World Championships 2023: Womens Elite Road Race. Loch Lomond - Glasgow 154km

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Jun 20, 2015
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Deignan has been 18th in one stage of the TdFFaZ.

It is her only top 30 result since May.

She has achieved three individual top 10s all season (two stages of RideLondon and one stage of the Vuelta).

This is quite the turnaround in form for her. I know it's home roads and all, but it's absolutely remarkable.

No surprise for me when you consider she was riding as a domestique and doing a good job, as she built up her fitness.
 
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Oct 2, 2020
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I thought Van Vleuten looked better today than at the end of the TDF, mechanicals notwithstanding. Kopecky was clearly the strongest. After her surreal performance in the TDF, she was the clear favorite today, especially on this course. Great ride/recovery by Vollering to take silver.
 
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Feb 20, 2010
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Oh for ***'s sake, they talk over all the interviews other than Lotte's winner's interview, but then we gots to go and hear Lizzie make excuses and talk about how she was tactically perfect and other riders just didn't help her again.
 
Oct 1, 2014
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To be fair, if Lizzie was riding as a domestique I probably missed it due to passing out from shock.
Are you deaf? The commentators constantly made sure we knew all about her domestique roles in the Tour of Britain & Giro & tour de france femme avec zwift. :tearsofjoy:


'The Kopecky effect' love that
 
Aug 3, 2015
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Doesn't mean I have to like it, especially as I've been on board the Vollering train since Parkhotel. The constant attacking her own teammates that Lotte's been doing and the absolute ruthlessness (attacking when the roads are blocked by others including her own mechanical, attacking in feedzones etc.) is part of why she's so strong and so dangerous, but it's also not something I personally find very endearing.

But she was quite clearly by far the strongest rider today and was made to do a lot of the work because of it, and still was strong enough to take it. She's absolutely a well and truly worthy world champion, but it doesn't mean that I didn't want anybody - anybody - not named Lizzie Deignan to beat her.
Thats obviously fair, and I can't say I have been watching 5% of the women's cycling that you have. If I had, maybe I'd be as the same opinion as you. However, since I feel that your Kuss dislike is completely unjustified, Im just a bit sceptic, but I did see the Tour and Kopecky was obviously not trying to do anything for anyone. On the other hand, I would have liked SD Worx to chase stages a bit more and I think Kopecky could easily have won a few more there in that shape.
 
Oct 3, 2021
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No surprise for me when you consider she was riding as a domestique and doing a good job, as she built up her fitness.

But she was riding as a domestique because she hadn't got any race form,and in the TdFF she didn't look to be riding within herself. Before the race I'd have wondered if she'd even finish not be at the head of the race with 12km to go.
 
Apr 10, 2019
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Doesn't mean I have to like it, especially as I've been on board the Vollering train since Parkhotel. The constant attacking her own teammates that Lotte's been doing and the absolute ruthlessness (attacking when the roads are blocked by others including her own mechanical, attacking in feedzones etc.) is part of why she's so strong and so dangerous, but it's also not something I personally find very endearing.

But she was quite clearly by far the strongest rider today and was made to do a lot of the work because of it, and still was strong enough to take it. She's absolutely a well and truly worthy world champion, but it doesn't mean that I didn't want anybody - anybody - not named Lizzie Deignan to beat her.
You also need to be scary strong to keep getting away with being totally ruthless and a cutthroat rider in the long run, otherwise others will just start racing against you and stop working with you.

The Dutch tactics when they still also had AVV there were questionable. You either send her on the attack or have her grind everyone down for Demi by riding a brutal pace. Instead she did a few tempo surges and then stopped riding afterwards.

Oh well, in the end the strongest rider won, nobody can match her on these short ramps.
 
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Feb 20, 2010
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I don't follow women's cycling much, but is Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig disliked in the peloton? If so, why?
Roxane Knetemann and Ellen van Dijk did a podcast where they criticised her tendency to sit on when the race breaks down to small groups and said that nobody likes racing with her.

There's also an element of people not really liking the way the media loves her, largely because of her personality, that makes people feel like she's somewhat exaggerative or caricature-like.
 
Nov 12, 2010
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Haha, you could see Vollering thinking "you're not getting second, you annoying piece of #$&*".

What an amazing race by Kopecky, not much could be done about her. The Dutch had the bad luck of the double mechanical for Van Vleuten, so they didn't have any tactical options, but otherwise they rode a pretty good race.
there are going to be words said to the mechanic. First he persists in a wheel change, then 2 bike changes. How come only AVV has this much bad luck and nobody else has in the entire race. Conspiracy
 
Jan 11, 2010
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there are going to be words said to the mechanic. First he persists in a wheel change, then 2 bike changes. How come only AVV has this much bad luck and nobody else has in the entire race. Conspiracy
She's Van Vleuten so the camera follows her. I'm sure there will have been more mechanicals.
 
Feb 20, 2010
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Thats obviously fair, and I can't say I have been watching 5% of the women's cycling that you have. If I had, maybe I'd be as the same opinion as you. However, since I feel that your Kuss dislike is completely unjustified, Im just a bit sceptic, but I did see the Tour and Kopecky was obviously not trying to do anything for anyone. On the other hand, I would have liked SD Worx to chase stages a bit more and I think Kopecky could easily have won a few more there in that shape.
The Kuss dislike is more about him being emblematic of a role and a type of racing that I hate than him as a person. Similar to why I hated Gerrans or Leipheimer, not because Kuss races like them but where the dislike was about their effect on races, not any comment on them individually as people.

The Kopecky dislike is more about what the way she races implies to me about her as a person.

The Deignan dislike is about her as a person and is in fact one of the few things where Jonathan Vaughters and I agree on something regarding the sport of cycling.
 
Jan 11, 2010
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Roxane Knetemann and Ellen van Dijk did a podcast where they criticised her tendency to sit on when the race breaks down to small groups and said that nobody likes racing with her.

There's also an element of people not really liking the way the media loves her, largely because of her personality, that makes people feel like she's somewhat exaggerative or caricature-like.
You don't even have to know what Van Dijk thinks of her, if you watched today's race you know she's the women's Rui Costa.
 
Feb 20, 2012
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You also need to be scary strong to keep getting away with being totally ruthless and a cutthroat rider in the long run, otherwise others will just start racing against you and stop working with you.

The Dutch tactics when they still also had AVV there were questionable. You either send her on the attack or have her grind everyone down for Demi by riding a brutal pace. Instead she did a few tempo surges and then stopped riding afterwards.

Oh well, in the end the strongest rider won, nobody can match her on these short ramps.
The one big mistake was Vollerings reaction being too slow when Van Vleuten was ahead. Aside from that the mistakes were pretty small
 
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Feb 20, 2010
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Vollering attacked a couple of short digs earlier and was grimacing somewhat so I think she was cramping up or at least on the verge of it a fair bit earlier than it became clear. That was a heroic effort to bridge the gap and try to go over the top when she did, but she was clearly throwing everything she had at it, whereas Kopecky responded to it very easily and with absolute poker-face. Of course, then Demi was unable to hide the cramping up any longer and was forced to stretch out the legs, but it was pretty clear there, she had put everything into that one hail mary as her last chance left of beating Kopecky and came up empty-handed.