It’s the start of a new season; time to rekindle the romance?
I’m writing my first post of 2017 (and my first since last year’s Tour) on the first day of the Dubai Tour. Dubai marks the return of live television coverage and despite its relatively short history it’s the probably the strongest after the demise of Qatar and the indifference that is shown towards the (more varied) Tour of Oman. Dubai benefits from slick presentation by organisers RCS with coverage that lasts long enough for the commentators to sift through the off-season stories before the inevitable sprint finish.
The fact that Dubai has survived is likely to have been helped by each stage being shown live on Eurosport. Qatar and Oman had both been around longer but the former wasn’t shown outside of ‘local’ host channels and Oman’s highlights only package has steadily eroded to the point that it’s buried one or even two days later around midnight. As an armchair fan (who rides a bit too) having Eurosport is pretty much essential if you want to watch road racing on television. With the possible exception of the GP Samyn I can’t think of many races that don’t benefit from getting shown in high definition (OK maybe I don’t need to see the delights of the petrol station at the finish of Liege Bastogne Liege either). ITV continue the C4 legacy with much the same team and cover the Tour live (and in recent years the Dauphine) but other than the Tour of Britain and a highlights package of the Vuelta that’s it. Eurosport gives you the spring classics, the Giro, Tour, Vuelta and pretty much everything in between.
The reason I’m banging on about this is that it slipped out via my social media feed last week that Sky (that’s Sky as in Team Sky, home of 3 x Tour winner Chris Froome fame) are threatening to drop Eurosport from their channels as of 1st Feb*. So potentially I’m looking at my 200+ days of live cycling becoming.. er.. well 1 day actually. Now it’s possible that everything has been resolved today and I’ll tune in tomorrow and find stage 2 of the Dubai Tour there in all of its glory. In all of the hoo hah about Donald Trump, Brexit and transfer deadline day a resolution that will see Sky continuing to show live cycling might have got lost in the ether. I have often wondered if Sky would see the success of their eponymous cycling team as a vehicle for taking over coverage of at least some of the marquee races. It seems a bit odd that they seem prepared to lose all of the free marketing that having Eurosport on their platform provides. Of course Sky have announced that their sponsorship of.. er Team Sky will not continue in perpetuity and their role as principal sponsor of British Cycling ended last year. Maybe, despite the success the team have achieved, Sky are falling out of love with cycling?
Pure speculation of course (isn’t that the preserve of the armchair fan?), but wouldn’t Sky be forgiven for feeling a little bit disenchanted with cycling after last year? Almost a seven year itch perhaps. There was quite a lot of things not to love about the sport last year and pretty much all of it originated from Sky and British Cycling. I’ve lost count of the times I thought ‘Wow, what a story. I ought to post something about that’ only for the next bit of news to emerge and the original story seems minor in comparison.
2016 Annus Horribilus
The wheels started to come off just before the start of the Rio Olympics. Lizzie Armitstead had swept all before her in 2015, culminating in a rainbow jersey by winning the Worlds in Richmond. Her form had continued into 2016 and she was widely tipped as potential Gold Medal winner in the Olympic road race. Just before the team were due to depart for Brazil it emerged that Armitstead had missed three whereabouts tests. Ordinarily this would have resulted in an automatic suspension from competition, leaving aside the inevitable questions about why any athlete would miss three tests. However British Cycling accepted Armitstead’s justification for missing three tests in less than 12 months and she would be allowed to compete in Rio.
Naturally this provoked a pretty negative reaction from press, public and many of her fellow professionals. Women’s cycling has been painted as somehow immune from the potential use of PEDs, principally because it is even less secure than the men’s tour financially. What would be the point of doping it was suggested when so many teams struggle just to make the start line. No doubt aware of the need to protect the sports reputation against comparisons with the worst excesses of the men some of Armitstead’s rivals, notably her predecessor as world champion Pauline Ferrand Perrot, were incredulous that she had even missed one test. The UK media wasted no time in seeking the views of the senior British male Olympic cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins. He couldn’t understand how Armitstead had made such a foolish error either. No guilt was implied but Wiggins stressed how important it was to be ‘squeaky clean’ in all matters doping related. He might have cause to regret this himself later.
Mixed emotions. Matthew Hayman, 37 years old, erstwhile Rabobank, Sky and now Orica Green Edge domestique / road captain. Aussie transplanted to Flanders and a seemingly perennial fixture in the breakaway in the last few editions of the ‘Hell of the North’. A pro’s pro, just had another couple of years tacked onto the contract that was supposed to be his last. This year’s Paris Roubaix his first race back after an early season crash had seen him miss most of the Flandrian classics. Of all the races to come back in; the one he loves most of all. The one he has dreamed of winning, never quite believing that he could.
Tom Boonen – Denied!
Tom Boonen, classics superstar. Past his best? Maybe. Many predict that this year could be his last, certainly his last chance at adding to his tally of victories in the Ronde and Roubaix. Another win in Paris Roubaix would make him the all time leader with five cobble trophies on his mantelpiece.
With those back stories you could have been happy with an outcome where either rider took the win. But then no one would have predicted a Mat Hayman victory when the race got under way last Sunday; probably not even Hayman himself.
You could have got odds of 800/1 to Matthew Hayman even after he got into the breakaway. After all, no one really expects the break to survive right? There might have been an omen in another unfancied rider getting a top ten finish in Flanders the previous weekend, but we’ll return to him later. Hayman was still attracting decent odds after he managed to survive the catch and hang with a pretty stellar group of chasers that included Boonen alongside Edvald Boasson Hagen, Sep Vanmarcke and Ian Stannard.
A rider definitely on his swansong Fabian Cancellara had been in the group behind Boonen’s alongside Peter Sagan. Over the last few years Cancellara, especially when he’s fit and on form was always a threat for the win. He had suffered with injuries last year but entering his final season he had made it clear that Flanders and Roubaix where his big targets. Denied by an inspired solo attack the week before in Belguim I anticipated Cancellara getting his own back last weekend. I didn’t see Boonen as a contender, any more so than Hayman in fact. That isn’t to say that I didn’t want to see Boonen win; I have always been in team Tom rather than in team Fabs. It was just hard to see the evidence that Boonen would have the legs to ride to the win like he did in 2012.
