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bike for people who don't know bikes good nations to cheer for: france, belgium, italy, netherlands, kazakhstan, denmark, germany, slovenia awful nations, boo and hiss at them: britain, australia, new Zealand, the US, any country which speaks English the two types of bike races are indoors and outdoors. the outdoor races are good, the indoor ones are fake and only people from non bike countries like the UK care about them. i think there's something where they race bikes on mountains. seems wild but im not sure if it's a real thing. one term in a bike race is "peloton". it means "platoon" and refers to the army of dope testers which will hopefully be massing outside the Team GB riders' rooms after the road race in all seriousness if you want an actual preview of the road race by an actual good writer check this out. https://inrng.com/2021/07/tokyo-olympics-mens-road-race-preview/ the road race is notably hilly this year to the extent that it's liable to favor "GC riders", aka riders who would also compete for the overall win at a grand tour like the Tour de France. notably the fresh TDF champ Tadej Pogacar (Slovenia) is the likely favorite for the Men's road race, with Richard Carapaz (Ecuador) a close second that said, it's not a mountaintop finish tour de france stage-some of the climber "classics riders" (guys who specialize in one day races, many which feature a large number of smaller climbs, rather than a few big mountain passes) may be able to handle the course if they've good legs. Wout van Aert of Belgium who is the most insanely talented fucker, is a big shot for this, as is Remco Evenopoel who is the most insanely talented fucker at everything except "going downhill without crashing" which maybe Quick Step should have fixed before they sent him on GC duties at the Giro d'italia There's a woman's road race. Woman's cycling is cool as hell but the Dutch will win it because they always do. Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Jul 24, 2021 |
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Jul 24, 2021 06:16
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 04:32 |
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also in all seriousness bike racing is a deeply weird sport despite "the winner is the first bike over the finish line" being the simplest thing ever so if you don't know what the bike riders are doing and why they're all chilling 15 minutes behind a group of leaders just ask
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Jul 24, 2021 06:24
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My Shark Waifuu posted:do the dudes shave their legs? they just did a close up of pedaling and those legs looked suspiciously smooth yes
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Jul 24, 2021 06:46
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by the way the next climb should be interesting because the main tactic of this race is to avoid getting to the final climb with Pogacar in the leading group if at all possible. if any major players want to shake the tree this is a good opportunity (as is the descent)
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Jul 24, 2021 06:54
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incredible ive definitely see someone think they've won with a rider in the break up the road before but never in a race this important lol
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Jul 25, 2021 11:05
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tbh the bigger problem was them letting a relatively good break get 10 minutes when absolutely no team was going to help set pace and chase it down when the Dutch had three of the four pre-race favorites on their team
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Jul 25, 2021 14:14
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kimbo305 posted:Long range solo breakaway wins are rare, but wins from small breakaway groups happen. How much support goes up up to those riders depends on how good their chances look. the most famous one (similar to today) was when a random French guy won the Tour of Flanders (one of the most important one-day bike races) when a total breakdown in peloton leadership between the two leading teams saw the early no-hope break get an absurd gap of like 25 minutes here one of the problems was that the Dutch were the heavy favorites and would have been expected to set pace for that reason. but since they misread the race situation, things totally fell apart when the Dutch stopped chasing, and the teams that knew there was a rider up the road (Italy, apparently) didn't particularly feel like chasing it down for the benefit of the Dutch there are a bunch of reasons you want to breakaway even if it has virtually no hope. one is that if you aren't a pre-race favorite, going in a no-hope break and hoping the peloton screws it up is legitimately the best chance you have to win (which happened today). the more important reason is that if you're in the breakaway, your team can chill out in the peloton without setting pace, because why chase a group of leaders when one of your teammates is in it? cycling is cool for that kind of thing, the peloton is basically a big game-theory-based rolling negotiation on who sets pace to bring the breakaway back Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 14:20
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even without that mistake it was a moronic move for them to give a not-particularly-weak break 10 minutes. you can do that in a race with more high quality teams and teammates, but in a Woman's Olympic race where a majority of the pre-race favorites comprise the Dutch team, that's one where you really should be giving them a 4-5 minute leash. the men's WC race can get away with a 20 minute breakaway because it almost always consists of semi-pro riders from smaller nations who want exposure. also unlike the woman's field, multiple teams will have pre-race favorites and be willing to set pace, and the peloton is full of world class roleur domestiques. you can't do that at the womans Olympic race e) also the dutch really should have been expecting to chase all day and not set their team up with three pre-race favorites. i honestly think they wanted to sweep the podium Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 14:48
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professional races have the riders carrying radios and live updates on the gap. international races (the olympics/european championships/world championships) don't. in a situation like that it wouldn't be unusual for the Dutch team car to ride up to the peloton and yell out the window (or informing one of the Dutch riders when she dropped back for a feed) so i'm going to assume that somehow the Dutch team car wasn't aware of the situation either (a few team members from other teams chimed in online saying they were fully aware of a rider up the road and had no idea what the Dutch were doing). a lot of the info floating around is dubious (possibly CYA from the Dutch team) but they also mentioned that the time gaps they were getting were to the next chasing group and not the lead of the race. frequently you have dudes with chalkboards on motorbikes giving time gaps, but that's a courtesy to the riders and not required in the rules, iirc.
