Pro Road Racing thread 2021 (spoilers)

No Vuelta for Pog…but he will still be racing through the end of the year.

Smart decision, IMO.

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Looking forward to the Bernal Vs. Roglic showdown

I’m not sure Bernal will be up for the task after Covid and celebrating his Giro win. He’s fast when in top form but he doesn’t seem that durable to me…maybe due to his leg length discrepancy and scoliosis.

Hope and think he will be there. I cannot see who else could challange Roglic really

Yes, Covid + he hit the deck this week. They say it’s all good but we’ll see. :colombia::crossed_fingers:t3::crossed_fingers:t3::crossed_fingers:t3:

UAE is on a pretty massive shopping tour :flushed:. They will be one of the strongest teams next year.

Yeah, any hope of being able to exploit UAE team weakness next year has all but vanished.

They could still use a couple of good roleurs for the flat / transition stages, but they’ll certainly sign a few.

Adding Ackerman and Soler was huge for support in the mountains.

They gobbled up George Bennet too :flushed:
So now they added Bennet, Soler and Almeida. That’s an insane line-up for the mountains.
And Ackermann + Hodeg for the sprints. UAE is gonna be next seasons superteam wtf.
Does anyone know what budget UAE has for next season? It must exceed Ineos and Jumbo-Visma :thinking:
Those oil-sheiks have deep pockets, damn.

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Like in Formula 1, winning in cycling brings in more sponsorship money. The more you win, the more you can spend on trying to keep winning. That second Tour from Pogacar upped the ante substantially.

It really seems like if you were a decent climber who was out of contract, you ended up at Bora or UAE. With Bora signing Vlasov, Higuita, Hindley, in addition to their current climbing squad, they should be formidable, at the very least in week stage races. Vlasov or Buchman could be capable of winning a Giro or Vuelta at some point in their career, but they don’t really have a Tour contender.

They finally found their “sportswashing” fix…after dabbling in a bunch of other stuff (and still doing some of them), cycling paid off. And on the scale of investment vs. other sports such as F1 or football / soccer, it is ridiculously cheap. Adding another $10M to a budget is nothing to those guys…they spend more on lunch than that.

Any opportunity to take advantage of a relatively weak UAE team is now gone…they’ll be rivaling Ineos in terms of overall budget before too long.

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Yeah sad but true. We do have some pretty questionable sponsors in our beloved little sport :confused:

Would be fun if the UCI decided to require every world tour team to have a womens squad as well. Wonder what would happen :laughing:

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To be fair to the UAE they’re not bad on women’s cycling. There was a Dubai women’s tour last year with a UAE team taking part, and I believe it’s due to be back next year after being cancelled for covid this year. At an amateur level nearly every men’s race has an equivalent women’s race running on the same day with the same prizes, which is a fair bit better than many other countries including here in the UK where a lot of races only have mens events (also different economics - race organisers here have to balance the books, most of the UAE racing is subsidised by the state). As I understand it a lot of the “sportswashing” is aimed internally - they have a real problem with a sedentary and obese population, cycling is one of the sports that has got a bit of traction with the locals. Probably because of the endless opportunities to spend lots of money on expensive kit…

There’s a whole broader discussion to be had on women’s rights and human rights, but probably outside the bounds of this forum! But on the specific question of world tour teams having to have a women’s team I don’t think UAE would be any more against the idea than any other team, and maybe less than some.

Unrelated to main topic.

I think that would be a bad idea. The women’s side of the sport is stronger for having its own teams and identities. It’s cool that there is a cross over in some events, but otherwise I enjoy the different calendar and teams that are in the women’s calendar.

Also, we can judge the world tour teams that don’t have a women’s team. That would be taken away from us.

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Oh yes totally agree. I was just contemplating how sponsors like UAE (and some others) would react. Not that it would necessarily be a good idea.
It’s great that there are unique womens teams like Canyon-Sram with their own culture and identity. And unique events like the “Battle of the North” that will hopefully happen at some point… Sidenote: does anyone no the state of that Race? It was supposed to start this year, but … you know.

Link for context:

Womens Tour of Norway is still going ahead I’m pretty sure. I’m guessing that Covid has made the logistics of crossing borders as a race impossible with quarantine based on a regional level in Scandinavia at the moment. So hopefully 2022?

Sweden opted out, in order to keep their current races, the TTT and the road race (Vargara (sp?)). Denmark and Norway will still host a slightly shorter version of the event next year. Got pushed back a year or two due to (thing that shall not be named).

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Well that’s a start. Would be awesome to have a proper nordic grand tour. I hope it will grow over the next few years.

Yes, I would love to see Sweden opt back in, and turn it into a legit GT. That along with the new TdF Femmes would be a great combo, and would give the women a ton of great racing. The Giro Rosa can die…