- Feb 20, 2010
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The thing is, it's not exclusively the course, but it's other things. There are only a small number of real elite climbers in the women's bunch, because in large part of a lack of real climbing races. The fact that the two strongest climbers at present are both from the same country created a big problem for these Worlds, as did the other negative happenstance which is that some of the other strongest climbers are not from countries with great depth, as a result you had them being outnumbered in the bunch and looking to those who still had helpers left to commit to the chase. Like Emma Johansson in 2014, I am not going to criticise, say, Ash Moolman-Pasio for not going all out on the front of the group in pursuit of van der Breggen; she started the race with only one teammate, who is a teenager with precious little European racing experience. Likewise Jolanda Neff, who's only done one road race in two years, against a far weaker field than this one. Once the gap was made, all it would then take would be for one or the other of the remaining elite climbers to not be in form, and you've got a completely broken chase. A bit like Dumoulin chasing Froome, there's the desire if you're not at 100% to have the helpers because you aren't going to catch van der Breggen on the flat on your own, she got silver in the ITT and the gold medalist is on the same team as her so stifling the chase; at the same time any time spent dithering over whether to wait for helpers is time she's gaining on you.
The women are more than capable of racing from distance in the high mountains and it being much more even. The La Crosetta stage of the 2014 Giro (the day Kasia Niewiadoma "arrived") is a good case in point. Everybody expected Pooley to attack on La Crosetta, 30km from home, so she attacked on the preceding climb 50km from home instead, bridged to the break while the other bigs were arguing over who would control her because they didn't want to waste their legs before La Crosetta, then Pooley got on the front and rode everybody off her wheel, with the exception of the teenage neo-pro Niewiadoma who only dropped right at the crest of the climb, while a select group of 6 including Abbott, Lichtenberg, Longo Borghini and the Rabo trio of Vos, PFP and Anna VDB got away from the rest of the field behind, after which Rabo pulled Kasia back to work on the front for the group, which fought and fought and eventually limited Pooley's gains to 15 seconds.
Even better is the 2016 Giro stage to Madonna della Guardia, which was over four serious climbs including the Colle di Nava. Having dropped time on the Mortirolo the day before, Niewiadoma went solo in the best young riders' jersey on the first climb of the day and tried to ride the whole 120km on her own. She made it to the penultimate climb, when Evelyn Stevens, 2nd on GC and having lost the maglia rosa the previous day, attacked drawing maglia rosa Mara Abbott with her. The two Americans built up a lead and caught the Pole, eventually distancing her near the summit, however neither are especially good descenders (in Mara's case conspicuously bad) and Kasia caught them again downhill. They then rode as a trio in the valley, with the remainder of the big guns - except Longo Borghini, who bonked hard - trying to chase them down, with Guderzo and Lichtenberg being tasked with much of the chasing, with Guarnier and van der Breggen having teammates up the road. On the final climb all hell broke loose as Abbott realised she needed more time with the TT to come, and tried to TT away from everyone on the climb but couldn't manage it.
This stage was around 33% longer than either of those, however, and I do think that played a big role - 50km from home in a 110-120km stage is a big ask, but you're a lot more fresh than setting off 50km from home in a 150-160km stage. The other thing is that while there have been a few more stages for mountain goats this year in the women's races, and the UCI have upgraded a couple of climby races like the Emakumeen Bira (and not before time), these haven't been especially sawtoothed; unlike that 2016 Giro stage with four major mountains, a lot of the stages have been Unipuerto or similar. All of the mountain stages of the Giro featured only one major ascent at the end with smaller climbs if any before them, and La Course featuring the double ascent of the Romme and Colombière is perhaps the most comparable single climbing day. And there, you had four riders make the day; two of whom were essentially riding with limited support yesterday and the best two of whom were teammates, on the strongest team which afforded them the best protection. Everybody else was minutes back. Without wishing to be harsh on Cille, as after all I think she's great and her performance and subsequent reactions in La Course were one of the highlights of the entire season, when somebody like her attacks 40km from the finish, riding for Cervélo-Bigla where only she and Ash Moolman-Pasio are real mountain threats, there is a sense that it's a dangerous, but not necessarily the decisive move; that a couple of the real big guns like van der Breggen and van Vleuten would have followed if they thought it was. When Anna van der Breggen attacks 50km from the finish, riding for a Dutch team which is, top-down, the strongest team in the race and she should therefore be one of the freshest riders left in the group, there is a sense that it could well be the decisive move, because if the likes of Niewiadoma, Longo Borghini, Moolman-Pasio and co. know what's best for them, they're on that move like glue, so if they're not, it's because Anna is stronger than them, and therefore Anna is probably going to win.
