Transcontinental Race No. 8 - TCR8 - #TCRN08 - 2022

It would get murky if they introduced a "pro class".

World Tour pro = obvious
Sponsored rider no other job = pretty obvious
Sponsored rider with day job = much less obvious
Privateer

Looks like there might be another couple form up at the ferry port. Though is 232 heading to the eastern ferry at the moment?

233 is closing in on the parcours now and looks to have pulled away from 75 a bit as well. Looking at Chrisoph's time to get through the parcours and onto the end possibly about 2:30-3:00 for Krystian to go?

Change them how? I don't see the impact. They areas are sponsors to the hilt and commercial as hell.

didn't they used to have some difference for if you have brands supporting you and if you don't? I might be thinking of some other ultra self-supported thing. Also i think it was only the cost of entry?

What's going on with 42? Look the sudden change of direction.

Belated screenshot

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Just following the road.

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TCR had special rules if you had any kind of media follow car deal going on or if you used TCR branding in sponsor related content. Stuff like that. Nothing to do with the racing results, as such.

Aha, another alternate route.

170 to CP4 was quite wide.

The suspense on some of the route choices has been up a notch. The ferry situation brought quite some mixed feeling. Quite the dot watching experience this one.

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Ulrich 6th? He was having selfies as a top two just a day ago, must be gutted. And Fiona pushing for top 10 finish, what a great ride.

Jair Hoogland doing the Romanian parcours 'backwards'?

Nope. Turned around. Guess he realised his mistake (or someone was on the phone to him)

Apparently yes. Pic from dotwatcher:

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I'm watching Daniele 223 (35th w/fixie) and Pawel 186 (36th) Both lovely blokes.

Daniele usually fun on the socials has gone super quiet, probably in a dark place.

He (daniele) put a story where was saying no connection in Romania...

Descending switchbacks on wet roads, backwards, while deeply tired and fatigued. He is a lot braver than me

Ah so the dark place is Romania

Apparently, but I have seen a story a couple of days ago (in Romania) where he walked a trail /pathway to find a local man and they did a selfie together...perhaps some late wifi on bar/restaurant?
hope is okay btw

Pawel posted a story of Daniele pushing along nicely. I'm sure he's good.

Fiona half of last parkour...go Dr!

Are TCR race courses always designed so that there are these 'groups' of finishers arriving at the end? Or is this year an anomaly?

The ferry crossing seems to have resulted in groups of 2, 4 or currently 6 riders coming home pretty close to each other. Could be even more once all the riders currently on PC4 get to the crossing in the next day or two.

I wondered if it was a deliberate tactic by the organizers meaning they only needed to man the finish for say 4 or 5 hours at a time, rather than have to hang around all day and night? (Or perhaps I'm reading too much into it)

I think it's just an artefact of the ferry crossing tbh

There's a start and finish and intermediate checkpoints, so there's always a branching and then converging nature during the race. The ferries with limited run times exacerbated this a bit. Essentially it became another checkpoint.

I doubt it. They'd already used Burgas as a start so had the knowledge to use it as a finish and the road in Romania was probably scouted when they were doing the Transfagaran research from a few years ago.

Also, there's trackers, so it's not like you have to hang around all day/night. You know when riders will be getting to you.