The third pick of the year is a place and a day where many stories came together. Stage 11 of the Tour de France was a breathless watch and for that alone it was a thrill and memorable.
In a race where the big names and teams often dominate, it also gave an underdog story with collarbone calcification and depicted the World Tour promotion-relegation battle too.
The second pick of the season is the Giro d’Italia’s penultimate stage on the Colle delle Finestre.
Five highlights from the season. First up is Milan-Sanremo, the fever dream of a Cipressa attack happened and the final half hour of the race felt like a trance.
The 2026 Giro d’Italia route has been unveiled. Here’s the stage by stage look at the course.
Gerry Ryan has long been a benefactor of Australian sport and likes to joke he’s busy spending his children’s inheritance. Sponsoring the Jayco team since its inception in 2012 has cost him tens of millions of dollars. It might be fun but owning a pro cycling team is not lucrative.
So the arrival of Never Say Never and Stoneweg as partners to take over the Israel-Premiertech team looks unusual. They’re financial investors but how do they plan on getting a return? Maybe they don’t and it’s all for fun but that still makes it an interesting project as a World Tour team because if they don’t have pressing commercial imperative there’s space for rebranding and new ways to promote a team.
A look at how the ten riders to watch for 2025 fared, both for their riding and where they stood in relation to the predictions and expectations set in January.
2024 was a bumper year for the Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale team. Sports retailer Decathlon joined as title sponsor: out went the brown shorts and in came new kit including bikes. The team had a roaring start to the season but fell short in the Tour de France and then finished with a podium at the Vuelta thanks to Ben O’Connor and finished sixth on the UCI rankings. Now we can see the budget for the year.
Oier Lazkano was one of Red Bull’s big signings for 2025. His spring classics campaign flopped but then so did the rest of the team. Then he vanished. He stopped racing, deleted social media accounts and the team were silent on what was happening.
Now we know better as he’s been provisionally suspended over his bio passport. It’s a point that gets stressed again below that he’s still innocent so here’s a look at the procedural elements of this case.
The best route so far? The Tour de France Femmes holds out the promise of surprise and the possibility that the yellow jersey could change several times along the way, including the final day in Nice.
It runs from Saturday 1 August to Sunday 9 August, so no overlap with the men’s race but it starts the weekend after the men’s race has finished.