The possibility that Boonen might be in with a shot increased when Cancellara crashed as the race went through the final cobbled sectors on the route to Roubaix. Sagan managed to avoid the crash (that’s a photo that’s worth doing a Google image search for) and Cancellara re-mounted but neither were in a position to challenge anymore.
Even when it had got down to five riders most peoples money wouldn’t have been on Hayman but he was the only rider who was able to bridge to Boonen after his late attack. Vanmarcke had attempted to solo away on a couple of occasions over the cobbles but each time he was pegged back by one of the remaining group riding him down or the whole group combining to do so.
Perhaps Boonen thought that he would be able to outsprint Hayman when the time came in the velodrome. Vanmarcke had arrived by this point and maybe Boonen was too vary of him to pay attention the the bike length that Hayman had stole from him as the race exited the final bend. Hayman threw his arms in the air as he crossed the line. It didn’t seem like such an emphatic victory as he reacted to what he had just done after he stopped. Viewed from a more sympathetic angle it became clear that this wasn’t a win by inches.
Boonen for his part seemed philosophical in defeat, suggesting that (unlike Cancellara) he might return for the classics again next year; “Why not?” he said. The trouble is, this was (probably) his best (if not final) chance of winning Paris Roubaix for a fifth time. Since his last win he has either been injured or unable to make the key breaks in the race. Four years have inevitably taken their toll. I think the Boonen of 2012 would have finished the race the same way he did then in 2016 but this version cannot reach those heights now. Tom Boonen won’t be around in 2020 anymore than Mat Hayman and perhaps Boonen’s enigmatic smile on the Roubaix podium reflected the realisation that his best chance of winning had been snatched from him by the least likely of victors.
If Roubaix didn’t produce the perfect fairytale ending you could argue the Flanders managed it nicely. Peter Sagan had won solo the previous weekend in Gent Wevelgem and did the same in the Ronde to deny Fabian Cancellara a farewell victory. Sagan accepts that other riders won’t work with him in a way that Cancellara has never seemed to manage and he seemed equally at ease about the ‘curse’ of the rainbow jersey that so many commentators love to cite anytime any world champion cyclist fails to win in the stripes. If you believe in such things (along with unicorns I suppose), Sagan put that to bed in Gent and looked the strongest he has ever been in the Ronde.
There was a nice symmetry in both world champions winning their respective editions of the race. Lizzie Armitstead is starting to look like Marianne Vos as she seems to bend each race she rides to her will. Vos who returned to racing in a rather more low key event in her native Holland the same weekend will no doubt recapture the form that made her the rider to beat in the women’s peloton but right now Armitstead is the benchmark in women’s cycling.
Hardly surprising that two of the biggest races on the calendar could produce so many headline grabbing stories in the space of seven days. I’ll admit the one for me hasn’t gone completely unmissed but just in case I’m going to share it. Now the Ronde and Roubaix have something else in common besides cobbles. They’re both world tour races and as such if you’re a world tour team then you have to turn up. In previous seasons it has been reasonable to wonder if teams like Movistar would bother with the cobbled classics given half a chance to sack off races that don’t really translate that well to Spain. But this year something changed. Movistar got a rider in the break in Flanders. Not only that, when the break got caught the Movistar rider, Imanol Erviti stayed with the leading group and crossed the line 7th.
Fast forward a week to Roubaix and who’s in the break again? That man Erviti. Now in all the excitement about Mat Hayman Erviti’s 9th place finish is inevitably a bit less of a headline grabber. But here’s the thing. In these two monuments only one rider (Sep Vanmarcke) has delivered two top ten results. This isn’t to suggest that Movistar are suddenly going to be a force in the classics but Erviti’s rides deserve a bit more coverage than they are likely to get after a pair of particularly classic editions of the Ronde and Roubaix.
A couple of other mentions..
The new job kept me from watching Pais Vasco live but even a highlights show is enjoyable when Steve Cummings steals another win. Alberto Contador took the overall, but I just haven’t seen enough stage racing to make the call on the grand tours yet.
I posted my thoughts on the Cycling News Reader Poll last year so here’s this years submission. I haven’t posted anything since the end of the Vuelta for all sorts of different reasons so there might be an end of season review feel to this post as well (maybe!).
I haven’t written about every nominee as it does feel a bit like the Cycling News team went with ten nominees for the Best Male category and then wondered if there would be a bit of a Twitterstorm if they didn’t have the same number of nominees in the other categories. While some of the nominations feel like they have been added for the sake of it, there are other categories where I don’t know enough about the subject matter to comment on whether or not a riders inclusion is warranted. Either way, there won’t be pages and pages on the Mountain Bike or Cyclocross categories.
So without fanfare or drum roll here’s my picks for the 2015.
Best Male Road Rider
So the normal suspects you would expect to see in an end of year poll are hear, alongside a couple of surprises. Lets deal with those first.
Peter Sagan
Richie Porte started the year in fantastic form winning Paris Nice for the second time amongst other things and generally looking like a better rider than Chris Froome during the early part of the year. Things began to unravel at the Giro and he began to resemble the rider who hadn’t exactly thrived when he was asked to pick up the team leadership from Froome in the 2014 Tour. Porte’s results post his return to racing after the Giro were less than spectacular and he even found himself slipping in his support role to best pal Froome at the Tour. If I was filling out Porte’s report card in April he would have got a A star but ahead of what is now (probably) a make or break move to BMC in 2016 he’s probably a C minus.
Another ‘What were they thinking?’ addition to the Best Male nomination is Mark Cavendish. Cav started the year under pressure to deliver results at Etixx and ended the year with a new team. While he isn’t the only sprinter to have had a less than stellar year (Marcel Kittel anyone?) it wasn’t perhaps the return to winning ways that everyone (the rider, his team, his fans) wanted. Sure Cav notched up another Tour stage win but he was completely outshone by a resurgent Andre Griepel in terms of number of wins and by the German’s victory on the most important stage of all in Paris. Cav of course remains a massive personality in the peloton and among UK fans but even the most diehard Cav supporter would find it hard to justify his selection as the best rider.
Another early starter was Alexander Kristoff. After Flanders I asked if anyone could stop him from winning any race he chose. Well as with so many predictions there was an element of hubris and Kristoff didn’t go on to win stages at the Tour for fun. In fact other than a low key win towards the end of the year it felt as if the Katusha rider had slipped from the radar screen completely.
