As spectator sports go, cycling can seem rather over-complicated to the untrained eye. The passing around of coloured jerseys, a veritable pick-and- mix of bike designs, Grand Tours, Monuments, breakaway tactics, WorldTour points, intermediate sprints, time bonuses… There is a lot to wrap your head around. With that in mind, we’ve put together this handy little one-stop guide to get you started.
One-day races
The least complicated of the race formats is the collection of one-day events which includes classics and Monuments – we’ll get on to the distinction shortly. These are pretty self-explanatory really, a mass start race, often - but not always - going from A to B, where the winner is the first across the line. Some, like the RideLondon-Surrey Classic, award King of the Mountain (KOM) and/or intermediate sprint points at odd intervals during the race, but ultimately, there is one winner and then everyone goes off and celebrates with a plate of frites and a Belgian beer.
As for the distinction between classics and Monuments, they are both labels attributed to collections of one-day races. To confuse matters, not even the UCI (the sport’s international governing body) can confidently define the clear characteristics that make a race a ‘classic’. However, if the race takes place in northern Europe on a single day during the spring, then the chances are it is a Spring Classic. If that race traverses any of the French and/or Belgian cobbled sectors, then it’ll be a Cobbled Classic. If, on the other hand, the race is held on the alarmingly hilly roads in and around the Ardennes forest, then it’ll be an Ardennes Classic.
Of these races, a select few also qualify as Monuments, and are much easier to identify. They are the five oldest, hardest and most prestigious one-day events in cycling: Milan-San Remo (‘the Sprinters’ Classic’), the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix (both Cobbled Classics), Liège- Bastogne-Liège (an Ardennes Classic, and the oldest of the lot), and the Giro di Lombardia (which breaks all the rules being held in the Autumn and neither a Cobbled Classic nor Ardennes).
Stage races
Where cycling starts to get a touch more complicated is when we come to stage races. The calendar is stacked with races spanning anything from three days right up to a lung-busting 21 (Grand Tours), but all essentially follow the same playbook. As well as racing for individual glory stage by stage, teams ride for the various classifications available. The general classification, the most prestigious of the lot, is won by the rider who completes the whole race - all twenty-one stages in the case of a Grand Tour - in the shortest time. Other classifications include best young rider, awarded to the best-placed rider under 25; the points classification, for which sprinters chase points via stage wins, top-10 finishes and intermediate sprints; and the KOM competition, where points are collected at the top of classified climbs. After each stage, the current leader of each classification is awarded with a coloured jersey (yellow for the overall leader at the Tour de France) which they will wear instead of their team jersey for as long as they stay in the lead.
Why so many bikes? You might notice that there are a vast number of bikes that pro cyclists can choose from, each with a slightly different design and setup. The reason is that riders and teams want to maximise their chances at any given race, so they take advantage of the technology available to them to optimise their equipment for the terrain. For instance, the Specialized Roubaix is aptly named for perhaps the most famous one-day race of them all, Paris-Roubaix. The race is famous for its slimy, uneven and bone-shattering cobbled sectors which demand a special sort of bike to maximise comfort and responsiveness over the unique terrain. Elsewhere in the season, riders might choose a lightweight bike over an aero bike depending on the profile of the stage or even the weather expected on the day of the race.
Just take a look at this little selection to see something of the choices available to the pros:
