Table of contents for June 2021 in Procycling

Tell me about Robbe. Robbe is a 19 year old from Vlezenbeek in Flemish Brabant, just south west of Brussels, who was diagnosed with diabetes aged 14. No matter, though, he still races with Team Novo Nordisk’s Continental team. The American squad’s riders are all diabetic. How’s he finding the team? This is his second year with Novo Nordisk. Robbe tells Procycling: “It’s really nice. When you cycle with diabetes, it’s a struggle, and I saw this team. It’s a dream to be in; everything is perfect. Everyone has diabetes, so you can ask about stuff. They have experience. It is the best team to be in for me.” Riding with diabetes? Is that not a challenge? It makes things more complicated, to put it lightly. Robbe explains: “You always…

The Ardennes races were off my calendar for the first time in my 14-year career. That’s right: thirteen consecutive appearances at Flèche and Liège, some ending in anonymity, others in the back of an ambulance but some years were successful. I got addicted to these races in my formative years, despite getting a right kicking and having some nasty crashes. There was just something special about them: the atmosphere on the Mur de Huy, and the history of Liège. Ardennes week is always just a fun time if you have a good group of team-mates, as there is loads of hotel time, coffee stops during the week and recon rides. It’s a time to build team spirit for the fights that are to come. There is also something beautiful about…

Tony Soprano once observed that ‘remember when’ was the lowest form of conversation, but nostalgia still exerts a pull. When Ireland began its first covid lockdown last year, repeat broadcasts of RTÉ’s retrospective programme Reeling In The Years – archive news footage soundtracked by the hits of the era – regularly featured near the top of the ratings. Maybe it was inevitable that the throwback feel to Sam Bennett’s subsequent achievements at the Tour would play so well to an Irish audience. A self-effacing man from Carrick-on-Suir winning stages and fighting for the green jersey bore obvious parallels with Sean Kelly’s heroics in the 1980s. Bennett’s success last September was the madeleine that evoked memories of those halcyon summers, attracting daily interest in the Tour from a wider Irish public…

WINS BY TEAM ONE-DAY RACE WINS UP TO APR 27 Deceuninck-Quick Step……. 7 Alpecin-Fenix…………… 5 UAE Emirates…………. .. 4 Trek-Segafredo…………. 4 Jumbo-Visma…………… 3 Groupama-FDJ………….. 2 Ineos Grenadiers………. .. 2 Inform TMX Make………. .. 1 Black Spoke Pro Cycling…. .. 1 Ag2r Citroën……………. 1 Qhubeka-Assos …………. 1 Cofidis………………… 1 Team BikeExchange……. .. 1 Movistar………………. 1 STAGE RACE WINS Jumbo-Visma’s clean sweep at Itzulia Basque Country bumps them up from third to second place this month, joint on wins with Ineos and UAE. Primož Roglič and Jonas Vingegaard finished first and second on GC, while they also took the points, KOM and team prizes. MEN’S WINS BY COUNTRY Belgium move into the lead, thanks to Jasper Philipsen’s win at Scheldeprijs and two stage wins at the Tour of Turkey, and Wout van…

VUELTA A BURGOS FEMINAS 20-23 May | Spain | 2.WWT Finally, the women’s peloton has a top-ranked stage race to contest, with the Vuelta a Burgos the first WorldTour stage race this season. Not too long ago, the women’s calendar was packed with multi-day racing options, but with the likes of the Tour de l’Aude, Tour de France Feminin and Women’s Challenge long ceased, today the programme is heavily skewed towards one-day racing. In fact, of the 24 WWT races this year, just seven are stage races - and the Itzulia race has already been cancelled because of covid. There’s been one edition of the Vuelta a Burgos before, in 2019, when it was ranked 2.1 and won by FDJ’s Stine Borgli. This year’s route certainly looks a lot more…

VUELTA A ANDALUCIA RUTA CICLISTA DEL SOL 18-22 May | Spain | 2.Pro The challenge of La Toba, which comes 62km into stage 3 of the Ruta del Sol, is the fact that it’s the third of four climbs in a day packed with 5,000 uphill metres. The stage is held within the Sierra de Segura mountain range, with La Toba the longest of the day’s four climbs (10.5km in length), the highest (at 1,607m) and with the steepest sections (15 per cent gradients at its worst). There’s still a stage to come, but expect the GC battle to be decided here.…