Time gaps in mountain stages are still pretty colossal among the women in a way that they simply aren't among the elite men (sometimes are at the .1 level, e.g. Nairo Quintana in the Route du Sud 2012 or Raúl Alarcón and Amaro Antunes in the Volta a Portugal 2017) except in exceptional circumstances, such as, say, Froome to Jafferau. At the same time, we talk back to stratospheric historical achievements like Coppi's Pinerolo masterpiece, Merckx's eight minutes to Mourenx, Fuente's Formigal raid, Hinault into Ávila or in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and think, you know what, I bet those were pretty boring from a televisual spectacle, right? I mean, the only question is how much are they going to win by? Especially Merckx, seeing as he was already winning the race, the others were fighting a GC. We lionise and celebrate the difficulty of the 1995 World Championships in Duitama, but only 25 riders finished them and though you had 10 within 2 minutes, 15th was over 9 minutes back, as opposed to 44 women yesterday making it in that timeframe - it's just that most of them came between the 7 and 9 minutes mark as opposed to 10 near the front and then 5 spread all over the road minutes behind. Why is it that Merckx or Fuente beating the field by almost ten minutes in a mountain stage is an example of great gutsy riding, a legendary achievement, but van der Breggen or Abbott doing it is seen by some quarters as evidence of the underdevelopment of women's racing and that easier courses for women are required? As I've pointed out, one of the main factors in the development of race controlling techniques among the men has been the increased professionalism meaning stronger domestiques, so leaders have to do much less thinking for themselves. Others point out that women's cycling is more like men's cycling was in the 70s, before that took hold. We can't have it both ways - want racing to be hard to control, with fewer strong domestiques and leaders attacking far from the finish, and then when we see a race that is exactly like that, complain that there wasn't suspense because it was over too quickly and the remainder was boring. A lot of races in the 70s were just like yesterday's demonstration from van der Breggen. We can't romanticise the attacks from the past and then deprecate the value of van der Breggen's triumph because of a lack of depth in the péloton for that type of racing. Because, guess what? It was precisely that which made those historic exploits in the past possible in men's cycling too.
The medium-mountain type designs or Unipuerto stages seem to be a way of getting around that for the time being, allowing the use of serious mountains but without running the risk of eliminating too many riders hors delais (Rio benefited greatly from that, you could argue). But then that's no answer to the 2020 Olympic woes. One very gradual 3% climb for an eternity and then a small bumpy circuit is in no way a comparison to the men's race with its decisive double mountains. The women could handle the gradual 3% for an eternity then the 6km 10% Mikuni Pass with a descent into the finish within 160km, sure. That wouldn't be as brutal as yesterday was, because, you know, it was the lack of respite as much as anything else that created such attrition; the pro women can handle 160km no problem, and they can handle some serious climbs; they've done the Stelvio, the Mortirolo, the Zoncolan, Mont Ventoux, Romme + Colombière and plenty of others that are as hard or harder than the Igls climb - Urkiola, Supergà, Mende, Mont Serein, Jaizkibel, Madonna del Ghisallo, Planche des Belles Filles and so on. Perhaps it's better with trade teams, given the number of the best riders concentrated into a handful of countries, and perhaps it was that the race was of such a length and going over the climbs all day that made it as decisive as it was.
But perhaps it was simply that Anna van der Breggen was that much better than everybody else, and her biggest competition was on her team, and the power and strength of her attack demoralised the opposition early on leading to many contenders being too shell-shocked to really respond to what racing was going on and fight for the medals once the gold was clearly decided.
Actually there had been some gripes about this one, because the UCI claimed that logistics meant they could only do the Gramartboden climb in one race, so the men's elite got it, only for the event organisers to reveal that during the women's race there was a sportif up there, thus showing the elite women were below cyclotourists on the priorities list, just like RideLondon where the men do a facsimile of the 2012 Olympic course, the cyclotourists do a facsimile of the 2012 Olympic course, and the elite women do a one hour crit. Cille and Kasper Asgreen had an interesting exchange about it.gregrowlerson said:The Hegelian said:
I agree. I don't watch much women's cycling (partly due to the lack of television coverage), but tuned in with about 50 kms to go, and the Dutch favourites appeared to be in some trouble. Suddenly, 10kms later, the race was over.
