Tabla de contenidos para November 2021 en Procycling

Cycling fans who like a bit of symmetry in race results will have been pleased by the Vuelta a España this year. When Primož Roglic won, it meant that the three grand tours of 2021 were won respectively by Egan Bernal, Tadej Pogacar and Roglic. There’s no doubt that these are the three pre-eminent grand tour riders of the age, and so it’s pleasing that each took home a winner’s jersey. But was the Vuelta a good race? As the race unfolded, I wasn’t sure. From day one, I got no sense that there was any jeopardy in the GC beyond the minor placings. Roglic won the stage 1 TT, and though he let the red jersey go for a couple of mid-race spells, his rivals couldn’t lay a glove…

17 The first ever Paris-Roubaix Femmes will include 17 cobbled sectors, including the five-star Mons-en-Pévèle and Carrefour de l’Arbre stretches, with a total of 30km of pavé before the velodrome finish. “I had a mental breakdown and it took four years to recover from that and to get integrated back into society”Alex Peters explains his absence from the sport, but says that cycling has helped his recovery. The British rider is now racing with SwiftCarbon Procycling. Bikes stolen in the Ardèche: Team BikeExchange had all of their bikes stolen ahead of stage 5 on the Tour de l’Ardèche, but recovered to the point where Teniel Campbell won her first race for the team on stage 6. The rider from Trinidad and Tobago said she would remember her win for a…

I started working with Ethan when he started working with the Academy two years ago. Straight away we could see the stuff he had done when he was a junior: he broke world records on the track. We could see pretty quickly that he had the physiological nuts and bolts to be a bloody good bike rider. When he started, he was a bit of a nightmare, a bit obsessed with the marginal gains. His energy was in the wrong places. The Academy really worked for him though. He was dealt a massive card with Tokyo being delayed, which gave him a leg up into that squad. He has matured massively in the last couple of years, and he’s a totally different person with a bright future ahead. I have…

I still haven’t pinned on a race number since the French championships at the end of June, but that hasn’t stopped me from following the cycling news closely. And what I’m seeing about the future of the Conti and ProTeams worries me a bit. Apart from Alpecin-Fenix, which is the exception that proves the rule, the teams of the second and third divisions are struggling to hold their own. The time when a team like my old one, Europcar, could compete seems a long time ago. The gap between the WorldTour teams and the rest of the peloton has widened over the past two years. Of course, at B&B Hotels p/b KTM we have ridden the last two Tours, but after almost four years of existence, it is still difficult…

There were gales of laughter in the Vuelta a España press room when Primož Roglič announced that the only word of Spanish he knew was “cerveza”, later qualified when he added, “Oh, and ‘dos más’”. There were also shakings of heads in bafflement and admiring murmurs of “cojones” when he followed Egan Bernal up the road with 60km to go on the Lagos de Covadonga stage. And appreciation as he and Enric Mas battled for victory on the steep climb to Valdepeñas de Jaén. Welcome to the 2021 Vuelta a España, where Primož Roglic held the race, the media and the cycling world at large in the palm of his hand. A lot can change in two years. When Roglic won the first of his hat trick of Vuelta titles…

They called Tim Merlier the ‘Trojan horse’. When the Belgian sprinter was wheeled through the gates and into the Alpecin-Fenix (then Corenden-Circus) stable in the middle of the 2019 season there were more than a few raised eyebrows. For starters, he was best mates with Wout van Aert, the main rival of Alpecin’s big star Mathieu van der Poel. He would share state secrets with the enemy at a time when the war between the low countries’ two cyclocross prodigies turned road phenomena was running especially hot, wouldn’t he? Then there was the fact that Merlier was a 26-year-old cyclo-cross rider with only a smattering of wins on the road, mostly in lower ranked Belgian races. But there was a plan. The owners and managers of Alpecin-Fenix – two brothers…

