{"id":177379,"date":"2025-04-29T11:24:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T11:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/the-inner-ring-tuesday-shorts-7\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T11:24:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T11:24:43","slug":"the-inner-ring-tuesday-shorts-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/the-inner-ring-tuesday-shorts-7\/","title":{"rendered":"The Inner Ring | Tuesday Shorts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Tour de Romandie starts today with a prologue, the only World Tour race that still has one. It\u2019s different from an opening time trial as it\u2019s defined as no more than 8km, also the rules say if a rider crashes and doesn\u2019t finish they can start tomorrow\u2019s stage with time of the slowest rider.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the prologue, Romandie\u2019s course is often traditional, even retro: no wall-climbs, no cobbles, no gravel. But this is part of the attraction for participants where Giro contenders get as risk-free racing as they can hope for, all on opulent Swiss tarmac. Also teams can test out younger riders in a World Tour stage race that\u2019s less hectic. For a change the weather forecast looks good too.<\/p>\n

Remco Evenepoel is the obvious pick for Romandie, two time trial stages and the long, steady climb to the Thyon 2000 summit finish suit him but he\u2019s got to get past UAE and last year\u2019s winner Carlos Rodriguez who looked handy on the way to Li\u00e8ge. Evenepoel\u2019s returned to racing at an usual time as there are few races to suit him in May given he\u2019s not doing the Giro d\u2019Italia. So Romandie is a key test before he returns to training and with an eye on the Dauphin\u00e9 in June. Reading Daniel Benson\u2019s blog<\/a> it seems Ineos have their eyes on him too.<\/p>\n

If Romandie is retro, contrast it with the Giro that has something new and innovative: the Red Bull KM. Only it\u2019s just the day\u2019s intermediate sprint which offers a regulation time bonus; the rest is presentation with the kilometre of road to the line branded by the soft drinks maker.<\/p>\n

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The search has been on for other forms of novelty here. There\u2019s often been a \u201cclassics revelations\u201d review to see which riders made a name for themselves in the spring classics away from the headline results and podiums. Only this time few riders got a look-in, even the established classics contenders struggled so a couple of paragraphs rather than a full post. Matthew Brennan (Visma-LAB) is the stand-out pick as he won the GP de Denain at the age of 19, he outmanoeuvred a breakaway of eight riders and got his team\u2019s only spring classic win.<\/p>\n

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Louis Barr\u00e9 (Intermarch\u00e9-Wanty) was sixth in the Amstel and even trading counter-attacks with Ben Healy and Tom Pidcock in the finish. Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) was among many frozen out in the Fl\u00e8che Wallonne but fifth place in Li\u00e8ge shows he can now handle 250km races, that was arguably his challenge this spring. 25 year old Yevgeniy Fedorov (XDS-Astana) had some strong moments too.<\/p>\n

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A revelation of a different kind was Uno-X\u2019s 7-Eleven kit for Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, a retro throwback to the old American team which seemed to work, it was easy to spot and clear. Under the UCI rules teams can have special kit for up to three events per year, so it could be one Sunday but an event could be a grand tour too. Lotto\u2019s combination jersey was also a retro theme that cleverly blended every version of past jerseys into one. Soudal-Quickstep had one to promote co-sponsor Ekopak, less memorable. We might see more of this but with ordinary fans struggling to spot teams there are trade-offs too.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s the World Tour relegation battle chart above. XDS-Astana are now just 1,022 points short of 18th place and World Tour safety having started the season 4,720 points behind. They\u2019re not far off their score for 2023 and 2024 and it\u2019s \u201conly\u201d April, which feels early in the year but we\u2019ve had a disproportionate chunk of points already. But the story so far of this relegation battle is one of steady trends rather than see-sawing fortunes. As the chart below shows Astana keep rising, Cofidis score here and there while Picnic-PostNL are stalling.<\/p>\n

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Away from the three year rankings, Lotto are having a stinker this season. They qualify for promotion to the World Tour thanks to past efforts but are not scoring like a top team right now. Injuries and illness are partly to blame. They\u2019re in a Catch-22 situation where they really need promotion to the World Tour because if they don\u2019t make it they\u2019ll struggle for invites and attention next year as they won\u2019t get the automatic wildcards. But financially they\u2019re missing a co-sponsor when they surely need one to help fund a deeper squad in the World Tour?<\/p>\n

Finally a riddle: if a team gets relegated from the World Tour, can it still participate in One Cycling?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Tour de Romandie starts today with a prologue, the only World Tour race that still has one. It\u2019s different from an opening time trial as it\u2019s defined as no more than 8km, also the rules say if a rider crashes and doesn\u2019t finish they can start tomorrow\u2019s stage with time of the slowest rider. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":177380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6804],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-177379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}