121–130 of 179 posts
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> All credit to her for an extremely strong ride. And a better strategy, which is a major part of competition. People commenting on her being lucky. She had a better strategy.
The others had no strategy because they didn't know she were upfront.
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In professional cycling the Ride as Hard as You Can people are necessary but often don’t achieve any real rank on the team. They might not even finish a tour, either having not budgeted enough for the late stages, or being so new that they can’t understand how tired they’re gonna be later. Their claim to fame may be limited to being on the top team, it might be being on a top 5 team. If you’re lucky you team may plac…
> I’m racking my brain trying to remember who was on Delgado’s team and coming up completely blank. Delgado had Miguel Induráin [1] working for him, hardly an unknown rider. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Indur%C3%A1in
Who was Indurain's right hand?
(More related to the comments than the article) I've seen tons of takes on this since watching the end of the race this morning and, although it certainly played a part in deciding the outcome, it's a shame that more focus has seemed to be on making excuses or how the Dutch riders messed things up instead of Dr Kiesenhofer's incredible story and ride. Kiesenhofer was on a fantastic day: van Vleuten's earlier attack f…
Also winning when the opponents are not really trying to catch you it's not really a story either. It happens a lot even when they know a rider is upfront in order to save energy for second place and not give a free ride to other cyclists -see how Carapaz won in men events where only Wout tried to catch him. The real story is the mistake from the dutch team that could have catch her but missinterpreted the situation.
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Why do you need to tell riders about the gaps?
Because otherwise the Olympics for road cycling and actual high-level road cycling races become totally different things. The entire game of road cycling races is based on judging these gaps. Without it, you would probably never let anyone ride off. Then races become attrition, followed by sprint. Either that or you get a weird spotting system where people try to get gap timings to the riders through unofficial chann…
Do you really prefer the spectacle of the peloton letting a breakaway head off into the distance, knowing that in 95% of cases they can just reel it back in just enough not to have an effect on the GC? Today just showed how exciting it is when people can head off down the road far enough for the others not to know what's going on. I think on balance I prefer attrition followed by sprint, although I'd contend that's a micharacterisation of what would actually happen.
Besides, isn't that exactly what the TDF used to be and what turned it into the best cycling race in the world? This year's TDF at least gave us a glimpse of what it could be like when someone rips up the rule book and the Sky train doesn't optimise the entire race into irrelevance.
I also think that there are enough cameras around to stop unofficial channels. And who's to say whether the person on the roadside is someone who's for you and giving you good information or against you and feeding you lies?
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Because otherwise the Olympics for road cycling and actual high-level road cycling races become totally different things. The entire game of road cycling races is based on judging these gaps. Without it, you would probably never let anyone ride off. Then races become attrition, followed by sprint. Either that or you get a weird spotting system where people try to get gap timings to the riders through unofficial chann…
I'm talking about the whole of cycling, not just the Olympics, so the first point doesn't stand. Do you really prefer the spectacle of the peloton letting a breakaway head off into the distance, knowing that in 95% of cases they can just reel it back in just enough not to have an effect on the GC? Today just showed how exciting it is when people can head off down the road far enough for the others not to know what's…
Some additional context for those who don't follow professional cycling: the Dutch women's team was incredibly strong coming into this road race. All 4 riders on their team are stars in their own right, and the only reason there wasn't a clear favorite for the race overall is that people weren't sure which Dutch rider would win. So you have a complicated group dynamic, where the majority of the peloton has no interes…
Is it possible that an outlier, an amateur, a lone wolf, was able for a moment to draw the strength and determination that would lead to victory and not even the best in the world stood a chance. Of is as you say....she was lucky and her victory was just a series of unfortunate circumstances for the other riders. I want to believe that there was no one that day that could beat her.
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> All credit to her for an extremely strong ride. And a better strategy, which is a major part of competition. People commenting on her being lucky. She had a better strategy.
I mean, it worked in this case, but winning from the break, especially for an important race like this, is rare. They were definitely lucky.
This is incredible, but some of the headlines of "amateur wins gold versus pros" are a little misleading. She was with a pro-team, she is the current Austrian time-trial champion and had devoted herself to making this happen over the pandemic. Meanwhile the Dutch World Champion didn't know she was ahead, so didn't chase her. I love the story, but it isn't a simple amateur beating out all the pros story.
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> All credit to her for an extremely strong ride. And a better strategy, which is a major part of competition. People commenting on her being lucky. She had a better strategy.
Breaks are rarely a winning strategy (on mountains they are, but those are a pure display of strength and will-power). Granted she is a mathematician and might be literate in road racing strategy but I'm sure a lot of that strategy is down to experience which she doesn't have.
As you said, she’s a mathematician - she knew exactly what she was doing.
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I mean, it worked in this case, but winning from the break, especially for an important race like this, is rare. They were definitely lucky.
If you're losing then it's a good idea to take actions that increase the variance of the possible outcomes.