"Tom Schulenburg" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> "Robert Chung" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
>
news:[email protected]...
> > Finally. I've been waiting. Here's the provisional list:
> >
http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2003/giro03/?id=startlist
> >
> > My reaction? The TdF is too dominant. Many teams and riders are planning
> on
> > doing the TdF instead, including two-thirds of last year's podium.
> >
> >
>
> One solution - Find a sponsor to come up with a "Triple Crown" of stage racing. Give a huge cash
> reward, and entry into all three tours the following year for the team (or teams rider) that
> places highest in two of the three tours. This would give the middle and lower tier teams
> incentive to perform well in the Giro and Vuelta.
The TDF organisers are no doubt very happy with being the dominant grand tour, and will probably try
to keep themselves that way. Therefore they would not want something such as you describe, and
they'd not give the automatic entry for the next year. They'd be particularly unhappy with the '2 of
3' bit, because if you want to do well in 2 tours, you'd choose the two most separated. Namely the
Giro and the Vuelta. A sponsor is going to give a huge amount of money only in return for a huge
amount of publicity. The way things are now, whoever won the triple crown would probably place
somewhere in the top 10 in each tour, but never get on the podium: not much publicity there, whereas
if you did it on team positions - well, not many people really care about team positions in one
grand tour, let alone playing with statistics from all three. The middle and lower teams would not
have much incentive to perform well in all three tours, because the winner would almost certainly be
a top team anyway, and going for something you're never going to get is fairly pointless, e.g. last
year USPS with 1 and 2 in the Tour and Vuelta would have won if you did it on riders (and that would
not, ever, get beaten by a middle or lower tier team); ONCE with 1 and 4 in the same on team
performance (which I suppose would be beatable, but given they weren't even trying to get that
statistic, and probably stopped trying to improve their team performance in the Vuelta as soon as it
got obvious they weren't going to win teams...).
Peter
>
> -T
