With 8km go go both Rigoberto Uran and Alexander Vinokourov attacked at the same time. They came round a ninety degree bend and both jumped out of the saddle, one going on the left and the other on the right of a wide road. It looked like happy coincidence, both riders went clear and found themselves able to cooperate. But this dual effort seemed to confuse the others and gave them the chance to get a small lead and co-operate. It was the moment the race was won.
If Box Hill was supposed to make the men’s course selective yesterday, the UCI have pre-empted this with some odd rules meaning the women’s race has only 66 starters and several of these are mountain bikers and track cyclists. But if the field is reduced, the quality isn’t and we can expect a battle royale to reach the finish outside Buckingham Palace.
The ultimate one day race? If the Tour de France represents the pinnacle of world cycling and the Tour of Flanders is arguably the top one-day classic of the season, the Olympic Games road race is unique because of its rarity and international recognition.
The men’s road race is the longest event of the 2012 Olympic games across all sports, taking an estimated six hours. This matters because the course is all about the distance and time, a small climb will be used and if it is not selective once then it will end the hopes of many by the ninth time after which the race heads back to London for a superb finish on The Mall, the proud avenue in front of Buckingham Palace.
Scan the start list of the men’s road race for the Olympic Games and you’ll spot several sprinters and fast finishers. Mark Cavendish, André Greipel and Peter Sagan for example. Who is the fastest?
The answer is obvious, it’s rider number 42: Mickaël Bourgain of France. He’s four times world champion in the team sprint event. On the track.
The Inner Ring will be looking to the five rings of the Olympics shortly and to start, you can now download a calendar of events for your electronic diary on a phone or computer.
Thomas Voeckler got played yesterday. Shortly after finishing Liège-Bastogne-Liège the Frenchman made his way to Frankfurt airport to fly out to Gabon. Once a French colony, today an oil-rich state on the west coast of Africa with exceptional wildlife, Gabon also has an annual bike race, the Tropicale Amissa Bongo. Named after a member of the Bongo family that rules the nation, the race has a diverse field of teams with Europcar.
Sadly the results are hard to come by. I can’t see them on cyclingnews.com but instead the superb AstanaFans.com has coverage (in Russian) because the Astana development team are riding, and with some success. The photo above by Elena Ryabovol shows the conditions for one of the stage transfers with riders, staff and media loaded into a military transport plane.
Pro cycling is a nakedly commercial sport. The above cartoon by Pellos mocks the way the 1956 Tour de France consumes the environment with branding. Half a century later only the sponsor names have changed. Riders act as mobile billboards to sell Quickstep laminated flooring and Liquigas bottled gas.
However this culture is set to clash with the Olympic Games, now just four months away. One thing that didn’t exist in 1956 was social media and the International Olympic Committee has very strict rules in place about the use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter during the games. Here’s a look at the ad rules and social media guidelines.
Here is the calendar of 2012 men’s pro races, beginning with the UCI World Tour races, the highest-ranked events and I’ve added the road events from the world championships and the Olympic games. In addition you’ll find the categorisation and points system behind the races explained.
EDIT: a helpful reader has put these races into a Google calendar and there is also an .ics file which can be downloaded and imported, for example with Microsoft Outlook, Apple iPhone or Lotus Notes. See here for more.
The British Olympic Association (BOA) is locked in a fight with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). I wanted to cover this story earlier in the week but there’s been too much other news to fit it in.
In case you’ve missed it, the BOA has a rule saying anyone banned for doping forfeits the right to represent Great Britain in the Olympic Games. But WADA say the ban for a doping offence is two years and that the BOA, in adding an effective life ban, goes beyond this. Consequently WADA has declared Britain a “non-compliant nation”. An embarrassment given the country is set to host the Olympics in 2012.
The risk though is that in seeking to punish British dopers WADA and international efforts to tackle doping are underminded .