Road Cycling 2020 Discussion Thread

[heywoodu 16,434]

On 05/11/2020 at 15:07, Grassmarket said:

Sad story, he was always a real hard-worker who did at least get a few great moments, notably in the 2015 Het Nieuwsblad.

 

Former British champion Ian Stannard has been forced to retire because of rheumatoid arthritis.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/54821989

That is sad indeed  

 

I see he was also third in that weird Roubaix where old Mathew Hayman of all places took an awesome win, 2016. Stannard is (or was, now) among the kind of riders I like most, that also includes for example Magnus Bäckstedt: those huge powerhouses who excel in classics like Het Nieuwsblad or Roubaix.

[heywoodu 16,434]

Awet Gebremehdin (went from  to ), who finished Lombardy and the Giro d'Italia last year, is stuck in Ethiopia. He went to visit his family which had fleed there, and now they are in hiding in the Tigray region, where a civil war is brewing  

 

Pretty much all talented Ethopians who were up-and-coming are from Tigray, basically the only Ethiopian region where cycling is a thing (thanks to it's connection with Eritrea), but that's all going down the drain rapidly now. 

 

Hopefully things calm down there, but considering things like history it's hard to imagine it will actually calm down  

 

[heywoodu 16,434]

Fun bit of analysis with a top-10 of 2020's best sprinters.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/ranking-the-top-10-male-sprinters-of-2020/

 

The top-4 is quite clearly miles above the rest, as we could see the whole season basically, with Bennett in first...although interestingly, he loses in all the head-to-heads against the other three of the big four  

[heywoodu 16,434]

Vini-Zabu was building up the excitement yesterday, big news coming?!

 

 

 

Aaaaaand....nope.

 

 

A one year contract renewel for the 108th place finisher in the Giro d'Italia whose best result in the entire year, by far, was a 22nd place in a poor field in the Trofeo Laigueglia  

[Gianlu33 5,920]

 

 

[Olympian1010 8,284]

Honestly a miracle more riders didn’t crash.

[dcro 10,210]

Much better than that Kazakh biathlete, who fell 5 meters before the finish line and placed 4th instead of taking Olympic gold.

[heywoodu 16,434]

Not much discussion possible about it, but Primoz Roglic won the prestigious Velo d'Or. The only one who could have remotely challenged him was probably Wout van Aert, but his performances were mostly centered on shorter times whereas Roglic was nearly impossibly good the entire year, both before and after the COVID break.

[hckošice 16,572]

3 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Not much discussion possible about it, but Primoz Roglic won the prestigious Velo d'Or. The only one who could have remotely challenged him was probably Wout van Aert, but his performances were mostly centered on shorter times whereas Roglic was nearly impossibly good the entire year, both before and after the COVID break.

For me Pogačar 1st Roglič 2nd Alaphilippe 3rd.

 

Van Aert ? sorry not even in top 10

[heywoodu 16,434]

16 minutes ago, hckosice said:

For me Pogačar 1st Roglič 2nd Alaphilippe 3rd.

 

Van Aert ? sorry not even in top 10

I forgot it wasn't Van Aert who won Flanders  If it was a Velo d'Or for the first weeks post-COVID, obviously there would have been no other choice than Van Aert

 

Now I'm curious about who you would see in the top-10 then.