December Tour 2023 - Rules & Discussion

[flockmastoR]

We will have another december tour design contest in 2023. With permission of the dictator I will guide you through the process that I mostly recycled from last year's topic:

Designers submit their tours, managers vote in the forum, the winning Tour will be ridden as catgory 3 tour in december. And the runner up as a shortened January Tour, cat 2, in January.

Design rules:
-Length: 10-14 days: Maximum 13 days riding. (That means you can do a 13 day tour without rest day or a 14 day tour with 1 rest day)
-No extreme tour, extreme as in unbalanced towards one speciality, flat, pavé, mountains TT, extreme as in extreme climate in December
-1 tour per designer
-Number of riders 6-9
-Maximum 1 day with half stages

Don't post your tours here, but in separate thread that I will open on the 1st of October. This thread here is for the rules (see above) criticism of the rules, discussion of the proposed tours later on. Promotion of tours welcome, criticism too, the more the better.

Posting of the Tours in October, deadline is the 31st. Races that are posted in the early hours of November, before I open the voting will of course still be counted.

Designer participation rules:

No active manager banned from participating. Here the rules changed a bit over the years. Used to be:

Andes designer not allowed:
Winner of the previous year not allowed.

Due to the low number of managers and thus of designers that was changed to
Andes designer can design a December tour too, but only 1 in three years. So if somebody designs the Andes for 3 years, he can only participate in the Dec competition in one year. A still a bit nebulous rule, if you design the Andes every second your you still can participate each year? Will have to rethink that rule in detail later on, but anyway, nobody disqualifed this year.
Winner of the previous year partly for the same reasons, lack of managers/designers, but also a miss by the Donkey when he didn't properly write that the previous winner was not allowed, so Tukh, that serial winner, had already submitted his tour when the Donkey realized the problem. So he won twice in a row, so now the rule is: If you win twice in a row you are disqualified from participating. (This rule will hopefully one day revert to the old one, but only once we have more active managers/designers)

Participation rules are changes that:
- Winner of the previous year not allowed (flockmastoR -> Alive And Dead)
- Andes designer is allowed to design this year (mainly for the reason that it has become a group work more and more over the last years, can be changed back at any future design competition)

Voting procedure:
First round voting from the 2nd to the 9th November.

The number of votes a manager has depends on the number of tours submitted:
Number of submissions/2, then rounded down. That means:
1-3 tours=1 vote
4-5 tours=2 votes
6-7 tours=3 votes
8-9 tours=4 votes.
But capped at 4 votes, even if we get more than 9 tours the number of votes per manager won't increase.

Second round: Normally the first 2 teams will advance to the second round. If there is a tie for place 1 or 2 that would make it impossible to reduce the tours to just 2, all tours with the same votes get into the second round. Number of votes in the second round is 1.

If there is a draw in the second round, the tour that got more votes in the first round wins. If there's still a draw we ask ChatGPT how to proceed.

[team fl]

Is the southern hemisphere still a prerequisite? Or at least a tour in a part of the world where the weather/climate is not extreme in December?

[Alkworld]

Is the southern hemisphere still a prerequisite? Or at least a tour in a part of the world where the weather/climate is not extreme in December?

Keep in mind, that the weather will be according to the real weather forecast for the location of the race and the wrong calculations from the past (esp. Andes) are fixed meanwhile.

[Alkworld]

-Maximum 1 day with half stages. (Is the half stage stuff now working?!)[/b]

Yes, this should work fine.

[Gipfelstuermer]

With permission of the dictator

The king is dead, long live the king!

[Hansa]

Is the southern hemisphere still a prerequisite? Or at least a tour in a part of the world where the weather/climate is not extreme in December?

Keep in mind, that the weather will be according to the real weather forecast for the location of the race and the wrong calculations from the past (esp. Andes) are fixed meanwhile.

how is the wheter determined? by a city in the area or by tha capital of the country? or the exact location?

[Alkworld]

Is the southern hemisphere still a prerequisite? Or at least a tour in a part of the world where the weather/climate is not extreme in December?

Keep in mind, that the weather will be according to the real weather forecast for the location of the race and the wrong calculations from the past (esp. Andes) are fixed meanwhile.

how is the wheter determined? by a city in the area or by tha capital of the country? or the exact location?

