Brian Holm rips into Lappartient's reform ideas

FocusZing

john1967 wrote:

FocusZing wrote:

I think he's right about giving the banning of power meters and radios a go, say for a season. Also on a MTF allow the riders to ditch their bonce receptacles if they want. Lets see the effort.

It needs more safe chaos. The first week everybody following on the stage threads were saying how formulaic it was. A faux break then action around 5K to go.

Nibali crashed on a mountain finish.

Ok, another good point let me just correct what I said,

FocusZing wrote:

It needs more chaos.

Pross

RichN95 wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

but it's notable running races don't allow pacing devices so it's not an absurd idea to ban power meters or at least a visible readout.

Running races literally hire people to set a certain pace. The pacing device is the clock in the stadium, or for marathon runners the watch that most of them wear.

Plus every decent runner I know seems capable of running within a few seconds of target pace without looking at their watch as they know how it feels from training. As has been argued on here many times riders would be able to do the same with their power level.

rick_chasey

Have to say I think, even aside from aerodynamics, pacing makes a huge difference, particularly in cycling.

It's a big mental help.

hypster

john1967 wrote:

FocusZing wrote:

I think he's right about giving the banning of power meters and radios a go, say for a season. Also on a MTF allow the riders to ditch their bonce receptacles if they want. Lets see the effort.

It needs more safe chaos. The first week everybody following on the stage threads were saying how formulaic it was. A faux break then action around 5K to go.

Nibali crashed on a mountain finish.

Yeah and he would have been better off if his helmet was strapped to his back.

DeVlaeminck

Pross wrote:

RichN95 wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

but it's notable running races don't allow pacing devices so it's not an absurd idea to ban power meters or at least a visible readout.

Running races literally hire people to set a certain pace. The pacing device is the clock in the stadium, or for marathon runners the watch that most of them wear.

Plus every decent runner I know seems capable of running within a few seconds of target pace without looking at their watch as they know how it feels from training. As has been argued on here many times riders would be able to do the same with their power level.

Well of course championships don't allow pacemakers - so you aren't going to get them in the Olympics, worlds etc

The other point no I don't accept that every decent runner can run within a few seconds of their target pace - a watch isn't a pacing device on the road - on the track maybe BUT as I said I don't think power meters are a big deal either way.

bobmcstuff

DeVlaeminck wrote:

The first week the breaks were going very easily but later in the race some of the most exciting racing was the first hour or so, I suppose we could have 45 minutes of watching the break getting away but I'm guessing that wouldn't be the case so I'd keep the whole race televised if possible.

Personally I'd like to see a further reduction in team size, say to 7. I don't know why some fans have a problem with this. I don't buy the "fewer young riders" line, they'll pick the best 7 or best 8 depending on how many are allowed. In any case it's a race not a charity to help young people get on in life - who cares if a rider is 22 or 44 why does that matter? It should also allow for more teams to enter.

I'd also like to see radios banned. Power meters I'm less bothered about, neither here nor there but it's notable running races don't allow pacing devices so it's not an absurd idea to ban power meters or at least a visible readout. The issue with radios is are they a safety device, some argue having all the DS yelling to get up the front makes racing less safe but clearly being able to communicate could be important say to warn of a dangerous surface, crash etc.

First point - I was taking the p!ss when I suggested that, all I am trying to say is that racing hasn't actually got any more boring than it ever has been before.

Second point - Sure, why not. Don't think it will do much to "stop Sky" though as they will just have a team of riders who might all be capable of GC top tens. Their budget won't go down, they'll just need fewer riders.

Third point - I think the impact of radios is a bit overstated, as by the time the DS has seen what is happening on the TV and issue some instructions the race is already up the road (based on comments by actual DSs). Some decisions have to be made in the heat of the moment. It would make some things harder, it might make it harder to organise pacing dropped leaders back on though, which I suppose could be a good thing, if all you want is bigger time gaps. Probably a bit unfair to riders who are dropped for mechanicals or punctures. Could also reduce the chance of breaks getting brought back, although they still have moto riders giving time gaps.

dinyull

I don't understand why some are so against banning power meters - why is that?

I think it would make racing a bit more unpredictable for a start. We saw in the Sky breakdown of the Finestre stage how pivotal riding to power was for Froome's win.*

You see time and time again riders attacking and others just sticking at their own pace. Get it wrong one day and you'll lose a load of time.

*I'm not against encouraging attacking rides like that mind...

dinyull

The biggest problem I see when everyone is trying to fix the sport, is that you'd need to start by rewriting history.

Rasmussen linked a vid of him being attacked by Contador in the 2000's and without the drugs it's a completely different sport. I'm a relative newcomer and was aghast at just how fast they were.

iainf72

Dinyull wrote:

I don't understand why some are so against banning power meters - why is that?

