Procycling -julkaisun October 2016 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

For GC riders, the Critérium du Dauphiné is about tuning their form for the Tour de France. For John Degenkolb it was about proving that he was even worth taking to the Tour, coming back as he was from injuries sustained in a horrific pre-season head-on crash with a car. In the event, he took an eighth place on stage 4, rode the Tour and built up his form to score two fourth places in the last week. Pictured here ahead of the rolling stage 3 is the German's TCR Advanced SL0, Giant's lightweight all-rounder. It features a Pioneer power meter built into the left arm and spider of the crankset, with the matching head unit. There's a satellite climbing shifter mounted on what look to be custom (or de-branded)…

As the GP Ouest France, the former name for the Bretagne Classic, the parcours was based on a circuit. For 15 years since the town hosted the Worlds in 2000, the pleasing rhythm of the Côte de Lezot just after the start, the Chapelle Ste-Anne des Bois climb at the furthest reach and the Ty Marrec, 4km from the line – lapped eight times – lent itself to roadside spectatorship. Tens of thousands roll up in motor homes and make a long weekend of it. A women’s race was added in 2002. There’s an amateur race and a retro sportive now, too. But television and the UCI have forced changes at Brittany’s World-Tour race. What TV wants is a spectacle – and a telegenic one at that. On both counts,…

The gazebo behind the podium where the top three prepared for the podium protocol was bustling with activity. Behind it, fans strained like meerkats to watch through the rickety steel mesh barriers. The handful of journalists present clustered exclusively around IAM’s Oliver Naesen, who had just written the best line yet in his palmares. Katusha’s Alexander Kristoff gave flash quotes to his press officer. The Norwegian reported that the squad had used up team-mates catching the day’s eight-man break and ended up making the catch too early. Neither winner nor star, Cannondale-Drapac’s Italian 22-year-old, Alberto Bettiol, was alone with his thoughts as he was cleaned up by a soigneur. Quietly disappointed, he took solace in his youth and the promise of future opportunity. “Last year the course was harder, he…

“Annemiek was just lying there in a really strange way, I don’t know why but I thought Annemiek was dead because otherwise the guy would do something” A more disruptive, terrifying race scenario for a competitor in an event on the scale and importance of the Olympics would be difficult to concoct. You round a blind corner on a descent and see your teammate face down, motionless and crumpled in a ditch. You search for clues of life. Nothing. There’s a bystander beside her, doing nothing. You think the worst. You think they’re dead. What do you do? That single, chilling frame of the limp, unconscious Annemiek Van Vleuten filled the minds of Anna Van Der Breggen and co-pursuers Emma Johansson and Elisa Longho Borghini as they rode past the…

CLÁSICA SAN SEBASTIÁN 31-07-2016 Did you feel confident before the race? I wasn’t so sure. You don’t do so much in the five days after the Tour and the legs feel a bit different. Did Trek control the race? No. We left it to other teams. Rodríguez and Valverde were two of the big favourites so we let their teams work. On the last climb the guys tried to help me into a good position at the bottom. What happened on the final climb? The climb was about 2km, in steps. It started steep, then it got a bit less, then the last 800m were really steep. I felt really easy, and on the last 500 or 600m, where it was steep, I felt I still had something left…

1 NACER BOUHANNI The bellicose Cofidis sprinter has scored fewer wins than his French rival Bryan Coquard but the quality of his palmares is arguably higher. Though his last two seasons have been hit by crashes, injuries, a scrap in a hotel and the occasional declassification, Bouhanni has previously picked up Vuelta and Giro stage wins, along with stage wins at three WorldTour races in 2016: Paris-Nice, Catalonia and the Dauphiné. Though Cofidis is a ProConti team, Bouhanni has had a noticeable effect on their competitiveness and organisation in the sprint finishes. They’ve been riding assertively and providing him with a very effective lead-out, without the distraction of a GC contender cramping his style. 2 BRYAN COQUARD The Direct Énergie sprinter has been one of the most successful riders…

Vuelta a España Stage 5, Spain 24 August 2016 For a short time at the start in Viveiro riders may have welcomed the rain after a few scorching days in the Vuelta's first week but no doubt the novelty soon wore off. This might look like Sky's Chris Froome furiously chasing on his own with Movistar hitched on behind him but his team are just ahead, with BMC setting the pace at the front for Darwin Atapuma's red jersey. The sun emerged for the last two hours and when the peloton raced into Lugo it was Gianni Meersman (EQS) who sprinted to his second stage win of the race. Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNl-Jumbo) hit an exposed metal pole, ending his race. Image: Tim De Waele Vuelta a España Stage 6, Spain…

