The highway races happen on the Paris Olympics this weekend, marking the top of the primary week of competitors within the biking occasions and the conclusion of the highway racing motion.
Going down on Saturday, the lads’s race will see the likes of Remco Evenepoel, Mathieu van der Poel, Julian Alaphilippe and double Olympic MTB champion Tom Pidcock go face to face within the battle for a gold medal.
24 hours later, it is going to be the flip of riders akin to reigning feminine world champion Lotte Kopecky and Elisa Longo Borgini to compete for gold.
As is commonly the case within the Olympic highway races – just like the World Championships – the 2 occasions may play out in another way in comparison with different races. There are smaller pelotons in every, however each promise barnstorming motion it doesn’t matter what.
Should you’re tuning on this weekend or are new to watching our sport, Biking Weekly has seemed to reply some key questions you’ll have in your thoughts.
Why aren’t Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard using?
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Trying on the peloton in the course of the males’s race on Saturday you might end up questioning why Tadej Pogačar, the winner of the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double this 12 months, isn’t current amongst the bunch, or double Tour champion Jonas Vingegaard. Aren’t these one of the best riders on this planet?
It is not that straightforward.
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Everybody will get fatigued. Pogačar has already had one hell of a 12 months along with his two Grand Tour victories. Pogačar additionally had a busy spring during which he received races like Strade Bianche and the Volta a Catalunya. The Slovenian pulled out of choice to present himself extra time to relaxation forward of his subsequent objective, successful the highway world title in Switzerland in September.
Pogačar additionally later stated that he was withdrawing from choice for Slovenia in protest because of his girlfriend Urška Žigart, the reigning feminine nationwide highway and time trial champion, being sidelined by the nationwide federation in the course of the choice course of, regardless of her spectacular outcomes.
In the meantime Jonas Vingegaard wasn’t chosen by the Danish federation. The course favours a punchier, classics type rider, one thing that the Dane isn’t. This 12 months’s Tour runner up is far more suited to excessive altitude and longer climbs.
Why are riders on the identical staff on completely different bikes?
Stevie Williams using his staff challenge Issue throughout final 12 months’s Tour of Britain
(Picture credit score: Zac Williams/SWPix.com)
In contrast to in a race just like the Tour, you’ll discover that many of the riders on a few of the greatest groups like Nice Britain, France and Belgium are on completely different bikes to the remainder of the teammates.
Within the males’s Nice Britain staff alone you’ll see Tom Pidcock and Josh Tarling using a Pinarello, Stevie Williams on a Issue and Fred Wright on a Merida. That is purely as a result of riders competing for his or her nationwide staff will usually use their commonplace commerce staff challenge bike that they trip throughout the remainder of the season.
Aside from in distinctive circumstances, nationwide federations don’t usually provide bikes to riders throughout occasions just like the Olympics. This isn’t simply because of points related to issues like sponsorship, but additionally as a result of riders spend months using their staff machine and tweaking it to their very own private preferences when it comes to measurements, gear and different finer particulars.
Consequently, it’s merely not value altering bikes for a nationwide staff occasion, even when that occasion is an Olympic highway race.
Who’s the Olympic highway race champion?
Kiesenhofer (l) and Carapaz (r) received in Tokyo three years in the past
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Richard Carapaz of Ecuador and Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria are the reigning champions.
Carapaz received in Tokyo in 2021 on a hilly course which ended on the Fiji Speedway Circuit, however surprisingly will not be in Paris to defend his title after he was not noted of Ecuador’s staff choice. Ecuador opted to pick Jhonatan Narváez as an alternative.
Kiesenhofer is the reigning feminine Olympic champion after she received unexpectedly in Japan three years in the past. The Austrian rider pulled off one of many greatest shocks ever seen in girls’s biking when she was a part of a breakaway that went from the off and stayed away for a lot of the day.
Why does the top of the course look the identical?
(Picture credit score: IOC/Paris 2024)
The ultimate a part of the course will probably be contested over a circuit inside the centre of Paris close to to the Montmartre district. Circuits are normally used at Championship races to make life simpler for the race organisers, and the followers. It is not fairly the identical as a point-to-point stage of the Tour.
