Author: Alex
-
The best of Mark Cavendish
Mark Cavendish won his fifth stage at this year’s Giro yesterday and so took the maglia rossio passione (great name). He has now won the points classification in all three Grand Tours and it has been far from easy. Many feel that Cav is at his best in a sprint finish, but that doesn’t actually…
-
Vincenzo Nibali’s happiness (and the varied feelings of others)
It would be wrong to say that Vincenzo Nibali would have been happy at the bottom of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo climb at the end of stage 20. He was about to face 20km of increasingly difficult uphill cycling and the weather near the top was about as pleasant as an old man’s scrotum.…
-
Danilo Di Luca – unfit for employment
When it comes to riders who have been caught doping, there are those from a previous generation where such things were considered the norm; there are those who made a mistake and learnt from it; and then there are repeat offenders who simply don’t seem to give a toss. We could perhaps label that last…
-
Vincenzo Nibali positively monsters the cronoscalata
There’s a headline you wouldn’t get on most websites. If you want a clear picture, get yourself a cronoscalata. What did today’s cronoscalata reveal? It revealed Vincenzo Nibali, then a big gap and then everyone else. On a normal stage, two riders can finish simultaneously but in radically different states. One can be cycling within…
-
Giovanni Visconti corners the market on memorable stage wins
The perfect denouement to a bike race is when you don’t know whether the peloton is going to catch the break or not. It’s the perfect underdog scenario with a ravenous pack moving more quickly and perhaps a lone rider as quarry, fighting valiantly in the face of an ever-diminishing time gap. In this analogy,…
-
Stefano Pirazzi and the King of the Nutcases competition
I’ve mostly been focusing on the general classification with a few nods to the points competition. What I haven’t really covered is the mountains classification. King of the Mountains The leader of the mountains classification tends to be referred to as the King of the Mountains (which always makes me hum this to myself). However,…
-
In defence of the Sky mountain train
It was a rest day yesterday, which presents an opportunity to reflect on the race as a whole. I’d therefore like to offer a counterpoint to the prevailing view that Sky’s mountain train tactics are duller than a conversation that flits from cars to mobile phones and then back again. What’s a mountain train? To…
-
Carlos Betancur climbs mountain and general classification
If you’re wondering what to get Carlos Betancur for his birthday this year, how about second place on a stage of the Giro d’Italia? He loves them. He’s now been second across the line on stages nine, ten and 15. Lord knows what stage 14’s third place was all about. He must have made a…
-
Vincenzo Nibali nibbles his rivals
For a man whose nickname is ‘The Shark’, Vincenzo Nibali isn’t taking particularly big chunks out of his rivals. He’s more like one of those tropical fish which nibbles away at dead skin – Vincenzo Nibbly, if you will. Today’s stage featured well over a minute of visible action as TV cameras didn’t come into…
-
The apparent inevitability of a Mark Cavendish win – chapter one billion
It was less than a day ago that I tried to get us all to appreciate the near-inevitability of a Mark Cavendish sprint win by pointing out that it had been less than a week since I’d tried to get us all to appreciate the near-inevitability of a Mark Cavendish sprint win. I then correctly…