Hello and thank you for reading the Wheel Talk Newsletter! We are in the final countdown to the Olympic Games, and with a few weeks to digest the Giro there’s a lot to look forward to. Unlike the last two Games, the time trial will be the first test, with a handful of exciting riders gunning for gold and a fun course, it will be a great “opening ceremony” for cycling in Paris.
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Some top Olympic contenders got their final pre-race tune-ups done at the Baloise Ladies Tour, and Lorena Wiebes is looking in prime form.
A number of riders sat out the Giro d’Italia to prepare for the Olympic road race, but getting some last-minute racing in your legs can put a cherry on top of all that time at altitude. Wiebes, who won multiple stages of the Giro last year, didn’t go to Italy this year but instead rocked up to Baloise to add five stage wins and the overall to her palmares.
The only stage not won by Wiebes was taken by Charlotte Kool (finally!). Kool has been second to Wiebes more times than she cares to count this year, and it was awesome to see her finally get a win.
A statement published by SD Worx-Protime after Kool’s stage victory shed some light on the finale, and why Wiebes wasn’t in contention for the stage win.
“I couldn’t sprint today, but I’m especially happy I got to the finish safely,” Wiebes said. “I was very close to a heavy crash after being pushed out of the wheel of my teammate Christine Majerus. There’s too less respect in this peloton. We were in the run up to the sprint & I was following my lead-out Christine Majerus when I got a heavy push from the left, luckily there was space on the right, or I crashed at high speed.”
“My chain was off & I was clicked out. So that was it for riding a sprint today. But with an eye on the Olympics, I’m very lucky I was able to stay upright. It all starts with respect. When I was younger, I had more respect for the top sprinters.”
“We can talk about safety measures by the race organizers all that we want, but it all starts with the riders. The organizers of Baloise Ladies Tour are doing a good job. This is a very nice race, but due to the behavior of the riders, you have so many crashes. That’s why we try to ride in the front as much as we do. We want to stay out of the chaos & crashes. I just hope by speaking up, something changes because this is dangerous for every rider.”
Races in the Netherlands and Belgium are always a bit more hectic than in other places. In general, there is more road furniture, smaller roads, riders take more risks to be in the front, the fight for positioning is more important because there are likely fewer opportunities to make up space in the peloton, and especially in these flat races where a bunch sprint is likely more riders are coming to the line together, making it more dangerous in the finale.
For riders at Baloise, like Wiebes, Alison Jackson of Canada, Pfeiffer Georgi of Great Britain and more, the need to stay upright was even higher at Baloise with the Olympic road race less than two weeks away.
Comments about respect are something we hear more from the men’s side of the sport, generally, but with the stakes on the rise in women’s cycling, it makes sense that the topic has been broached on our side as well. Younger riders are fighting for a real career in the sport now, instead of a measly paycheck and the hope of a free bike and travel to races. There is more on offer, so there will be more riders willing to push for it. But it’s disappointing to think that someone of Wiebes’s calibre, someone who is a legit gold medal contender, would feel the need to make such a statement.
There is something to be said about the race being a 2.1, an event that is below a Women’s WorldTour race and thus more likely to have developing riders in it. This particular peloton was heavy with WorldTeams bringing their A-riders, like DSM Firmenich-PostNL and SD Worx-Protime, but was still mostly Continental teams, and WorldTour-level riders can only expect so much from a peloton filled with women still trying to find their place in the sport. Not that that justifies what happened to Wiebes, but it would be a bit different had it happened at, say, the Simac Ladies Tour, another flat and fast race that is part of the WWT.
Incidents like this will always happen in cycling, it’s a dangerous sport. You’re racing alongside a hundred women on asphalt wearing Lycra, but everyone is in the same boat. No one wants to go down, regardless of what is next on the calendar.
One of the points Wiebes made has stuck with me since the statement. That outside forces can only do so much, at the end of the day, it’s up to the riders to keep each other safe.
