Race Thread

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Brand wins. Nearly a minute ahead of Puck, and nearly 2 minutes ahead of Worst. Quite an impressive performance, although I did get the impression that Puck maybe had a cold or something.

To illustrate the difference between cyclocross in the Netherlands and Belgium: this race wasn't on tv. Whereas in Belgium even the U23 men get a live tv broadcast...
 
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That was some fun drama in the last lap. He would likely have won in any event though. I'm kind of surprised that CX isn't bigger in France but domestic road pros can just train in the south all winter...
I had a discussion about this on Twitter a month or so ago; the French treat it as a training sport, and for Juniors to race. After that, most serious riders go Road or MTB........and do some races for winter training.
Venturini was Junior World Champ, Alaphillipe was 2nd, Bisiaux won last year, and they have a whole raft of promising juniors at the moment - I can't see many of them choosing CX as their No1 discipline.
 
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Watching the national championships, the varying coverage is interesting. Belgian champs was the standard decent stuff provided by Sporza. Dutch was average, however a shame it isn't live on national tv. Also strange that it was only available on Discovery+ here in the netherlands when the French championships were shown everywhere on the same platform. The French championships coverage was good as usual. My normal complaint with french cx races is they position the cameras in what i'd class as the wrong location, however this didn't seem to be the case this time.
British champs was half decent but as with the previous years, it needs alot of work. Some of the replays are unneccesary, but mainly the cameras are often not positioned in the best location and (i understand cameras and camera operators are expensive) there weren't enough. I think even for a static event, they're still using 4G. The best coverage was a few years ago with the Abergavenny national champs and C1 national trophy, that were done by S4C. They had pre race coverage (albeit in Welsh!) and a proper set up with a production truck and satellite. Like I said, I know it's expensive, however surely the sport is popular enough now that there can be someone who can put the money required and effort in to making good coverage.
 
I had a discussion about this on Twitter a month or so ago; the French treat it as a training sport, and for Juniors to race. After that, most serious riders go Road or MTB........and do some races for winter training.
Venturini was Junior World Champ, Alaphillipe was 2nd, Bisiaux won last year, and they have a whole raft of promising juniors at the moment - I can't see many of them choosing CX as their No1 discipline.
Venturini is an interesting one. He raced a full cyclocross calendar as a U23 and his first few years as an elite. Then 3 or 4 years basically only racing French nats and a prep race or two. He raced a bit more in 2021-22 and traveled to USA for worlds, and the last two seasons he has filled up his calendar a bit more. He finished 10th at Worlds last season and has 4 finishes inside the top 11 as an elite (out of 5 participations).