ProcyclingSeptember 2020的目錄

EDITOR The evenings are drawing in, and that can make cycling fans melancholy. But not this year. Instead of considering the steady diminuendo of the last third of the cycling year as August turns to September, we’re gearing up to watch the Tour de France. By the time you read this, many races will already have been contested, and we’ll be anticipating the belated but welcome start of the world’s biggest race. Of course, we’re going to be on tenterhooks. We’re nowhere near through the covid-19 crisis, and cycling is no more immune to this fact than the rest of us. Just because the Tour is planned to start on August 29 and finish on September 20 doesn’t mean it will. The teams, organisers, fans and media each have their…

When the Tour de France begins on August 29, history will be made as the Israel Start-Up Nation team line up for stage 1 in Nice and become the first Israeli team to ever appear in the Tour, with the race’s first ever Israeli rider among them. For a team that only launched five years ago, it will be the crowning moment of a rapid elevation to the biggest stage in the sport. “The dream of competing in the Tour de France, almost unthinkable only five years ago when we launched the team, is now coming true,” said co-owner Sylvan Adams at the squad’s 2020 team presentation in December. Every team comes into cycling with big ambitions. Yet for every MTN-Qhubeka or Bora Argon, there’s an Aqua Blue Sport or…

“I think the first thing I want to say is that I didn’t see Grande Boucle as a Tour de France. It’s not.” So says Emma Pooley. The record books might show Pooley as the last winner of the women’s edition of the Tour de France, but she sees it differently. “It’s a tour in France,” she says. “It wasn’t even all in France; some of it was in Spain. When I raced it, it was never one of the grand tours for women. It was four or five stages and, yes, it had the name Grande Boucle, which is the nickname of the Tour de France, but… I never, ever claimed to have won the Tour de France. I’ve won a few tours in France, and I would have…

150 The number of Colombian athletes, including cyclists, who flew to Europe on a specially chartered flight in July. All flights from Colombia are on hold until September, but the government gave permission for the flight for international athletes. Passengers included Egan Bernal and Nairo Quintana. “We’d like to be able to give them some nice victories” Boels-Dolmans team manager Danny Stam makes it clear that he’d like to give his outgoing sponsors some wins when the season resumes, as a send off. Next season, the team will be known as SD Worx. Race over: The first UCI classified race since lockdown, Dookoča Mazowsza, was brought to a halt on its first stage. Not because of the coronavirus, but because of an incident involving a civilian motorbike and a race…

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The unique selling point of the 2020 Tour de France route is that it has no unique selling point. Back in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, the inclusion of Alpe d’Huez and its often decisive effect on the race made it a natural focal point for the race, so much so that the cycling journalist Jean-Paul Vespini could write a book called The Tour is Won on the Alpe. If Vespini were to write a follow-up based on the 2020 route, he’d be stuck for a title, because instead of one or two key battlegrounds, the race has been fragmented into many small skirmishes. It’s a Tour for the modern attention span. Riders sometimes say that they take the race day by day; this is a Tour to tackle minute…

From his Monaco apartment, Richie Porte can see the Col de la Madone. It’s a mountain he climbs almost every day in training. Porte holds the Strava record for the quickest time up the climb: 33:19, and last year, a week after the Tour de France, he completed an Everesting challenge on it, climbing the 13.1km mountain almost 11 times, in just over 14 hours. During lockdown when Porte was confined to his apartment, unable to train outside as covid-19 spread around Europe, he’d sit on his terrace and stare at the Madone, thinking about how much he took for granted before. Things such as being able to get on his bike and ride in the mountains. Porte turned 35 in January this year. He’s got a young family at…

TEAMS p83 1 SATURDAY AUGUST 29 | 156KM Nice Moyen Pays › Nice The 2020 Tour kicks off, with a stage that loops thrice into the countryside north of Nice before a likely sprint on the Promenade des Anglais For the hordes of British tourists, sunseekers and expats who have made Nice a convenient base over the years, the locals have to thank Tobias Smollett, a Scottish doctor-cum-poet whose 1766 work Travels Through France and Italy was one of the earliest ever pieces of travel literature. Smollett, who stayed several years in Nice, had a healthy contempt for the locals, but nonetheless described the city in glowing enough terms that more of his countrymen and women followed in his path and Nice became a second home for many of the…

Prior to the Lance Armstrong years, it was rare for a Tour de France to be a foregone conclusion before it even started, but that seemed the case a quarter of a century ago as Miguel Indurain prepared his attempt to join the exclusive five-times winners’ club. Before the Tour kicked off in Brittany, it was clear that only an act of God would prevent Big Mig from joining Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Jacques Anquetil, and doing so in record time with five straight wins. Even Merckx hadn’t done that. Over the previous four Julys, no one had managed to mount a consistent challenge to Indurain. For four years it had been the same picture: crushing displays in the time trials, defence in the mountains and a Banesto squad…

Do you readers remember the last day of this year’s Paris-Nice? I know in current times that seems ages ago, but it was raced in 2020. That traditional, ultimate mountain stage where there is always lively racing and you see riders scattered all over the parcours. Well, in this year’s Tour de France, ASO throws that stage in on the first Sunday of a three week grand tour. Chapeau to them. Mark your calendars. On August 29 you’ll see a great day of sports on your television. And that is not all the spectacle you’ll get to see in week one. You’ll see another two mountain top finishes in that first week, which used to be a week for the sprinters and neverwinning breakaways. Although I never raced up these…

When Tom Dumoulin came out of leftfield and finished sixth in the 2015 Vuelta a España, and actually came within two mountains of winning the thing, the first question the cycling world asked was: ‘Can he win the Tour de France?’ Dumoulin has the classic morphology of the modern Tour winner - the rouleur/time triallist who can also climb with the very best - though he’s taller than the average. Most Tour winners in the last 40 years - Bernard Hinault, Laurent Fignon, Greg LeMond, Stephen Roche, Miguel Indurain, Jan Ullrich, Bradley Wiggins, Cadel Evans, Geraint Thomas and even Chris Froome - have been this rider type, and you can romanticise the climbers as much as you like, but in cycling these days you can’t argue with the numbers. Five…

For the Tour de France and Thibaut Pinot, it was love at first sight. But it took a long time for Pinot to reciprocate. When he appeared out of the Vosges for his first attempt at La Grande Boucle in 2012, aged barely 22 and the youngest rider in the Tour, his dramatic stage win in Porrentruy captured the imagination of the race and its followers. He hared into the finish, powered by the fearlessness of youth, and his team manager Marc Madiot played the role of chief tubthumper, bashing his car door with his fist and tearing his vocal cords to shreds with the volume of his exhortations. The 2012 Tour was a controlled, regimented affair, but Pinot won his stage with passion and verve. It was another seven…

CLASSIFICATIONS KEY Following on from a poor showing at last year’s Tour, ROMAIN BARDET claims that he won’t be aiming for general classification this year, instead targeting stage wins. The Frenchman will still lead the team at the race, however, after initially aiming for the Giro d’Italia, and might end up surprising himself and bettering his 15th place in last year’s edition. This is, of course, a man who has finished on the podium twice for Ag2r, and has won them three stages across his seven Tours. With just one time trial, this could be a course that suits the Frenchman. Bardet will be supported by a strong team, with Oliver Naesen controlling things on flat stages, and climbers such as Pierre Latour, Alexis Vuillermoz and Tony Gallopin there for…