Tag: Specialized Lululemon

VCSE’s 2015 Cycling News Reader Poll

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
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

Continue reading VCSE’s 2015 Cycling News Reader Poll

Swiss Timing

Matthias Brandle extended the hour record broken by Jens Voigt last Thursday. The venue, another velodrome in Switzerland and a few hundred metres added to the recently retired Voigt’s distance by a rider old (or should that be young?) enough to be his offspring.

Does a question arise that each (successful) attempt took place in different locations? The hour itself is obviously inviolable but would the variations in track length, degree of banking and ambient temperature between velodromes play a part in determining the outcome? As opinined in the previous post Voigt’s record now surpassed will probably stand the test of time over Brandle by dint of being the ‘first’, albeit under the ‘new’ rules. Brandle had gained some notoriety and much mispronunciation of his name at this year’s Tour of Britain with his Voigt-esque breakaways, but in comparison he is something of a footnote in comparison. Of course Brandle may yet prove to be a long serving record holder, but this seems unlikely with more storied names waiting in the wings and able to observe the apparent ease with which the record has been taken.

An interesting side bar to Brandle was a minor spat that developed on social media when it was suggested that maybe it was time that there was an attempt made by a woman. Composing this post without any recourse to the twin gods of Google and Wikipedia, VCSE pleads ignorance of who currently holds this particular title (Jeannie Longo?). It’s hard to imagine Marianne Vos not wanting to have a stab at it at some point. The storm in this particular tea cup stemmed from the suggestion emanating from the UCI. The complaint from some quarters was that with the shoestring budgets that most women’s pro teams operate under, it would unlikely that many female riders could generate the budget to make an attempt.

With the erstwhile Specialized Lululemon squad looking to raise a crowdfunded 2015 budget of $750k it highlights the gulf between the top male and female teams. Oleg Tinkoff has offered €250k bounties to the top GC boys for riding all 3 grand tours, an amount that could easily fund a professional womens team. The UCI has done more under Brian Cookson to promote women’s cycling with the introduction of two showcase events in 2014 and more to come with 3 days of racing alongside the men at next years Tour of California. Obviously there’s lots more to be done, but it’s sad to hear that the only UK published women’s cycling magazine is having to close only nine months after launching. Looking through the hour record lens maybe what’s needed is a female Grahame Obree with an idea and a surfeit of washing machine parts.

The Cav & Wig Show – VCSE’s Racing Digest #20

Tour of Britain round up

In our last post we discussed then (plain old) Bradley, now Sir Bradley Wiggins performance at last years Tour of Britain. In what should have been a valedictory event for the 2012 Tour de France and Olympic time trial winner, the Sky rider instead abandoned the race at the halfway point after a bizarre performance during which time he turned round and rode back the way he came in search of teammate Mark Cavendish.

Français : Bradley Wiggins, vainqueur du Crité...
Back to his best:  Bradley Wiggins(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wiggins stated aim this season, to win the Giro d’Italia, had looked in doubt from the outset as the Wigan based rider was unable to repeat his imperious form of the previous year and he often struggled to make the top five on GC in his preparation events like the Giro de Trentino. Wiggins hopes in the Giro went down the drain with the heavy rainfall that was such a feature at the event. A seemingly innocuous crash in the first week seemed to damage his confidence and he withdrew before the race finished. Pre Giro there had also been the debate, often fueled by Wiggins, about leadership of the Sky team at this years Tour de France. His performance at the Giro was probably the confirmation that the Sky hierarchy needed that Chris Froome, as well as being more suited to the parcours, was now the number one rider at the team.

And so it was a different Bradley Wiggins that emerged from the aftermath of Team Sky’s celebration of a second successive Tour win, making a low key return a week after the Grand Boucle in the Tour of Poland. He was entered in this event to target the individual time trial stage, pitching himself against one of his chief rivals for the world TT championships. Interviewed in the build up to the race the world’s TT was held up as the now 10kg heavier Wiggins goals for the end of season. And there, quietly in the background, was the announcement that in addition to the individual test, he would lead Sky at this years Tour of Britain and it was a race he intended to win.

There has been some critical mass building to Wiggins performance in last weeks race. His actual race form hadn’t sparkled after winning the stage in Poland, but he was finishing races and becoming a decent interviewee again. It can’t have been easy for Wiggins to admit that the reason he didn’t call Chris Froome to congratulate him in Paris was his fault as he didn’t have his mobile number. Both Wiggins and Sky had kept things low key when commenting on his participation in Poland and the following Eneco Tour, but as far as his home race was concerned the talk was of targeting the GC. Perhaps critically here, in addition to a strong supporting line up including Stannard, Eisel and Lopez, Shane Sutton was back in the fold after early season announcements that he would no longer play an active role in the Sky set up.

The first couple of stages held in typically wet British weather had been a sprinters party, despite an uphill finish on stage 2 in the Lake District. Milan San Remo winner Gerald Ciolek would have been reminded of the weather on the Italian coast earlier this year as he overhauled An Post’s Sam Bennett to win and take over the leaders gold jersey. Sky had kept Wiggins protected and near the front for these stages and there was a suggestion that he was in for the long haul when even he admitted that he “..would have climbed off” because of the conditions if he wasn’t motivated for the overall. Confirmation of this came the following day when Wiggins made several runs around the TT course at Knowsley. Tellingly rival Alex Dowsett, getting over a cold, chose to reconoittre the route from his team car. Dowsett was out of the starting hut before Wiggins, but any contest with his Sky rival was soon made academic as other riders went faster. Wiggins, the only rider to break 20 minutes for the test, was into the lead.

