World Championships RR

The World's title is the most important one day race of the year, the winner gets to wear the rainbow jersey all year long, a jersey of immense pride for winners and will be many riders main target of the second half of the season. As ever the course determines the candidates so lets look at what Ponferrada2014 has in store.

14 laps of an 18.2km circuit for a total distance of nearly 255km, if your in any doubt, that is a long way, particularly on a hilly circuit and is the first key aspect of the route. There have been riders past and present who have incredible skills but who cannot handle a hard race over a distance not many races reach in one day.

The hills of the course are detailed above, the official website makes sure that it points out that these roads are "perfectly asphalted", either way 4300m of climbing over the entire route will sap the legs even if these hills are not hugely challenging in themselves.

Team dynamics play a huge role with "too many chiefs" syndrome prevalent in national teams comprised of riders who normally ride in different colours in the peloton for the rest of the year.

The amount of riders each country can bring to make up their team is determined by performance by riders of that nationality in the peloton. This can leave some contenders from countries where the depth of rider is not great tremendously isolated in a team of three or even just on their own against a team of nine Spaniards or Italians.

9 riders: Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Colombia, Australia, Belgium, Poland, Germany, Great Britain

6 riders: Morocco, Venezuela, USA, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Slovenia, Denmark, Austria, Portugal

3 riders: Eritrea, Algeria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Japan, Korea, Czech Republic, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Romania, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, New Zealand, Belarus, Canada, Lithuania, Luxembourg, South Africa, Slovakia

1 rider: Ecuador, Sweden, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece

This race will have a hard pace as it is in a number of teams interest to eliminate sprinters like Degenkolb and Bouhanni, neither of which will be in the lead group come 2 laps to go in my opinion. Spain and Italy will drive the pace for Valverde and Nibali (or one of the other Italian riders, maybe Visconti).

This could well come down to whether the likes of Valverde can shake Gerrans, this course looks to me to be roughly the same sort of "hardness" of the ardennes races like Amstel Gold. Gerrans is hard enough for these kind of races but will he have the support necessary to cover all the attacks that will fly off in the finale? Unless Simon Clarke is on fire then the answer is no. In Gerrans three big one day triumphs this year for Orica he has had a super Pieter Weening to control fields with a strong pace shutting attacks down with ease, in this race Weening is riding for the Netherlands, it is a big loss for the Aussie who I think is a little reminiscent of Strax (10 kudos pts for the first person who gets that). Gerrans was super strong in Canada and is rightly one of the favourites for this race but in the betting markets 4/1 is too short for me to even be close to backing the Australian hope.

There is a name that as much as I'm not a huge fan you really cannot ignore, Valverde, one of the worlds strongest climbers and one day racers with a fast sprint, he may sit on wheels and struggle to see past his own ego but he is bloody consistent. In a home world championships with full support Valverde has to go well here. He could win solo or more likely from a small group of 6 or 7.

What of the phenomenon Peter Sagan? He's had a bit of a disappointing year with less wins than 2013 but he has peppered podiums and generally been marked out of chances to win races. Sagan has absolutely zero form coming into this race after purposely doing jackshit in the vuelta, is this the biggest bluff of form you'll ever see? The bookies don't want to take any chances installing him as 4th favourite, I don't blame them as I would not be surprised to see Sagan romp to a win, he is that classy.

The other bookies favourite is Cancellara, he has ignored the TT to focus on this race, and on form it's hard to see him dropped. As I said in my TTT preview Cancellara is really skinny to allow him to cope with the repeated climbs this race will throw at him, Trek suffered in the TTT but this conditioning could help Cancellara here. After a hard race Cancellara has a great sprint, look at Milan San Remo this year for evidence of that.

The scenario I cannot get away from is 8-10 riders cresting the top of the final climb on the last lap, the winner will come from this group with some major tactics going on. The descent will be rapid and I don't think there will be enough time to get back on for anyone dropped.

So after all that lets go over my picks.

Up first is Ireland's Dan Martin, a perennial contender who knows how to win big races, he's just come out of a strong Vuelta where he was only lacking on the really brutal mountain days and got his first GT top 10. Dan is a great one day racer with the all important decent sprint which gives two options to win and more likely ew placing. At 50/1 ish across the markets I really think that's good value. Sadly Boyles with their 5 places are a bit tighter than the rest at 33/1 and i'll leave it to you to decide if you want the extra places as 60s is available at Hills. For me I'm going to put whatever I'm allowed (not much) with Skybet at 66/1 for four places and the rest with Boyles at 5 places 33/1, I think the extra two places on the standard 3 places gives me a better chance here and if he wins I'll be happy with 33s.

