Latest International Road Racing

[stevenaaus]

Matthews won at Catalunya again

But imho Mohoric's dropper post probably didnt have much to do with his Milan - San Remo victory.

[Sharkey]

Then Kaden Groves won stage 2 and Ben O'Conner won stage 3. Oi Oi Oi.

Mohoric said it made a big difference, even pointing to the bike in acknowledgement before he raised his arms in the air at the finish.

[stevenaaus]

How good is Mads reeling in the break with a half wheel and holding off Cavendish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyfUYzkyJY

[stevenaaus]

I don't know who's the strongest, but Mathieu Van der Poel makes a nasty habit of riding Wout Van Aert's wheel.

[stevenaaus]

Sad news confirmed - Primoz is leaving Jumbo-Visma.
Gah - what a team they were.

[MichaelB]

A really interesting breakdown og Pog's 3rd from 3 Il Lombardia win !

Five Key Takeaways: Il Lombardia
Breaking down how the final major road race of the season, Il Lombardia, was won in impressive fashion
SPENCER MARTIN
OCT 10






READ IN APP

Tadej Pogačar won his third consecutive Il Lombardia and reasserted his position as the sport’s best rider by forging clear of an elite front group in the brutally steep yet visually stunning mountains surrounding the gorgeous town of Bergamo in Northern Italy on Saturday. While Pogačar attacked by opening a small gap on a descent with over 30 kilometers remaining, the lack of cooperation in the strong chase group behind was no match for the singular focus of Pogačar, who powered clear to cross the finish line by nearly a minute ahead of Andrea Bagioli and Primož Roglič,

2023 Il Lombardia Top Ten
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Andrea Bagioli (Soudal-QuickStep) +52
3) Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) +52
4) Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora) +52
5) Simon Yates (Jayco) +52
6) Adam Yates (UAE) +52
7) Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos) +52
Richard Carapaz (EF) +1’06
9) Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) +1’26
10) Andreas Kron (Lotto) +1’26

To expand on Saturday’s premium subscribers-only post-race breakdown, I’ve broken down the key moments and takeaways from the race below:

Race Notebook:
37.5km: After Roglič’s Jumbo-Visma team is thinned down due to setting a hard tempo to keep Ben Healy, who attacked with just over 80km-to-go, under control, UAE’s Adam Yates attacks, which draws out the main contenders and increased the pace enough to reel in Healy. Remco Evenepoel, who crashed earlier in the race, is dropped after he opts in on his patented ‘ride your own pace’ strategy instead of going all-in to stay with the leaders.
https://substack.com/redirect/d27fbc40- ... FK_VJmPl6s

35.1km: An attack from Aleksandr Vlasov, which is marked by riders including Mike Woods and Adam Yates, is off the front, while Roglič and Pogačar, still stuck in their multi-week long stalemate, sit behind and wait for the other to move before they react.


34.2km: While Roglič is pinned on the left-hand side of the road, Pogačar almost nonchalantly follows a bridge attempt on the right-hand side.


33.5km: This passivity from Roglič means that while Pogačar bridges up to the leaders, he is stuck behind chasing.


33.2km: Just as Roglič is about to make contact with the lead group, Pogačar smartly attacks in an attempt to make Roglič’s effort to get back on terms as difficult as possible. This move is key since it forces Roglič to expend a massive amount of energy prior to the descent.


31.3km: As they go over the top of the climb, Roglič, who has been forced to perform a taxing attack to get even with Pogačar and Vlasov, lets the wheel of Pogačar go while Vlasov acts as a sort of obstacle, or screen, between the two Slovenes.


31.5km: Roglič’s mistake allows a slight gap to open that Pogačar immediately takes advantage of by attacking just as the descent starts to get technical. This shows the importance of Pogačar’s decision to attack when Roglič was bridging in order to put him on the limit over the top of the climb.


30.6km: Just a few hundred meters later, Pogačar has already opened up a roughly four-second gap.


