Talk:Road bicycle racing

Riding "à bloc" means blocking?

Currently, riding 'à bloc' is defined the same as blocking. But every time I've seen the phrase riding à bloc that I can recall, I think I've interpreted it to mean something like "in the red", rather than "blocking". Here's an example where Alexander Vinokourov describes how he won the final stage in the 2005 Tour de France:

"That was victory made of courage and guts - I really gave it all in the last kilometres, although I didn't think it was possible until I crossed the line. I just went 'à bloc' - it's unbelievable, magnificent! I have no words for it..."

Does anyone who thinks that riding 'à bloc' means blocking have an example of this usage? --Serge 23:21, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Googling "riding a bloc" confirms my interpretation of the phrase, so I'm going to change it accordingly. --Serge 01:18, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Serge, to "ride a bloc" means to "ride all out". Julius.kusuma 01:35, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Right. That's what the googling confirmed and why I changed it. Before my change, à bloc was defined as a synonym for blocking. --Serge 16:57, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Reformatting of terminology

I'm really not keen on the new formatting of the terminology list. I don't think it's appropriate to use sections - each entry on the list is not a section, it uses vastly more screen space to display, the TOC is now overly long and it's not consistent with the wikipedia style. I could perhaps just about understand it for the list of rider types, but IMHO it's completely inappropriate for the "other terminology" section.

What was wrong with a straightforward "Wikipedia list" (I don't know the official title for it)?

Does anyone else have an opinion on this?

(M4rk 11:50, 28 July 2005 (UTC))

The list of terminologies is a great addition to the page, but I agree that using sub-sections for each one of the term makes the TOC bulky. Julius.kusuma 13:38, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I should have left a note here. The main advantage is now you can reference any term in this list from any other page with a link that will take you directly to it, like this:

Ullrich was dropped by Armstrong on the climb.

I think that's a very nice feature, and could end up being very useful.

The TOC is long, but it does give you an overview of all the terms, which is nice for browsing.

I would also like to see longer and more descriptive explanations of the terms, perhaps all with examples. In other words, instead of providing just brief quick reference definitions to these terms, provide in-depth explanations. I think doing that would make each term more like a separate section.

Finally, I think all the terms should be defined alphabetically in one section (with each term being a subsection), instead of dividing out types of races, type of riders, and then "other". I mean, we could still have those sections, make them shorter (listing the types of races and riders, with each one being a link to the full description).

Anyway, I won't put up a stink if someone reverts, but I think it's worth a little more consideration before that happens. --Serge 01:12, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Serge, it is a cool feature. So how about a compromise: a separate page for Cycle racing terminologies? Julius.kusuma 02:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

I like that. What about taking a step further, and having it be more general, like "cycling terms", so it's not restricted to terms used only in racing? --Serge 17:06, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Sure, but I would say be a little careful with setting the scope here. Worse comes worse, we'll end up making a sub-title for racing and other cycling-related terms. Thanks. Julius.kusuma 17:35, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Moving the terminology to a seperate page gets my vote, and I'd also like to see some padding out of the terms (I'll help here). (M4rk 22:35, 29 July 2005 (UTC))

Well, I went ahead and created Bicycling terminology on the grounds that having both cycle racing terminology and bicycling terminology would create too much redundancy. I also changed the race and rider types to be links into this new list. Have at it. --Serge 06:33, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Getting into racing?

Should we document the basics - and maybe the advanced - knowledge about participating in bicycle racing? I was tempted add topics like: Finding a club, Mechanics/Equipment, Sports Nutrition, Body Wegth, Training regimes (HR, Power, Cadence, etc). Is this the article where this ype of kowledge should live? --Richard@lbrc.org 12:56, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think that most of the topics you mention are fine, but should be written in an encyclopedic style, and perhaps in their own separate pages. The mechanics part is already being worked on by many people, such as bicycle, bicycle gearing, bicycle frame, etc. However, something like finding a club is hard to present in an encyclopedic manner, since it's highly subjective (see WP:NPOV). Wikipedia is not a how-to, but rather an encyclopedia that should be accessible to people of varying levels of familiarity with the subject. So please contribute! Browse around the now-large number of articles related to the subject and be bold! Julius.kusuma 14:09, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

New wiki

Hello :) I was just reading "How to start a Wiki" in Wikibooks and it said that, once created, it would be a good thing to find members willing to help. I've started http://www.uciprotour-cycling.net. In Wikibooks, it says that I should put the link on a corresponding article on a place like Wikipedia, but I don't want to give the impression of spamming so I've put it in the discussion page. Feel welcome to have a look at it, and you can register. Thanks!

Not to be rude, but why not just contribute here? There's already a good set of good articles, and more importantly a set of contributors. I don't see what your website does that is not better done here. Maybe I'm missing something. Julius.kusuma 18:42, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is bigger and does not focus on cycling alone, let alone on road bicycle racing. Many cycling articles are stubs and only a few races such as the Tour de France and the other Grand Tours get an article for each edition. There are no standings, say, for stage six of the Tour de Suisse 2005 (not even for the Tour de Suisse 2005, in fact), while my site goes more in-depth because it focuses exclusively on that. Anyway, thanks for your opinion.

