Nothing to take away from Anna Kiesenhofer. It is an absolute brilliant win. But an amateur winning a sporting event supposed to be for amateurs has become news. It's sad how much Olympics has lost its original meaning and intent.
Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
141–150 of 179 posts
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is obvious you know nothing about cycling. No peloton worth its salt will let a breakaway rider to march all the way long to gold totally unopposed and even worst, without being aware of it. This does not happen even at amateur or very young categories. To the people downvoting me, you cannot wish reality away. But by all means continue living in your fantasy world.
Totally unopposed, except for the part where they caught 2 of the 3 riders? Nobody is arguing that it wasn’t an error but that happens regularly — everyone is making strategic and tactical decisions while riding at a high fraction of their maximum heart rate, and there was clearly a communications breakdown based on the claim that Van Vleuten and Van der Breggen had been told that Plichta was the last. Mistakes under…
The fuck up was not riders most likely but DS. Someone did not bother to look at the damn TV and count people in the break and who they were.. someone did not communicate this absolutely crucial info to whoever was the Dutch road captain. Did they not have a system of when to go to the DS car?? I mean you get food and water there lol How?
It is a fuckup of astronomical proportions. Break wins all the time but I can’t think of a single race that I seen where Peloton did not realize that there was someone up the road. They had A LOT of time to catch her, they could easily do it. Yet they blew it
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#143It might be interesting to recall that Alan Turing was an Olympics team contender for 1948~1949
Yes, let's use the opportunity this article about this successful woman has provided us to talk about successful men instead. Great suggestion.
As an ardent women's cycling fan, i found it a fascinating fact.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#144It might be interesting to recall that Alan Turing was an Olympics team contender for 1948~1949
Yes, let's use the opportunity this article about this successful woman has provided us to talk about successful men instead. Great suggestion.
There's room for talking about both. It's not somehow a put down of the woman to kind of compare her to Turing.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#145(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…
Oh, "they" knew. Cyclists talk amongst themselves. Shapira and Plichta fell back to the peloton and they knew.
Not everyone knew, but then they let a group break away and build an 11 minute lead at one point. If you weren't keeping track of every rider in that group you are probably just trying to hang on to make a play amongst the rider left around around you later and not thinking about Gold.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#146Fantastic ride and if you follower her Twitter she's been doing a lot of very detailed exploration of her endurance limits in preparation. When the lead group fell to 3 they had an 11 minute lead. She broke free and went solo with 40km to go. When she finished that lead had eroded to 2 minutes as the front group she dropped had been caught. So in those 40km she lost 9 minutes of lead she had built with the help of th…
It’s easy to underestimate a break-away rider when you don’t know that there is one.
The silver medal winner thought she had won the race.
They need a kick for not communicating amongst themselves.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry but this is ridiculous! Everyone who participates at the olympics must be a professional athlete. Especially, if you are favorite. Observing the environment around you should be obvious?! It is not like Anna Kiesenhofer had the one ring on her finger and was invisible...
She did not earn her money with cycling. Last year, her proffesion was Mathematics teacher. She was also far from a favorite for this race. She spent one year in a proffesional group. The commentators were saying she really dislikes riding in 'the bunch'. Which would make proffesional cycling hard. She qualified through national championships, which are open to non-proffesionals. As for invisibility, the person who c…
She's not a mathematics teacher, but a research mathematician.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#148I recently started watching road cycling with this years Tour de France and now the Olympics and it's pretty interesting. A lot of tactical depth and it's a perfect WFH background noise- it plays out over hours so you don't have to be watching every minute Both mens and womens road race in the Olympics were excellent too, a lot of drama and interesting mind games
Welcome, I am also addicted!
http://www.cyclingtorrents.nl
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#149Fantastic ride and if you follower her Twitter she's been doing a lot of very detailed exploration of her endurance limits in preparation. When the lead group fell to 3 they had an 11 minute lead. She broke free and went solo with 40km to go. When she finished that lead had eroded to 2 minutes as the front group she dropped had been caught. So in those 40km she lost 9 minutes of lead she had built with the help of th…
It’s easy to underestimate a break-away rider when you don’t know that there is one. The silver medal winner thought she had won the race. They need a kick for not communicating amongst themselves.
I heard something early on about a communication failure, not sure how much truth there is in that.
Nonetheless, it was an incredible performance - right down to her collapsing to the ground victorious in tears at the line.
I laughed a little when I saw the Danish competitor come to congratulate her with a big smile while the Dutch team two meters away wouldn’t even acknowledge she was there - no point being bitter about it afterwards when you’ve already been beaten that badly by a “nobody”. I wasn’t even sure if Anna even realised because she was so exhausted (and elated!).
40KM without the help of a peloton. Incredible.
Re: Anna Kiesenhofer: Mathematician, amateur cyclist, Olympic champion
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is part of what makes road racing so much fun to watch. You need to be strong to win, but it's not just a pure contest of who can put out the most watts per kilogram. Tactics - and some luck - play a factor too.
Tactics are a measure of who knows at what time to put out how many watts per kilo. What happens in road racing is politics. Domestiques grouping up at a leisurely pace to finish a climb stage just under the time limit, celebrities holding the team car by a sticky water bottle to catch back up to the group that dropped them, taking it easy for the first part of the race until a race leader says "let's go", and not at…
IMO the politics and team tactics/antics are part of the fun.
It’d be boring real quick if they’d make it 21 time trials…