26.6km-15.2km: Pogačar presses the descent so aggressively that his gap quickly opens up to 12 seconds, and is over 30 seconds by the time the chasers, who are already starting to worry about pulling too much for each other, finish the descent.


12.1km: By the time he hits the flats, Pogačar has opened up a 45-second. He appears to be cramping, but he quickly calls back to the team car for what I’d imagine is a drink (like pickle juice) to alleviate the issue.


3.8km: Whatever he gets from the team car seems to work since Pogačar continues to extend his lead as he flies up the short final climb.


Finish: He crosses the finish line with more than enough time to celebrate his third victory, in just three career starts at this race.


Chase Group Finish: Roglič, who was actually dropped from the chase group on the short final climb, finishes second behind Andrea Bagioli after leading out the front from the front. This ferocity for which these riders are fighting for the sprint highlights why it was so difficult to reel in Pogačar, since everyone was holding back to fight for the podium and avoid pulling a rival to a victory.


Five Key Takeaways
The first three takeaways are my initial post-race thoughts sent to premium subscribers on Saturday after the race.

1) Tadej Pogačar is as close to unbeatable at this race as any rider in the history of the sport

The 25-year-old wins his third consecutive Il Lombardia title and becomes only the third rider behind only Alfredo Binda and Fausto Coppi to accomplish this feat. His ability to win one of the hardest races on the calendar seemingly on command is truly impressive, but what speaks to his greatness and staggering versatility is that he won this race on two different configurations (Como to Bergamo: 2021, 2023 & Bergamo to Como: 2022) in multiple ways and with different levels of fitness.

In 2021 & 2022, he dropped all but one other competitor on the climbs before outsprinting them at the finish line, but today, after failing to drop the other contenders on the final climb, he attacked the downhill before putting a staggering amount of time into the rest on the descent and gliding clear for a definitive solo victory.

As a testament to his greatness, Pogačar won today with the greatest margin of victory at this race despite looking like he was lacking his best fitness and was in the worst shape out of his three Lombardia wins.

This win means that Pogačar has won five Monument victories in just three seasons and in his last nine Monument starts, putting him at a staggering good and completely unrivaled 55.6% Monument win percentage since 2021.

To put this into context, at just 25, he has more Monument wins than any other active rider in the peloton, is already ranked 16th all-time, and has five titles at the same age as the great Tom Boonen, who went on to win seven total Monuments, was when he won his first.

The fact that Pogačar can win major one-days while also being one of the top two grand tour racers in the world means that Pogačar is currently, without a doubt, the best, and by far the most versatile, rider in the sport of professional cycling.

2) Primož Roglič’s going from a tactical masterclass last weekend to a disaterclass today illustrates the major gulf between semi-classics and Monuments

In his last race in Jumbo colors, the 33-year-old, after a surprisingly up-and-down race, gets a solid third place, which marks only the second time he has finished on a Monument podium in his career.

While this ride, especially his sprint, where he finished second after being on the front from nearly 500 meters to go, was impressive, it was hard not to notice the stark difference in the poise he showed in last weekend’s shorter Giro dell'Emilia, where he moped up the same competition with ease, to today.

On today’s final climb, he looked rattled and on the limit when he was isolated from his team, which led to a momentary lack of judgment that saw him take his eye off the ball and lose Pogačar’s wheel (after not leaving it throughout the tune-up races), which allowed Pogačar to ride clear for the win. This was a costly error since, judging by his impressive sprint, if he could have held Pogačar’s wheel at this point, it was possible that he could have won a reduced sprint for the win.

The fact that he looked far less physically and tactically impressive in a 238-kilometer one-day race versus the 200-kilometer one last weekend shows us why he isn’t the same level of major one-day rider as his countryman Pogačar, despite looking at, or even above, his level in the shorter ones.

3) Questions still linger regarding Remco Evenepoel’s ability to best top riders at major one-day races

The Belgian wunderkind may have two career Monument wins at the age of 23, but after today, where he crashed early in the race and finished 9th place in a rare opportunity to go head-to-head-to-head with Roglič and Pogačar, there are still major questions about his ability to go up against the world’s best riders at the peak of their fitness.

