World Championships Innsbruck 2018

[Red Rick]

Obviously there are no other differences between an 18 year old male junior being hailed cycling Jesus and a top female pro already on top of the world and still hardly gets talked about than nationality

 

[SafeBet]

Re:

Feel bad for the other Dutch girls though, can't help but feel like they could have made another clean sweep if they wanted to. I think they wanted to prove too hard that they were acting as a team. With VDB 3 minutes loose, they could have raced for second or third. Probably would have, had there been radio communication

This is exactly why we need more races without radios, and why this race was so beautiful.
Riders had to try and guess what was going on and react based on their feelings and sparse communications from cars.

Besides, all three riders on the podium were absolutely brilliant.
VDB with his epic solo win.
Spratt being brave and aggressive early.
Guderzo joining many breaks and eventually profiting from her great endurance.

 

[Gigs_98]

Re:

So according to Pöstlberger you'll need 20 seconds over the last climb to be sure to stay away. 10-15 seconds could do the trick but would not be impossible to bridge.
So will the explosive climbers (Valv,Yateses,Alaphilippe,Martin etc.) be able to open such a gap on the Höll?

It always depends on the situation. 15 seconds might not be enough if there is a well correlating group chasing, but if everyone is on his own or the chasers are looking at each other even a 3 seconds gap might be enough. Look at how Sagan won in Richmond.
Edit: On another note, why on earth are we debating if it's possible to finish this race solo. Look at that profile

 

[Red Rick]

Re: Re:

Feel bad for the other Dutch girls though, can't help but feel like they could have made another clean sweep if they wanted to. I think they wanted to prove too hard that they were acting as a team. With VDB 3 minutes loose, they could have raced for second or third. Probably would have, had there been radio communication

This is exactly why we need more races without radios, and why this race was so beautiful.
Riders had to try and guess what was going on and react based on their feelings and sparse communications from cars.

Besides, all three riders on the podium were absolutely brilliant.
VDB with his epic solo win.
Spratt being brave and aggressive early.
Guderzo joining many breaks and eventually profiting from her great endurance.

I just think it's stupid if teammates can't communicate with each other.

Only creates artificial drama.

 

[Alexandre B.]

Re: Re:

Feel bad for the other Dutch girls though, can't help but feel like they could have made another clean sweep if they wanted to. I think they wanted to prove too hard that they were acting as a team. With VDB 3 minutes loose, they could have raced for second or third. Probably would have, had there been radio communication

This is exactly why we need more races without radios, and why this race was so beautiful.
Riders had to try and guess what was going on and react based on their feelings and sparse communications from cars.

Besides, all three riders on the podium were absolutely brilliant.
VDB with his epic solo win.
Spratt being brave and aggressive early.
Guderzo joining many breaks and eventually profiting from her great endurance.

I just think it's stupid if teammates can't communicate with each other.

Only creates artificial drama.

The ardoisier is still a thing.

 

[postmanhat]

Re: Re:

So according to Pöstlberger you'll need 20 seconds over the last climb to be sure to stay away. 10-15 seconds could do the trick but would not be impossible to bridge.
So will the explosive climbers (Valv,Yateses,Alaphilippe,Martin etc.) be able to open such a gap on the Höll?

It always depends on the situation. 15 seconds might not be enough if there is a well correlating group chasing, but if everyone is on his own or the chasers are looking at each other even a 3 seconds gap might be enough. Look at how Sagan won in Richmond.
Edit: On another note, why on earth are we debating if it's possible to finish this race solo. Look at that profile

Good point. Wellens surely has to make an attempt after watching today. Might be Belguim's best chance of winning?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Sure, the chase was disorganised and a lot of riders gave up early, but did that make Froome's Giro-winning raid, or Cancellara's 2010 Roubaix, or Boonen's 2012 one for that matter, weak? Not a bit of it. I'm surprised that van der Breggen was the one to hit for home that early, I thought the Dutch would test the waters with somebody else and then Annemiek and Anna take on the last couple of laps, but instead they went hard or home early. Definitely I think seeing how strong Anna was that she was willing to take that up was intimidating for many, and when she got a gap, it was almost already too late. We've seem from de Ronde and elsewhere that chasing down a solo van der Breggen is tough at the best of times, let alone on a course as climby as this; you may have seen some of the climbing specialists being unwilling to go too hard in pursuit of Anna VDB early on the basis that if they went hard and dropped all of the riders they might want help from later, then blew up, they'd lose everything, and quite a few riders lost out because of that. Impressed with Tatiana though, she's only occasionally been able to perform at this level in recent years, rather than being consistently at the top like she was 2010-2012 kind of time. Quite impressed by a few names for durability I hadn't expected - I'm an Anastasiya Iakovenko fan, but I didn't expect her to survive in the Niewiadoma-Brand-Guarnier-Moolman-Pasio-García-Magnaldi-Ludwig group with all the elite climbers. She made 9th in La Flèche Wallonne, but has yet to put in any results on longer climbs. Poidevin also I'm impressed by - she's even younger and was really good in the Ardêche, and hasn't raced much in Europe, coming from the Rally team, and she was also caught up in the early crash that Annemiek got stuck in.

