City Centre Cycle racing and road surface condition

35dollars

As I was commuting into work this morning, over a road surface which could charitably be described as a series of massive cracks and pot-holes occasionally connected by asphalt, I got to thinking about how whenever I've watched one of these City Centre races, I don't recollect ever seeing the leaders having to drastically swerve to avoid disappearing down some collapsed drain or wheel-wrecking pot-hole.

This got me wondering about the roads that the serious boys & girls race on - are these races set up so that the courses just happen to use all the best road surface in the area, or does the local authority coincidentally resurface the roads on the planned route ahead of time, or do the pros actually put up with the same collection of tank traps and sink-holes that us mere mortals have to traverse every day?

TheBigYin

You should have seen the National Criterium Championships in Barnsley last Summer... I can assure you that the roads were not improved in any way, shape or form from the horrendous stuff that the rate-paying public of the area had to contend with day-in-day out.

Step it up to something like the TdF coming to town, and yes, the roads get improved - often quite substantially. If you'd have ridden around in the Yorkshire Dales 2 summers ago, anytime between May and 2 days before LeTour kicked off in Leeds, I can pretty much guarantee you'd have been stuck at some point behind a queue of traffic waiting for the Tarmac crew to finish rolling yet another 50 yard stretch...

35dollars

I thought as much. Who do I have to (speak to / bribe / kill) in order to route Le Tour through Ealing and Southall?

TheBigYin

just move to Yorkshire, and speak to Gary Verity... there's no bloody mountains down south anyway, thats why people make so much fuss over a pimple like box hill...