Competitive Weekend

Are you getting the hang of the Paralympic cycling classifications? GB have won a whole bunch of medals and the more we win the more it makes sense.

Over this weekend the tally of paracycling medals rose to 14 including golds galore in the velodrome as GB confirmed their superiority here as in able-bodied cycling.

An interesting extra element to the games, maintaining the technology that allows the cyclists (amongst other athletes) to compete was covered in the Guardian last week.

The Paralympic road cycling starts later in the week and in the meantime the Vuelta carried on, mostly uphill. The only respite was on Friday, where a break with many of the strongest teams represented went clear, leaving it down to Degenkolb’s Argos-Shimano team really as the only one with any reason to bring it back. They were unable to do that, and the breakaway started to play games for the win.

Eventually it was a blistering and intelligent attack by Steve Cummings that won it, giving the Brit a massive win in a season where he has broken his pelvis and wrist as well as failed to get Evans the Tour de France win. It was a stage win that seemed to be celebrated throughout the peloton.

The weekend saw some serious climbing, and on Saturday Rogriguez continued to show his domination on climbs with a powerful catch of Contador, followed by obliterating him to the line in the final few hundred metres. Froome looked increasingly exposed as his attacks were covered and then he fell back to fifth losing 37 seconds. Sunday then saw him lose yet more time as a different Spaniard won in the shape of a fantastic solo effort by Piedra, giving Rogriguez a day off from an altitude podium, although he did get to go there anyway as he still leads the Vuelta by 22 seconds from Contador. The story of the climb was the battle between the three Spanish top riders while it looked like Froome suffered in the climbs and lost over thirty seconds again, dropping him to forth overall, and increasingly looking unlikely to make this a Grand Tour win for Britain.

With all that climbing it was time to come down again, and that was taken care of by the Mountian bike DH World Championships in Leogang. The range of ability on the field, which included 120 riders rather than the usual top 80 in the World Cup finals, served to highlight just how strong the top guys are. In a change from what many people might have predicted Greg Minnaar put together a stunning run to take the DH title by half a second from Gee Atherton. Aaron Gwin could only cruise in after a mechanical high on the hill. The women's event saw something of a surprise win by French rider Morgane Charre with Brit Manon Carter in third.

All of this seems to be filled with competition, so for a bit of a break have a look at Danny MacAskill advertising a hair trimmer. You can see the connection, obviously, right?



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