I don't get the criticism about not working with Van Aert. Why would you give Van Aert a ride to the gold? The sane thing to do is make him drag everyone up to Alaphilippe and then counter attack over the top. The only way anyone in that group beats Van Aert is to get away from him, and I think Alaphilippe is probably second favourite for a sprint from the group, so having the 2 of them wear each other count and then counter is the perfect scenario. If you are Kwiatkowski, what do you care about a bronze when there's a chance of the rainbow bands? Similarly Fuglsang or Roglic - only Hirschi would enhance his reputation/palmares significantly with a podium, and he has enough of a kick to be best placed for bronze (or to compete with a knackered Van Aert in a sprint).
I thought it was a really interesting race. It looked like the French had done their work too early, and the Belgians and Italians were perfectly placed, but maybe the work that the French did caused enough fatigue that those teams ran out of legs in the last half a lap. I couldn't find it on Europsort, so I had to watch the BBC, and I wasn't impressed with the commentary. The segment with the Watford goalie was cringeworthy, as was the focus on where Pidcock was. He came in 40th or something - that's a worthy performance in his first senior worlds, but he was never going to feature with the top World Tour guys over a race this long. The commentators also seemed to want Pogacar to go all the way - if he had done that with an organised chase then all the suspicions would have been justified. The race was great though, and the course was a good one - enough climbing to weed out those who can't climb, but not so much that all you have to be able to do is go uphill. The womens race showed what a dominant team (with 3 of the best 6 riders in the world) could do, but there's no-one that dominant in the mens game, which made it much tighter.
