Índice para April 2018 em Procycling

RIDER TYPE A ‘climber and all-rounder’, and the steep slopes are clearly where the young Slovenian feels most at home Who’s this? Young Slovenian climber Tadej Pogacar who, at only 19, has already caused a stir in the U23s thanks to a string of consistent results, often against more experienced riders. The teenager rides for Slovenian Conti squad Ljubljana Gusto Xaurum, a team that dates back 70 years in the capital Ljubljana. What’s he been doing? It wasn’t just Tadej’s consistency that caught our eye, but also his versatility. As a junior his talent was evident, with a win at the Giro della Lunigiana and bronze medal at the European Junior road race among his 2016 results. Yet it was last season that his potential became clearer. How so? He…

So, sixth in Paris-Nice overall. I got a big welcome home on the Sunday night after a week that had gone really well, if not flawlessly for the team and me. On the plus side I did a really good time trial, came second on the queen stage, put in a few attacks, and finished sixth overall. On the down side, we lost Tejay van Garderen to crashes and I slipped out of the top five on the last day. Plus, I could have and should have followed Simon Yates immediately when he attacked on the queen stage to La Colmiane. I thought it was too far to go and I didn’t think I’d have the legs to stay away him. I thought I would actually be trying to limit…

THE GREATEST? Is Mark Cavendish the greatest sprinter ever to grace a finishing straight? Usually such questions asked with close proximity to the subject and their exploits obscure a century and more of cycling history behind them. But with Cavendish, a talent so singular and driven, it has produced a palmarès of breadth and depth that bears consideration before he’s even retired. Some have already made up their minds. In 2012 after he won on the ChampsÉlysées for the fourth year in a row and in the rainbow jersey – which was a first – L’Equipe proclaimed that the Manx Missile was just that: the best sprinter there ever was. We look at Cavendish’s career in raw numbers and pick some close comparisons. First, we should look at the key…

THE SEASON START Never win a Classic? I could live with that,” read the Het Nieuwsblad headline above its Sep Vanmarcke interview the morning of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. The 29-year-old was pictured smiling, on the massage table. Vanmarcke, the winner of the Omloop in 2012, was a rare drop of sanguinity in a region that was feeling the first feverish flush of the year for bike racing. “Cold War” boomed the paper on the front of its 17-page race supplement, which pictured the top favourite Greg Van Avermaet’s head frozen in ice – a reference to the clear, icy weather brought in on the scything northeast wind from Russia. The rare wind would dictate the terms of the race. In the week prior to the racing, Het Nieuwsblad’s coverage ran…

FELT AR FRD £11,499 ||| $12,999 The sleek lines of Felt’s top aero offering have been honed and perfected in extensive wind tunnel testing which the company claims makes the AR FRD up to 31 per cent faster than regular round tube road frames. The California-based fiirm are between professional teams at the moment – they supplied Garmin, then Argos-Shimano, and have also been seen beneath three-time world cyclo-cross champion Wout Van Aert and the Holowesko-Citadel racing team. This model comes equipped with Zipp 404 NSW carbon fiibre wheels and a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 drivetrain. www.feltbicycles.com ENVE SES 3.4 DISC £3,150 ||| $2,900 Enve’s SES 3.4 disc brake-optimised wheels eliminate the need to choose between light weight and aerodynamic performance by offering both. These rims feature a build using Chris…

FINAL GENERAL CLASSIFICATION Belgian Classics Astana has now won in its 12-year team history The most aggressive rider in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was Lotto Soudal’s Tim Wellens. The strongest was Sep Vanmarcke, of EF-Drapac. The most diligent chasers-down of other riders’ attacks were Quick-Step’s Ždenek Štybar and Ag2r La Mondiale’s Oliver Naesen. If there was a prize for the most consistent rider across these three disciplines, a kind of Omloop version of the Tour de France’s 1980s combine jersey, it might have been given to BMC’s Greg Van Avermaet. However, this is cycling, and only one result really counts. The winner of the 2018 Omloop was Michael Valgren, whose team, Astana, sat back while the above riders attacked, chased, relented, attacked, chased and relented, then did one really important thing:…

