Author: Alex

  • Michael Matthews was the sprinter who was glad he turned up for the 2013 Vuelta

    No-one else was. Two sprint finishes. Two Michael Matthews wins. The Chris Horner post-Vuelta interview on ITV4 Was one of the most extraordinary slabs of gibberish I’ve ever heard. It was a bizarre collage of  amazings and beautifuls. UK readers can see and hear it here. The gibberishiest gibberish comes from around 39 minutes in.…

  • Chris Horner’s standing climbing style wins him the Vuelta

    There’s a phrase in cycling: ‘dancing on the pedals’. It’s used when a rider gets out of the saddle on a steep slope. The finest exponents sway sinuously, the bike flicking from side-to-side beneath them. Several times during this Vuelta, commentators have said that Chris Horner has been dancing on the pedals. If Chris Horner…

  • Joaquim Rodriguez would like a bit more Vuelta

    Perhaps irritated by Chris Horner’s habit of making him sound like he’s from Turkey or somewhere, “Hakim” Rodriguez finally found the zip he seems to have been lacking for most of the Vuelta and won stage 19 with one of his vertical sprints. Just as in the Tour, Purito appears to be coming into his…

  • It’s a good job Vincenzo Nibali has tooth skin

    Because that’s the amount by which he’s retained the lead in this year’s Vuelta. It’s not looking good for Vince Nibbles. He tried to follow Chris Horner on stage 18’s final climb, the Pena Cabarga, but couldn’t. Nor could any of the other main contenders and the middle-aged American now hovers just three seconds away…

  • Domenico Pozzovivo doesn’t like abanicos – add them to the list

    You can always count on crosswinds to make a race pleasingly scrappy. While stage 17 with its abanicos wasn’t anywhere near as compelling as the Echelons! stage of this year’s Tour, it still did some damage. Not entirely unsurprisingly, the day’s biggest loser was Domenico Pozzovivo. I mean that he was the biggest loser in…

  • Looking forward to the Tour of Britain?

    I certainly have been doing. If that sounds like weird grammar, it’s meant to reflect the fact that I’ve spent quite some time producing an unexpectedly comprehensive preview of the Tour of Britain. It kind of got away from me a little bit, so I’ve spread it over several pages. I’ve covered TV coverage, the…

  • Warren Barguil claims a slice of the 2013 Vuelta

    When he won the other day Warren Barguil was just some rider who I hadn’t really heard of. When he won again today, it seemed more meaningful. Now he was ‘that bloke who won the other day’. It was a cracking win too. The bit that impressed me wasn’t when he opened a lead on…

  • How’s Tom Boonen’s perineum?

    It’s not great. But at least it’s improving. “It’s going in the right direction. The skin around my perineum has grown back but now I have to let it recuperate. I tried a couple of times to ride for an hour but it’s better that I save myself now and the skin grows strong again.…

  • Nicolas Roche makes a move

    Mountain stage tactics usually revolve around little beyond being fitter and more spindly than everyone else, but Nicolas Roche and Team Saxo-Tinkoff actually did something slightly more interesting than that on stage 15. It wasn’t a move that was particularly devilish in its complexity, but it worked reasonably well. Basically, they stuck someone in the…

  • Vincenzo Nibali is impervious to bad weather

    After winning a snow-hit Giro, Vincenzo Nibali was at it again on stage 14 of the Vuelta. And by ‘it’ I mean ‘cycling along not really being too bothered by the weather’. It wasn’t a day of attacks. It was a day of sadly and mournfully ticking off riders as they ebbed off the back…