Tabla de contenidos para April 2021 en Procycling

Both editions of Strade Bianche were brilliant races, the best of the year so far. That’s reason enough to celebrate them - I could just sit back and enjoy two exciting races, though a note to the TV people: show much more of the women’s race already. They were also excellent primers on How Cycling Works. The women’s race demonstrated the nuances of teamwork and how it operates in cycling. In 2020, Trek-Segafredo worked out a very effective way of fighting against the superior strength of Anna van der Breggen; in Strade Bianche 2021, Van der Breggen’s SD Worx turned the tables right back on them, putting Chantal van den Broeck-Blaak on to Elisa Longo Borghini’s wheel, where she stayed all the way to the final climb. There, the energy…

I feel really good in this team. Last year was always going to be a weird year, but now, you get to know people a little bit better and how they work. I’m pretty happy here. You just crack on with it, there’s a really good vibe in the team, and we’ve started this year pretty well. I always quite like to ride iconic climbs, the big names. It’s pretty cool to ride on those climbs. You only normally ride Mont Ventoux in the Tour de France, so it was nice to ride it in the Tour de la Provence. I quite enjoyed it. I always enjoy the big, big climbs. There are climbs like the Angliru, Alpe d’Huez and the Stelvio, where if you can do them, it’s super…

‘10 I entered 2010 with more expectation after my results from 2009. Slipstream was always a great environment to race in, where you didn’t feel so much pressure, but I was becoming one of the leaders, or at least a rider capable of getting results. The season started pretty average. Unusually for me, I can’t remember if I had sickness, but things were a bit of a struggle. Paris-Nice was brutal, and I was improving towards País Vasco. After the Ardennes, which were another learning exercise, the team asked me to go to the Giro, to see what I could do. It was an incredibly tough edition that lives long in people’s memory; the wet strade bianche stage and the 50-plus breakaway that escaped on a stage which was longer…

Since the last Tour de France, the demands have increased. The Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum through 2020, a year I was the only black rider to start the biggest race in the world, and my media profile grew, both at home and abroad. A few years ago, I had difficulty expressing myself on the question of racism, but things have changed. The 2020 Tour allowed me to take a stand and to understand what I wanted to express to the media and the public. I realised that what I think and say carries weight. This is a 180-degree turn for me, and today I feel empowered to send whatever message I want to get across. So much the better if that can give a voice to those who…

Roubaix has a special place in my heart. When I was a little kid and I started cycling, Roubaix was one of the races I admired the most. I was watching the television like the cyclists were the heroes, because on the television it looks tough but if you see it in real life it’s even harder. I thought it was a special race and when I was a first year professional and had the opportunity to start there, it was a really special feeling. The route hasn’t changed for a lot of years. You can’t compare the cobbles with other cobbles, because in Belgium the cobbles are rough but in the north of France it’s even rougher. And also we don’t race there any other time of the year.…

I rode my bicycle from Calais to Roubaix early one morning and I saw the 1980 Paris-Roubaix, come by me with about 15 kilometres to go. I had a camera lens in a little handlebar bag and just attached it to the bike and rode from the car ferry in Calais to try and find the race. That’s the bare beginning, and I saw the race every year since. I’d been doing cycling photography for three years then. I’d seen the Tour de France three times, but never seen a one-day classic and I was attracted to doing it as part of my growing interest in the business. Every year you learn something more about the route, but in the beginning, probably for 10 years, I always made a point…

I won Paris-Roubaix on Easter Day, which was always an auspicious day for me - I’d already won two races on Easter Day. That year, the weather was terrible, it was cold and rained. I had no plan at all in the morning that I was going to win. I knew I was in good condition and that my form was good, but I wasn’t thinking of the win. In those days the race really did start in Paris, and the race split up early, with me in the fourth echelon. There was a hard climb in the last 40km, the Côte de Doullens, where Louison Bobet rode very hard. I attacked, to join Bernard Gauthier, then attacked alone with 30km to go and they never caught me. Behind me,…

