It's decently popular in Denmark, but the only thing I've noticed so far is the crazy world record the Danish 4k pursuit team set yesterday as the first team under 3.40.
That's an average speed of 65 km/h from a standing start.
It’s decently popular in Denmark
Is it (somewhat) shown on free-access Danish TV channels?
Championships are occasionally shown on public broadcaster TV (DR, Danmarks Radio) - but most of the time you have to rely on Eurosport/Discovery/HBO Max - but that's the same with road racing. Both road and track cycling features prominently in the news, though, which is of course because Denmark does pretty well in both sports.
I watched a few of the 'bunch' (endurance) races of the previous days. I am not very interested in the rest (speed).
Men elimination was a complete mess. Riders were announced eliminated but in fact weren't, lots of yellow flags, several crashes and neutralisations, even one full stop (after a Portuguese rider was evacuated on a stretcher) with a restart that took a while to set up (putting riders on the 'right' place at the bottom and the top of the track), and when the restart was given after only 250m the bell rang already, it looked like a speed discipline standing start! The future Danish winner refused to obey official orders during this event (the full stop), yet he was allowed to restart.
Men points race was strange. The bunch allowed several riders to score easy laps without trying to make their life difficult, even (but not only) in the final part of the race. Meanwhile, there seemed to be a prize on the head of a rider like Thomas (the French one): several other riders would chase him, or go with him and then refuse relays despite the fact that it would have been good for them too, or grab his sprint points after he had done all the work and was willing to continue. Those guys were killing their own chances by doing so, but it looked like it was more important to make him lose. Weird.
Women elimination: Kopecky seemed to be back in shape, she was so sure of her strength that she was most of the time simply riding at the front of the bunch (in the second line). And she won.
Women elimination: Kopecky seemed to be back in shape, she was so sure of her strength that she was most of the time simply riding at the front of the bunch (in the second line). And she won.
She's indeed in a damn good shape! She also won the Points race (again ahead of Victoire Berteau who should be renamed SecondBest Berteau); and now the American race: after they messed up a little bit their sprints during a good while (Britain was dominating everyone else), they pressed the pedals 40 laps from the goal, and little by little dropped those who followed or caught up with them. It took 'em 35 laps to gain 1 lap, but they could score maximum sprint points during that time. In fact, I see it this way: they rode this race like a road classic, like they would break away 30 or 40 km from the line, and then thin the breakaway little by little until they were alone and then reach the final line.
BTW, the race went well this time, despite a crash as soon as the end of the formation laps and a few fails; I had terrible memories from the awful technical level a few other women American races.
On the sprint side, Mathilde Gros is also back in shape: she won the Kilometre (she hasn't got the big tights her competitors have, so she was behind in the first laps where more power is needed to build speed, but went faster in the second part), and finished second in Keirin behind the Russian Lysenko.
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