Perhaps the sprinter who did the best job of retaining form over the whole season was John Degenkolb. With Marcel Kittel’s catastrophic loss of form Degenkolb became the key focus for his Giant Alpecin team in 2015. That Degenkolb took his first monument in Milan San Remo was perhaps less of a surprise than him taking his second a matter of weeks later in Paris Roubaix. Unlike his rivals Degenkolb was adaptable enough to still win grand tour bunch sprints including the final day around Madrid in the Vuelta. Degenkolb, once a target for Etixx as an eventual replacement for Tom Boonen the irony is that while the team retain the shampoo brand title sponsor it is Kittel who is leaving for the Belgian outfit.
Of course it wouldn’t be a Best Male poll without the Tour winner and sure enough Chris Froome is included. I’ll credit Froomey for not quite sticking to the script this year and looking pretty ordinary on the bike until the latter stages of the Dauphine. The way that he and his Sky teammates bossed the Tour from stage 2 onwards without too much there to unsettle them deserved better than the piss that was literally poured on them in France. There was a tilt a Vuelta Tour double but that was undone by another accident that may or may not have been bought on by bike handling skills. A second Tour win for the honorary Brit is no mean achievement but no better or worse than the other grand tour winners from this year.
And what of those two? Alberto Contador won the Giro pretty much singlehanded as his Tinkoff teammates struggled to keep pace with Astana. It was pretty clear how much this had taken out of him when he was the first of the big names to really suffer in the Tour. The Giro win didn’t taste quite as sweet while struggling to keep up with Froome and co in July and it’s no surprise that Contador wants to go out with a band in France next year. Fabio Aru was up and down like a yoyo on the Giro and then later during the Vuelta but showed enough to hold on to second place in Italy and then go one better in Spain. Perhaps not the most popular winner of the Vuelta thanks to his team and the manner of the win he looks increasingly like the favoured rider at Astana.
When the BBC crown their Sports Personality each year the debate afterwards often centres less on the winners sporting success as much as are they in fact a personality. When Bradley Wiggins won in 2012 both boxes could be firmly ticked as he rocked up in a wickedly tailored suit and was pissed before the broadcast had even finished. All of that plus Britain’s first ever Tour winner and an Olympic Gold medallist to (Chelsea) boot! Froome the following year wasn’t really in the running, despite Sky’s best efforts to add colour to him. Politeness doesn’t really ‘sell’. Peter Sagan started the year unable to win. I wondered if the pressure of his multi million dollar contract at Tinkoff was having an effect. A trip to the US for the Tour of California where they LOVE him provided the rejuvination and while there wasn’t a win at the Tour the green jersey was duly claimed. It was the end of season single handed win at the world championships that delivered the result that Oleg Tinkoff’s millions demanded but it was the return of Sagan’s sense of fun in post stage interviews at the Tour that cements him as my pick for Best Male rider of 2015.
Best Male Team
Fortunately Cycling News allow us a choice. Don’t fancy any of their nominee’s? Pick one of your own. And that’s what I have done with my Best Male Team selection.
MTN Qhubeka might not have been the winningest team of 2015. In fact they didn’t pick up masses of victories full stop, but it was the significance of what they achieved this year that makes them my pick for Best Male Team.
Bringing Brian Smith on board as General Manager saw the team step up a gear with a number of high profile signings and key changes in equipment to become one of the most distinctive outfits in the peloton. A stage win in the Tour and the Vuelta and Edvald Boasson Hagen winning the overall at the Tour of Britain were the arguably bigger wins than the KOM jersey at the Dauphine but more importantly that was won by a black African rider: Daniel Teklehaimanot. Smith has the challenge of continuing to get the best out of an ageing team of ‘big’ names like new addition Cavendish and promoting the best of the African riders. If he can do this it could be one of the most important components of cycling becoming a more diverse and genuinely global sport.
Best Female Road Rider
Lizzie Armitstead. No contest really. It might be a little bit churlish to say that Marianne Vos being injured for most of the season gave Lizzie a clear run but that would be pretty disrespectful to a talented core of riders within the women’s pro peloton just as much as it would be disrespectful to Lizzie.
Winning the world cup for the second year in a row demonstrated her form over the course of the season and the world championships was the icing on the cake. More importantly the way that she rode the race in 2015 showed that she had learnt the lessons of 2014 and didn’t let a winning position slip. The pressure will be on now (not least from a tendency to big up GB medal hopes by lazy journo’s) for a gold medal in the Olympic road race in Rio next year. The course doesn’t suit her but if anyone has the mental ability to overcome that it’s Lizzie Armitsead.
Best Women’s Team
Boels Dolmans might seem like the obvious choice. They’re Lizzie Armitstead’s team as well as the berth for riders like Evelyn Stevens. But my pick for Best Women’s team would be Velocio SRAM. The team emerged from the remains of the Specialized Lululemon squad that announced it was folding at the end of the 2014 season. Initally crowd funded the team were ultimately received backing from Cervelo and SRAM for the 2015 season. For various reasons the team in this incarnation is no more and the riders had to deal with the fact that they didn’t have a team for next year while there was still part of this year’s races to complete. It says a lot about this group of riders that they were still one of the winningest teams in the women’s peloton in 2015 and rounded off the season with the TTT world championship.
Keep reading for the rest of the VCSE winners here
Have you had your say in the Cyclingnews 2014 awards yet? OK so we’re likely to see the usual suspects winning but it’s at least a truly democratic selection and representation of armchair fans’ views. For what it’s worth the VCSE voting form went something like this..
Moment of the year? – Grand Depart 2014
Best rider – Vincenzo Nibali
This was a bit of a toss up between Contador and the Shark. We held our nose about picking Chris Froome as pre-race Tour favourite this year even though Bert looked like the stronger of the two. What most people didn’t expect was that Vicenzo Nibali would take advantage of those two marking each other on stage 2 and attack for the stage victory and race lead before the race had even reached France. Following their respective injury led departures from the Tour it was Contador that claimed the ‘I probably would have beaten you at the Tour’ prize by knocking Froome over at the Vuelta. But the crucial point for Nibali in getting the VCSE nod over the Spaniard was his assured ride over the cobbles on stage 5 of the Tour. Surely the award of best rider has to go the one who demonstrated the greatest versatility and on a day where Contador appeared to be going backwards at times it was Nibali who emerged as the consummate bike handler.
