World Championships 2024 Zürich ***SPOILERS***

I'd argue it's quite different to ride as last mountain helper for a team, as opposed to outright leader. Mentally, you only have to be on it on fewer days for a start.

I think we can all see that Kuss' efforts in 2023 have had a knock-on effect on his 2024 season, where he's looked a shadow of the rider he was last year (not helped by his Covid positive at the Dauphine of course). He was the outright GC leader for Visma at the Vuelta and never looked like he was a serious contender.

There was never going to be sufficient collusion between MvdP et al to catch him. Evenepoel doesn't have the punch to counter an attack from Pogacar, MvdP didn't and doesn't have the climbing legs required on a course like that, Ben Healey didn't have the legs - what was he doing?! Flying off into no mans land in a desperate bid to drop his company with a hope for silver? There wasn't a snowflakes chance in hell he was going to catch Pog and there was equal probability of not holding off the pursuers.

A bunch of ego's and superstars who couldn't team up for toffee and Pog gets the win. How can a chase group of that calibre go that far and not catch him? Pathetic. They were all thinking that if they go at 90% they might have some energy for the finish except... the bird had flown and wouldn't be caught at 90% effort, relying on shredding team mates instead. Roglic, Tratnik and Pogacar played a blinder and in the last 100kms, the chasers stumbled over their ego's.  Evenepoel still had five teammates with him: Tim Wellens, Maxim Van Gils, Tiesj Benoot, Quinten Hermans and Campenaerts at one point and yet couldn't keep the race under control. That's a helluva squad and that means, it was a helluva failure. Holland had a great squad too. Slovenia were 3 men (effectively) vs an innumerate number of rivals.

You're not new to condescension that's for sure.

Once he'd gone and there was an elite chase group, they weren't going to win unless they went 100%, and if they went 100%, someone like O'Connor would beat them anyway.

I agree that Belgium and Netherlands left it too late to decide that it might be a problem to let the best rider in the world, with a history of winning from long breakaways, get a lead of a minute.

Chase groups not wanting to commit is almost a fundamental part of bike racing, the fact that this usually ends up in the lone escapee winning never seems to have persuaded them that a fully committed effort to chase them down may actually be the best tactic.

Exactly this. Most one day races these days see someone breaking away alone and a chase group forms behind, but it never fully commits because riders don't want to sacrifice their chances of winning, should it come back together. Fatigue is a key factor too, as @rick_chasey will tell us, it takes a special type of rider to be able to make a difference after 200 kms, and with races being ridden faster and faster, quite often those riders who form the chase group are at the limit of their resources.

Yeah +1 More or less . The other favourites neutralising each other in the chase is a common phenomenon. Wouldn't blame the superstar egos too much not like this doesn't happen with chasers of a lower superstar status in smaller races . The lesson is clearly to start working early if pog goes early . Remco and Mvdp repeatedly tried to jump and went nowhere . Less glycogen to just through and off . Pog was very catchable really especially as you have a 100km to do it . You can attack each other on the final lap not 4 laps to go

I don't think Pog was dead or even slightly less than capable at any point yesterday. . . It eas graphics gremlins that have the impression he was yoyoing time.

In the last couple of laps, sat on my sofa at home, I was taking manual time checks at key locations across each lap and it easy to see the gap on the road was different from the screen.

Yes there was the dropped bottle, yes the delay in the team car coming up, yes the regulator kicked neutral service out the gap before the narrow winding downhill, yes Pog appeared to ease up and shake the lactic out his legs, but at no point did he look like being caught.

Pogs performance was an 11/10

The race overall was a 7/10 imho

There was zero jeopardy over the win from 100km.

The real talking points were who else gets on thr podium and why were the other favourites not working together better.

By comparison, the women's race was 9.5/10 because there was always jeopardy on a great parcorps

As much as I think he could have won all 3 GTs, maybe a factor why he didn't try it, was because many of his top rivals have had a bad season as regards injuries. Winning all 3 against rivals in top form would mean so much more.

in addition to lack of race radios I wonder how much the lack of a concerted chase comes down to support riders not being prepared to go as deep when the reward is a rider on another pro team getting to wear the rainbow stripes. There’s not much incentive for a non-Alpecin Dutch rider to thrash themselves helping MVDP win.

I think the lack of cooperation is partly down to the course making it difficult to roll through and off but also being so tough that some of the riders probably couldn't contribute. It's not just riders playing poker.

Disagree there was zero jeopardy from 100k - and while the commentators may have bigged up his collapse on the last lap the riders behind Healey and the other chap did make up significant time quite quickly up until that chase came back together. Yes it never looked likely he'd be caught but it did look possible.

Was that the year they set it up for Gilbert?

The issue with chase group not co-operating is what is the alternative scenario?

Let's just say Remco managed to get away from the rest of the group (even if he was with MVDP)

He still has a big effort ahead to make it across a 40 second gap, just to draw level with Pog. He then has the issue of how to beat him from an equal position.

Just using Remco as an example in this scenario, it's the same for most of the riders in the chase group. If the 7 or 8 chasers had committed together for even 1 whole lap, Pog was catchable

I can only really remember two. One where Cav won, and one where everybody knew they just had to beat Cav. I suspect you are thinking of the latter.