Olympics! (spoilers)

[Jamesh]

To my mind the Olympic format just doesn't match modern road racing. Teams have different number which is blatantly unfair because of a qualification system that creates this.
I feel that all teams should be able to field a certain number of riders. No qualification needed. Problems of course include :
Of course some countries either wouldn't be able to find enough riders. Unfortunate but life is tough. Some teams may have enough riders but they won't be up to international race levels. Hmm. Todays race might well have seen some riders a couple of hours behind the bunch in this case. A night mare I guess for the organisers.
Another issue would be huge numbers. To make the Olympics open to all every country should be allowed to send the same amount of athletes. Qualification prior to the event excludes many from the event.
206 nations competing! Imagine 4 riders per team
Basically there isn't a satisfactory way is there?
Of course my "fair" ways mean that as expected the best riders in the world won't get there as there are fewer spaces than elite riders for some countries and the nature of that years course would exclude certain riders anyway. That this years TdF winner was a contender was not exactly common.

I do think it makes entertaining racing though.

The race cannot be controlled by a large team so there is much more unpredictably.

Radios would make it more predictable which would be a shame.

The fact that an amateur won today is they much in the Olympic tradition.

Cheers James

[thirdcrank]

I wouldn't call knowing how fast you were (or weren't) catching up with a breakaway a "basic skill".

And I don't think I did. Without information from others, nobody can see what's happening out of their sight. Riders can, however, take note of what happens within their view eg other riders breaking away and later being caught, or not, as in this case. I was suggesting that having got used to race radios, they have forgotten or never knew this part of the coping strategy.

All that seems to have happened here is that when the early breakaway went, there was the very understandable view that it wouldn't succeed. While that was always the likely outcome, it was not inevitable.

Not having the info about the relative speed would have obviously affected how hard the chaser(s) chased, but in this case, they weren't chasing.

[kylecycler]

Kiesenhofer's ride was the stuff of legend. Watch the rollout before the start - she was hanging off the back and I wondered who she was, checked her out on the startlist, then by the time they got the start she'd worked her way right to the front and just took off. Others went with her but I don't even think she was that interested in them, it was almost as if she wasn't racing anyone; she just treated the entire race like a time trial, as if the rest weren't there. I believe she just doesn't feel safe riding in a peloton, which is at least partly why she's never made a career of it, and maybe explains how she negotiated the start and the race itself.

No doubt we'll get the full backstory, but she finished third in last year's Tour de L'Ardeche as an independent riding for Austria. She won a stage of the same race in 2016 up Mont Ventoux by almost 4 minutes, also as an independent, although she crashed the next day. After that, however, she was signed up for 2017 by Lotto-Soudal, her only professional team to date. Her lab test numbers were apparently phenomenal but her results weren't - a 73rd and 76th, 6 DNFs and 1 DNS in the space of only a month, after which she quit without explanation. Otherwise she's only ever raced as an amateur - a true amateur in the Olympic spirit!

[TrevA]

I’m just rewatching it now on the I Player, as I missed the last 20k this morning. The peloton went through the pits and had bottles handed up with about 18k to go. Plenty of opportunities for helpers to tell them there was still a rider away. I agree about teams having equal number of riders. Lizzie was on a hiding to nothing with just one teammate, who wasn’t even with her at the finish. The Dutch could have chased the break down and still have sent a rider up the road to win. I think perhaps a case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians in the Dutch team.

In the men’s race, Van Aert chased the break down with everyone else sat on his wheel and still won the bunch sprint for 2nd.

Well done to Keisenhofer. Chapeau!

[sizbut]

As kylecycler say, rewatching the start is interesting. Anna was right at the back for the neutralised 10k. Not at the back of the peleton, actually sitting several bike lengths of the back. Either she doesn't like being in a bunch or saw, being the only Austrian, no point to the extra stress. Yet at the flag drop, immediately through the other 66 riders and off.

As a non pro-team rider she may have also been a lot freer in setting her training schedule and targets - like mentally preparing for a super long distance solo. Bravo.

