When I say it was a Titan vs. Titan battle, there was the interloper of the course conditions to keep things interesting. “It was a very hard race,” said Štybar. “I crashed one time and I thought it was over. From the beginning I thought, let’s race hard, I have nothing to lose. Now I have to go, I have to give it everything. I was fourth line, I had to brake full gas on the start and come back, which was a big effort for me. We were three, then two and then I thought we were just going to fight for the podium.”

Štybar had the disadvantage of starting further back on the grid than he would have liked, giving the other favourites at least three rows. French Rocket Francis Mourey took the green light and repeated his fast start that gave him the win at the WC event in Namur, but it was all to no avail as a bit of a wobble dropped him back into the chasing pack, looking like eventually he’d burnt his matches too quickly fading to finish eighth.

The main protagonists had at this stage almost formed up, with Štybar bridging across eventually to the group; it looked we had choice of winner from here. Over the next couple of laps Štybar and Nys were trading blows, sensing each other, while the casualties were the rest of the group,  as Van Der Haar and Mourey faded fast.

With two to go, it looked like a body blow had been landed, and it was Štybar who had taken to the canvas or mud if you will. He lost the bike on a soft-angled descent that had taken out Bina early doors. Nys, not even batting an eyelid, dismounted and jumped over his fallen comrade in mud and was away. Daylight had finally emerged between the two. But what happened next, maybe it was a brain fart on Nys’s behalf or just tiredness, while grabbing the end of a barrier/fence to whip round a bend he lost a wheel. It was enough for Štybar to get back on level pegging.

You’d have thought with the last lap they’d have maybe one attack/one counter in them, I was thinking that with the course going south so quickly it would have been Nys’s technical abilities that could have won the day, but it’s the pure power of Štybar that caused the decisive blow.  The attack was brutal, sustained, and final from Štybar pushing home the advantage as he gapped Nys. Game, Set and World Champioship title for Mr. Štybar.

Enjoy the exclusive photo gallery by our man in Hoogerheide, Wei Yuet, above.

Italy’s Eva Lechner did extremely well to take the Silver medal, the main interest for the neutral was the ding dong battle between Helen Wyman and Sanne Cant for Bronze. Cant’s superior technical skills on the fast deteriorating course against Wyman’s physical strength was the battle of the day, Wyman eventually moving  clear on the last lap with a searing attack that Cant couldn’t handle.

It was a bad day at the mud office for America’s hope, as Katie Compton first suffered a poor start, then a spill similar to that in the Junior Men, the combination of which put her far in arrears of the leaders. Though she fought hard, and at one point looked to be back in podium contention, the effort – and perhaps a continuation of the breathing problems that saw her pull out of the final round of the World Cup last weekend – was too much, and she faded back to finish in ninth.

Enjoy the exclusive photo gallery by our man in Hoogerheide, Wei Yuet, above.

The slick conditions brought technical skills to the forefront, and slips and crashes played a large role in the outcome of the race, as did a large start line crash. Although Dutch favourite Joris Nieuwenhuis made an impressive effort to claim the win, the Belgian phalanx of Thijs Aerts, Yannick Peeters, and Jelle Schuermans proved too strong a defence to crack, and took the podium in that order after Aerts attacked on the final bell, and held his lead until the end.

Enjoy the exclusive photo gallery by our man in Hoogerheide, Wei Yuet, above.

Results

“The Ride of Your Life” by Evans Cycles – An infographic from Evans Cycles

This post is done in association with Evans Cycles.

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We expect riders to be caught if they are doping, yet we have nothing firmer than suspicions, innuendo, and Secret Pro-esque rumours. We hear time and again after someone was pinged that “the whole peloton was suspicious.” If the whole peloton is always suspicious, well how come no one does a Xavier Tondo and reports anything to the authorities? Simple answer – some of the authorities are broken, too. So how do we change this ?

Some say life bans are the only path towards change, but I disagree with this. I don’t think the environment exists where they can be implemented fully. We’ve had rules, regulations, and gentlemen’s agreements about returning dopers, but when push came to shove (or signing a deal on the dotted line), no one blinked an eyelid when Ivan Basso was the first big name rider to re-sign for a WorldTour team instead of spending two years at a lower level. What we have are commercial interests determining how someone returns to the sport and at what level, and not in a predefined manner. Life bans are using a hammer to crack a singular nut.

It must be agreed that what we have at the moment is broke. We have dopers returning to race without showing good faith or rebuilding our trust in them; we have teams hiring ex-dopers and letting clean riders go; we have silent ex-dopers at management, coach, and Sporting Director levels and no one really bats an eyelid. There’s a quote from Trent Lowe that has stuck with me from earlier this year,

“I am convinced that to complete the workload I was given on an ongoing basis, one would have to dope in order to recover. I was not doping and therefore my health suffered a lot from such over-training. Sadly I believe this scenario may still be ongoing in professional cycling, and I feel it still has a very long way to go.”

We can’t go banning cyclists for life when the sport is as broken as this. To paraphrase Floyd Landis the whole thing needs burning to the ground with the hottest flame possible as we let it die. It seems that it is impossible to untangle the good, the bad, the good going bad, and the bad trying to be good. For a fan, how can one differentiate between a David Millar and Danilo Di Luca – other than by innuendo, Twitter hearsay, and dodgy rumours ?

It seems as if the professional sport doesn’t have a doping problem, it has a fundamental ethics problem. It seems as if everyone operates on the attitude of,”Well, someone’s going to be screwing me, so I might as well screw someone/everyone else.” We have teams that are only concerned with optics, to be seen to do the right thing, and we’ve teams trying to do the right thing but failing, and we’ve teams not giving a damn.

If we don’t subscribe to the Floyd Landis idea of burning the whole thing to the ground, what do I think we need to do? We need to change our anti-doping policy to a drugs policy, we need to look at the bigger picture than just the cyclist that uses. We need a review of the doctors involved in the sport, along with the sporting directors, the race calendar, and the treatment of riders during Grand Tours. We need to let people see there is a belief in the system, be it the bio-passport, be it the whereabouts reporting system, be it the legal system when it prosecutes.

We need a sea change from the top down for professional cycling to work, and this doesn’t mean a breakway league with TV rights for teams, Mr Vaughters, it means a searing honesty to the sport’s faults and flaws – not a slow reveal when it best suits your commerical needs. It needs a different UCI – not just a different President – and  it needs a better model for young riders to come in to the sport and be valued as young riders, not just as some talent to be flogged for the greater exposure of some sponsor.

Whoever you are in the sport of professional cycling, you have a duty to be honest and try make a single change to your sport – to make it a better place after you leave than when you started. Don’t talk bullshit, don’t speak out of both sides of your mouth, don’t say one thing and practise another, reach out and try and make that change or face someone like Floyd burning the whole shit pile to the ground when you least expect it.