heywoodu

Good chance there'll be a fresh young 51-year old competing this season

Israel Start-Up Nation has found Fuglsang to replace Froome's job of, you know, keeping the bikes warm and such. Also signed Hugo Houle as random 30+ name. Meanwhile Bahrain-Victorious has signed Luis Leon Sanchez, so he'll get back to great things next year, and strong Danish talent Johan Price-Pejtersen, whom with this we can expect to have a sensational first World Tour season if Bahrain keeps their collective 2021 magic up next year. One Filip Maciejuk of Poland has also signed there. Can't say I have heard of him, but that will obviously change next year

Irish cycling won't really miss anything with Roche out of it (in terms of results), unless that'd happened five years ago. Martin still had something in the tank this year, so that's a shame.

By the way, Bloemen was on WR pace until roughly 8km. I thought the top-3 mentioned here was just that, the top-3, but apparently that was the full result...the women's 5k even had only two participants, only one of which can be seen as internationally competitive. That's....not a whole lot, even the men's 5k only had eight participants.

Most of their PB's were skated on the significantly faster Salt Lake City though. Times like these (and Weidemann's 6:46.81 5km record of last night) halfway in October are incredible though. Either a great sign, or a sign of peaking way too hard, way too early, time will tell

Jesus, the Canadians are in shape. Tiny bit early, but alright

Just some nuance for people not actually clicking the link and only reading the post (if anyone is even still reading a cynical thread like this, hopefully this cynical nonsense will stay out of the actual competition threads once the season gets underway...): there were potentially legitimate explanations for it, related to the menstrual cycle, but those were sadly not investigated further by FIS. Just to clarify that it wasn't like "Oh yeah, you used nandrolone, but whatever".

The Dutch European champions won't be competing in Roubaix, since the Netherlands didn't send anyone to any Nations Cup and thus is not allowed to compete. Major fuckup from a national federation, who would have guessed.

At least it's magnificent Lenzerheide that is added in instead of, you know, non-Lenzerheide Obertilliach would be awesome as well, but it's a tad too small I think.

I'm not aiming for the win, I merely wanted to share one of my favourite Dutch songs

Distinct lack of rifles though

45-year old Francisco Mancebo with his first win in 2,5 years over in Japan https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/oita-urban-classic/2021/result

Drs. P - Dodenrit I thought, let's go with something different for a change: an actual Dutch-language song instead of just the big English-language hits from Dutch artists. He was born Heinz Hermann Polzer, in Switzerland, with a Dutch mother and Austrian father. He has always retained his Swiss nationality and never requested the Dutch one, as a token of gratitude towards Switzerland: during World War 2, they saved him from captivity twice, after he was detained for offending Hitler and Mussolini. The second time, the Swiss nearly literally dragged him away the firing squad. He had been living in the Netherlands since childhood though, before the war, and grew into a true master of the Dutch language - in his life, he has received countless prizes for his contributions to the language, literature and all things related to his songwriting. The 'Drs.' in his artist's name is actually not made up, he had a doctorate in economics. His most famous song in the Netherlands is Dodenrit, 'Death Ride'. It's told from the perspective of a man traveling with his family to the Russian city of Omsk, by troyka/troika/Russian horse carriage. However, the ride takes a bit of a dark turn, which is told in a humorous way in the song. The full text can be found here...translated in English! Sure, some of the things that rhyme in Dutch are not a perfect fit of course, but whoever translated it tried to make sure the English version did fit exactly into the melody, which is quite the performance. And generally speaking, the translation is absolutely excellent.

Still a way to go to rival Merckx though, who won that triple + Milan - San Remo + the world title in one year and that triple + the Giro + the Fleche Wallone in the next year

Tour de France and two monuments, quite the year for Pogacar

Right in those 5 seconds in which he maybe would have been in front instead of staying in Pogacar's wheel.

By the way, Masnada could win a monument in the city in which he was born, that'd be pretty awesome.

There was like a 5km period in which they did something and indeed closed in rapidly, and then...everyone just decided to leave it at that While only Alaphilippe of course had a legitimate reason not to ride.

Nobody in the chase group actually wants to win, it seems. What a mess.

Meanwhile Masnada somehow managed to close the gap to Pogacar. Probably going to fight for the win, the group behind him (filled with incredible quality) isn't really closing in.

Fun little fact: the past 18 monuments have been won by 17 different riders

Even after awarding the points I barely watched (more than half a minute of) any of the videos ever, because I just don't care and because I really can't get myself to spending 3-4 minutes just watching a music video...just like I never understood my fellow teenagers when I was at school and they'd go and 'watch' MTV after class or something There are rare occassions where a video is simply fun of course, but usually it just shows someone singing in place A, then place B and so on

Read the articles first though

They're already barely ever holding regular relays though, this only seems like something that will cut that down even further.

I feel like these stories come back every year and usually don't actually happen, so I'm still holding out hope