October 16 feels a long, long way away, but the Tour of Qatar peloton will have plenty of food for thought between now and the World Championships road race in Doha after they sampled four laps of the finishing circuit during stage 2.
The wind was stiffer on Tuesday than it had been for the women’s test event a week ago, and while it failed to break up the peloton on the 15.4-kilometre course, the early consensus was that this Worlds will be altogether more complicated in practice than it appears on paper.
Manuel Quinziato has been a mainstay of the Italian national team in recent seasons and when the BMC man rolled to a halt after the finish of Tuesday’s stage, he seemed almost addled by what he had seen.
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“I’ll need 24 hours to think about it,” Quinziato joked to Cyclingnews. “It’s a bit different to what I’d expected. It’s a criterium, like the ones they do after the Tour de France.”
The 15.4-kilometre circuit on the manmade island of the Pearl includes no fewer than 24 roundabouts and scarcely features a single long straight worthy of the name. Although the buildings on the course offer less shelter from the wind than one might expect, the changes in direction are so frequent that its effects could be neutralised.
“There are so many turns that it’s going to be difficult for it to break up,” Quinziato said. “I mean, it was windy today, and even if the group splits in a crosswind, you’ll turn into a headwind soon afterwards and you won’t be able to stay away.”
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