Table of contents for May 2019 in Procycling

EDITOR There’s something about the Giro that really appeals to me. It’s the expert cycling fan’s grand tour of choice, a race for the connoisseur, as opposed to the mass market appeal of the Tour de France. Of course, it doesn’t offer much different to the Tour - three weeks’ worth of racing, great scenery, spectacular mountains and fascinating local culture at every stage. But it also has its own unique aesthetic - Italy in springtime can throw everything, from blue sky and sunshine to bleak snowstorms, at the riders. The yellow jersey of the Tour may be the most famous icon of cycling, but the Giro’s maglia rosa has a character all of its own. And every year I look at photographs of the race in the Dolomites and…

Jim Ratcliffe, a keen triathlete, was named Britain’s richest man by The Sunday Times last year, with personal wealth of more than £21bn. He co-founded Ineos with two partners in 1998 and through a series of mergers and acquisitions turned the firm into a multinational one, with a turnover of $90bn. He was a keen supporter of Brexit, though he moved to Monaco last year. Ratcliffe is an avid sports enthusiast. He is currently backing four-times Olympic sailing gold medallist Ben Ainslie’s 2021 America’s Cup campaign to the tune of £110m, and he is the owner of FC Lausanne. Last year, he was closelt linked to a potential purchase of Chelsea Football Club. In 2017, Ineos bought the retro motorbike clothing label Belstaff. He also founded Projekt Grenadier, an enterprise…

It was luck that I became a cyclist. We don’t have any sports teachers or cyclists in my family, but my mum saw that I had too much energy. To keep me out of trouble, she told me that while I lived with her I had to do some sport. So I did wrestling for five years until I was 11, but then I got tired of it, doing the same thing over and over. My village is a really small village in Estonia: 5,000 people. For 40km around there are no big cities. There was one small cycling club. Straight away I met with the club manager and I spoke with him for a few minutes. He told me to get a bike and to get training. The next…

My race premiere 2019 finally happened in Drenthe. It was epic! Even getting there I had quite rough luck. Delays turned to cancellations and 10 hours just sat waiting to even leave the airport. I spent the night in an airport hotel and continued travelling the next day. It took me 26 hours to get from Girona to Dwingeloo. I should have just driven! It was stormy in Holland. I’ve never ridden in such weather. It was so gusty that riders were getting blown off the roads and the main battle was sometimes to just stay upright. The bunch just popped into pieces without even trying for echelons. It was craziness, and not safe enough to race. I think the rider safety should be the priority, over the organiser and…

2013 TOUR OF BRITAIN Riding for the GB team, 21-year-old Yates surprises rivals to win his first pro race at the Tour of Britain’s hilltop finish at Haytor. Gets the better of Quintana, Dan Martin and Wiggins on the 3km climb. 2016 VILLAFRANCA-ORDIZIAKO Yates gets his first win as a WT pro at the one-day Prueba Villafranca-Ordiziako Klasika in the Basque Country. Yates attacks from a group of five on the final climb, and finishes 34 seconds clear. 2016 VUELTA A ESPAÑA 2016 Wins his first grand tour stage at the Vuelta. Follows Dani Moreno’s attack with just over 5km to go before dropping him, catching breakaway rider Matthias Frank and winning solo. PARIS-NICE 2017 Wins stage 6 at Paris-Nice. With 19km to go, near the top of the Col…

Professional cyclists are portrayed as heroes, latter-day gladiators whose toughness and exploits shame the Premier League footballers who cry over rolled ankles and feign agony at an opponent’s lightest touch. I’ve often found it difficult to buy into cycling’s iconography of suffering and heroism. Yes, cyclists push themselves to complete extreme physical feats, and the dogged determination that underpins those performances is fascinating. However, it is also true that at the top level at least, generally the athletes are very well-supported and live in a different reality from those of us in the ‘real world’. I once hypothesised that if you gave a civilian the same regular public praise, encouragement and basic aid an athlete receives, their productivity would skyrocket. Cyclists don’t have to worry about cooking for themselves at…

Thirty years ago, at Italian races, you could still come across two men who had coloured much of post-war cycling history in ‘the Boot’. Gino Bartali was a fixture at the big races like Milan-San Remo, the Giro d’Italia and the Tour of Lombardy. He never really seemed to be doing much, to the extent that I pondered what his role was. Then one day I figured it out: Bartali’s job was to be Bartali. He was invited to the race to maintain a link back to the glory days of his jousts with Fausto Coppi and Fiorenzo Magni. He didn’t have to say or do very much, but his presence alone would remind Italian cyclists, media and fans of their heritage, and emphasise why whichever race it was still…

For a moment, if you switched on Dwars door Vlaanderen, you could have believed you were watching a slapstick comedy, not a WorldTour-level bike race. At the halfway point, as the peloton was careering towards the first major climb of the day, the Kluisberg, the commissaires called the riders to a halt. There had been a crash in the women’s race ahead on the same roads, and an ambulance needed to pass through. Shortly after restarting, around 10 minutes later, the riders were stopped again. Chaos ensued. Half the peloton took advantage of the rest time, and tried to upgrade their position in the bunch, swarming like ants around spectators, cars, over pavements, to get to the front ready for the restart. Bora-Hansgrohe’s Lukas Postlberger, part of the six-rider break…

