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(SPOILERS) Olympic road race

Aron B

Maximum Pace
Mar 24, 2012
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This Saturday will be the Olympic road race for men, a 9 laps totalling 250km race starting at 10.00 BST, that's 18.00 JST.

I think it will be one of the most awesome races this year, even though the spring classics have been good to us already. The reason is:
1) everybody thinks he can win, I've heard dozens or riders claiming that this is their main goal of the season
2) small teams, the largest teams have only 5 riders
3) anything can happen, both sprinters and baroudeurs have a chance here
4) it's in the middle of London!
http://www.london2012.com/cycling-road/event/men-road-race/phase=crm012100/index.html

Last year on the World Championships the British team were superstrong, and I am wondering if they have enough manpower to hold everything together for Cavendish. Sagan is good, Boonen had an amazing streak in April, it may be Cancellara's last and best chance.

So, speculate away!
 
I see a repeat of 2011 WC race. But it might get interesting if a biggish group breaks away and works together to build a good advantage over GB locomotive led peloton - no sprint finish in this case, group of 5 remaining until the final km, Sagan or Cancellara wins it :cool: Boonen broke something in his body lately, might be too tough for him?
 
They had a section about this on that cycling tv show I was going on about.

Going to be pretty damn tactical hitting the same section 9 times.

I think that would drive me mental by the 6th!
 
This is going to be one fine race. I'm going to be at a wedding with dress code, but will surely watch the stream on my android smartphone. Including occasional shouts of excitement.

Does anybody have an idea how to watch live on an iPad?

As for a prediction: Sagan vs cav
Sagan is probably still enraged to have stayed behind a failing greipel during the final in Paris, but he was closing in on Cav towards the line...
 
It will be very hard for any one team to do what they want, unless the goal is to have a rider in the first breakaway. Frankly, on this parcours I can only see it ending up in a sprint when the Brits can bribe some other countries. Really, who wants to sprint against Cavendish? Only Greipel I think.

Still, any domestique that neutralizes an attack can no longer properly help in the lead out train for the sprint. And there are many riders eager to try something in the final lap, who's going to chase them down?

Sagan can win Freire-style: the best sprinter in a large first group or after a really tough race.

What are the traditionally strong teams of Italy and Spain going to do? That will be interesting. And then Australia.
 
With Cavendish's loss in weight I got a feeling the tactics are going to be very different.
 
Looks like two options..

... teams with a strong sprinter want a sprint finish and those without want a chance with a break. With relatively small teams, hard for a single country to go for both.

Cav is the strongest sprinter, especially with a big train, but he can be beaten as we have recently seen. This means teams with a strong sprint are not going to just give up. So it boils down to which big teams want a sprint and will work together to make it happen that way. Germany and GB want a sprint. Australia should want it. Farrah is so weak that US probably does not join in this year, if it had been a good year, maybe they would, maybe they still do as it is the US's only chance. Italy is a wild card.

With three or four of the larger teams working to make it a sprint, it should go that way, however with a bunch of smaller teams trying for a strong break, then you always have a chance of it staying out if the sprint teams mistime things or stop working well together to try for a small advantage.

So like every road race, we have no idea who is going to win, throw in illness, TdF fatigue, wrecks, rain, wind, errant water bottles, press motorcycles, and any other hundred random events and it will be FUN TO WATCH!
 
I'll put Arashiro down for a top 10 finish.

He'll just hang in and go with the right breaks. Doubt he'll do any foolish pulls at the front like he usually does.

It's going to be a messy race. If the peloton is split in half, those in the 2nd group will not finish the race.

Therefore everybody will spend the first half of the race trying to stay in the first half of the peloton and the pace is going to be full on.

Messy, messy messy...
 
Go Kiwis!!!!

I am thinking (okay, Hoping) my hometown boy Jack Bauer is going to set up Greg Henderson for the win.
 
Oh man, It looks like someone has nailed the road, Half the field just stopped:mad:
 
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