Road Cycling UCI World Championships 2021

[heywoodu 15,135]

1 hour ago, dcro said:

Following her victory of the ages, Anna Kiesenhofer is sadly becoming somewhat annoying. Now she suddenly races only time trials and looks for an excuse when she ends up placing far away from the podium (at least according to her social media). She was a surprise and very much an unexpected gold medal winner period. Can't she just own that?

 

And what's up with skipping all the road races? Stage fright?

To be fair, that's not that new. She already focussed 99% on time trials before the Olympics and the Olympic time trial was her main career goal, but something about no Austrian quota there and a quota in the road race led to her doing only the road race. She's not made a secret (even before the Olympics) out of simply being very uncomfortable with riding in a peloton, which is why she didn't do a ton of road races in the first place.

 

She had six international competitions in 2019: five time trials and one road race, which was the Austrian national championships she won and in which she probably didn't spend much time - if any at all - in a large group. Last year she had two time trials, a 7-day stage race, another time trial and one more road race and before Tokyo she only had the Austrian champs (ITT and road race).

 

It's not new, and she's not making a secret out of why it is.

[Grassmarket 3,403]

10k to go, and the Dutch have seven riders in with a chance.

[heywoodu 15,135]

Just now, Grassmarket said:

10k to go, and the Dutch have seven riders in with a chance.

The plan was to give all of them a chance to get away until roughly 1,5 lap before the end. If none of them did, it'd be everything on Vos.

 

But yeah, it's the Dutch women's team. I can hardly see anyone working for anyone else unless they're actual teammates (vdBreggen, vdBroek-Blaak, Pieters and Vollering vs Van Dijk and Brand, with Vos and Van Vleuten being the lone wolfs).

[heywoodu 15,135]

Blanka Vas is riding a fantastic race as well @Vektor

[heywoodu 15,135]

This has a thrown away gold medal written all over it again for the Dutch women  

 

What a bunch of.....not great tactics.

[heywoodu 15,135]

Vos with silver behind an Italian for the 12668th time  

 

Too bad, Vos is basically the only rider in this Dutch team I'd have liked to see win after this umpteenth fiasco  

 

Whatever happened, Vos is basically the only one in the team not to blame for her not winning, oddly enough.

[Gianlu33 4,550]

Great victory for Balsamo

I can say, without any doubt, that this is our year in sport 

[Grassmarket 3,403]

British team tactics also rubbish. Worked mid-race, did all the chasing down late race, were exhausted for the last 2km.  

[Grassmarket 3,403]

12 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Blanka Vas is riding a fantastic race as well @Vektor

When I saw her I am embarassed to admit I thought “That’s a rider in Hungarian colours….no, can’t be” and ran through my mental database of nations with red, white & green flags.   Well, it wasn’t Lebanon either.

[heywoodu 15,135]

2 minutes ago, Grassmarket said:

When I saw her I am embarassed to admit I thought “That’s a rider in Hungarian colours….no, can’t be” and ran through my mental database of nations with red, white & green flags.   Well, it wasn’t Lebanon either.

And I believe Maldives was unfortunately missing.