With only 8 days until Kona 09, most people would expect a slew of stories and predictions. However, with my flight to Kona early next week, I would expect that there might be multiple posts next week on the biggest race of the year.
Ok, I fold. The good folks at Slowtwitch have come up with a list of odds for the favorites for Kona. There is a list of male pros and one for female pros. Of course, betting on Chrissie W might be the triathlon equivalent of betting on a 18-0 New England Patriots team from a few years ago (and we all know how that turned out). She's never lost an Ironman race (never really been pushed actually) but that "you never know" factor will keep us all watching on October 10.
Moving along, the Pro Cycling world (UCI) wrapped up the important part of their 2009 season with the Worlds Road Race last week. This is the race where World Champions are made, and forever become part of cycling lore. Past champions include Fausto Coppi, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Greg Lemond, and even a very young Lance Armstrong way back in 1993. Recent chamions include Oscar Friere (3 times), Tom Boonen, Paolo Bettini, and last year's champ Alessandro Ballan. This race is different than most since it becomes a country-vs-country race, with Italians competing against Spaniards and the like, with each national team trying to set up their big names for the finish. This year's race involved 19 laps and 38 monster climbs over 262 km, and the difficult course in Switzerland really did let the world's best cyclists come to the front.
Here is a 10 minute video of the last few km, and you can see that the final select group includes Alejandro Valverde (winner of the Vuelta), Sammy Sanchez (Beijing gold medal), Fabian Cancellera (Beijing TT Gold Medal, Worlds TT Champion, Home Town Favorite), Damiano Cunego (who excels in one day races) and Cadel Evans (Mr Almost-Win-The-Big-Race) among a group of 9. Earlier in the last lap, names like Tom Boonen and Alexander Vinokourov (in an epic solo attack that ended with him getting pulled back on the first of 2 climbs on the final lap) also made appearances at the front of the race. This truly was an epic grouping.
As you can see, Cadel Evans made the decisive move, and powered away to the biggest win of his career. The last 5 or 6 years are full of close calls in big races (2 second overall finishes in the Tour de France, plus a 4th place finish, also a 3rd and a 4th in the Vuelta D'Espana) so to see the Aussie finally get the proverbial kangaroo-off-his-back was nice to see.
By the way, kudos to Michael Barry, who finished 18th overall at the Worlds Road Race and was both top Canadian and top North American finisher. Both other Canadians did not finish (Ryder Hesjedal and Svein Tuft) but they had plenty of company as over half the field did not finish.
Come back later for more...but here's a funny poster...
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