Tabla de contenidos para November 2017 en Procycling

Chris Froome’s Vuelta win was an impressive thing. Add it to his Tour win this summer, and he’s the male rider of the year. He became the third rider after Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault to win the Tour and Vuelta in the same year, and the first to do so since the Vuelta moved to its current slot on the calendar. Sky came to the Vuelta with a formidable team, and were all but impervious to his rivals’ ambitions. Even when Froome had a mild off day at Los Machucos – the one chink in his armour in three weeks - he bounced back the next day. He won by 2:15, a smaller margin than most of his Tour wins, but he was every bit as dominant. I don’t…

IL LOMBARDIA It has everything so a complete rider wins. You need to climb, descend well and sprint. Beautiful scenery and history. Ticks every box PARIS-TOURS Its history and prestige have protected it in the WorldTour age. A typical classic, a long, long day, often with all the action in the final 10km GIRO DELL’ EMILIA One of the hardest finales in cycling. The 2km San Luca climb averages 11 per cent with some steeper sections and is tackled five times TOUR OF BRITAIN Earlier than the other races but a great event growing in stature each year. Loads of fans, stages for everybody, and popular among riders JAPAN CUP A select group of teams and a controlled race until the final 50km. It’s no exhibition! Its a testing circuit,…

After worrying that my injuries were going to keep me out of the races until next year, it seems things have gone better than expected. The team’s put me in for some Italian races - Milan-Torino, GP Beghelli and Tre Valli Varesine, and the Chrono des Herbiers. I’m also the reserve for Lombardy and Emilia, but I’m ready if the opportunity comes. I felt I was ready to race even earlier, but the team wanted me to recover properly before getting stuck in again. Training’s been going well. Sometimes the weather’s been starting to show signs of autumn, but today for example, I’ve just got back from a three-hour ride and it was 26 degrees out there, so the rides have been a pleasure. My training now is more to…

Mention northern France to a cycling fan and they’ll think immediately of Paris- Roubaix. But while the pavé of the Queen of Classics commands global attention, there are popular, historic and well-supported races below the behemoth in the Nord. The GP Fourmies is one of these and it always attracts a strong crew of the world’s sprinters and classics riders who can make the most of the fast course. This year the small photographic corps was treated to a Tour sprint rematch including Marcel Kittel, John Degenkolb, Dan McLay and Nacer Bouhanni. Bouhanni got a revenge of sorts with his victory here. Fourmies is a small town of 12,000 people and is very characteristic of places along the Franco-Belgian border: red brick houses, a small square, cafés and tabacs to…

One-day race Stage race GC Stages 1st Bretagne Classic 2016 Polynormande 2015 Belgian national road race championship 2017 2nd Schaal Sels 2015 Tour de l’Eurométropole 2016 Eneco Tour 2016 3rd Stage, Eneco Tour 2016 Stage, Four Days of Dunkirk 2017 Four Days of Dunkirk 2017 E3 Harelbeke 2017 GP Stad Zottegem 2015 4th Stage, Belgium Tour 2017 Stage, BinckBank Tour 2017 Stage, Belgium Tour 2017 Ronde van Limburg 2014 5th BinckBank Tour 2017 Druivenkoers Overijse 2015 6th Dwars door Vlaanderen 2017 Binche-Chimay-Binche 2014 Stage, BinckBank Tour 2017 Tour de Luxembourg 2015…

For 25 years, with a few exceptions, the Tour of Lombardy had rolled out of Milan, been sorted out on the climb to the Madonna del Ghisallo and concluded in the picture-postcard lakeside town of Como. Almost without exception the best man had won, but now, for the 1986 edition, race patron Vincenzo Torriani saw fit to shake it up for the second time in two seasons. In 1985 he’d got it wrong. The established Milan-Como route was reversed. There was nothing wrong with that, but the flatter terrain was nothing short of an outrage to the fans. Sean Kelly, the best rider in the world, had still won, but the race needed mountains, and so Torriani went to look for more appropriate challenges for his event. He’d been criticised…

16 CAREER WINS TO DATE Matteo Trentin is a hard rider to pigeonhole. He’s part sprinter, part classics specialist, part breakaway artist. If you had to define him, you might say he’s the archetypal Quick-Step Floors rider – without being a leader, he keeps the wins reliably ticking over, while stage victories in all three grand tours, and second place in both the Giro and Vuelta points classifications show not just consistency, but occasional brilliance. His 2015 Paris-Tours win gave him the ‘ruban jaune’ - the unofficial accolade for the fastest average speed ever in a classic. Trentin won four stages in the recent Vuelta – three bunch sprints and one from a group – a high water mark in his career. But if any bigname sprinters had been there,…

