cycling4freaks.com

As every year since 2007 we'll have a december tour decided by voting by our esteemed and hated users.

AS the self appointed absolute dictator of the december tour, here are the rules:

-10-14 days: Maximum 13 days riding. (That means you can do a 13 day tour without rest day or a 14 day tour with 1 rest day)
-Maximum 1 day with half stages.
-No extreme tour, flat, pavé, mountains TT etc.
-1 tour per designer

On October 1 I will open a thread to post your tours. Post them there, not here. Posting in October, 1st to 31st. No discussions in the other thread, but in this thread here, comments, praise, criticisms about all tours of course are more than welcome.

Voting procedure:
First round voting will start in early November. Nov 1st ideally, but if the dictator forgets it the second or so works too. Vote open 2 weeks.
First round: Votes per person depending on tours submitted.. Number of submissions/2, then rounded down. That means:
3 tours=1 vote
5 tours=2 votes
7 tours=3 votes
9 tours=4 votes.
But we'll cap the number of votes at 4, so even if we have 97 submission, it will stay 4 votes per person. Unchangeable votes. 2 weeks time for voting.
Second round: Normally the first 2 teams will advance to the second round. If it's very close more might be in, decision would be made by a committee of 3 composed of people with no submission, appointed by the dictator. 1 week vote.

I hope for many submission, as last year.

January tour: Not dictator there, but after last years participation in the extra vote for that was very low, I'm opposed to a special vote this time. But not dictator on that, while I will decide for the december tour, not change anything if I think it's better the way it is, even if 50 people are opposed to it (but in that case I would stand down from the dictatorship... for 2019) in the January tour the usual process works, majority etc. (numbers, not intellect, otherwise I decide alone again).

And btw, we need shorter stage races for winter too, details see in the winter threads, the FL proposals. So feel free to design a few short stage races in addition to your December tour proposal. Post in your fantasy threads!

He forgot to exclude the designer of pave tours and Andes.... Woo Hoo (When I feel heavy metal) Woo Hoo.

Carrera Blue Jeans, there is a rest day somewhere that you didn't tell us right? Becuase it says 10-14 day tour and you only have 9 stages.

Well, i think this Sicily Tour would be nice without rest day.

If really necessary we can put in a rest day after Time Trial.

You can always add a meaningless flat stage somewhere in between or just add a really short prologue to meet the 10days quota.

Ah, forgot to mention it, number of riders of course is up to the designer as well!

And Carrera, you can add a meaningful flat stage as well, don't buy High Flyers nihilism!

I really like my Israel Tour last year... is it ok to post it again or are there some new things needed?

Damn, I don't think we have a rule for that. So far it has been implicitly understood, that everybody posts something new each year, but there is no fix rule, just a strong recommendation. Unless people now demand a fix rule.
And last year Israel was my favorite tour, thought it was the best. But as a reheated soup most likely it wouldn't get my vote this year,
But as I said. My long dictator rule book doesn't include a rule against it, so feel free to post it.

Stage 10 for Tour of Sicily on !

After losing the Pavé vote..... ok, didn't spend too much time on Giro des Paves for a pave tour, but still enough time for a normal tour.... so after that, I probably have to take part in December Tour again. And this time no semi-Gipfel-semi-Roby tour, a real Gipfel-branded tour of course! Stay tuned!

Lots of tours seems this year.

Also waiting the one of Gipfel (Poke as well?).

Good will have lot to vote and to discuss

8 tours finally, good!
Too bad nobody (including me) feels like commenting on the proposed tours for the moment... but maybe later.

But don't forget to design shorter fantasy tours for the vault.
The "losers" of the votes will have priority when filling the rest of the calendar. But obviously not with those tours here, or shortened versions or whatever, it's win or lose here! But with other fantasy tours they might design... see the off season topic to check what's needed. and of course no guarantee that tours will be ridden, priority just if there are tours of similar quality. And "specialized" tours, have much much smaller chances to make it to the calendar than more balanced, varied ones.

I'll start with my opinions on the tours.

Sicily: This would really benefit from at least one additional stage for gc candidates. Now it looks like the TT and climb to the Etna decide everything.

Argentina: Can't see the percentages, I would like more TT km. Otherwise TT is completely irrelevant. Also 1 or 2 more stages for classics would be nice.

Nicaragua: I like the balance of this tour. Maybe a bit much money on the road. I would prefer it, if there were more long climbs

Sri Lanka: Not much to complain. First half looks a bit boring though.

Luzon: Stage 6 KOM 2km after the mountain is strange. Generally a bit too generous with climb categorization, but there are a few stages I like.

Eritrea Ethiopia: Best presentation. Also a nice tour. Too many cat 4 climbs for my taste, but those aren't going to change anything, so don't really care.

Guadeloupe: Actually like this tour, but can't see this working out as December Tour. A lot of up and down and so much money on the road that everyone would be rich afterwards

Atlas: I'm biased, but this is just perfect.

Tukhtahuaev wrote: ↑

Thu Nov 01, 2018 11:08 pm

Atlas: I'm biased, but this is just perfect.

+1

I join the great Tukh with some comments on some of the tours.

Tour of Sicily.
Actually this tour would have had a chance of getting my vote, if......