THE ONE AND ONLY How frequently do riders win from solo breakaways in the monuments and World Championships? If you want to win Il Lombardia or the Tour of Flanders, it pays to go for a solo breakaway. Both races were won last year solo – Philippe Gilbert in Belgium and Vincenzo Nibali in Italy. In the last 10 years, both races have been dominated by solo winners, with six Ronde winners and seven Lombardia winners having done so alone. Milan-San Remo is the least likely monument to end with a solo winner – Fabian Cancellara in 2008 was the most recent, though the size of the group contesting the sprint has varied between three and 40. Likewise, the size of the break that contests the finish at Liège has…

TOUR OF THE BASQUE COUNTRY If Basque cycling has a spiritual home, it's the the wooded summit of Arrate. It is only 530m high, but the roads that lead from Eibar city to the 17th-century sanctuary at the top have become a fixture of racing in the region. It hosted the Subida a Arrate hill climb between 1941 and 1986, before being an integral part of the Euskal Bizikleta. When that race was merged into the Tour of the Basque Country in 2008, a stipulation was that Arrate featured annually. Locals loyally flock to it. This year, organisers dispense with a tradition stretching back to 1975: a closing TT, but there's no eschewing the Arrate, which it visits on stage 6. 2 – 7 April | SPA | WT…

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Belgium 24 February 2018 The peloton crosses the Flemish plains as it heads towards the Molenberg climb, 50km from the finish of the first classic of the year. The cobbled berg was the seventh of 12 climbs in the race, which would be won by Astana's Michael Valgren. Bright blue skies might have made it look like a summer's day, but the clear conditions were accompanied by bitterly freezing temperatures that barely got above zero degrees Strade Bianche Siena, Italy 3 March 2018 The pain in Romain Bardet's legs begins to bite as the Frenchman, caked in mud, forces himself up the steep climb to the Piazza del Campo in Siena, and the finish of Strade Bianche. Despite not having a physique for the Classics, Tour runner-up…

Tim Vanderjeugd is the Director of Sports Marketing at Trek Bicycle. His team manages almost 100 professional athletes and their equipment needs across multiple disciplines Jet lag brings out the best in us. Maybe it’s because jet lag is a side effect of travel, which in itself expands the mind, but I have always loved how waking up way too early tickles my mind and energy. One cold morning last November, during our annual three-day sports marketing summit at Trek’s global headquarters in Waterloo, Wisconsin, Tom Varney was wide awake at 3am contemplating how he could make the greatest kit in the women’s peloton look even better. The 2017 kit was widely regarded as one of the best in all of pro cycling, and Tom was determined to keep the…

It’s only until we’ve had limited internet access here I’m reminded how much time I spend on it - and it’s not all necessarily productive time Finally, the season is underway. I’ve been bubbling over with excitement and anticipation for a long time, so it was nice to get rid of the preseason nerves. Now that we’ve started racing, time is flying. Before I had time to realise it, I’d already done two races, a stage race in Valencia and Strade Bianche. After that, I decided to flee the bad weather in Denmark and head to Spain. It’s something I am really happy I decided to do because I’ve learnt so many things I’m about to share with you. My plan is to rent an apartment long-term in Girona before…

The last sighting of Niki Terpstra in the wild before this edition of Procycling went to press was in Le Samyn, in early March. In a way, it was peak Terpstra. The day’s temperature hovered around freezing point and a biting, grabbing wind was blowing in from the east. Terpstra, wrapped in layers and layers of clothing, was off the front. A team performance of ice-cold ruthlessness from Quick-Step Floors had seen most of the squad represented in a mid-race break – six out of 16 riders away, after they’d levered themselves clear of the peloton in crosswinds with over 100 kilometres. Sixteen became five, which became three: Terpstra, his team-mate Gilbert and Direct-Energie’s Damien Gaudin. Gaudin would have known what was coming next: an attack from a Quick-Step rider,…