1. weather report from OpenWeatherMap at exact location
2. within 20km distance (actual distance, not race distance) calculated based on changed height
3. if no report is within 20km, a new one at the exact location is taken from OpenWeatherMap

[flockmastoR]

Is the southern hemisphere still a prerequisite? Or at least a tour in a part of the world where the weather/climate is not extreme in December?

Thanks for explaining the half stages and new weather calculations. Being in the Southern hemisphere is not necessary, but if you plan your tour in areas with extreme climates in December (in terms of cycling races), you might violate the "no extreme tour" rule.

[Gipfelstuermer]

Seeing we have the first competitor! From the Schartner Trash Stages Production. But is his December Tour really Trash? Or would we enjoy riding it while drinking some Schartner Bombe? Waiting for some competitors (and my disqualification) before I provide my scientific judgement.

[Chense]

Mine will be finished soon - stay prepared for some high class competition

[cataracs]

can IS points be set the same as TdF or Vuelta?

[Gipfelstuermer]

can IS points be set the same as TdF or Vuelta?

So far the rule has been: Individual kom/is points only for Grand Tours. To keep the game simple. Can be discussed of course I would be against having too mant exceptions.

[flockmastoR]

can IS points be set the same as TdF or Vuelta?

So far the rule has been: Individual kom/is points only for Grand Tours. To keep the game simple. Can be discussed of course I would be against having too mant exceptions.

I would suggest we stick to that policy.

[Robyklebt]

Time for comments:

Cuba and Hispaniola: No comment. My motto (as of right now) is: Design with love, present with passion, criticize with fury. Can't say anything about the love involved in designing, but there's no passion whatsoever in the presentation. If the desigern don't feel the need to write something about their own tour, I see no reason to take my penis out for some high quality furious criticism.

So we're left with Kashmir and Tamil Nadu&Kerala

Presentation:
Kashmir: Too much text, who has the time to read all that?
TN+K; Outstanding presentation, too but it was so short, wanted it longer!

Location:
Kashmir: india? And Pakistan? India? Why would we want to ride in India? 1/10
TN+K: India! What a great idea 10/10

Ok ok... let's try this again. Of course the Donkey likes the Kashmir presentation. Good text, informative. Maps of the stages. No pictures, overall the presentation is better than Tamil Nadu I think. Tamil Nadu of course has the outstanding text too, nice pictures, but no stage maps, and more importantly the infos about the stage, %, etc are buried within the text, in Kashmir's case they are found more easily.

Location though a plus for the Southern Indian location. Gulmarg the winter sports resort, hm., Ok, I expect they keep the road open, but it's probably still snowing at times and cold. Sadhna pass even higher, looks like over 3000. Probably the Indians try to keep that open too, looking at the very useful stage map it seems to go to a corner of India (well, Kashmir) that isn't reachable from India (well, Indian Kashmir) otherwise... So in the north the weather is a bit of a concern. But ok, what to do, it's not all in high altitude, so still ok.


The rest:
I start with Tamil Nadu&Kerala, now that one better:
Sprint stages: 3 completely flat. One most likely too difficult. Last one normally should be ok for flat sprinters, but depends on how many. 3 complete flat.. too easy? Maybe, but I think it's almost necessary to try to convince sprinters to come.
Middle mountain: Usually I think the weakness of RKL tours, I'm never really satisfied with how they look, this time I sort of liked them. But looking at them again I'm not too sure why anymore
Mountain stages: None is brilliant, maybe the first one even the best one for what it's supposed to be, an easy first mountain stage. Stage 5 and 12 suffer from the length of the climbs and kms under 6%.. 10 is short and nervous, but having the last climb as hardest climb... attackers risk losing lots of time there, better wait. Alternative to Munnar was the main road that had too many flat km before it starts going up... Which has the same effect, early attacks are not that promising. All in all not horrible, not perfect either, but the roads are what they are. Reasonably satisfied with it.

Placement of stages during the tour: Wanted to have 2 possibly topform spot, failed at that. Seems clear that having form for stage 10-11 is a must for GC riders. Ok, stage 5 is the second hardest mountain stage, so having it there, hope to get a big enough advantage to defend it later might be a tactic? Anyway, it's a bit more backloaded than I wanted, but otherwise I'm not unhappy with it, S-MM-HC-S-HC-S(HS) Rest day: MM-S-MM-HC-TT-HC-S.
GC, TT helps, with the TT between 2 HC stages reg helps too, and on 3 of the 4 HC stages a second climber seems helpful too.

