How can any team compete against Legion in a race like this? With 6 or 7 riders strung-out in a lead out like this, thereâs no way to get close to the front. Impressive.
You can either hook your train to the back of their train and try to blow them out when they start their lead out or put your train next to theirs and donât let them dictate the race. Could also get together with several other teams to put a break up the road and work to disrupt their train. Whatever you do you have to have a team that is working together and on an equal footing as far as fitness goes. âPedal harderâ doesnât work once they can pedal as hard as you and they have a plan.
They can if they worked as a team. Watch Euro racing and all the teams are good at working like that.
I think part of the problem is a lot of the teams are made up of riders spread across the country, with day jobs, so they donât get to drill together.
I think across all the teams, you could put together two more teams on their level, but itâs going to require people to check their egos and self sacrifice themselves a lot, and I donât see that happening. It will also require them to ride together a lot.
Why isnât Avelo there? Those guys are all young and at least train together constantly. Probably more so than L39ion.
Yes and noâŚwhen you see the Spring classics and Quick Step is on top form, no team is going to beat them. Send a rider up the road? They send someone like Stybar with you and heâll just sit on your wheel. Meanwhile, they have another 6 bullets behind him, ready to fire / counter.
Not many teams have the horsepower to set a train next to them and outmuscle âem.
Now, the team is not always in dominant form obviously and other tactics can interfere with their plans, etc. but as I said above, when a disciplined and dominant team is in top form, it is really, really difficult to beat them. They have an answer for every tactic. That was L39ION this weekend it seems.
Yeah, but all the teams work on this. Some do it better than others, and sure some days certain teams are firing on all cylinders, but having your sprinter sitting up front while you âdomestiquesâ are sitting in 80th place and back isnât the way to do it, and there is a lot of that happening over the last two nights.
The meme accounts have been solid this weekend.
Chris Tolleyâs meme game has been too. 
Chris reminds me of a lot of other BMXâers I knew growing up. Strong as an ox and on the wild side, but funny.
At Tulsa, there doesnât seem to be any team even remotely close. Id be interested to see the funding difference between Legion and other teams. Iâd guess itâs substantial.
Iâd like to hope rising tides raises all ships in potential money flowing in, but I donât know how a bunch of other white dudes is that marketable, without bringing something unique to the table or just killing the social media game.
I think Tulsa is onto something in turning this into a festival / mardi gras thing. Most big sports events are less about the racing, and more about the atmosphere.
Itâs gotta be. Specialized, SRAM, Rapha. They have some big sponsors. I doubt many other teams racing there in Tulsa have their funding.
I definitely agree with the bigger point here, but the problem is the one thing missing is racing. Because crits are just, well, awful.
The biggest draw to cycling is the narrative, itâs what sets it apart from most other sports. The epic stories of Charlie Gaul in Monte Bondone, Andy Hampsten on the Gavia, Merckx wrecking Ocana on the Col de Mente in a monsoon, these are what has written the lore. And beyond the action, the backdrop matters hugely. People love to poke fun at how Paul Sherwen went on about castles, but itâs honestly half the draw. The racing is just a backdrop much of the time. Even after 4 decades of watching, I still find myself slack jawed after being completely stopped in my tracks with some sort of arresting image on the screen from a TdF chopper cam.
I like a lot of what the Williamsâ are doing in the sport. It needs it so badly. And what Tulsa is doing is definitely great too, I think making it into am experience it critical and they get that fully. The problem is the one thing missing is a racing product commensurate with the party. There is just nothing compelling about nondescript laps around average streets. And I think Americans have a hard time admitting the inherent blandness of our race scene.
TL;DR If the racers arenât being chased across the Tourmalet at night by bears and wolves in a snow storm itâs blah.
And locationâŚmajor cities simply arenât interested in shutting down streets for stuff like this anymore. Plenty of other competing events that will draw more people.
So go to cities the size of Tulsa, etc. where you can get the interest of city officials. Boise is another good example
Cities will do it, but you have to pay, and the money just isnât there for the organizers.
Boise is blowing up too fast, imo. You need those like smaller tier cities with so-so economies; Reading PA, Scanton PA, Olean NY, etc. cities like thatâŚ
The race is already established at Boise, thoughâŚwhich is why I mentioned it as something to model after.
But we are saying the same thingâŚneed smaller cities, looking for ways to boost people coming to visit.
Scranton is weirdly attractive for a bike race now that I think about it.
It could be a cool layout.
Or sometimes you just show up solo and beat everyone else into submissionâŚ
The old Saturn Situp. Did not expect that