Worlds

The Spin: World Championship Road Race

The Cauberg climb is not long nor steep. Instead it is repetition that multiplies this small hill into something significant and when coupled with the Bemelerberg we have a tough finishing circuit will help select the 2012 world champion.

Philippe Gilbert and Peter Sagan are the obvious picks but neither offer convincing certainty and so this is an open race with many contenders that could become highly tactical in the final hour.

Here’s a preview of the course, the contenders, the weather, TV times and more.

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World Championships Time Trial Preview

With many of the world’s best time trial riders not here, today’s field of 58 riders might lack some obvious picks but there are still plenty of contenders, if not for the rainbow jersey then for a medal. The race should be a battle between Germany’s Tony Martin and Spain’s Alberto Contador but the course is deceptively hard and a surprise is possible, especially with changeable weather forecast.

Here’s a look at the contenders, the course, TV listing times and a full startlist too.

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Do Junior World Champions Succeed in the Pro Ranks?

Oskar Svendsen Merida

Norway’s Oskar Svendsen is the new junior time trial world champion. Who knows what the future holds for him now but it seems he could well become a force to be reckoned with in the senior ranks in the years to come.

Why? Because it turns out the time trial is a good measure of talent. This might seem obvious yet the road race is a very different story where past winners have flourished, proved mediocre or vanished into cycling obscurity despite the glory of a rainbow jersey.

Here’s a look at the correlation between junior performance and adult success in the time trial and road race. Plus what this means for today’s gold medallist Oskar Svendsen, who isn’t just the world time trial champion, apparently he has the world record for the highest VO2 Max ever recorded.

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Sunday Shorts

valkenburg limburg cycling

It was a close contest for the men and women. Look at the faces of the victorious Omega Pharma-Quickstep team as the picture says plenty although maybe the €100,000 prize pot had something to do with it (the women got a more modest €30,000).

In a brief “the moment the race was won” analysis, when BMC went up the Cauberg we saw gaps start to appear as Tejay van Garderen surged ahead and the others, notably Alessandro Ballan and Taylor Phinney, were in trouble and had to regroup. The extra effort, the briefest confusion and then the acceleration was probably worth more than three seconds, the margin of victory on the day.

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The Worlds Team Time Trial Explained

This Sunday sees a new event in the UCI World Championships, the team time trial. It’s new and relatively unknown and also very different from the usual team time trials we might see in a stage race.

Here’s a quick explainer of what is involved and why there’s no rainbow jersey for the winners.

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2012 Race Calendar

World Tour + Olympics

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.

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The moment Cavendish won the Worlds

Project Rainbow Jersey

Mark Cavendish won the World Cycling Championships in Copenhagen by crossing the finish line first. But the route to victory was more than the 14 laps and 266km around the northern suburb of Rudersdal.

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The forecast for Sunday

Peter Sagan

It’s hard to get the weather forecast right sometimes so predicting the results a 266km race is a lot harder. Nevertheless, for the fun of it here are some thoughts for Sunday’s elite men’s road world championships, starting with some scenario analysis and then a run through of the favourites.

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The rainbow jersey

Rainbow

Famous as the symbol of the world champion, cycling’s rainbow jersey was first introduced in 1927 when the inaugural world championships were organised in Germany. The winner was Italian Alfredo Binda.

No rainbow
For a start the colours aren’t those of a rainbow. In nature the spectrum of light does not include black in the middle. Instead the colours come from the Olympic rings which are supposed to represent the five continents.

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The Copenhagen circuit, for sprinters?

That’s a video of the World Championship circuit in Rudersal near Copenhagen. Note the on-screen altitude profile so if you are pressed for time, fast forward to the hills.

Yes, the hills. When you see the rises en route they are certainly not big. But the Worlds is all about repetition and attrition. They’ll do 17 laps and by the last three laps I suspect the bunch will be thinned down. As much as everyone says this is a course for sprinters, it is clearly hillier than Zolder, perhaps the last true Worlds finish for sprinters in 2002. The course could suit the likes of Philippe Gilbert and Robert Gesink.

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