Womens' Tour of Scotland
Day one of the above in a nice bit of rain. Best bit should be tomorrow up from Glasgow to Aberfoyle and over Duke's Pass.
No live stream as far as I can see.
https://womenstourofscotland.com/
twitter:#wtos
No live stream as far as I can see.
https://womenstourofscotland.com/
twitter:#wtos
0
Posts
https://twitter.com/womenstourscot/stat ... 3075666944
Hope it clears up a bit tomorrow. Lots of folk from my cycling club going to the Duke's to cheer on Jenny Holl.
I have the honour of warming up the crowds all weekend. Drive to Dundee today was interesting. Wipers struggling to keep up. Wind was strong, but it all calmed down for a half hour window before the start.
Good job crossing the Tay Bridge was depart fictif... Strong strong cross wind.
Lots of rain got worse and worse with larger puddles and flows across the roads. Add a thunderstorm and torrential rain = Scottish summer at her finest.
About 20km from the end the lead motos discovered one medium flood about 15 mins ahead of riders. The cars stopped and the motos continued... But another section proved too deep even for the motos... Worse, parts of the road surface were being washed away.
Massive kudos to the officials for making the decision swiftly and getting all the riders stopped in a good place to get them in the cars and off the course.
Even if they got past those floods final climb through park to finish had approx 50m of "river".
Main racing news was a group of 35 broke forward on first climb led by Biglo and Archibald had a puncture and took approx 15mins to get back in the peleton. Today's hilly course was supposed to make the GC gaps. Makes tomorrow's probable all together at Perth and the 3 loops of Arthur's seat all the more interesting and tighter for GC.
Good crowds considering the weather and obvious smaller profile than other big races in Scotland.
Main thing is that's it great to see UCI level racing on roads north of M8
https://youtu.be/NDQK2WVgdSQ
https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=18563
https://twitter.com/womenstourscot/stat ... 8702022657
I'd have fancied that descent of Kirk Brae if it wasn't for the lights at the bottom.
@DrHeadgear
The Vikings are coming!
https://www.strava.com/segments/1421807
Highlights of stage 2 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzi6Qb88a-k
https://twitter.com/womenstourscot/stat ... 2355414016
why was the sprint so slow? is that an up hill finish?
One in points competition none in KOM
Apart from Lizzie Deignan, who is there?
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/wo ... nd/2019/gc
lot of young riders involved, probably getting their first experiences of racing this season, nearly 2/5ths of the riders were competing for the young riders jersey, and Bigla are WWT level team and turned up with arguably a stronger team than they entered the Womens Tour with, similar with Tibcol, easy way to collect UCI points whilst the even bigger teams were out of the picture, so not surprising the UK domestiques and teams struggled to compete.
and Katie Archibald has probably lost out both by not really hitting the road to race much this year, hasnt raced in any road races this season, didnt even ride the nationals road race when it was clear she would be entering this, and ended up with a team thats really only there to promote Scotland and Scottish cycling as a thing,hence the whole time lost thing with the puncture.
I think it is fair to say that once the flag dropped this weekend was not about Katie. This weekend she played a tremendous role as the ultimate team player. Before the event she was the high profile figure for the media to latch onto, but concentrating on Tokyo and with no road racing this year,when the was on the road this weekend, when she could, she worked as a super domestique. Once the Scottish team's main goal of stage one GC attack in Dunfermline was gone, the chat was that the team goals were to get Neah in the intermediate sprints and support Jen and Anna Shackley as much as possible for the climbs.
Anna was in the lead group of 9 almost to the top of the Dukes Pass QOM yesterday. She dropped off the back and had a choice, push on and possibly burn out catching the leaders or allow the chasing pack to do the work for her. She chose the later... with hindsight she probably should have pressed on. The QOM summit was followed by a false flat, short downhill and another rise 1km further on... The cheeky wee Dane sat up when she had her QOM points and the leaders never fully pressed on. Apparently Anna admitted she could have bridged, but not knowing Cecilie had sat up she thought it better to sit up (too).
For a first stab at things it was a great 3 days. Yes it has some issues to deal with, but these are surmountable. Hopefully next year will not clash with European Champs, Edinburgh Festival or horrible weather.
Finally, Perth on Saturday was magnificent. Who knew that a Pride Festival featuring the real Gandalf, a Women's bike race, Tattie Sack racing and sunshine could be soooo much fun.