Worlds

The UCI World Championships are upon us.  Over the next week, champions will be crowned in TTT, ITT and road race, for men, women, and juniors.  For those so inclined, NBC Sports will be covering the women's TT (Tuesday, 9/24), men's TT (Wed, 9/25), women's road (Sat, 9/28) and men's road (Sunday, 9/29).

The Field
USA is sending a total of 29 riders.  The men's elite team is 7 strong, with automatic bids going to Fast Freddie Rodriguez (current national champ), Andrew Talansky and Tejay VanGarderen.  Talansky and Tejay earned their bid by being in the top 50 of world rankings.  The others are Chris Horner (barely off of his Vuelta victory), Taylor Phinney (Boulder-based TT power), Alex Howes (also from Boulder, what-what), and Peter Stetina.
The U-23 team has the familiar face of Lawson Craddock, as well as 4 others, all of whom ride for the Bontrager (formerly Livestrong) team.
Among the women are Mara Abbott (BOULDER!), and Evelyn Stevens (Olympian, 2nd in Worlds TT last year).
Complete list here.

The TT
I'm skipping over the TTT, because it's really just for funsies to fill up the week.  For TTT, the riders go with their pro team, not by country, and to my knowledge you don't get to sport an awesome jersey for the rest of the year announcing your awesomeness.  Which isn't to say there's not pride and cash on the line, but, you know, we've seen it.

The men's elite TT course

The elite men's time trial course is 57km, ending in= Florence.  I want to go ride it just because I'm sure it's beautiful.  But 35 miles is a LONG TT.  Taylor Phinney skipped out on the USAPC pretty much to train for this race.  It's flat, which suits his track background, but I'm concerned about the length (that's what she said).  Not that he doesn't have the motor, but he seems more likely to excel in a race more about the pure speed.  It's hard to not pick a standby, like TdF winner Froome or billion-time Swiss TT champion and crowd favorite Cancellara, but Taylor has been so many times the bridesmaid (2nd place twice last Worlds, 4th place twice in the Olympics) I'll be rooting for him to be the bride.  Not like he'll be worrying about saving energy for the road race.  And he'll probably have sweet shoes.

The Road Race
Because the Worlds are only one day, it's always a long day.  Like maybe they can wear the guys down enough to make a breakaway a possibility.  One thing about the national races, as opposed to the pro team races, the peloton does seem to be less organized.  There's less cooperation, fewer people per team, and a different feel to the race.  This year's race is 272 km, almost 170 miles, mostly in a circuit around Florence.

The only chance for an American to win this thing is a weird breakaway situation.  I'd be looking for something like a 10 man break, which on the last circuit splinters even more on the last lap and some opportunist Talansky who hasn't been doing his share of the work takes advantage.
The women's race is only (only!) 140 km, and does that same circuit 5 times to finish.  Stevens will be focusing on the TT, but she's won some overalls and can certainly handle this course.  Abbott is coming off a GC in the women's Giro, first American ever to wear that crown.  Again, though, I think both of them would operate better in a small break than trying to pull away in a mass finish.
U!S!A!U!S!A!

Parting Thoughts: The only thing I put ahead of me is do and re.

Angliru

Found a decent feed, got to see the Angliru.  Count it!

Though oppressive crowds, who stand in the way of the riders to wave a flag at the camera, because, you know, TV.  Through 21% grades, that stalled one of the camera motorcycles and caused a brief break in coverage.  Through a fog that settled in at the top of the mountain, and obscured the view of the road and riders around them.  Horner comes out on top.

An amazing battle between Nibali and Horner unfolded on the slopes of the Angliru.  An early attack by Nibali wasn't immediately answered, and had us wondering if Horner had spent it all to catch up over the last week.  Nibali seeemed in good position, with 2 teammated up the road, and all the other favorites riding solo.  But Fuglsang and Tiralongo didn't drop back to him fast enough and Horner, along with Valverde and Rodriguez, eventually made the catch, though neither of the latter helped Horner in the chase.  And even though Chris Horner may be the most awkward-looking man up a climb, I don't think I saw him in the saddle at any point in the last 10km, and apparently that works for him.  With a little more than 1km to go, he put in an attack and Nibali hit the wall.  Horner came in with a 34" advantage (and collapsed to the ground, surrounded by a very excited group of RadioShack support staff).

It would appear to me that Horner's injury this spring was well-timed.  If he was healthy at TdF time, he probably would have gone, been second-fiddle to Andy Schleck, and been eaten alive by Froome.  As it was, he got back in form right before the Vuelta, hit up the ToU to test the waters.  And comes home with a Grand Tour GC title.  The dude's 41.

Epic.

Parting Thought:  Big ups to the CU football team and staff, using the day off from the postponed game to help out people affected by the floods and serve the food that was already delivered to Folsom to those in need.

Battle at La Vuelta

I was a little disparaging about the Vuelta last time I mentioned it, but it has slowly turned in to the best Grand tour of the season.  Nibali was in control of the Giro, and Froome left no doubt about the outcome of Le Tour, but American Chris Horner is not interested in a similar storyline for La Vuelta.

After losing the lead and falling behind favorite Vincenzo Nibali way back on Stage 11 (September 4th) by 46 seconds, and then losing 4 more seconds a couple days later, Chris Horner has slowly but surely gotten himself back in this thing.  Showing impressive climbing form and well-times attacks, he has toirtoise-and-hared himself in to the Red leader's jersey before the final stage.  22 seconds on 16, 25 more on stage 18, and 6 more seconds on stage 19.  Horner is now up 3 seconds on Nibali, with the next closest competitor being Valverde at 1'06".  The presence of Valverde and Joaquin Rodriguez in the top 5, both top 10 finishers at TdF, is very impressive in itself.

