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.
Vélo by Paul Fournel
Remember those action films where someone would get poisoned and only a special serum could cure them? Our ailing hero would be close to death but the antidote always arrived just in time.
Following pro cycling can leave many feeling sick thanks to unredeemable controversy and scandal; although this can be part of the intrigue too. Still this should be a beautiful sport that uses a bicycle to turns farm tracks into paths to glory and exploits mountain ranges as arenas. In truth there are still lots of good stories but they’re being drowned out by the poison of the past.
There’s no magic remedy to these problems but you can find escapism. The easiest escape route is a ride, the simple pleasure of pedalling can often remind you that cycling isn’t about someone else’s race. Indeed this is what Fournel’s book is about and over the pages we get a series of short essays and vignettes that cover cycling and many of the related experiences, from click-clacking in cleated shoes to the pleasure of aching legs.
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.
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.
Past editions, personal experience and even legends from yesteryear combine to help form your thoughts about a race. But since this is the first time we’ve had a team time trial in the world championships, at least in this format, it is going to be a new experience.
Yet for all the novelty and the 40 teams racing, this will be a race that should be decided between just a few squads.
When a team fails to deliver results, the most common outcome sees the manager getting sacked. Yet this very rare in pro cycling as most team managers are also the owners of their team.
Not so at Rabobank. The team isn’t just sponsored by the Dutch bank, it is owned by them. The head of the team is Harold Knebel, a banker and not a cyclist (pictured above). Rabobank has total control of its sports sponsorship.
This week we got news of a management shake-up in the team. But it’s more than a shuffle of people and job titles, it’s part of a plan to make the team more professional. Indeed several teams are moving away from the old model of where the team manager hunts for sponsors, drives the team car, decides on tactics and negotiates new rider contracts.
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.
The cheerily-named French website cyclisme-dopage.com has been hosting research by engineer Frédéric Portoleau who estimates the power needed to ride with the leaders over the main mountain passes.
The estimates suggest the Vuelta saw some of the highest power-to-weight numbers of the year. Some will use this to draw conclusions but for me it’s more a tool to analyse the racing.
Ke BUFFONATA….
— Filippo Pozzato (@PippoPozzato) September 11, 2012
Che buffonata, what a farce. In two words Filippo Pozzato sums up the last three months and more.
Today saw the hearing of cyclist at the Italian National Olympic Commission (CONI) after he was charged with consulting Michele Ferrari, the infamous sports scientist. The case is both a farce and a serious issue.
Having looked at the racing and Alberto Contador’s victory yesterday, time to look at the race itself. It’s been a successful tour with big TV audiences, as you’ll see below. Were 10 summit finishes necessary? Was there a big contest for the points and mountains jersey? What can the Tour de France organisers ASO learn from this race?