Since I saw that PBP 2023 was going to have 8500 places, straight away I thought that back in 2015, it was said that they was running at max capacity of around 6500 and could not cope with increasing the numbers in future years.
In 2019, it started if I recall with about 6500 places, then at some point after June, created an additional 1000+ places, which seemed to cause confusion as to who could grab them but it was solely for riders with no pre-qualification but had done the qualifiers but could not get one of the 6500 initial places. These additional 1000+ places was to fill in the gaps of riders who failed to qualify etc and also a few extra places to cover for even more drop outs etc.
From what I understand, there is always about 1000+ who fail to start and that is why they could add those in extra places as a lot of riders had failed to qualify who had preregistered etc
I think that this year, the PBP organisation is planning ahead, created 8500 places, they know 1000+ will not start and this will drop the number to of riders to a manageable number and at the same time remove the last minute frenzy of people grabbing places when they release more places, which will them make it to easier to know what the starting figures are end of June so they can sort the finances out, catering out, printing jerseys etc rather than last minute in July early August.
Basically, I have a feeling that there will be no more additional places going to be released around end of June. It is a big leap from 6500 riders which was deemed manageable to 8500 riders. It must be about a 30% increase.
But, it's just a feeling and thinking behind the scenes of why 8500 initial places but I could be wrong.
Hope you'll not mind if I offer some accuracy,
inter alia drawing on Page 1 of this thread.
Rule 3 specifies
8000 places (not 8500) of which 2500 would be reserved for French nationals.
Before pre-registration opened the available places in the 80/90/84 table summed
7600. I have speculated upthread on how the 'spare' 400 might be deployed and how ACP will manage their aim to allow 2500 French to register.
What actually happened
in 2019 was that the places 'ran out' in March during the count down of those whose longest ride was a 300km in 2018. And then there was lots of Gallic sadness because loads of French riders seemed likely to be excluded from 'their' ride. So the ACP miraculously 'found' another 850 starts slots (started 30 minutes earlier on Sunday afternoon and added a start time on Monday dawn).
Starts still ran out (by 10 Apr)) but were freed up in June by pre-registrants failure to register with at least 3 qualifying BRMs. And slots in early start waves, vacated by the 'fails' were also freed up (go and look at the 2019 threads on this)
I think @LWaB has suggested over 1000 so failed, and in 2019 those slots were made available to non-(pre-)registered aspirants, provided they had at least 3 qualifying BRMs to submit.
@Ivo said "The ACP over the past years tried to persuade people to start in the 84 hour group.
On Saturday [7 Jan], Faburel [ACP main man] stated quite clearly that
he expects that everyone who qualifies can start but that those who didn't pre-qualify run the chance of missing their preferred starting slot. I understand this as if you haven't pre-qualified, then there's a chance that you won't get a 90h starting spot but have to do with 84h."
ACP will want the ride filled (ie registered) to capacity, with the expectation that 10% won't start built into that 'capacity' estimate. There's little scope for 84 waves (of 300?) to be shifted to 90 on Sunday evening. ACP did that last time and the 2023 design mimics the 2019 revision.
As a rider myself without a BRM last year (but with new hip, replacing the one that rode round without much complaint in August 2019) I shall be poised on 20 Jun with a BRM SR complete and homologated.
Registration closes midnight CEST 2 July: ACP then have plenty of time to sort things out with a settled figure of registered/starters.
