‘Chasing Rainbows’ – 2020 World Cycling Championships…

The last minute, re-arranged World Cycling Championships were very good considering all of the stress and alterations to the venue in the run up.

Naturally it was a shame not to see U23 competitions and the team time trial (especially seeing as how controversial it was when it came in). But the events we did get to see where entertaining and with deserving winners.

Rnk	Rider	Team	UCI	Pnt	Avg	Time
1	VAN DER BREGGEN Anna	Netherlands	350	100	47.157	40:20
2	REUSSER Marlen	Switzerland	250	70	46.867	0:15
3	VAN DIJK Ellen	Netherlands	200	40	46.561	0:31
4	BRENNAUER Lisa	Germany	150	30	46.296	0:45
5	BROWN Grace	Australia	125	25	45.998	1:01
6	NEBEN Amber	United States	100	20	45.648	1:20
7	NORSGAARD Emma Cecilie	Denmark	85	15	45.612	1:22
8	KRÖGER Mieke	Germany	70	10	45.448	1:31
9	STEPHENS Lauren	United States	60	9	45.232	1:43
10	BUSSI Vittoria	Italy	50	8	45.178	1:46

Anna Van Der Breggen was a narrow winner of the Womens TT with Marlen Reusser at only 15 seconds and Ellen Van Dyke only a second away from a 30 second blanket being able to be thrown over the podium.

Rnk	Rider	Team	UCI	Pnt	Time
1	VAN DER BREGGEN Anna	Netherlands	600	200	4:09:57
2	VAN VLEUTEN Annemiek	Netherlands	475	170	1:20
3	LONGO BORGHINI Elisa	Italy	400	140	,,
4	VOS Marianne	Netherlands	325	130	2:01
5	LIPPERT Liane	Germany	275	120	,,
6	DEIGNAN Elizabeth	Great Britain	225	110	,,
7	NIEWIADOMA Katarzyna	Poland	175	100	,,
8	LUDWIG Cecilie Uttrup	Denmark	150	90	2:41
9	BRENNAUER Lisa	Germany	125	80	3:08
10	REUSSER Marlen	Switzerland	100	70	,

The road race was less close with Van Der Breggen doing the double. Special mention must go to her team mate and rival Annamiek Van Vleuten who came home for a silver medal despite recently suffering a fracture of her wrist.

As with the womens events, the mens were dominated by the big names of the sport with Fillipo Ganna winning the time trial ahead of Wout Van Aert (who bagged a pair of silver medals) and Stefan Kung who had left the Tour de France early to prepare for this event.

The weather was unpredictable with howling wind and cloud closing in and pulling out all through the event. At one point a cloud burst looked inevitable and this would have given an advantage to the early starters. But it didn’t materialise.

It was interesting to see that despite a pretty bland circuit and shortened distance the riders made the event and that was exactly what the championships needed to be successful.

Rnk	Rider	Team	UCI	Pnt	Avg	Time
1	GANNA Filippo	Italy	350	250	52.981	35:54
2	VAN AERT Wout	Belgium	250	190	52.349	0:26
3	KÜNG Stefan	Switzerland	200	140	52.277	0:29
4	THOMAS Geraint	Great Britain	150	110	52.086	0:37
5	DENNIS Rohan	Australia	125	100	52.038	0:39
6	ASGREEN Kasper	Denmark	100	90	51.849	0:47
7	CAVAGNA Rémi	France	85	80	51.826	0:48
8	CAMPENAERTS Victor	Belgium	70	70	51.732	0:52
9	DOWSETT Alex	Great Britain	60	60	51.405	1:06
10	DUMOULIN Tom	Netherlands	50	50	51.221	1:14

The final event of the weekend was the mens road race which I settled down to watch with a beer after 80km of hard, windy riding of my own Sunday morning.

The breakaway were kept at a suitable arms length going into the latter stages of the race before Tadej Pogacar rocketed out of the front of the pack with a lap and a half to go.

He managed to get a good distance before fading, but it was a clear plan to soften the race up for his team mate Primoz Roglic.

Whether Roglic didn’t feel too great I don’t know. But he didn’t seem capable of getting out of the wheels when the likes of Tom Dumoulin and Greg Van Avermaet went off up the road.

The attack that did stick came from Julian Alaphillippe who went clear on the penultimate climb before following the Pogacar blueprint from previous laps and digging in on the plateau and rolling section of road.

He then made good on the decent into the Formula 1 circuit before stretching his narrow lead in the final kilometer as the chasers started to disfunction and settle for the lower places.

Rnk	Rider	Team	UCI	Pnt	Time
1	ALAPHILIPPE Julian	France	600	350	6:38:34
2	VAN AERT Wout	Belgium	475	260	0:24
3	HIRSCHI Marc	Switzerland	400	190	,,
4	KWIATKOWSKI Michał	Poland	325	150	,,
5	FUGLSANG Jakob	Denmark	275	130	,,
6	ROGLIČ Primož	Slovenia	225	110	,,
7	MATTHEWS Michael	Australia	175	100	0:53
8	VALVERDE Alejandro	Spain	150	90	,,
9	SCHACHMANN Maximilian	Germany	125	80	,,
10	CARUSO Damiano	Italy	100	70	,,

Van Aert came home second as previously mentioned with man of the month Marc Hirschi finishing off the podium places.

We now have a really short break before the Eneco Tour this week, Ardennes Classics on Wednesday and Sunday and the Giro starting Saturday.

Bring it on!