Beijing Road Race Profile
With the Olympics on its final countdown I decided to go on the hunt for information around the road race course, in particular the race profile. I have read and interview that Evans gave about the course and was keen to have a look at some finer details of what lay ahead.
You would think that the Chinees would have a pretty smick looking website… It looks good but when you start to look for details… let’s just give it a 2/10, it’s written in Chinglish (no offence meant to anyone but I was over it by this point). A lot of propagator and very little real content. They built the wall so why not an informative site?
The hunt went on… from what I can tell there is still some conjecture around the actual race distance. The information I did find was this, and my I add that it was released in 2006 (I kid you not!)
The course starts near the Forbidden City and heads to the Great Wall of China. During the first, flat 80km, racers will pass Tiananmen Square. Near the Great Wall, the climbing begins in earnest. Racers are slated to tackle six or seven laps of a 24km circuit that climbs 520m per lap. Nothing is definite yet, organizers await UCI approval for the course.
The course sounds like a scenic ride that anyone would enjoy and then I came across this bit of info.
The Beijing Olympic men’s road race will be staged thirteen days after the Tour de France on August 9th (women’s road race August 10th) and the road time trials for both men and women on August 13th.
My frustration continued the longer I searched, plenty of news about Evans and Rogers snaring a 1 – 2 in the 2007 time trail course début. If you’re looking for a ticket you’ll find that info in second, all I’m after is a course profile, at this point I was over it. Time and time again coming across a Chinees based website with the same crap picture (computer generated) of a landscape that looks like it’s off a computer game.
40 minutes later I gave up… convinced that the iron curtain has with heal a seemingly tiny bit of information. I can tell you that the race will be held on the “Urban Cycling Road Course” and not much else. In my final desperation I turned to YouTube and found this. I’ll let you be the judge, I still don’t know if I should laugh or cry.
