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Yes and perfect for Nibali.Looks Civiglio'esque.
Ridiculously short.Ridiculous how?
We are at a point where the increasing professionalism in the women's péloton is seeing a greater move toward parity with regards to many Classics. Stage races are including longer stages, the UCI has increased the maximum average stage distance from 100km to around 125km, and lots of one-day races are becoming longer or including more obstacles - take the Ronde van Vlaanderen as an example, which has increased from around 130k to 160k over the last few years - as the strength in depth of the péloton is increasing, meaning it takes more to break the race up. I know that Petite-Forclaz is tough enough to break up the race, but the point of the World Championships is that it is, essentially, monument toughness, and if the rest of the big tough Classics in the women's calendar (they don't have monuments, though there has been some talk of awarding that kind of special status in terms of WWT points to the Trofeo Alfredo Binda due to its age and prestige in the women's bunch) are moving up to 150-160km kind of distance, a 120km World Championships is pretty weak.Why should it be longer?
Sports journalism is the easiest thing manDon't really know where to put this but really wanted to share it. So I just looked through some images from my old phone and found an article by sport.orf.at, one of Austrias biggest sports websites, I screenshoted. It's a little preview for Il Lombardia 2016 and I must have saved it because the favorites they suggested just seemed too ridiculous to be true
So they listed 6 favorites. They started off with Damiano Cunego, who hadn't done anything of note in years, Joaquim Rodriguez, who basically retired a few months earlier and only returned for lombardia because of contract obligations, and Philipp Gilbert who wasn't exactly in the climbing shape of his life in 2016 either.
Then they continue with Valverde and Aru, who to be fair were among the favorites, but then they finish it off by going full random and picking Robert freakin Gesink of all people. You know, those guys are getting paid for articles like this. I mean they just could have googled the betting odds for this race. Or maybe they did and the guy who wrote this thought he'd get the steal of his life by putting money on Cunego, Rodriguez, Gilbert and Gesink.
Julian Alaphilippe
Egan Bernal
Richard Carapaz
Remco Evenepoel
Caleb Ewan
Jakob Fuglsang
Philippe Gilbert
Mathieu van der Poel
Primož Roglič
Mads Pedersen
Elia Viviani
Annemiek van Vleuten
Don't they nominate one female rider pretty regularly?The nominated for the Velo d'Or:
One of those is not like the others! I honestly thought it was a male-only prize, but... guess not. Or maybe AvV just transcends stuff like that.
Don't they nominate one female rider pretty regularly?
I thought Anna van der Breggen was on the shortlist last year.
Do they have to nominate 12 riders? Surely nobody would select Carapaz, Evenepoel, Ewan, Fuglsang (unless he wins Lombardia), Gilbert, Pedersen or Viviani...
Well, yeah, I thought that. Still these achievments are, although very impressive, clearly behind those of the remaining five.I suppose the reasoning is - in order:
Giro win.
Crazy breakthrough, including San Sebastian, EC ITT and silver at the WC ITT.
Three stages at Tour + two at Giro.
L-B-L, Dauphine + some podiums.
P-R
WC RR
EC RR
Well, yeah, I thought that. Still these achievments are, although very impressive, clearly behind those of the remaining five.
Do they have to nominate 12 riders? Surely nobody would select Carapaz, Evenepoel, Ewan, Fuglsang (unless he wins Lombardia), Gilbert, Pedersen or Viviani...
Although you you couls argue about their spring campaigns being equally impressive, I would still give Alaphilippe a slight edge. He won more races and a very wide variety of them. Imo, Ala's Tour exploits clearly overshadow Fuglsang's wins at Dauphiné and his Vuelta stage win.I don't get the inclusion of Fuglsang on your list of discardable riders? The rider of the spring along with Alaphilippe and van der Poel, monument winner, Dauphiné winner, possible Lombardia winner.