Tag: Fabio Aru
-
How do you feel about Fabio Aru?
Last week a reader wrote to me wondering why he couldn’t warm to Fabio Aru. It’s a common feeling. For this reader at least, his cycling played a part. “Aru looks like a spasticated muppet on a bike, with that stupid flailing from side to side and his tongue hanging out. You don’t often get…
-
Aru on the uphill, Dumoulin on the downhill and Nicolas Roche way ahead of them
In the autumn of his career, Haimar Zubeldia appears to have made an uncharacteristic decision to get on TV. He was one of two riders to emerge from a really rather sizeable break on stage 18. The other was Nicolas Roche, who won the stage for all the Franco-Irish out there. Roche generally rides well…
-
Half-decent time trial from Fabio Aru the most meaningful ride of the day
The threat of a time trial is a lot more interesting than the time trial itself. Beforehand, you can try and gauge riders’ fitness and fatigue while simultaneously weighing their size and power. You can then apply these vague assumptions to the route, looking at how long it is, how technical, how undulating, before finally…
-
Mikel Landa manages to race, Tom Dumoulin manages to survive, Chris Froome disappears from view
A hard, hard stage. So hard that half the riders found they were too tired to race. Mikel Landa – who’ll move to Sky next year – was the only man from the breakaway to stay away. The best climber in this year’s Giro d’Italia, he can now add a memorable win on one of…
-
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, it simply wasn’t possible. What happened? The day was all about the Colle delle Finestre, an 18km climb that was…
-
Fabio Aru successfully overcomes the drag resulting from his gaping dribbly mouth
Faces don’t come much more repulsive than those pulled by Fabio Aru as he rode away from everyone on the final climb of stage 19. I’m not being cruel (because he does have a bit of a funny face anyway), it was just one of those rides where self-consciousness is abandoned in favour of wide…
-
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 minute behind Fabio Aru’s group, having punctured. At the summit, he was two minutes ahead. Being as Aru’s Astana team…
-
Fabio Aru changes jersey while rivals change bikes
Like an enthusiastic but incompetent charades player, this year’s Giro keeps you guessing. A day after I suggested that Fabio Aru might be fading, he gains the maglia rosa. It didn’t have much to do with fitness or performance, mind. On a flat stage, a late crash brought down or held up several of the…
-
Philippe Gilbert goes into the red
An important aspect of cycling is that different terrain suits different riders. That’s why I always like to see the Grand Tour contenders beaten on an incline. It reinforces the notion that the sport’s a little more nuanced than just ‘fastest uphill’. Philippe Gilbert is fastest uphill, but only for a bit. Give him a…
-
Four or five riders to watch in 2015
I was going to pick five riders to watch, but while four came to me quite quickly, the fifth proved more elusive. A draft version of this article has been hanging around for about three months now, so I finally decided that four was my number. The perfect fifth selection will doubtless materialise in my…