As has been the case since they moved it to autumn, with the season having now affected the energy and muscles of most, the cycling world championship has to deal with important absences. But that hasn't lost its charm with his rainbow jersey up for grabs to be worn starting in Lombardy in October for the entire next season. Of the four big names who have dominated the grand tours of the last two years, Nairo Quintana (in dry dock after the disastrous falls in the Vuelta) and Alberto Contador, the winner of the Vuelta satisfied with what he achieved in the season despite the unfortunate Tour, are missing. away on the Ponferrada circuit, a track that is not flat but not too hard, a sort of Amstel Gold Race, there will be only Vincenzo Nibali and Christopher Froome. But they are not among the favorites of the eve. The Italian, winner of the Tour, is struggling with a hip infection picked up after a crash at the recent Tre Valli Varesine. As a brave fighter as he is, the Shark didn't feel like forfeiting by placing himself at the disposal of the blue team directed for the first time by Davide Cassani and which will have Fabio Aru as the Sicilian champion's natural deputy. As for Froome, swallowed up by a completely bad season, he isn't even taken into consideration by the bookmakers who put a range of winning riders in the front row in the one-day classics, just like the world championship race when it doesn't present difficulties that require qualities climbers.
The biggest favors go to Simon Gerrans, the Australian winner of Sanremo 2012 and this year's Liège-Bastogne-Liege, ranked 6. He is followed by Fabian Cancellara at 9, the Swiss who this year won his third Giro delle Flanders and who gave up the time trial to try to win his first rainbow jersey on the road, after wearing it four times in the specialty against the clock. A record that resists the assaults of Tony Martin, stopped at three, having been beaten by an extraordinary Bradley Wiggins in Wednesday's race in Ponferrada. Third on the podium of predictions, both given at 9, are Alejandro Valverde, leader with Joaquim Rodriguez of the Iberian team, and the German John Degenkolb, who has been raiding stages at the Vuelta for two years (no less than nine between 2013 and 2014) . Peter Sagan, who has not yet put his signature on an important race in the season despite winning the green jersey of the points classification of the Tour, is given a 12 on a par with another sprinter of rank, the Norwegian Alexander Kristoff, the winner of the last Sanremo. At 16 Michal Kwiatkowski, Ramunas Navardauskas, the defending world champion, Rui Costa and Van Avermaet are listed, who seems to be the most fit Belgian and as such is more popular than two other more famous and already world champion Belgians such as Tom Boonem and Philipe Gilbert still at 25. It should be noted that the last two world champions, Gilbert in 2012 and Rui Costa last year, once they wore the rainbow jersey, never achieved little or nothing except the success in the Tour of Switzerland by the Portuguese who he seems to be subscribed to the victory – it is the third in a row – at the Swiss event. Among the most recent former world champions, the absence of Mark Cavendish is heavy, also returning from a troubled season marked more by falls than by successes.
Beyond the bookmakers, the hope is that on Sunday it will not be a nobody like the German Muller of 1952 or the Latvian Vainstein of 2000 who wears the rainbow jersey. Cycling needs the champion to exalt himself all the more at the end of a season as the 2014 one that had the best brands at the top of the most important races, from the Grand Tours to the Monumental Classics. A season that also gave us the exploits of a veteran like Jens Voigt who, at the age of 43, tore up the hour record bringing it to 51 km and 121 metres, bringing back a time trial that seemed outdated and which today is teasing Wiggins who put her at the center of his next season. A farewell to racing with fireworks for the German, more discreet that of Cadel Evans, one of the major protagonists of the last decade, winner of the 2011 Tour, who announced his retirement after Sunday's world championship, a race that saw the winner in the 2009 edition.