Dan Martin a blended 1pt ew. 0.2pt ew Skybet 66/1 (4 places) and 0.8pt ew 33/1 Boyles (5 places).

Next up is Tim Wellens at 150/1. Wellens is a thoroughbred with a great career ahead of him. He sits within the superstar Belgian team who come in without any apparent strategy apart from dump a bunch of guys who all think they can win in the same team. It will be interesting how that works. I like Wellens and want to have him covered. 0.25pts ew with Boyles.

My next low stake pick is Bauke Mollema, a great one day racer who is incredibly consistent at not winning. But  he does place a lot and therefore 100/1 to 5 places at Boyles is worth a go at. 0.35pts ew at Boyles. It's questionable again who the Dutch go with but its a long time for TomDum to be at his peak whereas I get the sense Mollema is on an upwards trajectory after two 10th places in Canada.

I have to have 1pt on Valverde to win at 10/1 with Boyles as I am picturing a finish a bit like San Sebastian and if I have to sit and watch him ride away from Mollema again (I was on Mollema in San Sebastian) would make me very angry indeed.

There are a lot of riders I haven't mentioned here like Kwiatkowski, GVA, Costa, Gallopin etc but you can't cover every base and I've backed on the strength of the scenario which I think is most likely and riders I know can handle the distance. 

**UPDATE**

Now Boyles has upped the ante to 6 places e/w it seems foolish not to have a cover on Ben Swift at 100s. 0.5pts ew. Swift is probably the best climber of the "sprinters" and can pack a punch after a hard race and I think at 6 places that is a good bet.

World Championships TTT

In the first of my blogs on the World Championships I'm going to look at the Team Time Trial.

This year the world championships are being held in Spain, there are very few flat roads in spain and this years TTT is a bit more lumpy than last years pan flat course.

A good starting point is to look at last years race. OPQS triumphed by under 1 second over Orica Greenedge which is extraordinary if you consider this was a 64 minute effort (full results here).

For this years race I would expect the same teams to be contending for the win (plus Movistar), over the World Championship distance there can be no passengers and a lot of teams just do not have the TT depth to contend against the big TTT focused teams.

There have been two other TTT's this year in Tirreno-Adriatico and the Giro d'Italia in Ireland when Dan Martin infamously hit a grate. A Tony Martin inspired OPQS won from Orica in Tirreno and in the Giro Orica triumphed over OPQS without Tony Martin, the teams will be different and the Worlds course is over double the length of these but they give an idea of the two most TTT focused teams. However the worlds is a target for all the big teams and it is not just between OPQS and Orica.

The course this year is lumpy with a couple of steep sections.

There's not a lot of point at looking at the following teams; AG2R, FDJ, Lampre (unless Ulissi gets a ride), Lotto Belisol, Europcar, and Katusha. They do not have the personnel to do anything here, I will look at them for H2H purposes but not in depth for the win. 

From Pro-Conti level the only team who might do well is Rusvelo.

Lets look at the contending Lineups;

OPQS: Boonen, Kwiatkowski, T Martin, Serry, Terpstra, Vermote.

This is a really interesting selection from the reigning champions as Boonen, Serry and Vermote are not really names I would have picked from the full OPQS roster. These three riders come into the team this year in place of Vandewalle, Chavanel, and P Velits who all now race on different teams, Vandewalle and Chavanel are world class elite time trialists and Velits is handy too, so for me this is a significant downgrade on last years squad.

BMC: Dennis, Dillier, Oss, Quinziato, TJVG, P Velits

This is a really strong team from BMC, each rider in this line up can really contribute to a TTT performance of note from BMC. Dennis is one of the very best TT rider's in the world, Dillier will be near that level in 2 or 3 years time, Oss is solid, Quinziato has been going great in TT's this year, TJVG has a TT pedigree and P Velits has been part of the OPQS TTT machine in recent years.

Sky: Puccio, Kiryienka, Thomas, Wiggins, Cataldo, Suitsou

A strong team from Sky, Puccio rings alarm bells though for me, I'm not sure what he adds to this squad. Thomas looked a bit cooked in Canada in races that if he were in shape he would contend in. Wiggins may well make up for these deficiencies though as he moves further towards the track. Cataldo, Kiry and Suitsou are solid as a rock.

Giant-Shimano: Arndt, Dumoulin, Haga, Kittel, Ludviggson, Preidler

Giant are my dark horse for a top 5 placing here. Tom Dumoulin is the stand out name and one of the few riders in the world who can genuinely challenge Tony Martin in a ITT, Ludviggson is a favourite punt of mine in ITT's as many of you will know and he has a lot of talent, Arndt has posted a couple of good TT's over the year and Kittel and Haga can handle themselves also. Giant have been working towards improving their TTT for some time and I think this is maybe too early for them to genuinely challenge the big teams but I don't think they'll be too far away.