Best female rider – Lizzie Armitstead
Legend that she is 2014 was not the greatest year for Marianne Vos. True there were victories in the races she outright targeted; the inaugural Women’s Tour and Le Course but she was more of a peripheral figure this year. Lizzie Armitstead may not have expected to win the World Cup after her stunning early season consistency but win she did, further raising he profile outside of the UK. Then there was her Commonwealth Games gold against a field where (unlike the men’s race) Lizzie was up against a genuinely classy peloton. She may still rue the tactics that threw away an opportunity to win the worlds in September but looking back this has been a great year, no question.
Best track rider – Francois Pervis
Based purely on seeing him perform at the final round of the Revolution series earlier this year (he had already won the worlds by this time). With the British teams focus on the four year ‘cycle’ towards Rio 2016 it’s perhaps not surprising that Pervis made Jason Kenny look (if not) ordinary, then certainly not the reigning Olympic champion.
Rider of the year – Alberto Contador
A vote here for Contador might look a bit strange after picking Nibali earlier but Contador gets the nod for his results over the entire season. For starters Contador beat Nibali (winner of the previous two editions) easily in Tirreno Adriatico as the season was getting underway and long before his return from injury to claim his second Vuelta in three years. Throughout the year, Contador had the edge over his main rivals and he looked like the rider to beat ahead of this years Tour. We really only saw the briefest of flashes that Alberto was stronger than Nibali with his dig in final metres of stage 9, but by the next day he was gone. Of course, Nibali was not really seen as much of a threat before the race got underway, chief rival Froome never looked as if he had the confidence to seriously challenge Contador at the Tour. The gap between the two (in 2014 at least) was emphasised at the Vuelta. Winning his home grand tour may have provided some satisfaction after the disappointment of injury at the Tour but that’s the race you have to suspect Contador will want more than anything in 2015.
Stage race – Vuelta a Espana
Considering that it has provided more drama than the Tour (if not the Giro too) in the last few years the Vuelta remains the poor relation of the grand tours; threatened with a reduction in length or used as a training block for the world championships that follow. So the final stage was a bit of anti climax, what preceded it had it all with a GC contest going to the wire again. OK, it’s true that we probably wouldn’t have seen Contador or Froome at the race without their respective Tour exits but the fact is they were. The resulting battle the Sky power meter and Tinkoff street fighting provided the kind of stage racing the Tour often lacks. The Vuelta has to be the antidote to the Tour if it’s to survive in this format. The parcours and the field can throw up an unusual result (as with Chris Horner in 2013) and while it won’t ever enjoy the sheer scale of the Tour, at the moment at least, it’s the better race to watch.
One day race – Tour of Flanders
A close run thing with Paris Roubaix but on the basis of the Ronde literally going down to the final kilometre it has to be Flanders. With at least one more year of the Cancellara and Boonen rivalry to enjoy it’s going to take a Wiggins win in Roubaix to knock Flanders off the top step in 2015.
Team – Tinkoff
Grand tour winner? Check. Colourful team owner? Definitely. Up and coming new rider? Another tick. Strength in depth? In spades. Tinkoff Saxo showed that they could do most things better than their rivals in 2014. Losing team leader Alberto Contador on the Tour didn’t see the implosion that overcame Sky who lost Chris Froome almost a week earlier. Instead Tinkoff took stage wins and claimed the KOM with Rafal Majka. Bjaarne Riis selling up to Oleg Tinkoff pre season was just one of the ingredients that made Tinkoff the team of 2014. Astana might have had a look in but that outfit looks increasingly schizophrenic with Nibali and Aru struggling to balance out a slew of failed drug tests. Tinkoff can look forward to the arrival of Peter Sagan next year to rev up their one day prospects too.
Tour bike – Cervelo
Silly question. Have you seen my Instagram?
Innovation – in race technology
Could have said Di2 XTR here, but on reflection the introduction of in race technology (most pertinently on bike cameras) might presage better ways of presenting the sport. Watching a stage race live and actually getting excited before the final 10km is completely dependent on what’s at stake. It’s hard to get too jazzed about a flat transitional stage or any part of the Tour of Alberta (for example), which seems entirely based on arrow straight roads across featureless plains. Showing on bike footage, either live or previous days highlights could prove really useful in providing some colour to the bits in between. Same goes for the live timing used during the TT at the worlds’; actually made watching a time trial live interesting.
Memorable moment – Yorkshire Grand Depart
This was so nearly a “don’t know”. There were plenty of memorable moments to choose from; an exciting year in the classics, Quintana winning the Giro, Contador coming back to win the Vuelta, Jens taking the hour record. The unfortunately named ‘Big Start’ of the Giro was successful but perhaps lost something as a spectacle due to almost constant rain and sprint finishes. The Grand Depart on the other hand enjoyed blissful climatic conditions and the kind of public enthusiasm that we do in the UK since the Olympics. No one could have predicted just how many would turn out for a glimpse of the Tour. And this wasn’t just in the places you expected. Crowds four and five deep on a straight section of Essex A road as experienced by your correspondent on the stage into London showed just how popular the sport has become. It lights the touch paper for further friendly incursions by the Tour and potentially the chance of finally over coming the difficulties in staging closed road races here.
The 20th Commonwealth Games was bookended by its track and road cycling events. With a different mix of events included in comparison to the Olympics there wasn’t quite the same slew of medals seen at London 2012, but that also had a lot to do with the current state of GB track cycling. London was the last hurrah for the riders who had carried the success of the track programme on the shoulders since the beginning of the last decade. Sir Chris Hoy who would see the track events take place in his eponymously named velodrome had originally planned to retire at the games. Victoria Pendleton retired immediately after the London games and was a media presence at the games this time while her sometime nemesis Anna Meares continues to dominate the women’s sprint.
Venue for 2014 Commonwealth Games – The Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome
Part of the decline in British track cycling’s fortunes since London are put down to the four year Olympic cycle that sees the principal riders of the track team peak in line with that event. In other words; forget about the results now and look forward to Rio. So far the fall off in results doesn’t appear to be having an impact on the popularity of the event. Track meets featuring the medal winners from London like Jason Kenny, Laura Trott and Joanna Rowsell are assured to be a sell out, even if the crowd don’t always get the result they want. The cheers for the household names are always the loudest, irrespective of the outcome in their particular event.
