Calendar:
It starts with Time Trials:
- Sunday 21, morning: Elite Women (31 km)
- Sunday 21, afternoon: Elite Men (41 km)
- Monday 22, morning: U23 Women
- Monday 22, afternoon: U23 Men
- Tuesday 23, morning: Junior Women
- Tuesday 23, afternoon: Junior Men
- Wednesday 24 : mixed relays (2×21km)
Then come the mass start races:
- Thursday 25, afternoon: U23 Women
- Friday 26, morning: Junior Men
- Friday 26, afternoon: U23 Men
- Saturday 27, morning: Junior Women
- Saturday 27, afternoon: Elite Women
- Sunday 28: Elite Men
NB: Women Elite ride the same distance as U23 Men; U23 Women ride the same distance as Junior Men.
Here is the map of the circuit that all mass start races will use:
and an example of repeated profile:
In addition of this circuit, the Elite Men will also ride once a longer circuit:
which will result in this complete profile:
Selection for Denmark:
Men:
Women:
Denmark won’t send anyone for the ITT, nor for the u23 and junior-races. Shameful, if you ask me, but they claim the riders have not been allowed to go by their teams or won’t go.
So, Uno-X refuses to lend a single (male) rider? And no-one from the contis Beton or Coloquick wants to go? I am a bit surprised.
Wouldn’t it rather/also be a federation willing to save money, thus not trying too hard to get riders? We’ve had the case lately in France, after the federation spent all their yearly budget on renting a castle for the Olympic Games… Then they couldn’t afford travel expense to… Belgium.
With UnoX I think it’s believable as they’re fighting so hard for the points right now to secure their invites for next year.
It’s probably also a federation looking to save money, but I think it’s more important to send the u23 riders and the juniors than it is to send the main team. Danish cycling is in a great state because we prioritize(d) youth development, so I think it’s a shame to see them miss out on this experience and motivation at the youth level.
I don’t think that they have any need for points for the automatic invites (which are calculated on a single season): they are 1st of the Pro-Teams, with a huge margin over the 4th Pro-Team (or Word Team which would drop to Pro-Team).
Is it not so, that they rather want to become a World Team? There (the points are calculated over 3 seasons), indeed, they would need to fight with Cofidis and such.
Right, yes, they are fighting to become a WT team :) That’s the explanation that the UnoX riders have given in the press for their absence.
We could try to record how many UCI points the Danish riders of Uno-X will score in the time around the World Championship, to check if it will have mattered or not.
At the moment, 3 of them (out of 8) are not in the first 20 riders (those whose points are taken into account); basically none but M. Cort are riders who brings points.
But of course, as far as a team is concerned, these non-scoring or little-scoring rider may still be useful in helping other riders to score! So in fact our exercise would pretty vain 😀
I’m fairly certain they will score no points, although a Cort in form (which he hasn’t been since the spring) could do some damage in Rwanda. The younger riders like Henrik Pedersen and Dalby might have been able to do something in the u23 races, but alas.
Anyway, it’s clear the WC will be deprioritized by many countries. I think the Danish team is still quite good, though. Skjelmose has beaten Pog this season in an uphill sprint after all, not many riders can say that!
Today, Uno-X didn’t score a single point in Wallonie. It looks like they had sent a B or C team, but still, there were points awarded to the first 40 riders, and they didn’t get one. It is much easier to score on a 1.Pro like this, rather than on the stages of a 2.Pro (like Luxembourg) or 2.1 (like Slovakia). Wagner-Bazin, Flanders-Baloise and even the conti Beat managed to score a handful of points, only Tarteletto didn’t.
Battle of Giants today on the French SSR of the week-end, Paris-Chauny: 5 points for Cofidis vs 3 points for Uno-X 😆
Today in Belgium again, Uno-X did bad again (5 points), but Cofidis did worse (3 points) and their sprinter Milan Fretin crashed rather badly yesterday. As a result, Uno-X is now ahead of Cofidis in the 3-year UCI ranking by… 1 point!