I think it would make racing a bit more unpredictable for a start. We saw in the Sky breakdown of the Finestre stage how pivotal riding to power was for Froome's win.*

You see time and time again riders attacking and others just sticking at their own pace. Get it wrong one day and you'll lose a load of time.

*I'm not against encouraging attacking rides like that mind...

You're arguing that the most exciting ride of recent memory relied on power meters, so therefore we should not have power meter?

I know you've got your * there but it's a bit odd to use something really exciting that may have used power meters for your argument.

If riders are that reliant on them, which I don't believe they are, and you took it away, the logical outcome would be for racing to become even more conservative, no?

DeVlaeminck

bobmcstuff wrote:

First point - I was taking the p!ss when I suggested that, all I am trying to say is that racing hasn't actually got any more boring than it ever has been before.

Second point - Sure, why not. Don't think it will do much to "stop Sky" though as they will just have a team of riders who might all be capable of GC top tens. Their budget won't go down, they'll just need fewer riders.

Third point - I think the impact of radios is a bit overstated, as by the time the DS has seen what is happening on the TV and issue some instructions the race is already up the road (based on comments by actual DSs). Some decisions have to be made in the heat of the moment. It would make some things harder, it might make it harder to organise pacing dropped leaders back on though, which I suppose could be a good thing, if all you want is bigger time gaps. Probably a bit unfair to riders who are dropped for mechanicals or punctures. Could also reduce the chance of breaks getting brought back, although they still have moto riders giving time gaps.

One - Yes but there were a few comments to the effect that races have always been 4 hours of boredom and 30 minutes of racing thought it worth pointing out that maybe but sometimes the 30 minutes of racing is straight after the neutralised zone.

Second one - Smaller teams - SKy and others use numbers to control a race - fewer numbers means there options for controlling it are fewer. All other things being equal I don't see how having fewer riders wouldn't make it harder for any one team to control the race. They may come with 5 possible winners to set the pace but that's less effective than having 6 possible winners. Unless there are unforeseen consequences which change how teams race with fewer riders - I know Brian Smith was suggesting that on Eurosport but I can't remember exactly the points he was making and in any case I tend to think DS and former DS do tend to be against anything which makes a race less controlled because their job is to control it.

Third - Yes I don't think banning radios is going to revolutionise racing but there may be times where riders have to make decisions to follow or not when it changes the decision made. There was the stage (Tourmalet ?) where Landa went away and I remember thinking without radios some of the other leaders might react to this rather than sitting tight. That's the kind of situation it could affect for the better.

rick_chasey

Dinyull wrote:

The biggest problem I see when everyone is trying to fix the sport, is that you'd need to start by rewriting history.

Rasmussen linked a vid of him being attacked by Contador in the 2000's and without the drugs it's a completely different sport. I'm a relative newcomer and was aghast at just how fast they were.

Honestly? I don't think drugs have changed the way the tactics work or the way the racing works.

I just think they went a lot faster and a helpful bodily trait was to be very responsive to drugs.

dinyull

iainf72 wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

I don't understand why some are so against banning power meters - why is that?

I think it would make racing a bit more unpredictable for a start. We saw in the Sky breakdown of the Finestre stage how pivotal riding to power was for Froome's win.*

You see time and time again riders attacking and others just sticking at their own pace. Get it wrong one day and you'll lose a load of time.

*I'm not against encouraging attacking rides like that mind...

You're arguing that the most exciting ride of recent memory relied on power meters, so therefore we should not have power meter?

I know you've got your * there but it's a bit odd to use something really exciting that may have used power meters for your argument.

If riders are that reliant on them, which I don't believe they are, and you took it away, the logical outcome would be for racing to become even more conservative, no?

That's happened once in a decade, maybe?

And my point, although completely lost, is that power meters are a lot more important than the fans like to let on - I think.

dinyull

Rick Chasey wrote:

Dinyull wrote:

The biggest problem I see when everyone is trying to fix the sport, is that you'd need to start by rewriting history.

Rasmussen linked a vid of him being attacked by Contador in the 2000's and without the drugs it's a completely different sport. I'm a relative newcomer and was aghast at just how fast they were.

Honestly? I don't think drugs have changed the way the tactics work or the way the racing works.

I just think they went a lot faster and a helpful bodily trait was to be very responsive to drugs.

I dunno, like Iain said maybe I'm contradicting myself.

But in the spoiler threads on here people are always wanting long range attacks like the good old days, but they don't work nowadays. Time is to be made up in the last few hundred meters and potentially on an attack a few km's from the end.

