Tabla de contenidos para March 2021 en Procycling

Where’s home? I live in Varese in Italy, but I also consider Australia home, and I’m from Perth. For a bit I lived in Glasgow, Scotland, because my girlfriend went to uni there-I spent four months there twice. It’s probably what most cyclists ask me about: how I trained in Scotland, because it’s almost unheard of. What’s your favourite race? The Tour de Romandie or Il Lombardia, at WorldTour level. Lombardia feels like quite a local race to me because I train in this area, and I love the style of the race too-no circuit, and it’s also quite hilly. The same with Romandie: it’s at a nice time of year, the racing is fun… It’s hard, but it’s more enjoyable. It’s not like the tension of a monument or…

The Belgian classics are really close to home. They’re the roads I train on every day. No corner has any secrets any more, I know practically every hole in the road and every obstacle, so that’s a big advantage. Gent-Wevelgem is probably my favourite, because it’s not as hard as the Ronde, in climbing and hills. That’s the one where I’m at my best, and it feels like home because Wevelgem isn’t far from my parents’ place. Taking the national championships was my best experience in cycling, partly because it was close to home. My French is getting better every day. I feel really good in this team. They support me, and I try to support them. At last year’s Tour de France I tried to give everything for them,…

Year two as a pro was the difficult second album. Things started incredibly well with third place on GC at the Tour of the Med. Then I got sick at Paris-Nice. It was the strangest experience. We thought it was mononucleosis but the tests came back clear. Some kind of virus meant I had no energy for two weeks. I started back at the classics, and with Romandie started building towards Catalunya and a breakthrough result: I finished second behind Valverde on GC. It was a big result for me and the team and meant I made my way on to the long list for the Tour de France, before knee tendinitis - the only time in my career I’ve had it-kept me from taking the start in Monaco. I…

Peter Sagan is an anomaly. Not just because he’s a generational talent, but because he doesn’t seem to comfortably fit into an era as we normally see them. For all his talent and wins, has the Slovakian done enough to define a period? In 10, 20 years’ time, will the 2010s be looked at as the Peter Sagan era? As we pass into what will surely be the Van Aert-Van der Poel era, is it time to ask whether Sagan missed out on the opportunity to make an even bigger impact? Maybe, instead of the 2010s having been the Sagan era, they could be looked upon as being an interregnum between the Boonen-Cancellara years and the Van der Poel-Van Aert period. In a professional career which has already lasted more…

For one day every spring, the hill-top village of Orino, near Varese in Lombardia, is the centre of world cycling. The climb up to Orino may be less famous than the Poggio di San Remo, but it is as important to the outcome of the Trofeo Alfredo Binda as the Poggio is to Milan-San Remo. Fewer than a thousand people live here, and the main draw for the handful of tourists who visit is the square fortress of the medieval Rocca di Orino, atop the hill. But on race days, before the pandemic at least, that number swelled considerably, making it Trofeo Binda’s focal point, on a racing and on a visual level. This early season Women’s WorldTour race, set in a quiet corner of Lombardy, close to Lake Maggiore,…

Bessèges is a town that would hardly stand out at all if it weren’t for the bike race it hosts in February every year. Sat on the banks of the River Cèze in the foothills of the rugged and notoriously stormy Cévennes mountain range on the southeast flank of the Massif Central, it has the air of a little Liège. Like the Walloon city, also the host of an eponymous bike race, it was once an important industrial centre, but the loss of that heritage has scarred it visibly, eroding its vitality. The crumbling skeletons of huge factories and warehouses remain as testament to that industrial dynamism, which saw the town’s population grow fivefold during the 19th century to reach more than 11,000. It has steadily dwindled over the subsequent…

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As Iván Sosa rode up Mont Ventoux through the freezing mist and fog, his breath visible in front of him as he exhaled, his eyes directly staring ahead with his glasses tucked into his helmet, you could forgive him for wondering what he was doing in France in February. He’d normally be racing in his native Colombia, if coronavirus hadn’t called off all the South American races. The weather was so cold, heavy snowfall the night before had threatened to call off the Tour de la Provence’s showpiece stage, before organisers managed to clear the roads for the peloton to pass. With other races cancelled or suspended, the Tour de la Provence took on greater importance than usual. In previous years, it has been a relatively overlooked early season race,…

PETER SAGAN Barry Ryan caught up with the irrepressible Slovakian to find out how his relatively quiet 2020 has changed his outlook. Not EDITOR at all, he says. See page 30 STATE OF THE NATION: COLOMBIA Matt Rendell takes a deep dive into Colombian cycling for the latest in our in-depth series of features on cycling nations. See page 58. ÉTOILE DE BESSÈGES Pete Cossins was on the ground at the first stage race of 2021, to find an event that has stood the test of time, and this year saw its best ever edition. See page 68.…

