Not once. He’s won plenty of rainbow jerseys in cyclocross and never thought to combine with white shorts.
:::shudder::::
He regularly wore white shorts when he was in Dutch national champion kit on the road a few years back.
You’re right.
Wishfull thinking I guess.
Road race was the big event yesterday, but there was a mental ride from Filippo Ganna in the 4K pursuit on the track. He was down by miles at halfway and threw down a biblical last two laps to beat Dan Bigham.
Eurosport link (might be geoblocked)
Bigham is a really interesting rider - he’s closer to national class than world class in terms of physiological talent, doesn’t ride for a WT team, but is a world authority on bicycle aerodynamics. In the controlled environment of the track, and for events against the clock, that makes him able to race the greatest engine of our era (Ganna) to within 0.05secs of winning gold. He was part of Ganna’s training team for his world hour record last year.
Bigham’s riding position is insane. I don’t think he looked up a single time after the initial acceleration. How he holds his line so perfectly without being able to see when the turn is coming up is beyond me. Unless he has a periscope built into his helmet, which I wouldn’t put past him.
We’re watching the Netflix documentary Tour de France: Unchained and it’s really well done. Even though we know all the outcomes, the storylines and backstory are fascinating. Highly recommended, and we can’t wait for the version on the 2023 TdF.
Total class from Remco today, what a rider. Flat-ish TT with a hill at the end, 47km, and he put away two absolute Watt monsters in Ganna and Tarling.
Very few riders have won road and TT champs in their career.
Tarling is 19 and could have ridden the U23 event. Wanted to step up as he won the national TT last month and thought he could be competitive.
Mountain bike tomorrow which I’m looking forward to - vdP claiming he’s just going to ride steady. These statements usually precede him destroying all life on earth in the race. There are some pretty big technical sections though - if he really hasn’t ridden the mtb at all recently he may not go all out. Pidcock the favourite imho.
Lotte Kopecky takes the women’s rainbow jersey in dominant fashion, clearly the strongest in the race. After winning two track events earlier, no less. A little bit sad that Uttrip Ludwig didn’t hold Vollering off for 2nd, but podium still an excellent result for Cecilie.
Did anyone catch the 1st stage of the Vuelta a España, the team time trial in Barcelona? What a cluster! Forcing teams to finish in pouring rain in the dark.
Impossible to predict when the sun will set in Barcelona on Aug 26, got to cut the organizers some slack.
Stage 2 was not much better with further torrential rain, GC times taken with 9km to go in order to try to avoid crashes on the run-in to the finish, leading to a somewhat forgettable stage win for Lotto. At least only a couple people hit the deck. Shitty day for DSM losing the red jersey and a rider to a broken collarbone, good day for Lotto who haven’t had a lot of wins this year.
Proper hard mountains tomorrow, so hopefully some they’ll actually get to race properly. The start list is stacked with practically every GC rider of note aside from Pogi, so the race has the potential to be a really good show.
I want to believe in GC Kuss!
Sadly his TT skills will probably see him lose the red jersey on Tuesday.
The Tour of Britain is on at the moment, and it’s not been a great spectacle tbh. Local council authorities are broke, so there’s little appetite for stuff like WT bike races to promote the locale. Organisers sound like they’ve been under serious funding pressure from sponsors dropping out, so the fact it’s actually going on at all is hugely to their credit, but the parcours sucks by and large. A week of flat sprint stages when the country offers so much potential for mixed hilly routes with sharp Flandrien style climbs - one positive is that local crowds on the streets have been healthy, giving good support for the riders.
Anyhow Wout is on the premises and TJV are currently shitting on everyone with sprinter Olav Kooij having won the first four stages in a row. That’s pretty impressive consistency even with WvA leading you out and not the fiercest competition. The final stage 8 is pretty spikey-looking in S Wales so that might decide things.
