Talk:Randonneuring

prestonjb says... here are your clarifications...

Clarification required

I've extensively rewritten this article to improve clarity, grammar, typos, etc. To complete the job, it needs clarification -

• Brevet - an event that is 200 kilometers or more and must be completed between a specific date and time. [- does the rider have a choice of when to ride this, or is it held on a specific date each year?]

The BREVET is set up by the coordinator for the region and approved by the national. For example RUSA.org is the national and you can go to their site for a calendar of the brevets for the year. Therefore the rider does not have a choice of when to do a BREVET. The time is chosen by the local coordinator (RBA) and submitted to the national/RUSA.ORG. Some brevets are recognized internatinoally by the ACP (french organization)

• Permanent or Raid - an event similar to a brevet but having an arbitrary start date. [- does the rider have a range of dates available, or can it be ridden on any date during the year?]

There is a PERMANENT OWNER that is approved by the US RUSA.ORG. TO ride a permanent the rider must get permission from the perm owner. In general the ride time is open enough to say that these rides can be done nearly any time of the year. Not sure about a RAID

can be ridden at any time but the organizer may want to be notified of the date in advance 87.114.6.10 18:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

• Others - for instance, (BMB, RUSA specific Super Randonneur). [- what do these mean?]

Boston-Montreal-Boston 87.114.6.10 18:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC) Randoneurs USA (United States of America) 87.114.6.10 18:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Bards 18:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Purpose of this page

Thinking about reorganizing this page to stipulate the two different styles of randonneuiring (allure libre and audax)...

Possibly use this page for the general "shared" and history of randonneuring and point the "meat" of eacy specific style into their own pages allure libre and Audax (cycling).

Suggestions?

I am not this approach will work. What you refer to as 'allure libre' is exactly what Audax cycling in Australia (and elsewhere as far as I know) now refers to. Imposing an historical difference on the current day sport will create ongoing confusion. Everyone who does the PBP and Audax rides (in Australia at least) rides according to the allure libre style, yet nobody uses that term. The first time I encountered it was in this (and associated) Wikipedia articles. Peter Campbell 01:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

PS: you can sign your posts using 4 tildes (~~~~

---

That is going or will still be a point of distinction. The RUSA.ORG site makes it a clear distinction as so does all of the history that I can dig up from various web pages which talk about the history of the two styles.

I think for the point of clarity that I'm not going to try to stuff the terms into peoples throats but as long as there is the Union des Audax see http://www.audax-uaf.com/ exists then the audax style is still practiced... Latin is a dead language but that doesn't mean people don't toss it in their normal speech.

I think that simply stating that the two types are allure libre and audax and that there is confusion to the point that they are interchangeable is all we need to do...

What you are suggesting is we bury any notion that audax does not exist which I do not think is accurate

For example while you are an honest to goodness allure libre randonneur (as am I) the french (as I stated in france and holland are where it is still practiced) will dissagree with you... As I would had agreed with you a few months ago before I started this edit...

Here is the french wiki site that lists the last of the AUDAX paris brest paris rides and as you can see the last one was in 2006 (though not sure why the times were not recorded)...

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris-Brest-Paris_Audax

So while us Americans and you down-unders still butcher the AUDAX does not mean that it is still in practice... And, according to the french, the correct term...

But I am planning to do a light pen to make it easy on the eyes not to be confused as everyone except the hardest frenchy is indeed confused :) Prestonjb 04:16, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

History

The third paragraph under "History" makes the claim that The Tour de France was organized as a "randonneuring event", with randonneuring being defined at the beginning of the article as "non-competitive". I think this combination is misleading to the reader.

I think it's more accurate to say that both Paris-Brest-Paris and its subsequent rival, the Tour de France, began as bicycle races, with the Paris-Brest-Paris eventually catering to non-professional cyclotourists, while bicycle racing in general, along with the Tour de France, started to feature shorter distances for events and event stages.

Mike 20:36, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Intersting there Mike. I don't remember when this happened. I agree that I do not know of evidence that the TDF was a randonne... I also agree that they were rivals... Perhaps the lost intent was that both the TDF and the PBP were long distance endurance bicycle races but over time TDF changed to stage racing format and gained support to which the PBP lost favor as racers found it hard to trai for both styles of racing and there was more money in TDF...

Ah... I dug back to my original post and I see that over time things changed and someone added that the TDF was a randonneuring event... Here is my original...

After many years and as the interest in professional cycling promoted The Tour De France more as a series of day stage races, the long distance professional sport dissapeared. In 1951 the PBP event saw the professional riders depart however the club riders stayed around. The non professionals continued the PBP'. Even though the Audax Club Parisien had taken over the non professional part of PBP in the 1930s, it was in 1975 when the format of the "allure libre" became the domanent form to be used in all of the randonneuring events except the Fleche. There is still a version of PBP that is run in the audax style by the Union des Audax.

I think User:Bardsandwarriors flubbed it up during a re-write... I guess if my writing skills were better he might not had touched it eh ;)

OK... I'll go back and fix this in a bit...

Prestonjb 19:45, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

The Tour de France was always a stage race, a series of one day stages. In the 1903 first edition, there were only 6 stages, but they were rather longer than is typical today, and there were one or more rest days between stages. I think Henri Desgranges, the founder of the TdF, choose the number 6 based on the popular sport of six day bicycle racing. As time went on, the format changed to more stages of shorter length.I believe that between the wars, there was a classic of riders something like what is being discussed here, who started with and rode the same course as the professional riders, but who were not necessarily competing, which may be the source of confusion here. In short, the TdF has always been a professional stage race comprising a series of one day stages. Wschart (talk)` —Preceding comment was added at 20:25, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Merge discussion

There's overlap with randonneur and audax here. Do people think it would be good to merge the pages? Parsonscat (talk) 18:26, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

• Support merge - there is considerable overlap. – ukexpat (talk) 00:47, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
• Agree - 86.147.204.169 (talk) 01:46, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
• Support merge. I especially support merging randonneur into this page. Doctormatt (talk) 22:51, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

• Dont Support merge. The problem as stated back in 2007 between myself and Mr Cambell is that the nouns are unique. An Audax is a form of randonneuring but it is not an alles-librie. There are many differences between the two in their organization and the events they sponsor. If we meld them into one then the distinction between them will be lost.Prestonjb (talk) 05:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

I've pulled randonneur and brevet (cycling) into this article. I've reorganised it with readability, clarity and information transfer in mind. However, it would be good to make the references a bit more solid.

I suggest Prestonjb's distinction is kept, and we keep the audax (cycling) page and develop it to describe the Union des Audax version of the sport. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Parsonscat (talk • contribs) 09:29, 16 July 2011 (UTC)