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Jul 25, 2021 15:15
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also i think the dutch sent riders on the attack after they caught what they thought was the leading group because their riders are strong enough to make it to the end from a relatively long distance (see: https://howtheracewaswon.com/2019/world-championships-women ). surge-and-stop attack and regroup tends to screw up a chase and actually be slower than riding at a high steady pace.
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Jul 25, 2021 15:51
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yeah it happens in stage races quite a bit but it's extremely rare for an early break to stick in a major one-day race someone won from the early break at Paris-Roubaix in 2016 but that was a bizarre race, the early break was unusually strong, it wasn't a "real" solo break because he was joined by riders attacking from the peloton and Paris-Roubaix is borderline uncontrollable anyway. Flanders '92 is the closest thing i can think of in the modern era.
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Jul 25, 2021 16:58
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flanders 92 was hilarious, the French teams back then (and still now, to an extent) didn't give a poo poo about the Belgian races so the riders they sent there were either really young or mostly there as punishment for being out of shape. And they ended up winning
Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 17:10
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also im still pissed about the world championship men's race where the field nearly got lapped on the finishing circuit by the breakaway before the race officials politely informed the the riders that the entire peloton would be eliminated if the leaders lapped them
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Jul 25, 2021 17:13
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it's possible they could have attacked from the peloton and tried to bridge to the break, but all the dutch cyclists would have been heavily marked by the leaders of the other teams who hadn't spent the race riding on the front and would be relatively fresh, meaning they'd likely be followed by one of the Italians/Americans who'd sit on her wheel and neutralize the attack. also they had by far the strongest team and there's no need for fancy tactics there, you catch the break and launch your late attack.
Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jul 25, 2021 |
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Jul 25, 2021 18:24
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KingKapalone posted:So if you're the second best from your country, the country shouldn't even give you a shot at winning? I don't understand. cycling has the weird dynamic where it's a team sport even though individuals win it's understandably more difficult with small teams but given how strong the Dutch have been they should have expected that they'd be forced to ride on the front all day. just as an example the men's Belgian team were the favorites yesterday, they had two potential winners in Van Aert and Evenopoel but also had really valuable utility riders in GVA (who was never going to get over the climbs, but is great at towing the group), Benoot, and Vansevenant as support. and the Belgians weren't nearly as strong race favorites as the Dutch are. They didn't take a rider like Stuyven or Wellens because they didn't need another potential winner, they needed domestiques.
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Jul 25, 2021 18:38
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Paperhouse posted:what I mean is that Kiesenhofer got like 3:52 or something there's a lot of bad info about whether or not they knew she was up the road, though even without that, they sat up and gave the break way too wide of a margin. 10 minutes in a woman's race of that distance is a gap you give a no-hope break, not one that had a few legitimately good riders in it, especially when you should know you'll be setting pace all day. it would have been difficult for any of the Dutch riders to be allowed to break away. the entire group would have freaked out and tried to bring them back. this kind of thing does occasionally happen, and it's not impossible for them to do that because they're the strongest riders in the peloton (and that practically happened at the 2019 World Championships), but it's much easier to let a weak break go, pace the field to a late catch and win in a late attack.
