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RedheadDane said:Bit of sneakiness from whoever added riders to the Movistar squad.
You can't actually be registered as a Basque rider, can you?
RedheadDane said:Bit of sneakiness from whoever added riders to the Movistar squad.
You can't actually be registered as a Basque rider, can you?
Libertine Seguros said:Also, for some of those teams - Waowdeals, Cervélo, Cylance - it is in their interest to allow the break to go because they'd expect a good strong placement in the top 10 to be as best as they could do from the péloton, they then don't have to work behind, and why trade a likely top 10 for a possible top 10? Wiggle is slightly tougher as realistically the chances of Cordon-Ragot winning from there were slim as she's not got a sprint and though she's a functional climber she wouldn't expect to contest a climb like the Cauberg on an even keel with the likes of Spratt, but having been shorn of their secondary options for hilly races that they have had in previous years, they are very heavily reliant on Elisa Longo Borghini, who may not have fancied her chances against a completely fresh van der Breggen, Niewiadoma and Moolman-Pasio given she's had a few weeks out and a tough start to the season. I will say I'm surprised how inactive the péloton was on the Cauberg, I would have thought that a few placements might have been fought out for the WWT points, but then I guess Boels, Canyon and Sunweb aren't too fussed by them, whereas Bujak really looked like she was turning herself out to get 9th place which I think is BTC's best WT result this year. At the same time, for the Individual rankings you'd have thought the likes of Anna VDB, Elisa and Kasia might have fought out that final climb - I guess given the race was being left to the break, keeping your cards close to your chest for the Mur de Huy might be more important, considering Flèche is the most important race of Ardennes week for the women.
Blaaki will skip Flèche but she will ride Liège, as per her post-race interview.
tobydawq said:I don't want to sound condescending towards the women's racing and I really haven't watched much of it but it seemed that some of the decisions taken today were extremely odd. And there are taken stupid decisions in men's cycling too but I thought it was a little peculiar to see so many within 25 kms.
At least the UCI's producing summary videos means the cameras actually get switched on, they just only produce highlight videos rather than doing any live broadcasting, heaven forfend we miss any of the action when the men are 120km from the line - after all we know how often the men's Flèche Wallonne descends into chaos with important moves early on. Aside from spamming their social media outposts, and fans have done that for some time, I'm just not sure what would have an impact on ASO. They're too busy patting themselves on the back for giving the women La Course, even though they just about killed off an eight-day stage race in France to make room for it, then tried to kill off a long-established seven-day stage race in another country entirely for their experimental version last year.RedheadDane said:Do you know where - if anywhere - it might be possible to contact ASO to lobby for them to actually show F-W and L-B-L?
Made a comment on a FB post (the le Tour de France page) which - after the obligatory "Valverde gonna win" for the men's race - actually mentioned how we shouldn't forget the ladies' race... because apparently everybody can just go to Belgium...
Seeing as we've discussed over in the Danish talents thread the many ways in which Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig is awesome, she's also added 'calling out ASO on their BS' to the list, raising that it's a real shame that two races of high prestige and, with the link to the men's races, potential crossover audience, are not broadcast live - and are also the first WWT races of the year not to have any live coverage.Libertine Seguros said:At least the UCI's producing summary videos means the cameras actually get switched on, they just only produce highlight videos rather than doing any live broadcasting, heaven forfend we miss any of the action when the men are 120km from the line - after all we know how often the men's Flèche Wallonne descends into chaos with important moves early on. Aside from spamming their social media outposts, and fans have done that for some time, I'm just not sure what would have an impact on ASO. They're too busy patting themselves on the back for giving the women La Course, even though they just about killed off an eight-day stage race in France to make room for it, then tried to kill off a long-established seven-day stage race in another country entirely for their experimental version last year.RedheadDane said:Do you know where - if anywhere - it might be possible to contact ASO to lobby for them to actually show F-W and L-B-L?
Made a comment on a FB post (the le Tour de France page) which - after the obligatory "Valverde gonna win" for the men's race - actually mentioned how we shouldn't forget the ladies' race... because apparently everybody can just go to Belgium...