Inhaltsverzeichnis für October 2017 in Procycling

Cycling, we all know, sometimes moves a little slowly. I don’t mean the riders - nothing slow about any of the racing I’ve seen so far this year. I mean the pace of change. Of course, there are some things we could really do with sorting out as fast as possible - doping (still an issue, sadly) and better pay and conditions for women’s cycling. And rider identification numbers visible from the front, already. But other changes are more glacial. It struck me in the approach to the Vuelta that I’d quite enjoyed the races in August. Usually, I find them a little unengaging. Compared to the stage races of March, the April Classics, the Giro, summer stage races and the Tour, they’ve left me underwhelmed in previous years. However,…

Since the beginning of my career in 2008, the globalization of cycling has been a key topic for debate, especially as flyaway races such as Beijing and Qatar were developed. The vacant roadsides and lack of local talent were used as evidence of failure long before the races fell by the wayside and disappeared from the calendar completely, offering apparent proof that cycling is difficult to sustain outside its European heartland. An aspect that has seen a huge change is the nationality of teams, or rather where the sponsors originate. Look back to 2008 and there were 17 European teams out of 18 with five French, three Spanish and two Italian. In 2017 we have an equal split. Nine European and nine from elsewhere, but gone is the ‘traditional’ cycling…

You only have to ride one stage of the Tour de France with a broken pelvis to realise that it’s not the best idea. As I told you last month, I crashed in the Marseille TT at the Tour (silliest crash of my career) and was in a bit of pain in the Paris stage. I had an x-ray at the time, which didn’t show anything up. But things were getting so painful afterwards that I had another scan, and we found the broken pelvis. That was that - no Tour de l’Ain; in fact no racing at all for some time. For four weeks, I couldn’t cycle. I tried to start again last week, mid-August, but it was still too painful. Now I’m just starting to ride again, every…

Michał Kwiatkowski can still reel off his result from his first ever participation in the Tour de Pologne: 12th, when he was nine years old. Kwiatkowski was taking part in the kids’ Tour de Pologne, held parallel to the senior event, in which 500 or so 8-to-14 year olds race on the city centre circuits beloved by the race organisers as stage finishes. Stage two of the 1999 race was held in his home town of Torún. “I was really stressed about it,” Kwiatkowski says. “It was the biggest race I’d taken part in. But doing that and then being able to see the pros, stand close to them, maybe get a photo or an autograph – it was inspirational. You can’t delete those memories.” The 2014 world champion wasn’t…

Since making the much-anticipated step up to elite level in 2006 at the tender age of 19, Marianne Vos has won more than 200 races. That number is steadily ticking upwards, though not at the speed it once did. The Dutchwoman has finished all but two seasons with the most wins of anyone in the women’s peloton; her first season, where she finished second, and 2015 where she raced just two days on the road, but we’ll come to that a little bit later. Vos has experienced highs and lows. Admittedly more of the former, but that doesn’t take away from the frustration of the latter. And sometimes they come in pairs. She suffered a collarbone break in 2012 just eight weeks before the Olympics, but came through to take…

The Colorado Classic was more than a bike race. In fact, looking at the marketing material for the event, it looked like a festival of music, food and drink, with some bike racing tacked on. This isn’t at all to denigrate the men’s race, which was closelyfought, unpredictable and visually spectacular – all that a bike race should be, in fact. There was also a two-day women’s event which was more than just an add-on – it looked like a much more coherent part of the whole than, say, La Course or the Madrid Challenge. But the concept of the Velorama festival, as the event was known, was to offer a fan experience that a) offered more than pitching up at the side of the road to watch the race…

10 CAREER WINS TO DATE As a young rider, Jens Keukeleire promised much. He avoided the pressure of being a Flandrian on a home team and turned pro for Cofidis, just over the Franco-Belgian border. Within a month and 10 days of his professional debut, he’d won four races, and tough ones at that – Le Samyn, a stage and the GC of the Three Days of West Flanders and Nokere Koerse. A glittering Classics career awaited. But instead, Keukeleire settled into the steady roles of Classics domestique, stealth leader and occasional sprinter at Orica, for whom he signed in 2012. The wins came every now and again – a Vuelta stage in 2016, a stage of the Tour of Austria in 2011 – and his Classics results improved –…

The Tour de France is done. As we’d all expected, it was won by Chris Froome and Sky. But that doesn’t mean the season is over! I want to welcome you to the second half of the year, because there has been lots more racing since we left the riders in Paris. Most riders seemed to take time off after the Tour, or at least struggled to keep their good shape. That’s not surprising because the Tour is so tough and long. Remember riders are training for a long time before it for weeks and months, so they are mentally as well as physically tired. Well, that was true except for Micha? Kwiatkowski of Team Sky. He rode hard in the mountains of the Tour for Chris Froome, but he…

Another month, another Grand Tour. This time it’s the Vuelta. I’ve always liked racing in Spain. It’s more relaxed, there’s less media and the fans are great, probably the best to race in front of, actually. It’s different to a Tour crowd. In France lots of people who don’t really know cycling go and watch the Tour. Their enthusiasm’s admirable, but they don’t always know how to act. The Tour fans tend to be more partisan, cheering their favourites and booing the rivals. Look at Froome getting a lot of boos during the Tour. In Spain that doesn’t happen as much and it’s always a knowledgeable crowd which supports everyone. It’s a great atmosphere here. I’ve managed myself pretty well between the Tour and the Vuelta. I did a few…