I also believe it would be much more useful to contribute here, rather than dividing efforts. I don't believe anyone would complain about articles describing the yearly editions of Tour de Suisse for example.--Per Abrahamsen 20:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I'll register an account and import some pages from my wiki to Wikipedia then.

Note that there's already a lot of stuff on the different editions of the Tour de France, for example the 2005 Tour de France, and even stage-by-stage results. It would be great if you can add some stuff related to the Tour de Suisse, for example.

It looks to me that you already have a lot of material that can benefit from actually being on wikipedia so that it can cross-ref articles that already exist here, and vice-versa. Looking forward to your contributions! Julius.kusuma 00:00, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

I've already contributed a big part of the material, when I have time I'll end it all. BTW, I've already seen there are articles on the 2005 Tour de France and the 2005 Giro d'Italia, so I won't change those except for the UCI ProTour2005 Template. --Danilot 19:05, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

For starters, how about signing your posts with four tildes. Thanks! Cheers, ask123 20:37, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Eventual additions

Surprisingly in this article there are no sections yet, contending names of the most famous practitioners of this sport, resp. the constant plague of this sport, which doping certainly seems to be. VKing (talk) 14:03, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Edit types of riders

From the types of riders section of the main article I removed the section that referenced USA Cycling categories. I didn't think it was appropriate to the rest of the article. If such a section is added it should reference the international categories recognized by the UCI and not those of any particular national federation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.68.17.244 (talk) 18:07, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Who is Moore?

Someone called Moore is mentioned twice but not really identified: the first mention says " [the first Paris-Rouen] was also won by Moore" as though he had already been mentioned. Was the relevant information edited out? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.21.212.248 (talk) 21:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Section 'crosswinds'

Near the end of this section, the article reads "if the peloton should split, anything can happen, including [fuel-coolant interactions] or [transitional demand]", these last two terms linking, respectively, to steam explosion and transitional demand (an article on Marxist theory). Is this cycling/racing-specific terminology, or a mistake of some kind? The links should be fixed or removed and the meaning of these phrases clarified; or the sentence should be removed altogether.186.137.185.127 (talk) 08:11, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I removed material not supported by refs and added refs for what was left. User:HopsonRoad 17:15, 20 April 2017 (UTC)

Parcours?

This technical term in French seems to be used without explanation. Right now, Parcours redirects to Parkour (street gymnastics). I think it means a particular set of roads being used for this race on this day, but it would be good to see it defined more formally with a citation. Could someone oblige, please? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:49, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand why you bring up "parcours" in this discussion, John Maynard Friedman, since the term is not yet in the this article, nor does a search of Google connect the word with cycling. I agree that the term, as used in the Velonews article, is ill-explained, but that seems to be a fault of that article, not an issue for discussion for this Wikipedia article. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 13:58, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Because I saw the term in this Cycling News article, wondered what it meant, found it unknown to Wikipedia, did a google search and found other mentions (such as above, I'm surprised you didn't find it? did you try parcours -parkour -site:parcours.cc? (incidentally, why would someone choose parcours.cc as a business name if it has nothing to do with cycling?). I don't expect an article about it of course but thought perhaps this article might list common terms that have special meanings in cycle racing, like Madison and Criterium, for example (which do have articles). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:10, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Whoops, I've just realised that my "This technical term in French seems to be used without explanation" could most obviously be assumed to mean "used in this article", which is not what I intended. I meant "used in the media". I hadn't come across it before today. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:21, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

And to add to my embarrassment, I've just found it at Glossary of cycling#P. My apologies for the time wasting. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:25, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Not a waste of time. I learned something. Thanks! Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 17:49, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

References

Fantasy cycling within scope of the article?

I feel that this newly introduced topic is out of scope of the article. If it were the topic of a stand-alone article, it would be a "See also", here. What do others think? HopsonRoad (talk) 01:40, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• Update: I have deleted this section because it is about a game, not about the physical sport of road bicycle racing. An interested party could assess whether the game is a candidate for a stand-alone article. HopsonRoad (talk) 14:41, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Unreferenced material on team tactics

Thank you, Robert Merkel for your added material, regarding team tactics. Unfortunately, you did not supply a corresponding reference. As you may know, Wikipedia is a compilation of paraphrased materials from reliable references. Your contribution is also quite elaborate, and hard to follow. WP:TONE suggests that "Encyclopedic writing has a fairly academic approach, while remaining clear and understandable". I thought that I'd make you aware of these concerns and give you a chance to address them, before I reverted your good-faith contribution. Cheers, HopsonRoad (talk) 13:48, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Swapped in a real-life example with citation. Cycling tactics aren't easy to explain! Robert Merkel (talk) 01:22, 23 March 2022 (UTC)