Category: Stage races
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Brits lead the spring stage races
Put the kettle on and warm the pot! Brits are leading both Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. Tirreno-Adriatico Stage one was a team time trial. As has previously been noted on this website, Tony Martin could ride as an individual in the team event and still be competitive. Sure enough, his team, Omega Pharma-Quick Step, won. Omega…
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Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico herald spring
Is spring here? You can go by the calendar or you can judge by other signifiers. The trees are in blossom, it’s almost time to change the clocks to British Summer Time, green bin collections are about to recommence and major European stage racing is back. Tirreno-Adriatico starts today, but it’s Paris-Nice which really seems…
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Chris Froome can still cycle uphill at great speed
Not the greatest revelation ever. Up there with ‘oranges are still orange’ and ‘online marketing is a pointless, zero-sum game practised by cold, dead-eyed charlatans who talk the talk to a far greater degree than they walk the walk’. But if you write a cycling website, you take what you can at this point in…
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Why Peter Sagan isn’t a sprinter
Peter Sagan won the green jersey in last year’s Tour de France and he always contests the sprints, yet people don’t tend to talk about him as being a sprinter. Why is this? Stage four of the Tour of Oman answered that question. What happened? During four ascents of the same hill, the peloton was…
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What’s going on in the Tour of Oman?
In my last article, I slightly talked up the Tour of Oman, but have since written nowt about it. I should probably bring you up to lead-out speed on what’s been going on. Stage one Greipel wins. Take that, pedals! Stage two Alexander Kristoff won. Stage three Greipel wins. Take that, pedals! In summary It’s…
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Steve Cummings wins a stage race
Britain is still very Wiggins/Cavendish-centric when it comes to cycling. There’s been semi-adoption of Chris Froome, who races as a Brit and Geraint Thomas is quite well known. However, if you haven’t won a Tour de France or Olympic gold, most people would sooner spit in your face than hold a door open for you.…
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Middle Eastern foreshadowing
Never let it be said that I am detached from my readers. I know what the readership is crying out for and that’s a half-arsed update about the Dubai Tour and stage one of the Tour of Qatar. The Dubai Tour This is the kind of race that’s decided by a prologue. Taylor Phinney’s 15-second…
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Simon Gerrans refuses to wait just one second
Two stages for the price of one in this update, because, you know, it was Saturday yesterday and I simply couldn’t be bothered. I hadn’t actually intended to go ‘stage by stage’ for the Tour Down Under, but a little early season excitement seemed to lead me down that path. Until yesterday. Stage five If…
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The big sprint head-to-head that wasn’t
Greipel wins. Take that, pedals! Andre Greipel won stage four of the Tour Down Under after 95km, even though it was a 148.5km stage. This is when the race hit the Reservoir Road climb in Myponga. He made it to the top in the main group. Marcel Kittel didn’t. It wasn’t so much the climb…
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The corrupted logic of the breakaway rider
Jens Voigt got in the break on stage three of the Tour Down Under. “I picked today’s stage to break away because nobody else did, but I knew that it was close to impossible to go for the stage win.” But he did it anyway. That’s a key aspect of the near-universal appeal of the…