Table of contents for June 2019 in Procycling

CAMERON SCOTT The 21-year-old won a stage at the 2.HC-ranked Tour of Qinghai Lake last year. He also rides on the track and represented Australia at the Track Worlds. PIERRE BARBIER The Frenchman rides for Conti squad Natura4Ever-Roubaix Lille Métropole and has top-10s at a host of one-day races, including the .HC ranked GP de Denain. ALBERTO DAINESE Kaden’s SEG team-mate is quick, and won seven races in 2018. The Italian’s victories include a stage at the Baby Giro, and at this spring’s Tour de Normandie.…

Enthusiastic fans are ever-present on the roadsides all over Europe, but the supporters at the Tour of the Basque Country present a strong case for being the most passionate, knowledgeable and respectful fans that we have the pleasure to race in front of. Often, the steep roads resemble the mountainsides of France in July such is the density of supporters. Every single rider is cheered, often by name, and respected for the effort they are making irrespective of their road position. These people understand just what it takes to inch your way up a 20 per cent gradient. It is one of the most enjoyable aspects of what a lot of professionals regard as the most testing week of racing on the calendar. There is no let-up in the Basque…

ENECO TOUR, 2013: 2ND Leads the race with one day to go after strong performances in the TT and La Redoute stage, but comes up short on the final day to Geraardsbergen, ceding the GC to Zdenĕk Štybar by 26 seconds. TOUR DE SUISSE 2014: 5TH Second overall after two very strong TTs and the summit finish at Verbier. But a final-day ambush by Rui Costa upends the GC and pushes Dumoulin down to fifth overall at the end of the race. ENECO TOUR 2014: 3RD Pips Cancellara to win the mid-race TT, and second in Geraardsbergen puts Dumoulin into the GC lead with two days to go. But Wellens attacks on the next stage to win; Dumoulin slips to third. TOUR DE SUISSE 2015: 3RD Bookends the race with…

1.WT: One-day UCI WorldTour race / 1.HC: Major one-day race / 1.1: Minor one-day race / 2.WT: UCI WorldTour stage race / 2.HC: Major stage race / 2.1: Minor stage race / WWT: Women's WorldTour race WHY I LOVE… OVO ENERGY WOMEN’S TOUR 10-15 June | GBr | 2.WWT Women’s cycling still doesn’t have a grand tour, but in its short six-year history the Women’s Tour has cemented its place among the sport’s most highly regarded stage races. While the Giro Rosa has the tradition and history that the Women’s Tour lacks, the British race generates more headlines. Its first edition in 2014 came with a daily television highlights show, which has continued every year since. Last year a prize pot was introduced that matched the equivalent in the men’s…

This is sport, and there is always a new kid on the block, always an exciting young talent around the corner. This tale is as old as any in sport - new heroes are always queuing up to take over from the old guard. But, my friends, it has never been more real than right now in cycling. I feel like we’re balanced between two eras, right on the tipping point. For the current heroes and legends of cycling, time is running out very, very fast. Just look at the spring classics. The old king Philippe Gilbert won Paris-Roubaix to add to all the other classics he has won in the last 10 years and more. In the finale, he was just able to keep the young German rider Nils…

Paris-Roubaix France 14 APRIL 2019 The Paris-Roubaix course snakes and weaves into the distance, across the plains of northern France. Spectators line the road for the peloton and a television helicopter hovers low overhead to capture their passage. The 2019 Hell of the North was the finale of the cobbled classics campaign, and featured 27 sectors of pavé. Such was the fierce pace at the start of the 257km race and the strength of the headwind throughout the day, that attacks were unsuccessful during the opening two hours and the peloton stayed as one. It was only when the peloton reached the first cobbled sector that a breakaway managed to go clear. While French fans were hopeful of a first home winner in 22 years, Belgian Philippe Gilbert went home…

