The World Championships in Yorkshire are just four months away, and preparations are already being made for a tilt at the rainbow jersey. With the Classics-style parcours, Belgium is a nation that will have its pick of potential contenders for the race come September.
The course for this year’s Worlds will take the riders from Leeds, through the Yorkshire Dales and on to the spa town of Harrogate, where the opening stage of the 2014 Tour de France finished.
Knowledge is power, so the saying goes, and recons are an all-important part of cycling these days. You can look at a map and a profile, but it doesn’t replace being able to see the roads with your own eyes.
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The second stage of the Tour de Yorkshire provided the likes of Greg Van Avermaet and Serge Pauwels to have a look at the finishing circuit in racing conditions, but a special trip would have to be made to check out the earlier part of the route.
With Van Avermaet and co otherwise engaged, it was his compatriots Oliver Naesen and Yves Lampaert, along with new national selector Rik Verbrugghe, who headed to Yorkshire to check out the first 135 kilometres of the 285-kilometre men’s road race course.
Cyclingnews joined the Belgian squad for their day in the Dales, on what was a cold, grey and windy day. Being Britain, and Yorkshire, it’s entirely possible that the conditions could be similar or worse when the peloton descends on the region in September. The narrow roads and heavy surfaces will provide an additional challenge for the riders, but Lampaert, used to the hard terrain of the Classics, was pleased with what he saw on his visit.
The route
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/behind-the-scenes-belgium-recon-the-yorkshire-world-championships-course-video
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