The Roar
The Roar

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Ponferrada: Too many laps, too little scenery

Expert
30th September, 2014
3

There’s been a fair bit of commentary about the merits of showing women’s cycling on TV when we get races like Saturday’s Elite Women’s Road Race in Ponferrada.

If you missed it, well, here’s a recap. A race of just a couple of solo attacks lurched into life onto the last lap, albeit with an almost comical sprint finale.

Four riders, including reigning world champion Marianne Vos, closing in on victory refused to attack each other because they knew that wouldn’t win, and instead left it to France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prevot to effectively steal the Rainbow jersey.

Three of the four were going to be on the podium, but no one wanted it enough. It was simply bewildering.

So it’s hard to disagree with people like SBS commentator Mike Tomalaris.

“The race was what it was, boring, it happens. If that’s bad commentary then we’re all guilty. So line us up in front of a firing squad and get it over and done with,” he said.

But as he went on to add, men’s cycling has its own share of boring races.

“Men’s road cycling certainly isn’t immune from providing the odd yawn-fest,” Tomalaris said.

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“There have been many days down the years when the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia, the Spring Classics have produced the “switch-off” factor, and our commentators have said so.

“Can we say goodbye to 250-kilometre long sprint stages? Please.”

I can’t disagree Tomo, but can we add another thing to say goodbye to – races that consist entirely or almost entirely of a looped course.

In recent years, we’ve seen the race start with a point-to-point section before ending on looped circuit of at least 10 laps. On Sunday, at the UCI Road World Championships, there was no point-to-point section, just the laps. Fourteen of them, each 18 kilometres in total.

The course was designed to suit neither the pure climbers nor the pure sprinters, and the experts would say this was planned very well.

Before the race, one rider described it perfectly, “The long climb isn’t steep enough, and the steep climb isn’t long enough”.

This suggested an unpredictable race, and that’s exactly what we got. Poland’s Michal’s Kwiatkowski’s brave chase of the late race break, and dash for glory at the bottom of the final climb was perfectly judged, as he held off a small group including Simon Gerrans, Alejandro Valverde and Philippe Gilbert.

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Prior to that we had seen the classic road race unfold. The early break allowed to soak up a pile of TV time. The chase, the capture and the counter attacks before the final regrouping ahead of the finish.

All good. Except it wasn’t all good.

Fourteen laps of this uninspiring 18-kilometre course did not make a great TV spectacle. You may disagree but I’m not sure it contributed very much to a majority of the actual race.

The riders just looked to be on autopilot as the kilometres trickled down like the almost ever-present rain.

Had you put the riders on a point-to-point course instead of a loop, we may not have seen a remarkably different race, but it wouldn’t have looked as predictable. There is something monotonous about watching the lap counter tick down, knowing almost certainly that we won’t see any real action until the final lap.

On a point-to-point race we may still get a similar outcome but at least the course changes and with it so does the scenery. And regardless of how many people are watching from the side of the road, there are countless others watching from home.

A loop works well for spectators who get to see the riders pass numerous times, and logistically it may be more manageable for the host city and the race officials, but it lacks plenty on TV, which is ultimately where cycling wants to shine.

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And on TV, Ponferrada, this relatively remote place in the northwest of Spain, didn’t shine.

Two smallish climbs and a castle (albeit a pretty one) on a hill was not enough to satisfy my visual hunger. Seeing it 14 times was just overkill. It was just as bad as the Commonwealth Games Road Race in Glasgow, which looked abysmal.

The Tour de France puts as much time into identifying beautiful scenery for us to watch as they do designing (generally) stunning race routes. Last year we saw 10 laps of a 16-kilometre circuit near Florence. Twelve months earlier, there were 10 laps also of 16 kilometres in Valkenburg.

On both of those races, the aesthetic were much better but 10 laps is too many Even eight laps of the Champs Elysees is more than we need. What’s wrong with two or three?

As we have seen on a smaller scale at the Tour Down Under, two or three loops (as we see in the Willunga and Stirling stages) works perfectly, but it helps that there’s plenty of scenery to enjoy.
It may sound superficial to rank scenery as importantly as the quality of racing, but cycling can’t afford to miss any opportunity to sell itself to the wider sporting public.

Racing through spectacular scenery is an essential part of that.

Ponferrada therefore, was a double failure. Too many laps and not enough “eye candy”.

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Next year the World Road Championship heads to Richmond in the USA, where the road race will be held on a technical, inner-city circuit featuring cobbled climbs and some punchy 20 per cent inclines. The circuit is 16 kilometre, but there’s no mention of how long the race will be.

It sounds like an urban spring classic and will no doubt have a gripping climax, but if a standard 250-kilometre length is what we’ll get, it looks like we’re in for another 15-lap endurance test. Maybe I’ll watch the first few laps, and then tune in for the final three circuits.

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