Any thoughts about why the races are different lengths for the men and women? The Saturday race was 116k while the Sunday race was 258k.
They want to keep the races at certain time limits - not distance. The W race is always much slower in avg speed so they are shorter distance to compensate.
Women’s races are always shorter - there’s a UCI limit on race distances of 160km for women, 280km for men (but that doesn’t cover World Tour 1 day races, they are discretionary, MSR is 300km for example). You can find this here: Regulations | UCI
Obviously the womens race could have been longer and still been within the UCI regs. I don’t know why that is, I did see someone suggest that it would have put one of the really hard cobbled sectors right at the start of the race or something but I couldn’t say if that’s true.
The idea of having a shorter limit for the womens in general is to do with the reduced depth in field I think; in that there are very few women who would be competitive over 200+km at the moment. The limit went up in 2018 and probably will continue to rise as women’s racing seems to be coming on a lot at the moment.
The other issue was the women’s price pot being €7k vs €92k for the men…
That’s not the reason… or at least, not the whole reason… They didn’t ride at less than half the mens’ speed…
Also worth noting we only got 60km of coverage of the women’s race, so we missed a lot of the key developments (the first 4 cobbled sectors for instance). As opposed to flag-to-flag coverage for the men’s.
I think Dan Lloyd said it best after the race. He said he thought Cobrelli was more clever than MvdP. He did the same to Remco and almost did the same in the World champs. Cobrelli knows how to let others bury themselves and right now MvdP is not a clever enough racer not to willingly bury himself. He pulled way too much to be in shape for a sprint. I appreciate that there wasn’t the usual games in such a finish, but that was obviously to Cobrelli’s benefit, not MvdP
I’ve been really disappointed with how aggressive Wout’s been in these last two races. Both the world champs and Roubaix he was, as you said, a marked man, but in both I found him to be terminally patient. You can’t win if you aren’t in the final group and in both races his choices throughout the race prevented him from being in that group. Sagan may have been marked, but he still tried to do something.
Colbrelli has done this enough times that VDP should have been wiser to it, only has himself to blame. VDP could have stopped pulling so much when it was clear they weren’t getting caught by the main chase group - could have still risked Moscon coming back though, but VDP needed to be braver there (I don’t think Moscon has got much of a sprint, although I could be wrong, but he would have been tired anyway).
Vermeersch was the big unknown there - was clear afterwards Colbrelli had no idea who he was! Brilliant ride by him anyway.
Can’t argue too much there. It has been said that the tour of Britain and going deep in the worlds TT affected his world championship road race, maybe for PR he is still below par. It’s fine margins at this level isn’t it, 1% below par likely makes all the difference, especially when you’re a marked rider.
MvdP often reminds me of that super smart kid at school who finds everything easy but then gets to uni and isn’t used to having to work for it so doesn’t get the grades someone putting in the hours get.
He’s so skilled it seams he burns matches left right and centre and then loses out. That’s not to say it’s not always successful but tactically it’s lacking. Remco also shows this so I don’t think it’s just him.
VVA kind of look tired. The expression on his face is sullen these last two races. He seemed to peak around the Olympics.
I think they were all tired by the end, but he didn’t look tired early on and well into the race. He was covering gaps and it seemed easy for him. I thought he looked tired in the world championships, but in Roubaix I thought he had regained his form. He had a few unlucky crashes around him that forced him to close some decent sized gaps, but I think it’s more the tactics I’m concerned about. There is no killer instinct. The plan you drew up in the team bus will only get you to the point where you need to do something to win and he doesn’t seem to recognize when to go for it. JA did and won the worlds. MvdP did and was in the winning move.
Much shorter is a relative statement. You don’t have to be half the speed to ride much slower.
I have not yet watched the W race, but others said that even at this distance it was very strung out. Could you imagine watching it for 1-3 additional hours? They most likely keep the W race shorter so that the avg speed will be higher / the race will be more exciting. It ultimately all boils down to viewership and the races must be exciting. Shorter races almost always have higher intensity / attacks. That’s what is fun to watch for the avg viewer.
I don’t think it was a tactical issue w Vdp. He is favored in races with short incline sprints. Colbrelli always had the advantage when it comes down to the sprint finish on this course. It really was never clear that they had a sure victory out of the 3 of them. Consider how quickly Moscons 1 min gap over them was lost with his slide out. WVA group was just about the same distance behind them the whole time. I think, all else the same, if PR ended like strade bianche, Vdp would have took the win over those two. He might be better than WVA on a pure sprint like how he beat him in Tour of Flanders, but I’d put my money on Colbrelli (and I’m a Vdp super fan!)
The problem is if every rider is “clever” we have boring racing. I commend MVdP for riding hard to at least put himself in the conversation for victory. That has lead to a few losses from soft pedaling followers who have ridden the race more smartly.
I just want to see hard racing 
. Colbrelli won’t be able to do this forever either. This year he’s surprised many with his step up from sprinter type to genuine one day race contender.
The men’s was also pretty strung out.
As I wrote there’s a hard upper limit on the women’s race length that’s set by the UCI (160k). A lot of the women wanted to race longer than 117k, the speculation I saw was that it would have put one of the harder cobbled sections very early in the race.
In the end it comes down to the same thing - the reason for the UCI limited distance in women’s racing is because (either perception or reality) there’s not enough depth in the field for it to be competitive over longer distances.
The reason for ASO only providing coverage for the last 60k and giving a paltry prize pot - is another matter.
In any level of bike racing, if a very small group is coming to the finish of a flat race with a true sprinter in the group, the sprinter is going to win 9 times out of 10. The only way out once stuck with that mix is a team repeatedly attacking the sprinter or someone sneaking away on a last minute solo break while the rest are caught looking at each other. Neither of those were going to happen yesterday. The group of 3 was not big enough to let one guy go and there was no team. Add in the fact that a great way to get fired is to blow a guaranteed podium position in a Monument race by dicking around in the last few kilometers and getting caught by the chasers and there was a big limit to how much gambling was going to be going on until the very very end,
Everyone did the best they could for the last 20k (keeping in mind the effects of the 209km that came before). They did not get caught and all 3 played the velodrome sprint decently enough given their individual skills and abilities.
One of the absolute joys of watching Wouthieu race, they aren’t afraid to be the engine room in the move. Double pulls no problem. You rarely see them getting annoyed with the other riders. They know the score and go out to get what they can.
I thoroughly enjoyed the race and thought he deserved that win! Colbrelli raced a near perfect tactical and technical race. BUT it must be mentioned this season… that a “step up” like that for a rider his age, on that team, sponsored by that nation, certainly must be a little sus. I hope he’s clean.
Also watching Moscon lead and then lose in such spectacular fashion was a pure manifestation of karma.
Oh yes - I had everything crossed, was wishing on everything I could think of and even had to explain to my uninterested wife, why I was shouting at the screen for him to crash…after which point she started doing the same!
The ASO is definitely culpable for the coverage and prize discrepancy, but I think placing all the blame on them is wrong. Sponsors and TV coverage dollars drive these things as much as the organizer. Hard to place blame on ‘sponsors’ as a whole, since it is an entire industry, but certainly they share the blame here.
Organizationally you can easily point the finger at ASO, and I agree they didn’t do enough here, but there is a broader problem.
On a slightly related note - I agree with AVV that the prize purse should be secondary to the coverage. Equal prize purses are fantastic, but I’d much prefer they invest in coverage first as that (should) help build the sport’s popularity and visibility.
I love watching women’s racing - usually more dynamic and interesting than men’s - and if more than the last hour or two were available I’d have a much easier time convincing fellow cycling fans to tune in