Kashmir:
Sprint: 5 stages as well. 1 completely flat, 4 seems rather for hill sprinters? But 3 on the other hand might actually be possible for sprinters, even if it's a middle mountain stage. 8+10 then are easy ones again. Stage 12, here the presentation is a bit unclear... First 5% 15km from the top? After that only 2 more 5+? Or 2 more km at over 5%? Ok, then a sprint certainly looks possible.
So very similar, 3 sure ones, one that normally should be there too, one that looks too difficult. But then as an extra there's stage 3, which seems possible, easier than stage 4 actually for sprinters probably. But could still be 2 hard, 2 sieb km in the last climb, then long downhill. Like the sprint stages. Not sure about the mostly uninhabited places north of Delhi though.
Middle mountain: 4 here. 2 looks nice, attack in the second part of the downhill? Sprint classics controlling that? 3 as mentioned a potential sprint/hill sprint stage, hill sprint seems very doable. 5, here more detail on how the last climb is would be helpful. 11 then is nice again. But middle mountain stages hard to assess without the whole thing... not really sure, but 2+11 look nice, 5 my liking depends a bit on the exact % of the last climb.
HC stages: 3 of them, 7+9 though are basically the same stage, short, long final climb. 7 clearly harder after a second look. Last one completely different. Here not fully convinced, a bit like with Tamil Nadu... somehow a nice alpine stage with 3-4 steep climbs in a row without much flat would be nice. But the road is what it is, can't be found in northern India/Kashmir/Pakistan. All 3 need attacks from far possible, by having relais stations ahead. Long climbs... usually tactical at c4f, right block, wrong block, right moment attack, wrong moment attack.

Position in race: Here with stage 6+7 2 form settings are possible, early and late. S-MM-MM-S (HS)-MM-TT-HC, S-HC-S-MM-S-HC
Maybe a bit too many middle mountains early, but everything works.
GC similar to Tamil Nadu again, TT, reg, second climber all helpful. Reg here a bit less important than Tamil Nadu maybe, it's only TT-HC, in T&K it's HC-TT-HC. But the TT here will cost more energy, longer and climb. So same?

Interesting tour, won't be insulted if it wins ahead of Tamil Nadu.

[Alkworld]

can IS points be set the same as TdF or Vuelta?

So far the rule has been: Individual kom/is points only for Grand Tours. To keep the game simple. Can be discussed of course I would be against having too mant exceptions.

With tomorrow's new C4F version (will install in the morning), this will be possible quite easily. It will also involve a correction of the enormous intermediate prize money, so feel free to use it (I'll have to do something manually there, but it's very easy)

[cataracs]

The San Diego tour stage names make it extreme and shouldn't be allowed

[flockmastoR]

The San Diego tour stage names make it extreme and shouldn't be allowed

we are not corrupt

[Schartner Bombe]

Time for comments:

Cuba and Hispaniola: No comment. My motto (as of right now) is: Design with love, present with passion, criticize with fury. Can't say anything about the love involved in designing, but there's no passion whatsoever in the presentation. If the desigern don't feel the need to write something about their own tour, I see no reason to take my penis out for some high quality furious criticism.

you are a muse with your penis problem
I like no text from you about Cuba its my motto: no text, only profile.
want to be a muse for you too: maybe you should change your name to big dongy?

[Chense]

Okay its time for critizism from my side also this year ... hope i can finish it all in the next days ... post will be edited further.

We have got 9 tours in the competition which is nice - i feared it would be much less the last days!

I will try to somehow give objective points but also tell you about my subjective feelings about the tours.

Points:
1)Balance in GC / Total impression and balance: How many types of riders have chances for the gc? Is the tour balanced to attract all kinds of teams, is the stage setting nice? 30%

2)Seeing the different stages as one without further connection to the following ones (see point 2) 35%:
a)- Flat Stages 10%
b)- Hilly Stages 10%
c)- Mountain Stages 10%
e)- ITT / TTT 5%

3)Presentation: How good does the presentation figure out the stages, important points and how much "heart" is in it 25%

4)Fits for TTV: Well not really important as i would most likely ride the dec tour anyway but surely have to think which one fits best for me - 10%

Lets start with the "Vuelta Ciclista a Cuba" - Schartner Bombe:

