On the plus side for Hitec, they've had a positive response to all of this; they have had to reduce their calendar which is a fairly predictaable outcome of this. I hope they'll be able to pull through as they've been a fixture of the sport for best part of a decade and helped bring through quite a few people.
In other bad news, Canyon's young German TT/sprint prospect Lisa Klein has been hit by a car while training. She's come out of it very luckily, with only a collarbone break. It does mean she's had to obviously withdraw from the upcoming World Tour races.
We have two World Tour races coming up this week, too, on either side of the Atlantic. Firstly, the Tour of California, which begins on Thursday and runs until Saturday, parallel with the men's race. The parcours is a bit limiting; there's only the middle stage, around South Lake Tahoe, which is the same as last year's queen stage which was won by Katie Hall ahead of Anna van der Breggen and Kristabel Doebel-Hickok, featuring a small punchy finish off the back of a 12km at 6% climb and descent, so that's where the race will be won and lost - especially so given that unlike last year there isn't a secondary stage with some level of importance as the first stage is essentially rolling with a likely sprint outcome, and the final stage is a borderline crit so unless bonus seconds come into it I can't imagine that will be particularly important to the GC, especially as it's a downtown crit so there isn't the possibility that there is in the first stage that exposed terrain could allow the weather to play a role.
Defending champion van der Breggen is not in attendance as Boels are skipping the race, though two of their riders - Megan Guarnier and Skylar Schneider - are among the US national selection for the event. Astana have yet to announce their squad so it's unclear if Arlenis Sierra - 3rd last year - will be in attendance, but Katie Hall obviously will, the 30-year-old is something of a specialist climber and she has been absolutely wrecking the American domestic scene - more than usual - this season, and this will be one of her season's goals. For the most part the bigger WT teams attending have sent their development cadres which might give Hall a chance to go one better this season, though a couple of the teams have got strong leaders - Sunweb have Coryn Rivera to lead the team, and Ruth Winder back in the US scene where she has been so great in the past, and Canyon most notably have Kasia Niewiadoma, who has to be considered among the favourites in a race which has a serious climbing stage and nowhere else to really gain time, but she may be hamstrung by the team mostly using their young and inexperienced riders (bar Worrack) to back her up, whereas UHC will be going all out for this one.
Meanwhile, back in Europe, the Emakumeen Bira, women's País Vasco (the name literally means 'women's race' in Basque and was formerly a companion piece to the Euskal Bizikleta before the latter merged with the Vuelta al País Vasco), takes place with its first WWT edition, starting on Saturday, after its traditional precursor, the one-day Durango-Durango Emakumeen Saria (women's trophy), takes place on Thursday. This year's Emakumeen Bira is less angled towards the climbers than usual, surprisingly, with a 25km time trial - the kind of length we seldom see on the calendar as an ITT - in the middle of the race which will set up some riders to need to attack from distance in the closing stage which features both a climb and a descent of the classic cathedral of Basque cycling, the Urkiola, meaning that anybody who needs to gain time in the climbs will need to do it from distance.
The field is, as you might expect, pretty strong, as many of the smaller WWT teams do not want the expenditure of the travel to the US, especially those who've just returned from Asia after Chongming Island, so Bira being made WT is a bonus for them, while larger teams can afford to give their riders the choice, and it seems most of the biggest names have elected for northern Spain over northern California. Here, the defending champion is here, as Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio is here to try to defend the title she won by grinding everyone to dust on the Jaizkibel last year, and Cervélo are going all out for it, relying as ever on Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig as her main sidekick, and Lotta Lepistö for the sprints (what options Euskadi gives for them - the fact Lotta can get over a good few obstacles obviously helps), but in Claire Rose and Ann-Sophie Duyck they also have some good contenders for the ITT. Returning for revenge after last year's embarrassment, Mitchelton-Scott gave away the lead of a race they'd been dominating on the final day last year by not committing to either van Vleuten or Garfoot until it was too late, with both of them, and Amanda Spratt, being in the mix throughout but unable to match Ash's acceleration on the final climb of the race. Garfoot may have moved on, but Annemiek and Amanda are both here looking for redemption, assisted with the return of Lucy Kennedy after crashing out of the Ardennes too.
The revelation of last year's edition, Eider Merino, returns for more also, now with the Movistar team. The young Basque (her brother Igor rides for Burgos-BH) was a standout performer climbing with van Vleuten last year but dropping away on the descent. With a bigger team led by Małgorzata Jasińska, she may have her work cut out to duplicate that now that she won't be afforded as much scope and in a stronger field. Alé-Cipollini also help with bigger-name local stars as Ane Santesteban will lead their team de facto, though Bastianelli is in attendance with sprints in mind and also Janneke Ensing is ordinarily a better shout for the upper echelons of the GC. The other revelation of last year, Nikola Nosková, returns with the lead of the BePink team - last year the team ended up using the money won by her stage positions to pay for her to fly back later to take her exams back in the Czech Republic...
The big problem for those revelations is, though, with the improvement in status to WWT, the Emakumeen Bira field has returned to where it was six or seven years ago when it was truly a focal stage race in pre-Giro training and all the big names wanted to be there. Boels-Dolmans have released Guarnier to go to California, but that only means one minor gap in the strength of the support team for Anna van der Breggen, since Canuel is no slouch at all, though the rest of the team is not set up for climbing so much with the likes of Dideriksen and van den Bos (though Jippy did once win the U23 category here). Wiggle-High5 look to be full strength, bar Wild who wouldn't expect to make many finishes here; Brennauer will handle sprinting as a result, and Longo Borghini is obviously here for GC. With PFP taking time out and Kasia in California, the GC aims here will be handled by Amialiusik for Canyon, after her strong showing in Yorkshire, while the Barnes sisters will handle the flatter stuff, Cecchini and Cromwell the hillier stuff.
For the others, Kristabel Doebel-Hickok was on the podium in California last year so has climbing capability and will lead Cylance's GC aims, maybe alongside Ratto, but Bronzini is the de facto team leader. The absence of Sheyla Gutiérrez is a shame. Rasa Leleivyte likes the punchy climbs, but not the TTing, so she may contend for a stage here, while previous decent GC performances here have been achieved by Hanna Solovey, Polona Batagelj, and Elise Maes for WNT is an OK climber too. Sabrina Stultiens for Waowdeals is a potential climbing threat, though it's a shame they don't have Pauliena Rooijakkers at their disposal as she finished top 10 last year. Alongside Batagelj, BTC City-Ljubljana have a pretty solid threat in Hanna Nilsson, she's a very decent climber indeed, and might be the biggest threat on a "smaller" WT team other than Shara Gillow, who often fulfils that role with FDJ. Although Zabelinskaya has been going well lately, the controversial veteran Russian hasn't been contesting races against the top stars however so her level against them is unknown. And there's always Francesca Cauz, but I'm not convinced we'll ever see her at the right level again.