Mathieu van der Poel ready. 🧡 #Paris2024 📷: bjorn_sabbe
Michel Wuyts: "In such a mini-peloton of 90, the Olympic road race becomes even more food for daredevils"
CyclingSaturday, 03 August 2024 at 13:30
Chaos is what is expected out of the Olympic Games' road race and the very small number of riders and short teams is part of the reason. Some pundits analyze the big event that is taking place this Saturday with many of the world's best riders but an outcome that can be quite unexpected.
José de Cauwer talked about the climb to Montmartre to Het Nieuwsblad where he thinks the decisive attacks may come: "It can happen here. If you want to ride away solo, it has to happen here. But then you have to start on time on the climb and not wait until the top. It is a race of more than 270 kilometers in warm weather conditions and with a small peloton, so difficult to control. It is a small peloton of 45 real professionals. It will be a special race. It will be very difficult at the end."
The essence of the race comes from it's chaotic structure, very different from a regular race, and the lack of radios as well in the 274-kilometer course that feature plenty small ascents all throughout the day. This rolling terrain may favour a few riders that are not traditionally winners in the spring classics. Michel Wuyts argued for Het Laatste Nieuws: "Evenepoel is also the biggest option for gold on Saturday. Only an anatomical prodigy can win the time trial six days after the Tour. Seven days later, in an optimal phase of supercompensation, he will make men crack on his whee. I've been thinking about the World Championships in Wollongong for days now: finishing third in the time trial after the Vuelta and then making the rest realise that they travelled to Australia in vain".
"In such a mini-peloton of 90, the Olympic road race becomes even more food for daredevils," the Belgian believes. "The distance of usually 240 km was increased to 273. It will only increase Evenepoel's room to manoeuvre. Who or what can stop Remco?" Mathieu van der Poel is the main rival to the Belgian team but there are plenty contenders; and he argues that trade team teammates could also assist each other when it comes to tactics and some attacks.
"Lidl-Trek is entering six riders in addition to leader Pedersen. But I don't see Mads diving into the Seine with Skujins and Gibbons. A Visma attack is not so utopian. Jorgenson, Van Baarle with Van Aert. Suppose Evenepoel is still riding there with Van der Poel and Pidcock at the wheel. A medal for each. Will he wait for Van Aert or not? It's up to you to judge."
Read also
claps 0visitors 290
Just in
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Nov 05, 13:04
0
Popular news
Latest comments
- Exactly who, Joey, is "they"? Flimsy, illogical conspiracy theories aside, it is in no one's interest (financial or otherwise) to "drive away small local events." Major cultural and macroeconomic factors are reducing ridership, but there is no "they" in this context.verve82520-12-2024
- And our virtual platforms allow us to "ride" famous place that we can't get to in person, which is a pretty fabulous aspect of this weird weird sport.RidesHills19-12-2024
- Which off-season are you referring to? The one after he won the Tour of California? The one after he won 3 stages and was on the podium of the Vuelta? The one after TJV screwed up, never put him away, and lost the Tour on the time trial? We've seen the guy hit the wall, lose energy, nearly fail, and lose races ("I'm dead") more than once. He's got a visible threshold and his fueling regimen is a clear weak spot. You'll need more detail to make this more than under defined insinuations .RidesHills19-12-2024
- Interesting analysis. And yet, I'm in the US, and at a recent wedding reception as a group of us older folks had to stand at a certain place to keep track of a thing, we got to talking, and every single one of us had a favorite rider, a favorite circuit of races, a moment when we fell in love with the sport, and a joy in the complexities of it all. None of us knew about the other's fandom until that moment. It's wonderful that these are my brothers-in-law, and we now know to talk about this when the spouses aren't listening. Point being: there are fans all over, and for US folks, the loss of GCN+ has been huge. As so often, it's the media bottleneck that matters more than anything else. Look at F1 in the US before Netflix, as an example.RidesHills19-12-2024
- On the one hand, what he says is trivial. Of course it's genetics. It always is, in any sport. That's just obvious. Look at Mondo Duplantis, whose sprinting speed is key to his pole vaulting, for example - he's just plain faster than other vaulters and good at the rest of the event as well. In cycling, even when you take the most genetically weird group of people and give them amazing training, some will be better than others, as well. Distributions are distributions and there are outliers and that's just that. Pogacar's body is built for this kind of thing, it seems, with him only recently having had to pick up skills that others have used all along. I'm still inclined to believe that these folks are using entirely legal means to arrive at their shockingly good performance, given how more senior riders kinda complain about (or at least comment on) the regimens and control over the nutrition and exercise and all that. And in every population, there are edge cases of truly exceptional behavior.RidesHills19-12-2024
- And it’s likely going to get worse. They are going all-out to drive away small local events which are where a lot of new riders come from. They want fee income and Olympic medals. That’s all.JoeyB19-12-2024
- Oh Lordspock12319-12-2024
- Interesting suggestion, fo you think testing Tadej’s (or Bolts’ or so many others’) parents would have given us a preview of his potential then or what criteria do you have to pick parents with?Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- Even amateur teams suffer this sort. But this is also largely due to the precarious sponsorship, in very few sports do you find kit with so many sponsors having to be integrated and changing so regularly.Mistermaumau19-12-2024
- I think it’s pretty obvious what was responsible for destroying interest that used to be there.Mistermaumau19-12-2024