Tour of Turkey Stage 4, Kemer, Turkey 14 APRIL 2021 Mark Cavendish has always worn his emotions on his sleeve and his effort on his face, and he shows the strain as he sprints to his third successive stage win at the Tour of Turkey, powering clear of Jasper Philipsen, in green, who finished second to Cavendish in each of his wins. The Manxman’s victories in Turkey were his first since Feburary 2018. The flat stage was easily controlled by the sprinters’ teams, and it looked like Philipsen’s Alpecin-Fenix had control going into the final kilometre. However, the team left the Belgian in the wind too early, allowing Cavendish to come from behind, rounding his opponent in the final metres of the stage. The sprint was marred by a huge…

CARAPAZ DISQUALIFIED Richard Carapaz became the highest-profile cyclist to be disqualified for breaking the UCI’s new rules for on-bike positioning at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. After his attack on the Côte des Forges, Carapaz adopted the now-banned ‘super-tuck’ position, leading him to be stricken from the results. “When I am given the green light, I’m in for a long, slow slog back to fitness, but I’ve done it before and I will do it again”Chloe Hosking after testing positive for coronavirus in April. 2022 Alejandro Valverde looks set to continue riding into his 21st year in the professional peloton. After finishing third at Flèche Wallonne, the Spaniard said that he was riding with “great feelings again”, leading to speculation that he may postpone his retirement which is currently planned for the end of…

Maurizio Evangelista was a leading cycling journalist in the 1980s and early 1990s and then created the successful Vitesse communications agency. Now he is the Tour of the Alps race director; it’s the third and seemingly hardest chapter of his life in the sport. Evangelista wrote for the Corriere dello Sport newspaper, which always loved to compete against bigger rivals La Gazzetta dello Sport. After he created Vitesse, he managed the Saeco media office in its early years and then numerous other clients. Evangelista moved to near Lake Garda a decade ago and became the Trentino/Alps race director, with his son David taking over at Vitesse. “I think a lot of people don’t fully appreciate just how difficult and complex it is to put on a major professional sporting event…

BMC ROADMACHINE 01 FOUR £6,200 ||| $6,999 The BMC Roadmachine is designed to do it all. This endurance bike is for the cyclist who wants to cover a lot of tarmac, but who isn’t fussed about the tiniest of watt gains from aero advantages and wants more compliance over sheer speed. Not that it’s slow, however. This high performance 01 version is made of top-quality carbon, with an integrated aero cockpit. This model comes with Shimano Ultegra Di2 and CRD-321 carbon wheels. www.bmc-switzerland.com HUNT 60 LIMITLESS AERO £1,429 ||| $1,985.95 Hunt’s fastest wheelset is designed for minimising drag while allowing for control of the bike in variable conditions. The British wheel builders say they are for “all-out riding and racing at maximum speed on fast courses”. These wheels will be…

Watching Anna van der Breggen during the final 30 kilometres of Flèche Wallonne was a bit like watching an assassin prepare to kill someone in a movie. The Dutchwoman’s face was expressionless, her body barely moved an inch, her shoulders frozen, except for the constant turning of her legs on the pedals. While riders of the calibre of Annemiek van Vleuten and Elisa Longo Borghini visibly gritted their teeth and exhaled, their shoulders rocking as they attempted to break Van der Breggen before the Mur de Huy, the 31-year-old kept her gaze fixed low on the road in front of her, and simply followed every move. There was no inkling of emotion as to how she was feeling, or the effort she was exerting. She looked completely at ease and…

Liège-Bastogne-Liège may be a climber-friendly race, but the 15 flat kilometres that now sit between the top of the final climb and the finish line mean it plays into the hands of a rider who can climb, but also sprint: see Marianne Vos. It’s also why SD Worx were backing their bright young talent in Demi Vollering, the 24-year-old Dutchwoman, who finished third in Liège on her debut in 2019. Vollering is cut from a similar cloth to her compatriot in that she excels at short, sharp climbs, but her biggest asset is also her speed. Having finished narrowly second to Vos at Amstel, if Vollering were to win, it would help to get rid of Vos first. Using their strength in depth has always been SD Worx’s modus operandi.…

