Category: Stage races
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Pogacar is unlike Vingegaard – a springtime state of play update
Spring is (sort of) here. Tadej Pogacar is winning bike races. Gauntlets are being thrown down. Where are we with everything? Shall we try and take stock? The WorldTour (the UCI still hasn’t found its space bar) officially began in January with the Tour Down Under, but road cycling’s deep-rooted eurocentrism means it never really…
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Van der Poel’s power, van Aert’s adaptability, Pogacar’s form and Roglic’s matter-of-factness – scene-setting in early spring
The season is now definitely underway and we’ve been given a couple of sighters for the bigger events to come. Let’s take a look at who you need to be keeping an eye on this year. This early part of spring provides a bit of a warm-up for everyone. We’ve had our first big one-day…
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When does the 2021 pro cycling season *really* begin?
The professional road racing season is theoretically international these days which meant the 2021 World Tour officially got underway in the UAE in February, following the cancellation of the Tour Down Under and the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in Australia earlier in the year. But everyone knows that isn’t the real start of…
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Woot! Wout! | A 2020 Italian classics recap + talking points from the Critérium du Dauphiné
The second phase of the World Tour season kicked off with Strade Bianche, the gravelly one-day race that actually only started in 2007 but which everyone has agreed to talk about like it’s been going for at least 100 years. It was an inauspicious start in some ways with Sylvan Dillier hoicked from the start…
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The 2019 Paris-Nice Wrap
I’ve been branding most of my stage race round-ups ‘wraps’ for the last year or so, but I can’t help but feel that a Paris-Nice wrap must be a specific type of French taco. Do you know about the French taco? It’s the French version of meat and chips in a wrap – which is…
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A trident for Michal Kwiatkowski thanks to Team Sky’s most prosaic advantage – its finances
Considering the ongoing furore about his allegedly excessive, possibly ban-earning use of his inhaler and the much larger controversies blighting Team Sky, Chris Froome took the wise decision to be woefully out of form at Tirreno Adriatico, finishing 34th. The story of Spring Stage Race Week was however the other, oft-overlooked factor influencing Team Sky’s…
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Daryl Impey won the Tour Down Under but there was also some bigger news
There’s been an awful lot of high profile off season controversy this year and you’ve probably been wondering what nugget of news would finally trigger another update on this site after an unusually prolonged silence. I managed to ride out all the stuff about the mysterious contents of the Jiffy bag delivered to Bradley Wiggins…
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Richie Porte is stronger than everybody individually (but not everybody combined) | The 2017 Criterium du Dauphine wrap
It was a classic edition of the eight-stage race I like to call The Dolphin – but as ever, the main point of interest is what events told us about the form of the main contenders for the Tour de France, which starts in three weeks. The strongest rider An oddly worded subheading in that…
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The Tour de Yorkshire will be on ITV4 – both live and highlights
It appears to be TV broadcasting week on this website. More info about the Giro to follow, but today I’m here to inform you that ITV4 will be showing the Tour de Yorkshire – both live and highlights. It’s also on Eurosport. The race starts on Friday and there’s live coverage on both channels. The…
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Springtime stage races from one place to a different place – a round-up
You may have noticed that my approach to race reports this year has been to deliver them almost pointlessly late. You may think that this temporal delay removes my responsibility to look at the ins and outs of how each race was decided. You’d be right. I’m also lazy. And busy. These ingredients are not…