I briefly thought to myself, "This course seems pretty selective for one that we were complaining about; this climb goes on for ages". Only to remember that it was the 2020 Olympic course that had been made far too easy.
However, this race does give those who support having easier women's races ammunition, because this tough course really revealed just how superior the winner (and to a lesser extent her team) was. Personally I think that the women should race the same course as the men no matter what, and enjoy a dominant display if it happens, and let the depth of the women's field simply grow over time (gaps used to be a lot larger in the early editions of the men's TDF of course, and they didn't suddenly make the courses easier....they did eventually though). But in today's commercial world power brokers likely are scared of a race being decided when it still has 20% of the distance to go. So I can see a little more now of some of the logic of making the 2020 Games course for the women as easier (compared to the men's) as it is.
The thing is, it's not exclusively the course, but it's other things. There are only a small number of real elite climbers in the women's bunch, because in large part of a lack of real climbing races. The fact that the two strongest climbers at present are both from the same country created a big problem for these Worlds, as did the other negative happenstance which is that some of the other strongest climbers are not from countries with great depth, as a result you had them being outnumbered in the bunch and looking to those who still had helpers left to commit to the chase. Like Emma Johansson in 2014, I am not going to criticise, say, Ash Moolman-Pasio for not going all out on the front of the group in pursuit of van der Breggen; she started the race with only one teammate, who is a teenager with precious little European racing experience. Likewise Jolanda Neff, who's only done one road race in two years, against a far weaker field than this one. Once the gap was made, all it would then take would be for one or the other of the remaining elite climbers to not be in form, and you've got a completely broken chase. A bit like Dumoulin chasing Froome, there's the desire if you're not at 100% to have the helpers because you aren't going to catch van der Breggen on the flat on your own, she got silver in the ITT and the gold medalist is on the same team as her so stifling the chase; at the same time any time spent dithering over whether to wait for helpers is time she's gaining on you.
The women are more than capable of racing from distance in the high mountains and it being much more even. The La Crosetta stage of the 2014 Giro (the day Kasia Niewiadoma "arrived") is a good case in point. Everybody expected Pooley to attack on La Crosetta, 30km from home, so she attacked on the preceding climb 50km from home instead, bridged to the break while the other bigs were arguing over who would control her because they didn't want to waste their legs before La Crosetta, then Pooley got on the front and rode everybody off her wheel, with the exception of the teenage neo-pro Niewiadoma who only dropped right at the crest of the climb, while a select group of 6 including Abbott, Lichtenberg, Longo Borghini and the Rabo trio of Vos, PFP and Anna VDB got away from the rest of the field behind, after which Rabo pulled Kasia back to work on the front for the group, which fought and fought and eventually limited Pooley's gains to 15 seconds.
Even better is the 2016 Giro stage to Madonna della Guardia, which was over four serious climbs including the Colle di Nava. Having dropped time on the Mortirolo the day before, Niewiadoma went solo in the best young riders' jersey on the first climb of the day and tried to ride the whole 120km on her own. She made it to the penultimate climb, when Evelyn Stevens, 2nd on GC and having lost the maglia rosa the previous day, attacked drawing maglia rosa Mara Abbott with her. The two Americans built up a lead and caught the Pole, eventually distancing her near the summit, however neither are especially good descenders (in Mara's case conspicuously bad) and Kasia caught them again downhill. They then rode as a trio in the valley, with the remainder of the big guns - except Longo Borghini, who bonked hard - trying to chase them down, with Guderzo and Lichtenberg being tasked with much of the chasing, with Guarnier and van der Breggen having teammates up the road. On the final climb all hell broke loose as Abbott realised she needed more time with the TT to come, and tried to TT away from everyone on the climb but couldn't manage it.
