Such a weird schedule. I had to check, are the Olympics happening next month or something? Because it’s been difficult to adjust to the Men’s World Road Race to be contested in the beginning of August, and the women just a week later. In fact, the previous earliest Worlds were in late August, back in the LeMond/Hinault/Kelly etc. days, and for all of this current century the competition has followed the Vuelta a España, in late September or early October.
But this is a new day, and maybe a pretty cool one? I haven’t had time to really watch but the all-discipline Worlds is a dynamic idea, where fans of all cycling disciplines can geek out on bike stuff together, maybe even long enough to stop arguing about which one is superior. Put your beer down, watch the Germans win another Artistic Cycling medal, and drink it all in. The Wheelympics are alright by me.
Photo by Robert Sennecke/ullstein bild via Getty Images
Of course, another reason for this might just be the UCI pretending to be the Olympics, which may or may not work out. It is rather conspicuous that last Sunday’s Worlds race came a year before the Olympic road race in Paris, to be held next summer, August 4. Was this a means for getting the peloton thinking of how to transition from the Tour de France to a one-day Monument-length race two weeks later? That I am absolutely for.
I might be getting ahead of myself but next year’s Olympic road race is already on my mind, for a few reasons. One, Mathieu van der Poel said after his win that he was running out of career goals — something like “my career is almost finished” but I don’t think he meant he was retiring. [We unilanguage types should cut exhausted athletes speaking in their fourth language some slack here.] The Paris Olympics have to be way up on his radar.
Another reason is that this has to be a great event, right? No disrespect to the one-off Olympic cycling events, which have mostly been gimmicky tourist courses that nonetheless produced a decent race, or even a fascinating one (ni hao Beijing!). The Paris event is also not exactly drawn from any existing race, focusing on the Chevreuse Valley southwest of the capital before doubling back into town and doing three circuits featuring the Côte de la Butte Montmartre, just shy of a kilometer at 4.7%, a long power climb which will probably set up a lot of…
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