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Olympic Road Race Men

Page 87 - Get up to date with the latest news, scores & standings from the Cycling News Community.
Oct 30, 2011
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Howard Thomas said:
Cavendish does not have another event but I wonder if Bradley W has not ruined his chances in the TT?

A little unfair on Cav. He would have said beforehand (did say) that the only chance of a medal was in a bunch sprint (for any of the sprinters) and he regarded the medal as a team one. I am wondering if there should not be two events? One for the likes of Vino or Sagan to sore an individual road medal and one as a team sprint event?

Otherwise the two types of rider are ruled out depending on the design of the course. For that matter, a straight climb of 20 kms could give the likes of Schlecks and Contador an Olympic opportunity. Bit difficult to organise this in the Netherlands of course (if they had the games)!

Sprinters don't really deserve Olympic RR medals. It should go to genuine classics riders who fight for the victory. A Worlds once in a while is enough for the sprinters, the rest of the Worlds and Olympic parcours should be challenging.

f it were in the Netherlands, they'd probably finish it in Valkenberg.
 
Jun 21, 2009
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Fat Cav spouts again...

Maybe if he lost some more weight he would have been able to climb better and shut up about other people losing the race for him. As if the race was supposed to be his god given win. He makes me more nauseaus with every passing day.

Sagan will whoop his **** next year to the delight of many.
 
Caruut said:
Sprinters don't really deserve Olympic RR medals. It should go to genuine classics riders who fight for the victory. A Worlds once in a while is enough for the sprinters, the rest of the Worlds and Olympic parcours should be challenging.

f it were in the Netherlands, they'd probably finish it in Valkenberg.
Let us not forget that Kristoff, very much a sprinter, was bronze. He played his cards right.
 
Howard Thomas said:
Cavendish does not have another event but I wonder if Bradley W has not ruined his chances in the TT?

A little unfair on Cav. He would have said beforehand (did say) that the only chance of a medal was in a bunch sprint (for any of the sprinters) and he regarded the medal as a team one. I am wondering if there should not be two events? One for the likes of Vino or Sagan to sore an individual road medal and one as a team sprint event?

Otherwise the two types of rider are ruled out depending on the design of the course. For that matter, a straight climb of 20 kms could give the likes of Schlecks and Contador an Olympic opportunity. Bit difficult to organise this in the Netherlands of course (if they had the games)!
Olympic courses are like Worlds courses. Sometimes they suit one type of rider, sometimes they suit another. Schleck could have had a chance in Beijing, but didn't take it, Cav could have had a chance here, but didn't take it. Two completely different types of cyclist.

As I've said several times, and shall continue to say, the Worlds (and by extension, the Olympics, as a special attraction) are like a Monument. And as there is a monument for everybody - every type of rider has a Monument they can win provided they're good enough - then Worlds/Olympics courses should be like this. They shouldn't provide a course flatter than Milan-San Remo. But they shouldn't provide a course more mountainous than Il Lombardia.

The 2016 Olympics RR course will be in Rio, and is probably likely to be quite hilly. But the 2020 candidate cities are Madrid (we saw what the Worlds there were like, and it was a sprint from a reduced bunch), Istanbul (liable to be mostly flat) and Tokyo (could have some decent sized climbs, but if they finish in the city then it will be a flat run-in like yesterday).
 
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Howard Thomas said:
Otherwise the two types of rider are ruled out depending on the design of the course.

Replying to my own post i really meant two types of medal (individual and team). One could use the same course as was used yesterday. In fact one could say there were two races possible yesterday, one being for the third group, but of course that was pointless in the circumstances.
 
Howard Thomas said:
Otherwise the two types of rider are ruled out depending on the design of the course. For that matter, a straight climb of 20 kms could give the likes of Schlecks and Contador an Olympic opportunity. Bit difficult to organise this in the Netherlands of course (if they had the games)!

Rio is not short of mountains: Corcovado would be a much more scenic finishing straight than the Mall.
 