This stage was around 33% longer than either of those, however, and I do think that played a big role - 50km from home in a 110-120km stage is a big ask, but you're a lot more fresh than setting off 50km from home in a 150-160km stage. The other thing is that while there have been a few more stages for mountain goats this year in the women's races, and the UCI have upgraded a couple of climby races like the Emakumeen Bira (and not before time), these haven't been especially sawtoothed; unlike that 2016 Giro stage with four major mountains, a lot of the stages have been Unipuerto or similar. All of the mountain stages of the Giro featured only one major ascent at the end with smaller climbs if any before them, and La Course featuring the double ascent of the Romme and Colombière is perhaps the most comparable single climbing day. And there, you had four riders make the day; two of whom were essentially riding with limited support yesterday and the best two of whom were teammates, on the strongest team which afforded them the best protection. Everybody else was minutes back. Without wishing to be harsh on Cille, as after all I think she's great and her performance and subsequent reactions in La Course were one of the highlights of the entire season, when somebody like her attacks 40km from the finish, riding for Cervélo-Bigla where only she and Ash Moolman-Pasio are real mountain threats, there is a sense that it's a dangerous, but not necessarily the decisive move; that a couple of the real big guns like van der Breggen and van Vleuten would have followed if they thought it was. When Anna van der Breggen attacks 50km from the finish, riding for a Dutch team which is, top-down, the strongest team in the race and she should therefore be one of the freshest riders left in the group, there is a sense that it could well be the decisive move, because if the likes of Niewiadoma, Longo Borghini, Moolman-Pasio and co. know what's best for them, they're on that move like glue, so if they're not, it's because Anna is stronger than them, and therefore Anna is probably going to win.
Time gaps in mountain stages are still pretty colossal among the women in a way that they simply aren't among the elite men (sometimes are at the .1 level, e.g. Nairo Quintana in the Route du Sud 2012 or Raúl Alarcón and Amaro Antunes in the Volta a Portugal 2017) except in exceptional circumstances, such as, say, Froome to Jafferau. At the same time, we talk back to stratospheric historical achievements like Coppi's Pinerolo masterpiece, Merckx's eight minutes to Mourenx, Fuente's Formigal raid, Hinault into Ávila or in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and think, you know what, I bet those were pretty boring from a televisual spectacle, right? I mean, the only question is how much are they going to win by? Especially Merckx, seeing as he was already winning the race, the others were fighting a GC. We lionise and celebrate the difficulty of the 1995 World Championships in Duitama, but only 25 riders finished them and though you had 10 within 2 minutes, 15th was over 9 minutes back, as opposed to 44 women yesterday making it in that timeframe - it's just that most of them came between the 7 and 9 minutes mark as opposed to 10 near the front and then 5 spread all over the road minutes behind. Why is it that Merckx or Fuente beating the field by almost ten minutes in a mountain stage is an example of great gutsy riding, a legendary achievement, but van der Breggen or Abbott doing it is seen by some quarters as evidence of the underdevelopment of women's racing and that easier courses for women are required? As I've pointed out, one of the main factors in the development of race controlling techniques among the men has been the increased professionalism meaning stronger domestiques, so leaders have to do much less thinking for themselves. Others point out that women's cycling is more like men's cycling was in the 70s, before that took hold. We can't have it both ways - want racing to be hard to control, with fewer strong domestiques and leaders attacking far from the finish, and then when we see a race that is exactly like that, complain that there wasn't suspense because it was over too quickly and the remainder was boring. A lot of races in the 70s were just like yesterday's demonstration from van der Breggen. We can't romanticise the attacks from the past and then deprecate the value of van der Breggen's triumph because of a lack of depth in the péloton for that type of racing. Because, guess what? It was precisely that which made those historic exploits in the past possible in men's cycling too.
The medium-mountain type designs or Unipuerto stages seem to be a way of getting around that for the time being, allowing the use of serious mountains but without running the risk of eliminating too many riders hors delais (Rio benefited greatly from that, you could argue). But then that's no answer to the 2020 Olympic woes. One very gradual 3% climb for an eternity and then a small bumpy circuit is in no way a comparison to the men's race with its decisive double mountains. The women could handle the gradual 3% for an eternity then the 6km 10% Mikuni Pass with a descent into the finish within 160km, sure. That wouldn't be as brutal as yesterday was, because, you know, it was the lack of respite as much as anything else that created such attrition; the pro women can handle 160km no problem, and they can handle some serious climbs; they've done the Stelvio, the Mortirolo, the Zoncolan, Mont Ventoux, Romme + Colombière and plenty of others that are as hard or harder than the Igls climb - Urkiola, Supergà, Mende, Mont Serein, Jaizkibel, Madonna del Ghisallo, Planche des Belles Filles and so on. Perhaps it's better with trade teams, given the number of the best riders concentrated into a handful of countries, and perhaps it was that the race was of such a length and going over the climbs all day that made it as decisive as it was.
But perhaps it was simply that Anna van der Breggen was that much better than everybody else, and her biggest competition was on her team, and the power and strength of her attack demoralised the opposition early on leading to many contenders being too shell-shocked to really respond to what racing was going on and fight for the medals once the gold was clearly decided.
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