You shouldn't need two television screens in order to keep up to date with what’s happening in your favourite sport. In the past week, most of the men’s WorldTour peloton has been split between France and Italy, half racing in Paris-Nice, the other half in Tirreno-Adriatico. These two, week-long stage races running alongside each other has become a problem: cycling fans have too much bike racing to watch.
Is it Filippo Ganna in the lead of Paris-Nice? Or was that the other race? Is it Vingegaard who crashed out of Tirreno, or did that happen in France? Which race is the one that has had really bad weather? Do you know which stage is going to be the most entertaining today? Which one is worth watching in full from the start, and which should I just tune into for the last few kilometres? Can I borrow your Discovery+ login so I can watch one race on my laptop, and the other one on the TV?
These sorts of questions are enough to put even the most committed of viewers off trying to follow what is going on in both stage races. With bad weather rife across the whole of Europe over this week, Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico can’t even be distinguished by the conditions the riders are racing in as you flick your television screen from one race to the other. The sixth stage of Paris-Nice (won by Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pedersen) and the fifth stage of Tirreno (won by Fredrik Dversnes from Uno-X Pro Cycling) finished just a few moments apart – the former concluding when the latter had just six kilometres to go.
Race leader Matteo Jorgenson at Paris-Nice (Image: ASO/Billy Ceusters)
Both stages had been exciting, with crosswinds in Paris-Nice and plenty of attacks on the punchy stage to Pergola in Tirreno, but it was impossible to give either the full attention it deserved. Instead, it was a case of frantically trying to follow both, with viewers forced to do their utmost in order to decipher riders who were wrapped in rain capes racing through similar dismal, grey landscapes. From a business standpoint, let alone fan perspective, this can’t be good: both races must be haemorrhaging TV viewership numbers, which won’t make organisers or sponsors happy.
But how did we end up in this position? Tirreno-Adriatico was, in fact, originally created to purposefully sit alongside Paris-Nice on the calendar. At that time – back in 1966 – there were no Italian teams, or very few, that went to Paris-Nice, so RCS created an event which would allow the Italian teams to race too, giving them a better chance at doing well in races like Milan-Sanremo which followed. For a while, Tirreno ran from Wednesday to Tuesday, meaning that the finale didn’t clash with Paris-Nice, but the organisers have since changed this as television viewership numbers are better on a weekend.
The UCI, at least, are aware of the issues that having two important stage races clashing causes for the sport. In an interview with Het Nieuwsblad early last year, UCI President David Lappartient explained that there were reforms planned for the calendar in 2026 which would ensure that key WorldTour races did not overlap. The problem, however, is agreeing with race organisers like RCS and ASO where their events fit on a newly-designed calendar. Cycling is a sport steeped in heritage and tradition, and many are reluctant to move away from the current race structure which has been in place for centuries.
The peloton during Tirreno-Adriatico (Image: RCS)
However, it is possible for tradition and evolution to coexist, and when professional cycling has been forced to break its usual mould, the racing and interest hasn’t necessarily suffered. During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, the Tour de France was held in September and the Tour of Flanders in October and both were extremely successful. That’s not to say the calendar should be run like that in the future, but it does prove that change is entirely possible if stakeholders can agree on it.
In addition, if the Saudi-backed OneCycling project comes to fruition, it proposes model for cycling with ticketed races, blockbuster start lists and city circuits. This would see the sport’s superstars race head-to-head regularly in an elite series of events, meaning clashes like Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico would be mostly avoided. Once again, however, there is pushback surrounding this project, especially from some race organisers who would like their events to remain in the place on the calendar which they always have done (there's also concerns over how smaller races would suffer from these reforms.) The likes of Mauro Vegni, long-standing organiser of RCS's landmark events, argue that there are enough riders to race two stage races at the same time, believing the current clash isn't a problem – but does this give enough consideration the fan perspective?
There’s no easy solution, but one certainty is that change is needed. It’s true that cycling is a special sport because of its past and history, but it must move with the times to keep viewers engaged. It should not be a chore or challenge to follow the narrative of the season, and cycling needs to do more to make it easier for fans to engage with the sport and root for their favourite athletes – this is the only way to ensure growth. Change is certainly on the horizon, so here’s hoping this is the last year where we will have to try and follow two major stage races being contested by the sport’s biggest riders at the same time. Quite simply, it’s not much fun.
(Cover image: ASO/Billy Ceusters)