It's worth noting though that once Anna van der Breggen had one hand already on the rainbow jersey, which I think we knew was the case quite early on, of the moves that took place behind, the riders that eventually fought out the rest of the medals... every rider from 2nd down to 7th is 30 or more, save for Fahlin who will join that club in three weeks' time. Clearly while Anna is the strongest rider out there today, and that's not exactly a shocking discovery, it was experience and craft that showed in building the moves that enabled riders to fight out the medals.

Not sure if there was a bit of a problem with regards to who would take the responsibility for the chase, I can definitely see why, say, Ash wouldn't chase, being effectively on her own, and presumably a few others would have looked to especially the USA and Italy to chase down - once the selection of 25-30 or so was made they both had three riders in the group (Canada did too, but don't really have an A-list contender, Kirchmann and Canuel were possibilities as outsiders but not secondary favourites like Guarnier or Longo Borghini). If Elisa was on a bad day and clearly Guderzo was the one in form I guess Italy may have hesitated, while the US having three in there would also have made them frontline contenders to take up the reins. Poland (Jasinska and Niewiadoma) and Australia (Spratt and Kennedy) were the only other ones with numbers who could have been called upon as obviously the Dutch weren't going to chase Anna down, and the Aussies involved themselves in early moves anyway with Spratt eventually and deservedly profiting, while I can totally understand riders caught solo in the group such as Ludwig, Moolman-Pasio, García, Neff and Leleivyte not putting too much help into the chase whilst outnumbered, while riders like Iakovenko and Koppenburg were probably just happy to have made the selection.

Still, the fact of the matter is, Anna van der Breggen is the best one-day racer in the women's péloton right now, and there's a very good chance she would have won regardless. The fight for the jersey was over rather earlier on than expected, but that doesn't make the ride any less remarkable.

 

[WKA311]

Re: Re:

So according to Pöstlberger you'll need 20 seconds over the last climb to be sure to stay away. 10-15 seconds could do the trick but would not be impossible to bridge.
So will the explosive climbers (Valv,Yateses,Alaphilippe,Martin etc.) be able to open such a gap on the Höll?

It always depends on the situation. 15 seconds might not be enough if there is a well correlating group chasing, but if everyone is on his own or the chasers are looking at each other even a 3 seconds gap might be enough. Look at how Sagan won in Richmond.
Edit: On another note, why on earth are we debating if it's possible to finish this race solo. Look at that profile

Forgot to point out he was talking this numbers with an organised chase behind the front runner. So with an disorganised chase obviously there is a lesser gap to talk about.

 

[Red Rick]

The most likely situation is that the guy who rides way on the last climb does so because he's the strongest.

I'm pretty confident he doesn't need too much time to last all the way until the finish.

 

[May0maniac]

Re:

The most likely situation is that the guy who rides way on the last climb does so because he's the strongest.

I'm pretty confident he doesn't need too much time to last all the way until the finish.

Well, unless it's a rather bad descender like Pinot who's getting chsed by great descenders...

 

[RedheadDane]

So... turns out Van Vleuten fractured her knee in a crash 96 KM from the line.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Re: Re:

So according to Pöstlberger you'll need 20 seconds over the last climb to be sure to stay away. 10-15 seconds could do the trick but would not be impossible to bridge.
So will the explosive climbers (Valv,Yateses,Alaphilippe,Martin etc.) be able to open such a gap on the Höll?

It always depends on the situation. 15 seconds might not be enough if there is a well correlating group chasing, but if everyone is on his own or the chasers are looking at each other even a 3 seconds gap might be enough. Look at how Sagan won in Richmond.
Edit: On another note, why on earth are we debating if it's possible to finish this race solo. Look at that profile

Good point. Wellens surely has to make an attempt after watching today. Might be Belguim's best chance of winning?

