders route followed by the exact Paris Roubaix Route.

That'll sort the men from the boys

And what would you do for the second day?

tailwindhome

underlayunderlay wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

TailWindHome wrote:

Let's change direction slightly

If you were organising the route for next year what would you do to beat Froome/make the race more exciting?

Is it possible to have a 21 stage 3 week tour which doesn't have the key skill as 40 minute efforts at 6.5(?) w/kg

Is it possible to have a tour which Sagan, Tony Martin, Dan Martin and Froome can all have a chance of winning the overall and it still be a Tour De France?

Exact Tour of Flanders route followed by the exact Paris Roubaix Route.

That'll sort the men from the boys

And what would you do for the second day?

He'd make them do it every day until it rained

rick_chasey

I have done this experiment on pro cycling manager.

I did a week long stage which went as follows:

Stage 1: tour of Flanders
Stage 2: Paris Roubaix
Stage 3: liege
Stage 4: 50km flat TT
Stage 5: monster alpine stage including MTF.

It was procycling manager 2008: it almost exclusively became a battle between Evans and Valverde, however much I tried.

Lanterne_Rogue

Rick Chasey wrote:

I have done this experiment on pro cycling manager.

I did a week long stage which went as follows:

Stage 1: tour of Flanders
Stage 2: Paris Roubaix
Stage 3: liege
Stage 4: 50km flat TT
Stage 5: monster alpine stage including MTF.

It was procycling manager 2008: it almost exclusively became a battle between Evans and Valverde, however much I tried.

Made doubly frustrating by the fact they were both on the same team?

Lanterne_Rogue

Going back to designing parcours that don't get completely nullified by the racing, here's an idea - one mountain stage only, as the penultimate stage.

Pretty much every mountain stage fails to live up to its billing no matter how epic we think it might be, so embrace that - give us one stage to get really excited about, don't fanny about with intermediate stuff elsewhere in the stage, just drill it on the flat and then two whacking great climbs to finish. Double or quits. Make the rest of the tour one single, short time trial to open out enough time to create intrigue and the rest of them either pan flat or marginally lumpy. Plus Paris, with a twenty minute bonus on the line.

RichN95.

yourpaceormine wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

I'd take most of these figures with a pinch of salt. SKY puplish there finances and it was £24.5m last year. Vauters said Cannondale only had $16m, but that's still a lot more than 10m euros.

Earlier in the year £24.5m was worth 35m Euros. It's now worth 29m Euros. Still we got our country back didn't we. :roll:

iirc the way Sky are funded their funding can be paid in GBP or €. Think that was on the innering article about how they were funded. So whilst our holiday money rate is pants, Sky are alright thank you very much.

I read that too. I was just pointing out the L'Equipe have chosen the highest exchange rate the pound has had in nearly ten years to make reach their figure - thus inflating it a bit.

dougzz

Dinyull wrote:

Landa, Poels etc have been signed to play super domestique to Froome in July and then allowed to give it a go at the Giro and Vuelta. The lack of results in the other GT's (aside from Froome again in the Vuelta) back this up.
Rowe, Stannard and Thomas have fallen into their laps thanks to BC, they haven't had to throw the chequebook at them like a Kwia.
Take the Tour away and look at their results from the past few years and you'd struggle to justify their budget.

Yeah, apart from the results at the Tour and the Vuelta, and Uran's second at the Giro they've been poor in the other GTs......

Richmond Racer 2

Dinyull wrote:

gsk82 wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

You'd have to say as well that Sky's budget is focused mainly on the Tour, whereas others spread themselves over the season.

Yes, Thomas, Stannard, and Rowe are riders capable of Classic wins, but Kwiatkowski is probably their only man they pay big money to for non Tour duties.

so you're saying sky are only focused on the tour apart from they're also strong at everything else? they sent landa to the giro with a decent team after that strong classics campaign, which included poels winning LBL.

Landa, Poels etc have been signed to play super domestique to Froome in July and then allowed to give it a go at the Giro and Vuelta. The lack of results in the other GT's (aside from Froome again in the Vuelta) back this up.

Rowe, Stannard and Thomas have fallen into their laps thanks to BC, they haven't had to throw the chequebook at them like a Kwia.

Take the Tour away and look at their results from the past few years and you'd struggle to justify their budget.

Others have addressed your results comment

I'll just say that Sky have recouped that budget - a tiny fraction of their total marketing budget - multiple times over in marketing value. Many multiples. They have no complaints.

gsk82

TailWindHome wrote:

Let's change direction slightly

If you were organising the route for next year what would you do to beat Froome/make the race more exciting?

They tried that in 2015.

Froome is the best in the mountains and the best on the flat of the contenders. Unless they run it in winter he'll still win.

milton50

Make every mountain stage less than 120km long.

hypster

Milton50 wrote:

Make every mountain stage less than 120km long.

I'm not sure how this would help beat Froome but I do agree with it in terms of the overal spectacle and race. If you want to see clean riders fighting it out on the final climb, there's no point in making them ride tempo for 200km overall several categorised climbs.

Alex99

TailWindHome wrote:

Let's change direction slightly

If you were organising the route for next year what would you do to beat Froome/make the race more exciting?

Is it possible to have a 21 stage 3 week tour which doesn't have the key skill as 40 minute efforts at 6.5(?) w/kg

Is it possible to have a tour which Sagan, Tony Martin, Dan Martin and Froome can all have a chance of winning the overall and it still be a Tour De France?

You could make it more 'classic' like to dis-favour the pure climbers. But have they not done this to a degree? Can't take the moutains out!

