Author: Alex
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Michal Kwiatkowski’s back!
As in ‘returned’. He hasn’t got ankylosing spondylitis or anything. Michal Kwiatkowski hasn’t had a spectacularly successful time at Team Sky thus far. In 2014, at what was then Omega Pharma-Quick Step, he won Strade Bianche and became world champion and finished on the podium in La Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege – all big races.…
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What does Peter Sagan eat after a bike race?
Haribo. Haribo Gold Bears, specifically. One fistful, smushed into the mouth via the palms of both hands. Here’s some footage, because I know that you’re yearning for footage. The greatest Haribo advert ever created :: pic.twitter.com/RpWzHZa4uA — Gage+DeSoto (@gagedesoto) February 26, 2017 I wrote more about this earth-shattering pro cycling development for my day job,…
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The Omloop ushers in a brave old world
Rub the sleep from your eyes, wash the surprisingly large amount of winter filth off your bike – Omloop Het Nieuwsblad has taken place and the cycling season is now unequivocally underway. So how have things changed? They haven’t. Olympic road race champion Greg Van Avermaet won the Omloop, just as he did last year.…
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Bradley Wiggins’ gurning on The Jump – a real dignity-stripper with which to commence retirement
Bradley Wiggins has retired from cycling. I would have written something about it sooner, but he voiced so many contradictory plans that it wasn’t until I saw the last 25 seconds of The Jump last night that I honestly believed it had happened. Those 25 seconds were… painful. I wouldn’t call myself a Wiggins ‘fan’…
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Richie Porte wins first WorldTour event of the year – but what the hell is the WorldTour?
The French film Belleville Rendez-vous does a cracking job of expressing the sheer irrepressible joyful exuberance of cycling at this time of year. It looks something like this: You’re slower and heavier; it’s darker and colder outside; and your bike seems to require cleaning even when you haven’t actually used it. Yet the season is…
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Autumn round-up: from Belgium to Qatar
I’ve rather permitted the season to peter out and for that I apologise. Last time I wrote about actual racing, Steve Cummings had won the Tour of Britain. What’s happened since then? Eneco Tour I rather like the Eneco Tour, but didn’t really get chance to follow it too closely this year. It’s rough and…
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All the unsatisfying equivocal answers about Bradley Wiggins’ asthma TUEs
There are things I write about because I want to and there are things I write about because I think it’ll look weird if I don’t. This is the latter. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t want to write about this. I’ll write about any old shit. The background You’ll most likely…
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How did Steve Cummings win the Tour of Britain?
It’s slightly annoying for me that two of my favourite races should clash. The Tour of Britain has little in common with the Vuelta a Espana, but does tend to offer scrappy, broken racing which is a great deal more entertaining that the formulaic nature of bigger stage races. Some of you may have watched…
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A good Vuelta for Froome’s reputation but a better one for Quintana’s
For a race so profoundly sprint-unfriendly, the final stage seems bizarre – almost irrelevant. Supposedly a reward for sprinters who’ve lasted the course, the truth is that few turned up in the first place, so this just seems a weird, out-of-character, tacked on extra. Best of the dregs was Magnus Cort Nielsen, who also won…
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Nairo Quintana not inclined to budge from race lead
In the end, the task of gaining over a minute on Nairo Quintana on a mountain stage proved as impossible as might realistically have been expected. If the Colombian has a weakness, it is not uphill. The final 5km of the stage were mostly just Chris Froome attacking and Quintana following him with a face…