No one male rider dominated in the hilly classics this spring; Amstel, Flèche and Liège. The lowest combined total of results was by Julian Alaphilippe, who won Flèche and finished runner-up at Liège. The only other riders in the top 10 of all three races were Max Schachmann and Alejandro Valverde. WHO RODE THE MOST RACES? No one male rider rode all of the WorldTour one-day races that have happened so far this year. This is unsurprising, with the depth of modern teams allowing completely different squads to compete in Italy, over the cobbles, and in the Ardennes. Only two riders managed 10 races: Gonzalo Serrano, who only missed Gent-Wevelgem, and Greg van Avermaet, who missed La Flèche Wallonne. THE MOST CONSISTENT TEAMS MEN Now the classics season is over,…

TOUR DE SUISSE 6-13 June | Switzerland | 2.UWT Tradition dictates that riders who want to win the Tour have to choose between the Tour de Suisse or Critérium du Dauphiné as their final preparation race. No other two stage races at this time of year are as tough and pack in as many days and as many climbs. But going back to 2007, of the nine Tour winners, only two of them chose the Tour de Suisse as their last fine-tuner before winning the yellow jersey. Andy Schleck raced in Switzerland in 2010, although he was retrospectively awarded the Tour title - Alberto Contador, who was DQed, favoured the Dauphiné. Then Egan Bernal did it in 2019. While the Dauphiné offers more recovery time, the latter has something the…

Comeback of the century or dead cat bounce? As always in cycling discourse, and as always in Mark Cavendish discourse, opinions on the Manxman’s four sprint victories at the Tour of Turkey were sharply divided, while the truth probably sat somewhere between the extremes. Cavendish, coming off the back of four disappointing seasons beset by illness, had already looked perkier in 2021 than for years. In the Belgian one-day races he was fighting for wins - he mistimed his sprint at the GP Monseré and was beaten by Tim Merlier. Jakub Mareczko beat him into second on stage 1 of the Settimana Coppie Bartali. And at Scheldeprijs, Deceuninck didn’t seem to have a focused gameplan - Bennett second and Cavendish third, both behind Jasper Philipsen. But he was sprinting for…

Where’s home? Stavanger, on Norway’s south west coast. Because I’m on the coast, the weather is very similar to Britain, maybe Scotland. Schools and stuff are still open at the moment. Compared to many other places in the world, covid is quite under control here. What’s your favourite climb? I think maybe a local one here in Stavanger: Dalsnuten. I use it a lot for training, so maybe that’s my favourite. From the bottom to the top it’s about 10 minutes, and it goes up in steps. Where in the world would you like to get lost on your bike? I really enjoyed having a training camp in the US, when I was in California. I also like training in Mallorca, but I don’t think I could get lost there,…

In the last hours of 2020 I was having a drink with Christian Meier, an entrepreneur and former pro cyclist. Six years ago Christian and his wife Amber opened La Fabrica, a coffee shop in the heart of Girona. This venture seems like a slam-dunk now, but when they opened, the idea of charging two euros for a cup of fairly-traded coffee, in a land where a euro could get you a croissant and an espresso, was an intimidating prospect. However, La Fabrica transformed the trajectory of the ancient city. It is rare to walk down one of its streets without hearing the sizzle of a coasting freehub, or passing a cafe with words like ‘avocado toast’ written on the menu. The town has become a mecca for cycling and…

2013 Riding for the Conti-level An Post team, Bennett, 22, wins his first pro race on stage 5 of the Tour of Britain. The sprint comes at the end of a tough, hilly day through Wales to Caerphilly. 2014 Joins ProConti level NetApp Endura, and wins three times. Takes the Clásica de Almería - his first one-day win as a pro - and Rund um Köln, as well as a stage at Bayern Rundfahrt. 2015 Wins the final stage of the Tour of Qatar, his best result against opposition including Sagan, Bouhanni and Guardini. Makes his debut at the Tour but abandons on stage 17 in the Alps. 2016 Gets the better of Mark Cavendish in the sprint on stage 2 of Giro della Toscana and defends his title at…