The primary 200 kilometres or so of the lads’s occasion will see the riders do battle throughout a sequence of loops to the west of the French capital earlier than heading again into the centre for the ultimate sections.
The ladies’s race will happen on a really related course, albeit considerably shorter at simply 158 kilometres. The identical ending circuit can even be included.
Should you’re watching on from residence, you might discover that the race has the same really feel to the highway races on the Glasgow World Championships final summer season as a result of ultimate inside metropolis circuits.
Why is the peloton so small?
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As defined by our information editor Adam Becket, the peloton for each races this weekend will seem considerably smaller in comparison with different main WorldTour races that we’re all used to watching throughout the remainder of the 12 months.
Simply 88 riders are anticipated to line up for the lads’s race and 95 for the ladies’s, a large drop from the big pelotons of greater than 150 riders that we’d see elsewhere.
That is as a result of Worldwide Olympic Committee capping the numbers of athletes competing on the video games. As a result of regular giant numbers of athletes competing in biking occasions, it was inevitable that biking is without doubt one of the sports activities impacted by this course of.
Why does just one rider on the successful staff get a gold medal?
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Whereas highway biking is taken into account to be a staff sport, the Olympic highway races have just one winner, runner up and third place. Biking is each a staff sport and a person sport on the similar time.
Solely the individual to cross the road first in each races will probably be awarded a gold medal, even when different riders on their staff have labored for them so as to assist arrange the eventual winners victory all through the day. The identical goes for the remainder of the medal positions.
Whether or not that could possibly be thought of unfair is one other query. The Olympics is the largest stage of all in any sport, so in any case, why ought to just one individual on the successful biking staff obtain the popularity of a gold medal? The very fact is it’s merely all the way down to custom in biking and unlikely to vary anytime quickly.
Why are there no race radios?
Annemiek van Vleuten celebrated as she crossed the road in Tokyo believing she had received a gold medal
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Race radios have by no means been utilized in occasions the place riders are competing for nationwide groups. Whereas they’re now ubiquitous elsewhere in modern-day biking, they’ve by no means been a part of the peloton in both the Olympics, World Championships or different occasions just like the Commonwealth Video games.
The gear was first launched within the early Nineteen Nineties into racing, and shortly turned a part of practically all of biking’s main occasions, enabling sports activities administrators to move on tactical recommendation and different key data to their riders. Nonetheless, as a result of these races are so completely different, and raced in nationwide groups, they’ve by no means been used.
Their absence ought to make for a much less managed, extra chaotic race.
Why do some groups have extra riders than others?
Belgium may have the utmost rider quota in Paris as a result of outcomes of the likes of Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert
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The variety of riders within the particular person groups will depend on the UCI rankings from the earlier season. If a rustic has extra rating factors than one other, it’s going to typically imply that the nationwide federation in query can then choose extra riders than a staff like Eritrea as an illustration who can solely choose one rider – Biniam Girmay. In the meantime, Belgium get 4.
The rankings are taken from a rustic’s eight greatest raiders in the course of the course of a 12 months.
The highest 5 nations have 4 riders, the subsequent 5 have three, and the subsequent ten highest ranked nations within the subject are granted permission to trip with two riders with the next 25 receiving one spot from the IOC.
How does rider choice work for the 2 occasions?
Julian Alaphilippe’s stage victory on the Giro d’Italia this 12 months will undoubtedly of helped the Frenchman earn an Olympic spot
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
It might be straightforward to return to the belief that the choice course of for the video games comes all the way down to factors or the same type of rating inside every particular person nationwide federation. However this isn’t the case and it’s a lot less complicated than it could appear.
Staff choice is basically made by trying on the course and the way that fits explicit riders, the broader staff make-up, rider availability and a bit of bit of fine quaint politics. Largely although, everybody making the choices all over the world desires to present their riders one of the best likelihood doable of one in all them successful gold. Consequently the primary level is normally crucial.
The course in Paris favours Classics-style riders with its punchy, brief and sharp hills and technical sections inside the metropolis streets of Paris within the closing phases. Riders in good type this season are favoured over massive names who won’t do as effectively.
In fact, the extra riders you could have obtainable at your disposal the better staff choice then is. There may be additionally a little bit of politics concerned, for good measure, particularly if groups solely have one or two slots to play with.