VUELTA A ESPAÑA Our 360-degree look at the last grand tour of the year, with full analysis of Chris Froome's win, a look at Alberto Contador's lap of honour, and a view from inside the wild card Manzana team. Coverage starts on page 40 GPS QUÉBEC & MONTRÉAL Procycling's Sam Dansie paid a visit to Canada for the two one-day WorldTour races to find out how this unique ecosystem of events is thriving and look behind the scenes. Sam's Race Culture report starts on page 74 INTERVIEW: OLIVER NAESEN Belgian champion Oliver Naesen has been one of the world's fastest-rising riders since his win at Plouay last year, confirmed by third place in E3 in 2017. Edward Pickering's revealing interview with Naesen is on page 82…

As well as unveiling a new kit for 2018 that looks like a cross between Astana and Team Sky’s light blue offerings, Movistar confirmed that next year it would also be launching a women’s team for the first time in its history. The Spanish squad said the new team was a signal of how strong women’s cycling is in the country, and a commitment from them to offer Spanish riders the “best conditions possible to compete in the international peloton.” The team follows in the footsteps of Astana, Orica-Scott, FDJ, Lotto Soudal and Sunweb, who all run women’s teams parallel to their men’s WorldTour squads. Movistar’s move is significant for the fact that the team is a peloton stalwart. Dating all the way back to 1980, it’s the longest-running team…

KRISTOFFER HALVORSEN The Norwegian is one of the marquee U23 riders, along with Avenir winner Egan Bernal and Baby Giro winner Pavel Sivakov, signed by Sky for 2018. Halvorsen, 21, won the 2016 U23 world championships in a bunch sprint FABIO JAKOBSEN The 21-year-old Dutch U23 road race champion won the second stage of the Tour de l’Avenir. It was his fifth UCI-ranked victory of the season, which will have satisfied his boss-to-be Patrick Lefevere at Quick-Step Floors BENJAMIN THOMAS The 21-year-old Frenchman has an impeccable track pedigree, with madison and omnium world titles. Thomas won stage 3 of the Four Days of Dunkirk and stage 1 of the Tour de Wallonie with late attacks. He joins FDJ next year…

So, stage 19 of the Vuelta and it all comes together to get my stage win. It came in a way I didn’t expect. A small group sprint is not really my speciality and there were some strong riders in the group, like Rui Costa, Bob Jungels and Jarlinson Pantano. They’ve all proved at one time or another that they can be dangerous in that kind of situation. It was a headwind in the finishing straight as well so it was good that the Bahrain-Merida guy, Iván García, started his sprint early and gave me something to aim at. Before that, we had to catch the break. I remember saying to Bob Jungels, “Do you want to ride for fifth or first?” Bob is a better time triallist than me…

At the Calar Alto Observatory, scene of the finish of stage 11 of the 2017 Vuelta a Espana, the atmosphere was bleak. Thick cloud smothered the 2,120m summit. Rain crashed down, turning the earth to mud. It was a jarring, unpleasant contrast to the first half of the race – more like Belgium in spring than Spain in late summer, as Chris Froome said. Only three days earlier, with the temperature in the mid-30s, the peloton had hugged the Costa Blanca, racing through Alicante, Benidorm and Calpe, the holiday towns’ streets lined almost cruelly with spectators who’d rushed from beach to roadside, clutching cold bottles of beer and clad in swimming trunks and bikinis. Now at Calar Alto, it was warm jackets and umbrellas as far as the eye could…

STAGE 5 Froome moves away, Contador responds with Michael Woods before attempting to go clear himself STAGE 6 In the sierras of Valencia, Contador isolates Froome from his team on the second category Puerto del Garbi STAGE 8 Contador attacks on the ‘wall’ of Alto Xorret de Cati. Froome then drops him. Contador draws equal by the summit STAGE 11 Contador attacks midway up the climb to the Calar Alto observatory, but is dropped by Nibali and Froome STAGE 12 Contador attacks on the Torca before Froome crashes twice on the descent. He gains 42 seconds at the line STAGE 14 Blasts away 3.5km from the summit of Sierra de La Pandera. Gets caught and loses a few seconds STAGE 15 A long-distance attack with Miguel Angel Lopez on Sierra…

MAKING HISTORY IN QUÉBEC The spires of the Château Frontenac house a maze of rooms, suites, conference facilities, ballrooms and museum displays. The hotel on a promontory over the Saint Lawrence River is part hospitality business, part heritage site. By North American standards, Québec City has a storied history. From salient moments like the city’s British capture in 1759 through to the 1943 summit that conceived the idea of the allied invasion of Europe – D-Day in other words – a lot has happened here. Tourists pile daily into the dark, brassy lobby of the Frontenac to soak up the atmosphere of the place where Churchill and Roosevelt discussed the course of the Second World War and changed history. More recently, Québec City and the legendary hotel were locations in…

