Olympic Road Cycling

Some of mines outside Harrods, processed quickly as I have to go to NY tomorrow

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Good news!
Cancellara's shoulder is pretty bashed up, but his collar bone isnt broken.
Not decided yet if he's going to ride the TT, i'd love to see him do it, but as long as he's ok, then i'm happy.

Tbh, i was more gutted today thinking that he had broken his collar bone again than i was that Cav didnt win.
<3 Sparticus
 
After we watched the last lap of Box Hill we went to a big screen to watch the rest. The applause from the massive crowd of GB fans when Cancellara got back on his bike after the crash was quite poignant. Genuine respect from almost everyone for him.
 
There was no way I was going to cycle all the way to Box Hill with so little sleep and my camera, so that idea went totally out the window. I also wasn't keen on getting the train to Dorking as I'm not familiar with the area and I was worried it was going to be super busy. So I decided I'd just go to the Buckingham Palace area like I did with the test event last year.

Got there about 9am which was later than I had wanted. It was already very busy and had to walk quite a long way up the Constitution Hill road to find a spot, which wasn't ideal for getting photos with everyone trying to do the same. Caught the tail end of a few of the riders warming up and there was a great atmosphere with everyone cheering and banging the barriers when they announced the Team GB squad. Watched them set off and then went for a bit of a wander about, as I feared you can't get anywhere near the Podium. Although they have some commentary on speakers in the Mall area, there were no TVs anywhere. Decided to go up to the Hyde Park Festival where they do, but due to having camera gear, couldn't get in.

So I went and grabbed a bite to eat and then looked for a good spot. Decided on the top of Constitution Hill road as you can see them come around a corner and then head down towards the Mall. So I then had to camp out in that spot for about 3 and a half hours or so, but it turned out be alright due to the people I was stood with being talkative.

Trying to follow the race though proved difficult.
I couldn't get the BBC coverage to play on my phone and everyone else seemed to find that 3G was useless and not playing anything. I guess too many signals. Luckily I thought to bring a small personal radio, so I put 5 Live on. The problem was though that there are so many events going on, that they are constantly cutting between them. As it got closer to the end of the race though, they spent more time on the Cycling. The annoying thing was that the commentators didn't really know what was going on. They had no idea who anyone was really, all they could say was that "There is a German, somebody from the Swiss team etc... in the breakaway, we haven't got the current up to date list of where everyone is".

So I think that perhaps reflects the same issues that were also happening on TV which didn't sound much better. All I've seen are the highlights, but I saw Chris Boardman tweeted that they will do better tomorrow.

As for the result, yes it was disappointing when it seemed like a sure thing, especially given the form we've seen from these riders in the past week. They tried to do exactly the same thing they did last Sunday, which worked, but this time they had less help in both numbers and team support and the other teams didn't put in the effort to help catch the break.

I can see how people who aren't that familiar with Cycling must think it turned out to be billed as amazing and then turned out to be a let down. I've just heard BBC report that the race is now the most watched Olympic Event ever, so there were obviously lots of people who aren't familiar, so a lack of real information during the race won't have helped. The truth is that Team GB gave everything they could, but it was really out of their hands, I feel gutted for Cav because we knew how bad he wanted this, it was obvious from how he took to this year's Tour.

What I think actually happened today was that the world was robbed of what should have been a great bunch sprint. Even if Cav hadn't won it, we would still have had a real fight for the finish and that didn't happen.

Finally will add that the organisation was very well done and all the volunteers were great and provided some crowd participation as entertainment. Police were also fantastic and many of the motorbike riders were loving waving to the crowd. It was also nice to see the Army running security operations rather than some G4S stooges. They have audio messages that play at end of an event along with instructions on how to leave which have been recorded by athletes and celebs, some pretty funny ones in there, so that was a nice touch. Most amusing moment of the day was after most of the riders had got through, a couple of guys on Boris Bikes managed to get over the barriers and were cycling past the crowds before they got stopped.

Got to decide whether to go to the Mall again tomorrow or possibly cycling to Richmond Park. I think it might be a little quieter tomorrow as the women's race doesn't have quite the same expectation, things have been subdued a little now and it might be wet tomorrow.

Got lots of photos, but haven't got time to process them now.
Wow, that was a long post!
 
