Olympic Road Cycling

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The team was announced today for the road race:

David Millar
Chris Froome*
Bradley Wiggins*
Ian Stannard
Mark Cavendish

*TT entries

Interestingly, Millar is not entered in the Time Trial. the 2 riders for that are froome + wiggins.
I hope this is to do with form (millar has not been time trialling as well as usual this year) rather than any politics surrounding his ban. IMO Millar has served his time and is now a great promoter of drug free sport, and it's fair that he gets to ride in the olympics.

 

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I think Millar was involved in that big crash on saturday? So i'm not sure that he'll be on top form anyway today. Still seems to have put in a decent time though.

I saw an article the other day about a loophole that Germany + France have found to get around the limit of the number of riders entered in their track team. As i understand it, they submit a team of 8 track riders then select riders from those 8 for each event. But they are also allowed to use riders from other disciplines to ride track events, so the massive german track sprinter Robert Forstemann is entered as a MTBer and the French track rider Bourgain is entered for the road race.
It doesnt mean that they get more riders into each individual event, just that they have a larger pool of riders to select from.
(Link)

 

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Are you maybe getting mixed up with the track TT? The track TT is 1kilometre i think and that sort of distance would suit a sprinter.
The road TT is much longer (44kilometres) and doesnt suit a sprinter. Wiggins, Cancellara and Tony Martin are the ones to watch for the road TT.

 

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That's be right - i was thinking velodrome (those round cycle tracks in an arena).

Well, in that case, to answer your question, Cavendish is not riding the track TT because that event has been dropped this year Cavendish doesnt usually ride the track TT anyway, Wiggins is much better at it and got gold in the 4k in 2008. I think that was one of the main reasons he decided to focus more on road racing, they removed his events from the olympic track riding.

I thought 44km would be like a sprint if they've done over 3000 km in tour de france?

Its still a long way (nearly 30 miles), so it's not a distance that sprinters are good at.

 

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I don't like the lack of on-screen graphics to tell you the distance between riders or who's in the breakaway.

Yeah.
When a time does flash up, it seems to be giving the gap between the front riders and the rear of the peleton? I'm sure it will only be a few seconds difference, but i'd rather know the gap to the front of the peleton

 

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All these slow-mo shots are great, but they scare the hell out of me
I'v only ever seen a director cut to a slow-mo before when someone has fallen/crashed/etc, i keep thinking something has happened.

 

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Single rider break away , wonder how long til he gets swallowed up.

Gilbert is very strong, but i doubt even he can hold off the peleton on his own. Things are looking good for Cav now.
One last climb up box hill to go and doesnt look like he's struggling too much yet.

 

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Gilbert has 1:20 over the peleton with around 40k to go.
Looks very much like this will be a bunch sprint.

 

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Around 4.

 

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Uh oh! Cancellara in the break?
Not good news for Cav, Cancellara is the sort of guy who could ride that sort of distance on his own and hold off the peleton.

Good to see Eisel in his usual place in the "Sky" train

 

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Why's he giving up now. He was going all the way in France.

In a single day race, there's nothing to gain from him crossing the line in the middle of the bunch. The plan would have always been for each member of team GB to give everything they've got then drop off.

 

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Come on Uran, lets get a Sky win at least

Edit: actually, it's Uran, not Henao.

 

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I'm lost. There are two leaders with a 56" gap?

2 leaders, chase group a few seconds behind, peleton 56 secs back.

 

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They didn't have any information because the organisers ****** up royally and didn't provide enough timing information during the race.

They didnt "**** up". You cant expect them to spend the same money that the TdF does on transponders/timing equipment for one single event.

 

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the way the media have hyped him up was pretty hilarious in all honesty.

No it wasnt.
The media said he had a good chance of winning because he had a good chance of winning.
You cant chase every breakaway, you have to gamble and hope that you can catch them again and hope that some of the other sprinters teams will help you chase.
Thats cycling, thats what happens. It's disappointing for Cav/GB but they worked hard and stuck to their plan. A combination of a very big escape group and not much help chasing from anybody else ruined their chances.
Cavendish is by far the fastest sprinter and i'm fairly sure he would have won if it was all together at the end.


Really disappointed for Cancellara though. I hope he's not too bad and can still ride the TT, but it didnt look good. He was by far the favourite to win from that group.

 

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The whole thing is (or will be soon) on iplayer

 

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Ah right so the so the other teams wouldnt take a turn in front, not very good sportsmanship.

It was their tactics, rather than poor sportsmanship or anything like that. The germans know that Cav is slightly faster than their sprinter (Greipel), so they dont want to use up all their energy to chase the front group down and force a bunch sprint only for him to lose to Cav anyway.
The german team was gambling on GB chasing down the break to make a sprint for Cav (but using up all their energy doing so) and then, having not done any chasing, the german team would all be fresh to give the best leadout they could to Greipel and hope that they can do enough to help him outsprint Cav.
By the time that the germans realised that GB couldnt catch the front group and started to send their own men up to help, it was too late for the peleton to catch them.

 

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why does it matter what the group does? only matters what the team gb can do doesn't it?

The breakaway today was quite large. If they are all working together (each rider taking a turn of being in the wind on the front of the group) then the 4 team GB riders each taking a turn on the front of the peleton are never going to catch them. You would expect everybody who did not have a teammate in the front group to help GB chase down that group.

they are riding for different countries aren't they?

Technically yes, but they also are all friends in their normal teams. For example, Eisel (Austrian, and Team Sky) did a lot of work to help GB/Cav.

so why didn't they see them getting away and then just go for it instead of saying other teams weren't going for it?

Most of them went on the climb, GB needed to stay with Cav because he is not as quick on the hills and hope that they can chase down the breakaway group on the flat.

This pelaton thingy is just the main group isn't it? Isn't it supposed to be the lead group? i.e. the khazakhstan and columbia riders?

The 'peleton' is usually just the biggest group of riders.

i don't much understand road cycling....

It can be quite confusing if you're not sure whats going on

 

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Question: are all the riders from this race TDF riders?

Not all of them. Uran (2nd) didnt ride the TdF this year, for example. Although he is a pro on a big team (Sky), there are also riders from smaller teams who were not invited to the tour.

 

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Few from my P&S today.

Thats interesting, i didnt realise that brad wasnt using his Pinarello today.

Just looked it up, info about the bike he was riding is here if anybody is interested. (It says that the whole team will be riding them, but it's clear from Russell's pic that most of them are using their team bikes)