User:Green-eyed girl/Style guide/Grand Tour

For an article on a Grand Tour (that is, the Tour de France, Vuelta a España, or the Giro d'Italia), the following style guidelines should apply.

Lead
The lead should give the name of the race, which (numerical) edition of the race it is, what dates over which it took place, and the overall winner. Because the events take place in Europe, all dates should be in the "day-month" European style. As these are very long events, some overall detail of the race, such as when the winner took the overall lead and perhaps the winners of the other classifications, should be mentioned in the lead.

Every cycling event should include Infobox Cycling race report. Wikilink riders' names in the palmarès section of the infobox, and use ct as much as possible for the teams. If the team does not have a code associated with ct, either set it up or just list the team name textually, and wikilink it. It is not necessary to link nations, as this is done automatically. The full name of the nation and its three-letter abbreviation are equivalent - enter either ESP or Spain, for example, in the infobox. Remove any unused fields from the infobox, but do not remove fields for an image or average speed, as these are likely or at least potentially to be filled in the future.

Question for consensus
Might it be better to devote an entire section to details of the race, in prose? There should still be a little in the lead, but there is a lot more to say about these Grand Tours than short stage races.

Stage summary table
Since there are 20 or more stages in a Grand Tour, including all of them in the article on the event would bloat the article past Wikipedia's recommended article size of 30-50K. The stage profiles are to be put into two new articles (more on that in a moment), but as a summary of the stages should be presented in table form. This should show the date, distance and start/end points of each stage, and it should also note the rest days.

Questions for consensus
There are quite a lot of them as it relates to the stage summary table. The most basic question is what type of table to use. Disregarding the precise elements of each example for the moment, which style of stage summary table do you think is best?

or

Once the style table is decided, we need to decide the elements.


 * Use flag logos
 * 1) For stages that leave France, Spain, or Italy (for the respective race)
 * 2) For every stage
 * 3) Never


 * Do we include the "stage type" icons? ([[File:Plainstage.svg]] [[File:Mountainstage.svg]] [[File:Mediummountainstage.svg]] )


 * Do we include the stage winner and race leader in this table?


 * If we opt to use the "Vuelta" table, are the stage start and end points described accurately enough, or would other sorts of punctuation be better?

Participating teams
List the teams participating alphabetically. Don't use qualifiers such as "wild card" next to team names in the list, as this is only meaningful for UCI ProTour events, and none of the Grand Tours are UCI ProTour events. Do mention in prose above the list which teams are not UCI ProTour teams, as they will nonetheless comprise the majority of the event's peloton.

Stages
There are too many stages in a Grand Tour to put the profiles for all of them in the same article as the race. Put them into two new articles, half and half. The most common splits are 1-11 and 12-21, and Prologue-10 and 11-20 if the race has a Prologue. If a race doesn't have 21 stages, just make the split as evenly as possible, with any odd stage in the first article. These articles should be namen Tour name, first stage in description to last stage in description. Some examples: In each of these new articles should be a profile for each stage, in its own subsection. The top line, in bold, should give the date of the stage, its start point and end point (if a stage starts and ends in the same place, such as a time trial or circuit race, just give the place name once), the length in kilometers, and the type of the stage if it's not a simple road race. If the stage starts or ends in a nation other than the one in which it mostly takes place, denote this in the header by giving the nation in parentheses after the city. If the start or end city has a Wikipedia article that is slightly different in title from what the race uses, pipe the correct link to the name given by the race (exception: always use common English names instead of foreign versions). Use an endash between the date and the start down and a comma before the stage length.
 * 2007 Tour de France, Prologue to Stage 10
 * 2007 Tour de France, Stage 11 to Stage 20
 * 2008 Tour de France, Stage 1 to Stage 11
 * 2008 Tour de France, Stage 12 to Stage 21
 * 2008 Vuelta a España, Stage 1 to Stage 11
 * 2009 Giro d'Italia, Stage 1 to Stage 11

For example

;23 July 2008 – Embrun to Alpe d'Huez, 210 km

which gives


 * 23 July 2008 – Embrun to Alpe d'Huez, 210 km

but

20 May 2009 – Turin to Arenzano, 214 km

rather than Torino, which the race organizers use.

Occasionally, the name given by race organizers for a start or finish location will be a location so specific that Wikipedia has an article about a larger area that includes the place named by the race. Link to the best Wikipedia article and pipe it to the name used by the race. If the race organizers use two names to describe a start or finish town (a prominent example occurs yearly in the Tour de France - the final stage is always said to be "Paris Champs Élysées"), link to the more specific location and give both names in the visible link. Do NOT use two consecutive wikilinks - this is contrary to the MOS.

