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Yes it was very remote.
The CP was at the bottom of the pass, so you had about a 600m climb from it to the parcours start, took me 2-3 hours. The CP wasn't in a town but there were some stalls there which were locals selling produce like cheese, honey, etc. Strasser said he managed to buy 5 croissants and 5 snickers there, but he had to hunt around. There wouldn't have been that for later riders, and I didn't see anything, so I was relying on supplies I'd carried from the other side of the pass, up the 1800m climb.
There were two springs on it, one right at the start and another about half way.
There were a few cars knocking around at the start by the road but they only went a little way down it. After the first km I only saw one car and two German guys on motorbikes. I don't think the second half would have been drivable other than in a serious high clearance off road vehicle.
At the other end you come out in a remote area. There are a couple of villages, and I found a shop in one, but about 30km to the first town.
If you had a bad crash and couldn't ride on I think you would be pressing the SOS button on your tracker and waiting for a helicopter. If one came, an insurance company would be picking up the tab. Rather than just signing a cheque, I'd expect them to ask serious questions about risk assessments and what the organisers had done to mitigate risks.
I thought I might have to walk it from the middle when my left Cleat shim disintegrated. I had about 25km to the end. Would probably have taken me 8 hours, to get to a country road in the middle of the night, with no food.
I'd be surprised if they have any lawyers at all. I think they just wing it and are blissfully unaware of the issues, and the extent to which they would be held liable.
frank9755-
I'd be surprised if they have any lawyers at all. I think they just wing it and are blissfully unaware of the issues, and the extent to which they would be held liable.
You reckon? It's a pretty high profile race to be winging it.
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I thought I might have to walk it from the middle when my left Cleat shim disintegrated. I had about 25km to the end.
I thought you were riding flats?
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I’ve said this before, the risk isn’t from claims against them from riders. It’s insurance companies. I may even have been saying this to you. Presumably they are insured and as long as they meet their insurance responsibilities it’d be between two insurers but the obvious consequence could be that they can no longer obtain insurance…
Something that seems to be lacking in the assessment is how far riders are in to the race, they aren’t fresh! I also don’t think Anna handles the discussion very well.I think tough parcours have a part but when everyone has to push a large distance it becomes diminished as it’s no longer about riders abilities.
hippy
pifko
GoatandTricycle
Is it that remote? There was a CP at one end of it and a town at the other end and there's quite a few Google pics of cars and motorbikes on it. If you had to walk it from the middle, how long would it take? If someone had to come and pick up a crashed rider how long would it take?
Presumably they have lawyers that know what they can get away with but equally they've not been tested on this in reality so I don't know what would happen if someone did have a serious accident on the parcours like this.
I'm sure I've made comments about my dislike of hike-a-bike parcours in TCR before but as I'm not a lawyer I don't know what the situation would be legally. Maybe they'll take some of the comments on board? They didn't change anything the last two years though. If anything, they put more technical/more remote sections in.