“The result I’m most proud of is being world champion on the track, because you can call yourself world champion forever” What is your favourite race? Paris-Roubaix, because… it’s Paris-Roubaix. The history, the cobbles… it didn’t bring me a lot of luck in the last few years but it’s still the most beautiful one-day race. And the Tour of Switzerland. It’s my home race and it inspired me to become a cyclist. What is your favourite climb? Alpe d’Huez. Ten years ago I went to watch the Tour, by bike, as a fan. I was by the road when Carlos Sastre won. I was like, ‘Wow, maybe one day I’ll be able to do this myself.’ Last year at the Tour I got to the bottom [of Alpe d’Huez], I…

I have only done the Tour of California once, in 2011. I would love to go back as it’s a great race, it’s just inconveniently placed after my spring break and in prime Tour de France training time. That year, the race began at South Lake Tahoe. I was rooming with Christian Vande Velde and the weather was changeable to say the least. We were met by a blizzard. Two days later, we went training in 25 degree sunshine. By the time the race began, the snow returned and the first stage was cancelled. Wide roads mean it’s completely different to racing in Europe. There’s less of a fight for position and less stress. It’s more about getting to the front with pure horsepower. It helps explain why the race…

To win two grand tours in a calendar year, a rider first needs to win one. This is why very few riders talk about contending for two three-week stage races in a season - there’s no point in keeping one eye on a target two months down the line, when the huge obstacle of a more immediate target stands in the way. Tom Dumoulin, who is the highest-profile rider to be riding both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France this year, is stating publicly that his main aim is the Giro, whose three time trials suit him far more than the high mountain terrain that defines the Tour this year. Therefore, he’ll train primarily for the Giro, ensure that he’s in shape to win that, and only once…

PINARELLO DOGMA F10 DISK £10,250 ||| $13,300 The F10 is the family frameset Ineos use, though the team is yet to move to disc brakes. Pinarello say the F10 takes aero cues from the firm’s Bolide TT bike, including the positioning of the water bottles to ensure they catch less wind. The Onda fork on the Disk was necessarily re-engineered to be stiffer, to take through-axles and to tolerate the higher forces associated with hydraulic brakes, but otherwise it utilises the same materials and style as its rim brake equivalent. This striking red model, dubbed ‘Vulcano’, is one of seven off-the-peg colourways although designs can be customised with Pinarello’s My Way offering. www.pinarello.com SHIMANO DURA-ACE 9170 C60 DISC £2,389.98 ||| $3,120 These are Shimano’s latest deep profile race-ready disc brake…

Alexander Kristoff’s wins since he joined the WorldTour in 2010 have followed a classic bell curve. Zero in his first year. One, then two in the next seasons; seven in 2013, double figures the next year. He reached his zenith in 2015, with 20 wins. Since then, the story has been an almost identically-pitched descent through low double figures, then high single figures. To paraphrase Genesis 3:19, dust his career is, and to dust his career shall return. However, the numbers disguise a bounce-back in form. He might not be winning much in terms of quantity, but the quality of his results is high. He won his first Tour de France sprint for four years on the Champs-Élysées in 2018, which was significant. Kristoff has been outgunned by faster rivals…

So long as he’s fit and healthy, there will be talk of little else in cycling circles next March. Can Philippe Gilbert win the 2020 Milan-San Remo and so become only the fourth rider to complete the monument slam? After becoming an unlikely winner of Paris-Roubaix last month, the Walloon is tantalisingly close to replicating what only Rik Van Looy, Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck have so far been able to do and win the big five. Factor in that Gilbert also holds a world road title, it means that should he take the Classicissima, he’d go one better than De Vlaeminck and become just the third rider to win all six of the most prestigious one-day races on the cycling calendar. To say that Gilbert was unfancied for…

Robbie McEwen, Michael Matthews, Caleb Ewan, now Kaden Groves…? Yes, Australia has a long list of sprinting stars in its history, and Kaden could be among the next generation. The 20-year-old from Queensland has the natural speed, and is now making waves in Europe in his first season racing for SEG Academy. What are his results so far? Kaden won a host of UCI-ranked stage races on the Asian Tour, including at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, Tour of Fuzhou and Tour of Quanzhou Bay. Now at the highly-rated Dutch U23 team for 2019, he has been repeating his success on this side of the world. He won two stages at Les Triptyque des Monts et Châteaux in Belgium in April before another two at the Circuit des Ardennes International,…

