Sunday, September 26, 2021
Cycling World Championships: Degenkolb falls on his head
Belgian curses sweeten Alaphilippe’s title
The road cycling world championships are one big festival. The fans in Belgium also make the men’s race a spectacle, with German Nils Politt causing a stir while team-mate John Degenkolb falls on the head. The title goes back to Julian Alaphilippe.
In the midst of the Belgian cycling madness, Nils Politt drove attack after attack, but in the end it was not enough for the sensational medal coup. When the French superstar Julian Alaphilippe was crowned the new world champion again in front of an unbelievable backdrop, the German professional cyclist had long since had to tear down after numerous attacks on the 267.7 kilometers from Antwerp to Leuven. Politt lived up to his role as captain for the Association of German Cyclists (BDR), but only came 16th on the hilly classic course with numerous toxic climbs waiting for a medal in the World Championship road race.
Instead, Alaphilippe single-handedly won the rainbow jersey again with one of his courageous attacks. He had already triumphed as a soloist in Imola the previous year. 32 seconds behind Alaphilippe secured the other medals in Flanders, where hundreds of thousands of people made the pilgrimage to the route on Sunday, the Dutchman Dylan van Baarle and the Dane Michael Valgren. Wout van Aert, the hope of an estimated one million fanatical Belgian cycling fans on the side of the track, finished eleventh.
“I think the Belgian fans were hoping for van Aert, and many of them found less nice words for me as I neared the finish line,” said Alaphilippe, who, like Peter Sagan (2015-2017) most recently, managed to to successfully defend the title. With a grin on his face, he emphasized: “That makes it twice as nice to win here.”
“My helmet is broken”
The 195 drivers started the rapid ups and downs across Flanders early in the morning. For Captain Politt, the race began with a moment of shock: after a few kilometers, he had to stop at the roadside to have a defect on his bike repaired.
As a result, the Cologne man presented himself offensively and showed himself – with a determined look and wide open mouth – again and again at the top of the peloton. It was also the Bora-hansgrohe professional who divided the field around 100 kilometers from the finish with a courageous attack. Previously, several attempts to escape, among others by Belgium’s super talent Remco Evenepoel and Slovenia’s star driver Primoz Roglic, had been stopped again.
John Degenkolb had already had a hard time at the time of Politt’s attack. The veteran fell in a fall at high speed. He suffered from skin abrasions and bruises. “It was a very uncomfortable fall, I also fell on my head and my helmet broke. At first I was dizzy too, I’ll have to watch that for the next few days. I’m really disappointed that my World Championship race ended like this is, “said Degenkolb after leaving the UCI infirmary. But Politt was missing an important and experienced helper in the field.
German balance sheet nevertheless decent
The German champion Maximilian Schachmann – scheduled as captain at the 2020 World Cup and the 2021 Olympics – had nothing to add to the sport this time and had to tear it down early and give up later. Sprinter Pascal Ackermann couldn’t keep up either, the already small German team fell apart early on.
They also missed the big spectacle on Belgium’s streets, on which the World Cup Sunday looked like a national holiday. At the end of the title fights, the people who were crazy about cycling wanted to celebrate the longed-for home win. Such a fantastic atmosphere had not been seen since the beginning of the corona pandemic. In the days before, the madness had increased from day to day: From thousands of Eddy Merckx hats to full bars and pubs with party people to children who loudly and screeching begging for drinking bottles from unknown junior cyclists.
The German balance sheet is positive despite the missed final coup. Tony Martin led the time trial mixed to gold in his last race as a professional, while Antonia Niedermaier and Linda Riedmann also won bronze medals in the junior women. In the previous year in Imola, there was no medal at all in the competitions, which were greatly reduced due to the corona.