World Series Cycling

World Series Cycling ...good or bad?

#1 The Rake

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Posted 11 December 2012 - 08:21 AM

CN has posted an interview with Jonathan Price on the founding of a "breakaway" cycling league.

http://www.cyclingne...nvent-the-sport

Concerned that this format will either bastardise existing races, or try and create races that have no history - basic premise is there will be a series of 4 day stage races featuring sprint, mountain, rolling and TT (either TTT or TT) stages, and at the end of the year someone becomes World Champion. The sport has done this before with the World Cup and such like, but never creating "new" races (though I suppose the Wincanton Classic and the Vattenfalls were created to this end).

Any thoughts? I don't like the idea of tinkering with the calendar too much and risking running established races down with these new ones. Maybe I'm just a luddite. There will be ten of these races, so that's 40 days off the calendar. Add in the GTs and you are looking at 60+ days racing. Some riders don't do that in a year now - I can only see it leading to the collapse of more established events

Price suggests he is

Quote

working with the UCI and Zdenek [Bakala] to build a competitive product that we think cycling fans worldwide want and which is good for the sport

. Do we want it; is it good for the sport?

Kristian House...now the most successful cyclist to come from Austin, Texas

#2 Burkni

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Posted 11 December 2012 - 03:05 PM

Anything with the UCI's dirty paws on it is inherently bad for the sport.
Although the 10-race "Grand Prix" 4-day race series is an interesting notion, at least if it makes off with the horrors of the Tour of Beijing and such races.

The notion that this will not harm existing races is quite ludicrous, and I don't see what the whole "reinvention" concept is about, if not only to pretend to make away with doping.

In Vino veritas, 1998-2011.

#3 Strategy

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Posted 12 December 2012 - 11:47 AM

A simple racing calendar? A ranking system that normal people are capable of understanding. A clear indication of who is the "best" overall rider, with the possibility to have individual overall competitions for best sprinter and best climber (even best TT'er) without making it a horrible mess to keep track of? I like it - I like it a lot.

The great thing about a concept like this is that this is something that you can actually sell-in to TV. The TV stations are buying a fixed product with the best teams, and races that will occur predictably at (presumably) regular intervals throughout the season. Presumably, a significant portion of this money will go to the teams that are included in the federation - making them at least a little less dependent on volatile sponsorships. Not to mention that a fixed World series of this format makes for a much more attractive sponsorship product for Cycling.

Yes - this will kill many the traditional races, but seriously: that is going to happen anyway. This just accelerates the process, while hopefully replacing it with a structure that may actually be viable for the sport in the long run.