Example of both of the above:

24 May 2009 – Centre d'Alt Rendiment to Circuit de Catalunya Montmeló, 110.8 km

Include a brief preview of each stage, discussing its physical profile and length. This need not be more than a sentence or two in most cases.

After the stage has been run, summarize it. Discuss, for road stages, any major breakaways on the day, when they were caught, and the character of the finish (breakaway/mass sprint/riders finishing two or three at a time). For particularly mountainous stages, include brief detail on the day's major climbs. If any leader's jerseys change hands, note this. For time trials, mention who set times early on that stood for a particularly long time (or if none did, mention that). If anything that took place during the stage seems notable for a non-competitive reason (for example, riders hitting dogs or particularly spectacular crashes in the past have been widely disseminated videos on the web), consider mentioning that. The summary should comprise about 1-3 paragraphs, and at least the top of the subsequent tables should be visible while the entire summary is still on the screen.

Below the textual summary, include two tables, side-by-side, one for the top on the stage and one of the top ten in the GC as it stood after that stage. Indicate in the stage result table which jerseys were worn by classification leaders on the stage with the icon correct for that jersey, and alternative text describing that the cyclist wore that jersey as classification leader. Place the icon next to the rider's name, separated by only one space. For the intermediate GC table, indicate any and all jerseys awarded to the cyclist on the podium with those same icons, and alternative text describing that the cyclist was awarded the jersey as classification leader.

Always use the flagathlete template, with any use of a rider in a table (it is excessive in prose), and not just flagicon and the rider's name. This used to be the predominant practice, but per the Manual of Style, flags should always be explanatory and never simply decorative.

Example:

Jersey progress table
Prior to 2008, a table like is seen in this revision was the one that was regularly used. This has now been specifically discouraged, after conversation during the 2008 Tour de France. You may still find it on articles about old races; if so, you're encouraged to convert it to the new one, such as is seen on almost any event currently. The names on the same horizontal row as a stage should reflect the jerseys awarded on the podium after that stage. The table colors should be based on the colors for the jerseys awarded; there can be some guesswork as to what hexadecimal code best represents a particular color jersey, but for the most part, the colors have been decided, on articles about previous years' races. Do not change colors without discussion. The top and bottom of each vertical column should be a shade darker than the colors on the inside, with the top naming each competition (with the name linked to something explanatory where possible) and the bottom listing the overall winner of each competition.

The table should show who is awarded a jersey, not who wears one. If a rider is awarded two or more jerseys on the podium after a certain stage, list the rider in each column accurately and denote below the table who the "caretaker" wearer of each jersey is. Use the phrase "Jersey wearers when one rider is leading two or more competitions" and precede it with a semicolon. Put an asterisk in front of each line explaining who the caretaker is.

The consensus for the looks of the table is shown in the example below:

In the 2009 Tour de France article, this has been changed by User:196.30.79.194 to the table below. Major differences: the headers have lost their background colors, the font size is changed from "smaller" to "95%", which increases the font size, and the stage numbers are bold. This is not consensus, but can be discussed in the talk page.

Standings/results
When a race is ongoing, this section should be titled Standings, as the information is not final.

Give standings and results tables in a two-column format (there should not be more than five or six total tables), with the top ten in each classification listed. Give the General Classification first. When the race ends, standings become results. Past history has shown that there is sufficient editor interest to update these tables daily. While Wikipedia is not news, it is not unreasonable to have the most up-to-date information of surely encyclopedic significance as soon as possible.

The format of these tables should be identical to the format described above for standings and results after stages, with the exception of the jerseys: each table should have the appropriate jersey icon next to the rider's name to show the jersey awarded for it (and the jerseys awarded to anyone else in the top ten in that classification). Do not use multiple icons if one rider is leading/has won multiple competitions - just give the appropriate icon for the lead of the particular classification in the table. For example, if a rider leads the General classification and the Youth classification, just give for the correct jersey icon in the General classification table and the correct icon for the Youth classification in that table. If a rider leads/wins two competitions and is also in the top ten for a third, give his more prestigious jersey in his cell for that third classification. For example, if a rider leads the General and Youth classifications and is sixth in the Mountains classification, put the GC jersey icon on his cell on the Mountains classification table. Boldface each entry (name, team, and points/time) for the leading rider or team in each table.

See also, references, and external links
Briefly, these sections should be in this order. All internal content should come before any external content. Each Grand Tour has a navigational infobox associated with it; it should go below the external links. Each edition can also have a navigational infobox, this should be below the overall navigational infobox. Example:

If anything else needs discussion
other than what's still listed at User:Nosleep/Style guide/Short stage race, list it here.