category climbs:measurements?

warning: depressing

http://bicycling.about.com/od/tourdefrance/l/aa063002a.htm

from a coworker of mine. He says its a slap in the face back to reality. 🙁 🙁

neilkod said:

warning: depressing

bicycling.about.comaa063002a.htmOpen ↗

from a coworker of mine. He says its a slap in the face back to reality. 🙁 🙁

Good explaination, but watch the typos - Everest is only 8.9 KM tall, so where it talks about 1000KM it probably means 1000M. Probably the most important point is the categorization is subjective.

Go and have a look at

memoire-du-cyclisme.netmontagnes tdf.phpOpen ↗

It rates climbs based on similar criteria (though my french isn't that great) to the TdF and gives them a points score. Notice that a climb doesn't have to be that long to get lots of points, as long as its very steep. Really long climbs that aren't that steep don't get high points scores.

For example the Col D'Iseran (one of the highest paved roads in Europe and one of the biggest altitude differences) ascends a massive 1955 metres in altitude and yet has only a 95.92 difficulty as its average gradient is low and it has a couple of sections that are pretty much false flats (0 - 2% grade), average grade is a mere 4.2%. On the other hand the Col de Granon ascends a mere 1043 metres in comparison but due to its average gradient of 9.2% it has a rating of 133.04

If you now compare the difficulty ratings on this site to climbs in the TdF the boundary is about 100 for a Hors catagory climb, about 80 for a 1st (haven't checked this too thoroughly though).

gary.ray said:

Probably the most important point is the categorization is subjective.

Good point, especially considering that where the climb appears in the day's race route affects the rating as well. I can't imagine doing those big climbs at the end of a 200km race. 🙁