> The Tour de France was originally intended to be so tough that only one person might finish it.
The difficulty has been toned down a lot since the early days though. (You'll never see a 466km long stage like the first of Tour de France 1903[1] ever again).
[1]: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1re_%C3%A9tape_du_Tour_de_Fr...)
There are still races with much longer "stages" than 466km, but they are not part of the contemporary pro-cycling world. The classic brevet events, Paris-Brest-Paris and Boston-Montreal-Boston are 1200km ridden as a single stage. PBP is older than the TDF also, starting in 1891. The nature of brevet events means that they can essentially never be a spectator sport, hence the lack of any significant attention to them.
With satellite trackers and social media these kinds of events have developed into a spectator sport. Bikepacking races tend to be in more remote locales than the French countryside so racers are required to carry a satellite tracker which reports to a public website. "Dot watchers" who live along the route come out to watch racers go by or leave water/snacks in coolers along the side of the road. Far more dot watchers are limited to the live tracker and check daily updates from racers or journalists covering the event on social media.
After the event some racers upload videos for spectators and it helps them with sponsorship. This video gives a glimpse into what its like to race the Tour Divide competitively. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azJS106xeNA
What I mean by a "spectator sport" in this context is primarily that the event can be monetized because huge numbers of people will watch it either in person or via video of some sort.
The number of people watching the trans-europe or other similar solo events as they happen is likely less than the population of a typical US liberal arts school. The monetization that might follow from YT videos that occurs later is completely different from what the TdF manages to encourage. The winner of 2023's Tour Divide has 58k views ... even Lael only gets 300k or so views for her adventuring and racing videos. This is not a spectator sport in any sort of historical sense of that term.
Pedantically, brevets are not races.
In what sense is PBP not a race? It is a timed event, with a cutoff. The organization that runs it maintains a results list that includes times.
If you mean there are no prizes, then fair enough, but that's not my definition of a race.
The nature and culture around the event discourage treating them as races. The point is completion, not competition. It shares a lot of the definition of a race while not being one.
The culture centers on completion because that's so damn hard. The fastest riders, however, are absolutely racing each other.
Would you say that Tour Divide or TransEurope are not races, because enough people fail to finish them that the focus is on completion, not competition?
Another reason why the culture is different: drafting is not widely used, and pack formation is rare. This magnifies the effects of very small differences in riding speed so that riders are generally widely spread out. I know from own experience doing brevets in the 90s that it would be rare to be in visual contact with other riders. Same is true for Tour Divide, TransEurope, RAAM etc. This makes "competition" look and feel very different than in pro-cycling and cat racing where "can I hang with the pack?" and "should i attack now?" are the constant questions.
However, all the same things are true of ultramarathon running too. Limited visual contact with other racers, high DNF rates, completion being the goal for the majority of participants. Nobody says, however, that WS100 or UTMB are "not races". And the reason for that is: in this category of racing, there is no other format. Nobody runs 100 miles like the pack on a track and field event, or even the way most major marathons play out. The nature of racing WS100 or UTMB just simply is the nature of ultramarathon running races.
And so it is for cycling. When you increase the distances and terms (e.g. "the clock runs non-stop"), the nature of the event changes. PBP is nothing like any TdF stage, but it is still a race. Granted, more like triathlon where only a small percentage of the entrants are actively racing other people, but people don't say that's not a race, either.
I think a thing fit all the definitions of something while not being that thing. For example, tomatoes are berries according to the definition set by botanists, yet if you ask anyone in genpop they consider tomatoes a vegetable because that is how people view them.
I’m not trying to disagree that PBP isn’t a race, because i acknowledge it fits the definition of a race, but I hope we can agree that calling it a race does a disservice to its history and culture.
For similar reasons I wouldn’t consider the Tour Divide a race either because the organizers don’t call it a race. For the same reasons an ultramarathon or rides like Unbound, Silk Road, TransAm, or Transcontinental is a race; because the organizers call it one. Is this a rational viewpoint? Definitely not, but that’s fine with me.
There is a power in what things are called and I think it is important to stay true to roots.