Unfamiliar faces v familiar faces | a 2021 spring classics recap
The big springtime one-day races represent the divide between people who really follow cycling and people who very much like it and will definitely watch it when it’s on ITV4 but probably won’t actively seek…
A sprinter’s view of the mountains as Mark Cavendish fails to make the time cut
When Mark Cavendish finished stage 11 of this year’s Tour de France, they were clearing the barriers away. Podium ceremonies had been and gone and the new yellow jersey, Geraint Thomas, was busy doing a…
Vincenzo Nibali is slowly winning all of the things
Milan-Sanremo really is one of the finest races of the year. At 291km, it is very long, which is a very important quality as it means people can deploy the word ‘epic’ which is a…
Stage four: Cavendish finds more give in roadside barrier than Sagan’s elbow
It was a day of aqueducts, châteaux and sheep. The flat profile meant the break was always going to be caught and when that break turned out to be just one rider – Belgian Guillaume…
Mark Cavendish elicits a strop from Marcel Kittel
The thing about headwinds is, they slow you down. If Marcel Kittel had been one of the four men who had ridden near enough 200km into one as part of the break, he’d have been…
Mark Cavendish has started beating Marcel Kittel (he’s more used to beating everyone else)
Before this race, Mark Cavendish had never actually beaten Marcel Kittel when the two have gone head-to-head in a sprint. That stat is old and irrelevant. He’s now beaten him three times in a week…
Mark Cavendish helps create a normal sandwich
I like to think I know how years are named. Each year you just add one, don’t you? It doesn’t seem like that in cycling. My specific doubts centre on 2014 and 2015, which seem…
Apparently Mark Cavendish can beat Marcel Kittel
It seems increasingly unfashionable to make a case for something using facts. I don’t quite know what it says that it took a Briton from outside the UK to remind everyone how persuasive such things…
Green jersey contenders in 2016
I’ve been putting off writing this points competition preview for a few days now and presumed there was some reason for this – nothing conscious, just some mystic message from the cosmos saying: “No, don’t…
British Olympic track cycling preview in the form of a World Championships review
They just held the UCI Track World Championships. Some Britons did well. Some didn’t. Here’s a look at how the nation fared in a handful of the Olympic events to serve as some kind of…
