﻿ Men's Road Cycling > Random Danish cycling news sponsored by Midge


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So I wanted to write about the problems for danish cycling right now. Every aspect of the sport has pretty major issues in my opinion, about structure, budget and race program for team, about management and debt and limited choice that follows for the federation, about funding from sport organizations and about lack of media coverage.

But on second thought at least wrt teams the situation is somewhat ok at this point in time because all generally do good work with mostly very limited ressources. Five small teams that most often depend on voluntary help to go to race is not ideal at all of course. A procontinental team is not going to happen next year either. For development it's fine but many never get a chance to move up, with riders still around from previous years and talented new names too there is just not enough places on bigger teams for everyone.

One very good thing is Anders Lund as CT for the national team. He chose to use the limited travel budget to go to valle d'Aosta and picked exactly the right team for l'Avenir. The trade teams generally have ok race programs although they hardly ever go to races further away than France or maybe the Czech Republic. For u23s it's acceptable but the structure is not good when riders are ready to move on.

Newspapers rarely have own stories about cycling anymore and news coverage on the two cycling websites is mostly through rewritten press releases. That means no news about transfers anywhere so to compensate a little here is a sort of evaluation of some of the more interesting riders. First u23s, then some comments on older guys.

Niklas Eg has to have offers already but meanwhile it will be interesting to see what he can do in tour de l'Avenir. Talented junior that hardly raced in the first two+ years as u23 due to physical issues, strong all season with fourth overall in Aosta (third on the hardest stage after Sivakov and Lambrecht), second in the Priessnitz Spa nations cup after Lambrecht, second in Breizh Kreiz which is not really his kind of race. Eg has not raced much as u23 before this year so should have considerable margins for improvement.

Casper Pedersen won the euro championships road race title with a deadly finish after dominating a small break from more than 25km. Remember a lot of teams wanted a sprint finish. Aggressive but also versatile enough to get over hills, he has in fact won a number of races in similar ways this season. A third year u23, it's Pedersen's first full year as a road cyclist.

Kasper Asgreen won the euro championships time trial and the first stage of l'Avenir from a strong break. Much like Wurtz he is not a specialist, instead seems to be well suited for cobble races. Can get over hills too as the overall classifica in some harder races earlier this year shows. Was fifth last year in the world's time trial and should be one of the favorites this year, like Pedersen is in the road race.

Jonas Gregaard is another third year u23 who could possibly get a chance somewhere. Won the Breizh Kreiz stage race in Bretagne a couple of weeks and hard one day type courses are probably his strongest side but can also handle real mountains as fourth in a Aosta stage shows. Should be in the world's team and could maybe do something in the Avenir mountain stages.

After the Stölting fail last year Guldhammer, Kamp and Quaade all deserved a good deal elsewhere. Martin Mortensen too but after he had won Tro-Bro Léon the trump voice bad people from One Pro waited until october to tell him there was no money. Meanwhile he had turned down other teams because he wanted to stay and they had no places anymore. Chris Anker Sørensen had an offer from Bahrain but preferred Riwal because he wants to go back to school.

This year it's much the same for the first three. Rasmus Guldhammer has more than twenty top tens including four wins, basically always one of the best in non-sprint races. He had a similar season two years ago but in more difficult races and ended the year as n 61 in the cqrankings. If anyone can mention a more undervalued cyclist in the world now please go ahead. Alexander Kamp is kind of similar to Guldhammer in the way the talent is so obvious. Can get over long hills but not mountains and is super fast. Wins often like Guldhammer but it's hard to get noticed from these kind of races.

Rasmus Quaade is in the top ten overall in more or less every stage race including Dunkerque and tour of Britain when he did those and almost won an italian race with hard mountains. Last year was mostly about track cycling and he has only targetted road races in full from this year. Potentially top ten world's time trial if he went back to that again. Finally Torkil Veyhe is just really strong and seems like someone who can do well as support or in breaks. It's his first year in races in other countries. Obviously he and Quaade will not get offers unless some crazy performance or if a danish team materializes but both are obviously strong enough. Guldhammer and Kamp otoh has had all kind of concrete results for a long time and deserve a place somewhere.

Asbjørn Kragh Andersen will maybe go to Sunweb because his brother is there but is a talented cyclist in his own right with potential. Martin Mortensen was so disappointed after the problems last year that he chose to just be support for other riders and will stop riding after the season.
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  • « Last Edit: August 24, 2017, 16:50 by ciranda »


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