Yellow on points?

ugo.santalucia

In Grand Tours, the GC based on time was set in a time when a stage would see riders finishing staggered with delays of minutes when not hours. Up to a decade or two ago, a tough mountain stage would still see delays of a few minutes between the favourites, but then something changed and these days most of the stages are fought for a handful of seconds over the last kilometer and th bulk of the time is made in time trials... is it time to review the way the yellow jersey is assigned?

Maybe a point system of some sort would make the race more interesting... thoughts?

bobmcstuff

They should bring back the combination jersey

ugo.santalucia

The problem is that we expect significant time gains and when you see them getting to the finish gaining 5-10 seconds, it feels like it's been a waste of... time. Maybe if time was combined with points in some clever way, the race could be more interesting and even 5 seconds could be significant

jscl

Why don't we just introduce telephone voting for each stage? The most popular get's a ten minute time bonus.

Jobs a good 'un.

bobmcstuff

JSCL wrote:

Why don't we just introduce telephone voting for each stage? The most popular get's a ten minute time bonus.

Jobs a good 'un.

Something similar, but where the public votes for who gets to use their F1 KERS-style electric motor.

Garry H

ugo.santalucia wrote:

In Grand Tours, the GC based on time was set in a time when a stage would see riders finishing staggered with delays of minutes when not hours. Up to a decade or two ago, a tough mountain stage would still see delays of a few minutes between the favourites, but then something changed and these days most of the stages are fought for a handful of seconds over the last kilometer and th bulk of the time is made in time trials... is it time to review the way the yellow jersey is assigned?

Maybe a point system of some sort would make the race more interesting... thoughts?

It's already been tried...

specialgueststar

team budget restrictions

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Send teams out in a staggered system, say every 10 minutes, then carry on basing GC on time? Team then has to work for their own top cyclist on any given stage, none of this cat and mouse and radio nonsense?

iainf72

SpecialGuestStar wrote:

team budget restrictions

I suspect that would make the sport less attractive to sponsors.

tangled_metal

Take out the use of radio and in race.communications between team car and riders. Basically the riders are on their own in the race. Not sure of what effect this would do but making the riders do their own thinking and track other teams for themselves. They'd have to work out any reactions to attacks on the fly and perhaps without feedback on leads and members of attacks they may have.to defend sooner.

I think there is often dominant teams, perhaps 2 or 3 with the personnel to control a stage they want to attack. This has often been the case but why worry about it now? It's a British led team that's at.the top afterall?

salsiccia1

Sometimes, you just get a dominant rider with a dominant team. It's often been like that: Merckx & Molteni, Hinault & Renault, Indurain & Banesto. It won't always be like this year.

Mac9

What about a Tour without a series of high mountains? Sacrilege to even suggest this I know, but what about one year having a series of classics-style parcours stages? A couple of cobbled stages, a few short steep uphill finishes (no more than 1.5km maybe?).

Probably not enough variety possible to fill three weeks like this but it would certainly produce completely different styles of racing and results.

salsiccia1

Mac9 wrote:

What about a Tour without a series of high mountains? Sacrilege to even suggest this I know, but what about one year having a series of classics-style parcours stages? A couple of cobbled stages, a few short steep uphill finishes (no more than 1.5km maybe?).

Probably not enough variety possible to fill three weeks like this but it would certainly produce completely different styles of racing and results.

I'd be more up for this. Long, selective stages with lots of climbs don't often lead to great racing these days. Having this variation, with more rolling stages would help.

All that said, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. This year has been a procession so far, but last year wasn't decided until the last climb and nearly end in Froome losing it. This year isn't over yet, either.

Pross

Having it based on points would make the current style of racing even more prevalent. You'd have all the favourites marking each other and then having mini bunch sprints (like happens for mountain time bonuses at the Vuelta).

If we want exciting, attacking racing then it's time to legalise drug use. Riders know enough about physiology these days and won't risk the big attack one day only to lose it all and more the next.

gsk82

Mac9 wrote:

What about a Tour without a series of high mountains? Sacrilege to even suggest this I know, but what about one year having a series of classics-style parcours stages? A couple of cobbled stages, a few short steep uphill finishes (no more than 1.5km maybe?).

Probably not enough variety possible to fill three weeks like this but it would certainly produce completely different styles of racing and results.

They tried it with Paris-Nice a couple of years ago. Carlos Betancur won. It was terrible.

Pross

Maybe it should be done like ski jumping where the athletic performance (time to finish the stage) is combined with style marks to reward 'exciting' racing.

above_the_cows

Honestly sometimes I don't know why people watch GTs. Really I don't. They've always been like this. The key is to enjoy the nuance and the races within races. Honestly if you want to be permanently entertained because you have the attention span of a two year old go and watch ice hockey or something or download Pokemon Go and get hit by a car.

ic.

How about some sort of bonus second system every km on mountains, will possible multiplication of bonuses if you take 2 or 3 in a row. Possibly on MTFs as it would encourage teams to catch the break so the stars race for the stage too which isn't happening this year.

ic.