The decline has been most keenly felt in the men’s sprint. Hoy had been replaced by the younger Kenny in London, but since he took the Olympic gold his results have been patchy. Physically smaller than Hoy, Kenny wins his races with bike handling and guile more so than outright power, but he’s often struggled to make the final in meets in the last year. He took Silver in Glasgow, losing here to the New Zealand rider Sam Webster. One half of track cycling’s ‘golden couple’ Kenny’s girlfriend Laura Trott took her own Commonwealth gold in the points race, narrowly beating Elinor Barker. In contrast to the emotions shown by some of the home nations medal winners across the Glasgow games Trott had been embroiled in a bit of a social media spat ahead of the games by appearing to downplay the status of the event in comparison to the Olympics. Trott failed to say she had been outright misquoted in the Daily Mail interview, but she didn’t have quite the same profile at these games and seemed happy enough when she thought she had missed out on the winners medal in the immediate aftermath of the points race.
The women’s team pursuit where Trott had won the first of her Olympic golds with teammates Roswell and Dani King was missing in Glasgow. The dominant rider of the trio, Rowsell took the individual gold in a display that cements why she’s the current world champion in the event also.
One of the successful elements of the track programme (the whole games in fact) was the integration of the paralympic events within the schedule. Scotland’s Craig MacLean took two golds with Neil Fachie in the tandem events after returning to the track. MacLean had been one the very early successes of the GB track programme and his return makes you wonder of Hoy could do something similar in Rio. The likelihood is not, but there’s surely some merit in the MacLean model allowing further integration of paralympic sport as well as the prospect of raisin para sports profile yet further. It’s hard to mention MacLean as a rider returning in search of former glories without mentioning Bradley Wiggins having another tilt on the track. Wiggins returned to anchor the men’s team pursuit squad. Working with the team for barely a week before the games Wiggins seemed happy with a silver medal. As with the sprint the benchmark for success is gold in Rio in two years time. Wiggins is also extremely realistic about what can be achieved, he was similarly sanguine about his silver medal in last years world championship time trial defeat to Tony Martin.
Wiggins missed the individual time trial and road race in Glasgow and offered some thinly veiled thoughts on his road racing future in a wide ranging interview the day after the team pursuit. Describing the road scene as “..very political” he confirmed that he no longer expected to lead a team in a grand tour. Out of contract with Sky at the end of this season this admission would appear to limit where Wiggins could go next year, if indeed he does continue to race on the road. He’s been announced as a late call up to Sunday’s Ride London event, an indicator of the fact the Wiggins is box office as far as race organisers (if not Sky) are concerned. With Mark Cavendish choosing to pull out of the race as he continues to recover from his injury sustained at this years Tour it’s possible that Cavendish’s appearance money has been redirected in Wiggins direction.
Back to Wiggins plans for next year, the choice seems to be remaining with Sky on the basis that they will be more likely to accommodate his track plans or to do a (likely) very lucrative one year programme with another team who will bank on his marketability. This could open up any number of teams. With Jens Voigt retiring Trek might see the benefit of providing Wiggins with a birth to defend his Tour of California title and he could be a useful counterpoint to Fabian Cancellara in the classics. VCSE has mentioned BMC in the past, but that seems as unlikely as a move to Orica Greenedge who definitely wouldn’t be supportive of Wiggins building up to the track in Rio where Australia will also be targeting medals. Garmin, or whoever Garmin become next season when they hook up with Cannondale as a bike supplier might still be an option but as things stand it’s entirely possible that Wiggins will stay with Sky or even walk away from road cycling altogether. Wiggins retains the capacity to surprise us and whatever he ends up doing it may well be something that no one predicted!
Giro 2014 Stages 2 & 3 Belfast to Belfast & Armagh to Dublin
With crowds lining the route in what has been pretty much awful weather it’s fair to say that bringing the 2014 Giro d’Italia to Ireland has been a huge success. The residents of Belfast and Dublin and towns and villages elsewhere on the route were always going to get into the spirit of the event and it will be interesting to see if there’s quite as much yellow being worn as Pink when the Tour de France arrives in Yorkshire in a month or two. There was a real sense that for three days at least the Giro belonged to Ireland rather than Italy and the weather couldn’t dampen those feelings.
Whether the teams enjoyed the three stages quite as much is probably more open to debate. The stages didn’t throw up many stories and in many ways (as flat stages often are) were less than exciting. The spectators found much more to enjoy than the actual participants. The opening TTT had some human interest with Dan Martin’s cruel exit, the suspected broken collarbone now confirmed and Svein Tuft getting handed a leaders jersey for his birthday. Taking in some the most beautiful coastline in the UK along the Antrim coast it was unfortunate that the weather just made it appear so grim. The view might have given some respite had the weather been better as the racing itself was pretty flat. The peloton was content to put in the miles in return for a fresh (or in this case dry) jacket from the team car.
Marcel Kittel’s presence meant that the sprint, at least in stage two, was a forgone conclusion and the Giant rider manage to survive even the disintegration of his lead out train to win easily as the race returned to Belfast. Ninety five percent of today’s stage from Armagh to Dublin was the same sleep inducing procession as the previous day, interspersed with accidents as riders nodded off through boredom. There was much speculation about a tricky S bend on the run into the line in Dublin, but as the race approached the roads had begun to dry out in the strong winds and it was negotiated with little fuss.
The peloton had already been funnelled onto a narrower section of a couple of kilometres earlier and by the time they went through 1k to go were very strung out. Kittel on his own at this point was some way back from Sky’s Ben Swift and Cannondale’s Elia Viviani. Swift, who had recovered his place at the head of the race was led out by Edvalt Boasson Hagen and right up to the line you would have thought he had won it. But in a superhuman effort it was Kittel who nicked the win by no more that a wheel. The big German collapsed afterwards demonstrating just how much he had put into the effort to overhaul Swift who finished a disappointed but worthy second.
The teams now go into a rest day as the Giro transfers down to southern Italy. Assuming Michele Scarponi is injured from his accident today, the race could have shrunk its group contenders already with Martin already out. The teams and riders will be hoping that no one has picked up a bug from three days of riding in almost continuous rain. There aren’t many conclusions to be drawn from the Irish stages. That Orica Green Edge are great TTT riders is hardly news any more than Marcel Kittel is the worlds fastest sprinter in the world right now. Of the world tour teams those with the least ambition look like Belkin and Lotto who have stuck riders in the breakaways on both days.
