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(Dutch Beer Race) Amstel Gold Race 2021, 216.7k. Sunday.

Page 19 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.

Pick the winner.

  • Pidcock / Kwiatkowski

    Votes: 9 11.3%
  • Bagioli / Vansevenant / Alaphilippe

    Votes: 10 12.5%
  • Schachmann / Schelling

    Votes: 3 3.8%
  • van Aert / Roglic

    Votes: 33 41.3%
  • Valverde

    Votes: 5 6.3%
  • Hirschi

    Votes: 2 2.5%
  • Fuglsang

    Votes: 1 1.3%
  • Matthews

    Votes: 2 2.5%
  • Hindsgaul Madsen

    Votes: 3 3.8%
  • All these choices are ridiculous, I'm making my ballot invalid.

    Votes: 12 15.0%

  • Total voters
    80
  • Poll closed .
Congratulations to Wout van Aert for taking the win.

Pidock really impressed me in the last two races. Looks like his physique doesn't tell the whole story. Mohorič and Tratnik took care of entertaining us too. As for Roglič, same as the whole JV team, he did a great job today, chasing and positioning himself as support for van Aert. Ideally he wouldn't have had a mechanical and likely would have finished on the podium, still mission accomplished today!

View: https://twitter.com/JumboVismaRoad/status/1383807372401909765


Chapeau!
 
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Fonzie?
 
Hard to please, much?

It pretty much had everything you want in a bike race. Attacks by top riders from far out, strong breaks, leads changing hands, multiple teams trying to leverage their strength, and a will-they-won’t-they bunch bearing down on the cat and mousing leaders at the finish. I enjoyed it.

It beat the snot out of “everybody who wants to win, hide in the bunch until the last time up the Cauberg” that we got every year with the old route.
+1. Every race people find a reason to complain. 10x more when a course changes. You’re spot on. I don’t care as much about courses, just give me good racing.
 
I think they did well today. In the cobble classics they rarely did anything from 60km to 25km to go. Unlucky from Roglic of course as well.
They did OK, I guess, since they won. And of course the work they did was very important for letting van Aert save as much energy as possible there. But I think both Vingegaard and Roglic were activated too early in the race. The split that happened after the last Cauberg (cca 20km to go), when there were 3 INEOS riders in the lead group of 7-8 riders, was very dangerous. Ideally you'd want Roglic to be there with van Aert. There was bad luck (probably) involved, but even without the mechanical I'm not sure Roglic would have been there, because he spent a lot of energy beforehand. Also he was very bad positioned going onto the last Cauberg. With Roglic out of the game, there was no other Jumbo Visma rider in sight. They had no one in the first two chasing groups.

So I think it was a little bit of a gamble to do so much work so early. Luckily for them, it paid off. It was a much better team performance than in the cobbled classics, that's true. But keep in mind also the team was much stronger on paper, with 1st and 2nd from a recently finished WT stage race.
 
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+1. Every race people find a reason to complain. 10x more when a course changes. You’re spot on. I don’t care as much about courses, just give me good racing.
I'm not people. In fact I don't think I've complained about a race once in 2021. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who verbally expresses more enthusiasm for racing than me on this forum.

Besides, I posted nothing about the route before the race, exactly because I had no idea what was going to happen. But then the race happened, and it was dull. No major contender showed his face until the last Cauberg. Much of the excitement came from the valiant efforts by the two youngsters Vansevenant and Schelling (who were never going to win). An exciting race from the Cauberg, that I'll concede.

Was the route to blame for the dull racing yesterday? Possibly not the only factor, but the comparison with the 2017-2019 editions is pretty clear. All of those were much harder and much more exciting races. So yeah, I really hope they bring back that route.
 
I'm not people. In fact I don't think I've complained about a race once in 2021. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who verbally expresses more enthusiasm for racing than me on this forum.

Besides, I posted nothing about the route before the race, exactly because I had no idea what was going to happen. But then the race happened, and it was dull. No major contender showed his face until the last Cauberg. Much of the excitement came from the valiant efforts by the two youngsters Vansevenant and Schelling (who were never going to win). An exciting race from the Cauberg, that I'll concede.

Was the route to blame for the dull racing yesterday? Possibly not the only factor, but the comparison with the 2017-2019 editions is pretty clear. All of those were much harder and much more exciting races. So yeah, I really hope they bring back that route.
There was a lot of talk about how easy the route was, I'm surprised the final Cauberg selection even was decisive, but in this case I cannot fault the organisers at all.
 
I'm not people. In fact I don't think I've complained about a race once in 2021. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who verbally expresses more enthusiasm for racing than me on this forum.

Besides, I posted nothing about the route before the race, exactly because I had no idea what was going to happen. But then the race happened, and it was dull. No major contender showed his face until the last Cauberg. Much of the excitement came from the valiant efforts by the two youngsters Vansevenant and Schelling (who were never going to win). An exciting race from the Cauberg, that I'll concede.

Was the route to blame for the dull racing yesterday? Possibly not the only factor, but the comparison with the 2017-2019 editions is pretty clear. All of those were much harder and much more exciting races. So yeah, I really hope they bring back that route.
People actually do complain about the course, tactics, and the excitement of just about every race. Sometimes it’s warranted, mostly it’s not. I thought yesterday was quite a good race, given the situation, and the last 30-40 kilometers were quite good, as in any good race. The finish was really exciting, more than most races. Yet people still gripe.

I find the griping tiresome, it so often reads as posturing. If my comments don‘t apply to you, great. I don’t track who posts what.
 
People actually do complain about the course, tactics, and the excitement of just about every race. Sometimes it’s warranted, mostly it’s not. I thought yesterday was quite a good race, given the situation, and the last 30-40 kilometers were quite good, as in any good race. The finish was really exciting, more than most races. Yet people still gripe.

I find the griping tiresome, it so often reads as posturing. If my comments don‘t apply to you, great. I don’t track who posts what.
If it is reasonable and fairly argued (as in this case), it is not mere complaints (or whines), but critique. Exactly what you'd hope to find in a forum.

Far better than an insufferable echo-chamber of ever happy cheerleaders.
 
If it is reasonable and fairly argued (as in this case), it is not mere complaints (or whines), but critique. Exactly what you'd hope to find in a forum.

Far better than an insufferable echo-chamber of ever happy cheerleaders.
Is that an issue here, a lack of reasonable critique?

Theres a pandemic on. We all prefer the regular course, naturally. Calling that race “dull” is silly. It’s the same after every race, bad tactics, bad course, boring racing, no one attacks. Yawn.

It’s not like there aren’t real issues in cycling and some legitimately boring races to complain about.
 
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Is that an issue here, a lack of reasonable critique?

Theres a pandemic on. We all prefer the regular course, naturally. Calling that race “dull” is silly. It’s the same after every race, bad tactics, bad course, boring racing, no one attacks. Yawn.

It’s not like there aren’t real issues in cycling to complain about.
The race was dull, and I don't think he was blaming the organisers for the route either. Complaining about complaining doesn't make it less dull
 
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How was the race dull? The last 60-70km or so there were non-stop attacks, none of them fruitful, but it wasn't just a peloton riding pace. Every hill in the last laps you saw them properly suffer, big names were riding against eachother, the world champion cracking, sensational finish. And that on an "easy" improvised parcours.
 

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