You crashed in the Australian nationals and broke your collarbone, but you’re back racing at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. Was the recovery a straightforward process? We just needed to give the body some time. I lost a lot of skin, had some stitches in my knee but I was back on the home trainer after a week off. On the eve of the Classics season, how do you feel? On the ‘opening weekend’ you always feel a bit anxious about how the off season’s gone. I think it’s the first race that really matters to the Classics riders. If we’re talking proper races, this is the one you get a bit of a feeling for. There’s still Tirreno and the actual big Classics to come, so it’s an opportunity to race…

ANALYSIS • INSIGHT • DATA RACE RESULT If modern cycling’s tactical rulebook consists of a series of mathematical equations, the story of the 2018 Strade Bianche was written in free verse. Chaos reigned as cold, heavy rain washed away the ambition of many. When the peloton split into two in the first hour, those behind never got back on. Then the gluey surface of the race’s eponymous white gravel roads sucked at the riders’ wheels until only a handful remained. The riders were caked in mud thrown up from the roads. Under blue skies and sunshine, Tuscany’s gravel roads are pristine and white, but with heavy clouds and rain they turn into an impasto of sticky mud the colour of burnt sienna. Team tactics? It was barely possible to identify…

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 EDITOR WHY I LOVE… TOUR OF FLANDERS I think the Tour of Flanders is the world’s greatest bike race. It packs everything that is challenging about one-day racing - hills, cobbles and wind - into a single event, and combines that with a tough, varied parcours, fascinating local culture, history, geography and more. It’s a heady mix: on the ground there is an onslaught on the senses: the noise of the passionate local fans and the smell of the beer and hot dog fumes all mixed in with the rural backdrop of the Flemish…

WORLDS RECON TOUR OF THE ALPS The old Giro del Trentino is what the Route du Sud is to the Tour: a short cramming race held a couple of weeks before the main event. This year the race has the added interest of finishing with three laps centred on the main climb of the Innsbruck Worlds course, the 7.9km, 5.7 per cent ascent to Iglis. But the action in chocolatebox scenery will be hot from the day-one start in Trentino. The first stages ends in Folgaria, eight undulating kilometres after a 19km climb to Serrada. Stage 2 _inishes on the Alpe di Pampeago which will inevitably recall Marco Pantani’s 1998 Giro tussle with Pavel Tonkov. That should set the GC up for three tricky days that will favour attacking riders.…

18 Months since the investigation into team sky was opened Team Sky might have thought they had weathered the worst of a storm that has been squalling around their team bus for the last 18 months. Jiffy bags, TUEs, alleged tramadol usage, non-existent medical records, mistakenly ordered testosterone and salbutamol have been among the continual drip of scandals that have hit them. But then they were struck by a bolt of lightning as the Parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee released their report titled, ‘Combatting Doping in Sport’. Whatever remained of Sky’s reputation for them having a policy of ‘zero tolerance on doping’ and of ‘doing things the right way’, was further damaged by the report’s conclusion that the team “crossed the ethical line” by using permitted medical…

What’s your favourite race? The Tour of Flanders is one of the races I grew up with; Flanders is the biggest race, and the biggest Classic. I’m actually from Harelbeke and E3 Harelbeke is also a special race for me. I lived there for more than 20 years, so maybe I have to say that one. I always went to the start. The finish is also now at the football stadium in Harelbeke and I always played there. I was a goalkeeper. What’s your favourite climb? Alpe d’Huez, because I did it when I was a kid with my brother. I think he was eight, I was nine years old.We did it together with our dad, on mountain bikes so it was quite heavy. We were climbing for two hours.…