Michael Mørkøv is like every other selfless domestique who suffers for the benefit of his or her appointed leader. His results rarely reflect his sacrifice, and as he points out: “It’s never me standing on top of the podium with the flowers and the prize money.” But where the Deceuninck-Quick Step rider differs from his peers is that being a good domestique on the road prepares the Dane for individual glory. Mørkøv leads a double life: he is both domestique and serial winner. As well as delivering Sam Bennett to numerous sprint wins, Mørkøv is the reigning world champion and 2019 European champion in the Madison, with Lasse Norman Hansen, and the Danes are the favourites to win the gold medal in this summer’s Tokyo Olympics. As well as being…

A new women’s Tour de France may finally be in the pipeline again, but it’s a long time since the Tour organisers ran anything of the kind. Those of us who followed cycling in the 1980s might imagine it’s not that distant, because that’s how the memory bank works, but it’s now almost 35 years since Maria Canins won her second Tour Féminin on the trot in 1986. To put that into perspective, go back another 35 years from Canins’ double, and you are into the years of peak Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali. That gives an idea of how distant is the era when the climber the Italians nicknamed ‘la mamma volante’ dominated the Tour. That nickname might seem a tad patronising today, but Canins’ career was all the…

Quinn Simmons has not learned his lesson. Last year the Trek-Segafredo rider was suspended for what his team called “conduct unbefitting a Trek athlete”. Last September, the American posted a tweet that included the word “Bye” and an emoji of a black hand waving, in a reply to a journalist’s tweet saying that supporters of Donald Trump could unfollow her. This incident was alleged to be racist, but half a year on when Simmons was asked whether he understood why he was suspended, he said: “If I’m honest, no, not really.” This is despite diversity training during the off-season. He also told Cyclingnews.com: “I don’t feel like I deserved the suspension… This is really something new that I don’t fully understand, and a lot of people don’t understand.” There was…

What happened again? Ah yeah, something about me riding into the back of a car at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. I wouldn’t necessarily say too many, but I’ve definitely made a lot of jokes about the crash I had at the opening weekend in Belgium, which resulted in a concussion and some sore muscles. It’s certainly not a funny thing, and the fact that I’ve tried to win a few laughs off the back of it doesn’t mean at all that I haven’t been taking things seriously. I’ve had numerous scans all over my body and regular testing from the team’s doctors to work out how things are, and of course I’ve been following their advice as much as possible to get me back in training as soon as possible. But…

Maybe after 15 seasons as a professional bike rider, you’d think a sense of routine would have long set in when a new year comes around, that familiarity would have overtaken the novelty and anticipation that riders at the start of their careers feel when a new season begins. There’s a comfort that comes with routine. You know what to expect and the effect of that is grounding, even when the routine of a pro athlete means travelling around the world and never staying in one place for long. The neverending cycle of racing, to off-season, back to the start of a new season, is entrenched in an athlete’s psyche. The calendar is familiar, the race programme, by now, would be fairly consistent. Even the hotels riders stay in tend…

After doing the recon ride, I understood why you should, because it is unique. It is really like nothing else we’ve done before. I’ve always watched this race; it’s one of my favourites. I watched it when we had a Swedish winner in Magnus Bäckstedt when I was young. Sitting on the sofa watching the TV, you see it’s rough and you see it’s hard but riding it is something unreal. Some of the sectors are crazy. You need pure power and you need a good day to be able to produce the power, but it’s also the technique to have the right gear and to float on the cobbles. You need a bit of practice, and you need good equipment and you need equipment testing - tyre pressure and…

We have 320 members, we have former riders and we have different nationalities. We have French people, Belgian people, from Europe but also from the United States, Australia, China, Japan, Canada… The association is worldwide. It was 2001 when I got membership, so now it is my 20 year anniversary. The first time I watched Paris-Roubaix on television, I was maybe eight years old. The first time I rode my bicycle I was maybe four years old. Now I am 56. When I was young it was better for me to ride on the cobbles. I have been living in the north of France for 30 years, I live in a flat near the Roubaix velodrome - from my balcony I can see the velodrome. I know all the cobblestones,…

Roubaix in 2004 was one of those moments that was fairly life changing for me. I remember that day vividly. Riding for a smaller team had its challenges, but I’m a firm believer that Roubaix is one direction, and there’s a lot less that can go on than in Flanders, for example. It’s one of those races where you make your own luck. In the 10 years I did it, I only got one puncture. My team-mates got me out of a lot of trouble, because it was a day that I was really nervous, and didn’t realise how much until I found out I’d forgotten my food at the beginning, so without any team-mates that would have been the end of my race. Although they finished a long way…

