During the latter half of May, I had the privilege of serving as the head referee at the 14th edition of the Tour of Japan professional bicycle race, which is part of the International Cycling Union’s Asia Tour. The race began in the Osaka area in western Japan and, over the course of a week of racing in fine weather, made its way to Tokyo.

A little bit about road use in Japan

In order to best understand the technical organization of the race, it’s important to know that, in Japan, bicycle races on public roads are not accounted for by the law.  And, Japanese law being extremely particular, anything not explicitly allowed is denied. While this kind of policy is good in my main profession, computer security, it is not so good in the world of bicycle racing.  Without the use of public roads, it is nearly impossible to run a professional calibre race.

So this may explain why road cycle races in Japan are almost exclusively run on circuits, or with small stretches of open road followed by circuits. While it may be anathema, from the point of view of a European cycling team director, for races to not have city center to city center races, Japanese race organizers are simply at the whim of the police, who reference the law, and therein lies the rub.

The race was organized into seven stages held across eight days:

• Stage 1: Osaka (Sakai city) – individual time trial – 2.65 km
  Daisen Park circuit course
• Stage 2: Nara – circuit race – 121.2 km
  Yamazoe-mura Nunome Dam circuit course
• Stage 3: Mino – circuit race – 160.7 km
  Kyu Imai-ke Jutaku to Yokogoshi to Mino Washi Paper Museum circuit course
• Stage 4: Minami-Shinshu – circuit race – 148.0 km
  Iida Station to Shimohisakata circuit course
• Stage 5: Mount Fuji – point to point (hill climb) – 11.4 km
  Climb to Mt Fuji Subashiriguchi 5th station
• Stage 6: Izu – circuit race – 97.6 km
  Japan Cycle Sports Center circuit course
• Stage 7: Tokyo – circuit race – 112.7 km
  Hibiya City to Ohi Wharf circuit course

Here we go!

As usual, the first step of a bicycle race often seems to be the hardest: organizing meeting, checking riders’ licenses and arranging for transportation. There are no inscription problems and the managers’ meeting also goes smoothly. Once we conclude this, we pick up our car and head back to the hotel for dinner and some rest before tomorrow’s beginning stage.

This year Subaru is the car sponsor and the cars that all the commissaires get are really nice, each with a decent sunroof and plenty of room in the back to set up for the race.

Comm 2 gets the turbocharger, but really I think that comm 3 should get it, simply because he ends up having to do so much running back and forth during the race. My only complaint about the car is that, like so many cars, it is difficult to see the trip odometer when seated behind the driver. It would have been very handy to have a GPS unit on the front dashboard with kms ridden displayed.

Historical spots

One thing I can say about races in Japan is that you’re bound to have stages that start or end at historical spots. And even if you simply end in a city center, there will be an interesting night spot to go once the refereeing duties are completed for the day.

The second stage, at Nara, was no exception. The city of Nara itself is quite important in Japanese history, as it is one of the ancient capitals of the country. However, the Nara stage has for many years started in front of the Todai-ji Temple, which is a UN World Heritage site and contains the largest wooden building in the world.

Nara, and Todai-ji in particular, is one of my favorite places, and it was simply wonderful to have a chance to see a stage start from this famous location. (In addition, I had never dreamed of actually driving all the way to the Todai-ji temple. Usually you have a nice long walk, as the roads are all closed to traffic.  But not today: our race starts from here!)

Children in police uniform prepare to talk about bicycle safety at Todai-ji before Stage 2

Mount Fuji

Probably the most interesting stage on the race this year was the hill climb of Mount Fuji. The stage was unusual simply because it was so short (only 11.4 km) and so steep. Normally courses like this might be used for a time trial — as it has been in the past — but this year they decided to make the stage a mass start race. Though I was skeptical at first, the stage did turn out quite well: amazingly there were no reports of riders hanging on to cars, yet all the riders made the time cut (if barely).

However, the day before the stage, I was a bit worried, because the entire course was in a fog bank (click on the 1-minute video above). I thought that it might be dicey for the referees or even the team managers to watch what was going on during the ascent. However, on race day the weather was simply splendid all the way from start to finish.

Hot tea above the clouds

On the course inspection day, once we passed through the fog bank and made it to the top of the ascent, we stopped for a while at the Mt Fuji fifth station to drink some hot tea and enjoy the view. It was spectacular: on one side was an unobstructed view of Mt Fuji and on the other we looked down upon the cloud tops.

As for the Mt Fuji stage itself, I was quite happy with how it turned out. The refereeing team did a very good job dealing with the barrage during the climb.  Of course, the reason for barrage on this kind of ascent has nothing to do with gapping riders from the slipstream (after all, there was only about 100 meters of flat for the whole stage). Instead, it’s about avoiding vehicle congestion and keeping tabs on weaker riders who might be tempted to get a hand in making the climb. Much of the course consisted of switchbacks, but we repositioned the timeboards (only one was really needed) to help in the observations, and the moto-commissaires operated in more of a leap-frog mode, since the steepness prevented their safely moving slowly on many sections of the climb.

Stage 5 - Mt Fuji

The climb up Fuji-san was difficult for all of the riders, but of course those who came from mountainous parts of the world had the winning advantage: an Italian and two Kazakh riders took the top three spots on the stage classification.  Riders from the club and university teams who participated had more difficulty, but did complete the stage successfully.

In retrospect, an extremely difficult climbing stage like Mt Fuji completely negates the need for having a prologue or individual time trial at the beginning of the race. Aside from determining the order of the team cars for the first mass start race, the small time gaps that came from Stage 1′s ITT ended up having no bearing on the final race outcome.

This is one stage where I still would have preferred an individual time trial, simply to put more emphasis on the man-versus-nature aspect of racing.  But I must admit that it was fun to watch it unroll as a mass start event.

The commissaires and officials

Just as Japan is divided in culture by region, so is Japan cycling. But the Tour of Japan brings people from all over the country together to pull off the largest annual cycle race in the country. Many of the people on the results team come from the Tour de Hokkaido, which is the second-largest UCI race in Japan, held in the fall.  Of course, a number of people came from the Kanto (Tokyo) area.  The antidoping inspector came from a university situated far north of Tokyo, and I came from the Kansai area of Osaka in western Japan. Together I think we made a very effective team, allowing the race to come off well both in the eyes of the teams and of the spectators.

Officials at Dinner

Taiko drummers at Izu

Japan Cycle Sports Center at Izu

The Tour of Japan was fun!

Kurt wearing a farmer's hat on Mt Fuji