Interesting partnership announced for the Cape Epic.
Cant wait to see them in action!!
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Unstoppable…they are gonna dominate.
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Welp, good luck to everybody else.
I just hope nobody cheats.
yassss
Awesome to see! Schurter and Colombo a solid team as well.
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I hope Keegan is doing his V02max intervals.
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Well, this isn’t going as well as I thought it would for these guys. Yikes.
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Obviously something is “off” with Keegan. Beers was turning around and looking for him on the climbs today…
Total speculation but between the cold weather race at Valley of the Tears and then the mega-travel to South Africa, he could easily have picked up some sort of illness. Knowing the competitor Keegan is he is not going to say a word and just try and power through.
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Yeah, he’s been off since day 1 in the prologue. It’s probably a combination of things, jet lag, how fast that first day was as only an hour full gas versus the kind of races he now trains for, heat, etc.. He’s been stretching his back a lot too so don’t know if he tweaked that or what. It has to be brutal to be in this race and be the teammate that is slowing the team down all the time.
At Valley of Tears, he won the crit but finished back a bit in the Gravel race on Saturday. It was a deep field (and the race was cut way short), but he’s usually going to be in the mix at the end. I never heard how that race went down, so it might have just been bad luck or tactics, but maybe illness or just fighting through something. Hopefully just working through something that isn’t long term.
Based on a couple of pods I listened to, it sounds like no one knew the race was gonna finish when it did. Daxton Mock got the win simply because he was pulling when the lead group of 3 crossed the line (they pooled the money for 1-3 and split it evenly).
I think it was just circumstances that put Keegan in 11th.
For sure, that race was a crapshoot. Racing in a blizzard and no one knew where the finish line was until they got to it.
Crazy considering Sofia was in Texas also and she’s killing it in SA. Hope whatever the reason, it doesn’t affect his whole season.
That makes perfect sense. We found out the race (the non-pro field) was finishing about 2 miles out from the finish line. We had one guy up the road who obviously won, so kind of the same deal. I was in the next group on the road and unfortunately didn’t hear the moto telling the group the race was about to end. By the time I got the message, the folks on the front already attacked and I got caught sleeping and rolled in ~30 seconds behind. I wasn’t too disappointed, it would have been a pretty sketchy finish to fight for the win with a group of ~15 guys and I’m not much of a sprinter.
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Yeah… but Keegan was 6 min back at that point. He’s usually doesn’t just let the pack go and is up in the front at that point in the race. Something does seem off… but who knows.
Nino and Colombo are looking really good right now as are the Italian team. Some great racing so far!
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Dylan said something about Keegan’s bike filling up with mud at Valley of Tears on the BB podcast.
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Good point….I forgot he said that.
I say this as a Lifetime Grand Prix fan, that enjoys following those series closely, but I often get the feeling that the US gravel scene doesn’t always grasp how high the level of XCM and XCO is in Europe.
Those disciplines are quite old in Europe, with very established youth recruitment structures, lots of federative support, lots of natural selection. It’s an extremely deep field. A good example is Tiago Ferreira (BH). He’s an extremely accomplished XCM athlete, last year went to the US and got some really good results in Lifetime Grand Prix events.
I get the feeling that the US gravel sphere sometimes sends this vibe that they’re the pioneers of riding really fast for long distances off-road, when this is not the case at all. I think the problem is that there was not real passing of the torch from XCM to gravel. I think that XCM stopped being popular perhaps too soon to effectively transfer technical and training knowledge to gravel, as well as athletes and fans alike.
I a a big fan of Keegan, but his results in the US give him this godlike, invincibility aura and maybe unrealistic expectations. It’s not often that he is racing against the pointy end of XCO and XCM
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With the Beers and Grotts combo winning in 2024, I definitely thought swapping Keegan in for Grotts would yield great results too. I think there is still more to his performance than just not being at the level of the others.
It is impressive seeing what Nino cano with a partner that can match him pedal stroke for pedal stroke.
Sofia and Langvad have been crushing it but things got a little sketchy with Langvad crashing a few times yesrerday. I would love to see her retirn to Leadville this year and give the top women a battle for the podium. It would be quite the story.
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Judging by some IG post from Keegan sounds like he is having really bad back issues. I’m sure that’s a large reason for his disappointing times thus far. Hope he can heal up.
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