Orica Greenedge: Lancaster, Howson, Mouris, Durbridge, Hepburn, Tuft

This is a unit, 5 of this squad are tried and tested in Orica's very successful recent TTT efforts, and the new boy is Howson who is the U23 world TT champion of 2013. This is several of this teams major 2014 target, individually these riders generally cannot compete with the likes of Martin, Wiggins, Cancellara, Dumoulin etc but as a team they are formidable and I cannot see Orica not getting a top 3 result here.

Trek: Cancellara, Vandewalle, Sergent, Irizar, Popovich, Stuyven

A strong line up from Trek but not one I think can podium although they will be close. Cancellara is the skinniest I've seen in a long time because he is after the road race title and not the ITT and has worked on his shape accordingly, he will still be an asset to this squad but not to the level of Martin will be for OPQS for example. Vandewalle and Sergent have had good years in the ITT but Vandewalle has seemed a touch tired recently and has a cracked rib, the other three are solid but not going to light any TTT fires.

Movistar: (6 from these 7) Amador, Dowsett, I Izaguirre, Malori, Sutterlin, Erviti, Herrada

The home hope for this TTT as the only Spanish team with a hope of doing well here Movistar will have a good lineup for this in theory. The problem I have with Movistar is that usually they disappoint but on home turf they should be galvanised. Dowsett and Malori are top quality, Amador and Izaguirre can handle themselves and Sutterlin has a good junior record versus the clock. Hopefully they pick Herrada over Erviti as for me that makes a stronger line up but obviously I don't know the inner workings at the Movistar camp.

Other teams who have strong riders in the lineup are;

Astana: Grivko, Gruzdev, Kangert, Lutsenko, Westra could all line up for Astana and they could do well if they are in form, Kangert had a hugely disappointing Vuelta whereas Lutsenko has huge promise and showed that in the Vuelta.

Cannondale: Bodnar & Koren are strong riders individually but the rest will not be able to contribute enough for a Cannondale win or podium.

Garmin: Norman Hansen, Talansky, Van Baarle, Navardauskas - Garmin have some nice riders who are in form Van Baarle just won the Tour of Britain, Talansky should have good shape coming out of a Vuelta where he worked for the team, Navardauskas is in form and Norman Hansen has a great TT future.

Belkin: A line up of solid riders who can all do a job, I think Belkin will top 10, an important member of the line up will be Stef Clement who is a former four time Dutch TT champ.

Tinkoff-Saxo: Boaro, Bennati, Juul-Jensen, Roche, Rogers - Tinkoff have good riders in their potential team but I'm not sure this is much of a focus for them coming so soon after the victory of Contador in the Vuelta.

Rusvelo: The russian outfit tends to do pretty well in TTT efforts and is another lineup where the Sum performance is greater than its constituents.

A few things to consider here, OPQS have for me a weaker lineup than last year but they are always strong and have the irreplaceable Tony Martin who could beat half the teams in this on his own. Orica are very focussed on success here and have a great lineup but they might be a little bit green around the edges to make them back able for me. Movistar on home soil will be looking for glory and have a couple of form riders, how much the Tour of Britain would have taken out of Dowsett is a worry though as he went very deep. Sky should go well but I don't see them winning.

The team I really like here is BMC, I think the course is perfect for them and as soon as I saw their line up I thought it looked really good. In truth there is not a lot to separate some of these teams and it should be tight.

My first bet is BMC to take out the WIN 1pt at 20/1 with BWIN, this seems over priced for me as I think BMC are one of the big contenders.

One aspect of the preview of any Time Trial team or otherwise which I have yet to mention is weather, at the moment it looks like there's a risk of thunderstorms but this far out its hard to tell. Weather can be all important but I'm still taking BMC this far out as I don't think that price will last, the 14s on offer at PP is chunky as well. I also want 1pt of BMC top 3 at 2/1 which you can get at b365 and Kambi platforms.

My 1, 2, 3 is going to be BMC, Orica, OPQS. Doubt you will read that anywhere else.

If there is rain mid race then we need to cover an early starter. That would be Cannondale who are decent and go out earliest of the teams who have any chance at all. 0.2pts win 150/1, Various, 0.1pt top 3 30/1 Kambi.

H2H's

Giant v astana Evens 2pts Kambi platform - Giant should top ten, Astana I'm not so sure, they were not great in the Vuelta and the team is largely the same. *Added another point on this at 2.4*

Belkin v garmin 6/5 1pt Kambi platform - I fancy Belkin to beat garmin here, Belkin have a lot of decent riders in their squad, whereas Garmin have 3 good guys 3 rubbish guys (no offence if any of them read this).