Over the winter, ‘Gouden’ Greg Van Avermaet switched from BMC bikes, which he had ridden since 2012, to Giant. The Belgian could have chosen Giant’s aerodynamic Propel or its cobble-specific Defy, but he opted for the all-round race bike, the TCR Advanced SL. It’s light enough for climbers and, evidently, robust enough for the toughest classics men. The bike majors on power transfer, so oversized chain-stays connect to a very chunky bottom bracket, dubbed the PowerCore, which connects to an equally beefy rectangular-shaped down-tube. The tapered steerer tube also keeps the front end taut over cobbles and in corners. Apart from the Shimano Dura-Ace groupset and Vittoria Corsa tyres, which Van Avermaet used at BMC, most other componentry is Giant’s own. The bars, stem, saddle, wheels and even the computer…

I’m going to get straight to the point: the 2010 Giro d’Italia nearly killed me. Well, that’s slightly dramatic perhaps, but if it’s true that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, then I should have been Mr Universe after this race. A mixture of spring allergies, inexperience, poor weather, epic stages and long transfers meant it remains my toughest grand tour to date. Most days I finished far behind the front of the race. There was one shining light however. Stage 9 to the top of Monte Zoncolan. It’s where I got my first top-10 stage finish in a grand tour. However, I still wouldn’t say that I ‘raced’ up there. Anybody who has ridden the Zoncolan will know that time and speed are practically irrelevant on a climb…

This month was not what I had planned. The plan went something like this: race Tirreno, focus on the TTT and the TT, get home, rest, then Catalunya, where I’d then move to with Chanel who’d travel down while I was racing. Best laid plans and all that, because my fractured thumb from the UAE Tour confined me to the turbo and not a lot else. Chanel and I also moved in with my parents while we were finalising the move abroad and Zwift became that friend that you love and hate - it’s there to make a mind-numbing thing less mind-numbing. Kev, my coach, was setting planned, ‘hold those numbers or grind to a halt’ ergo sessions, mixed in with just balling around Watopia to mix things up, and…

RUDI ALTIG Pro career: 1960–1971 Tour stage wins: 8 Giro stage wins: 4 Vuelta stage wins: Altig was more than a bunch sprinter: he also won classics and time trials. As well as eight Tour stage wins, he won Milan-San Remo, Flanders, the Worlds road race and the Vuelta GC. MARCEL WUST Pro career: 1988-2001 Tour stage wins: 1 Giro stage wins: 1 Vuelta stage wins: 12 Still the German record holder for Vuelta stage wins, Wust also has the rare distinction of having won a Tour de France bunch sprint while wearing the King of the Mountains jersey. OLAF LUDWIG Pro career: 1990-1996 TDF stage wins: 3 Giro stage wins: 0 Vuelta stage wins: 0 Ludwig turned pro late, having grown up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany.…

Domenico Pozzovivo has never been one to make a commotion, and so it was left to the absent Vincenzo Nibali, watching on TV, to highlight the discrepancy two weeks into last year’s Giro d’Italia. Home media coverage of the Italian contenders seemed to stop at a struggling Fabio Aru, whose ongoing travails were the focus of detailed, daily post-mortems. Pozzovivo, by contrast, was putting together the best Giro of his life to little fanfare. “Not enough is being said about our own Domenico Pozzovivo,” Nibali tweeted when his Bahrain-Merida teammate lay third overall in Sappada. But Pozzovivo scarcely generated more column inches in the final week, where he looked set for the podium until Chris Froome turned the Giro on its head on the Colle delle Finestre. He still reached…

The Spanish have their own word for a foreign tourist: guiri. You know the type. Clutching a giant paper map picked up at the tourist office with big circles drawn in blue biro, sunglasses on a cord around their neck, cargo shorts, sandals and socks, yelling loudly, usually in English. Or staring into a smartphone as if it’s about to reveal the answer to life, the universe and everything, while totally oblivious to street furniture, moving vehicles and other forms of non-artificial intelligence. Guiri tends to be a light-hearted, non-pejorative term, but it does give the sense life was better before they arrived. The city of Girona has its own special type of guiri. The cobbled streets of the Barri Vell, its old medieval city, are full of tracksuit tops…

Deceuninck started 2019 off as they spent the whole of 2018: winning one-day races. On and on they came: Omloop, Kuurne, Samyn, Strade Bianche, San Remo, E3… However, there are chinks in the armour. De Panne, Gent-Wevelgem and Dwars door Vlaanderen all slipped from their grasp and Ždenek Štybar wasn’t confident enough in his sprint in E3 not to try attacking the lead group first. (He needn’t have worried - the efforts his rivals had made chasing down the lone break by Deceuninck’s Bob Jungels had tired them out enough to make his sprint win a formality.) Deceuninck’s rivals will have been heartened that in De Panne and Gent-Wevelgem, Elia Viviani was outsprinted. Dylan Groenewegen was simply faster in De Panne, while in Gent-Wevelgem a fast, aggressive race with a…