The peloton may not look back on the Irish stages of this years Giro with much fondness (almost entirely due to the weather) but for the fans at the roadside the memories will linger on and hopefully inspire a new generation of Kelly’s and Roche’s.
Tour of California
The Tour of California gets underway later tonight (UK time) with a stage starting and finishing in the state capital of Sacremento. The big story from the race is Sky’s entry. It’s a mixture of marketing for team and rider with Sky now sponsored by another News Corp company 21st Century Fox and Bradley Wiggins, who is now represented by agent to the stars Simon Fuller. The logic of the teams appearance in a marketplace so important for one of their title sponsors make sense, what isn’t so clear is whether or not Wiggins is the kind of character that American fans will take to their hearts. The possibility that Wiggins will make it big in the US is a question to be answered another day. Right now we have the rider’s stated aim of winning the GC over the course of eight stages that will follow the ToC’s traditional north to south trajectory after last years ‘experiment’ with a south to north parcours.
The north to south route has often seen the early stages run in the sort of weather that the 2014 Giro Peloton has ‘enjoyed’ in Ireland and this was part of the motivation for the switch to a southern start in the ToC last year. The law of unintended consequences as far as the route change was concerned was that the early stages saw riders suffering dehydration and heat stroke with some of the rouleurs who had spent the previous weeks in the wind and rain of northern France and Flanders collapsing in the intense heat of the Californian desert. North, south or south to north is of less concern to Wiggins than stage two’s TT around Folsom a town whose previous and let’s be honest greater claim to fame is for its prison immortalised in the Johnny Cash live recording. The TT is short at 20km, but this isn’t much more than the archetypal 10 miles distance used for most club TT’s and will be a distance that Wiggin’s should be comfortable with. The bigger question in terms of his GC ambitions will be whether or not he can eke out enough of an advantage (assuming he actually wins the stage) to be defended for the remainder of the race. Sky have selected a squad that draws heavily on its US riders and it does look a little light on riders who will set the kind of pace over the climbs that feature later in the race that will be essential for a Wiggins win.
The Sky / Wiggins appearance continues a trend seen before in the ToC which see’s riders integral to the marketing of bikes in the US making an appearance. Jens Voigt, a stage winner last year. is a case in point and continues his ‘farewell tour’ in the US. home of his bike sponsor Trek. The other marquee name worth mentioning is Peter Sagan. Sagan often has the sprints in the US as a bit of a benefit, but Omega Pharma Quick Step have bought Mark Cavendish and Tom Boonen this year, so Sagan won’t have things quite his own way in 2014 VCSE suspects. Keep an eye out also for young British rider Tao Geoghegan Hart who’s racing in the US this year and is likely to feature in at least one of the breakaways.
Women’s Tour
Winner of the Women’s Tour – Marianne Vos
Some might say that the rise in popularity in cycling in the UK has been driven by the success of the aforementioned Sky and Wiggins. Actually the growth in popularity has been as much if not more so because the successes have crossed the gender barrier and riders like Lizzie Armitstead and Laura Trott are as popular as the mod knight of the realm. Announced last year by Tour of Britain organisers Sweetspot the maiden Women’s Tour has been run around the east of England this week and has attracted the cream of the women’s peloton including Marianne Vos and Emma Johansson.
It goes without saying that the chances of running an event for the first time, where the take up and interest from new fans will be so important to its ongoing success, needs good weather. Typically, as this is the UK it’s rained and when it hasn’t rained it’s been windy. The positive news is that this doesn’t seem to have dampened the spirits of the riders or, more importantly, the crowds who have turned out along the entire route to provide scenes that the women’s peloton aren’t always used to. Whether these same crowds will turn out again next year remains to be seen, but with a stage of the Tour coming through Cambridgeshire and Essex in July the locals are getting their fair share of professional road cycling this summer.
In trying to create a narrative to the race the organisers and media had attempted to talk up the race as face off between Vos and Armitstead. There was a grain of truth in this as Armitstead has enjoyed a successful start to the year with a win in the opening round of the women’s world cup, backed up by a series of podium places in the following rounds. With Vos only returning to the world cup at Fleche Wallone, Armitstead leads the world cup standings and from this the supposed rivalry with Vos emerged. The fantastically matter of fact Armitstead nipped this in the bud ahead of the first stage but the opening couple of stages did provide flashes of how much she has improved this year. Vos looked as if she was trying (and failing) to beat Armitstead in the intermediate sprints but the evidence of the final three stages would suggest she was just riding herself in.
After Johansson took the opening stage, we were treated to a breakaway win from Rossella Ratto in stage two, the peloton getting a bit huffy with one another over who should be putting in an effort to catch Ratto. From then on Vos took over taking the next three stages and the overall comfortably. No doubt the supposed Armitstead / Vos rivalry was swept under the carpet at the end of the race; Armitstead didn’t even start the final stage. There was good news for British riders with two of the next generation of women Hannah Barnes and Lucy Garner finishing in the top 10, less than a minute down on Vos in the final standings.
Whether or not the Women’s Tour is judged to be a success depends less on the crowds who turned out to what was a free event than the commercial success of the race. The title sponsor Friends Life was a late signatory and the some of the sponsors, familiar from the Tour or Britain, suggested that the organisers had been going around with the begging bowl to an extent. Getting a global brand like Strava involved was a bit a coup though. Is it the right thing to hold the Women’s Tour as a race in its own right as opposed to piggy backing the women’s event on to the Tour of Britain. This seems to work successfully at the Tour of Flanders and Fleche Wallone and there are some women in the peloton who want to race on a level playing field with the men. That the race exists is a good thing, but like the Tour of Britain itself has grown from its latest incarnation of ten years ago, The Women’s Tour needs to evolve.
“I’ve got this.. I’ve got this..” or words to that effect was Sep Vanmarcke’s message to his team car as he approached the finish line after 250 kilometres of racing at the Ronde. “No I haven’t” is what he should have said after he crossed the line in third place to Fabian Cancellara (OK, let’s be honest it was probably some Franco / Belge expletives).
