Imagine a stage race designed to find the best all round rider:
Stage 1: Downhill MTB - something like the Fort William course
Stage 2: XCO - a longer distance cross country race
Stage 3: CX - a 1 hour cyclocross race
Stage 4: Gravel - 180km of gravel. Actually gravel not Kansas peanut butter mud. Think Tuscan white roads.
Stage 5: a typical grand tour stage a few hills but probably no HC climbs
Stage 6: Time Trial day, fast and flat around 20km
Stage 7: a flying 200m on the velodrome.
It’ll be a points competition rather than accumulated time. As not to favour the longer stages
The question is if the race were held this year who wins? In the women’s I reckon Pauline Ferrand-Prévot would almost certainly take the win. In the men’s I think Pidock would just edge out MVDP.
Logistically and financially this would be a nightmare event to run needing 7 bikes to complete.
If it comes down to a tie for first the winner is decided by an Artist Cycling routine.
Despite the sprint, there are very few in the men’s peloton that regularly compete across these events so Pidders and MVDP are the obvious choices, but I would throw Jasper, Wout, Pogi and “IDGAF” Primoz in there for fun. And maybe Ganna because he would just plow through the trees and rocks on the downhill.
What type of bike would you pick? And how much could you change it? A full suspension gravel bike? But can you change to slick tyres? Add tt bars? Change the forks for ridged forks?
On the men’s side, Pidcock smokes MvdP in the DH and the road stage. But MvdP beats him on gravel and in the TT. I’d assume he also has the edge on the track. The rest should be pretty equal so this might end up actually being an interesting race.
I’m going to give a shout for Thibau Nys. If it’s a points based stage race, even a strict cutoff time would let some specialists compete through the whole thing. So, a downhiller might take all the points and then struggle on for the remaining races. This would make it a “best of the rest” in every event as the winner overall. I think Nys has the power and skill to be at the front or near the front of every event listed.
But also Marianne Vos because a GOAT is gonna goat.
Aren’t we missing the hill climb? The one up an extremely steep hill, say 100-300m altitude gain riding a fixed gear bike with one brake, track tubulars and drilliumed everything. I propose a max weight limit of 6kg for this.