THE LONG WAY ROUND Procycling: How are things from the perspective of early 2021? Dion Smith: I’m in Spain, and we’ve got a couple of restrictions in terms of curfews but I can still get out and train. The first few races in Spain were postponed and it was looking a bit like last year but hopefully things will only improve. It’s a little bit up in the air but we just have to crack on and keep training. Last year, it was different. We had no idea it was going to be so bad and it all happened suddenly. We did a couple of races at the start of the year - I did the SunTour and the Cadel Evans race, then the only races I did in Europe…

SIMONE CONSONNI BEST RESULT 2020 Worlds: Team pursuit, bronze FILIPPO GANNA BEST RESULT 2018-2020 Worlds: Individual pursuit, gold ETHAN HAYTER BEST RESULT 2018 Worlds Team pursuit, gold ROGER KLUGE BEST RESULT 2018-2019 Worlds Madison, gold MICHAEL MØRKØV BEST RESULT 2020 Worlds: Madison, gold LASSE NORMAN HANSEN BEST RESULT 2020 Worlds: Madison, gold SEBASTIÁN MORA BEST RESULT 2020 Europeans: Madison, gold ELIA VIVIANI BEST RESULT 2016 Olympics: Omnium, gold MATT WALLS BEST RESULT 2020 Europeans: Omnium, gold…

Is there any such thing as a Strade Bianche specialist? Virtually all kinds of riders have won it, and though three of the last seven have been won by current or former world cyclo-cross champions, other victors have included Julian Alaphilippe, a hilly one-day race specialist, and Fabian Cancellara, who was a multiple world TT champ and cobbled classics winner. At the same time, grand tour winners have been close to winning - Egan Bernal came third this year, and Romain Bardet was second in 2018. If there is a theme to the winners, it seems to be that the best riders in the world at that time have a history of doing well. The race was a smaller affair in 2011 when Philippe Gilbert won, but that was the…

Is it too soon to start talking about other teams having a Deceuninck-Quick Step complex? The final 20km of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, normally one of the most aggressive and dynamic races on the calendar, was not much more than a 30-minute-long leadout for Deceuninck’s Davide Ballerini, who won the final sprint very easily. Apart from Gianni Moscon going away over the Muur van Geraardsbergen, Deceuninck controlled the unusually large lead group on the run-in to the finish, and nobody took the opportunity to attack. However, it’s more complicated than that. The wind, though not strong, was in the riders faces, and of the 55 or so who’d made the lead group, five were from DQS. No other team had such numbers, and UAE Emirates were also keen for a sprint,…

I have been retired as a pro for 15 months now and I still know the drill. I don’t want to be that guy, who acts like it used to be just champagne and caviar in the old days. For sure, I can also remember the more miserable days in the bunch and often they were around the week-long races in March, which saw snow cancel stages and bitterly cold weather. In all three of these races, Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Volta a Catalunya, I ask my friends who are still racing this one question: is your rain bag prepared? Some guys smile, some guys call me a dick, but the question is always important enough to extend our conversation by at least five minutes. If you’re taking part in…

Antti-Jussi is like an Ardennes classics rider, good at short punchy hills in the one-day races. He’s good at finishes from small groups. To be honest, I think he’s quite promising as a cyclist, with a lot of potential. The first two years when he started to race seriously, he was in a French amateur team, and no one was really looking after him; he was on his own. When he joined the team last year he now has a complete programme, and has training camps with his team-mates. He has progressed from when he joined up to the end of the last year. He’s under a bit of pressure because he is one of the older guys on the team, and he has to perform in order to get…

What gives you energy? We know what drains it: long travel days, for example. But if we think about what gives energy, what is it? What is it that makes you want to push the pedals? If I think about this question in the context of racing, I can answer it easily. The feeling of a ‘team mission’, ambition, the landscapes you get to experience… and the crowds. Oh, how the crowds (yes, you the fans) truly bring out the best in me, and I’m sure I speak for many other riders. I remember watching Strade Bianche before I was a pro, and one of the most compelling memories is the passion of the crowds lining the ascent of the climb into Piazza Del Campo. They form a canopy over…

