Have we reached peak sportive? Etape Pennines axed due to lack of participant interest

It isn't elitist or sneering to point out that sportives are expensive and that a confident cyclist can easily do without them.

I did a few sportives too as I got back into cycling. I enjoyed them. It was helpful having a planned route with signs, lots of other cyclists, and the knowledge there was a voiture balai that'd come along in the worst case.

However, after a while of cycling, as your abilities, knowledge, self-reliance and confidence develops and you go out yourself on longer runs at the weekend, it becomes hard to not to develop the feeling that you're paying a hell of a lot of money to ride on public roads like you'd do anyway.

Also, with how the prices of sportives have generally rapidly increased over the years, it is hard to avoid the thought that the sportive organisers are fleecing you. That thought is particularly hard to escape when you've finished a sportive you paid a good few tens of pounds for, are famished and find there is no complementary food at the finish. You're left ponder as you queue at the hot food stand, where you'll have to hand over another £5 or so. For me, the conclusion was inescapable.

Do them when you start off cycling, if it helps give you the confidence to cycle. After a certain point, if you can't figure out how to better spend that money, well... maybe you're a mug.

A lot of my friends are into Sportives and I tag along.

They don't train all year round, so target these so they don't lose their 50/ 70 quid !

Organisers IMG are rip off merchants who are only interested in making money. I have done plenty of sportives but there is no way I would spend that amount of money on what is a relatively short event. I did Wiggle Hell of Hexham last year and it used many of the same roads and couldn't understand why they bother closing the roads.. Passed by about a dozen cars all day... Roads were deserted! Seems like sportive events are either over subscribed or get virtually no entries. The reputation of events seems to matter most for potential entrants.

To many event management companies especially the likes of IMG have jumped on the sportive bandwagon to make cash for themselves while pretending to raise money for charity

There are still plenty about organized by clubs and raising directly for charity such as Fred whitton (lakes road club)etape dales (Dave Rayner fund) just think carefully which you book

"IMG Challenge World also organises the Etape Caledonia, which continues to thrive."
Positively thriving for the organisers . . . the charity I'm not too sure about.

Here's some required reading from a couple of years ago about IMG for anyone thinking of entering a "charity" event . . .
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2012/jun/20/charity-bik...

A mate persuaded me to enter a closed road sportive this year.

I wasn't convinced before the event - I ride those roads anyway and they are fairly quiet.

In the end I really did enjoy it - especially the last 15 miles into the finish where we had a proper little bunch working. Before that it was too hilly and people were strung out.

The closed roads made that part quite fun - but it wasnt a long drive for us and it wasnt £63.

Problem was it clashed with the North Pennines NTB Marathon in the same area on the same weekend which only cost £28 to enter.
Doesn't help the appeal that even though the Etape is for Marie Curie, none of the entry fee goes to the charity, its merely an opportunity to raise sponsorship on top. Money from the MTB Marathon went into local access development.

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the course was awful IMHO - all first gear climbs and descents on the brakes

Welcome to the North

What we need is an Etape New Forest.

Organise it and they will come.

Just too expensive
I am all for a good charity but within reason
Market forces should prevail and they should compete not just give up

I did a couple of Sportives a few years ago, what put me off was the attitude of some "competitors" and the fact that I got hit by someone trying to run a red light...

Too expensive. That's it.

Mmm, I think people are being a bit unfair to sportives and their riders on this comment thread. Sportives have played their part in the UK's cycling boom we are all enjoying - they are an easy way for new and less committed riders to participate with like-minded others over well-planned but unfamiliar routes. They help people enjoy the sport, achieve fitness goals and, for some, go on to more ambitious cycling, whether competitive or otherwise. They don't cost nothing to put on, and the for-profit group of organisers usually sets the standard in booking, routing and support. If the market is now maturing and some events are surplus, that sends useful signals to the organisers about quantity, product and pricing, and they can adjust. Many sportives also raise money for charity, whether or not the organising body is for profit. Audaxes and clubs are great, but they are more specialist propositions, not cheap sportives. Not everyone wants to commit to a club, or gets as much fun out of longer-distance audax rides, but their memberships are benefiting from people entering the sport, many of whom will try a local or high-profile sportive before deciding whether to join in. I'd suggest the success of sportives are something for all kinds of cyclists to celebrate, not to sneer at, and they present aficionados of other aspects of the sport a great recruitment platform.

We travelled up from Wales and stayed in the area a week so perhaps perfect clients? But the course was awful IMHO - all first gear climbs and descents on the brakes. Difficult to get in a rhythm and enjoy and also pretty unsociable as difficult to ride as a couple or in a group. Organisation was brilliant though - probably the best I've been to.

Or, spend £15 and ride the hilliest, prettiest 60 miles of your life, just an hour from Waterloo: www.primarypedal.org.uk - May 10th 2015

The folks trumpeting Audaxes as the solution are missing a MAJOR point: with an Audax, you have to know where you are going. Saying Audaxes are the solution to Sportive-fatigue is like saying the AA mapbook is the solution to SatNav rage.

Sure SatNavs aren't perfect, but they make life a hell of a lot easier. Gone are the days you needed a pile of books in the car, or to stop at a local services to buy the local map that wouldn't be stocked anywhere else.