1)
All in all i dont see the tour very balanced - its more or less something for strong classics with tt - maybe a huber but even he will have a hard time with the long and very flat tt where they loose much time.
Classics stages arent mine (see 2) but classics will have very good chances for stagewins - maybe too much in my opinion with the chance for 3 jerseys (yellow, green, dots) in the end. Sprinters will be somehow happy with 3 sure sprints but i would not bring a full train here.
For 8 riders the tour all in all looks pretty balanced and overthought but maybe even to controlled without real chances for escapers. That feeling is strengthened by the fact that we dont really see 2 "reg consuming" stages after another indeed.
5/10

2)a) Stage 1 hard but possible if there are more teams at once trying it together, not my favourite for a first stage but still nice. Stages 5 and 6 are pure flat stages. Both nearly similar profile and length. Stage 8 has an early siebkm and is shorter then the other stages. Should attract sprinters
Stage 13 has 2 pave parts. Both are flat the first one longer and ** the second one only 2km but ***. I think here sprinters wont win anything but gc could change very late. Front will be for some guy with 75+ pave and a team i think.
All in all - 3 clear sprints seem to be enough to get some sprinter teams even if the other 2 stages most likely will not be a mass sprint but maximum a reduced sprint. What i lack a bit is a stage with early sieb and then longer flat. Like those long distance hunting. But the pave one in there is still a nice end so:
5/10

2)b)
Stage 2 is something i like even if it has only that one real hill in the end and nothing of more hills behind each other. But the 2** pave only 20km from finish could bring some spice in make some teams decide if gc or stagewin is important.
Stage 9 is absolutely nothing for me ... there are the bigger hills in the middle yes but then its virtually flat ending with a single pro mountain riders km ... i think this one will be very controlled
Stage 12 is pretty similar to stage 2 but with 2 mountains instead of pave - mountain ... after the last mountain pretty far to the finish so most likely a sprint of some strong classics
All in all ... The classics stages are only 3 and none of them can totally convince me - a little bonus for the 2 classics stages that are categorized H.C. - but only 50% bonus instead of 100%!
4/10

2)c)
Stage 3 ... normally i dont like those 1 steep mountain and nothing before stages but here it could be somehow interesting with that pave part after the first 4 and a flat finish ... somehow land for a strong 80-70 team?
Stage 4: First of all this would have been a hilly stage for me ... clearly mountain riders should not win this at all. I like the idea with those 2 short but steep mountains one of them with pave - we could see much splits and short groups against each other here - still if it was categorized right (in my view) one point more
Stage 10: Yes this one is cool! A split mountain with some very steep km - clearly not a mountain to win minutes in gc but for some spectacular action
Stage 11: Sorry but also this one is a hilly stage for me and there its somehow a harder copy of stage 4
All in all mountain stages dont convince me either ... there are only 2 real mountain stages (+ 0,5* the short mountain top categorized as middle mountain) and none of them will give real time differences or even more important imo early attacking possibilities
3/10

2)d)
Pretty long ITT gives a bonus as reg counts - but totally flat so very easy to calculate - its a
5/10

3) Positive: Theres at least a short description of the most stages e.g. some mountains, Table with total Stage length, HM, Mintact
Negative: No Map, Have to guess for some stages totally by myself how many kms could be interesting or have to be looked at

Total: 3/10

4)
We could somehow be happy here - 3 Stages that fit perfectly for my train are nice. Also the pave classics stage looks not so bad for us. But all in all its only 4 stages where we really see chances to compete and nothing where we could have a funny attack with our high reg guys.
So here its a 5/10

So ... the total voting is a: 3,95

[team fl]

I felt inclined to make a list and give points for different attributes: name and acronym, place and logistics, presentation, variety and order of stages, subjective fun factor (SFF). Long story short, I came up with the following ranking.

The tours I voted for:

1. Hawaii Winter Race:

Like the idea. Easy recognisable name, good acronym (HWR), not very creativ though. Nice variety of stages and good order for an interesting tour until the end for everybody. Presentation very good, one minus point as it refers to google (!). Another minus: sustainability of the logistics. The overall subjective fun factor is not the best of all tours presented, but very close to them.

39/50 points

2. Vuelta cicliasta a Cuba

Not Just the Vuelta a Cuba, it's the Vuelta CICLISTA a Cuba. Nice adding also VCC sounds like a suitable acronym. Could be a bit more creative though. place and logistics seem fine and plausible, everything on the Island of Cuba. the bigges minus is the presentation though, that's just lazy. On the other hand, the tour looks full of variety and fun.

37.5/50 points

2. Tamil Nadu&Kerala International Bicycle Race

This name. Although it's creative and describes the tour very well, it's hard to remember and to abbreviate. So I'll call it TANAKE IBR from now on. Everything else seems fine though. As usual one of the best presentations, well thought route. SFF not at the top, but in a good zone.

