Note: these two races start at the exact same time at 10pm pacific TODAY! (6am Euro time? I am confused with daylight savings time ending on different dates.)
Normally in multi-day Rock concerts the last act is of a lesser stature so at least some of the audience leaves early and makes the traffic a little bit easier to handle. This is where we are at: the end of the road cycling season. Lombardy just finished. People are going home. But we still have a few races left this week.
This post will be for the three Chinese races, all World Tour events, two of them the last two women’s races of the year while on the men’s side. We also have a couple of Italian races, both named Veneto and the always surprisingly fun Japan Cup that we will have separate threads for. But let’s cast our eyes towards China and first two WT stage races there.
Two thoughts on the women’s Tour of Chongming Island
Remember the Simac Ladies Tour? Finished just last Sunday. Remember how flat it was? Compared to the Tour of Chongming Island, Simac was freaking mountainous. Tourmalet, followed by Zoncolan, followed by Angrilu on every stage. Chongming Island is an, yes, an island at the mouth of the Yangtze river as it empties into the East China Sea. Just north of Shanghai. The bike Tour does have three what they call cat 4 climbs one each for each stage at the beginning of each stage. These are bridges. Otherwise it’s sprint city.
Who’s gonna win? There are four WT teams here plus an assortment of lesser teams. Daria Pikulik is here, she’s got a sprint, and I say she cleans up. Any questions?
Three thoughts on the mens Gree Tour of Guangxi.
16 WT teams are here with just Alpecin and FDJ absent. As for the riders present, they are mostly either D-listers on their team and everyone else on their team begged off to start their vacations early, or they are transferring to a new team and their obnoxious DS’s are making them race one last time, halfway around the world. There are also some riders who seem happy to be here. Pavel Sivakov is reportedly one of them.
The result is kinda interesting as you never know which riders are actually interested in racing. Last year Milan Vader, then of Jumbo Visma won the GC, which no one expected, so surprises are possible. In general though the guys with the best pedigrees tend to finish on top. Last year all but one of the stages ended in a bunch sprint and the winners were Viviani (the good one), Johnny Milan, Kooij, Molano, and Kooij again. GC winners have usually been bigger named riders like Mass or Wellens.
Remember how Guangxi is usually flat with one stage having a short hill that determines the GC winner? There’s that one short stage again but otherwise this race is kinda hilly but otherwise the other stages are also hilly, though not so much that real separation will happen probably and they all end in flat runs to the line. What this means is that the sprinters who most like flat stages aren’t here this year. No Milans or Kooijs etc. Instead look. for sprinters who can handle a little bit of climbing. Riders like Lamperti, Garcia Cortina, Max Kanter, Mick Van Dijke, David Dekker, etc. Oh and Fabio Jakobsen too.
So who’s gonna win? How about…
Pavel Plapp. Or maybe Lennert Narvaez. Look out for for Alexey Wellens or possibly Esteban Baudin. Quinn Hirt will be dangerous. Maybe Chris Froome.
(I’ll add a blurb on the women’s one day Gunagxi race later in the week.)
