Track Cycling UCI World Championships 2019

[Quasit 869]

9 minutes ago, phelps said:

but all the show we just saw, it won't happen in Tokyo, thanks to the geniuses running UCI and IOC, who think that those 2 events don't deserve the Olympic stage (meanwhile we will see amazing events like team sprint and omnium)...

Omnium would be amazing, if it wasn't as it is now.

[phelps 8,285]

5 minutes ago, Quasit said:

Omnium would be amazing, if it wasn't as it is now.

 

well, tbh tonight we have a great battle between Paternoster and Wild, but this is not normally the case, with the Dutch overlapping all of of her opponents in the previous couple of years...

and in any case, I'm not a fan of this competition...I rather prefer standalone Points Race and Elimination Race (not to say that not having the individual pursuit at the Games is just insulting towards the history of track cycling)...

[phelps 8,285]

and even if it looked close, the sad truth is that Paternoster didn't have anything left in the tank in the final 20 laps and Wild just had to score a couple of points in the forelast sprint to win another Gold Medal...

we didn't even have a final sprint showdown between the 2 main contenders...

by the way, congrats to Wild...

Edited March 1, 2019 by phelps

[Col_Frost 179]

Gold for Lee  

[dcro 10,210]

Barely five laps gone and already a serious crash in women's madison. How very surprising.

[mrv86 3,240]

I don't understand why they chose to add Madison to the Olympics... is so hard to follow the action, and so accident prone.

[dcro 10,210]

New Zealander who crashed on lap 5 just collapsed on lap 80. Great job paramedics for letting her race.

[dcro 10,210]

And again a bunch of DNFs, not just New Zealand. 4 in total.

 

In all Olympic editions of men's madison only one team ever had a DNF:..

[phelps 8,285]

2 hours ago, mrv86 said:

I don't understand why they chose to add Madison to the Olympics... is so hard to follow the action, and so accident prone.

 

because the Madison race is the history of track cycling, the race that decides all the action in the most traditional (and lucrative) events of this sport (the socalled "6 Days")...

and it used to be the second most prestigious title of them all (just behind the king of the track, the individual sprint champion)...

this before UCI almost destroyed the sport in the last 15/20 years or so...

the main problem with the Madison race is that it's always been reserved only to the men, the women have never even tried to compete at this game before a couple of years ago, when the IOC forced the UCI to "invent" the women's Madison if only they wanted the men's race back at the Games...

and UCI couldn't do otherwise...but the truth is that the girls are not ready at all to ride such kind of race (and I also think that the women's race is too long, they should cut at least 20 laps/5km and have only half the current number of intermediate sprints, trying to make the girls going for the lap gain instead of just gifting medals to those who can only win a bunch of intermediate sprints, which isn't the essence of this race)...

Edited March 2, 2019 by phelps

[dcro 10,210]

7 minutes ago, phelps said:

and UCI couldn't do otherwise...but the truth is that the girls are not ready at all to ride such kind of race (and I also think it's the women's race is too long, they should cut at least 20 laps/5km and have only half the current number of intermediate sprints, trying to make the girls going for the lap gain instead of just gifting medals to those who can only win a bunch of intermediate sprints, which isn't the essence of this race)...

 

Indeed, nothing has changed in women's madison since its introduction two years ago. It's always 3 or 4 teams that are sweeping intermediate sprints and the rest just circling and crashing around. It's almost grotesque how incapable the lesser teams are. Even if they put a full attack they often end up with nothing on intermediate sprints.

 

And the same story will be going on next year, with half the field going to the Olympics knowing that they can't score any points...