Or how about Special Stages for the top 10 or 20 on GC in the last week, where only they are allowed to take part. Short sharp stages, may reduce the mountain train element

Or just do more short sharp stages. Why don't they do split days anymore?

salsiccia1

IC. wrote:

Why don't they do split days anymore?

Because they're unreasonable and the riders hate them.

salsiccia1

Above The Cows wrote:

if you want to be permanently entertained because you have the attention span of a two year old go and watch ice hockey

How very dare you :shock:

I've watched some bloody boring ice hockey matches, mind...

Moraygub

Most of the GT's i watch over the years has this formulaic way of riding and deciding the GC.
I have no problem with it as a previous poster says enjoy the nuances within the race.

RichN95.

Above The Cows wrote:

Honestly if you want to be permanently entertained because you have the attention span of a two year old go and watch ice hockey

You still get Sky riders at the Ice Hockey down here, probably making it boring.

ugo.santalucia

Salsiccia1 wrote:

Sometimes, you just get a dominant rider with a dominant team. It's often been like that: Merckx & Molteni, Hinault & Renault, Indurain & Banesto. It won't always be like this year.

In the years of Hinault, Indurain and Merckx mountain stages were contested, with significant time gaps... the point is not having or not having a dominant rider, but seeing a bit of action...
What's the point in televising a non event?

If half the games in the premier league ended 0-0, the FA would try to do something about it. In serie A a win used to be 2 points, then it became 3 points to prevent teams from playing too defensively.

Rules have changed in rugby to promote more offensive play (extra points given for high scoring for instance).

The rules are not cast in stone... they need to adapt to the times, just like going for the hour record on Eddy Merckx bike in 2014 didn't make much sense

ugo.santalucia

Above The Cows wrote:

Honestly sometimes I don't know why people watch GTs. Really I don't. They've always been like this. The key is to enjoy the nuance and the races within races.

No they haven't... look back and you will see that mountain stages used to yield time gaps in the region of 1-5 minutes

Some teams are just too strong... maybe a draft system like they have in NBA would re-balance things a little, but I think rules for the GC need to be revised...
Maybe give a significant time bonus for the final sprint among GC riders... 30 seconds to the first, 15 to the second, 5 to the third... just thought... if you haven't got the team to do a gap, but you have the punch, you can bag 1-2 minutes in mountain finishes

rick_chasey

Smaller teams.

ugo.santalucia

Rick Chasey wrote:

Smaller teams.

Possibly, but wouldn't they become more specialised... ? Sky would have 5 climbers for Froome, Quick step 5 big guys for Kittel leaving Alaphilippe at home etc... might become even more boring

mechanism

I would release hungry lions behind the GC group.

above_the_cows

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Above The Cows wrote:

Honestly sometimes I don't know why people watch GTs. Really I don't. They've always been like this. The key is to enjoy the nuance and the races within races.

No they haven't... look back and you will see that mountain stages used to yield time gaps in the region of 1-5 minutes

Some teams are just too strong... maybe a draft system like they have in NBA would re-balance things a little, but I think rules for the GC need to be revised...
Maybe give a significant time bonus for the final sprint among GC riders... 30 seconds to the first, 15 to the second, 5 to the third... just thought... if you haven't got the team to do a gap, but you have the punch, you can bag 1-2 minutes in mountain finishes

How are time gaps of 5+ minutes exciting? 2014 was as dull as dishwater at this point because Nibali was leading by 5+ minutes. Time gaps of 5+ minutes nullify the race. There are some very close gaps in the top 10 this year if people want to bother making a little bit of an effort and realise that the Tour is more than just who is in yellow.

And some teams are only 'too' strong relative to other teams. Other teams could be stronger, they choose not to be. Trek and BMC have let key riders of theirs go home. :shock:

Was everyone complaining that Astana were too strong in 2014? No they weren't.

ContrelaMontre

IC. wrote:

Or how about Special Stages for the top 10 or 20 on GC in the last week, where only they are allowed to take part. Short sharp stages, may reduce the mountain train element

This sounds a good alternative to a mountain time trial - 50-60km stage over a couple of mountain passes with only the top riders on GC.

This would actually be quite good for Sky as if we had a top 25 stage today rather than a TT there would be 4 sky riders to 2 each from Astana, Trek, Movistar and BMC.

I'd like to see it

andyp

Above The Cows wrote:

Honestly sometimes I don't know why people watch GTs. Really I don't. They've always been like this. The key is to enjoy the nuance and the races within races. Honestly if you want to be permanently entertained because you have the attention span of a two year old go and watch ice hockey or something or download Pokemon Go and get hit by a car.

Pretty much this.

I don't know why half the contributors on here watch the Tour, they seem to expect something completely different to what is going to happen. The Tour is invariably won by the strongest rider, who'll use certain stages to use their superiority to build a race winning lead. It's always been like this.