Most people don't want to have to work their brains that hard. They want to turn up and ride, with no-brainer fatigue-proof signage at every turn, regular marshals and the knowledge that if the shit does hit the fan, there is someone to help medically or technically. The actual entry fee is usually a tiny fraction of the overall opportunity cost for most cyclists who have had to travel more than 50 miles, and let's face it, the Pennines or other rides in the wilderness do attract people from far away.

Plus Audaxes are frequently on god-awful main roads. Although with the increase in GPS-routed non-routecard-stamping ones this is changing and AUK recognise this.

If you're paying £40 to £60+ just for a few feed zones, you need to learn how to use google maps to plan a route that goes through a village or town with a petrol station or newsagent at appropriate intervals. For £40+ you should be stopping at gourmet restaurants for your feed zones, instead of grabbing a few bananas, sugary gels & flap jacks from a table at the side of the road!

Sportives: Massive waste of money.

That's the beauty of Audax, you get a prepared route in a part of the country you're not familar with, and in most cases it costs less than a tenner. In fact for just a bit more, £12, on last years snow roads 300k, snacks were available at the start, there was a free conrol with beans on toast etc laid on at Braemar, and also bridies, (a kind of Scottish steak pasty), soup and beers laid on at the finish all covered by the entry fee.
Most of the time too Audaxes are of a sufficient length to make it really worthwhile travelling to the other end of the country. I'm sure many people spend more time actually getting to a sportive than they do riding them!

£63 to enter a sportive? And they wonder why they can't attract enough takers?

I'm not much of a sportivist but I can see the value in paying £20 for someone to plan a nice route for you and provide food and drink stops along the way. Having a broom wagon in case of a major mechanical is also nice. Doing a big ride with no support takes a bit of planning and organisation and paying a small fee to have someone else do this for you represents good value in my book but £63? I don't think so, even if the roads are closed.

I do sportives for the reasons given above, the main one being the feedzones. Although the standard has plummeted recently, one event thought the biscuits and water was sufficient. The navigation issues are a close second followed by the goodie bag/medal and after ride food.

That said, organisers seemingly made enough out of £10 entry with well stocked feedzones a few years ago. My focus has shifted to doing a few well organised events over on the continent anyway.

The biggest problem with this event is that it was too close to Le Tour. Hmm let's think, international event that was effectively free to watch and possibly not repeated. Or an expensive ride?

The next biggest problem is that there are just too many events all chasing the same money. Ok so the event is say £25 to enter, add in another £25 for food, £50 for fuel and maybe £100 for accommodation, that's £200 for one day riding. Do five events and that's a £1k. The cost of a good bike. As for "It's for charity" events come on, please give us a break what they are after is often ridiculous, entry is £25 plus £500 sponsership. Hello guys, my workmates wages have been below inflation for the last 5 years.

I do a few sportive events a year.Reason I enjoy is because it does gives me the opportunity to ride different routes I wouldn't necessarily be aware of.The Wiggle/UK cycling events are usually well organised and with prices around £30.Only paid that sort of cash for the prudential London.I also have had enough of charity events . unless if you a really popular figure how can you keep receiving donations from friends and family all the time?

I must admit that I feel very ambivilent about the whole corporate ethos of these events with cyclists seemingly just there to balance the books. Corporate charities PAY large sums of money to be associated with the events and then, in turn, go on the hard sell offensive to recoup the outlay. I just like riding my bike...rather than being an upsell opportunity whilst I am doing it.

I live just up the road from Co. Durham, and ride occasional sportives. Etape Pennines had no reason for me to pay the extra above what, say, the Wooler Wheel type events charge. As someone else pointed out, there are plenty of high quality sportives around Hexham and Haydon Bridge, like the Hexham Hell, Angel and even the Cyclone, that cost a lot less for the same outcomes.

More than that though, the greed of huge corporate charities like Marie Curie can stifle events. They seem to demand a USP from the events they partner with that can make those events unviable. Like other people have said, why do you need closed roads? We don't need closed roads to ride time trials; closed roads are only required for road races, and the whole point of a sportive is it isn't a race.

I have never ridden a sportive. The only thing that would make me keen would be closed roads. What sportives are?

For your money you also got to piss off all those other people who like to use the roads. That's gotta be worth something?

I've had it with sportives, waste of money. Unless it's something with a USP (like the Maratona, Etape abroad or the Bealach Mor in the UK) they're not worth the money.

The last one I did was on local roads. It wasn't cheap and for your money you got a handful of energy gels, a crappy finishing medal and a bowl of pasta at the end. There wasn't even any chipped timing!

Not only this:

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IMG Challenger also organises the Etape Caledonia, which continues to thrive. Entries for next year’s edition of the closed-roads sportive in Scotland opened at the start of this month, and general places – that is, excluding 500 Charity Pledge places – sold out within 58 hours.

But this:

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Not necessarily. IMG Challenge World also organises the Etape Caledonia, which continues to thrive.

Entries for next May’s edition of the closed-roads sportive in Highland Perhshire opened at the start of this month, and general places – that is, excluding 500 Charity Pledge places – sold out within 58 hours.

Just like my wife; if it's worth saying once, it's worth saying more than once.

As a long time Audaxer, I have to say that although I've ridden a few sportives, I've never really 'got' them. I don't understand why people are willing to spend £50 or more to ride roads they can ride for free.
Maybe we have reached peak sportive as the article mentions, if IMG aren't able to fill an event with closed roads.
For me, closed roads would be the only reason I'd bother to enter another sportive.