Can I win Roubaix too? – Fabian Cancellara
Vanmarcke wasn’t the only one kicking himself. BMC’s Greg van Avermaet had gone away late on and it felt like he could go one better than his Het Nieuwsblad 2nd place from earlier in the year. This years Ronde came down to a sprint of the track variety (missing only track stands) and it was 2013 winner Cancellara who out foxed his rivals. A week away from Paris Roubaix his rivals must be wondering what they can do to deny Cancellara another win in next weeks race. Whether or not you think Spartacus possesses a sprint, the fact is Vanmarcke and van Avermaet (in particular) are decent quick men. Stijn Vandenbergh, an analogue rider against digital rivals recognised that in a four way sprint he would be favourite for fourth place and attacked first. Indicative of his place as Tom Boonen’s bag carrier, Vandenbergh gave up almost as soon as he started, sacrificing a lead that looked as if it could stick, as a lack confidence manifested itself immediately. Vandenbergh’s bid to escape might have lacked conviction but it looked most likely to succeed. Instead as the final few hundred metres disappeared beneath their wheels it was Cancellara who got the drop on the other three. Unlike last year, this wasn’t a victory to savour in the final kilometre’s Cancellara had to work for this one and the emotions weren’t released until he crossed the line and began punching the air.
Vanmarcke and van Avermaet rolled over in second and third and in disbelief; “what just happened”. The result is potential hex on both riders, experiencing another loss snatched from the jaws of victory. The positives are that both riders (and in fairness Vandenbergh too) have been consistent performers in the classics so far this year, but the fact is that this was a race both men could have won. It cannot be disputed either that Cancellara is the srongest rider in the classics right now and in the monuments when it really counts. It’s hard to see who’s going to beat him this year and Trek must feel vindicated in pulling out all of the stops to deny Sky taking him on last year when Radioshack finished as headline sponsor.
Having the numbers when the selection had taken place was no advantage for Omega Pharma Quick Step. The problem for QPQS was tactical. By the time it was clear that Tom Boonen was coming up short again, they lacked a rider who could take up the challenge of beating Cancellara. Boonen’s heavyweight shadow Vandenbergh had been sent up the road to cover van Avermaet’s late break, but as is so often the case he lacks the speed and guile to carve out a win for himself. Boonen, chasing a fourth Ronde victory may have believed until the last and that might be why the in form Niki Terpstra was released too late to catch the leading four.
Boonen wasn’t the only pre-race favourite who popped. Peter Sagan looked like he wished that the race distance had been about 50km less and was unable to go with Cancellara when the Trek team leader attacked. Given the choice Sagan would swap his E3 victory and the win that almost wasn’t in stage 1 of the Three Days of De Panne for a win in the Ronde. At 24 he can potentially be a classics contender for another ten years, but it seems that Sagan is subdued by the pressure to deliver a monument win. At least he will have a week to recover ahead of Paris Roubaix; the De Panne stage win looks extremely poor value if it was this that left Sagan without legs today.
This years edition was a bit of a crashfest with accidents ranging from the typical for a cobbled classic to the bizarre, such as Trek’s Yaroslav Popovych getting unseated by a female spectator’s handbag. His teammate Stijn Devolder who had proved so valuable to Cancellara at E3 seemed to only feature on camera immediately after another mishap in an accident prone afternoon for the Belgian champion.
And so to your VCSE predictions. We tipped Cancellara and Vanmarcke in the our last post (http://tinyurl.com/pvkebup) and predicted that OPQS would be the strongest team. Geraint Thomas was an unlikely podium for Sky, but he was their best finisher in 8th place. Can we keep it up for Paris Roubaix next week? If you want to find out, follow the blog! Here’s a thought though; late entry to the Ronde Bradley Wiggins finished in 32nd place. Can he go better in the ‘hell of the north’ next Sunday?
Your world cup leader is..
Great to see Lizzie Armitstead leading the points table in the women’s World Cup. She finished second to Bols Dolmans teammate Ellen van Djik in the women’s Tour or Flanders today after winning the opening round at the Ronde van Drenthe. It’s been a great week for Lizzie as she signed a contract extension to 2016 with her Boels Dolmans team.
Tour of the Basque Country
Starts tomorrow! Last year’s edition was one of the highlights of the 2013 season with biblical rain and some outstanding rides from eventual winner Nairo Quintana and KOM Caja Rural’s Amets Txurruka. Quintana is missing this year; Movistar will be led by Alejandro Valverde. Ag2R have a potential double team in Jean-Christophe Peraud and Carlos Betancur to match up against previous grand tour winners Cadel Evans, Ryder Hesjedal and Alberto Contador. There’s a strong Basque presence including (interestingly) Sky led by in form Mikel Nieve in the absence of Froome or Porte in what’s often seen as an important tune up for the Giro. With Quintana absent too, we shouldn’t read too much into this, but the race could be an opportunity for one of Sky’s new GC orientated signings (Phil Deignan is racing too) to raise themselves up the pecking order on the death star.
To the uninitiated it can look as if Marianne Vos is unbeatable, such is her win rate on the women’s pro tour and as we recently covered at VCSE, XC mountain biking. Vos remember has been in the sport competitively since she was a teenager and already possesses a palmares that rider on the verge of retirement would kill for, let alone someone who probably has at least another ten years left at the highest level.
In the UK people who have become interested in the sport through the successes of the British track cycling team could be forgiven for thinking that riders have always enjoyed a clear path to international competition from an early age. In fact it was as recent as the late 90’s until there was a level of investment in track cycling in the UK that provided the platform for riders like Victoria Pendleton and more recently Laura Trott. Trott in particular benefited from the scouting that now takes place in schools up and down the country to identify potential track stars. Note that the emphasis here is on track cycling. The haul of cycling medals taken in Bejing in 2008 and London last year, in addition to many more won in world championship and world cup track events is reflective of a focus on the track that hasn’t always been shown towards the road. While the medals won on the track in Bejing grabbed most of the headlines not many remember that the first cycling gold for Britain (the first medal for the entire GB team in fact) in 2008 was won on the road by Nicole Cooke.
In pouring rain Cooke rode a superb race against a quality field that included Vos , who finished 6th, and Judith Arndt the 2004 Olympic champion. Cooke retired from road racing before the start of this season making and her open letter to the press and fans vented some of her frustrations at the differences between the way road racing is structured and perhaps more importantly funded in comparison to the men’s tour*. Cooke’s teammate in 2008 Emma Pooley has voiced similar concerns. It’s hard to imagine a rider of Pooley’s class within the men’s peloton having to deal with two of their teams collapsing through lack of sponsorship.
