Netherlands Nightmare Ride
Earlier today the UCI World Championships, mired in a slew of time trialling, found its entertainment value moving toward its anticipated peak, with a nail-biting and generally fascinating event, the Mixed Relay. While ITTs are nice, and chapeau to winners in all six(ish) events (Women’s U23 title is taken from the best young rider in the Elite race), things didn’t reach peak intrigue until today.
The Mixed Relay has been a curio for a couple years, with decent riders staffing the medal-winning teams, but this time around it was a star-studded event as regards both genders. Did Mathieu van der Poel kick it out for the ITT? Nope, but he was all too happy to help the Netherlands’ chances in the mixed event, along with superstar women Ellen van Dijk (seeking a second gold medal) and Annemiek van Vleuten. Italy was stacked with big TT names in former champion Filippo Ganna, U23 winner Vittoria Guazzini, and heavy hitter Elisa Longo Borghini. Denmark had not one but two Bjergs. Australia had Durbo, Plappy and the home crowd. Siwtzerland were the actual favorites, with Stefan Küng and Marlen Reusser driving the train.
But the Netherlands had bling. Stars galore, including Bauke Mollema (NL Nats champ, former winner in this event, conqueror of monuments and grand tours, etc.) along with the three vans, plus Daan Hoole and Riejanne Markus. Huge squad with huge names. This was going to be awesome.
Australia crushed it early, before the favorites group from which they were curiously omitted, but whatever. Then the Danes got going very fast, only for the French to beat them at the first check, but not the second, except the French came in tied with Denmark! Australia were still up 20 seconds, so no rainbows were at stake in this dead heat, and sure enough the Dutch, Italians and Swiss all came out fast enough to not worry about the fate of France and Denmark.
Switzerland stole the show, as became apparent pretty quickly. Italy dropped five seconds, but threatened to grab gold as the women’s leg of the relay sped up. Netherlands… Oh dear.
This is where things get weird. Mollema dropped his chain inexplicably, reached down to fix it, made it worse, and slowed down to the point where he had to grab a replacement bike. By then van der Poel and Hoole were too far up the road and would have to fight on as a twosome. The pair had lost 21 seconds to the Swiss at the first time check and 40” when the women started. The Dutch…
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