Tour the Poland - terrible accident

[pieter]

[pieter]

Many accidents, heavy wounds, deaths surround the professional cycling sport in France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. You have the factors extreme speed (for cycling, around 40 to 45 miles an hour), narrow European roads, motor bikes and cars with camera crews, often high altitudes, high mountains and deep valleys and often deep descents in which cyclists can reach speeds of between 50 and 60 miles an hour.

When they hit a wall, rocks, trees, electricity poles, traffick signs or fall into a Canyon they will be heavily wounded or dead. Falling into a Canyon can mean falling dozens of meters (hundreds of feet) or in some cases hundreds of meters (thousands of feet). You are lucky if you survive such a fall in the French Alps, Pyrenees or other mountain regions in Europe. But also the notorious Tour of Flanders (Ronde van Vlaanderen) is know for it’s rough conditions.

Today the Tour of Flanders is one of the five monuments of cycling, together with Milan–San Remo, Paris–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Giro di Lombardia. It is one of the two major Cobbled classics, anticipating Paris–Roubaix, which is on the calendar one week after the Tour of Flanders. The event had its only interruptions during World War I and has been organized without hiatus since 1919, the longest uninterrupted streak of any cycling classic.

The Tour of Flanders is known for being a strategic race, where race favourites have multiple opportunities of planning their decisive attacks. The tactical part of the race begins in the hilly region of the Flemish Ardennes, where teams and riders often have to react to unpredictable developments and shadow favourites make anticipatory moves.

The steep nature of these hills favours an aggressive, attacking style of riding, making the Tour of Flanders an attractive race for viewing audiences. The peloton often rushes furiously over the narrow roads towards the climbs as teams try to position their captains in the front of the group. A climb is usually followed by a bigger road for some recovery, before taking the next small roads and climb again.

As most hills are in rural locations or along small villages, the climbs themselves and the roads leading to them are often narrow, causing the peloton to stretch into a long line and frequently break into smaller groups. Consequently, the best riders are forced to continually fight for space at the front of the pack. The race is therefore both renowned and notorious for its nervous course, with some favourites falling behind early in the race because of a crash or puncture, often unable to return to the front of the race.

[pieter]

2020 Tour de Pologne

The 2020 Tour de Pologne is the 77th running of the Tour de Pologne road cycling stage race. It started on 5 August, on the one-year anniversary of the death of Belgian rider Bjorg Lambrecht in the last edition of the race, in the Silesian Stadium and will end on 9 August in Kraków, after five stages. The tour was initially due to run from 5 to 11 July, but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In memory of Lambrecht, the dossard number 143, which was worn by Lambrecht in 2019, was retired from the race beginning this year.

Teams

All nineteen UCI WorldTeams, two wildcard UCI ProTeams, and the Polish national team are participating in the race. Each of the twenty-two teams entered seven riders, for a starting peloton of 154 riders.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Tour_de_Pologne

[pieter]

Classic cycle races

The classic cycle races are the most prestigious one-day professional road cycling races in the international calendar. Some of these events date back to the 19th century. They are normally held at roughly the same time each year. The five most revered races are often described as the cycling monuments.

For the 2005 to 2007 seasons, some classics formed part of the UCI ProTour run by the Union Cycliste Internationale. This event series also included various stage races including the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a España, Paris–Nice and the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. The UCI ProTour replaced the UCI Road World Cup series (1989–2004) which contained only one-day races. Many of the classics, and all the Grand Tours, were not part of the UCI ProTour for the 2008 season because of disputes between the UCI and the ASO, which organizes the Tour de France and several other major races. Since 2009, many classic cycle races are part of the UCI World Tour.

The cycle race sport is extremely popular in the Netherlands 🇳🇱, France 🇫🇷 and Belgium 🇧🇪, but also in other nations like Italy 🇮🇹 and South Africa 🇿🇦 . It is a tradition, culture, sport, marketing, corporate event (merchandize, commercial sport tv -Fox Sport-, Radio and bloggers/vloggers, the horeca around it, the selling of cycling gear, cycling suits, cycling shoes, cycling helmets, cycling jumpsuits, cycling underwear, healthy cycling food, cycling energy supplements, cycling drinks, business events around the cycling, cycling parties and the masses around the finish line of the various Tours).

When the Tour de France or Giro ‘d Italia came to the Netherlands Dutch regions (Provinces), cities and towns invested millions in the arrival of these ‘cycling circusses’, because when the Giro ‘d Italia came to Arnhem, Apeldoorn and Nijmegen, the whole world saw these Gelderland Province cities and towns and that was good for local/regional business for the city region Arnhem-Nijmegen, tourism in the Central Gelderland region (Arnhem-Nijmegen) and thus the local horeca and entrepreneurs next to the International Market Garden celebrations.

[pieter]

How popular is the ‘Cycle race sport’ in Poland 🇵🇱 Jaga? In the Netherlands and Belgium it is the second most popular sport. And I think that professional race ice skating is the third most popular sport in the Netherlands. Next to that Dutch sporters are good at running (marathons), short track racing, athletics, sailing, rowing, windsurfing, professional swimming and skiing, snowboarding and Langlaufen (Cross-country skiing). Dutch guys are water rats due to the North sea, their lakes, swimmingpools, sport education, ponds and rivers.

How about the Poles and Poland Jaga. My mother said that Polish women were less sports minded than the Dutch women. Is that the same today or are Polish women sport fanatics today.😉

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

Professional biking was very popular in Poland since the time of so called Race for peace (Wyscig Pokoju) , which took place in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Eastern Germany through warsaw, Praque and Berlin and many other places in May each year. We had great bikers like Szurkowski and Szozda, but Soviets were usually the best as a team. The end of the communism brought the end to this race unfortunately.

Referring to women sport, in the past all boys played soccer but not all girls did professional sports. Among my classmates I had girls that were swimming and did gymnastics on the very high level. I liked hiking, I knew how to bike and swim but I did not do any professional sports in Poland. When I started working I actually started doing karate and I liked it. Still, we had some famous Polish sport sprinters- Irena Szewinska and good girls/women teams.
But Poland now is different, my nieces are doing half-marathons for fun.

[Jaga]

here is Polish cyclists: Szurkowski and Szozda win in Barcelona Olympic Games in 1971:

Ryszard Szurkowski (złoto) Stanisław Szozda (srebro)!! MŚ Barcelona 1973

and here is more about Peace Race:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Race