Rate the WCRR

[etymology]

so far, it's a solid 8, though that is subject to change. if the the stream i've been watching since this 8:30 this morning is accurate, well, let's just say a lot can happen in the last 29.1km of this race!

are the riders actually doing track stands on libby hill or is the picture freeze problem getting worse?

anyways: i have a full lunar eclipse to watch tonight. it starts at 25 minutes from now (21:42 u.s east coast time), concluding at 27 minutes past midnight. if the man in the moon gropes casseopia's butt on the celestial podium, i will report every sordid detail AFTER i cast my vote in this poll.

 

[hrotha]

Re:

It's not about the attacks not sticking so much as about the perceptions that the attacks may stick. Besides, every lap was 4 interesting km followed by 13 dull ones where we knew nothing much could happen (easy straight roads, perfect for an organized pack and to save energy between laps), and that's one long impasse. It was all but guaranteed to be decided on the last 4 km of the last lap.

I mean, there were lots of attacks in Copenhague 2011 too.

 

[42x16ss]

Re:

What about Rogers? Surely the Bargain Bucket Klöden doesn't go on the likable list.

Hmmm, is it wrong that I actually warmed to him a little last year? Normally I can't stand Rogers at all but since last years Giro he's grown on me a bit

 

[yespatterns]

I gave it a 7 based on the amount of action, the conclusion, especially considering the distance. Production and presentation could have been better, but it was my fave one day race so far this year. Too bad the field didn't include the GT winners, but that's probably an unrealistic ask.

 

[greenedge]

7- Sagan's ride was superb and so emphatic.
Would have liked to see more action earlier on though.

 

[hfer07]

Until we get a WCRR parcours the likes of Sallanches or Duitama, we sadly won't witness a "great race".

This Parcours was as equal as the racing action- barely OK

 

[Jspear]

An 8 because there was decent action and the winner was exactly who I wanted! Very happy the nearly man got a big win.

 

[Jancouver]

Voted 10 only because I'm biased.

In reality, the racing action was very good and close to 10. Unfortunately, the race course and TV coverage was just average due to the lack of experience and the usual incompetence of USA Cycling / UCI.

At least we have a worthy winner and I cant wait to see Sagan back in California next year as a reigning winner and a world champion. I truly think his win is a big win not only for him and his fans but also for all the cycling sponsors and cycling in general.

 

[jaylew]

Re: Re:

So Degenkolb rode good, but Aussies rode poor, is that's what you're saying? Cause I would say Aussies rode smart, to their strengths, and Germany and especially Degenkolb rode bad, or should I say stupid

Degenkolb rode honorably. Australia rode stupid. Riding smart would be pulling a Firenze a la Costa. Or winning in any way.

er no. Australia rode smart. Only 1 rider beat them. You are confusing smart with entertaining - two different things.

Isn't the aim to win the race

Please explain to everyone what Australia could have done differently to give them a better chance of winning

How about not having your last two guys working together in the finale rather than sprinting against each other? Having Gerrans sitting near the front ready to go with or chase down someone like GVA or maybe...Sagan?

Matthews:

When asked if Gerrans had helped him, he replied: "No, I think we were sprinting against each other unfortunately. We had two leaders so it is was it is."

When then asked if he was disappointed if Gerrans had not worked for him, he added: "Yeah, I would have liked the full support but it is what it is. We came in with two leaders."

I get that Gerrans is one of Australia's best ever but he came in with unknown form, the parcours was made for someone like Matthews, and most importantly, Bling was there in the finale and is faster. Gerrans should have swallowed his pride and sacrificed himself.

 

[jaylew]

Re:

Strange that people say that Sagan attacked with 3 kms to go which was brilliantly planned and executed - Strangest thing he was invisible for nearly all the race. What was he doing for the other 261kms.

Exactly what he was supposed to be doing, keeping his powder dry. After all, it's not as if he had strong team support.

 

[Asero831]

We do not need a 9 man team. The talent level of the peloton is just to high that they can control the race with only 6 guys.
This would encourage more aggressive riding

 

[orangerider]

Re: Re:

Exactly what he was supposed to be doing, keeping his powder dry. After all, it's not as if he had strong team support.

Exactly. It's not like his "team" had more than one card to play. Sagan had to bide his time and make the smart move forward where he knew he could win, rather than just get some TV time. Also, I just checked the finish list and his two other "teammates" were DNF, not sure when they dropped out but probably long before the finish arrived. This meant Sagan was a one-man team during much of the fast paced action and still pulled it off !

