To your comment about leadership, I tend to agree, but I think it’s worth it to point out that McNulty won worlds because he WASN’T a leader. He made his move and the chasing group didn’t tag him as important enough to chase him down until it was too late (and maybe some extra indifference from Del Toro).

So there could be some strategic gamesmanship my intentionally not labelling someone as your leader, it takes the spotlight off of them slightly.

Slightly, yes, but I think that the major part of the effect is that all main riders know the qualities and flaws of other main riders. In that respect, both McNulty and Jorgenson meet my "strong guy without a sprint" category. Those guys who can help one leader/co-leader/second-leader until very far in a race, but in normal conditions cannot expect to win.

What's funny is that other riders do not consider them dangerous because they don't have a sprint, yet let them go in the only way by which they can win without a sprint.

I can't find the race, but I think I remember a day when they let S. Küng go in the final miles. Just quietly on the other side of the road, and no one cared. The guy has absolutely zero sprint, so they don't 'register' him a threat, but that doesn't mean that this TT specialist is not fast, on a regular pace, alone. And he won. (At least in my memory 😁.)

Back to our national coach, I saw a glimpse of an interview today where he said he wanted Cosnefroy for Slovenia. Again, this confirms a double mistake, a complete inversion of the riders needed for Canada and for Slovenia. It had to be the rider himself who refused because he rightfully though the Slovenian climb was too hard for him. How could the coach not know that? And how couldn't he see that the Montreal profile fitted him (even though he never had great results there, but that dates back a bit and he was in shape this year)?

Add to this that Lenny Martinez also refused to come. Ou coach would have selected him otherwise, while he is completely out of shape at the moment (4 withdrawals out of 6 Italian races...)?

That means that if those 2 riders hadn't refused, we would have started the European Championship with extra 2 riders unfit for the race (1 extra puncher, and 1 out of shape guy), therefore 2 potentially useful riders would have been left at home, perhaps the 2 of the 3 climbers which did well (compared to the rest of the team), since the coach wrongly saw that race as more suitable for punchers than climbers.

Finally, about Canada, "we may have seen ourselves better than we were". "We", and "may"... This goes the way of what I was saying on the race day, that it looked like the French team believed they only had one opponent to beat on this race, and the rest of the field was peanuts.

By the way, if I am so pissed about the guy, it is because people praised him and his 'ideas of genius' so much after the 2 Alaphilippe victories (and Laporte's) that he started believing them. Even though he himself confessed by then, that 2 of them happened without following his orders and even against the plan, he then forgot that and started believing he was an actual genius, and not just someone who likes to voluntary mess things and got lucky doing that.

I was of the mind that he should have quitted after those good years, to leave with a good (brilliant even!) image. But nope, he stayed. And his discourse is less and less light-hearted, becomes more and more defensive, he starts denying things anyone can see. And the winds of public image have finally started to turn. And when those things turns, they tend to erase the good things that were done in the past. It seems he will stick to his position at least one more year. Probably counting on a Seixas miracle. I heard that after next WC, the profiles may get flatter and not suit Seixas very well, so 2027 would be his only chance in a while.