Who’s Luke Plapp? He’s a 20-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, who stunned the field at the Aussie National Championships time trial, beating defending champion Luke Durbridge by 43 seconds on the 37.5km course. At the road race days later, he put in a serious attack that put Team BikeExchange’s riders in trouble, before he eventually finished 17th. Wow! Has he come from nowhere? Luke has been riding for the Australian track cycling team for the past couple of years, and should be going to the Tokyo Olympics this summer, if everything goes to plan. He also won the National Champs time trial at both junior and under-23 level, so this is just the latest step in a promising career. How has he performed on the road? He has been racing in…

A Dutch friend got wind of it. He told me there were some jerseys “near Kortrijk” and gave me a name and an address. A postal address, that is, not an email address. So I wrote the bloke a letter. I crafted that letter and then, because he didn’t craft one back, I crafted another one. Eventually he wrote that yes, there were jerseys. He didn’t state how many, but he inferred – though no more – that he might just be prepared to sell. Then I rang JJ. JJ is from Provence, and he grew up with Anquetil and Poulidor. He has a prosaic job as a financial advisor, and like me he collects old cycling jerseys. He and I agreed to fly to Brussels – he from Marseille…

A year ago, in February 2020, a tearful Jhon Anderson Rodríguez sat on his suitcase beside the check-in desks at El Dorado airport in Bogotá. The Medellín-based EPM-Scott team had travelled to the high altitude of Boyacá with seven other riders, after which the six who would ride the 2020 Tour Colombia would finally be selected. Rodríguez was a former junior national TT champion and a medal winner at the 2014 Youth Olympics. He had been Egan Bernal’s team-mate at the 2016 Tour de l’Avenir, where Bernal was fourth and Rodríguez had won a stage. But he was not selected for the 2020 Tour Colombia. The international peloton was flying into Boyacá, and Rodríguez was in the capital a few hours south, heading home with damp eyes. His frustration was…

A piercing ice-cold wind blows through the Perkpolder and in the background, cargo ships glide past over the Westerschelde. It’s the third day of 2021 and the top international cyclo-cross riders have gathered in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen. Nothing is as usual in the beautiful fortified town of Hulst. The race organisation has had to divert to the nearby polder, where they have prepared a gruelling course near the dykes, in order to adhere to the covid rules. The team buses flank both sides of the only entryway, including that of Jumbo-Visma. Next to it are an equipment truck and a minibus, both in the well known yellow-black colours. The modest trailer park is complete with a campervan that feels somewhat out of place. Judging by the animal print above the windscreen, it…

The ‘échappée royale’ is a relatively rare thing in cycling; perhaps even more so at the Étoile de Bessèges. But the 17-rider break that went up the road on stage 3 of the earlyseason French race this year was a good example of the form. To qualify as an échappée royale, a break simply needs not just good but great riders: proven race winners and team leaders. Perhaps the perfect example happened in the last mountain stage of the 1989 Tour de France to Aix-les-Bains, when the top four on GC - Laurent Fignon, Greg LeMond, Pedro Delgado and Gert-Jan Theunisse, plus seventh-placed Marino Lejarreta (who would rise to fifth, making it a ‘perfect’ break) - escaped and rode together to the finish. It was a good year for it.…

STÉPHANE GOUBERT DS, AG2R CITROËN The GP La Marseillaise was the first race of the season and was won by Aurélien Paret-Peintre in a 30-rider bunch finish. Ag2r Citroën directeur sportif Stéphane Goubert explains how they did it… We had a few climbers in the squad, and Marseille is a hilly race, so our strategy was an aggressive one. We wanted to be actors in the race, to be able to create a favourable situation. We had no leader, yet everybody was a leader. We had Ben Gastauer, Aurélien Paret-Peintre, Tony Gallopin and Lilian Calmejane up there, and each attacked in turn. At the finish, maybe Tony was the fastest of the group on paper, but it was an unusual sprint with a headwind. Aurélien’s job at that point was…

Cyclo-cross World Championships Ostend, Belgium 30 JANUARY 2021 The race organisers put on one of the most varied and visually spectacular World Championships routes ever seen in Ostend in January. There was an inland section of mud, bridges, steps and deep ruts, as with most courses. However, the riders were also taken out on to the beach for alternate sections of deep soft sand, and even a stretch along the seafront, in which some riders’ lines took them into the sea. Here, Denise Betsema of the Netherlands rides into an early lead on lap one of the women’s elite event. However, she would be overhauled in an attritional race, and fade to third behind compatriot Lucinda Brand, who won, and Annemarie Worst, who was second best. The Dutch dominated, winning…