Occasional American cycling fans might want to start paying attention to the Vuelta a Espana, as Sepp Kuss survived the ITT still holding over a minute lead over defending champ Remco Evenepoel and now has a realistic chance of winning the general classification of the third grand tour he rides this year, which would make for one of the greatest achievements by an American cyclist in a very long while. Huge test tomorrow with a monstrous day in the Pyrenees.
Sepp is of course super strong in the mountains, but he’s usually not racing to the finish line so this will be a bit new for him. Potential for lots of drama, as Jumbo Visma and UAE each have three rider very highly placed. Kuss, Vingegaard, and Roglic for JV, and fellow domestique Mark Soler, wonder kid Juan Ayuso, and frequent grand tour top 10 Joao Almeida for UAE. If Kuss needs help, will Tour-winner Vingegaard or Giro-winner Roglic actually sacrifice their own chances to ride as domestiques for the guy who has faithfully helped them win 6 grand tours? Would be the feel-good story of the season if they did.
Thanks for highlighting – I just finished watching stage 13 highlights – I’d say Kuss did pretty well 
Note stage 14 has also completed, but I watched 13 mostly because it was the one that showed up on youtube – its the one Gorsnak mentioned above – as one can tell – nice and hilly.
Brian
Unless he collapses on the Angliru on Stage 17, Kuss will most likely win the race. And collapse seems unlikely. Kuss seems as strong as anyone on the big climbs, except for maybe Jonas. But he’s got 1’44" on Jonas, and I haven’t heard anything about JV planning on having their three principals fighting against each other. Vingegaard’s attack on the Tourmalet was not about gaining time on Kuss, but about dropping Soler and having Jonas gain time against Ayuso and Mas. With Jumbo being 1-2-3 in the GC they’re probably more likely to play Stage 17 defensively, just wait for other people (pretty much just Ayuso and Mas at this point) to attack, and they can take turns covering them.
Aside from Stage 17, I guess UAE and Movistar could team up and try a raid on Stage 18? It’s just that Jumbo have the stronger team. Somehow having a budget twice that of most other teams leads to having a stronger set of domestiques than the other guys. Although to be fair UAE also have an insane budget, and they just never seem to have the power on the flats that Jumbo does.
All that said, Remco has shown that anyone can have a disastrously bad day and lose bucketloads of time.
Never have I been so loathe to tell someone that they were right.
A whopping 8 seconds separates Kuss from Vingegaard — not sure how it works when they are on the same team for how hard they compete against each other. I was surprised JV is only 2 minutes ahead of Bahrain Victorious.
Brian
Not sure what I was right about. Kuss hasn’t had a disastrously bad day, and he hasn’t lost bucketloads of time. Jumbo Visma have let their three leaders attack each other, and they haven’t been riding defensively at all.
Now Kuss has lost some time, because he’s clearly not the strongest rider in the race. There’s a pretty reasonable chance he still wins the race, though obviously it’s a lot closer than it was at the rest day.
Stages remaining:
Tomorrow is the last mountain stage, complete with mountaintop finish. The final climb is a hard Cat 1, but not anywhere near as tough as the Angliru.
Friday is the flattest sprint stage I can recall there ever being in the Vuelta. Usually Vuelta sprint stages have a lot of elevation gain over the day, but the profile on this one looks like a pancake.
Saturday is up and down all day, but it’s just endless Cat 3’s.
Sunday is set up as a processional with a final circuit in Madrid ending in a flat sprint.
If Jonas really wants to take the red jersey from Kuss tomorrow he probably can. But if he really had wanted to do that, he probably would have sprinted against Rog for the stage today. Dunno. This team is not behaving the way I expected them to over the last few days, so I have no confidence in any predictions. Except, if Kuss is in red at the end of the stage tomorrow, he’s very unlikely to lose it to Jonas after that.
MvdP’s shorts.
Vingegaard and Roglic didn’t attack today but were loyal domestiques for Kuss. That should have sealed the GC win for Sepp, unless something very unexpected happens on Saturday. It was about time for the two to pay him something back for all the work he did for them in countless grand tours.