Alternatively, you change the weighting of the rewards on offer during the race e.g. time bonuses on all categorized cilmbs and bigger time bonuses for sprints. Combine this with smaller teams and you might have a very different race. You could have Sagan going full gas up the mountains trying to keep yellow. You could see GC rouleur teams vs GC climber teams.

dinyull

What about banning power meters?

Pretty much every comment from Sky's competitors about their superiority mentions "sitting @ 400w so no one can attack without blowing up".

Alex99

Dinyull wrote:

What about banning power meters?

Pretty much every comment from Sky's competitors about their superiority mentions "sitting @ 400w so no one can attack without blowing up".

Not sure that would make any difference. You've either got the watts, or not.

norvernrob

underlayunderlay wrote:

Going back to designing parcours that don't get completely nullified by the racing, here's an idea - one mountain stage only, as the penultimate stage.

Pretty much every mountain stage fails to live up to its billing no matter how epic we think it might be, so embrace that - give us one stage to get really excited about, don't fanny about with intermediate stuff elsewhere in the stage, just drill it on the flat and then two whacking great climbs to finish. Double or quits. Make the rest of the tour one single, short time trial to open out enough time to create intrigue and the rest of them either pan flat or marginally lumpy. Plus Paris, with a twenty minute bonus on the line.

Or don't bother with stages that have mountains followed by a descent or flat finish (unless it's a short descent after the final climb). Stages with 4 or 5 Cat 1's look good on paper but in reality end up processions most of the time. MTF, flat sprint stages (let's have some on the coast and hope for crosswinds), one day style stages and a couple of mixed terrain TT's.

I know they've done one day style stages with cobble and steep finishes already, but those were all entertaining.

It's not going to help someone beat Froome though, he's already proved he's better than nearly everyone else at virtually everything.

larkim

As armchair pundits we're going around in circles trying to reinvent the TdF so that the current best GC rider in the world gets beaten. Without much conclusion.

Seems to me that the answer is that he's very difficult to beat, has demonstrated no significant weaknesses this year (indeed, demonstrated strengths where he was thought to have weaknesses) and in the current structure of teams and GC formats, there is no answer to the question "how would you beat Froome" beyond "be better than him in at least one area, and be his equal in all others, including having an equally good team around you".

Still, fun to debate.

RichN95.

I think there's now a substantial mental barrier established in the minds of many riders. It's notable that the one rider who doesn't seem the least bit intimidated by Froome is Porte - a confidence born out of hours and hours riding together.

Alex99

RichN95 wrote:

I think there's now a substantial mental barrier established in the minds of many riders. It's notable that the one rider who doesn't seem the least bit intimidated by Froome is Porte - a confidence born out of hours and hours riding together.

Yeah, it must be intimidating for many. I really hope Porte smashes the time trial and goes on a rampage on the last few stages.

Alex99

larkim wrote:

As armchair pundits we're going around in circles trying to reinvent the TdF so that the current best GC rider in the world gets beaten. Without much conclusion.

Seems to me that the answer is that he's very difficult to beat, has demonstrated no significant weaknesses this year (indeed, demonstrated strengths where he was thought to have weaknesses) and in the current structure of teams and GC formats, there is no answer to the question "how would you beat Froome" beyond "be better than him in at least one area, and be his equal in all others, including having an equally good team around you".

Still, fun to debate.

Sky seems to have built team perfectly suited to the current race format. So, yes, we definitely have moved into Tour re-invention mode. You'd need to favour the sprinter-climbers.

effillo

Or just make all the stages pan flat. Cav in Yellow all the way to Paris next year?

RichN95.

effillo wrote:

Or just make all the stages pan flat. Cav in Yellow all the way to Paris next year?

If the GC of the this Tour was taken only from flat stages, excluding bonus seconds, Froome would still be second behind Sagan.

above_the_cows

RichN95 wrote:

I think there's now a substantial mental barrier established in the minds of many riders. It's notable that the one rider who doesn't seem the least bit intimidated by Froome is Porte - a confidence born out of hours and hours riding together.

He knows where the bodies are buried.

Seriously though can we consider the answer to this questions to be, if Froome is 100% he can't be beaten, he can only loose through error or misfortune.

Is that not enough of an answer?

Personally I have no problem with the strongest rider in the race winning the race. Isn't that sort of the point? Anything else just starts to seem like some sort of kids game show with Pat Sharpe sporting an 80s mullet and a bucket of green gunge.

dinyull

Alex99 wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

What about banning power meters?

Pretty much every comment from Sky's competitors about their superiority mentions "sitting @ 400w so no one can attack without blowing up".

Not sure that would make any difference. You've either got the watts, or not.

Surely most of the top teams have the watts, but if you took away the readout you'd have to be riding on feel. What might feel like 400 could be 420 or 380 1 day to the next.

Also a psychological tool, if your not feeling your best but know you can pump out so many watts for so many hours you'll do it.

Having said all of that, do all riders in the peloton ride with power meters?

Alex99

Above The Cows wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

I think there's now a substantial mental barrier established in the minds of many riders. It's notable that the one rider who doesn't seem the least bit intimidated by Froome is Porte - a confidence born out of hours and hours riding together.

He knows where the bodies are buried.

Seriously though can we consider the answer to this questions to be, if Froome is 100% he can't be beaten, he can only loose through error or misfortune.

Is that not enough of an answer?

Personally I have no problem with the strongest rider in the race winning the race. Isn't that sort of the point? Anything else just starts to seem like some sort of kids game show with Pat Sharpe sporting an 80s mullet and a bucket of green gunge.

You're opened a lush line of investigation here. I'd swap that electro-accordian theme for "Fun hoooooooouse, whole lot of fun, prizes to be won..."