I wonder how many of the other masters hopefuls have not been on a bike for the best part of a year?. Maybe because of injury but certainly will not have been so LAZY and chosen not to ride. The doc can afford to be lazy tho. That is the grift.
I would say that the masters has a 50/50 chance of happening, this year. It all depends on how things go with covid and planned races. Quite a few have already been canned(financial reasons as much as covid) and a number are looking for gaps later in the year.
I can't imagine things getting as crazy as the end of last season, but Masters will come last for the UCI as it is a drain on resources with very little or no return. It is a shame for competitors but the majority are just grateful it exists and understand that it might not happen. The doc will be really hoping it is cancelled so he doesn't have to train up, for it. Maybe by then it will be unemployed, broke and ebegging for food so the spare cash isn't going to be there, anyway. Maybe a sponsor will step up. Who knows?
Seeing as the doc reads his thread; maybe we should use this space to champion the women he might be up against. It will be hard to find out who is deffo going, this early, but some might be more obvious later in the year. The problem, for quite a while yet, is getting track training/racing for anyone apart from the real elite. Anyway.... imagine the spaz if his own thread was just full of stuff about real women who train really hard and the real struggles of maybe balancing kids, a real job and the training required to compete against a man.
The covid thing that might fuck things up, even if masters goes ahead, is the virus passport crap, that is brewing in the background, and the requirements that may still exist for quarantine, when entering a country, AND the virus testing that will, probably, still be ongoing. All this costs and somebody has to pay and there are not that many masters who are going to bother, if their jolly is going to cost some thousands extra, and one week turns into three. The 2021 masters is in L.A. so advantage USA/Canada if it is all very expensive/too time consuming for other nations to attend. Might end up just being the doc vs Orwick in that age group. Who knows?