[mjr]

Not for Kiesenhofer. Virtually unheard of before the race, the 30 year-old whose PhD thesis was on “Noncommunicative integrable systems on b-symplectic manifolds”, is now part of Olympic history. 

I suspect that should be noncommutative, but the thesis title I found starts with "Integrable". It's mathematical physics and lost in my memory for now, as my third-best bit of maths, but might be something to do with constrained flows of liquids or gases.

[mjr]

As a non pro-team rider she may have also been a lot freer in setting her training schedule and targets - like mentally preparing for a super long distance solo. Bravo.

What little she did tweet suggests she trained for the high temperatures, even while still in Austria, plus she is a repeat time trial national champion, so she was completely the wrong rider to let go into a breakaway, as it turned out. I am a bit surprised no one in a team car researched her and warned some riders in the peloton over 5 hours, even without radios. Complacency about the usual doomed breakaway, perhaps?

[mattsccm]

James. I agree completely. I suspect that many riders, those muttering about communications maybe, just didn't cope with the different systems at the Olympics.
Something like athletics is generally very similar at all levels whereas road cycle racing isn't and the higher up the levels you get the further apart things get.
It must be one of the few sports, footy being another where an Olympic medal isn't the ultimate prize. Many a rider has stated that they would prefer a TdF win to an Olympic gold. Perhaps, as yet, the women don't have such a prestigious road race.

[sizbut]

Depends on your version of cycling. Track cyclists (including a number who have road racing as their day job) view the Olympics as a very big deal. Both van de Poel and Piddock have gone for mountain bike gold. The BMX'ers will be doing mad things. It's a good reminder that competitive cycling, pro and amateur, has many forms.

[Jamesh]

Definitely...

I think the men's Olympic RR is a third class race tbh.

1st Tdf
2nd Giro, Vuelta
3rd Major classics, world champs, Olympics RR.

But as you say the women don't have such a established calendar so an Olympic win has more status.....


I wonder who a UK equivalent would be? Michael Hutchinson comes to mind....

Cheers James

[sizbut]

As a non pro-team rider she may have also been a lot freer in setting her training schedule and targets - like mentally preparing for a super long distance solo. Bravo.

What little she did tweet suggests she trained for the high temperatures, even while still in Austria, plus she is a repeat time trial national champion, so she was completely the wrong rider to let go into a breakaway, as it turned out. I am a bit surprised no one in a team car researched her and warned some riders in the peloton over 5 hours, even without radios. Complacency about the usual doomed breakaway, perhaps?

Indeed. Whilst we like to think of those who have landed a pro ride as being the best of the best, there are numerous reasons why some very capable riders aren't riding as pro's. And great that an event like the Olympics allows them to show their abilities. Kudos too to the Austrian cycling federation - they could have chosen from 3 Austrian women who do ride on pro teams. Whatever the reasons they made a good choice.

[thirdcrank]

The size of teams has been mentioned but you can't select riders who don't exist. Remember also that until the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Olympics in all sports were entirely amateur but a lot of those amateurs were members of the armed forces of Iron Curtain countries, particular the Soviet Union. Before the lottery, many British competitors were self-financing. National teams have always been controversial in pro cycling, even though they persisted in the TdeF until the 1960s; among the problems have been riders with divided loyalties to country and sponsors. Also, countries selected to host an Olympics don't necessarily have any local tradition of cycle racing.

[Pendodave]

Having just watched three weeks of carnage on the tour, i can quite understand if someone decides that they quite enjoy keeping their original skin and skeleton intact, especially if they are able to combine another career with high level am events.

[Jamesh]

Just watching the triathlon....what a messy bike course far too technical.

Which reminds me that the brownlee brothers don't always win the local running races. There are numerous local amateur runners who give them a run for thier money.

Cheers James

[kylecycler]

Brutal (probably unfair) comment on YouTube about the women's road race: "More non-triers than a chase at Killarney."