heywoodu

Meanwhile today we will pass the new bridge in Genua, which will undoubtedly be extensively shown. I hope this will be brought as a sort of monument, but somehow I feel like it will mostly be brought as a way to show their 'awesome new bridge'...(which wouldn't have needed to be there in the first place if the people responsible had done their work...) Caleb Ewan is done with the Giro this year, he won't start today, sort of as expected. Very curious about today's stage, it seems to have the potential for a very fun last 50k or so.

That seems unlikely though. You never know, but considering his current shape, it'd be likely they wanted to keep him in the Giro if at all realistically possible.

Because cycling, stage races at least, are made up of several individual races. There is of course the general classification at the end, which especially in terms of media exposure and prize money is the main thing, but that part is basically only for the strong climbers. There's plenty of other riders, with different specialties, who all have their chances in individual stages (not in the sense to give them something 'because otherwise it's unfair', but because a good stage race should consist of many different types of stages, from long and flat to short and mountaineous). A podium makes sense, like described in the post above, a stage is kind of like a Formula 1 race, with the final classification being the championship. It's not really like in rally, where you have 5+ stages a day, and the whole rally is done in a few days. Stage wins are counted, but not specifically celebrated there. The bottle of champagne thing...that's just sponsors I mean, a podium does need something, because it's an actual win in a semi-separate race, but the bottles being so big is just a sponsor thing.

This sucks so bad. I mean, equal distances is fantastic and since that was the headline, I was super excited for roughly one minute....until seeing the actual distances

Moroni kicked out Lopez in qualifying. With that, Lopez' insane streak ended, this will be the first time since the 2002 (!) Australian Open that we'll have a Grand Slam main draw without Lopez in it. Yep, more than 20 years ago. Moroni had just turned 4 when there last was a Grand Slam without Lopez in the main draw. Andreas Seppi lost as well in the qualifying, the first time since the 2005 French Open he'll miss a main draw at a Grand Slam. The longest and third-longest streaks in Open Era history have now ended.

Vollering is fine, as SD Worx communicated today. They could have done that earlier... Anyhow, during the weekend Puck Moonen - who is totally not getting yearly contract renewals because of her semi-modelling but totally because of her results - actually finished an international race for the first time since 2019, instead of DNF'ing everything. https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/zlm-omloop-der-kempen-ladies/2022/result

He has confirmed he won't start Also, Van der Poel said why he had to chase for a long time in the final yesterday: he had a sock with ice in his shirt to keep cool, but that fell and disrupted a part of his bike

Pauliena Rooijakkers takes the win in the Durango Emakumeen Saria in Basque Country. Worries about Demi Vollering though, who over the weekend won the World Tour Itzulia stage race in the Basque Country by winning every single one of the three stages. Yesterday she crashed (before TV coverage started) and was taken to the hospital, but there has been not a single word about her from the team other than that. Nothing on Vollering's social media, where she usually is very active, nothing on the team's social media, just...silence. Which is not at all putting minds at ease considering the Amy Pieters situation.

Girmay most likely won't start today Damn, that is some anticlimax.

And yeah, that was a fantastic sprint! After he stayed in Van der Poel's wheel all day Saturday and basically made both of them lose by it, he stayed in Van der Poel's wheel again all day today but finished it a bit better Great stage, unfortunately followed by tomorrows annual borefest stage in the Po Valley Thursday will be good though (with a sad moment when the peloton passes the location of Wouter Weylandt's fatal crash for the first time since that day), good preparation for a tough weekend.

Still unclear whether or not he'll start tomorrow... Not that that will affect his second street parade of the year in Asmara after this

And then you get a jury that actually does a good job (Ukraine) and their own freaking minister turns out to be a moron who is angry at it

Yeah in the end I guess it's just impossible to really solve these issues...

Sounds bad, but remember: Romania this year only had money to buy half t-shirts for the guys, and Spain went for such an expensive outfit that they could only cover the bare minimum of her singer

Right, still somehow implement the 'you can not vote on your own country' thing