Good morning, and welcome back to The Leadout. I hope you’re well and as excited as I am by the return of proper racing. I watched Strade Bianche with my friends at the weekend, and while both races were won by their respective favourites, it was good to see the best riders in the world going up against each other again. I can’t wait for Flanders, now. As always, if you want to get in touch, let me know what race you’re most looking forward to this spring, I’m adam.becket@futurenet.com.
The year is 2024 and we live in a world where Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico are still run concurrently. There are two WorldTour stage races, of more or less equal importance, on at the same time, in two bordering European countries. 11 years ago, there was talk and hope of the pair being given different slots in the season, but that appears to be a long-lost dream now, with the pair seemingly inseparable.
As it is, we all do the same dance every year, switching between the two depending on what the most interesting looking stage is, and getting confused all the while. Is Jonas Vingegaard at Paris-Nice or Tirreno? Is that Mark Cavendish, I didn’t know he was here? Wait, are Lotto Dstny not riding this race? It goes on.
Of course, Paris-Nice and Tirreno are not the only races to clash, but they are the only WorldTour races to overlap by more than a day or two.
Both races have their merits, although they are largely similar: Paris-Nice being an eight-day affair with punchy stages, time trials, sprints, and proper climbing thrown in; Tirreno-Adriatico, meanwhile, is a seven-day race with proper climbing, time trials, sprints and punchy stages thrown in.
That feels glib, and both are actually great entertainment, especially in the early season, as narratives start to bubble. However, those narratives are affected by both WorldTour races running at the same time, and effectively splitting the field. We can’t know how old teammates Primož Roglič and Vingegaard will match up, because the former is in France, while the latter is in Italy. The same with sprint rivals, like Tim Merlier and Fabio Jakobsen, or Classics stars like Mads Pedersen and Julian Alaphilippe. They’re at different races, with different fields, so it’s hard to measure anything up.
When explaining the cycling season to a non-obsessive, like I’m sure many of us are, it’s easy to sketch it out as a building up to a peak, normally either the Classics or the Tour de France. Where does Paris-Nice and Tirreno clashing fit into this? It’s hard to define. This one is the top race at this time of the year, but so is the other one. It doesn’t really make sense.
Splitting the WorldTour peloton like this just feels mad, and also makes for slightly devalued racing on either side of the Alps. There is history to thank for their concurrent running - both are key to the Classics build up and Tirreno used to be the stage race for Italians, while Paris-Nice was there for French riders - but bike racing is a bit more international these days. And their dates don’t need to be set in stone.
The solution to this is to give the races different slots in the calendar, a solution which feels reasonably simple to do, given next week is empty of WorldTour racing until Milan-San Remo on the Saturday. It would require a shifting round of programmes and schedules, sure, especially as much of the Tirreno peloton are riders who have stuck around after Strade Bianche, but sometimes things need to change.
Meanwhile, we will continue to channel surf between the two races, hoping to catch the best of the action and work out some kind of narrative. Well, I won’t, I’ll be watching Paris-Nice, because I prefer it. Just don’t tell the Italians.
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If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
