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Today's race started off a bit slow but the last 3-4 laps were brilliant entertainment. But I'm a sucker for a surprise winner and King Küng's on the podium so I may be biased.
I enjoy watching the Tour of California (last I checked Valverde has never raced it). However, it also has great weather to race in. The ONLY race that was decent to watch this year was the men's Junior race and the men's Junior ITT. The entire rest of the races with a total WASTE of time.
When Alejandro retires I will not go hunting for races. If they aren't easily available on TV to find I won't be looking for them. Which means living in the US, I likely won't be watching many races outside of California and Utah.
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Please never be in charge of the extreme weather protocol, Koronin.
A light rain is fine, but NOT racing in a monsoon. This was basically the same as telling a college or NFL team to play a football game in the middle of a hurricane. Stupid at best.
A podium with riders from attacks at 45, 30 and 60 km to go shows how good the race was.
The roads were fine on the whole, bar a small flooded section on top of the climb which was well marshalled and riders slowed down. They did the correct thing this morning in taking out the problem areas and avoiding them.
It should NOT have been raced in these conditions. These conditions are good ONLY for causing injury and illness to riders.
So far you have been the only one. You sound like a 1 rider fan only.
Weather was not good and I don't like it either. But race was really good.
It’s an outdoor event, you get wind, rain and sometimes snow.
Sport is tough, it isn’t a tea party.
The weather made for bad racing. As I said I only enjoyed the men's Junior RR and ITT. The rest were bad at best.
Koronin wait until the Wollongong in 2021 - You'll probably find that with the poor performance of Matthews today, a flat course will be presented for Ewan.
As I said Quatar was worse with it's pan flat course so any plan flat course is going to be worse regardless of weather. (Part of what my big issue with the women's Junior race was. Totally different course that was basically flat.)
Anyway my main takeaway is that circuit races are almost all terrible, and you're mostly dependent on weather. Maybe you instead make it like de Ronde but I guess that's logistically impossible.
I really just want to know how Innsbruck would've been without that hellhole climb or whatever it was called
I really just want to know how Innsbruck would've been without that hellhole climb or whatever it was called
Why is that your take? You didn't get the chance to see how this race would have played out in good weather. Certainly it wouldn't just have been a roll-around for an eventual sprint.
I phrased that poorly. I've held that opinion for a long time.
With good weather this could've been better than most because of the techincality and irregularity, and with the bigger climbs before the main route. But if the main difficulty is only 8km from the finish the biggest favorites can wait that long and I really dislike that.
Maybe it woudl be interesting if 2020 had an easier circuit with some real bigass climbs in run in instead of just a hard climb in the circuit.
Rick, I think you’re saying “circuit races suck, unless the circuit is designed well, and the racers race it hard.”
I think we saw enough in the other races to say that, had the forecast turned out completely wrong and the sun shone all day, the circuit was still demanding and technical enough that an exciting Elite Mens race would have more than likely taken place. If the 2 big climbs had stayed in, that would obviously have made a difference to the race and the result.
I think we saw enough in the other races to say that, had the forecast turned out completely wrong and the sun shone all day, the circuit was still demanding and technical enough that an exciting Elite Mens race would have more than likely taken place. If the 2 big climbs had stayed in, that would obviously have made a difference to the race and the result.
If it had been sunny, we likely WOULD have gotten a good race from this circuit. It was well designed, just had horrible weather and that usually makes for poor racing.
No.
It.
Doesn’t.
It can. It didn’t today. No amount of you saying it did will change that.
What? Some of the most memorable racing days in the history of cycling involved bad weather conditions (much worse than today, by the way; today was rather mild all things considered). Except for strong headwinds, most instances of bad weather make races better, not worse, because they make them both harder and more open. This is one hell of a bad take.
Remember, that in Koronin's case, good racing is races Valverde wins.
She has also said before that she thinks the Tour is less prestigious than the Tour of California.
So it's pretty difficult to discuss topics like these with her because the foundations of our understandings and opinions differ quite vastly.
I said I like the Tour of California a lot better than the Tour de France. I find Cali to be a better race. I don't think I said anything about it being more prestigious.
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