"I never had a cycling hero. I appreciate great exploits rather than the rider" What is the best thing about riding your bike? You can see a lot of beautiful places that you can’t see in any other way. A while ago I went to Trento for a gran fondo and I rode up Monte Bondone. I’d not been there since school and I was just taking it easy – it was simply beautiful. The views you get from cycling set it apart from every other sport. Do you ride according to power or by feel? Both. When I have rest days or easy days or long training I ride by feel. When I have work to do, by power. What is your favourite race? For me that’s an easy…

1. Kampioenschap van Vlaanderen 16 September, 1.1, Belgium 2. Memorial Marco Pantani 17 September, 1.1, Italy 3. Primus Classic Impanis -Van Petegem 17 September, 1.HC, Belgium 4. GP Industria & Commercio di Prato 18 September, 1.1, Italy 5. Eneco Tour 19-25 September, 2.UWT, Benelux 6. Giro della Toscana-Memorial Alfredo Martini 20-21 September, 2.1, Italy 7. Coppa Sabatini-Gran Premio Città di Peccioli 22 September, 1.1, Italy 8. Giro dell'Emilia 24 September, 1.HC, Italy 9. Duo Normand 25 September, 1.1, France 10. Gran Premio Bruno Beghelli 25 September, 1.HC, Italy 11. Tre Valli Varesine 27 September, 1.HC, Italy 12. Milan-Turin 28 September, 1.HC, Italy 13. Giro del Piemonte 29 September, 1.HC, Italy 15. 88°Piccolo Giro di Lombardia 2 October, 1.2U, Italy 16. Tour de l'Eurométropole 2 October, 1.1, Belgium 17. Tour of…

Fair or not, we measure Tour winners by the number of yellow jerseys they have won. When ASO summoned the 21 living Tour de France winners to the route announcement for the 2003 race and presented them one at a time to the gathered audience, they were brought out in a certain order. Chronologically, the onetime winners were lined up first, from Hugo Koblet to Marco Pantani. Then came the double winners, Bernard Thévenet and Laurent Fignon. Then Greg LeMond, at the time the only living three-time winner of the Tour, and Armstrong, then on four wins. Finally came Merckx, Hinault and Indurain. The hierarchy was clear. Bradley Wiggins is a one-time winner. He’s also a rare example of a Tour champion who never went back to try and win…

Jean-Yves Tranvaux’s day job consists of running a company which makes concrete. It’s the perfect foundation for a sideline in building the biggest bike race in Brittany. Tranvaux is the focal point of the huge collective of volunteers who make not only the Bretagne Classic but a full four days of races and events. He’s a ubiquitous presence at the start and finish area, having his picture taken with Peter Sagan at the start, glad-handing the VIPs during the race and still busying himself with admin well after the finish. He projects the kind of unflappable, slightly stern competence you’d want in a race organiser. Tranvaux is a former bike racer himself – he never rode as a pro but was a first category amateur, competing in the endless circuit…

In the narrow space between the Fortuneo team bus and mechanics’ lorry, they’ve set up two rickety trestle tables, on which a stack of plastic cups sits. Around us, the race is packing up and going home. Winner Naesen is stuck at the doping control, and the party is still going strong in isolated pockets of the VIP enclosure but nobody else has much reason to hang around, and with 10-hour-plus drives to the next stop, most of the teams are already on the road. However, in the chilly breeze of the early evening, the Fortuneo team are lingering a while. Directeur sportif Roger Tréhin, a proud Breton who lives just 20km down the road in Lorient, leans out of the mechanics’ truck and passes down bottles of champagne. A…

OLYMPIC MEN’S ROAD RACE 06-08-2016 RACERESULT None of the riders who rode up the final ascent of Vista Chinesa in the Olympic road race in the company of eventual winner Greg Van Avermaet should have been surprised by how well he was climbing. Two of them, Vincenzo Nibali and Rafał Majka, had spent significant time in breaks at the Tour de France with the Belgian, and even been outclimbed by him. On stage 5 to Le Lioran in the Massif Central, Van Avermaet dropped Majka en route to a stage win and the yellow jersey, and two days later, Van Avermaet finished one place and one minute behind Nibali on the stage over the Col d’Aspin to Lac de Payolle. If Joaquim Rodríguez had turned around at the finish…