Philippe Gilbert sits on his hotel balcony, taking in the Swiss view on a perfectly still Saturday evening. Before him, Lake Lucerne reflects the light blue sky, hills covered in fresh summer green and a gold bar of the setting sun. A white cruiser passes bearing an enormous red Swiss flag on the stern; the cruiser’s wash laps at the shore like distant applause. It’s the evening after the Tour de Suisse prologue and other Quick-Step Floors riders file down to the water for a swim before dinner. “A 6km ride and a lake swim,” Yves Lampaert, the 26-year-old Classics rider says gleefully. “The life of the pro, eh?” After a while Gilbert nods our way, and 15 minutes later he’s downstairs in his covetable Belgian national champions’ skinsuit with…

For the host country, the 1978 Vuelta a Espana had been a chastening experience. The young Breton rider Bernard Hinault had been dispatched by Renault to take part in his maiden grand tour, and such was the paucity of talent in the Spanish peloton that it had resembled a procession. Nobody doubted for one minute that Hinault was a champion in the making, but the comparative ease of his impending victory was embarrassing even for him. The experience reacquainted the hosts, for the umpteenth time, with the uncomfortable truth about their cycling. The greats Luis Ocana and José Manuel Fuente were long gone, and no champion had emerged in their wake. No champions meant no TV, no TV meant no sponsors, and no sponsors meant no prize money. The purse,…

TEAM ISSUE BIKES – TESTED BY PROCYCLING SPECIFICATION Weight: 7.1kg (57.5cm) Frame: carbon Fork: carbon Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace 9100 Crankset: Shimano Dura-Ace 9100, 50/34 Cassette: Shimano Dura-Ace 9100, 11-28 Brakes: Shimano Dura-Ace 9100 Wheels: Fulcrum Racing Zero Tyres: Vittoria Corsa G+ 25c Handlebar/stem: Most Jaguar aero 3k carbon/ MOST F-Series carbon Seatpost: Pinarello carbon aero post Saddle: FiZIk Arione carbon Price: £7,750 | $5,950 (frame only) www.pinarello.com Pinarello gave their flagship Dogma frame an update in time for Chris Froome to ride it to his fourth victory in the recent Tour de France. The Brit’s wins in 2015 and 2016 had been on the Dogma F8, a bike which counted more than 90 pro wins and was the Italian company’s most commercially successful bike in its 65-year history. It showed…

SENNE LEYSEN The Belgian beat his Lotto Soudal U23 team-mate Brent Van Moer by half a second in Anzegem in early May. Leysen, the son of Bart, a Mapei domestique in the 1990s, now has a stagiaire’s contract with the senior team KASPER ASGREEN The Dane has trounced the competition at home and abroad this season. He won the U23 national TT, the European U23 championships (held in Denmark), and then he won the opening stage of the Tour de l’Avenir MARC HIRSCHI Lives in Ittingen, outside Bern, Fabian Cancellara's home village. The former junior madison world champion is building up a stack of national titles: he already has four. He _inished third in the European U23 Road Race champs…

I’m writing from the Ladies Tour of Norway. It’s the third time I’ve raced here and I love it. It’s such a beautiful country, especially when the weather is fine like it is now; you can really admire the view of the lakes and mountains. Time here is short and I won’t have a chance to nip over to Bergen to check out the World Championships course. But I’m not too worried about that. I’ve learned from experience that you can know every metre of the course and then it actually almost becomes a disadvantage because you’re always thinking about the next corner or hill or whatever and not focusing on what’s happening around you. I’ll go to Bergen five or six days before the race. It’ll be more than…

2003 As a first year professional with FDJeux, Gilbert wins a stage of the Tour de l’Avenir by outsprinting Samuel Dumoulin on the 2km climb to Sollies- Ville; the puncheur announces himself. 2004 At the Tour Down Under, on a stage over gravel roads, Gilbert escapes a 16-man group in the final 500m to take the first of two wins in’04. Completes his maiden GT, the Giro. His best is sixth on stage 1. 2005 Gilbert wins five races including the Tour du Haut Var and the Polynormande, but arguably his best result is sixth in Milan-San Remo behind Alessandro Petacchi. 2006 Gilbert takes the biggest win of his career so far at Het Volk. He bridges up to the leading group from the peloton in the final 20km, and…

There was a change of name and branding at the BinckBank Tour this year, but the heart of the race is still the same. It’s like the Classics all rolled into one and transported to the height of summer. And it also feels like a crossroads in the season, because the riders coming out of the Tour in super form mix with riders with fresh legs who started racing again after a break. This year’s race started in great weather in north Holland, but through the week the riders had to race through a lot of rain. The worst day for the riders was the stage 2 time trial, even though it was a great day for dramatic photography. At the end of the race, we were lucky that the…

When Sean Kelly first began to earn selection for the Irish national team as an amateur in the mid-1970s, he regularly found himself competing for jerseys with his teammates. Not rainbow ones, mind, but the notoriously ill-fitting garments provided by the Irish Cycling Federation at the time. Alan McCormack, regularly Kelly’s equal in the sprint as a junior, was rather slighter of build than the robust farmer’s son from Carrick-on- Suir, but he was never guaranteed the snuggest jersey on offer. “They’d be laid out on a bed and Sean would grab my jersey, saying he liked a nice tight fit,” says McCormack. “Jesus, the medium would be like a dress on me, so I used to have to fight him to keep my small jersey. They were pure cotton…

1 NACER BOUHANNI COFIDIS Nacer Bouhanni celebrated his 27th birthday two days after the finish of the Tour de France, but the Cofidis sprinter might not have been in the mood for celebrating. The overriding impression with Bouhanni is that he is not fulfilling his potential, though this is largely for the reason that he hasn’t added to the five stages he’s won between the Giro and Vuelta with a Tour stage. Until he does, he’s likely to labour under the weight of that gap on his palmares. But perhaps the expectations are simply too high. Bouhanni is consistently the highest ProConti rider on the rolling cqranking.com points system. But it’s a system which rewards regular high results as much as brilliance, and Bouhanni is stuck – he’s scored almost…