Racing continues…
At the Olympic time trial in Paris!
The Basics:
Saturday, July 27, 2024 @ 14:30 CET
Live coverage: 🇺🇸 NBC/Peacock, 🇬🇧 BBC/ Discovery+, 🇦🇺 Nine Network, 🇨🇦 CBC
Distance: 32.4 km
The Course
Starting just east of the Eiffel Tower at the Hôtel des Invalides, the time trial course winds through the streets of downtown Paris, with an out-and-back on Boulevard Saint-Germain to the Bois de Vincennes park before looping back to finish on Pont Alexandre III (a bridge crossing the Seine just south of the Champs-Élysées).
The course is pretty much completely flat but will be technical, as you might imagine of a race in a busy city centre. There are multiple sections of straight to get into a good rhythm but enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. It’s a course that favours the pure time trialists of the peloton (and those who aren’t regular to women’s cycling).
The most technical section of the course is once they reach Bois de Vincennes. There they will hook around the Velodrome and the Institute of Sport before they return to straight(ish) roads for the final 10 km of the race.
The Contenders
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Wheel Talk Podcast
GRACIE IS BACK! Along with Tilda and Loren for this week’s podcast. We dove deep into the debate around the Giro’s placement on the calendar, its overlap with the Tour and what could be done differently and we preview the upcoming Olympic ITT.
Let’s Discuss …
Who’s going to win the Olympic time trial on Saturday?
Well. This is going to be fun. On the one hand, we have the riders we know are riding well, riders like Elisa Longo Borghini and Grace Brown who just displayed their form at the Giro d’Italia recently. On the other hand, we have the riders who dominate time trials but have been absent from racing for the last few months or most of the year entirely like Chloe Dygert and Ellen van Dijk. As I said this week on the podcast, it’s a healthy dose of known and unknown.
One of the biggest shocks is the absence of Marlen Reusser, current European ITT champion and second to Annemiek van Vleuten at the Olympic time trial in Tokyo. The Swiss rider announced on her Instagram that she would not compete in Paris due to illness.
The known
Belgian ITT champion, road world champion and recent runner-up at the Giro: it’s safe to say Lotte Kopecky has been on quite the run of good form. She didn’t race the time trial at the World Championships in Glasgow last year, and it’s hard to compare any results Kopecky had pre-Tour de France Femmes in 2023 to the Kopecky we know now. With the course being as flat as it is, and as technical, Kopecky is sure to put in a good performance, although her goals likely lie later in the Games both on the road and the track.
Another rider who impressed at the Giro, especially in the stage 1 time trial, was Grace Brown. The Australian rider will be retiring at the end of this season so this and the Worlds in September will be her final chance at that top step. She finished second at the ITT in Glasgow last year, second at the Worlds in 2022 and fourth in the time trial at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. But with only two major goals left in her diary, Brown will have nothing to lose on Saturday.
With how she rode at the Giro it’s safe to say Elisa Longo Borghini is in the form of her life. She didn’t race the time trial in Tokyo and sat out the Glasgow Worlds last year due to illness so there are very few immediate top-level events to compare her to the rest of the competitors, but based solely on her Giro performance, her overall maturity as a rider this year, and her strength in the discipline, Longo Borghini could definitely land herself on the podium.
The unknown
Anna Henderson has had one heck of a year but still managed to come out of her second broken collarbone of 2024 with a win at the British national time trial championships, and second in the road race. She finished fourth in the time trial in Glasgow. From what we know of her form, she is riding well, but the nationals were in late June and she had been out of competition for most of the season. Luckily, one place you don’t need peloton-level reaction time is on a time trial bike. In her final races of last season, she also finished second behind Marlen Reusser in the European Championship time trial, something to keep in mind.