"The course suits me well. It’s a challenging course that goes up and down relentlessly. The year I won I broke away with Rogli?, Bernal and Nibali. Winning ahead of Nibali gave even more value to my win. As the first Frenchman to win since Jalabert in 1997, I feel a lot of pride, as it’s one of the hardest classics to win. A finish in Bergamo is more for the puncheurs than the pure climbers, so that changes the way you race. The shore of Lake Como is a lovely place to finish a race, especially with the nearby climbs like Civiglio. For me that’s the signature finish for Lombardy. My lasting memories of Lombardy are on the Ghisallo where you have the church, and bells ringing. There’s always…

Huy, July 2006. The Tour de France stage was about to roll out. A panting, sweating, stressed-out middle-aged man with the face of a venerable suntanned garden gnome was running through the cars parked ahead of the start line. Freddy Maertens had been left behind by the VIP car with which he was supposed to be travelling to the finish in Saint-Quentin and was desperate for a lift. We put Freddy in the car and drove him down the course through Belgium until he had sorted things out; after a flurry of phone calls involving his wife Carine, eventually we passed him on to another car. It felt like picking up George Best at the roadside. The episode reflected the vulnerability that had marked Maertens’s rags-to-riches-to-rags trajectory. I can’t imagine…

EDWARD PICKERING EDITOR Ed thinks stage 20 of the Vuelta was the best race of 2021. It had absolutely everything, from López’s disaster, through Bahrain’s tactics to Champoussin’s amazing win ADAM BECKET STAFF WRITER Adam wonders when it is appropriate to start thinking about next season rather than this one. The classics and tours seem mouthwatering already PATRICK FLETCHER FEATURE SEDITOR CYCLINGNEWS.COM Patrick was impressed by Van Vleuten’s comeback win at Ceratizit Challenge. It’s almost as if she has to give her rivals a head start to give them a chance.…

A six-rider break escaped in the Brussels Classic, and the composition was: two Lotto riders - Philippe Gilbert and Tosh Van der Sande - two UAE Emirates riders - Marc Hirschi and Brandon McNulty, plus Remco Evenepoel of Deceuninck-Quick Step and Aimé De Gendt of Intermarché. It was a fascinating mix. Evenepoel was the form rider, and had won Druivenkoers-Overijse just two days before. Gilbert’s experience makes him a danger in any one-day race and McNulty had also come within a few kilometres of contesting for gold at the Olympic road race just a few weeks before. And the fact that Lotto and UAE each had two riders meant that there were tactical possibilities to combat Evenepoel’s good form. However, as well as strong legs, Evenepoel had one other advantage:…

“It is a very, very nice race. You have to have a lot of skill and experience in order to go well in it. In theory, the VAM-berg is the most selective part of the race, it could be the crucial point, but already by then there are so few riders that it does not matter as much. I like all races in Belgium with these characteristics. I remember the crowds from when I won in 2019, and the determination it gave us, something we missed a lot last year.” Moved from its usual position in March due to the pandemic, the Ronde van Drenthe is one of the most prestigious one-day races on the Women’s WorldTour, due to the severity of its course. It includes cobbled sectors, which were…

Where in spring everybody is keen on showing the best of themselves, my training buddies and I wouldn’t show any signs of great morale by September after the biggest race of the year. The Tour de France was typically followed by the criteriums with late nights and lots of kilometres on the road. In spring I would mount mudguards and heavy tyres on my training bike to survive the spring showers. In contrast, by September any precipitation would be welcomed with open arms. “We’ll take another rest day. Training in this weather can’t be good for the body,” we would text our training group. Any rain in September meant no training for that day. That was a rule. We called the end of the year sluggishness Septemberitis, normally followed by…

It has been an okay year this year. I wouldn’t say I am thrilled with how it has gone, but I have had some good races. Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was good, and I was pretty excited to start the season like that. But then I had an injury that took a lot of rehab to come back from, which was very frustrating at times. I think I have got to the end of it now, which is very important going into the next month. After a while I did an MRI on my back which showed a bulging disc hitting a nerve, which was causing numbness down there. It was pretty frustrating, because I would be feeling great in a race. Hopefully I have got to the end of it,…

