monty wrote:
Now that the format is set, I have been thinking about it a bit. And one thing that I believe that will happen, is we will not be seeing the top folks actually racing against each other. Yes, they will be racing on the same day, same course, but this is a 3 way heads up format. So it would make little sense in putting the top 3 men and women in a heat together. You wont want to take a chance at wasting your best athlete, so probably will go something like football playoffs. Once selected, you will most likely get the best going against the worst in a lot of these match ups.. Gonna be hard for the team managers to tell many of their athletes that you are just cannon fodder in your race. Like I said before, if Europe puts up Frodo, you are not going to put up Sanders or the best American in that match up. You will be going to someone and saying, do your best, maybe he will get a flat and not be able to fix it..The format will likely push to less top confrontations, than more. It is all about the points at the end of the day, and earning those will be entirely tactical. When the race is over, no doubt losing teams will be able to see that they could have done better in different spots, and winning teams may see they could have gotten away with a lot less in certain spots..
Cool stuff
I agree it’s unlikely all the biggest guns will go head to head. In the matchups I think this is one area where it’s hard to compare the Collins Cup to the Ryder Cup, there’s a lot more chance in golf where anyone on the team could win 1 match, triathlon is more predictable. Either way I’m excited to watch.
I’d love to see this evolve to the point where there are a different numbers of athletes in different races. You could have 2 or 3 athletes from each team in a race. Team would have to make decisions about going for the best results, or sacrificing athletes as domestiques. I hope this sticks around long enough to see this race develop and evolve.