Very smartly raced.
He pre recced the unknown parcour in TransAlpina. Rode within his considerable abilities in the early stages but stayed in touch with the leaders, and learned new unsupported skills on the fly. Put the hammer down in the final quarter and no one had the horsepower to stay his pace.
Anything can happen on a big complex event like TCR, but barring major mechanicals/injury I can't see anyone out there who could compete with that power and focus.
Perhaps Abdul Zeinab.
My only slightly negative thought is that the race has been one by a professional cyclist. When it started the race was all about the maths teacher racing the bike courier. Now we have riders who do this for their profession. Sponsored sufficient that they can take time to go across Europe to reccy parts of the course. None of its against the rules. And when we look at it James was sponsored by a private equity firm so he could focus on riding full time. So it's been going that way for years. What always appealed to me with ultra racing was it was normal people competing. A maths teacher from Belgium, a computer geek from Helsinki, a cycle courier from London. Normal people taking on a most extraordinary feet. And whilst further back down the pack there are the Brompton, and the fixie, and the Romanian with an oma fiets and panniers (no really). The pointy end is now professional riders. I fully expect Lachlan Morton to be on the start sometime soon.
What Christoph has done is an awesome achievement. There is no denying that. I just wonder how fast some of the rest of the pack would be if they didn't have to worry about a day job.
Its early days but so far it appears to have been a very well thought out and smoothly run edition, Im so glad about that after the previous cancellations.
It will be interesting to hear the stories and reports from the road once all the riders are in and have had time to digest.
It will be interesting to see how the 9th edition changes. Given Anna is stepping back from running the race.
The extreme parcour in Romania has caused some online consternation, but poersonaly I like the added spice and mental challenge it adds to the race.
I'm not too thrilled with the ferry lottery, but I imagine its a necessary encumbrance to keep the race within safety margins and also run it way down to that neck of the woods.
Given the choice of the ferries or that parcour. I'll take the ferries please. Lost dot sent out an email today saying there is no expectation to be able to ride the parcour. Which IMHO on a road cydli race is just ridiculous. If the majori of riders can't ride the parcour, then it has no place in the race. We've seen this in the past couple of editions, the bonkers parcours in Serbia on the previous two editions come to mind. On number 6 one rider even left his bike at the bottom, walked up with the tracker, and walked back down again. In one edition Mike ran they had the military road in Italy, but the whole thing was ridable in road tyres. The last two Serbian parcours, and this Romanian one. Not so much.
Oh. And several riders at the pointy end crashed in the cp4 parcour. Not good.
J