Much has been made of the shrinking of team sizes in races, in the name of safer racing and to bring more open tactics as teams will have more difficulty controlling things. Here I am, halfway through my first WorldTour race of the year, Paris-Nice, and the change is definitely noticeable. Those 22 fewer riders in the peloton feels like a big difference. Whether the race is safer I’m not so sure, but it makes it much easier to move around. The biggest impact it’s had, however, is when you lose a rider. Unfortunately my team-mate Rui Costa crashed on stage 1 and could barely pedal come stage 2, which meant we were down to six riders. It made for a lot of room in the team bus and a…

The Abu Dhabi Tour was frustrating, to say the least. It did not go to plan. We lost Mark Cavendish on stage 1, which was a big blow. I felt terrible all race, too. I think the main problem was the sudden change in temperature. I’d come from a European winter into a desert, where we saw temperatures of 35 degrees. I arrived one day before the race and it was never enough time to adapt to the heat. It has been colder than normal in Europe the last weeks and it was hotter than average in Abu Dhabi. A shift in temperature of around 20-30 degrees was enough for my body to not function at its optimal. Having said that, after seeing the decisive climb to Jebel Hafeet on…

It often feels as if the monuments are the last bastion of continuity in an ever-changing cycling world. That tradition is key to our love for the greatest one-day races, but we must never forget they are a movable feast. That’s underlined when you look at recent developments at the Tour of Flanders, and the constant tweaking of Il (or the Giro di) Lombardia. And although Paris-Roubaix is all about those ancient cobbled tracks in Northern France, the configuration of those tracks changes constantly, as I discovered while researching a book on the film by Danish director Jørgen Leth, A Sunday in Hell. As well as looking in detail at how Leth made the film, and examining the back stories of the men who shot it and the riders who…

RACE RESULT Anna van der Breggen took her debut win in the first event of the 2018 Women’s WorldTour. Rain poured almost entirely throughout the 136km race, yet though the conditions were extreme, the sludgy roads did nothing to slow Van der Breggen. Her team-mate Chantal Blaak went up the road in a trio with 75km to go, and the rest of the peloton was forced to chase, while Van der Breggen could sit in and bide her time, safe in the knowledge that if they were caught she could try something and if they weren’t she had a team-mate who could win. They were caught with 23km to go, prompting last year’s winner and runner-up Elisa Longo Borghini and Kasia Niewiadoma to attack on the steep seventh gravel sector.…

Nathan Haas came to road racing late, dominated the local scene and won a contract from a team hoping they’d found a rough diamond. Garmin-Barracuda picked up the Japan Cup-winning, former socio-legal studies student, in 2012. They had a 22-year-old who knew about crime and punishment but couldn’t take a bidon from the car without causing havoc in the caravan. His DS at the time, Allan Peiper, said that physically, he was the shape and style of the former double road world champion Paolo Bettini. But that success “depended on the size of the engine.” Six years on, that initial assessment seems borne out. Haas is still best in attritional races that end in a reduced group sprint. His stage 2 victory at the Tour of Oman this year is…

AMSTEL GOLD RACE In 2017, the Amstel Gold Race organisers took the step of removing the Cauberg from the finale of their event for the first time since 2002. In doing so they were rewarded with a far richer, more tactical race. It was won by the on-song Philippe Gilbert, which brought the Belgian’s number of victories in the race to four. Last year’s win means he has won on all three iterations of the course used since 2010. This year, Amstel’s organisers are keeping the theme of change by tweaking the finale again. While the final climb – the 35th – remains the Bemelerberg around 7km from the finish, race boss Leon van Vliet has a traced a new route along narrower roads back to the line in Berg…

I loved every minute of this year’s Strade Bianche. It felt like we were back in the time of Eddy Merckx or Bernard Hinault. It was one of those days where it all came together: a classic course and classic spring weather, with rain and cold temperatures, a high-quality list of starters with some really big names and big teams with ambitions. It turned out to be more of an old-style gladiator fight than a modern-day bike race. It was a happy end for the most daring rider, the one who wanted it the most and not the strongest team or the smartest team. This one was all guts and passion. Already, there was a hectic start with punctures and crashes adding to the toughness of the conditions. A lot…