What a day. It seemed in the morning that a lot has changed (like the press parking, for example), but it soon turned out that the organisers turned the course upside down, so to speak – and for the better. I think it is now shorter but harder – the extra, cobbled climb before the infamous off-camber made the it all the harder. They also changed the direction of certain sections. I wonder why can’t organisers do that more often – it can change a course dramatically.
The weather was really bad, it rained quite heavily almost all day, our only saving grace was that it wasn’t THAT cold and the wind wasn’t blowing too hard, or at least you couldn’t really feel it among the trees. But really bad weather is good for photos, so I don’t want to complain.
If we learnt one thing today though, is the dire need for an U23/juniors women’s race. There were 80+ riders at the start line. The call-up took forever and the start looked like the last days of the Giro Rosa. Just more arm warmers. I guess many junior riders want to race the coming Helen100 races and they all decided that they wanted their money’s worth by racing through the whole Kerstweek. It’s really great to see this many riders racing, but they deserve proper categories and not just forced into ‘elite women’.
And with that, thank you for your attention, I’m signing off for a few days. I wish you all Happy Christmas and I’ll be back with more silly, muddy stuff on Boxing day from Zolder.