37.5/50 points

4. Kashmir Peace Tour

I like the idea, had almost the same for DRINK (Democratic Republik of India N' Kashmir) after EAT. So huge minus for taking away that idea and not using the opportunity for such a superb name! The rest is obviously (almost) as good as my idea, so huge plus! Anyway, not as good as the top 3 tours overall by a very little margin.

37/50 points in total

The rest:

5. Arakan Tour: Place and "tour" in the name: No creativity, abbreviation also questionable (AT? maybe ART?). Besides that, the tour isn't bad, but also not in the top four. Would riding it consider to be fun though. 36/50 points

5. South East Asian Tour: I see the name, huge plus. horrible logistics though, climate change incoming. presentation and variety of stages ok, SFF a bit underwhealming. 36/50 points.

7. Vuelta Hispaniola: No creativity regarding name and sff. Presentation ok. The usual standard tour in my eyes. Done ok, but could not feel the love. 08/15 points, ehm 35.5/50 points

8. C4F Convention 2023: Very nice idea, very nice name, but the execution! And I don't want to get 50'000 fine on the bella italia stage... 35/50 points

9. Kabylie Tour: Lack of creativity regarding name and presentation. variety and order of the stage improvable. SFF the worst of all tours. 31/50 points

[IDF]

5. Arakan Tour: Place and "tour" in the name: No creativity, abbreviation also questionable (AT? maybe ART?). Besides that, the tour isn't bad, but also not in the top four. Would riding it consider to be fun though. 36/50 points

Who cares about the abreviation btw?
Except if you're doing a bullshit job like marketing..

[team fl]

5. Arakan Tour: Place and "tour" in the name: No creativity, abbreviation also questionable (AT? maybe ART?). Besides that, the tour isn't bad, but also not in the top four. Would riding it consider to be fun though. 36/50 points

Who cares about the abreviation btw?
Except if you're doing a bullshit job like marketing..

Me, obviously. As I am not in marketing, guess my bullshit job

Anyway, don't take things too seriously is my advice, except for people who have a job that lifes depend on...

[cataracs]

I personally think the only well structured tours are Arakan and Kabylie...rest is of lower quality.
But since my riders vote and not myself, they seem to like Hawai and Cuba.

[flockmastoR]

My votes go to (unordered)

Vuelta Hispaniola
+ stage chances for a lot of rider types
+ nice long ITT, HC stage combi after the rest day (but HC stage _______/)
- unbalanced in a way that 3 stages after the rest day will decide the tour

Kashmir Peace Tour
+ nice start with contest for yellow for sprinters, classics, escapers
+ stage chances for a lot of rider types
+ long ITT, HC stage combi in the first week, before the rest day makes it even more interesting, and the HC stage has early hard climbs
- missing the big opportunity to attack yellow in the second week, a back-to-back HC stage combi or so

Tamil Nadu&Kerala International Bicycle Race
+ nice start, sprinters and climbers for the first week, the stage 2-3 combi has some potential, but doesn't look too hard to really try a big thing
+ 9-10-11-12 nice combo to decide the GC
- a bit unbalance towards the second week

Decided to vote just for those 3, as the 4th one was already not that clear for me between some candidates

[Robyklebt]

Convention.
Good idea, but his admiration for Zauberlehrlinge is clearly misplaced. Pius Spycher? Pfff. Luques clearly missing. And everybody loves me btw, hate, hate, some people just can't deal with the strong overwhelming love they feel for me and try to convert it into some superficial hate.

The race:
-the big plus is 10 days, which is what put it in the running for one of my votes. With our low numbers IMO short is still better. Big plus there.
-visiting the zoo on the Donkey stage!
- TTT vs mountain, no ITT looks interesting for GC. and makes it different from the rest. Like it.

Minus:
-We don't really know how hard the stages are. No Info on percentages.
- Stage 2-3-4-6-9 the GC stages. Ok 2 minimally, mostly bonifications. 3-4-6 and then 9 for bigger differences. This somehow promises little suspense after stage 6. And without info about % hard to know what exactly can happen on 9. Others easier to assume how it is Much better distribution would have been possible. 2-3-4 ok, that looks fine, but then 7-9/8-9/ or even 7-9/10 IMO better
-visiting Aux? On the lesossies stage? There was no need for this insult.