Wellens and Teuns probably. I would think Teuns is the only one that could wait for the final climb (if he can get over the other climbs because if those are ridden hard, he won't survive). All the others need to attack and go for the breakaway.

So... turns out Van Vleuten fractured her knee in a crash 96 KM from the line.

She did look like something was wrong when she got back on her bike.

 

[May0maniac]

Re: Re:

So according to Pöstlberger you'll need 20 seconds over the last climb to be sure to stay away. 10-15 seconds could do the trick but would not be impossible to bridge.
So will the explosive climbers (Valv,Yateses,Alaphilippe,Martin etc.) be able to open such a gap on the Höll?

It always depends on the situation. 15 seconds might not be enough if there is a well correlating group chasing, but if everyone is on his own or the chasers are looking at each other even a 3 seconds gap might be enough. Look at how Sagan won in Richmond.
Edit: On another note, why on earth are we debating if it's possible to finish this race solo. Look at that profile

Good point. Wellens surely has to make an attempt after watching today. Might be Belguim's best chance of winning?

Wellens and Teuns probably. I would think Teuns is the only one that could wait for the final climb (if he can get over the other climbs because if those are ridden hard, he won't survive). All the others need to attack and go for the breakaway.

Yeah, but the weather will be rather nice, so Wellens and Benoot won't turn into Gremlins.

 

[LaFlorecita]

Re:

So... turns out Van Vleuten fractured her knee in a crash 96 KM from the line.

And she attacked and finished 7th. Tough as nails.

 

[Jagartrott]

Re: Re:

I just think it's stupid if teammates can't communicate with each other.

Only creates artificial drama.

It creates more uncertainty and as such its a disadvantage to strong teams.
Which is why we need more races without radios, not less.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Re: Re:

What are we talking about? The hyping.

Any over-the-top hyping gets annoying unless you are on the bandwagon.

Is it over the top though? Its extreme, but that extreme amount of hype is justified by his riding IMO.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Re: Re:

So... turns out Van Vleuten fractured her knee in a crash 96 KM from the line.

And she attacked and finished 7th. Tough as nails.

We are talking about a woman who fractured her spine costing her an almost nailed-on Olympic gold medal, and was winning races back in Europe less than a month later. Annemiek is constructed primarily out of titanium and awesomeness.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Re: Re:

So... turns out Van Vleuten fractured her knee in a crash 96 KM from the line.

And she attacked and finished 7th. Tough as nails.

We are talking about a woman who fractured her spine costing her an almost nailed-on Olympic gold medal, and was winning races back in Europe less than a month later. Annemiek is constructed primarily out of titanium and awesomeness.

So, what you're saying is that it wasn't really that remarkable

Wonder if her knee will look anything like Gilbert's knee after he also finished the race after his crash.
https://twitter.com/philippegilbert/status/1022061942104567808

 

[sir fly]

So, it was the injury that prevented the Dutch from another clean sweep... makes sense.
Tough as nails, as already said.

Looking at the men's start list, have to notice that the Dutch team looks pretty solid. There aren't many better lineups than theirs.
We'll see what kind of change in racing will make that final hellish ascent. Coming after 250k's of tough racing it might be the padlock of the race. Hopefully, everybody have assessed where their strength's lying on this course, and are willing to take a shot.

 

[JosephK]

Re: Re:

So... turns out Van Vleuten fractured her knee in a crash 96 KM from the line.

And she attacked and finished 7th. Tough as nails.

I am an old geezer but still have a crush on Annemiek. Couldn't believe her crash in the Olympics -- horrific. And then she comes back and wins world titles. Today? Riding 96 km on a fractured knee? Holy cow!

 

[Andy262]

Words can't describe how awesome Annemiek is. Bearing in mind she was still able to beat most of the field though, I can't help but think some of the other 'elite climbers' should take a critical look at their performance today. Obviously the first 8 and Coryn Rivera excepted.

 

[Zinoviev Letter]

Coryn Rivera is the most entertaining rider in the world who is nominally a big bunch sprinter (and a successful big bunch sprinter).

 

[The Hegelian]

That attack by Van der Breggen was probably the most devastating I've ever seen. It was like The Terminator. World class field just destroyed. Wow.

 

[gregrowlerson]

Re:

That attack by Van der Breggen was probably the most devastating I've ever seen. It was like The Terminator. World class field just destroyed. Wow.

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.

 

[Logic-is-your-friend]

Credits to Van Vleuten though, it was her effort that strangled the opposition so that nobody was able to respond to Van der Breggen's attack.