Cycling Update: World Championships in Road Racing

 

 If you watched the video, that pretty much sums up all you need to know about how the United States did in the road world championships.  There was a time, not too long ago, that the US could have a chance at winning any race.  Those days are no more.  Not for the men or the women.  The only chance the US had this year was Chloe Dygert, a time trial specialist and currently the best in the world, but a blowout going into a curve at 30mph took care of her chances.  

Since there isn't much to report on for the US here I just wanted to give people a sense of how good Chloe Dygert is.  The video below is her earlier this year competing in the world track competition, individual pursuit.  

She is the perfect American athlete.  She's cocky but humble.  She's an incredibly hard worker who is being coached by the greatest American time trialist of all time, Kristin Armstrong.  And most importantly she's the best.  It's a shame that someone like her can't at least get the same level of fame as Lindsey Vonn, but I'm afraid cycling in the United States has fallen into a deep hole that it is going to take quite a bit of time to get out of.  

All that being said here were the results at this year's road championships.  

Elite Women's Time Trial

1	Anna van der Breggen (Netherlands)	0:40:20
2	Marlen Reusser (Switzerland)	0:00:16
3	Ellen van Dijk (Netherlands)	0:00:31
4	Lisa Brennauer (Germany)	0:00:45
5	Grace Brown (Australia)	0:01:01

Elite Women's Road Race

1	Anna van der Breggen (Netherlands)	4:09:57
2	Annemiek van Vleuten (Netherlands)	0:01:20
3	Elisa Longo Borgini (Italy)
4	Marianne Vos (Netherlands)	0:02:01
5	Liane Lippert (Germany)

Elite Men's Time Trial

1	Filippo Ganna (Italy)	0:35:54
2	Wout van Aert (Belgium)	0:00:27
3	Stefan Küng (Switzerland)	0:00:30
4	Geraint Thomas (Great Britain)	0:00:37
5	Rohan Dennis (Australia)	0:00:40

Elite Men's Road Race

1	Julian Alaphilippe (France)	6:38:34
2	Wout van Aert (Belgium)	0:00:24
3	Marc Hirschi (Switzerland)
4	Michal Kwiatkowski (Poland)
5	Jakob Fuglsang (Denmark)

Women's cycling continues to be completely dominated by the Dutch.  The hold they have over the sport is incredible.  As for the men there was a though that Wout van Aert could become the first man to ever win both the time trial and road race and he came awfully close winning silver in both. 

Julian Alaphilippe is someone who gives me hope for American cycling.  French cycling went into utter collapse after doping scandals rocked their cyclists back in the late 90's and it appeared as though the French would never compete at the top level again.  Alaphilippe came into this race as the heavy favorite and he pulled off the win behind a very strong team.  It only took the French about 20 years to recover, so maybe by 2030 the US will be back with some strong cyclists.