1 PETER SAGAN BORA-HANSGROHE Few would have bet against Peter Sagan securing a record-equalling sixth green jersey at the Tour de France, and when the race got underway there was little to suggest otherwise. He had already won stage 3 on the uphill finish into Longwy in spite of his shoe unclipping in the sprint, but was controversially disqualified a day later after a crash with Mark Cavendish in Vittel. The disappointed twotime world champion left France with a clear point to prove. Stage 3 at the Tour was his seventh victory of 2017, but just over two months later he’d added another four wins to that tally. He rejigged his race programme and headed to the Tour of Poland at the end of July where he won the opening…

We saw another very strong performance by Chris Froome in the Vuelta a Espana this year. He’s obviously the best grand tour rider at the moment, because he’s won four of the last five Tours, but adding the Vuelta in the same season was another step up for him. Contrary to some other viewers I don’t find it at all boring to see him and Team Sky winning time after time with that much precision and a perfect approach. They should almost get rewarded for the most efficient way of winning a race they set their eyes on. Like we used to say in Germany, “A good horse only jumps as high as necessary.” Sky play it safe and cool, wait for their challengers to get tired or to make…

I hate the word motivation, especially when it is applied to training and racing. It’s a word that pops up quite often when we get towards the back end of the season. As a rider who has enjoyed successful campaigns right up to the end of October some years, perhaps I am an anomaly, but that term motivation is never the key behind that longevity. This might be a job but I race because I love it, and that applies whether it’s February or October. The atmosphere in races is very different at the end of the year; not nearly as cut-throat as spring. I also used to put that down to motivation but now I believe it’s due to the intensity and length of the season we now have.…

As I’m writing, it’s the day before I fly to the Worlds. It was the women’s TT yesterday and a group of riders – me included – got together in Girona to check out the form of the favourites. Call it collective homework, but it was a cool way to see who was going well and who we’ll need to watch out for in the road race. I decided to head to the Worlds as late as possible for a couple of reasons. One was to dodge Bergen’s rain for as long as possible. The other was just to stay out of the race bubble. I can feel the vibes of expectation. And while I know that home media and the Polish federation only want the best for me, it…

1 Red Jersey: Rohan Dennis 2 Red Jersey: Yves Lampaert 3 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 4 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 5 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 6 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 7 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 8 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 9 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 10 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 11 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 12 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 13 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 14 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 15 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 16 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 17 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 18 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 19 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 20 Red Jersey: Chris Froome 21 Red Jersey: Chris Froome FINAL TOP 20 GENERAL CLASSIFICATION…

Manzana Postobón’s riders are quiet on the drive to the start of stage 9 of the Vuelta a Espana in Orihuela. Ricardo Vilela looks intently at a printout of the stage profile, tracing it with his right index finger. Hernando Bohórquez, Bernardo Suaza, Sebastián Molano and Fernando Orejuela sit in the lounge area of the bus, concentrating on their phones. The silence among the riders makes the constant squeaks generated by every cabinet and seat in the bus that much louder. The bus originally belonged to Team CSC years ago and was retired from use by them before Carlos Sastre had even won the 2008 Tour de France. Since then the bus has been used by several Italian squads and Team Colombia. Manzana Postobón is renting it for the duration…

While Peter Sagan was winning multiple Tour de France stages in 2012 and 2013 and Nairo Quintana coming second overall in the Tour, another 1990 baby, Oliver Naesen, was getting up at 5am most days, driving a delivery lorry 400 kilometres, going out training in the dark and contemplating the life of an ambitious kermesse racer. “I was delivering stuff to 80 customers a day,” Naesen says. “Wake up. Work. Come home. Off with the overalls. On with the cycling shorts. Hit the road. Come back home. Eat. Sleep. Nothing in between. No rest days. No days off. “It wasn’t,” Naesen continues, “my dream life.” Naesen is a late developer, even notwithstanding the precocity of riders like Sagan and Quintana, who were already winning WorldTour races while they were still…

The top four riders in the UCI’s women's World Ranking are all Dutch. The ranking is a rolling total with points carried over each season (unlike the WorldTour, which runs from March to September each year). The country also has strength in depth – out of the top 100 riders in the World Ranking, 18 are Dutch. The next strongest nation is the USA, with 11, followed by Australia, with 10.…

SPECIFICATION Weight: 7kg (58cm) Frame: ACE Technology 01 Premium Carbon Fork: ACE Technology 01 Premium Carbon Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace 9100 Crankset: Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 52/36 Cassette: Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 11-30 Brakes: Shimano Dura-Ace SM-RT900 hydraulic disc Wheels: DT Swiss ERC Dicut 1100 35 Carbon Tyres: Vittoria Corsa 25c Handlebar/stem: 3T Ergonova Team carbon bar, BMC ICS01 intergrated design stem Seatpost: SLR01 D premium carbon 15mm offset Saddle: FiZik Antares R3 carbon Price: £10,000 | $11,999 www.bmc-switzerland.com For such a young company, Switzerland’s BMC have made a big name for themselves with professional wins coming thick and fast, many on the Team Machine. The original, dating from 2011, is the bike that Cadel Evans propelled to his Tour win in the same year, and which Philippe Gilbert rode to his 2012…