🇳🇱 #Elfstedenrace 💬 "We didn't have a bad race as a team. It was a good day on the bike." - Olav Kooij Read more in our report! ✍🏼⤵️
"I think everyone who was in the first group had a great time" - Olav Kooij enjoys day on home roads marked by echelons despite runner-up result
CyclingThursday, 05 October 2023 at 02:30
Olav Kooij had to settle for second place on Wednesday. The Dutch sprinter from Jumbo-Visma raced with his team all day, but ultimately saw Jasper Philipsen take the victory flowers in the Visit Friesland Elfstedenrace.
The Dutchman commented the race in a press release afterwards. "This was a typical echelons course. When the wind has free rein, you can race very nicely in the Netherlands. I think everyone who was in the first group had a great time. I immediately felt that we had a good chance of success with this group. Then it was a matter of continuing to work together. I was convinced that we would stay ahead until the finish."
That was indeed the case, but the 21-year-old Kooij could not beat his Belgian counterpart from Alpecin-Deceuninck. "Maybe I could have timed my sprint a little better," said the man who started quite early. "That is of course easy to say afterwards. Jasper ultimately got over me. I think he is the deserved winner of this race. Of course you always strive for profit, but I can live with this result. As a team we did not ride a bad race. It was a beautiful day on the bike," Kooij concludes.
The sprinter, who could not compete for victory in the Münsterland Giro won by Per Strand Hagenes on Tuesday, will travel to China next week for the Tour of Guangxi. In that WorldTour race he concludes his year, in which the victory count currently stands at eleven victories.
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- Well said! It's true, even for those of us who are older and slower now.leodis18-12-2024
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- Exactly, most cycling fans are also active riders, another difference with many sports, we can actually associate with these people and experience many of the same feelings.Mistermaumau18-12-2024
- Especially now that they claim to be stopping CO treatment, but what else have they (and others) been trying, before banning it starts to be discussed?Mistermaumau18-12-2024
- The article gives a lot of food but lacks much thought. Cycling was PERMANENTLY damaged by one guy’s quest for invincibility and lost a lot of followers that were helping to make it more mainstream. The days of British glory (track, Sky, Wiggins. Froome, Ineos) which were also permitting Anglo media (the dominant form for global influence) to sell the sport as mainstream, are also dead. Many sports don’t have a season’s worth of events to report on, the media focuses on one huge event WC/Olympics and that’s sll that counts, cycling is the opposite, the WC hardly counts whereas traditional races are considered more noteworthy and riders pick and choose races according to a personal agenda, there is no single culminating event and each is more important to some and most important to a few, how is a general reporter to make sense of comparisons in such an individualistic structure? Awards are usually consensus based and there are just not enough people following cycling for it to score high across the board. Sometimes there is not a single or simple reason for things, it is just the cumulative effect of many effects influencing things and in this case, there are dozens. In most countries’ media a sport like cricket or darts or rugby or even the whole Commonwealth results would be completely overlooked too, this may not be the case in the UK or at the Beeb but it does highlight how different perceptions are from different places and people, sumo or wrestling, kayak, judo, karate, have any of these ever even been considered? I don’t know but probably boxing has. A sport has to be commercially popular enough to count, the problem with cycling is, it SEEMS popular but isn’t that just a bias because it’s kind of free? How many fans would really remain if you had to pay a 50€ entrance fee to look from the sidelines, and that’s the thing, the majority of people don’t really watch the SPORT, they enjoy being part of the event and moment and know very little about things. True followers are very rare as the number of commentators on websites such as this one show. Riders also just aren’t interesting enough personalities to interest mainstream media, they have very few newsworthy incidents and even when, the murdering of a wife remained largely internal to the cycling media. It seems as if the cycling powers that be don’t promote cycling news to the outside world, perhaps from lack of budget to persuade general media to report (and we know some sport federations have huge budgets to convince media and reporters to make space for them, look how many pages of national newspapers were dedicated to lower league sports results or even horse racing compared to cycling, gambling companies also influence this as they obviously have more interest in promoting data their clients are likely to be interested in. Anyway, these are just some more aspects the cycling federations should reflect on before ordering an expensive audit to understand why we can’t pull our weight on the global sport scene.Mistermaumau18-12-2024
- Tadej, unlike Armstrong, does not have cancer. Whenever they found something strange about Armstrong, he and his complice system, explained that they were innovative procedures for cancer, which is why he was able to fool around for so many years.
maria2024202418-12-2024 - Oh, Always this frustrated hater present, poor soul, his happiness is defame with falsely rational arguments, pure cheap sophistry. Calm down, go to holidays, maybe you could obtain a genuine moment of happiness.maria2024202418-12-2024
- who cares about the BBC? Let them continue to reward the dirty and every year more violent football, actually, a BBC award is an insult.maria2024202418-12-2024