“The direction of the team, the idea of exploring the world – it all really meshes with what I believe in.” Michael Woods, as EF Education First confirms the Canadian signed a “multi-year” contract renewal with the American squad. 2 The Tour takes a leaf out of the Vuelta's playbook and confirms that the 2020 race will visit climbs in the Alpes-Maritimes as early as day two, when the race climbs the Col de Colmiane and the Turini. “It’s a tough situation” Dimension Data 's team manager Doug Ryder on Mark Cavendish's condition, as the sprinter faced another period on the sidelines this spring. The 33-year-old hoped to return to form this year to contest the Tour de France, after two years struggling with Epstein-Barr virus. “The hair stands up…

STEPHEN WILLIAMS Last year, the 22-year-old Welsh climber won the Tour Alsace, then stage 7 of the Baby Giro on his way to fifth overall. He joined Bahrain-Merida in 2019. JASPER PHILIPSEN Belgian sprinter Philipsen’s wins as an U23 include a Baby Giro stage. He turned pro with UAE this year and won a Tour Down Under stage on his pro debut. ALEJANDRO OSORIO The Colombian won a stage of the Baby Giro, before winning the mountains jersey at the Tour de l’Avenir last year. He finished 11th at the this year’s Colombia 2.1.…

The 17th major pile-up of stage 2 spread across the road in front. As more fragile cyclists were added to the growing out-of-action list, it occurred to me that there is probably an easier way from Paris to Nice. For someone in my weight class, it’s almost impossible to describe what it’s like racing in 80km/h crosswinds on exposed French farm roads. The only analogy I have is that it almost feels like playing a video game. Maybe it’s the lack of thought that you give to each crash at the time. Carbon smashes all around you and if you make it through, there is no time to reflect on just how close you just came to serious harm. You just pedal on: you have another 10 lives. I think…

"NINO DEFILIPPIS’S GIRO BIDON BECAME MY PRIZED POSSESSION" BRUNO REVERBERI Bardiani-CSF, team owner “The one that brought tears to my eyes was Brett Lancaster winning us the prologue in Calabria in 2005. It was the first Giro of the ProTour-WorldTour era, and everyone was predicting it would be the death of the team. Keep in mind that I’d done my first Giro in 1982, and none of my riders had ever worn the maglia rosa. People had been criticising Carmine Castellano, the race director, for inviting us. They were saying that we wouldn’t be competitive, but we were. Then we won another stage with Luca Mazzanti later on, and we’ve been winning ever since – we’ve won 28 stages at the Giro d’Italia and that, if you think about it,…

Domenico Pozzovivo’s 15-year career has orbited around the Giro d’Italia. He competed in the corsa rosa in his neo-pro season and has started the race every year since 2010. Of the dozen editions he’s started, he’s finished half of them in the top 10. His best GC results are a pair of fifths, one in 2014 and the other last year. That’s more than enough to tell us he’s a superb climber. Yet for all this success, the diminutive rider rarely comes close to winning stages. Of his 36 stage top 10s, just three have been podium finishes, 12 are fourths and fifths and there are 21 places between sixth and 10th. That’s not really a surprise: his superb GC consistency means rivals rarely give him an inch on summit…

1 JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE Points: 3,797.95 Deceuninck-Quick Step, Age: 26 920 points for San Remo, Strade Bianche and Tirreno stage wins 2 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE Points: 3,437 Movistar, Age: 38 Top-10 finishes at San Remo and Catalunya count for Valverde 3 PRIMOŽ ROGLIČ Points: 3,191.28 Jumbo-Visma, Age: 29 First place at Tirreno nets Roglič 500 points and a higher ranking 4 TOM DUMOULIN Points: 3,145.43 Sunweb, Age: 28 275 points for fourth at Tirreno, plus 70 for 11th at San Remo 5 GREG VAN AVERMAET Points: 2,760.9 CCC Team, Age: 33 Top-10 placings as the classics begin earn the Belgian points 6 THIBAUT PINOT Points: 2,712 Groupama-FDJ, Age: 28 Fifth on GC at Tirreno was Pinot’s top result last month 7 ELIA VIVIANI Points: 2,574 Deceuninck-Quick Step, Age: 30 Third in De…

This spring has seen yet another period of domination by the Quick-Step team. (Go easy on me, I’m still getting used to the fact that they are actually called Deceuninck-Quick Step!) The name may be new, but the way they race is not. Almost every year the team starts the season with a bunch of wins. That list is so far headed by Julian Alaphilippe at Milan-San Remo. We all should pay some respect to them – for years they have been one of the best teams in the spring. Plus, it would be simply untrue to say that the team disappears after the classics. They still go for stage wins at the Tour de France and compete throughout the year at the highest level. It’s safe to say that…