Cooke was perhaps Vos’ biggest rival during the late ‘noughties’ and while some of their competitors span both era’s the latest rider to try and topple Vos wasn’t even racing in 2008 despite being older by three years. Evelyn (Evie) Stevens had followed an outstanding academic career at a US Ivy League college and a spell at Oxford. From there she had gone to Wall Street leaving Lehman Brothers shortly before the bank collapsed and was working at another bank when she had her cycling epiphany. She had acquired a bike among all of the other things you accumulate when you live in a loft in Manhattan but a trip to a cycling workshop in Central Park rekindled her interest and she was soon taking on a coach.
Stevens became an amateur racer in 2009 although she can thank her sister for entering her into her first event; cyclo cross. Early on her coach found that Stevens had the power output of an elite level cyclist and as the global financial crisis began to make her question her future in banking she took the plunge to become a professional. The loft, along with the rest of the trappings of a Wall Street banker went and she was left with her bike and a bag and wondering “..what have I done?”
Turning pro in 2010 with HTC Highroad she moved to Specialized Lululemon last year following the collapse of her first team after (you’ve guessed it) they lost their sponsor. For someone who was the most successful stage race winner on the women’s world tour Stevens is also a talented time trialler winning the US national title twice and finishing runner up at last years individual world championship. Her strengths in the discipline also helped Specialized Lululemon to the team prize in Limburg. Perhaps her biggest win of the year came at the Fleche Wallone where she out climbed Vos on the Mur de Huy to win convincingly.
Absent from this years race (won by Vos, natch) due to a nasty accident in Italy Stevens showed her determination by returning and winning a stage a month later at the Gracia Orlova stage race in the Czech Republic. She finished 2nd overall this year after winning the overall in 2012 but announced herself “..back to racing, back to smiling”. No doubt disappointed to have missed the opportunity to defend her ‘classic’ Stevens will be looking to retain her stage racing titles from last year in the US and in France and perhaps to go one (or even two) places better and win the overall at the Giro Donne.
Like Marianne Vos, Evie Stevens retains a humility that belies her status as one of the top female sportswomen in the world. Like Vos the overriding sense is that she is doing what she loves and Stevens has described how her enforced absence has made her “hunger and love” for racing grow even stronger. As to who is going to be the stronger rider this year Stevens describes Vos as an “incredible athlete”. Rather like Lizzie Armitstead at last years Olympics however, Steven’s believes Vos is “human”. It will be interesting to see how the Stevens / Vos match up plays out this year. Both riders win for fun but will it be the late comer who left the world of high finance and Manhattan lofts behind for the joy of two wheels who comes out on top? What does Stevens think?
“I still haven’t found my boundary”
* The letter also covered Cooke’s views on doping in the sport
Joy (joi) noun – A feeling of great pleasure and happiness / a thing that causes joy
Recently reading some articles about Marianne Vos I was struck by two things that seem perhaps unconnected. The first; the fact that if she was a man she would be cast as the heir to Eddy Merckx, arguably the greatest ever cyclist. She is the consummate racer, a world and Olympic champion, winning across any two wheeled discipline she chooses. This in itself is noteworthy, one feels she should be celebrated more. Her profile should be higher than it undoubtedly is while she is still in her 20’s.
The greater impact is felt from the pictures in the two articles which were in the kind of magazines that probably see articles more as essays. In one photo, taken in winter sunshine so bright you can imagine the cold air, Vos is at a Cyclocross meeting. She beams from the page. Maybe from the satisfaction of a race won or someone who is naturally at ease having her picture taken. Perhaps her smile is because Marianne Vos enjoys riding her bike, any bike in any discipline, for ridings sake.
Happy – Marianne Vos
It’s natural here in the UK to seek to cast someone in the role of pantomime villain (only we actually know what a pantomime villain is after all) when one of our own is competing. After the best laid plans of the men’s road race at London 2012 were unpicked, the following day Lizzie Armitstead understood what every billboard was imploring; ‘Take the Stage’. As rain swept the Mall and the crowd yelled for a happy ending there was Marianne Vos to break the nations hearts and take the gold.
Armitstead, more understanding of her situation than the majority of those watching knew that the result was not some cruel twist in the GB Olympic fairytale. In the natural scheme of things finishing runner up to Vos was not as much of a disappointment as failing to jump Vos in the sprint, besides ‘..she is faster than most girls.. so I am chuffed with silver’.
In reality (read as among cycling fans) Vos was the clear favourite going into London and her palmares for 2012 as a whole is incredible, including road race and cyclo cross world championships and national cyclo cross and track titles. Added to the rainbow and national jerseys she also successfully defended her Giro Donne Maglia Rosa from 2011.
She was winning national championships within ten years of first riding a bike as a six year old and became a world champion while still a teenager, an achievement in itself until you realise this was across two disciplines. Endurance is an obvious need for any cyclist but the way Vos manages to sustain not just a level of competitiveness, but superiority from cross through road to the track is remarkable.
Motivation stems from becoming a ‘..more complete rider’ rather than the financial rewards despite being the most bankable rider in the female peloton. What comes across in her interviews is the joy that she takes from just riding her bike. Its ‘..a great feeling” to race, she describes road racing as ‘beautiful’.
It sums up the much lower profile of women’s racing in comparison to the men’s world tour however that it has taken victories in the few races that can be associated with the men for people to recognise Vos’ success, such as the Giro. She wants to see the sport grow, yet appears quite selfless about how she is instrumental in seeing the profile raised. What comes across is a strong desire to she women’s cycling expand and improve for all of her competitors. Certainly as passionate as Marianne Vos is about winning, she is capable of doing so without the expense of her relationships with the likes of Emma Pooley who she beat at 2011 Giro.
She describes cycling as a full time hobby, enjoying being out on her bike and in competition. One feels for her comparisons with Merckx are not important. For Marianne Vos perhaps being the worlds happiest cyclist is the greatest accolade that could be bestowed on her.
Postscript
Since writing this post over a year ago Marianne Vos has claimed further world championships in cyclocross (2014) and road racing. She won the women’s Tour of Flanders for the first time and in the last month the inaugral Women’s Tour in Britain.
Velo Club Sud Eglise 