Doge

My "easy" statement was about the transition to doing distance, not the race. In general TT is the hardest. Hard or easy has little to do with distance. The fact that mini breaks can stay away 3 hours is so the pack has it easy. They are not "racing". What we see less of is strategy, attacks, more breaks and teams doing
As to watching - that is what I am suggesting as a way to fix things. As pointed out in posts above USA coverage tends to be 1 or 2 hour slots.

That was kinda the reason for the post. I do. And as I started mentioning to cycling racer fans - they do to and I noticed seeing just a part of a long race was less satisfying to them too. So I wanted to see what BF folks thought.
I would like a way found to have cyclist paid more, having a team as a profitable thing and increase viewers. So far most of what USA wants to watch is finishes, crashes and doped up riders (we say we don't but they are more fun to watch). The nuances of the sport are not shown on TV as it takes too long, too hard to edit, the editors don't know what to look for. There are some narrated YouTube videos by racers that make small SoCal crits exciting when you know what is going on.

Doge

You'd get further separation if you made the races 12 hours.
You also get it even more boring.

That is in fact part of my bias. The "boys" are faster, so the "men" have to wear them out. We have an event of attrition.

Caretaker

This thread is too long, I'm bored.

Kevindale

I usually wait to see if a thread makes it to page 2, then I just read the last post and respond to that.

colombo357

Just face the fact that road cycling is boring to watch.

Just like soccer.

That's what highlight reels are for.

By suggesting that they shorten road races to 2-3 hours, you're basically saying a "D" is better than an "F". That may be so, but...

Kevindale

I think you're partly right - cycling doesn't involve the rapid transitions and variety of actions that most team sports feature, especially those with normal scoring and goals. Soccer was boring for me till my wife got me to play a bit, and I went to her games, and learned a bit. Now I can enjoy it, though it requires a fair amount of education. In the same way, I don't think casual fans can really appreciate road racing unless they ride enough to have pushed themselves beyond what a commuter or casual rider does.

Leinster

A big part of what makes road bike racing what it is, is precisely that the races are so long. Thats why the oldest races are named after the start and finish towns (even in Paris Roubaix doesn't start in Paris any more, nor LBL finish in Liege).

If you prefer 1 hour or 2 hour races, there's any amount of that out there, be it crit racing, cyclocross, the Red Hook series etc. The Hammer Series is 3 2-hour long team races on consecutive days. And of course there's track. If you can track them down and watch them instead of the Tour, I'm sure they'd be delighted for the eyeballs.

The Tour is the Tour, and if it were to change itself to a series of 2 hour races to suit the viewing public, it would lose a lot of its character. Yes the 100km stage this year was exciting, but a big part of what made it was that the riders were tired from other long days in the saddle.

dieselrover

How in the WORLD could there be only one race in existence that is thousands of kilometers over multiple weeks.

Why doesn't someone come up with something different?

brianmcg123

I know right. What do these guys do for the rest of the year. Such a waste.

Kevindale

You're right, I guess, the TdF is pretty much dialed in. That must be why they've never changed up the rules over all these decades....

fietsbob

the grand tours are now in at least their hundredth year.. how old are you?

Doge

You mean the Race Across America?
Normally done in about a week.

That is the only single race I know of that long.
But pretty unknown as it is too boring to watch. But separates the men from the boys I guess.

Doge

The cycling is not really a financially viable sport. Few World Tour teams last more than a few years. Most riders cannot retire on earnings.
TdF started out as a great adventure type thing. It was an event as much as a race. Like RAAM is a race, or reality survival TV, before survival TV.

The sport of road racing on pavement in stages has been around a while, but the cameras on bikes, GPS and real-time electronics and in pack coverage is very new. Suddenly a fan (or coach/team) has access to watch all those little nuances and things going on and viewers can see the strategy/tricks etc. There is just more in shorter races.
Marketing that well would increase viewership and revenue to the riders and industry - I think.

fietsbob

but the winners can... Froome moved to that Tax haven for the Rich, the mediteranian principality, Monaco..

Caretaker

There are currently 18 World Tour teams and most have been around for at least 10 years and some like AG2R and Movistar over 20 years.

The TdF and the Giro have both been around for over 100 years and the Vuelta since the mid-1930s and more than likely all three will be around for another 100 years at least.

Financially viable? Teams attract sponsorship primarily because they attract publicity to the sponsor's name not because they return revenue.

1989Pre 

No, they are not too long in my opinion: Not long enough. Coverage should include every single stage and cut down on the time used by commercial messages.

Mo06

It's interesting to compare the routes of the 1962 and 2017 editions of the TDF...

1962:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._de_France.png

2017:

https://cycling-passion.com/wp-conten...e-2017-map.jpg

The earlier route looks much more like a tour of France to me.

France is a pretty large country (I live there) and to do a real TDF the stages have to be longish (although they are a lot shorter that in the old days).

Also the 1962 route included four time trials and no rest days.

Distances were 4274km in 1962 compared to 3540km in 2017 with two rest days.

As for making the race more exciting, Id suggest we get rid of race radios - riders would have to use their initiative more and the DS would not be so much in control.

I'm also not sure that swapping bikes during a stage should be allowed.

Kevindale

They're the same team except regarding names, sponsors, managers, and riders. Movistar is only the 8th name for that team. Sponsors constantly drop out, equipment changes with sponsors, riders come and go every couple of years, team kit changes, etc. There is so little continuity that as a casual fan I find it impossible to say "I'm rooting for team X." As a result, there are limited ways for a team to monetize their identity. That lack of ability to monetize trickles down to the riders, most of whom barely make enough to get by.