Oct 23, 2011
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Don't be late Pedro said:
@janibrajkovic
My opinion: Most teams were not racing to win, they were racing to see Team GB loose.

Well, not sprinting against Cav was the first step to winning in this race.

So the Dutch, Italians, Belgians, Spanish did what they had to do to be able to win. Vino and Uran just went at he right moment, screwing their chances of winning. If Vino and Uran had a shot in the flat finish, than Paolini, Valverde, Sanchez, Boom and Roelandts all had a shot as well, they just didn't finish it off. But all of these countries did a near perfect race for a maximal chance of winning.
 
Jul 3, 2009
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Rule 1 in road racing, if you dont want to chase get a rider in the break especially if its a large break. Rule 2 if you fail to get a rider in the first break be damn sure you get 1 in the chasing break even more so if its a big break. If you fail to get a rider in the breaks then expect to do the work yourself and not relie on other countries to bail you out as they may have different game plans. If your a sprinter that sits on all day and only sees the front in the last 200mtrs dont dis anyone else not prepared to pull your **** to the line. If your annoyed about the winner being a convicted doper dont get your own federation to change its rules so a convicted doper can ride on your team. And as for Vino buying off Uran, if Uran wasnt looking back to see where his "team mate" Cav was then he might have won, everyone knew Cav was sitting on his other bought "team mate" Eisle.
 
Don't be late Pedro said:
@janibrajkovic
My opinion: Most teams were not racing to win, they were racing to see Team GB loose.

"Loose" ? I think he meant "lose".

None the less it's an interesting question. How does one ride to make another team lose?

It's a surprising observation from Jani concidering he was in the break all day.

He was also tweeting about the "determination" during the Tour. I do wonder what his motive is here.

Time will tell during August contract time.
 
Regarding routes of past two decades or so, wasn't Beijing the first which had a long route which they would go only once before reaching the circuit. At least the worlds I was watching before that were all completely run on circuits.

Geelong and Copenhagen were similar setups compared to Beijing, of course these two Worlds had easier routes.

London had the circuit in the middle.
 
hrotha said:
Are you seriously commenting on a "mistake" by a non-native speaker who imitates what natives say?

I put mistake in quotation marks, because by now you just gotta accept that "loose" and "lose" are merging, like it's happened with other words in the past.

No not really. I was more commenting how does one ride to make another team loose. I'm still trying to understand how he made his observation from the break that he was in - maybe he was riding against team GB?
 
Sep 1, 2010
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roundabout said:
Brajkovic to Sky?

He's certainly keen on it judging by his postings:

janibrajkovic ‏@janibrajkovic 20 Jul
Together in helicopter with @bradwiggins and @chrisfroome. Quite an honor.

janibrajkovic ‏@janibrajkovic 9 Jul
Couple of years ago every1 was laughing at @TeamSky for doing million things trying to improve performance, now when they're flying...
 
hrotha said:
Are you seriously commenting on a "mistake" by a non-native speaker who imitates what natives write?

I put mistake in quotation marks, because by now you just gotta accept that "loose" and "lose" are merging, like it's happened with other words in the past.
Fixed it for you. They sound the same. Although what you meant is sad but true.

Don't get what you mean by merging??? The words have completely different meaning, plus one is a verb (to lose) and the other one is an adjective (loose) :confused:
 
Apparently this is riding to make another team lose. Which is what you're meant to do isn't it?! Win and make other teams lose?

--

Vincenzo Nibali was one of the most active riders in the mid section of the race. The Italian all rounder attacked on several occasions over Box Hill. Italy placed several riders in moves but had to settle for ninth through Luca Paolini.

"In the final part of the race I chased two attacks as I was afraid the chasing group could come back. We did everything we could to get a medal. We tried hard alongside the other teams, like Belgium, to make the race tougher," Nibalia said at the finish.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/olympic-shorts-australian-aggression-angers-british
 
Jul 16, 2010
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I think it's stupid to use the argument "the other big countries didn't win anything, so they should've helped us."

Hello... Only 3 people can win a medal, everyone else misses out.
 

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