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.
Happening 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, will probably be the flip of riders corresponding to reigning feminine world champion Lotte Kopecky and Elisa Longo Borgini to compete for gold.
As is usually 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.
When you’re tuning on this weekend or are new to watching our sport, Biking Weekly has seemed to reply some key questions you will have in your thoughts.
Why aren’t Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard driving?
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
Trying on the peloton throughout the males’s race on Saturday chances are you’ll 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 the very best riders on the planet?
It isn’t that straightforward.
The most recent race content material, interviews, options, critiques and professional shopping for guides, direct to your inbox!
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 wherein he gained races like Strade Bianche and the Volta a Catalunya. The Slovenian pulled out of choice to offer himself extra time to relaxation forward of his subsequent purpose, successful the highway world title in Switzerland in September.
Pogačar additionally later mentioned that he was withdrawing from choice for Slovenia in protest on account of his girlfriend Urška Žigart, the reigning feminine nationwide highway and time trial champion, being sidelined by the nationwide federation throughout 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 fashion 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 workforce on completely different bikes?
Stevie Williams driving his workforce situation 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 workforce alone you’ll see Tom Pidcock and Josh Tarling driving 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 workforce will sometimes use their commonplace commerce workforce situation bike that they trip throughout the remainder of the season.
Aside from in distinctive circumstances, nationwide federations don’t sometimes provide bikes to riders throughout occasions just like the Olympics. This isn’t simply on account of points related to issues like sponsorship, but in addition as a result of riders spend months driving their workforce machine and tweaking it to their very own private preferences when it comes to measurements, gear and different finer particulars.
Because of this, it’s merely not value altering bikes for a nationwide workforce occasion, even when that occasion is an Olympic highway race.
Who’s the Olympic highway race champion?
Kiesenhofer (l) and Carapaz (r) gained in Tokyo three years in the past
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
Richard Carapaz of Ecuador and Anna Kiesenhofer of Austria are the reigning champions.
Carapaz gained 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 unnoticed of Ecuador’s workforce choice. Ecuador opted to pick Jhonatan Narváez as a substitute.
Kiesenhofer is the reigning feminine Olympic champion after she gained 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 shall be contested over a circuit throughout the centre of Paris close to to the Montmartre district. Circuits are often used at Championship races to make life simpler for the race organisers, and the followers. It isn’t 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 collection 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 may also be included.
When you’re watching on from residence, chances are you’ll discover that the race has an identical really feel to the highway races on the Glasgow World Championships final summer season because of the last inside metropolis circuits.
Why is the peloton so small?
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
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, an enormous drop from the massive pelotons of greater than 150 riders that we might see elsewhere.
That is because of the 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 workforce get a gold medal?
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
Whereas highway biking is taken into account to be a workforce sport, the Olympic highway races have just one winner, runner up and third place. Biking is each a workforce sport and a person sport on the similar time.
Solely the particular person to cross the road first in each races shall be awarded a gold medal, even when different riders on their workforce 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 may very well be thought-about unfair is one other query. The Olympics is the most important stage of all in any sport, so in any case, why ought to just one particular person on the successful biking workforce 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 gained a gold medal
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
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 Nineties into racing, and shortly turned a part of almost all of biking’s main occasions, enabling sports activities administrators to go on tactical recommendation and different key info 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 because of the outcomes of the likes of Remco Evenepoel and Wout van Aert
(Picture credit score: Getty Photos)
The variety of riders within the particular person groups depends upon the UCI rankings from the earlier season. If a rustic has extra rating factors than one other, it can typically imply that the nationwide federation in query can then choose extra riders than a workforce like Eritrea for example 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 throughout 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 Photos)
It could be straightforward to return to the belief that the choice course of for the video games comes all the way down to factors or an identical 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.
Workforce choice is basically made by trying on the course and the way that fits explicit riders, the broader workforce make-up, rider availability and slightly bit of fine quaint politics. Largely although, everybody making the choices around the globe needs to offer their riders the very best likelihood potential of one in all them successful gold. Because of this the primary level is often a very powerful.
The course in Paris favours Classics-style riders with its punchy, quick and sharp hills and technical sections throughout the metropolis streets of Paris within the closing levels. Riders in good type this season are favoured over huge names who may not do as properly.
After all, the extra riders you could have out there at your disposal the simpler workforce choice then is. There’s additionally a little bit of politics concerned, for good measure, particularly if groups solely have one or two slots to play with.