 

[IndianCyclist]

Good race but it was not a selective parcours like Flanders nor an attrition race like MSR. As a result there were teammates present till the last 5 kms. After that it literally became a power sprint. I give it an 8 as the riders tried to make the race with attacks but Parcours wasn't good enough to explode the race.
Sagan and GVA had the power as has been seen in their duel at TDF as well. Sagan won it not because of his power but because of his bike handling skills in the downhill & corners. It was also probable that Cance would have won this. GVA gave up early bcos of EBH and ambition to focus on just the gold. He should have thought about Belgium not having anybody for the sprint as Boonen had already shot his bolt. Sometimes u gotta try even when u are going to lose.Like Nibali in Florence
Norway had really good tactics with EBH to chase down attacks and Kristoff for the sprint. But the focus in chasing should be the leader of the race not the chase r of the leader. A little bit of flexibility in tactics is required for the medaling.
Australia did everything right till last 500m after that they were utterly crap. You cannot have 2 guys in the same team sprinting for the line. Gerrans should have ledout Matthews.
Degekolb failed for Germany.
Terpstra went early.
Navardauskas was a surprise.
Valverde, Gallopin were good
everybody had one shot at it and if they went early they lost. Also not have proper position in the final 5 kms means it was lost. This race was not for countries like Italy & Spain.

 

[nepetalactone]

9.

Last 70 K (what I watched) were very exciting. Penultimate lap with a strong group of favorites then last 10 were great with Sitsou going again and a cameo from Farrar. Stybar at the base of 1st climb got me screaming. Then Sagan had me screaming again. And he made the gap with his crazy tuck on the descent then held it to the end. Great!!

 

[WildspokeJoe]

Just got back from Richmond. Great day. The course was meh but not nearly as bad as Hamilton if that’s any consolation.

That being said, how the race unfolded couldn’t have gone any better as far as storylines go. For the casual fan attending the race you had a US rider out front the entire day. Ben King in the first break. Then Phinney made his move and finally Tyler. But serious fans knew it was all just window dressing. I walked almost the entire course and the 23rd street hill was the only place that gave the riders a real opportunity to break the field.

If you listened to Sagan in his post race interview he said it was a very strange race as he “waited and waited” Sagan’s attack was perfectly timed. But if it wasn’t for his attack and the race ended in a field sprint I don’t think people would be nearly as excited about the outcome.

Race 8. Course 3.

 

[Trev_S]

Re:

A 7, the route was really bad, but at least the riders tried to attack.
Sagan with no team beating the aussie assclowns was also good, I really dislike the way they race.

Of course we have our own personal opinions but if you ran a team with the abilities of the Aussies, how would you race? They race to win remember, not to make things look good. In 5 years nobody will remember any attack today except the 1 rider who won. If Sagan didn't pull it off the only rider that would be remembered in 5 years would be Michael Matthews. If not for Super Sagan the course was simply not hard enough today to stop the aussie assclowns

I think what it means is look at the teams that made the podium, Slovakia had 3 team members, Australia had 9, Lithuania had 3.
Both Sagan & Navardauskas had to make the race their own in whatever manner they could depending on how it unfolded. Neither could have any control of the race barring attacks of their own or feed off other teams and attack if/when they could or use the other teams and wait for the sprint.
Australia on the other hand had a team of full compliment of 9 riders, where they could have forced the race in the later laps and put pressure on the other teams and individuals. They sat in either by choice or because that's the best they could do. It was only towards the end when a couple of them helped Germany chase the break (containing Belgium and Italy etc).
The Aussie's should have had guys earmarked for the later attack/breakaway and either instigate the attack or to go with one. They rode the first half of the race well by conserving for the later laps which left them with good numbers in the later laps.

Compare the Aussie men's race to the Aussie Women's race and it's chalk and cheese. The Women raced to win it, they had the numbers and went on the attack and/or with any move and eventually getting 2 riders into the late break. Whilst they didn't score the podium they raced together with a common goal of winning.

The Men's had Matthews and Gerrans racing against each other and nobody following or making the attacks, they probably should have had Haussler or Clarke make the move into the late break. Either one of them could then be dangerous in going for the outsider win from the break. They basically had a negative race but they did score a Silver medal out of it.