I rode my motorbike down to about 10 minutes walk from the loop but on the other side to boxhill, we found an ace little bit of climb with good views and some fun people around. Here's a few photo's from camera phone, forgot to pack my other camera :o

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I went to watch in Richmond Park, couldn't believe how quick they came past, absolutely flying. General tip would be don't try panning at a once in a lifetime event if you've never done it before :p

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touch said:
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.


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.


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.


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


It can be quite confusing if you're not sure whats going on :)
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Thanks for that. :) Explains most of it nicely. :)

My next question is - why didn't they drop Cav off and go for it?
Not nice as a team but it's individuals not a team isn't it?

He might be world #1 but maybe one of the others should have forgot that and just gone for it?

You would expect everyone who had a rider in the top group to NOT help team GB chase them down as that could effect the outcome and they could go from gold to nowhere if there's a group. Wasn't it just the kazak guy and a columbian so the worst they could do is finish silver whereas if the group caught them up they would be nowhere....
 
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helpimcrap said:
Thanks for that. :) Explains most of it nicely. :)

My next question is - why didn't they drop Cav off and go for it?
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They can't. Cav has the easy job of 'just following' the train. It's the guys at the front that are having to work 25% harder. And if they can't catch the break then Cav can't do it, and if he did jump across when he got there he would be exhausted.

In all the big breakaway had 20, the peloton had 4 controlling it in laymans terms thats 5 times more people to give that extra 25%.

For me thats the beauty of cycling I don't really know of any other sport where politics and tactics play such a major role.
 
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helpimcrap said:
My next question is - why didn't they drop Cav off and go for it?
Not nice as a team but it's individuals not a team isn't it?
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None of the GB team other than Cav are particularly strong at sprinting. So that chances are that if they just left cav behind and pushed on, they would just end up dragging somebody who is a stronger sprinter and then being outsprinted.

helpimcrap said:
He might be world #1 but maybe one of the others should have forgot that and just gone for it?
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Cav wasnt chosen as the team leader because of his reputation or status. He was chosen because of the way he earned those things. He is the fastest sprinter in the world and if they had managed to pull in the break, he probably would have won.
The GB tactic was to focus completely on Cav. Sacrifice the chances of everybody else in the team to try and set Cav up for the win. Obviously, this is a risk, and it didnt pay off this time, but i still think it was the best thing we could have done. Other teams had different tactics, USA, for example, have Tyler Farrar, who is a very good sprinter, but they gambled on putting a few guys in the break. So they had a chance of winning it whether or not the break got caught but the guys in the break were not great sprinters (althoug, Phinney got 4th i think?, so that's good for him) and Farrar would have been left on his own if it had come to a bunch sprint because the guys who were in the break would be too tired to help him.

helpimcrap said:
You would expect everyone who had a rider in the top group to NOT help team GB chase them down as that could effect the outcome and they could go from gold to nowhere if there's a group. Wasn't it just the kazak guy and a columbian so the worst they could do is finish silver whereas if the group caught them up they would be nowhere....
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Yep, if you have a team mate in the breakaway, you dont do any work to help chase him down. The breakaway was very big and there were a lot of different nationalities represented, so that worked against GB as not many people wanted to help.

The 2 guys who were 1st and 2nd sprinted away from the breakaway of around 33 riders at the 1kilometre to go point. When you are going very fast and you are that close to the end, it takes a lot of effort to catch those 2 again and you dont have time to recover to sprint for the end.
So what do you do if your behind those 2 in the lead group? Do you chase it yourself and then the other 30 guys in that group come flying past you on the line when you're knackered? Or do you wait and hope somebody else will chase?
If you watch the group behind when the 2 guys first sprint away you can see somebody working on the front trying to chase them down, then he moves to the side to let somebody else do some work, but nobody will help him, so the 2 in front build up a big lead and take the win.

Edinho said:
For me thats the beauty of cycling I don't really know of any other sport where politics and tactics play such a major role.
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Thats why they call it "Chess on wheels" ;)
 
Team GB looking good so far, Lizzie in the breakaway in a good position, and the rest of the team towards the front end of the peloton should the breakaway be caught.

Hopefully the weaker of the 3 in the breakaway (Russian??) can keep in the mix to help them stay in front.

Gap of 40 seconds with less than 15k to go.
 
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