Announcers ion NBC Sports Gold (Anthony McCrossen and a woman whose name I have not caught yet) just said that there is snow at the location in Switzerland where Worlds were originally supposed to be held. Speculated that the extreme weather protocol for cold would have likely been enacted had the race been held there.
ETA - it is Lucy Martin who is the other announcer.
Well that doesn’t inspire confidence for a successful Giro d’Italia
No…looks like it is cold at Imola today, as well. Lots of arm warmers and even a few vests.
Oh… apparently Lutsenko didn’t start today because he got the 'rona… Is this the beginning of the end of the season?
There’s a pretty big difference between IM and 70.3 racing and TT racing. Former is sub-threshold efforts on typically non-technical courses, latter is on the rivet efforts on often quite technical courses.
I actually thought the article made some good points. Pretty hard to argue that TT bikes aren’t more dangerous than road bikes, all else being equal. They don’t handle as well even when you’re on the base bar. When you’re on the aerobars the handling is even worse and if you do find yourself in trouble (e.g. carrying too much speed into a corner, getting hit by a gust of wind, or having a car suddenly pull out of a side road) then you have much less ability to recover or take evasive action as needed. Given that TTing is typically only 1-2 days of a stage race, there do seem to be a disproportionate number of serious accidents on TT bikes - Wout van Aert, Froome and Dygert just in the last year or so, and those are all top TT riders who know how to handle a bike. I know a lot of people who ride both TT and road bikes and the rate of crashes on the former is certainly much higher.
Put it this way - I’m sure you’d have been fine riding a road bike at Racine 70.3, but if you’d been on your TT bike coming down Morgul Bismark do you think you’d have stayed upright?
The wick is being turned up by the French now. Think we’ll see the effect on the next climb.
Not this particular year…due to the storm the bike leg was shortened to 31 miles. I figured it was only a few miles longer than a 40k TT so I race it flat out.
Wout’s accidentnwas his own fault (took the wrong line)…Froome did something stupid at the wrong time (even I know not to take my hand(s) off the bars in a descent on a windy day) and we don’t know exactly what caused Dygert’s accident yet.
Absolutely.
Look, I’m not saying that TT bikes handle the same as road bike or that there aren’t reasons that make them more challenging. But the idea that they are inherently “dangerous” is just dumb and presented for clickbait.
Pogacar going all in i think but Belgium look comfortable.
Also Froome crashed out of a tour on a road bike. So did Nibali. And GT and Porte, and…
A lot less handling is also required because there are no cyclists around. You have the whole road to yourself.
The writer also makes the bogus claim of no brakes on a TT bike. As well as there are no advantages since everyone is on one. I guess Quintana didn’t get the memo.
Chapeau, Allaphillipe!!!
Man that was an exciting finish!
I’m pretty militant about wearing a mask, but I was glad to see the podium guys remove their masks for a picture after everyone else had left the stage.
Someone forgot to put it on his bike before his TT run, that’s all.
I stand corrected: I have conflated the two.
You’d expect there to be more crashes overall on road stages for the simple reason that there are ~10x as many road bike as TT stages on a Grand Tour, plus you’ve got 100+ riders in close proximity on those stages. I still think the number of TT bike crashes is disproportionate given how little the riders are on their TT bikes and that when they are they’re riding solo.
I have a TT bike, I’ve done plenty of triathlons and TTs, and it’s probably my best cycling discipline. I’m not saying that TT bikes should be banned. I think there’s a valid argument that the extra risk is justified by the spectacle of the extra speed, and that the specialist nature of riding a TT bike adds more variety and interest to the sport. I just can’t see how anybody can honestly say that there is no extra risk. Are TT bikes inherently dangerous? No. Are they more dangerous than road bikes? Seems obvious to me that they are, for all the reasons in that article plus my own experience and that of friends and team-mates. I’m certainly far more picky about when, where and in what conditions I’ll ride my TT bike than I am with my road bike.
Yes, it’s wrong to say they don’t have brakes. But still valid to point out that when you’re in the aero position you can’t immediately get to those brakes if you suddenly need to, and when you do get to them you don’t have as much braking leverage as you would on a road bike for the simple reason that you don’t have a thumb hooked around the hood/bar to stop you from sliding forwards. Plus there have been plenty of TT bikes with fancy bespoke brakes designed and placed for their aeroness not their stopping ability (hopefully something that will go away as more TT bikes move to disc brakes).
It’s not the TT bike that brings extra risk. It’s the fact that people riding take all extra risks for a few seconds. If they rode the bikes at 15 mph, there would be 0 crashes on the TT bike. It’s the fact that people will risk everything for winning.
Another example is your car. It’s perfectly safe 30 mph. Even if you crash, it’s a low speed crash with almost 0 risk of death. For each 10 mph, you increase your likelihood to crash and the risk of death doubles. You can’t blame the car, if you go 100 mph.
I’m not saying they need to slow down. I’m just saying that’s risk inherent to racing, he it cycling, all sorts of cars, skis, horses or whatever.
You can say the same thing about a regular road bike…look at all the crashes that happen on descents because people “take all the extra risks for a few seconds”.
That is the fault of behavior, not the type of bike. Again, there is nothing dangerous about a TT as the author claimed.
Think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one! Agree that the nature of TTing inherently adds risk. Disagree that the TT bike doesn’t load further risk on top of that.
To take your car analogy, then obviously going at 100mph is more dangerous than going at 30mph. But going 100mph in a car you don’t drive very often and which has different and inferior handling to your regular car is more dangerous still. I don’t see how it’s possible to seriously believe that riders pushing to the limits to eke out every last second on a technical TT course wouldn’t be less likely to crash if doing so on the bike that they do 90% of their training on, with a nice wide, firm grip on the bars and instant access to the brakes if needed. It would of course also be slower, more predictable, and offer less opportunity in the sport for specialists like Ganna and Dennis. Plus it would sell less bikes 
The TT bike exists because riders try to squeeze every second. It goes all the way back to putting aero bars on a road bike. Nobody wants to be Fignon. Skin suits, aero helmets, PED’s etc all evolved for all the extra seconds. If you notice, the people who crash (aside from slipping in rain), are the ones trying to win the TT. Sprinters and Domestiques don’t crash.