  When the UCI launched the 2017 WorldTour calendar, which has grown from 27 to 37 events, including many new additions, the governing body’s president Brian Cookson said the top tier of racing was “enriched by the addition of some truly fantastic races across the globe.” Cookson described himself as “delighted” with the new schedule. The teams and riders were less enamoured. The new line-up stretches to 17 stage races and 20 one-day events. There are some good points: the six-week gap between the Tour Down Under and Paris-Nice has been plugged, the WorldTour’s presence extends to five new countries and good races that warranted inclusion are in – Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Strade Bianche, for example. The changes were announced in early August. The race organisers’ association, the AIOCC,…

 Meet Kilian Frankiny, a young climber from Switzerland who has just blown everyone's socks off in one of Italy's toughest races and is already being honed for the WorldTour. Tell us a little about Kilian, then. Frankiny is 22 and from Reckingen in Switzerland. Currently he’s riding for the BMC Development Team, though he’s also still studying economics. What type of rider is he? He’s a very strong climber. You don’t win a race like the Giro della Valle d’Aosta in any other way (this year the five-day race was made up of four summit finishes and a TTT). He prised the race open on stage 4 from Fénis to Clavalite, which was the queen stage and finished with 3km at 11 per cent. He won by 23 seconds over…

I’m from Okinawa, in Japan. Okinawa is made of lots of small islands. The biggest is Okinawa Island, where the capital, Naha, is. Then there’s Ishigaki, Miyako, Iriomote and lots more. I didn’t live on the main island, but on Ishigaki. Ishigaki is not very big. It’s maybe 100 or 120km around. We’re three hours by plane from Tokyo but only 200km across the sea from Taiwan. I live in Vendée, in France. It’s a nice region, with good weather and everything I need as a professional rider. In some ways it’s not so different from Ishigaki – both regions are mainly farms. Where I live, it’s farms and cows, everywhere. My father was friends with two former Japanese professionals, Shinichi and Koji Fukushima. Shinichi took part in the Tour…

The French post-Impressionist artist Paul Gauguin once said, “I love Brittany. I find there the savage, the primitive. When my clogs resound on the granite soil, I hear the muffled, dull, powerful tone that I’m after in my painting.” At Plouay’s Bretagne Classic, you’re more likely to hear the clack of cycling shoes than clogs but there’s an atmosphere at the event which remains proudly Breton. As much as at the Belgian Classics, the landscape and climate are an integral part of the race. The parcours stretches out into the almost-wild, rolling scenery of Morbihan and Finistere, a land of granite crosses, acid soil, cornfields, water towers and quiet villages, while the green countryside, and the intermittent drizzle and wind of the 2016 race, are a reminder that even in…

Is this it?” is not a promising question to be asking one another at the foot of a big race’s signature climb. The 1.2km Ty Marrec is a climb of two parts. Neither is that hard in the context of professional cycling. The race is delivered to the foot via a narrow road following the gentle River Scorff. A sharp left turn spits the riders onto a leafy, well-surfaced farm track running parallel to the busy départementale road. Strava says the gradient hits a maximum of 20 per cent but it’s for the most fleeting of moments. The quoted average is 6 per cent. Halfway up, the course kinks left onto the bland D769, which is a broad single carriageway with a crawler lane for trucks. It feels very wide,…

CANYON SPEEDMAX CF SLX 9.0 £5,199 The new Speedmax was designed with a much greater focus on the bigger triathlon market yet it remains UCI legal and it is faster than ever, saving a claimed 4W at 45kph over the previous model. The biggest change is to the geometry, with a shorter top tube and much steeper seat tube that’s far more becoming of a clock racer. Canyon teamed up with Ergon for the new grips and arm pads, and with TRP on the revised brakes, which are easier to set up, offer more feel and snap back away from the rims more urgently. The triangle at the base of the seatpost hides the clamp and also a compartment for a spare tube, lever and a CO2 cartridge, which will…

Just when you thought Tony Martin was the best time triallist in the world and Fabian Cancellara was a spent force, it turns out that actually the opposite may be the case. Though there are still some races to come, it looks like the Swiss rider, who recently stormed to victory in the Rio Olympic TT, has been the dominant time triallist of the year, with four wins. We’ve compared placings in TTs so far in 2016, looking at top five results. Tony Martin, without a TT win yet, albeit with three second places, doesn’t even crack the top 15. Tom Dumoulin, with two wins, and five second places, is right up there, while Thibaut Pinot is third, with two TT wins: at Criterium International and the French Nationals.…