Many little problems for me with the presentation.

1) Put the name of the tour in the stage name! Shouldn't bother me maybe, but it does, already -10 points. Good to see later in the palmares. Now just "Messina - Siracusa". But what's this? A one day race? Just put in "Tour of Sicily 1st stage (or 1a tappa): Messina - Siracusa"
2) More information about what the stages are, like Falkenbier percentages of important points and the last kms, or like Donks link change the eriet18_01 to 1atappamessina_siracusa, and you get this:
http://www.radsportfreaks.de/radsport/p ... ension=c4f
3) Some text maybe, tell us what it is.. sprint, classic. Or some pictures, like you did in the voting thread now.
4) Cefalu. No accents in race names at c4f! Cefalù creats the finance bug! And it isn't shown anyway. No accents, no umlaute, no apostroph etc!
5) Or on top like some here did (not me either, but should have) a recap, x sprint stages, x middle mountain etc etc.
Good work with the map, but for those of us that don't know the geography of Sicily by heart... add numbers to the map or so. But good work without "buts" except the one at the beginning of the sentence for putting in names of towns in the stage.


The race itself, big selling point for me it's shortness, wouldn't mind a short tour. Since there's not much info... there seems to be enough sprint, 3-4, mountain Etna and Agrigento seems one too, so 2 for climbers, then TT, rest classic, so 2-3? TT maybe a bit long for my taste compared to the mountains, but ok. Generally don't dislike the tour, quite like it even, thanks to the shortness and there's a bit of everything. But missed out on my vote because of first point no 2 above. no 1 then as secondary reason.

2: Rapido en Argentina. Go rapido and link it directly instead of doing weird stuff with online hosting of pictures or so. That's lento.
Same as Sicily for point 1 then. And 2. And 5. Good work with 3. But some name places wouldn't hurt in the stage.

The race.. .first lots of sprints, then mountains. No classic stage... and personally don't like stage 4 at all. Clearly not my favorite.

Sri Lanka:
Nothing to complain about with the presentation.
The race, got one of my votes, I would have liked one a bit harder stage in the first part too, but like this is ok too, sprint TTT, sprint, classic, sprint, classic. No 2 days in a row the same.
Second week: mountain-sprint-classic?/mountain?-mountain-TT sprint. No real blocks, ok, twice possible mountain, but the first one looks almost more for a strong classic to me.
Nice tour, nothing really to complain, has chances to get my second round vote too, if it makes it that far.

Luzon:
Another tour that had no chance to get my vote because of point no 2. How tough are all these little hills in the flat stages? With that information it might have gotten one of my votes.
On point 1, you did the opposite, just the tour and the stage, no city names. Much better than the opposite, but somehow nice to have the city names too. (But no minus points for this..)

The tour itself, a bit back heavy.. like Sri Lanka. As Tukh said, some of the stages look nice, but it's hard to judge without more information.

Eritrea Ethiopia

Presentation, no map, overview about how many sprint stages, middle mountain etc there are. Lazy. Excellent colorful title!!
Lots of text, but if I want to read something of the length of the "brothers Karamasov", I'll read the brothers Karamasov. Even if I have to admit that the excerpts I read of this Eritrea Ethiopia presentation are clearly superior to the brothers Karamosov.

The race... didn't really come out as planned. Original plan was the mountains at the end of the first part to finish the tour, or last few days anyway. The region at least. And other similarly tough mountains in the first week. Longer ITT. Then added Eritrea, realized for the 10th time that their mountains suck, but finally stuck with it. Like stage 4 a lot, the rest is what it is. With stage 4+5 as the toughest ones, front heavy, the ITT late to somehow balance, but still not balanced. There's at least 2 tours that are clearly better. Well, I'll try with Ethiopia again in 2027+2028.

Atlas: Stage 8 looks great. Stage 11 with the comment horrible. A bit too simple for Hubers in the end I think though, the whole thing. 30 km TT, 15 km ITT, not much for climbers with or without TT to make up for that. Stage 5 a bit, stage 10 more... stage 11... don't know how steep the climbs and the downhill are, or how long the flat in the end is, but this looks like minimal time gain for climbers over classics (and thus Hubers) Ok, we don't really have Hubers in the game anymore, so this becomes open again...a classic with ITT and a good TTT team might even have some outsider chances, which I actually like. But most likely then climbers with TT... Ok tour, but I'm not the biggest fan, like with Eritrea Ethiopia, see 2 tours that are better at first sight... (but with Eritrea Ethiopia I know all the details, here not, so with more information Atlas might move up in my ranking...)

Stage 11 is definitely not my favourite, but I didn't see any other way to make it work in that region. And I needed a mountain stage without a mountain finish. Was a bit lazy there, because I didn't have much time for presentation, so here is a bit more info on that stage for you.

First 8km of Col de Chellatta only 4.3%, then it gets steeper with 11km at 7.6%. That's followed by 14km of downhill at 7.7%.
Cat 2 mountain after that is 7km at 9.7%, Following 12 km are -2, 5, 1, 2, 1, 3, 3, -3, 5, 1, -3, 1. Col de Tirourda is 6km at 8.8%. Downhill is not as steep, 30km at only 4.6% and 7km between -2 and 1 to the finish