World Championship 2025: Mens U23 and Junior ITTs and RRs

Jan 27, 2012
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Thread for all things related to mens racing except Elite ITT and RR. I suggest using the Womens thread for the mixed relay.

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The U23 ITT starts today (22.09) in a minute or so.
 
Sep 20, 2017
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Hate how depleted the field is with a blanket ban on pros racing. Obviously you don't want a Fedorov situation where a 22.5 y/o in his second pro season beats up the kids, but IMO they should have found a middle ground. First and second year U23s (by age) should be eligible during their first pro season.
 
Feb 20, 2012
54,081
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Hate how depleted the field is with a blanket ban on pros racing. Obviously you don't want a Fedorov situation where a 22.5 y/o in his second pro season beats up the kids, but IMO they should have found a middle ground. First and second year U23s (by age) should be eligible during their first pro season.
Part of the field depletion is the prohibitive costs of going to Kigali and a number of federations just leaving the U23s and juniors at home though.

Honestly I don't think there's a great solution for this, other than spreading races out more and allowing riders to actually race more age categories if one of them is the u23 and one of them is the men's race. But maybe that's outrageous.

The extremes of either case are gonna look dumb to me.
 
Sep 20, 2017
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Part of the field depletion is the prohibitive costs of going to Kigali and a number of federations just leaving the U23s and juniors at home though.
Even with every eligible rider there, the field would not have been good. On the U23 teams, there are straight up zero exciting climby-TT prospects, and even if we look at all TT prospects it's really only a Söderqvist who has stayed at the U23 level for longer than he should have.
 
Jan 27, 2012
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Start times of the last 20 riders:

2015:10GROSS Adam22:31
1915:14MARRIAGE Zac26:31
1815:16REMKHI Rudolf28:31
1715:18WALTON Jonas30:31
1615:20MONTI Alberto32:31
1515:22ALMUTAIWEI Mohammad34:31
1415:24CRAUSE Pedri36:31
1315:26KALEJMANN Mateo38:31
1215:28PRINGLE Nate40:31
1115:30HUBER Jan42:31
1015:32LEIDERT Louis44:31
915:34THORNLEY Callum46:31
815:36FINN Lorenzo48:31
715:38KESSLER Cole50:31
615:40PERICAS Adrià52:31
515:42DECOMBLE Maxime54:31
415:44SCHWARZBACHER Matthias56:31
315:46VERVENNE Jonathan58:31
215:48MCKENZIE Hamish1:00:31
115:50SÖDERQVIST Jakob1:02:31
 
May 10, 2015
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Hate how depleted the field is with a blanket ban on pros racing. Obviously you don't want a Fedorov situation where a 22.5 y/o in his second pro season beats up the kids, but IMO they should have found a middle ground. First and second year U23s (by age) should be eligible during their first pro season.

I still don't understand their decision. Was so easy to just find some midleground (like first year pros or riders who haven't raced in the WT, or haven't raced a GT, etc).

Obviously, like Rick said it also looks worse because it's in Rwanda and a lot of countries don't want to spend the money to get full teams there but still, it will look meeh every year from now on. Most of the time just a junior 2.0 fight between the same guys.
 
Jun 30, 2022
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If it were open to all U23s, some of the top favorites still wouldn‘t show up because they would be at the elites. I think it makes much more sense as a talent showcase instead of as a way to find the most farm-happy pro.
 
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Feb 20, 2012
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For reference, Gajdulewicz's time is 3'17" faster than Reusser's time from yesterday.
Bigger gap than last year, when it was 2'46 between the fastest U23 man and elite woman

However judging by Bäckstedt earlier today, it could also be that general conditions are much better somehow someway
 
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Sep 2, 2011
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Borgo gained 13" on Gajdulewicz from T2 to finish, so the time is surely beatable.

Edit: Alvarez gained 14".
 
Feb 20, 2012
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Conditions are way better than yesterday. Plenty of guys are beating the sector 3 splits of some top riders yesterday. Sector 1 is also close for many