And is this a good thing? The TdF was created as a publicity stunt, to sell newspapers. It continued to exist because they brought in the Publicity Caravan, so more advertising. Pro cycling has never (to my knowledge) made money the way other sports make it, by charging admission and by charging for broadcast rights. It's a money-losing sport at almost every level. The real money only goes to races/teams that get the most publicity, and it means that the revenue goes up and down based on things completely unrelated to the sport. It even skews the way races proceed, with the inevitable "camera-time breakaway" by teams that aren't competitive.

Do you really think longer stages/races would lead to more viewing fans? And who's going to pay for that intensive coverage? Ultimately, it has to come from demands by more viewers, which leads to increased advertising, increased rates for broadcast rights, etc. At the same time some of us are wishing for more coverage (as you're doing), casual fans of cycling complain that the races are too boring, and non-cycling sports fans don't find any incentive to spend their limited viewing time on a very subtle sport where a typical event lasts 5-6 hours.

Caretaker

It isn't necessarily a bad thing. I doubt most World Tour riders "barely make enough to get by" although some may be earning little over the average industrial wage.
It's a meritocracy, good riders are paid well and great riders earn large amounts even if they don't reach the stratospheric levels seen in some other sports.
Words like 'stunt' and 'skew' are pejorative, I prefer more neutral terms like 'publicity race' and 'influences the way races proceed' that reflect the unique and endearing qualities of pro-cycling.
Personally I'd hate to see pro-cycling pandering to the uneducated masses for the sake of a quick but probably temporary injection of cash.

Kevindale

It's not a meritocracy, it's nearly a winner-take-all pyramid. Froome will collect 40k Euros per criterium race he does, just for showing up. Uran, who finished literally seconds behind, isn't being offered that kind of money. In men's cycling, only the top half a dozen riders get any kind of wealth. In women's cycling, the top riders have to have side jobs to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the race organizers get wealthy. Cycling is where other sports were 50 years ago, with the actual athletes being told they're lucky to make a living doing what they love.

Interesting you prefer words like "publicity" and "influences" and yet consider changes that make pro cycling more viewer friendly are "pandering." You do realize that the TdF has changed rules dramatically, many times, in order to maintain the appeal.

Caretaker

Change happens, in the Tour, in other Grand Tours, in pro-cycling generally, in the UCI rules. I'm not against change in order to maintain the appeal but I am against change simply to broaden that appeal to an audience with little or no knowledge of pro-cycling.

Darth Lefty 

They sure take too long to watch. I found it funny a week or two ago when the X Games Big Air competition - which is cycling, whether you like it or not - took an hour of prime time. At the same time, the endless TdF was being shuffled to subspace

Kevindale

All successful/popular sports have large audiences, most of whom have little knowledge of the ins and outs of the sport. They're fans because it's exciting and entertaining to watch. Pro cycling is actually a bit unusual, I think, in that a fairly large portion of the fans who care enough to seek it out actually do know what it's like to ride hard for hours at a time. I don't think the sport necessarily has anything to lose by attracting more fans, including fans with little knowledge of pro cycling. It's a beautiful sport, and at least as exciting as baseball or tennis.

Speaking of tennis, BITD tie breakers didn't exist. Rackets were wood, most courts were clay. It used to be that a set could go on practically forever if the two players were well matched, and 5 set matches often lasted 6+ hours. The effect was a player would win an epic match, and then be too exhausted to play well the next match. Matches would have to be continued the next day, fans would go home, the game would finish when it wasn't on TV - it was boring and hurt the sport. Imagine if tennis embraced those aspects of the game, by making it harder, to where a tournament was so exhausting that no pro would dare play all 4 Grand Slam events.

As you acknowledge, change happens all the time, and is happening now (teams getting smaller, for one thing). Many of those changes have been to broaden the appeal of the sport and to make it more competitive. Right now, the sport is so messed up that the potential fans with little knowledge know three things: (1) the TdF is the whole sport, (2) the TdF goes on forever and is confusing as hell, and (3) the PUD issue hasn't been put to bed decisively. Suggestions for how to make individual stages more interesting are the tip of the iceberg.

I think the biggest issue for pro cycling is that there are a lot of entrenched interests who would stand to lose if the sport were reorganized. Until someone figures that out, then the sport will continue to be so byzantine that only the most hard-core fan can even be vaguely familiar with who all the teams and organizations are, who's in charge of what, and what the rules are.

Mo06

"Right now, the sport is so messed up that the potential fans with little knowledge know three things: (1) the TdF is the whole sport, (2) the TdF goes on forever and is confusing as hell, and (3) the PUD issue hasn't been put to bed decisively."

That may be true in the USA, but here in Europe, it's definitely not true - fans/followers of the TDF and cycling fans in general here are very knowledable about the sport.

Here we follow all the big comptetitions - Milan - San Remo, Paris - Nice, the one day classics (including the cobbled classics), the Critérium du Dauphiné as well as of course as the grand tours.

This year I thought the Giro was a much more exciting race to watch than the TDF, although I will always watch the Tour.

Caretaker

The biggest issue for pro-cycling is doping and the ongoing fight against the doping culture.

You could have a sport packaged for a mass audience into short 1-2 hour segments full of climbs to mountain top finishes and city circuits but any fan can already have that watching the last 10, 25 or 60kms. This flag to flag coverage in the TdF has only come in this year. Previously TV coverage in GTs typically began just before the first major climb or the last 125kms in a flat stage. Now the people with the time and interest can watch right from km zero to the podium ceremony. Likewise those without the time or interest can watch the last 25kms.

Pro-cycling has evolved and will continue to evolve but by its nature will always be a global minority sport. It will be more 'successful' when it loses its image as 'the dopers sport'. This is the only 'success' worth having.