I score the race a 4.
Long and fairly dull until the later 1/2 to 3rd of the race where at least it picked up a little, it was only the Boonen/Kwiatkowski/Viviani group that sparked it up until the the final few km's. These races are basically to long for them to be "exciting" unless they course has longer punchy hills or cobbles etc. like the classics.
What if the race was 8 laps, would that have encouraged harder/more attacking racing much earlier and for a longer period???

 

[PremierAndrew]

Re:

An 8 because there was decent action and the winner was exactly who I wanted! Very happy the nearly man got a big win.

Van Avermaet won?

 

[fauniera]

The route was crappy, can't give more than 5. Only Sagan saved us from a bunch sprint with an unworthy winner. The racing was exciting in the final round, again thanks to Sagan and Sagan only. I would expect more from a decent parcours though than just one good round.

 

[Bolder]

I agree that a solo winner out of a bunch sprint type race is the best outcome. I would have liked to see a course in which you've got a couple of late breakaways with pursuers, but having lived in central Va., that wasn't going to happen. I personally love Sagan, even if he is a goofball. And I liked his appeal to think about the migrant crisis, even if he couldn't quite articulate what he was thinking.

 

[barmaher]

It was a very good race, considering the course was never going to be too selective.

The attack a couple of laps out with Boonen, Stannard, Kwiatkowski and others made for very interesting viewing. It turned into nothing, but I thought it had a reasonable chance of sticking.

I can understand how Libertine might think cycling is going down the tubes. I can understand people who dislike Sagan for his past misdmeanours, but I don't see how him winning the race makes cycling go down the tubes.

A large reason people get hooked to cycling is because of exciting racing with worthy winners.

I would say this race was relatively exciting (say 7 out of 10) and the winner was worthy.

 

[Echoes]

Epic fail to all those who claimed an attacker won. They surely don't know what a real cycling breakaway is.

Even Michel Wuyts said Satan had sucked wheel all day long. You could never see his ugly face before the final part of the final lap and since the climbs (if you can call these climbs and cobbles; the cobbles are better aligned than on the Citadelle of Namur) are all gathered in the final part, it's taylor-made for an explosive uphill finisher but not a true endurance cycling rider. Mug race with a mug winner in a mug era.

And some would ridicule me because I claimed that the World Championship was not as hard as a major spring classic. For f*ck sake, Satan is unable to train hard enough to get a classic win. Each spring was a fail for him because he can't be bothered to train hard enough in winter. Classics don't pay and Satan only thinks of his wallet. I still remember this pathetic defeat to Kwiatkowski at the Montepaschi because he rather wanted to make the show prior to the event than go on a recognition/train hard.

This route was poor, that's why Satan could win. It's not because the race has a bombastic name and because you have an LGBT-like jersey at stake that it's a hard one.

Satan is a star (in the Hollywoodian sense of the word) in an era when cycling is going awry. The frivolous, bourgeois era of Jawbones glasses, the era of sport betting, the era of mandatory helmets, the era of Olga Tinkov (such employer, such employee after all), the era of Internet forums with their own set of stupid gifs and lame posts) an era in which spectators are groupies/fans. The era of ipods and Internet forums. Cycling is long dead and the Slovakian is the perfect embodiment of a post-cycling era He's just a bourgois, obsessed with money. A Coca-Cola cyclist! True cyclists did a hard sport. A hard sport that made you humble. That's not what the poor Slovakian is. Would you imagine Brik Schotte wheelying after each of his win? What is so great in wheelying? even my grampa who is 85 year old can do a wheelie. It's really like a despicable "look at me, I'm the best, I'm the most handsome" attention-seeking attitude. Would Girardengo ever do a "dunce cap" behind a fellow rider on a podium? Lol even my little cousin who is 10 years old no longer does "dunce cap" because it's so plain stupid. This guy really has a grain. The bit about the "migrant crisis" is just the height of his media-attention personality. And to hell with this distinction: he's great on the bike but "controversial" off it. A true champion is never so arrogant and attention-seeking. He's a wheelsucker on the bike who could only be bothered to train hard when it's financially worth it.

I can only understand Cancellara when he stopped this *** from winning Cogoleto-Sanremo in 2013. Normally I dislike such negative attitude but it was good to teach this *** a lesson. I can understand how Fabian refused to help him win a cobbled stage at Bore de France. It's some kind of a Tommy Lee Jones attitude in the film "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"...