UCI reforms are around the corner and, having read them and re-read them, I can only conclude that the road ahead for ProContinental teams looks more perilous than ever before. Under the plans, the two top performing teams from the ProContinental division – to be renamed ProTeams – will gain automatic entry to all grand tours. This means race organisers will only have discretion to invite two wildcards teams. Keep in mind that for a team like ours the Giro represents about 90 per cent of the value in terms of media coverage. To not be at the Giro would be a severe hit to the team’s viability. My team rode its first Giro in 1982. Ours is a small family business. I’ve never had the funds to compete for…

There is precious little amid the outcrops of red, oxidised rock that garland the upper reaches of Mount Teide to divert a man’s attention from this fundamental question: why do it? This is dangerous territory. The life of a professional cyclist involves embracing but also overlooking the absurdity of its central premise, namely that an adult’s livelihood is derived from prowess on what was once a childhood toy. On this February morning, the world is going about its everyday business and Tom Dumoulin is going about his, performing the Sisyphean task of riding a bicycle up and down the side of a volcano jutting from the Atlantic Ocean in preparation for the season ahead. Come the summer, Dumoulin will repeat this gesture before thousands screaming on the roadsides in France…

1st Stage, Critérium International 2014 Dutch National TT Championships 2014, 2016, 2017 Stage, Eneco Tour 2014 Stage, Tour of Alberta 2014 Stage, Vuelta al País Vasco 2015 Stage, Tour de Suisse 2015 (2) Stage, Vuelta a España 2015 (2) Stage, Giro d’Italia 2016, 2017 (2), 2018 Stage, Tour de France 2016 (2), 2018 Giro d’Italia 2017 BinckBank Tour 2017 World Time Trial Championships 2017 2nd Stage, Tour of Belgium 2013, 2014 Dutch National RR Championships 2013 Stage, Eneco Tour 2013, 2014, 2017 Eneco Tour 2013 Stage, Ruta del Sol 2014 Tour of Belgium 2014 Stage, Tour de Suisse 2014 (2) Stage, Tour de France 2014, 2016, 2018 (2) Tour of Alberta 2014 GP de Québec 2014 Stage, Vuelta a España 2015 Stage, Paris-Nice 2016 Stage, Tour de Romandie 2016 (2)…

Mathieu van der Poel’s Amstel Gold Race win was an anomaly, the sort of win that comes along once in a generation. Perhaps Van der Poel’s success in overturning a deficit that was more than a minute at 6km to go, 35 seconds at 2.5km and then leading out and launching the winning sprint can be most closely bracketed with Moreno Argentin’s upset in the 1987 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, when the world champion emerged on the Boulevard de la Sauvenière to mug Claude Criquielion and Stephen Roche. That Van der Poel’s success came in the Dutch champion’s jersey in the nation’s biggest race made it a sort of JFK – or should that now be VdP – moment. Fans will always remember where they were when comet-like Mathieu van der Poel was…

75 Career wins for Philippe Gilbert PARIS-ROUBAIX / 14.04.19 Gilbert masters the Roubaix pavé The final metres of the 2019 Paris-Roubaix might easily have been presented as the age-old tale of experience versus youth. As the old warhorse Philippe Gilbert and young upstart Nils Politt, the last men standing in a race of unrelenting attrition, warily circled the velodrome, Politt in front, Gilbert glued to his wheel, there was plenty of time for spectators to contemplate the 12 years that separated the pair in their age. When Gilbert rode his first race as a fully-fledged pro, the 2003 Trofeo Laigueglia, Politt was eight. However, the narrative did contain one small twist: the 2019 Roubaix was only Gilbert’s third try at the race, while Politt was on his fourth. But that,…