Through every career non-international one-day race matchup, Evenepoel has yet to beat Roglič on a single occasion and has never beaten Pogačar in a race the Slovenian has finished.

This is a troubling trendline, especially since Evenepoel has traditionally employed a ‘Remco see, Remco smash’ racing style to win one-day races, which doesn’t work nearly as well against top-tier and fully fit competition.

Also, while the early crash likely affected his performance, seeing the young Belgian fall off the pace on a late race climb when the pace got high, only to surge back on the flats later on the run into the finish line, made me question if he has the ability to ride on other rider’s terms and be uncomfortable for the 5-10 minutes at a time to stay in an elite group toward the end of a world-class race.

4) Behind Pogačar, a few performances stood out, for better and for worse

Pogačar might have dominated the race, and the narrative, but Andrea Bagioli’s second place finish, and Richard Carapaz’s 8th place finish after a difficult 2023, and crash earlier in the race, were notable surprise results.

Bagioli, the extremely talented 24-year-old Italian, wrapped up the best week of his four years at QuickStep, where he finished on the podium of all three races he started and beat his own team leader Evenepoel, just as he leaves for Lidl-Trek.

With the ability to podium one of the hardest races of the year, it will be interesting to see how he develops, or regresses, on his new team.

The 30-year-old Carapaz, coming off one of the worst seasons of his career, besieged by injuries and crashes and failing to race more than a single stage in a grand tour, rallied to an impressive top-ten finish after a late crash.

Considering how much less race-level intensity he was able to accrue throughout the season, this is an incredibly impressive result that bodes well for his 2024 season.

On the other hand, the 27-year-old Aleksandr Vlasov finished another race where he looked incredibly strong, but at no point appeared to be a serious challenger for the race win.

Vlasov, who burst onto the scene with an impressive third place at the 2020 Il Lombardia, has failed to progress since that result due to an inability to utilize racing strategies that would allow him to beat riders like Roglič and Pogačar.

Instead of taking risks to get out in front of the race in order to put the rest in a difficult position, he has fallen into a bad habit of sitting in and following wheels in the hardest moments.

While being able to follow these riders is physically impressive, his lack of a sprint and inability to drop quicker riders means that his chances of victory racing in this manner are near zero, and shows why he hasn’t won a race since the summer of 2022.

5) The rise of top-tier riders winning major races solo illustrates how game theory is increasingly influencing racing

The final Monument of the 2023 season further emphasized how rare it is in modern cycling for reduced chase groups to close down a single strong rider at the end of a difficult race.

For example, through 2023’s five Monuments (plus the World Championships), a solo rider, who was a member of cycling’s unofficial Big Six (Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Tadej Pogačar, Jonas Vingegaard, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert), won every event.

This phenomenon illustrates just how strong the spell of ‘second group syndrome’ has become and the lengths riders stuck behind in the chase group will go to avoid reeling in the escaped rider due to the situation representing a real-life version of the prisoner's dilemma game theory thought experiment (a paradox in decision analysis in which two individuals acting in their own self-interests do not produce the optimal outcome.).

It also shows us that as modern racing gets harder and more physically demanding, it is favoring only the sport’s ultra top-tier riders, who can get, and stay, away from the chasers more easily due to the increased difficulty meaning that even a larger chase group can struggle to ride at a higher pace than a single strong rider.

Another factor that can’t be ignored is how the importance of podium finishes at major one-day races, and substantial UCI points on offer, create a situation where the pace of the chase group is decreased as the importance of a race increases.

Whatever the reason, the message should be clear; if you want to win a major one-day race, find a window to attack and get away clear inside the final few kilometers of the race to force the others to make a difficult-to-impossible decision.

[stevenaaus]

Great Racing in Paris-Nice 2024.