GC One-day Stages 1st Women’s Tour of New Zealand, 2015 Tour de l’Ardèche, 2015 Tour of the Gila, 2017 Chrono Gatineau, 2014 Women’s Tour of New Zealand, 2015 Tour de l’Ardèche, 2015 Internationale Thüringen Rundfahrt der Frauen, 2017 Emakumeen Bira, 2019 2nd Tour de l’Ardèche, 2014 La Route de France, 2016 Tour de Feminin, 2017 Amgen Tour of California, 2018 Pan American Champs TT, 2017 US National Champs TT, 2018 Tour de l’Ardèche, 2012, 2015 Tour de Feminin, 2016, 2017 (2) La Route de France, 2016 Tour of the Gila, 2017 (3) Amgen Tour of California, 2018 Giro d’Italia Femminile, 2018 3rd Tour de l’Ardèche, 2012 US National Champs RR, 2015 Chrono de Gatineau, 2015, 2018, 2019 Race Torquay, 2020 Tour de l’Ardèche, 2012, 2014 Gracia-Orlova, 2013 Emakumeen Bira, 2019…

It was an incredible day when I finished ninth in Roubaix, one of the most beautiful days in my career, in 2019. It was the day that everything went well - I had no punctures, no problems. I had super legs, I made a good tactical choice, everything went really well and I really enjoyed it. I have a real history with Paris-Roubaix, with what happened the previous year. The race has given me a lot. It is cool that I can participate in the legend of Roubaix. The year before, my team manager said to me that Roubaix has a history, and you need to respect the history of the race. It’s important. A lot of riders have done this race before, and that’s why I rode to the…

Roubaix is an old industrial city, and like any it faces challenges. Unemployment is quite high and life isn’t always easy here. Through the 20th century, its wealth came from the wool industry and it had one of the biggest wool factories in Europe in the 1950s but it shrunk through the 1960s and 1970s and it has closed now. Roubaix reinvented itself, and La Redoute, the mail order company, was the biggest employer, but the city is in transition now to a service economy. But while it’s one of the poorest cities in France, the name is known everywhere and the race exports the name everywhere. People may not know about the city, but they know the name of the race. For the people of the Nord region, the…

Max Schachmann can’t help it if he enjoys the work. “I’m not stupid, I don’t do this in training,” he joked after sprawling onto the roadside on a hilltop in Portugal. It was at the Volta ao Algarve last spring, and his chest was still heaving from having tried to outmatch Remco Evenepoel on the Alto do Malhão, but he could already laugh at the intensity of the effort he had just summoned. Professional cycling may demand ever increasing levels of asceticism, but the German manages to retain his enthusiasm for the endeavour. In those heightened moments when the peloton’s rivets come loose, Schachmann typically wears a grimace that looks a lot like a grin. Maybe it’s both. “I like it when you don’t have to play the normal game…

GC One-day Stages 1st Coppa Sabatini, 2020 2nd Tour of Utah, 2015 Herald Sun Tour, 2019, 2020 Paris-Chauny, 2018 National Championships RR, 2016 3rd Tour of Alberta, 2015 Herald Sun Tour, 2016 Tour of Belgium, 2018 Vuelta a España, 2020 Philadephia Cycling Classic, 2014 National Championships RR, 2017 Japan Cup, 2019 Tour of Belgium, 2018 4th Tour of Alberta, 2014, 2015 Volta a Catalunya, 2017, 2019 5th Tour of Utah, 2015 Four Days of Dunkirk, 2016 Tour of Luxembourg, 2016 Volta a Catalunya, 2017 Vuelta a España, 2020 Tour of Alberta, 2015 Four Days of Dunkirk, 2016 GP Jef Scherens, 2016 Münsterland Giro, 2016…

Should women race the same distance as men? Put another way, would equalising distance validate women’s racing? Sit through the first half of a men’s race, especially a sprint stage, and the answer’s an unequivocal ‘no’, for the sake of our boredom thresholds. Flip to the women’s events, which are 50-100km shorter, and there’s no dead time. It’s foot down from the get-go, or at least that is how it looks. And according to research using elite riders, that’s exactly how it is. “My study shows that women race at a higher intensity than men,” says Dutch sports scientist Teun van Erp. “This is potentially revelatory and should guide how women train.” Van Erp spent nearly nine years at Team DSM and its various incarnations before leaving last year to…