Table of contents for October 2021 in Procycling

What makes one cycling team different from another? When I look at the WorldTour and Women’s WorldTour, I never see a homogenous list of teams, whose only point of difference is how strong each outfit is. Teams have riders, but they also seem to have an ethos. The more obvious examples are EF, who have always cultivated a quirky, kooky outlook, and DQS, whose ‘Wolf Pack’ schtick seems to resonate with some fans (though not with me). On the women’s side, SD Worx are intimidating and businesslike, FDJ look a lot of fun and Movistar just look totally different from the men’s outfit. It’s all good, and I think it really adds to the sport. It’s why, when our regular contributor James Witts pitched a feature about ‘cultural architects’ in…

There are so many transfers at this time of year that it can be hard to keep track. UAE Team Emirates’ activity will be sure to attract many column inches, just like on the other side of this page, but a move that has caught my attention more than others is that of Peter Sagan. The three-time world champion will be moving to Team TotalEnergies after five years with Bora-Hansgrohe. In those five years, the Slovakian won five Tour de France stages, the green jersey twice, Paris-Roubaix, and the final one of his three world championship wins. It was a successful time at the German team, but during his time there Bora went from the Peter Sagan vehicle to genuine all-rounders, boasting a lineup that can challenge at most races.…

The problem with learning through experience is that contrary to traditional learning, first comes the test, and only after do you get the lesson. The test is where you make the mistake, and recognising it and taking steps to correct it is where the learning actually occurs, according to neuroscientists. It just sucks that you have to go through the emotions and consequences of the mistake, feel all the internal, usually melodramatic rage and shame before the benefits. After that has passed, you work to break it down into the lesson. In every race, someone is making a mistake and learning a lesson. From things like not fuelling enough and fading at the crux of the race, to starting a sprint too early and getting swamped, or hesitating and starting…

WINS Stage, Tour of Hainan 2016 Stage, Vuelta a España 2017 Hong Kong Challenge 2017 GP Industria e Artigianato - Larciano 2018 Stage, Giro d’Italia 2018 Slovenian national RR champs 2018, 2021 Stage, Tour of Austria 2018 BinckBank Tour 2018 Stage, Deutschland Tour 2018 Deutschland Tour 2018 Stage, Tour de Pologne 2019 Stage, Tour de France 2021 (2) SECONDS Slovenian national TT champs 2016, 2019 Stage, Tour de Slovénie 2018, 2021 (2) Stage, Tour of Austria 2018 Stage, Deutschland Tour 2018 (2) Stage, Volta a Catalunya 2021 Clásica San Sebastián 2021 THIRDS Tour of Hainan 2016 Slovenien national RR champs 2017, 2020 Stage, Volta a Catalunya 2018 Tour de Slovénie 2018 GP Citta di Lugano 2019 Stage, Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2020…

STAGE WINS Gracia Orlova 2004, 2012 Tour de l’Aude 2004 (2), 2005, 2007, 2009 Holland Ladies Tour 2004, 2008 Giro della Toscana 2004, 2011 Emakumeen Bira 2005 (2) Internationale Thüringen Rundfahrt 2007, 2008, 2012 (2) Giro d’Italia Femminile 2009 Tour de Feminin 2010 (5) BeNe Ladies Tour 2018 ONE-DAY WINS Primavera Rosa 2005 Tour de l’Aude 2004 Albstadt Frauen Etappenrennen 2008 (2) German national TT champs 2009, 2016, 2017 German national RR champs 2013, 2015 GC WINS Tour de Feminin 2004, 2010 Giro della Toscana 2004 Albstadt Frauen Etappenrennen 2007, 2008 Gracia Orlova 2009 Tour of Qatar 2012 Tour of California 2015 Tour of Qatar 2016…