And if you're wondering why a truly knowledgeable poster like Libertine Seguros is so p*ssed by this outcome, then you might just want to understand what this sport really is. Because Libertine truly knows this sport inside out, knows the spirit of it and certainly does not deserve all this contempt from posters who can't hold a candle to "them" (sic).
I would just have to quote Jean Gabin: "If you are talking about cycling, it's as though I was talking about chicken breeding. You don't have a clue" "Only that is history, you don't learn it on the roadside" (now we should say before the telly instead of on the roadside).

 

[Lance Armstrong]

Epic fail to all those who claimed an attacker won. They surely don't know what a real cycling breakaway is.

Even Michel Wuyts said Satan had sucked wheel all day long. You could never see his ugly face before the final part of the final lap and since the climbs (if you can call these climbs and cobbles; the cobbles are better aligned than on the Citadelle of Namur) are all gathered in the final part, it's taylor-made for an explosive uphill finisher but not a true endurance cycling rider. Mug race with a mug winner in a mug era.

Look at Top 10 - all of them wheelsucked except Kwiatkowski. This is what modern cycling is about. You should maybe try another sport.

 

[SeriousSam]

 

[Arredondo]

Someone who gives this race below 6, i cannot take serious. I don't know what kind of racing those kind of people want, but we are not going to get it in the next 50 years.

I'll go with a 8.5. I loved the race and the winner.

 

[saganftw]

Epic fail to all those who claimed an attacker won. They surely don't know what a real cycling breakaway is.

Even Michel Wuyts said Satan had sucked wheel all day long. You could never see his ugly face before the final part of the final lap and since the climbs (if you can call these climbs and cobbles; the cobbles are better aligned than on the Citadelle of Namur) are all gathered in the final part, it's taylor-made for an explosive uphill finisher but not a true endurance cycling rider. Mug race with a mug winner in a mug era.

And some would ridicule me because I claimed that the World Championship was not as hard as a major spring classic. For f*ck sake, Satan is unable to train hard enough to get a classic win. Each spring was a fail for him because he can't be bothered to train hard enough in winter. Classics don't pay and Satan only thinks of his wallet. I still remember this pathetic defeat to Kwiatkowski at the Montepaschi because he rather wanted to make the show prior to the event than go on a recognition/train hard.

This route was poor, that's why Satan could win. It's not because the race has a bombastic name and because you have an LGBT-like jersey at stake that it's a hard one.

Satan is a star (in the Hollywoodian sense of the word) in an era when cycling is going awry. The frivolous, bourgeois era of Jawbones glasses, the era of sport betting, the era of mandatory helmets, the era of Olga Tinkov (such employer, such employee after all), the era of Internet forums with their own set of stupid gifs and lame posts) an era in which spectators are groupies/fans. The era of ipods and Internet forums. Cycling is long dead and the Slovakian is the perfect embodiment of a post-cycling era He's just a bourgois, obsessed with money. A Coca-Cola cyclist! True cyclists did a hard sport. A hard sport that made you humble. That's not what the poor Slovakian is. Would you imagine Brik Schotte wheelying after each of his win? What is so great in wheelying? even my grampa who is 85 year old can do a wheelie. It's really like a despicable "look at me, I'm the best, I'm the most handsome" attention-seeking attitude. Would Girardengo ever do a "dunce cap" behind a fellow rider on a podium? Lol even my little cousin who is 10 years old no longer does "dunce cap" because it's so plain stupid. This guy really has a grain. The bit about the "migrant crisis" is just the height of his media-attention personality. And to hell with this distinction: he's great on the bike but "controversial" off it. A true champion is never so arrogant and attention-seeking. He's a wheelsucker on the bike who could only be bothered to train hard when it's financially worth it.

I can only understand Cancellara when he stopped this *** from winning Cogoleto-Sanremo in 2013. Normally I dislike such negative attitude but it was good to teach this *** a lesson. I can understand how Fabian refused to help him win a cobbled stage at Bore de France. It's some kind of a Tommy Lee Jones attitude in the film "Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"...

And if you're wondering why a truly knowledgeable poster like Libertine Seguros is so p*ssed by this outcome, then you might just want to understand what this sport really is. Because Libertine truly knows this sport inside out, knows the spirit of it and certainly does not deserve all this contempt from posters who can't hold a candle to "them" (sic).
I would just have to quote Jean Gabin: "If you are talking about cycling, it's as though I was talking about chicken breeding. You don't have a clue" "Only that is history, you don't learn it on the roadside" (now we should say before the telly instead of on the roadside).

i love this post,usually negative posts are quite boring and are parroting already known BS but this is fantastic hatespeech,extremely enjoyable to read