Wikipedia:Peer review/Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Women's road race/archive1

Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's road race

• A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for January 2009.

This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because it is a comprehensive article on the subject. Based on the fact that it's equivalent article Cycling at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's road race, for which this follows the same template and style, has gained FA status, I think this one should be up to scratch! Thanks Thaf (talk) 12:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Brianbouton comments:

A carefully prepared article with a very good table of the race order. I found the prose sections a bit wordy at times, with some odd choices of phrase, some of which I point out below. There are also phrases used that need explaining to non-followers of cycle racing – I think I've identified these – and some grammar issues. It might be worth getting a fresh pair of eyes to review the prose before the article goes to FAC. I have found that a pretty essential step with my own nominations.

• Lead
  • First line: a full stop, not a comma, is required after "2008 Summer Olympics". You would achieve a better flow and avoid repetitions if you combined a couple of these early sentences. For example: "It took place on 10 August 2008 at the Urban Road Cycling Course, with 66 women from 33 countries competing".
  • There is too much small detail in the lead, which is supposed to provide a broad, general summary of the whole article. Information such as the exact scheduled start and finish times, specific landmarks on the route, gradients, etc, belong in the body of the text, not here.
  • Avoid apparently POV language such as "The race was also significant for more inauspicious reasons". This sounds like your opinion. And "more inauspicious" is rather ponderous, anyhow.

• Qualification
  • Are the UCI rankings the same as the Wourld Tour rankings? What is the "B" World Championship? Non-followeres of cycling won't know these things.
  • "for reasons which would not become apparent until the following day" is a cliff-hanger. I suggest the phrase is replaced with "after failing a drugs test" or similar appropriate wording.

• Conditions
  • Should the first word be "before"?
  • "turned out to be" → "proved"
  • I'm having difficulty with the sentence which begins "Despite the pollution levels..." I think it needs rewriting; I'd suggest something, except I'm not clear about what it means. It might begin: "Although pollution levels in Beijing on 10 August far exceeded WHO safety levels..." but the rest is beyond me.
  • The last sentence of the first paragraph of this section is also awkward and wordy. Could it be simplified to "In the men's race the main problems had arisen from heat and humidity"?
  • "negatively impacted upon" is ugly phrasing. Perhaps "adversely affected"?

• Pre-race favourites
  • Arandt, whose picture is shown, is not mentioned again in the article, but is listed as finishing 41st. As you give her top billing as a pre-race favourite in excellent form, surely her lowly position should be mentioned in the race report? As to why she, rather than more prominent finishers, is pictured, I suppose this is due to availability. Anyhow, I've reduced the image size via upright – it was too intrusive before.
  • More extra words: "Another nationality of riders thought to comprise a strong team were the Australians..." This could read simply, "The Australian team was considered strong..."

• Course
  • "architectural features" rather than "architecture"
  • Para 3, suggested simplification: "The layout for the women's race, less than half the length of the men's, saw..."
  • "in the race" after 78.8 km point is redundant wording
  • So is the later phrase "to contend with"
  • "...should several riders have been grouped together..." Should be " "should several riders be grouped together". Also, the "as they were" is pre-reporting and should be deleted. Same is true for "but they were not", though this information is not relevant to this article anyway.

• Race
  • "found herself falling" → "fell"
  • You need to explain "bell loop"
  • The sentence beginning "Emma Pooley (GB)..." needs sorting out. Problems in the middle, and it seems anyway like more than one sentence.
  • There is a tendency here to adopt sports reporting phrases. Examples: "leading a desperate chase", Cooke's "explosive" sprint, Guderzo "hanging on". I dare say it is hard to write neutrally about an exciting race, but the article should not sound like something from the sports pages.
  • I'm not sure the final factoid belongs in this section, which is a race description.

I hope you find these remarks helpful. Brianboulton (talk) 13:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)