I’m surprised nobody’s posted that Brandon McNulty won the men’s Worlds solo - amazing effort, and amazing teamwork from Matteo Jurgenson and Quinn Simmons.
Absolutely banger of a race - if you haven’t watched it, go watch the last about 80km (or slightly more)
Amazing race. McNulty owes Jorgenson a beer.
Yeah! Regardless of which nation you pledge allegiance to, if you enjoy cycling you will love watching that race.
Classic case of teamwork making the dream work by the US team. Quinn got out in the break so that the US riders could play the teammate card in the chase group. Then they rolled attacks after the break came back. Then Jorgensen hopped on the wheel of any attack.
But Healy, Pidcock, MvdP, so many riders taking their shot. What a race.
The lack of radios really made that race as fun to watch as it was.
I doubt we’ll see a radio ban anytime soon in grand tours, but it makes for much more dynamic racing.
Or 50. Hell of an effort by McNulty but Matteo was absolutely the MVP. Sacrificed everything to get USA the win. Stellar performance all around. And man that move by McNulty was perfect. Just snuck off the front at the perfect time. I got scared there at the final lap summit when I thought he was toast. And Quinn getting dropped half a dozen times to finish 4th was nuts. Even MvdP getting dropped a bunch and getting the bronze. Wild race.
Sucks for Tadej being hurt but that was one of the most exciting races I’ve seen in the last 5 years. No clue what was going to happen.
Sucked for Tadej, but a waaaaaay more interesting race without him by a country mile
Same. He said after he was doing zone 2 up the climb dead. But Ciccone not pulling through when Pidcock closed all but 10 seconds let him recover and ride away as they looked at each other.
I couldn’t believe the chase pulled to within 10 seconds of McNulty but couldn’t close it. I thought for sure it’d be over by that point. I think the team tactics and all the matches to get that close is what saved him.
Absolutely an amazing race, one of the most dynamic I’ve seen. I’ll probably rewatch the last couple hours again when there is a full replay out.
I remember one of the forum members posting snapshots of his training rides 3-4yrs ago and being amazed at his 3 x 90min intervals at sweet spot (about 390w at the time).
How good for the super domestique to get his opportunity, USA really worked smartly as a team and McNulty was obviously on great form!
Way to go Team USA! It will be crazy seeing the World Champion jersey doing domestique work for Pog and Del Torro next season.
Great result for McNulty – when he was young, people talked about him as a GC rider for Tours, but that didn’t pan out and her became a domestique de luxe. He’s not explosive enough to be a classics guy, and it may be that a one-week stage race is his ceiling. But he now has rainbow bands that no one can take away. Good on him.
True, but McNulty has quite a cache of great wins in his palmares. His wiki for anyone that’s interested: Brandon McNulty - Wikipedia
He has some overall wins in smaller stage races, some stage wins in the Giro and Vuelta and some other one day races. So so many pro’s go an entire career without any wins. Anyhow, what a race, what a great display of team work and tactics. This is one for the ages.
I’ve been seeing a lot of international social media comments and such regarding the win and have been pretty impressed by how positive they nearly have all been. There’s often so much disdain for Americans in general (largely stemming from our president) and particularly around cycling (Lance), that this has really impressed me to see.
I think both the unreal excitement of the race and excellent teamwork really contributed to everyone really enjoying the race.
Non-American here - your cyclists are a pretty easy bunch to like right now. Whole bunch of talented but fairly low key, modest guys who are good team players both for their trade team and in US colours and don’t seem to bring a lot of ego. Pretty much the antithesis of the Lance and Postal days. Kuss and Warbasse also great examples. Delighted to see McNulty win.
I thought it was interesting that all the big favorites seemed to make their moves on the hardest (steepest) parts of the circuit. But the winning move went away on the flats! His move went against everything we’re taught. I think he acted on an instinct afforded by the knowledge of having teammates that will latch on to anyone’s chase, which was a luxury no other rider had in that group.
See this at my much much lower level of racing all the time! All the strongest riders identify the hardest bit of the course as the place to attack on. But if there isn’t an outright strongest rider who can get away through sheer watts or W/kg then they just neutralise each other while dropping or fatiguing the weaker riders and then a fairly innocuous move can get away somewhere else. And if you no longer have a team with 2+ strong riders in the group willing to commit to chasing then everybody starts looking at each other and it turns into a race winning move.
Guess it would have been very different if Pog was there as either he’d have the strength to just be the first rider able to break clear on one of those sections and solo to the line, or if McNulty had been the one to get away he can then just sit in (UAE teammate), bide his time then likely break clear after the others have taken turns chasing or attacking and you’d think he could bridge across.
McNulty may have ridden for Pog if Pog paid him enough. Or, the US team would have made the same moves and Pog would have been caught watching the other favorites. Makes for good hot stove season speculation.
A lot like Zoetemelk in '85 (who had a much greater palmares, but was at the end of his career at that point and not a favorite). Punch at the right time and take advantage of a moment’s heavy-hitter hesitation.
I’m not a fan of Pog and draw parallels with the many previous supreme talents and their subsequent downfall. So seeing races without him is refreshing for me personally. Aside from that, I did genuinely feel for him when he crashed in the Vuelta, I don’t like seeing any cyclist get hurt.
I missed the men’s race, but watched some of the women’s. Looks like I missed a good race.
