Steep gravel and dehydration – together they are Alberto Contador’s kryptonite
The final stage is a flat stage, so Alberto Contador will win the 2015 Giro d’Italia. He had a bloody good go at losing it on stage 20, but he’d built up such an advantage,…
Descending matters and moral matters
Bit pressed for time, so I’m going to have to wazz through this a bit. First, the stage winner: Philippe Gilbert. He was in the break, he was dropped on the climb, paced himself and…
Contador way better than Aru – but that probably ain’t saying much at the minute
The nuts and bolts of the story are these. At the foot of the really-rather-nasty Mortirolo climb (12.4km at 10.5%) – the penultimate of the day – Alberto Contador was on his own, about a…
Vasil Kiryienka is the man to maintain an impossible-to-maintain pace
French team FDJ have a scooter they train behind. It’s named ‘Vasil’ after Sky rider Vasil Kiryienka because of the relentlessly punishing pace it delivers. It seems that riding along behind it is almost –…
Diego Ulissi briefly emerges from the inaction
It was a weird stage. Which wasn’t to say that it was exciting, because it wasn’t. It seems that 264km in the middle of a Grand Tour is enough to sap any enthusiasm for attacking….
Andre Greipel engineers a win
Greipel wins. Take that, pedals! I didn’t see this. Not even the highlights. I was busy watching Prometheus for the second time in a week. Even so, I have a fair idea how it went….
Alberto Contador drags everyone onto the podium
The way a Grand Tour’s supposed to work is like gravy. You mix everything up, heat it and it’s delicious, but it’s only as it cools that you see the fat slowly rise to the…
Ding from Contador and dong from Froome
Which sounds a bit disgusting. Let’s gloss over that. Ding dong battles are rare in cycling. Ding ding battles are more common because if you’re fitter and faster than someone one day, that rarely changes…
Chris Froome reveals that the sun will rise in the morning
I should probably react to the long-since-broken news that Chris Froome will be riding the Tour de France in 2015. Maybe if it wasn’t so blindingly obvious that was going to happen, I might actually…
Alberto Contador has the legs – even if one of them’s a bit skeggy and slightly knackered
I can only presume that having prepared for the Vuelta by riding around with a fractured leg and a huge infected wound, racing Chris Froome up a mountain suddenly seems like a pain-free doddle for…
