[quote="marco"]Something a bit troubling seems to be happening at the world champs - a lot of riders are suddenly announcing that they are 'feeling a bit flat' and withdrawing from their teams
so far its
Kim Kirchen
Stuart O'Grady
Fabian Cancellara
Linus Gerdemann (pain in the neck rather than a bit flat)
Stefan Schumacher (maybe all that sprinting , climbing , TTing etc in france really took it out of him)
Womens TT winner Hanka Kupfernagel (health not up to it, not 100% etc) is also not defending.
I dont recall the World Champs suddenly being on a different week to before - the Vuelta has always been in the run up to it so nothing seems too different to other years...except...
a)the riders are cleaner and genuinely fatigued.
or
b)they think theres a new test for something with a long halflife that they cant get out of their system in time. (eg CERA is detectable for weeks afterwards)
Whatever happens Im going to keep reading between the lines of the news reports because its interesting times