The cycling season is long. With this sport being so hard in both the training and racing, it’s not a surprise that as we approach the end of the season our bodies start to feel the fatigue in a more serious way, but the effect that it has on racing is interesting. Add in different contract situations, the timing of different goals, and the world championships for some, and it can feel like quite a strange peloton. For me I’ve had a couple of hard stage races that have had a big effect. The Tour de Pologne and Benelux Tour, both very hard seven-day stage races, have put me in some good form, especially for longer efforts, but they have both pushed down the heart rate I can manage on…

“The 1983 Lombardia was a special memory as it was my first win in a classic, and it was such a close finish that I did not know I had won it. I had my head down and did a throw to the line. I think in the final two or three metres I had my eyes closed with the effort, so it wasn’t until afterwards that it came through that I had beaten Greg LeMond by the tiniest of margins. For my second victory, in 1985, we were a group that arrived onto the Vigorelli track. It was a tense run into the final because a track sprint is always a bit more complicated than on the road, but in the end it went as I would have liked…

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While I was at the Tour of Britain in September, I realised just how important fans are to cycling. It’s easy, when watching on television, to dismiss the centrality of spectators, because you can still see the fantastic views and all the action. However, when you are at a race, you can really see how the energy passes from the roadside to the peloton itself, pushing people further, making the action all the more exciting. Almost every British rider I spoke to while at the Tour said how good it was to be racing in front of home fans; the presence of friends and families behind the barriers must inspire a great sense of pride in the riders lucky enough to pass near (or near enough) their home. Stage 4,…

Sometimes you really have to advocate for your own body. As sportspeople and athletes we are trained to be acutely aware of niggles that can turn into injuries, sniffles that turn into a full on head cold and hormonal or nutritional imbalances that can grind you down. But we are often also prone to suppressing the issues in order to keep pushing and to keep competing, especially after investing so much time and energy into being in shape. However, there are times we have to stand up for ourselves and make a bit of noise when something less obvious is not sitting right. I am currently experiencing what feels like making a mountain out of a molehill. In 2017 I had reconstruction on my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament - a…

Kolding is a port in south Denmark, an old medieval city on the edge of the hilly landscape of Mid Jutland and facing the Kolding Fjord. It’s centrally located in Denmark, and because of its position Kolding has long been known for its trade and export industry. Goods have moved from these Jutlandic hillsides out into the world for centuries. Kolding is a place you travel out from and return to. It’s apt, then, that this is the home of 26-year-old Kasper Asgreen, the professional cyclist and Tour of Flanders winner, but also a little unusual, historically speaking. Only five or six years ago, it wasn’t the norm for a professional Danish rider to live in Denmark. The landscape was perceived to be too flat and the weather too unstable,…

Rolf Sørensen: probably the best (Danish) cyclist in the world. Or at least the most successful, given his post-career admission of EPO usage. The blond Dane was part of the first ‘golden generation’ of Danish cyclists, which also included Bjarne Riis, Brian Holm and Jesper Skibby. His career ran from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, and he was a prolific winner of big races in his peak years in the mid-1990s. He won two monuments - the Tour of Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and it’s a measure of how difficult this career double is, that only two men since have managed it: Michele Bartoli and Philippe Gilbert. He also achieved second in Milan-San Remo, fourth in Lombardia and sixth in Paris-Roubaix and the Worlds. Sørensen also wore the yellow jersey…

“Il Lombardia was very much a home race for Papa [Felice Gimondi] as it went on the roads he trained on. Lots of fans would cheer him on all along the course, and he saw the race as a way to get close to his fans and his old classmates. He wanted to do well in front of his fans. The race meant a lot to him. “Papa won it twice – in 1966, and then in 1973 after Merckx was disqualified. In 1966, he beat Merckx and Poulidor in a sprint, where he had a very good lead out from his team-mate Vittorio Adorni. Adorni was very good tactically and managed to keep Papa ahead of Eddy into the finish line in the Como velodrome. “Seven years ago, Papa…