The following day brought the first of three stage wins for Mark Cavendish. Sunday’s misfire of the Omega Pharma sprint train was forgotten as the world tour teams began to impose themselves on the peloton. Another world tour squad were making their presence felt in the other competitions. Movistar’s Angel Madrasso was a permanent fixture in the breaks all week and thanks to an infringement on the final stage was able to claim both the KOM and sprinters prizes. For the smaller teams the pickings were pretty slim. The chance to feature in the break or a bunch sprint was the best that most could hope for. With talk of the ToB moving up to HC status in the future many of the British squads will feel disappointed that they didn’t come away with a better result. There would have been mixed feelings among the 3rd level teams at Simon Yates stage win on Dartmoor. The British U23 squad had appeared the previous year, but Yate’s win following both his and his twin brothers performances in the Tour de Avenir will have put both riders first in the queue for a contract with the world tour squads. The emphasis on shorter criterium style events seems to blunt the opportunity for some of the young riders in the British conti squads to shine.

Despite the bad weather earlier in the week, crowds at this years race if anything seemed even bigger than the year before. Certainly the final stage around central London had a last day of the Tour feel and Cavendish served up the perfect result, winning convincingly. Wiggins was lost in the bunch over the line, but maintained a comfortable lead at the finish. Both riders had demonstrated their respect for the race in interviews all week, Cavendish showing his pride at winning the final stage at his home race and Wiggins describing that there are “..no easy stages on the Tour of Britain” earlier in the week. Inevitably, talk is already turning to what will Wiggins do next. The rider is focused on the world championship time trial, what comes next will be interesting. A stated aim is to win another gold medal at the Olympics in 2016. That still leaves at least one season where, perhaps, Wiggins will target another race with ‘history’. Paris Roubaix perhaps?

We will be sharing our fans eye view of the penultimate stage from Epsom to Guildford shortly. Don’t forget to visit our Facebook page where you can bid for a T shirt signed by Tour of Britain legends including Tour de France 2013 stage winner Dan Martin! 

World Championships – Team Time Trial

Omega Pharma successfully defended the TTT title in Florence on Sunday. Sky, denuded of Wiggins due to the ToB still managed to take 3rd place reinforcing their reputation as one of the strongest TTT outfits. Runners up were winners of the TTT at this years Tour Orica Greenedge. The women’s TTT was also defended successfully with Specialized Lululemon taking the win.

No domestic broadcasters are taking the live pictures from the event, so you will need to check out UCI TV for live streaming.

More teams to fold 

In addition to the loss of Vacansoleil it was rumoured over the weekend that second tier French outfit Sojasun would also be folding due to a lack of sponsorship for 2014. VCSE had reported the apparent saving of Euskatel by Fernando Alonso a couple of weeks back, but both parties have officially announced that they were unable to reach agreement on the structure of the team for 2014. Alonso has vowed to build a team from scratch which suggests that he still intends to pursue a world tour licence. However, he is suggesting that this team will not appear until 2015 at the earliest so there will be a lot more Spanish and French riders looking for rides next year. Expect to see a lot of animation from these riders at the worlds and at the Giro di Lombardia as they look to catch the eye of a prospective employer.

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Someone to boss Vos?

From Central Park to the Peloton – Evie Stevens

picture – http://www.wellandgoodnyc.com

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

 

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This years best team kit?

Opinion (noun) – A view or judgement formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge

There has been a lot of chatter around team kits this season. Sky switching to Rapha is controversial for some fans, based largely on the prices the brand asks for its kit. There’s also the team that isn’t; Blanco. Blanco the ‘brand’ created for the team that can no longer speak (or at least advertise) it’s association with the men’s world tour; Rabobank.

Interestingly, what looks to VCSE like a nicely executed and simple strip, appears to be hated by the majority of commentators. The colours chosen closely follow the brand identity of bike supplier Giant but perhaps the stigma of doping that led to Rabobank’s withdrawl prevented Giant from taking the title sponsorship over.

One rung down the professional ladder there are further team kits that win the VCSE seal of approval. Vini Fantini’s luminous yellow jersey’s are anything but subtle but one that we can imagine wearing. Also, VCSE’s team of the week Caja Rural have a clean design  that extends to the green accents on the Vivelo bikes.

The worst kits? AG2R’s brown shorts, Argos Shimano’s white / translucent kit when it rains and perhaps worst of all the decision to add Merida lime green to Lampre’s blue and pink. Never a good look.

Here at VCSE however, our vote for the best team kit in 2013 leaves the men’s tour altogether. With 65 victories in 2012 Specialized Lululemon were the most successful team in the women’s pro-tour. They have added some great new riders to the roster for 2013 who will join our GB rider Katie Colclough.

Describing the Specialized Lululemon kit as black and white doesn’t do it justice. Fortunately we can share this video introducing the 2013 squad along with our other women’s road racing content on the VCSE You Tube channel.