Christina Schweinberger shocked last year when she finished 3rd in the World ITT in Glasgow behind Brown. The rider from Austria went on to finish fifth in the road race a few days later and then third again in the European championship time trial. She finished second behind the winner of the road race in Tokyo, Anna Kiesenhofer, at their national championships time trial earlier this season and won the road race later that week, plus she’s had a few strong performances this year including third in the time trial at the Thüringen Ladies Tour. Both she and Kiesenhofer, who will also race the time trial in Paris, are super strong riders, but how they stack up against the field is what is unknown.
She is known as the best climber currently in the peloton but Demi Vollering has also been known to throw down a strong ride on her time trial bike. Second behind Reusser in the final stage time trial at the Tour de France Femmes last year, she won the time trial at the Tour of Britain in 2021 and finished on the podium of the Dutch time trial championships in 2023 and this year. She has been away from racing since the National Championships in June, preparing for both the Olympics and the Tour. A win might be just out of reach for Vollering, but you never know.
Hometown hero Audrey Cordon-Ragot won the stage 5 ITT at the Simac Ladies Tour in 2022 and has been French ITT champ at least 12 times. She may not be a favourite to win, but never discount what it means to ride on the roads of your home nation, wearing your flag, and during the Olympics no less. Unfortunately, she crashed at the Baloise Ladies Tour this weekend, but seems to be well enough to still be on the hunt for a result in Paris on Saturday.
Now we’re into our three biggest unkowns. The first is America’s Taylor Knibb. Knibb is one of the best triathletes on the scene and rocked USA Cycling when she won the national time trial championship in May and secured the final spot to the Games for cycling. When it comes to going fast on a bike, she is very good. What we don’t know is if she will be able to compete against the best in women’s road cycling, and how she will fare on the course in Paris.
Knibb’s teammate, Chloe Dygert is the reigning world champion in the time trial discipline, but has only raced three times this year, none of them a time trial. As the world champion she was automatically selected to race in Paris, so she has spent much of this year solely focused on that. She will also race the road race and on the track, but it’s time trial gold that she wants, and when Dygert is focused on something it is nearly imposible to beat her. All she needs to do is stay upright, do her thing, and the title will her hers. What makes her even more fired up this Olmypics is her seventh place finish in the time trial in Tokyo. If there’s anything Dygert hates it’s losing.
Possibly the best story on the start list at this year’s Olympic time trial is Ellen van Dijk. There is so much to cheer for when it comes to Van Dijk. Firstly, she wasn’t selected for the Dutch team for Tokyo. She went on to win the Worlds ITT in Leuven a month or so later. Then there is the fact that she took 2023 off to have her first child, and when she lines up in Paris she will be 10 months postpartum. Finally, she came into the season after giving birth absolutely flying. Her form, as a brand new mother, was enough to inspire anyone with a heart but things took a turn a few weeks before the Dutch national championships when Van Dijk crashed in training and broke her ankle. Her whole pregnancy she was focused on Paris, and to experience that kind of setback is devastating. But if there’s one person who would be able to fight through it it’s Ellen and she did. She continued her preparations, with some adjustments, and was cleared to race by the Dutch federation a week ago.
If you were to look back one year Van Dijk’s road to Paris would be incredible, but it’s not just the last three years that have built up to this point for the Dutchwoman and former ITT world champion. It’s the four years leading into Tokyo as well.
A picture worth a couple of words
Never forget the 2015 edition of La Course by the Tour de France, raced before the men finished on the Champs-Élysées. It rained that day and the cobbles were trecherous. Almost every rider in the race crashed at one point or another, they might as well have raced on a skating rink.
Anna van der Breggen won that day, from a very reduced group.
Taylor Swift
“No, I didn’t see the news
‘Cause we were somewhere else
Stumbled down pretend alleyways
Cheap wine, make believe it’s champagne
I was taken by the view
Like we were in Paris”
Until next time!
Thank you for reading this week’s Wheel Talk Newsletter. I will be back next week! Until then you can find me on the Escape Collective Discord.
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