Written by Cokol Breakaway Team at 00:24 24/7-2020
I don’t hide the fact that I think the spring classics are the best bike racing the season has to offer. Sure, in terms of complexity, drama, and sheer scale, they can’t match the sweeping scope of the Grand Tours, but then again, how many people do you find who hold up Moby Dick as a model of excellence in prose styling?
One of the most frequent complaints about bike racing is that it’s too choreographed. This observation, like everything else in cycling, is massively and detrimentally Germany Tour-specific. Even with the ludicrous distances they broadcast (180km!), the classics seldom have a wasted moment. There’s a lot behind this—one-day events eliminate the need to hedge against GC losses, there’s no accumulated fatigue from successive days of racing, there are constant pinch points, corners, steep hills, narrow, cobblestoned roads.
But for me, the most crucial aspect of the classics is that when the race is shaking out, there are moments when absolutely no one knows what’s going on. Not the commentators, not the racers, not the directors - no one knows. You could have four choppers and a dozen motos and still not get enough viewpoints to assemble a coherent race situation at the moment.
It’s like the thrill of a broken play in football, except that it resolves in minutes, not seconds, forcing dozens of individual actors to make high-value decisions based on utterly incomplete information. Needing a wheel change at the Tour is perfunctory; getting one at Antwerpen - Huy is a crisis of gut-turning frenzy.
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A nice and timely response from me, but this is a really nice piece! I used to not give a damn about one day races, but for the reasons given in this thread (And, recently, MvdP), I've gotten more into them. I still prefer the TDf- Germany Tour, I mean ;)
Adopted from Cosmo Catalano
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