The Giro dell’Emilia, like most of the Italian regional classics, was an itinerant event. Its financial model was underpinned by the fact that its start and finish would be sold to the highest bidder, but that all changed in 1999. Someone decided that Bologna, the dreamy regional capital, would heretofore host the finale, and that the race would conclude with two ascents of one of Italy’s more emblematic climbs. At the 1956 Giro, the great Fiorenzo Magni had immortalised the Santuario della Madonna di San Luca as only he would or could. Having broken his collarbone, he famously attached one end of an inner tube to his handlebars. He held the other end with his teeth and then, for two stomach-churning kilometres of uphill, pulled for all he was worth.…

PRIMOŽ ROGLI¨ Before becoming one of the best GC riders in the world, Roglič was a ski jumper, with two wins in the Continental Cup, the second tier of the sport. His personal best distance was 185 metres. REMCO EVENEPOEL The prodigious Evenepoel started out as a footballer, and was in the youth academies of Anderlecht and PSV Eindhoven. He played for the Belgium U16 national team five times. MICHAEL WOODS Woods came to cycling late after beginning his sporting career as a middle distance runner. The Canadian set national junior records in the mile and 3000m races, including a sub-4 mile. CLARA HUGHES Hughes began her athletic life as a speed skater before adding cycling. She is the only person to have won multiple medals at Summer and Winter…

The last three winners at the Tour of Britain have all been riders who have either won, or have gone on to win monuments: Wout van Aert this year, Mathieu van der Poel in 2019 and Julian Alaphilippe in 2018. 2020 was cancelled because of covid, so we will simply have to speculate that it would have been won by Jasper Stuyven or Kasper Asgreen. It is obviously the kind of race that favours punchy sprinters, or climbers who have a bit of a sprint to them too, like the three mentioned above. Its position in the calendar just ahead of the Worlds also means that it attracts classics-style riders looking to build their form ahead of the road race. What this means is that the riders who win the…

There is something special about The Women’s Tour. It is one of the biggest stage races for professional women, and yet this year’s event will take place entirely within quite a small part of Britain, with stages being held from Walsall to Clactonon-Sea. It’s a high-profile race where the place with the most stage visits is Atherstone in Warwickshire. And yet the world’s best cyclists will be there, and the list of winners is a Who’s Who of the peloton. The crowds are always huge at British races, and to see big names speed through quaint English villages is always entertaining. It is only one of five stage races on the Women’s WorldTour, but in a way it is the most accessible, with race coverage on TV. The fact that…

The race of the falling leaves rolls round again, a sign that the nights are drawing in, the air is getting colder and winter is just around the corner. Lombardia is also the last race on the WorldTour this year, giving it a real feeling of finality. That’s how it should be, the last monument of the year being the last shot at glory. 2020’s edition was strange, taking place in August rather than October, so it is good to see it back in its proper position on the calendar. It will also be Dan Martin’s last race, with the Irishman retiring at the end of 2021. The winner in 2014, Martin will hope to have one last attempt at a monument victory before hanging up his bike, and it…

RACING AGAINST THE CLOCK CHRONO DES NATIONS 17 October | France | 1.1 A one-day race that consists of a single individual time trial, so no explosive finish, no certain result until the very end, but a worthy winner. The Chrono takes place in the Vendée, and since 2006 has been merged with the much more historic GP des Nations, which was the unofficial time trial world championship. This is a race desperately in need of some glamour and prestige. THE FASTEST RIDERS PARIS - TOURS ELITE 10 October | France | 1.Pro On nine separate occasions the rider winning Paris-Tours has also won the Ruban Jaune, the award for the rider recording the fastest average speed in a professional cycling race or stage longer than 200 km. Its tradition…