… dunno how mega it will turn out to be, but in any case; this is the thread to talk about national championships in!
Because of the heat wave, the (men) national championship in France on Sunday will be a bit shorter: 13 × 16.5km loops instead of 14. They will start later, which means that they suppress the first loop, thus the one at the coolest time of the day 🤦
FDJ and its 26 riders made a show of strength all along the race, including at some point a team attack resulting in the formation of a group of 9 riders, among which were 8 FDJ riders!
And they lost 😆
No coverage of Canadian races anywhere. Nothing on youtube. Not even someone’s cell phone videos
This country sucks
Latvia ITT Men
- SKUJIŅŠ Toms LTK 31:37
- NEILANDS Krists IPT 1:00
- BELOHVOŠČIKS Kristiāns MIG 1:05
Italy ITT Men:
- GANNA Filippo IGD 30:35
- BARONCINI Filippo UAD 0:47
- CATTANEO Mattia SOQ 0:57
Those times mean that the distances are getting ridiculously short, especially for a speciality trial!
It looks like these ‘girly’ distances are in fact truly so, as they are apparently justified by forcing an equality of distance between men and women.
France 26.5 km:
- Bruno Armirail (Decathlon) 32’16’’
- Kévin Vauquelin (Arkéa) +21’’ (I heard he crashed ??)
- Paul Seixas (Decathlon) +44’’
Armirail isn’t truly a specialist any more, he’s become more of an all-terrain rider since he started training a lot for mountain and lost weight a few years ago. Vauquelin is good at TT, but he shone on the Tour of Switzerland, as a puncher/puncher-climber there. Seixas who did very well on the Critérium du Dauphiné is more of a climber.
First FDJ is Cavagna at 50’'.
Several club riders did better than Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis and Olympic champion of omnium)…
This is getting so ridiculous that, inside the Tour of France, one ITT for non-specialist riders will be longer than the one granting the National TT Champion title…
Meanwhile in Great-Britain (Wales), the course took close to 1 hour to complete…