But the story now is today's real final stage (the stage tomorrow won't make a difference).  And it's the perfect setting for the showdown.  Check out the profile for the final climb.

Not only ouch, but ouch

The La Vuelta website, though I'm sure a little biased, calls Alto de l'Angrilu perhaps the toughest climb on the entire racing calender.  With gradients up to 23.5%, and an average of 10.2%, there's no joking around.  There's also no wasting time, because the course is under way, and I need time to go find a feed from some sketchy Italian website  to watch it play out myself.  Darn you, Universal Sports!  Chris Horner is now in the driver's seat, and just has to sit on Nibali's wheel (and make sure one of the others doesn't run off unchecked).  Go Chris!

Parting Thoughts: Ylvis, the Norwegian Lonely Island... go check em out on the youtubes.

Random CU Basketball Stat Day

Though I am certainly feeling the excitement of the UNDEFEATED football team (no, I don't care who it was over), I cannot suppress my desire for college basketball to start up.  And the winning ways of both the CU teams over the past 2 years has made me giddy as a schoolboy.  A schoolboy of roughly 11 to be more precise, back when the women's team (nee Lady Buffs) was on top of the world and I saw almost every home game.  But I digress... I was curious how our teams have fared over our first 2 glorious seasons in the Pac-12 and here are some interesting numbers I picked out of the results:

Combined men's and women's record, last 2 seasons: CU comes in 3rd in the Pac-12, with a win percent of 0.667.  Numbers 1 and 2 are Stanford and Cal, basically buoyed by their women's team (Stanford women are 64-4 over time).  Interesting note, though, is that CU men and women come in at .652 and 0.683 respectively, ie 0.011, aka very close.  For comparison, Stanford has a gap of 0.307 from their women to their men.  Also, there are only 4 teams with losing records.
Other notes: Wazzu and USC are the only teams with losing records for both men and women over those 2 years (though there are several teams that just scrape by).
On the men's side, conference play only, there is a pretty fast drop off from the top tier to the bottom tier (from Stanford at 19-17, to ASU 15-21, then OSU and WSU at 11-25).  The top 6 teams are within basically 0.1 of eachother.  The women are much more evenly spaced, but that also means the outliers (from Stanford at 35-1 to 'Zona at 7-29).

Basically, what I'm saying is, CU is the best.  Yay, numbers.

Parting Thought: For the purposes of these calculations, I used the men's "official" record, but I think we all know better...

USAPC look back and look forward

So, yeah... the PC ended a while ago, and I never got around to a wrap up.  This will be a very short look back, some thoughts on the future, and that whole other gigantic race that's happening now (featuring an American!)

2013 USAPC
Judging by the shots they showed on TV, attendance at this year's race wasn't a let down.  The course this year was designed to draw in more people, and the riders put on a show.

• Peter Sagan kept on proving that he came here to win, by taking the finishes in Steamboat, Ft Collins and the finale in Denver.  He was never really tested.  No other teams brought a top-tier sprinter to this race.
• Tejay finally came through, after a 2nd and a 3rd in previous years, and added the PC to his TdCali earlier this year.  After a somewhat disappointing TdF, he showed that he is still the man to beat in the US.
• Andrew Talansky held the course record on the Vail TT... for about an hour, until Tejay came through and beat him by 4 seconds.  It was heart-wrenching.  The kid really went all out, and I was rooting for him to claim that stage.

The pain on that face...

I said quick, so there it was.  All in all, I very much enjoyed this year's edition, and watched most of the 32 hours of coverage (however spotty it was) over the course of the week.  But, there are still improvements to be made, for the sake of this race and the sport of cycling in the US...

Looking Ahead

The race NEEDS Boulder.  Well, not Boulder really, but Flagstaff.  And not so much Flagstaff as any uphill finish on the Front Range.  Saturday of the race must come back to the Front Range, it's where the fans are and the money is.  And I'm actually pretty down with the idea of the sprinter showcase, essentially meaningless to the GC, circuits around Denver to finish it off on Sunday.  But the GC needs to be in contention up until the finale, and the best way is throw down a big climb to end the penultimate day.  Flagstaff was perfect.  I could see Lookout working, there's some room up there and it's close to Denver.  I'm sure there are other I'm not aware of.  But DO IT!

And Tejay, as good as he is, needs competition.  Either that or a personality.  Dude doesn't have a twitter account.  And yes, I'm ashamed to call for one, but to connect with the youth and the fanbase as a whole, and make cycling accessible and fun, you need to go there.  Besides, there's a fake Tejay account and confuses the crap out of people.  Plan B is for another American who *does* reach out to go stride for stride with him.  Yes, Talansky beat him at TdF, but he needs to bring it at home, where he's seen (and primetime coverage in the US...).  Also, Talansky has over 20k followers, fwiw.

Look, Tejay's having fun!  Share with the world, Tejay!

Vuelta
Oh yeah, and the 3rd and final Grand Tour of the year is happening.  I would be remiss to skip over it, but a) I don't get TV coverage and 2) it's just not as glamorous as the Giro or TdF.  But they do know how to dish out the pain.  11 of the 21 stages are uphill finishes.  One of the stages last week had the Mirador de Ezaro, which included a section of 30% (!!) grade, that some pros walked up.  And, up until today's TT, won by one of faves Fabian Cancellara (266k followers on twitter... just sayin), American Chris Horner had the leader's Red Jersey.

Miradorrrrr!  *shakes fist*

Parting Thought: According to some random site that I can't verify the validity of (besides, of course, that the number they do list seem accurate), the top-followed pro cyclists are: Alberto Contador (673k), Mark Cavendish (639k), and Andy Schleck (258k).  Fabian is next on that list.  And Justin Bieber has 44 million.  *sad face*