Like I said, I'm a relative newcomer so can't directly compare to the past, just something I've picked up over the years reading the spoiler threads on here.

No_Ta_Doctor

Power meters are just a handy tool to help with some accuracy in gauging an effort. Given that the Sky train is lined up such that each rider in turn is capable of a little more than the rider in front of him and each rider puts out about the highest they can sustain for a decent period before pulling off, removing the power meters will do nothing.

There's not really any difference between a DS saying "give me X watts for the next y minutes" and "give me your max sustainable for y minutes".

dinyull

No tA Doctor wrote:

Power meters are just a handy tool to help with some accuracy in gauging an effort. Given that the Sky train is lined up such that each rider in turn is capable of a little more than the rider in front of him and each rider puts out about the highest they can sustain for a decent period before pulling off, removing the power meters will do nothing.

There's not really any difference between a DS saying "give me X watts for the next y minutes" and "give me your max sustainable for y minutes".

But doesn't that allow for more misjudgement? An off day?

On the fly, if they have to adjust power for a climb because leader isn't feeling it today they might be told, knock off 10%. With a computer in front, piece of pi$$. A knackered, under strain athlete though?

dinyull

I think it would be at least worth a try, over a week long stage race.

DeVlaeminck

No tA Doctor wrote:

Power meters are just a handy tool to help with some accuracy in gauging an effort. Given that the Sky train is lined up such that each rider in turn is capable of a little more than the rider in front of him and each rider puts out about the highest they can sustain for a decent period before pulling off, removing the power meters will do nothing.

There's not really any difference between a DS saying "give me X watts for the next y minutes" and "give me your max sustainable for y minutes".

Difficult to say how far that is true but one thing - some people think they detract from the racing and some think they don't really have an effect - nobody is really arguing they improve it so if we did ban them would anyone apart from the sports science coaches care ?

joey54321

The sports scientists wouldn't care, I imagine it would be like track racing where you are allowed to collect data, just not act on it.

I don't see what all the fuss is about, it's very easy to test it. Try it in a smaller race, then somewhere like Paris-Nice or the Dauphine. If it still works try it on a few stages of the Tour.

Personally I don't think it will make much differences but it's hardly re-writing cycling and is a very easy trial.

blazing_saddles

If Lappartient really is on a crusade to make the Tour have more interesting racing, the place to start cutting is with the endless succession of flat, featureless stages, that drag us all, kicking and screaming towards the second half of the race.

The other thing he has talked about cutting is the Giro and Vuelta: down to two weeks.
Yet, both of these GT's manage to produce exciting racing for pretty much their duration.
The racing in the third week of this year's Giro made the strongest argument possible against such a cut, by delivering such a dramatic GC battle.

The same cannot be said of the Tour, however. It really is a two week race in a three week suit.

RichN95.

Blazing Saddles wrote:

If Lappartient really is on a crusade to make the Tour have more interesting racing, the place to start cutting is with the endless succession of flat, featureless stages, that drag us all, kicking and screaming towards the second half of the race.

If he did that the race couldn't get to the town he's mayor of. Or the one Prudhomme's brother-in-law is the mayor of.

bobmcstuff

joey54321 wrote:

The sports scientists wouldn't care, I imagine it would be like track racing where you are allowed to collect data, just not act on it.

I don't see what all the fuss is about, it's very easy to test it. Try it in a smaller race, then somewhere like Paris-Nice or the Dauphine. If it still works try it on a few stages of the Tour.

Personally I don't think it will make much differences but it's hardly re-writing cycling and is a very easy trial.

Problem would be with quantifying what "works" looks like I think, it will be more or less impossible to identify whether some exciting attack or collapse has been caused by lack of power meters or something else.

RichN95.

The consequence of smaller teams will be teams focusing solely on one objective. Some already do that of course but if we look at the top 12 on GC we see teams with shared objectives...

Dumoulin was with Matthews
Roglic & Kruijswijk with Groenewegen
Martin with Kristoff
Zakarin with Kittel
Jungels with Gaviria and Alaphilippe
Fuglsang had Cort

Also Nibali/Colbrelli, Majka/Sagan

You can't do that with six riders

neonriver

Teams have won in pretty much the same way for the past 50 years. Strong mountain train pacing leader who's strong at time trials and can climb well. Merckx, Hinault, Fignon, Indurain, all won in the same way. And for team domination check 86 out La Vie Claire were 1, 2, 4, 7, 12 and 23rd, won Mountains, Youth, Combination, Team and Combatively prizes and no one made changes to stop that.