1.WT: One-day UCI WorldTour race / 1.Pro: Major one-day race / 1.1: Minor one-day race / 2.WT: UCI WorldTour stage race / 2.Pro: Major stage race / 2.1: Minor stage race / WWT: Women's WorldTour race TOUR OF BRITAIN 5-12 Sep | Great Britain | 2.Pro We might not have the great mountain ranges of continental Europe, no Alps or Pyrenees, not even the Massif Central or the Sierra Nevada, but the landscape of Britain still provides an excellent backdrop for bike racing. Again, the UK might not have the same road racing history or pedigree as our European neighbours, but the enthusiasm for elite cycling is always clear to see whenever the professional peloton crosses the channel. The Tour of Britain punches above its weight, thanks to its position…

TOUR FÉMININ INTERNATIONAL DE L’ARDÈCHE 8-14 Sep | France | 2.1 The Tour de l’Ardèche is actually one of the hardest parcours that we do all year. The amount of climbing it has over seven days is ridiculous, to say the least. When it comes to the level of the race, it’s not the highest, so it leaves room for a bit more opportunity, but I would say the course is one of the hardest we do. It’s the heat there too, and there are long transfers. It’s really difficult at this race, you stay in one location the entire time but the transfers are any time from an hour to three hours, and some days you have three hours at both ends of the day, so there are more…

12 The number of months, at the time of going to press, that Bryan Coquard has gone without a win. The French sprinter is moving teams next season, from B&B Hotels p/b KTM to Cofidis, after four years with the Breton squad. “ The fact that TotalEnergies is not in the World Tour today is not a problem for me” Peter Sagan says that he is on a journey with his new French team, and that he hopes to take them to the top of the sport. 80% The proportion of respondents to The Cyclist’s Alliance’s annual survey who are on one-year contracts. The survey of 84 female riders also showed that 80 per cent of those asked did not use legal assistance when signing contracts. “ I will try…

What I really like about Henri is his relaxed way of doing this sport. He always keeps his feet on the ground, he is not arrogant and he works in a really good way with his team-mates, with the staff and with the coaches. That’s a big compliment to Henri. This guy is taking things step by step and not thinking too much about being the perfect rider. He wants to learn in order to go to the top in the WorldTour. Last year when he rode in the Ronde de l’Isard and the Tour de Savoie he looked good, and also at the Baby Giro, so we made contact with him. First he made the step up to the development team and then he’ll progress to the WorldTour team,…

I quite often get into discussions with older riders about the changes in professional cycling that have happened over the last years. It’s always nice to get them going on the stories about a peloton that seems a world away from the one I live in today, and it leaves a funny image in my head of a very controlled game that was only sometimes hard, with a rockstar lifestyle and a whole book of unwritten rules. However, this last week I got a small taste of all that. I’ve just finished the Tour de Pologne, a week-long race with a few of those long transition sprint stages that have become unpopular these days. In the first three days we racked up at least 650km and I must admit that…

The ronin were samurai warriors in Japan’s feudal period between the 1200s and late 1800s who were defined by their lack of fealty to a shogun. The literal translation of the two kanji that make up the word - ‘rou’ and ‘nin’ - is ‘wandering person’ but the word was used to describe a caste of masterless samurai. They were individualistic, itinerant and independent freelance warriors for hire, roaming the countryside causing trouble and disrupting the natural order of things. The ronin were no match for the armies of the dominant warlords, but they were dangerous and industrious. Sometimes an individual working cleverly could do more damage than a strong outfit of warriors. This is something of which the stronger nations in the women’s road race at the 2020 Tokyo…

AUSSIE HEROES Though consistent international success only really started in the 1970s or 1980s for Australia, their participation in international road cycling goes almost back to the beginning of the sport HUBERT OPPERMAN Career: 1921-1939 Opperman was the original Aussie pioneer to Europe, travelling to race the Tour de France for the first time in 1928 and again in 1931. He won Paris-Brest-Paris and was famous for setting cycling endurance distance records. PHIL ANDERSON Career: 1980-1994 The first Australian to wear the yellow jersey and to finish in the top 10 of the Tour de France. Anderson was an all-rounder who came fifth in the Tour and won the Dauphiné and Suisse, along with Amstel Gold and Paris-Tours. KATHY WATT Career: 1990-2008 Watt was the Olympic road race champion in…