My first event, the Vuelta Valenciana, was postponed, which was a shame because I wanted to have some racing to write about. But this is cycling and there’s always something going on. The hot topic that I’m sure will be debated for weeks or months to come is the new rules from the UCI, designed to improve safety. The banning of the ‘supertuck’ descending and forearms-on-handlebars positions are the two most discussed and controversial. (Although I do think everybody has overlooked the rules on littering, that will affect us most). You may have seen that I put out a reaction on social media that was understood to be supporting the UCI’s decision, as I applauded them for being proactive. However, I was not supporting the decision. I was appreciative of…

2010 Wins his first pro race on stage 3 of Paris-Nice in Aurillac, getting away in a sixrider break on the final climb on a stage shortened due to snow. Beats Joaquim Rodríguez and Nico Roche in the sprint. 2011 Wins the first of three Vuelta a España stages-his first in a grand tour. Four Liquigas riders made up the top five, but a mix-up in team tactics sees Sagan take the win ahead of leader Vincenzo Nibali. 2012 Aged 21, Sagan storms into the Tour de France, winning the first road stage he ever starts on stage 1 in Seraing, on a tricky uphill finish. Ends the race with three stages and a first green jersey. 2013 Wheelies over the finish in a freezing edition of Gent-Wevelgem to win…

Stage races Stages One day races TT 2NDS STAGE RACE OVERALL Tour de l’Ardèche 2011, 2012, 2013 Emakumeen Euskal Bira 2015 Women’s Tour 2016 Giro d’Italia Femminile 2018 Setmana Ciclista Valenciana 2018 STAGES Tour de l’Ardèche 2011 Tour de Free State 2012 Festival Elsy Jacobs 2013 La Route de France 2013 Auensteiner Radsporttage 2015, 2016 (2) Women’s Tour 2016 Setmana Valenciana 2017, 2018 (2), 2019 Giro Toscana 2017 Giro d’Italia Femminile 2018 (2) ONE-DAY RACES South Africa National RR Champs 2009 Tour de l’Ardèche 2011, 2012, 2013 Le Samyn des Dames 2014 Giro dell’Emilia 2015, 2016 Flèche Wallonne Féminine 2018 TIME TRIALS South African National TT Champs 2011, 2012 African Championships TT 2011 WINS STAGE RACE OVERALL Auensteiner Radsporttage 2015, 2016 Giro Toscana 2016, 2017 Emakumeen Bira 2017 STAGES Tour…

Jasper Stuyven was a teenager, only 17, when the glare of Belgian cycling fandom first fell on him. In Moscow in August 2009, he became the first rider from his country in 27 years to win the junior world road title. He returned home from Russia to Heverlee, a town in Flemish Brabant, and found a crowd of people waiting to greet him with banners, and journalists and photographers desperate for a piece of him. Six months later he’d win Paris-Roubaix juniors, and the spotlight intensified. In less than 12 months, Stuyven had become the hottest young property in cycling, touted as the most promising Belgian talent in years. Cycling, and in particular Belgian cycling where the sport is ingrained in everyday life, has a culture of crowning champions before…

PINARELLO PRINCE DISK TICR £4,000 ||| $5,480 An icon returns, as Pinarello revives the Prince for the modern age. The bike inherits a lot of what makes the top-of-the-range Dogma F12 so good, but in a slightly more relaxed and affordable shape. The F12, of course, is a multi-grand tour winning bike, so its little brother is a promising addition to Pinarello’s lineup. It was redesigned with an emphasis on aero gains and power transfer, but it is still incredibly light, yet also stiff. This model comes with Shimano Ultegra and Fulcrum Racing 500 wheels. www.pinarellostore.co.uk LOOK GEO TREKKING PEDALS £59 ||| $80 The perfect option for commuters who want to be able to cycle with and without cleats on their bike, without switching pedals. The Geo Trekking pedals from…

1.WT: One-day UCI WorldTour race / 1.Pro: Major one-day race / 1.1: Minor one-day race / 2.WT: UCI WorldTour stage race / 2.Pro: Major stage race / 2.1: Minor stage race / WWT: Women's WorldTour race ADAM BECKET STAFF WRITER WHY I LOVE… TIRRENO-ADRIATICO 10-16 March | Italy | 2.UWT The warm-up race for the Giro d’Italia was dealt a bad hand last year, running at the same time as the Tour de France in September. It’s rightfully back in its March slot, running concurrently with Paris-Nice, but with a bit more glamour and better weather than its French counterpart. Paris-Nice might be the traditionalists’ favourite, but Tirreno is less in thrall to the wind, meaning that the riders have to completely rely on their own abilities over the terrain…