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UCI official: Giro d'Italia Best Descender contest an "unacceptable idea"Giro d'Italia 100 (Photo credit ANSA - Peri-Zennaro-Dal Zennaro-Bazzi).jpg

UCI official: Giro d'Italia Best Descender contest an "unacceptable idea"

Road commission president Tom Van Damme says governing body opposed to controversial competiton
by Simon_MacMichael
Tue, May 02, 2017 20:35
11

A senior official at world cycling’s governing body, the UCI, has said that the introduction of a ‘Best Descender’ competition at the Giro d’Italia is an “unacceptable idea” given concerns over the safety of riders.

Tom Van Damme, president of the UCI’s road commission – a role fulfilled by Brian Cookson before he became the governing body’s president in 2013 – was reacting to yesterday’s news that organisers of the Italian Grand Tour were introducing the new competition.

> Giro d'Italia introduces Best Descender contest - but will it encourage riders to take too many risks?

Van Damme, who is also president of the Belgian Cycling Federation, made his position – and that of the UCI – clear in a tweet.

The Best Descender competition, sponsored by tyre company Pirelli, has been launched with little fanfare – there has not been a press release about it as yet.

However, it was condemned by fans, riders and team management as encouraging needlessly risky riding after blogger Inner Ring noticed details of it in the regulations of this year’s race and tweeted about it yesterday.

According to the race’s rulebook, the 10 descents that form the basis of the competition are as follows:

Giro d'Italia 2017 descent competition.JPG

There will be a prize of €500 for the best descender on each stage – the quickest rider on the sections in question.

Points awarded to the quickest five riders on each of those 10 descents will count towards a final classification at the end of the race, with the winner taking €5,000, the runner-up €3,000 and the third placed man €2,000 for a total prize fund of €15,000.

While TV images will focus, as ever, on the front of the race, Cannondale-Drapac manager Jonathan Vaughters suggested that the introduction of the competition would lead riders further back to take undue risks.

uci
Giro d'Italia 2017
Descending
Simon MacMichael

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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11 comments

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Must be Mad | 7 years ago
0 likes

I don't  know the streches of road slected for this - if its the high mountain passes with lots of hairpins and big drops, then this is a very silly idea.

However, choose the right bit of road... not too steep, not too twisty and not to much road funiture... and a mini down hill time trail in the middle of a stage for the grupetto to go for  could be kind of interesting. 

Avatar
arfa | 7 years ago
0 likes

It would appear that the race organisers have forgotten about Wouter Weylandt. Maybe memories are short these days.

Avatar
missionsystem | 7 years ago
1 like

Didn't the obsession with riding uphill faster lead to a doping culture - in some cases resulting in fatalities?

Some riders are good at descending and enjoy it. They don't need any encouragement to challenge themselves. I would imagine that they already informally compare their performance for bragging rights. Perhaps having a fairly paltry award won't really affect the way the riders tackle a decent that much.

Maybe the timing is poor but I don't really understand the hoo-ha...

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sammutd88 | 7 years ago
0 likes

Well it won't be Steven Kruijswijk...

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Russell Orgazoid | 7 years ago
4 likes

They don't want disc brakes but will take part in this!

Pro peleton isn't so bright, it would seem.

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Hypoxic | 7 years ago
0 likes

Sounds like it should be a separate sport to me. Definitely an X-Sport.

Find a nice public road, block it off, put in some safety barriers (nets for flying fish) and off you go... good luck getting that one off the ground. Has anyone approached Red Bull about this?

 

Avatar
tritecommentbot replied to Hypoxic | 7 years ago
2 likes
Hypoxic wrote:

Sounds like it should be a separate sport to me. Definitely an X-Sport.

Find a nice public road, block it off, put in some safety barriers (nets for flying fish) and off you go... good luck getting that one off the ground. Has anyone approached Red Bull about this?

 

 

People acting like descents don't already happen in cycling at over 100km per hour.

Hysteria just like disc brakes. Reward or not, riders will bomb down descents as fast as they can get away with. It's not the X games, it's Pro Cycling. Try watching it sometime. 

Avatar
joules1975 replied to Hypoxic | 7 years ago
0 likes
Hypoxic wrote:

Sounds like it should be a separate sport to me. Definitely an X-Sport.

Find a nice public road, block it off, put in some safety barriers (nets for flying fish) and off you go... good luck getting that one off the ground. Has anyone approached Red Bull about this?

 

 

They already have. Check out the Red Bull Road Rage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Road_Rage

 

Avatar
joules1975 | 7 years ago
5 likes

I'm struggling to figure out if this is a good idea or not.

Yes it potentially promotes dangerous riding, but then riders take silly risks now anyway on descents when they have a chance of a stage win. And what's the most dangerous part of a cycle race? I guess the injuries from crashes on descents have tended to be significantly worse in certain cases, but there are far more crashes during sprint finishes.

I also find it odd for the UCI to complain about it when there is the UCI Mountain Bike Downhill World Championships and World Cup events. Yes they wear full face helmets and often body amour, but what they are expected to ride can be pretty nuts.

So I'm thinking that if measures are put in place to protect riders from roadside objects etc (as per mountain bike downhill, with padding on trees, catch netting in front of drops,  etc), why not. If no mitigation is put in place for the increase likelyhood of a serious crash, then maybe a bad idea.

Avatar
crazy-legs replied to joules1975 | 7 years ago
1 like
joules1975 wrote:

I also find it odd for the UCI to complain about it when there is the UCI Mountain Bike Downhill World Championships and World Cup events. Yes they wear full face helmets and often body amour, but what they are expected to ride can be pretty nuts.

In DH racing, the riders are on the track individually and there are rules about the size of obstacle, the drop, the run out, chicken runs, padding and so on. Bascially the rider can slow down / move around the track as much as they want, safe in the knowledge there are not 120 other riders within spitting distance.

In a road race, you often can't take the "ideal" line due to the presence of so many other riders and the nature of the race may mean that it's almost neutralised (think of the bunch pootling along while the break have a 5 minute advantage...) or they may be chasing hard so having a "timed segment" may even impact how the race pans out.

Jonathan Vaughters tweeted that it's not the riders in front you need to watch, it's the sprinters in the autobus desperately trying to stay within the time cut who are usually the ones hurtling down descents but the cameras are rarely that far back, they're all up with the GC action at the front.

Avatar
timb27 | 7 years ago
2 likes

I think it's a terrible idea, adding Strava segment descending to a Grand Tour just for some publicity sponsor action.

Having said that, if it came with a jersey, I would so have bought one.

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