World Inline Cup Tries a New Format

Event News > Basel World Inline Cup

World Cup Tries a New Format
Will team time trial format push the pace?
By Planet staff

The road course for the Basel World Inline Cup is scenic, but it's not ideally suited for a marathon.

As it winds through the old streets of the Swiss city and over the bridges of the Rhine, it makes frequent sharp turns and becomes narrow in some sections, creating potential bottlenecks for skaters who typically, in marathons, congregate in large packs.

Rather than change the racecourse, World Cup organizers decided to try something different this year. Instead of a marathon, they turned the event into a team time trial, similar to those of the Metrodome Inline Marathon and cycling's Tour de France.

"We saw this as an opportunity to do something new and exciting," said Christophe Audoire, the World Cup's race director.

The race Saturday night will feature 17 men's teams, 7 women's teams and, in a separate heat, 60 teams of non-World Cup skaters.

The World Cup teams will loop the five kilometer racecourse five times for a total of 25 kilometers.

Each team will start alone with 30 to 60 seconds before the next team is set loose on the course.

Teams will not be allowed to draft behind each other, so pacelines will never exceed five skaters, the maximum team size.

Final rankings will be determined by the finish time of the third fastest skater of each men's team and the second fastest skater for each women's team. (Women's teams are typically smaller than men's teams in the World Cup.)

A race announcer will give lap times. But since teams will be spread out on the racecourse, they will not know exactly how each other are doing.

This is expected to make for an unusually fast pace.

In standard marathons, racers don't usually push the pace from start to finish. They can (and typically do) hang with the lead pack and save some energy for the final field sprint.

But in time trials, athletes typically push themselves to the limit since they can never be sure that the competition won't do the same.

The team time trial format "is going to make it a real endurance event," one veteran racer said.

About 2500 skaters are expected to compete in Saturday's event. The purse is 20,000 Swiss francs, or about $16,000.

If the race proves successful, Iguana Think Tank, the organizer of the World Cup, may add more team time trials in 2007.