Worlds TTT - non-spoiler.

[David Kirk]

So I see that the Worlds TTT is over and the results are in and I must say I feel off the back. The teams are listed as trade teams and not by country and the various teams are made up of riders from all different counties.

I would have thought that an American or Italian team would be made up with Americans or Italians.

Anyone know how this works?

Dave

[Fixed]

Trade teams for the team t.t.
It is the start of the end of national teams I feel
The road race will be national teams ,but I think in the future it will be trade teams also
Cheers

[mhespenheide]

Here's a clip from a cyclingnews.com (http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/mcquaid-hails-world-championship-team-time-trials-as-success) article about the trade-teams world championship TTT:


"I was very pleased with today. I knew for some weeks or months that the teams were approaching this very seriously. There was wonderful participation from all the teams and when you see a close finish like that it's good for the race," he told Cyclingnews.

"It's an event that will grow in importance and strength in the coming years."

The UCI President said that the events were introduced in order to improve the depth of the world championships and give trade teams an opportunity to compete in a set of events that have previously been dominated by national teams. However McQuaid added that trade teams would never race in the road or individual time trials races.

"This was part of a whole project about changing the whole week of the world championships. Instead of having a worlds just over the final weekend we wanted to try and create a bigger event for the cycling family, for the whole week," he said.

"There has been comments made by some individuals that this would be the thin end of the wedge that and that in years to come the elite race would be for teams and not nations but that absolutely would never happen. This is an event for trade teams, the rest are for nations. There's too much history with the worlds cycling championships to start playing around with it."


Note that the response still doesn't do too much to explain why they added a trade-teams event to the World's. Didn't there used to be a 100km TTT event contested by national teams?

[FlashUNC]

Trade teams contest it, and the trade team that wins gets to wear the world champ TTT stripes or whatever they decide next year. If a rider changes teams, he's not eligible to wear the stripes. Only stays with the trade team.

Very weird structure, to be sure.

[dauwhe]

Nice summary of the new format:

http://inrng.com/2012/09/world-team-time-trial-championships/