“In terms of his age and his experience, Enric has still got room for progression in the next two, three or four years,” Eusebio Unzué, Movistar’s longstanding manager, tells Procycling. “And within that he needs to consolidate his greatest talent, which is staying on his game, day after day, in a grand tour. “Secondly, we hope that his physical progression and experience makes him more and more a rider to be up there with the chosen few of the grand tours, and - why not? - be able to beat them too.” Either the Tour or the Vuelta could be good for Mas this year, Unzué feels. “Any of the grand tours offers enough opportunities to leave everybody satisfied, even if on paper the Tour is harder and its standout…

How frequently have you come across the argument that sport can break down barriers even between the bitterest of political and social enemies? From the earliest Olympic Games providing respite to the warring Hellenic world, through First World War soldiers playing Christmas Day football games in no-mans land, to rugby’s 1995 World Cup putting a nail in the coffin of South African apartheid, at least on the surface of it, it’s an idea as old as sport itself. Cycling, often, has worked like that. Matt Rendell described in this series how Colombia’s unique cycling culture helped unite a fragmented nation. The Tour de France forms part of the bedrock of France’s collective consciousness. Across the Alps, the Giro d’Italia has played a role in boosting 20th century Italy’s brittle sense…

Contentment is a difficult thing to quantify, especially when it comes to professional sport. You can measure wattage, you can count calories, but it is difficult to reach happiness. It’s a vague quality for all of us, and so there’s an uneasy link between it and the exacting quantifiable world of cycling. For Jack Haig, though, happiness is important. It is something he has spent a long time thinking about. He explains: “I’m a big believer that you can do all the training in the world and think you’re in the best shape possible, but if you’re not enjoying life and the bike, then the results are never going to come.” Now in his sixth year as a pro, the Australian switched teams over the winter, leaving the Australian bubble…

I’m not particularly good at it, but it is still racing. It doesn’t really matter, either, because there are 100 other people riding, as individuals, around me – a global peloton of faceless avatars. Their names are things like ‘J. Surname [TEAM VEGAN]’ and the race is called, rather plainly, Crit City Race. The parcours consists of laps around a virtual town, mostly flat with a short cobbled climb thrown in for good measure, a semblance of traditionalism. I’ve got two water bottles on a little folding table in the living room which sits right next to my bike. When my little 3D person wheels onto the cobbles, my smart trainer vibrates, and when I sprint to the line – 32nd, but that’s never the final score, you’ll have to…

Remember when classics specialist Julian Alaphilippe almost won the Tour de France? Tour de France specialist Tadej Pogacar went one better by winning Liège - Bastogne - Liège. The result confirmed what we’ve known for some time - that the era of the specialist is over and cycling is tilting back to the multi-talented. It wasn’t just Liège - Wout van Aert and Marianne Vos both won Gent-Wevelgem and Amstel Gold, a double which hasn’t been achieved since the 1970s. Forget the days of Chris Froome winning grand tours and only grand tours and Tom Boonen’s season being based exclusively on April. Everybody can now do everything again. 23Professional wins for Tadej Pogačar, at age 22 It has also been a spring in which we’ve been reminded that cycling is…

Rik Van Slycke, DS, Deceuninck-QS Delko’s José Díaz might have won the GC title thanks to his stage 5 win on the eight-stage race’s only mountain finish, but it was Deceuninck-Quick Step who dominated in Turkey, winning four of the seven bunch sprints through a rejuvinated Mark Cavendish. It was always the team plan to have Mark try to get his first win of the season over there. We should have been happy with one victory, but the circumstances went in another direction and he was, for us, in very good shape. He was sprinting like before, in his way, from wheel to wheel and bam, he had the little last explosion like he had a few years ago - five, six, 10 years ago. He was also surprised that…

How special does it feel to win? It feels really cool. It is a big race to win for me, and I’m still very excited by it, even if it was by a tiny amount and I didn’t have that ‘I’ve won a race’ feeling, because I didn’t get to celebrate on the line. So it feels different to the other races I’ve won, but it’s still really special. It’s your first one-day win, so does that make it even more impressive? Yes. Also just that it’s a Belgian classic on top of that. Obviously, it’s different this year with not so many fans, but it feels like bike racing in Belgium and the Netherlands is huge. It feels really cool, and people recognise you on the road and congratulate…