When David Lappartient took over the Presidency of the International Cycling Union (UCI) in the autumn of 2017, he had surfed a wave both of political infighting and anti-British sentiment that secured his success and hastened the exit of predecessor Brian Cookson. In 2015, 2016 and on, into 2017, the Anglo-Saxon ‘takeover’ of cycling – Cookson as UCI president, Team Sky dominating the Tour de France, the confirmation of Yorkshire, not Flanders, Piedmont or Brittany, as a perpetual heartland of cycling – had seemed complete. In a very short space of time, though, everything changed. There was Chris Froome’s adverse analytical finding for Salbutamol, the painful Culture, Media and Sport hearings in the British parliament and the Jiffy Bag mystery, Shane Sutton’s comments on the tactical use of TUEs, Cookson’s…

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At what point does it become a problem that Dutch riders are dominating the Women’s WorldTour? There have been a dozen events in 2021 up to the end of the Tour of Norway, and counting one-day races and stage race GCs, Dutch riders have won 10 of those. The only exceptions so far have been Italian Elisa Longo Borghini’s win at Trofeo Binda and Australian Grace Brown winning De Panne. Chantal van den Broek-Blaak, Marianne Vos, Annemiek van Vleuten, Anna van der Breggen and Demi Vollering have shared all the other race titles between them, though the individual stages in the multi-day races have been more cosmopolitan: a mix of nationalities took stages in Burgos and in Norway. The Dutch dominance stretches back, however. Six out of seven Tours of…

The serene progress with which Deceuninck-Quick Step’s Belgian rider Remco Evenepoel sailed through his first months and year as a professional was rudely interrupted by his crash at Il Lombardia in 2020, in which he sustained serious injuries including a broken pelvis. The comeback was delayed, painful and prolonged, and when he faltered badly at the 2021 Giro d’Italia, fans may have dared to speculate if he would ever be the same again. However, he bounced back from his Giro disappointment and June’s Tour of Belgium showed him at something like his best, for his sixth career GC win. And if Belgium was impressive, the recent Tour of Denmark was vintage Evenepoel. On stage 3 he crashed, remounted and attacked, and nobody could live with him, to the point that…

Six weeks. That’s how long it took me to resume training after starting my break on the night of the French Champs. Six weeks is a long time but it was necessary to regain the desire to compete in my last pro races. Between the unfavourable weather and my personal Tour de France in July to spend time with family and friends, I felt the time was not right to force things. I had to wait until I was mentally ready to resume training and to know whether I was still capable of being a pro a few more months. I had a frank discussion with my managers about the end of the season. I was honest that either I wouldn’t be able to reconnect and I’d stop, or I’d…

Breaks have changed somewhat at races like the Tour de France, and so have the riders who are getting into them. Trek-Segafredo’s Bauke Mollema is perhaps the new archetype - the Dutchman achieved his second career stage win at this summer’s race, in his second life as an all-rounder. Formerly a GC specialist, Mollema is now a bit of everything - sometimes a GC rider, sometimes a stage hunter and sometimes a one-day racer, with big successes in each field. He’s a monument winner, following his victory in the 2019 edition of Il Lombardia, a grand tour podium finisher and now a Tour stage break specialist. Mollema’s win in Quillan in stage THE BIG INTERVIEW 14 of this year’s Tour was his second at the race, and confirmed his reputation…

The Basque Country is Spain’s cycling heartland. Girona and Mallorca might have the expat throng of tourists and pros, the Sierra Nevada high altitude training, but Euskadi is the soul, with fabulous riders and passionate fans. I’ve visited the region many times to ride and for the food and culture but never covered the Donostia Klasikoa, so planning spots to shoot was going to be key. The wonderful maze of tiny roads and numerous sharp climbs are ready to catch out the unprepared. Composition, light and all that wouldn’t matter a jot if I didn’t get there. My plan, based on some knowledge, maps and the parcours was reinforced a little by a quick chat with a local friend of a friend who’s chased the race before. As a result,…

