SHORT-CIRCUIT

Mark Cavendish thinks circuit races are crucial for professional cycling’s future. Does he have a point?

As the 2016 cycling season petered out in Abu Dhabi with the sort of tedious desert slog that often now bookends the racing calendar in this post-globalisation sport, Mark Cavendish was putting forward a case, as reported on skysports.com, in favour of circuit races like the one he won in stage 4 of the Abu Dhabi Tour at the Yas Marina F1 track.

“They attract crowds and they attract more than just the race. You can have a paddock area, like Formula One and MotoGP, and enjoy an atmosphere. It’s more forgiving for a spectator than camping for two days to see 20 seconds of racing... As a rider, it’s easier on the head to do an A-to-B race, but the way forward for cycling is on circuits.”

As an ambassador Cavendish is obliged to be complimentary about the race but putting that to one side for a second, does he have a point? In certain ways, yes. They often attract decent crowds and they are more forgiving for spectators on the ground, who get to see far more of the action. Healthy numbers attend the final stages of the Tour de France, Tour of Britain and Vuelta a España, which currently finish with circuit races. Fans of the Tour of Flanders have accepted a late race three-loop section, albeit within a point-to-point race from Bruges to Oudenaarde, while the World Championships finish with a closed circuit. Closer to home, the town centre Tour Series criteriums are often well attended.

The sport, more and more, is heading in this direction. Roadside fans apart, they’re attractive to race organisers. Like television’s ‘bottle episodes’, where sets are restricted as much as possible to reduce cost, circuit races are financially attractive and less logistically challenging than traditional point-to-point races.

There is, however, something artificial about them, particularly of the type staged at the Yas Marina F1 track. For anybody concerned about the potential Formula One-isation of professional cycling, the sight of racing staged at an actual F1 track will send shudders down their spine.

As a free-to-view sport, cycling generates little direct revenue for the teams, so could it be that the future of cycling will lie in opening up or even building tracks, in which fans pay to watch the racing in a Formula One-kind-of-way, with a similar homogenised, globe-trotting calendar? It’s a nightmarish vision, depicted by journalist Daniel Friebe’s feature in issue 315, of what the sport might look like in a decade’s time.

Let’s just cross our fingers and hope not. The beauty of professional cycling is in covering new ground, in the ebb and flow as the peloton progresses from A-to-B. It might work, to a degree, in the flesh and for the bean counters, but circuit racing is a repetitive downer that strips the sport of its spirit and nuance.

The sight of racing staged at an actual F1 track will send shudders down their spine