TheBigBean

I don't think TTTs and 65km stages help. Then there is the prestige of finishing 12th, the entourage and the big flat valleys that don't help either.

iainf72

Power meters are just the latest in a list of "technology we can blame"

Computers and heart rate monitors were 2 previous things having an adverse impact on racing

DeadCalm

Blazing Saddles wrote:

If Lappartient really is on a crusade to make the Tour have more interesting racing, the place to start cutting is with the endless succession of flat, featureless stages, that drag us all, kicking and screaming towards the second half of the race.

The other thing he has talked about cutting is the Giro and Vuelta: down to two weeks.
Yet, both of these GT's manage to produce exciting racing for pretty much their duration.
The racing in the third week of this year's Giro made the strongest argument possible against such a cut, by delivering such a dramatic GC battle.

The same cannot be said of the Tour, however. It really is a two week race in a three week suit.

I know they're both French so easily confused in your mind, but Lappartient is not Prudhomme and therefore has no say in the route of the Tour.

Vino'sGhost

FocusZing wrote:

bobmcstuff wrote:

FocusZing wrote:

I think he's right about giving the banning of power meters and radios a go, say for a season. Also on a MTF allow the riders to ditch their bonce receptacles if they want. Lets see the effort.

It needs more safe chaos. The first week everybody following on the stage threads were saying how formulaic it was. A faux break then action around 5K to go.

I think a lot of that would be solved by getting rid of full stage coverage and limiting everyone to a 45 minute highlights package...

I don't see a lot of evidence that it has got any more formulaic than it has been for the last couple of decades or more, it's just that now you (the royal you) can sit through an interminable 6 hours riding on flat roads then whinge about it online afterwards. Maybe ban twitter and forums as well

Ha. That's a fair point, oh well see you next year for the highlights:)

Well in some respects things have changed, the race doesn’t exist in a vaccum, the environment its in has changed significantly. Not geographically and not in terms of tactics but in terms of how and when its viewed. People do watch on TV and their phones and computers, they do discuss stages as theyre slowly unfolding and they do whinge about the action in forums afterwards. When youre reading the highlights of the day in a few colums of news print with maybe a few pictures its easier to romantacise about the race. Less so when its exposed warts and all.

We’re not going back to yellow newspapers as the source, the tour has always been about media content from its earliest days and has evolved along with changes in media style and consumption methods.

How we consume that content has changed rapidly over the last ten years and the tour hasnt always kept up. (What has apart from Russia Trump and the labour party) Perhpas the tour and cycling in general needs to enter a period of more rapid evolution too.

Vino'sGhost

I actually quite liked the tour this year once it got going. Its got everything crashes, punchups rogue coppers, pepper spray, striking farmers,

blazing_saddles

DeadCalm wrote:

Blazing Saddles wrote:

If Lappartient really is on a crusade to make the Tour have more interesting racing, the place to start cutting is with the endless succession of flat, featureless stages, that drag us all, kicking and screaming towards the second half of the race.

The other thing he has talked about cutting is the Giro and Vuelta: down to two weeks.
Yet, both of these GT's manage to produce exciting racing for pretty much their duration.
The racing in the third week of this year's Giro made the strongest argument possible against such a cut, by delivering such a dramatic GC battle.

The same cannot be said of the Tour, however. It really is a two week race in a three week suit.

I know they're both French so easily confused in your mind, but Lappartient is not Prudhomme and therefore has no say in the route of the Tour.

Ultimately he, or at least the UCI does, when it comes to the duration.
Sure, it will never happen, but hey, we're only chewing the fat here.

Not sure about your need for sarcasm. I assume it's Friday thing.....

Vino'sGhost wrote:

I actually quite liked the tour this year once it got going. Its got everything crashes, punchups rogue coppers, pepper spray, striking farmers,

Exactly.

DeadCalm

Blazing Saddles wrote:

DeadCalm wrote:

Blazing Saddles wrote:

If Lappartient really is on a crusade to make the Tour have more interesting racing, the place to start cutting is with the endless succession of flat, featureless stages, that drag us all, kicking and screaming towards the second half of the race.

The other thing he has talked about cutting is the Giro and Vuelta: down to two weeks.
Yet, both of these GT's manage to produce exciting racing for pretty much their duration.
The racing in the third week of this year's Giro made the strongest argument possible against such a cut, by delivering such a dramatic GC battle.

The same cannot be said of the Tour, however. It really is a two week race in a three week suit.

I know they're both French so easily confused in your mind, but Lappartient is not Prudhomme and therefore has no say in the route of the Tour.

Ultimately he, or at least the UCI does, when it comes to the duration.
Sure, it will never happen, but hey, we're only chewing the fat here.

Not sure about your need for sarcasm. I assume it's Friday thing.....

No alcohol consumed today. Just find the constant French bashing tedious.