After Lizzie Deignan was outwitted By Elise Chabbey in a two-up sprint on stage 1 of the Tour de Suisse, her Trek-Segafredo team began the second stage on the back foot. But the team’s performance that day around Frauenfeld was proof, if it were needed, that victories owe as much or more to tactics and well executed plans as they do to power, weight and aerodynamics. Picking up bonus seconds and denying Canyon-SRAM’s Chabbey the same, the team propelled the Brit to overall victory. “This is what I like because the strongest rider does not always win. You have to be smart, says Trek-Segafredo’s road captain Trixi Worrack. “It was me and Audrey [Cordon-Ragot] who did a lot of work, and Lucinda [Brand] and Lizzie sprinted. When Audrey and I…

Adversity can be a better stimulus than the good times. EF-Nippo’s Mitch Docker recalls when the 2019 Vuelta a España went badly wrong for the team on stage 5, and how they turned their race around. “We had a big crash and lost Rigo Urán and Hugh Carthy. Tejay van Garderen pulled out the next day. We’d lost our GC men, it was a disaster. But I thought, ‘It’s time to step up. These boys need firing up and we need to think about our next goal.’ “I told Sergio Higuita to follow Lawson Craddock and Dani Martínez to follow me and Logan Owen. From that moment we became a five-man unit and made that Vuelta happen. Sergio won stage 18.” Docker had to be positive and motivating – in…

TOUR DE FRANCE STAGE DOMINANCE We all know that Mark Cavendish equalled Eddy Merckx’s all-time record of stage wins at this year’s Tour de France. What needs to be appreciated, however, is just how far ahead the Manxman is ahead of all other active riders with his 34 wins. However, if Tadej Pogacar keeps up his rate of winning three stages every season, we might see someone new at the top. 12 PETER SAGAN 2ND 22, 3RD 13 34 MARK CAVENDISH 2ND 3, 3RD 5 11 ANDRÉ GREIPEL 2ND 8, 3RD 6 UNSUCCESSFUL TEAMS The most successful teams in cycling are pretty obvious, with Deceuninck-Quick Step far ahead of the field with their 48 victories this season. Other teams, however, have struggled. DSM, Qhubeka NextHash and Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert Matériaux have got…

UCI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS ITT 20 Sep | Belgium | CM A real power course is on offer to the rouleurs at this year’s World Championships in Flanders, heading inland from Knokke-Heist to Bruges. It is a race that has been dominated by the Dutch in recent years, with just three medals going to non-Netherlands riders since 2017, out of 12. It will be Anna van der Breggen’s final chance to win a second world title, with her retirement coming up quickly, and she will be challenged, as always, by the new Olympic champion Annemiek van Vleuten. Wind could be a big factor on the largely flat course, with the organisers noting that there are trees that grow diagonally in the region after being knocked sideways by the wind. No echelons…

NICHE ITALIAN CYCLING GIRO DI SICILIA - TOUR OF SICILY 28 Sep-1 Oct | Italy | ME 2.1 The Giro di Sicilia dates back to 2019, or 1907, depending on how you define the race. This will be the 25th edition of a stage race in Sicily which was revived two years ago by RCS. Sicily is a fascinating arena for bike racing, as is displayed every time the Giro d’Italia visits the volcanic island. It being a 2.1 race, it might not attract the top teams, but it should still be a fascinating watch, as Italian ProTour teams scrap it out. LATE SEASON WALLONIAN RACING GRAND PRIX DE WALLONIE 15 Sep | Belgium | 1.Pro The Grand Prix de Wallonie is a late-season cousin of the Ardennes classics. Held…

In 2008 the Dutch national coach had trouble finding five guys who were willing to do the Olympic Games. The road race at the Beijing Games was held the same week as the lucrative post-Tour de France criteriums. You would race for start money every night, entertaining the public. When you went to Beijng you would miss out on the extra money, while at the Olympics there was nothing to earn but respect. We as a team ended up dragging Niki Terpstra, who was doing the team pursuit back then, out of the Beijing velodrome to help us climbers in the first 150 kilometres of the race. I didn’t get much of a result if I remember rightly but that wasn’t the most important thing anyway. What was important was…