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Jul 25, 2021 18:45
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like fundamentally, the reason for the peloton/breakaway dynamic is control. when the group is together the race is unstable, because anyone who jumps off the front is instantly in the race lead. everyone in the race is a lazy rear end in a top hat and doesn't want to ride hard for the entire race, so what happens is that a relatively weak group of riders is let up the road, meaning there's almost no incentive to attack out of the group anymore (in big races, you have domestiques ,basically: utility players, whose specialty is to police the breakaway and chase back breaks that they think are too dangerous, or chase down riders they don't want up the road). then you can rely on your rouleurs to tow the peloton all day and gradually bring the breakaway back, while your star riders chill out away from the wind, and then race for the win in the final x kilometers when the break is caught, or close enough to bridge to. when you're the outright favorites, you don't really "need" to do any fancy tactics- you want a controlled race that ends with your favorites attacking for the race win. it's the other teams who have more incentive to shake the tree tactically. there's also the question of who chases. in a stage race it's conventionally (though not always) the leader's team, because they have the most to lose if the break gets a bunch of time- in a one-day race, it's the race favorites because none of the other teams are going to set pace for their benefit. this was an unusual one because men's cycling rarely has the dynamic woman's cycling does now where one national team is such a blatant favorite that absolutely no other team would be willing to work to tow the field. the problem the dutch had was a) they let a relatively strong break go b) they gave the break way too much time c) they didn't have enough utility riders who'd be great at setting pace to control the break d) they apparently lost track of the time gap
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Jul 25, 2021 18:59
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yeah sprint is the funniest example of how much the simple act of drafting changes racing. like sprint is fundamentally a three lap race. this is how it actually plays out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulj5x3wZqeQ
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Jul 25, 2021 19:03
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Yeah a funny thing is that the men's race favorite, Wout van Aert is almost too good to win these races, because everyone is waiting for his attack and nobody is willing to help him chase down attacks. You could see why in that race where he was more or less forced to chase down Carapaz himself and even after doing that, won the sprint for second place anyway.
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Jul 25, 2021 19:16
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its a cool sport because its really hard to get a clearer example of classic game theory. like 90% of cycling strategy is the prisoners dilemma/free rider problem. nothing cooler than seeing a guy constantly keep a group 15 seconds behind him at bay because they refuse to cooperate
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Jul 25, 2021 21:50
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yeah probably true. im trying to avoid the really complicated thing where I'm not sure which teams, if any knew there was a rider up the road because nobody seems to be able to get their facts straight. Really this seems like one of those situations where the peloton suffered a total nervous breakdown which is always hilarious
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Jul 25, 2021 22:00
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also the guys policing the break are going to be on the favorites teams, and when they go up the road to chase you down, others will follow because you generally don't want someone on a team of favorites up the road, and before you know it you're effectively towing the whole field. a few riders who specialize in breakaways are good enough at sustained effort (usually on flat roads) over a period of time that they can literally just ride everyone off their wheel and break if they want to. that's especially impressive because you generally don't want someone strong like that in a break because that means it's going to be a hard chase. e) back in the day the strongest riders in the field actually had enough social/political power to more or less have them literally say "you're allowed in the break" or "you aren't". that system of peloton leadership kind of died out with the sport getting a bit more modern/professional, but hey. you still kind of see this in situations like if the peloton slows down after a crash during a non-critical part of the stage to let people back in- the guy telling everyone to cool off will generally be one of the race favorites, or a really respected veteran domestique Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 14:53 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 14:47
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good writeups of both races, btw - https://inrng.com/2021/07/tokyo-olympics-road-race-review/ https://inrng.com/2021/07/womens-road-race-review-tokyo/ quote:After the satisfaction of seeing the best riders from the Tour de France duke it out for the medals in a script a Hollywood executive would approve, the women’s race went for a fantasy story from Yowamushi Pedal, an otaku win, and in a manner that could only really work in a fantasy manga. Yes sport can have upsets but it would be a surprise if Kiesenhofer held out to win the Flèche Wallonne from the early break, a stunning shock if she’d somehow won the Strade Bianche. But the Olympics? Feels Villeneuve fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Jul 26, 2021 |
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Jul 26, 2021 17:12
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the uci needs to bring back the motorpacing events imo https://youtu.be/sdLj2Nvv3k0
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Jul 27, 2021 04:45
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 04:32 |
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Loving Africa Chaps posted:It's because they can't ride a bike op i have repeatedly pmed every mod and administrator to ban triathlon discussion in the bike thread op
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Jul 31, 2021 21:40
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