Lots of smack talking re Roglic's average performance in his first outing for Bora, but sounds like a tough final stage according to Plapp

Roglic sounded like he was enjoying it ??

[familyguy]

No WvA for a few events.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/wout-v ... are-crash/

[elantra]

No WvA for a few events.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/wout-v ... are-crash/

That’s a bad one.
Too many crashes in Pro cycling these days unfortunately.

[MichaelB]

No WvA for a few events.
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/wout-v ... are-crash/

That’s a bad one.
Too many crashes in Pro cycling these days unfortunately.

Yep, he’ll be missed for the next few events. Don’t see the crash, but sounds nasty !

[MichaelB]

Crikey! Mass crash at Basque Country race with quite a few fractures -

Jonas with Collarbone, Remco with collarbone & scapula, Jay with fractured vertebra amongst the high profile people.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jonas- ... try-crash/

A real shame hope they heal quick

EDIT :

Stef Cras also suffered serious injury - 2 perforated lungs, 2 broken ribs and also vertabrae damage

Crash footage is about 7:30. Nasty


[shareyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsigCcYoJ34[/shareyoutube]

[foo on patrol]

Crikey! Mass crash at Basque Country race with quite a few fractures -

Jonas with Collarbone, Remco with collarbone & scapula, Jay with fractured vertebra amongst the high profile people.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jonas- ... try-crash/

A real shame hope they heal quick

Yeah, it was a nasty one.

Foo

[MichaelB]

Crikey! Mass crash at Basque Country race with quite a few fractures -

Jonas with Collarbone, Remco with collarbone & scapula, Jay with fractured vertebra amongst the high profile people.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jonas- ... try-crash/

A real shame hope they heal quick

Yeah, it was a nasty one.

Foo

It also really chnages the potential winners of the remaining classics and makes the Giro a one horse contest !

[stevenaaus]

Probably should have put a barrier there Nasty sharp corner.

[MichaelB]

And with Roubaix on this weekend (my favourite race of the year), the routing into the Arenberg Forest is changed ...



Started by a rider vote, they'll sprint towards the 'chicane' and then the next corner to start Arenberg cobbles.

Will be INTERESTING to say the least.

Hope it achieves what it was mean to

https://escapecollective.com/how-roubai ... -48-hours/

[g-boaf]

Crikey! Mass crash at Basque Country race with quite a few fractures -

Jonas with Collarbone, Remco with collarbone & scapula, Jay with fractured vertebra amongst the high profile people.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/jonas- ... try-crash/

A real shame hope they heal quick

EDIT :

Stef Cras also suffered serious injury - 2 perforated lungs, 2 broken ribs and also vertabrae damage

Crash footage is about 7:30. Nasty


[shareyoutube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsigCcYoJ34[/shareyoutube]

Damn that's nasty. Looks like a drop-off at the edge of the road too, quite a big one. I'm surprised some barriers (or advertising banners) weren't put there as a visual warning.

Fingers crossed they all mend quickly. Jay Vine will be in a heck of a lot of pain.

[foo on patrol]

The lastest update.

https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com/ra ... ue-country

Foo

[familyguy]

A tough lesson in not celebrating too early for Lorena Weibes...ouch.

[foo on patrol]

A tough lesson in not celebrating too early for Lorena Weibes...ouch.

Stupid stupid habit, especially when it is a close finish!



Foo

[foo on patrol]

Pidcock rode a very well judged ride and his attack in the last 15Klms was a good feeler for who had some energy left in their legs.

Foo

[stevenaaus]

^^ That's a great photo. Not even close, laugh.

[foo on patrol]

^^ That's a great photo. Not even close, laugh.

She was celebrating and backed off the power about 10mtrs out.

Foo

[MichaelB]

Absolutely HORRID conditions for Flèche Wallone !!!!

Looks like a combo of rain and snow

[warthog1]

Wow it is bucketing down!

[foo on patrol]

Yeah a combo of rain, hail and snow along with strong wind and a temp of 3-6c.

Foo