A different breed.
The Worlds are going to be played out on US roads, which is fantastic and the last time it happened we witnessed a great race with a worthy winner. But the Worlds has lost a lot of its prestige since moving from late August to its current position in late September. It’s only a month’s difference, but it means that the riders who started early and raced through the summer are dialing down for the season, and only the riders who either took the Summer easy or are started racing later will be interested in racing for the bands.
It used to be that the winner of the road race wore the Rainbow Stripes in the time trial events as well, because there wasn’t a separate time trial Champion. One World Champion instead of two has the sort of simplicity to it that my twisted OCD brain can really sink its teeth into, and every rider to ever swing a leg over a top tube had that event on their list – whether they were a sprinter, a Grand Tour rider, rouleur, or domestique. I would be willing to bet that a modern champion like like Chris Froome or Alberto Contador doesn’t even have the the Worlds on their radar as a career goal.
We won’t be seeing a defending Tour champion roll up to the prologue with the rainbow stripes on their back any time soon. I vote we bring back the Summertime Worlds.
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Frank - It's CDO and you would know that if you were truly OCD. :-)
@chuckp
Clearly you have a keyboard defect there with punctuation like that at the end.
Why did the race number move from under the top tube to behind the rear brake? Steel racing frames would frequently come with a cool brazed-on race card holder. A little peg under the top tube to tell everyone you are in fact riding a very high end frame. Especially if that brazed-on race card holder was fitted with a Campagnolo downtube shifter wingbolt, because you need that little bolt the be made by Campagnolo as well.
Last time 'round? Worthy winner? Certamente. Great race? Eh.
@RVester, you answered your own question: non-steel, or non-metallic frames leave little space behind the head tube. It used to be only short people who had to put the tag out back, but now it's fuck all.
@Joe
Its now getting cluttered under the seat with added GPS making the seats look like they have a semi hard-on trailing out the back
@frank- I miss the days of old when Worlds was a two week festival of Amateurs and Professionals. When the track world and the road world all gathered in the same city! When the World TTT was a 100km 4 man effort and not the Trade team event it is now( but I am glad that there is at least some form of TTT again).
We camped alongside the course just before the 20% ramp in Geelong for the 2010 worlds. Was a great week and the atmosphere was awesome. The best bit was rolling out of the caravan park at sun up and riding the entire lap of the course before the pro's. Then setting up deck chairs and esky's infront of camper trailer and watching them roll past multiple times.
Anyone heading to the current WC's will have an amazing time.
In Aus, we have a National Road Champion (Haussler/Mullens), a National Time Trial Champion (Porte/Wardlaw) AND a National Criterium Champion (Von Hoff/Wells)...
I like like this post.
@Puffy
I think they have a national crit champion in the US too.