An aide memoire about the new UCI rule that’s been applied for a year now to some bunch sprints where a gap of at least three seconds needs to exist in order for a new time gap to exist. It’s still under trial this year and more complicated than mere gap of three seconds.
As mentioned in the post looking at the overall contenders, to cite Chris Froome is to mention his ongoing case with the UCI following the adverse analytical finding for salbutamol in the Vuelta. While all riders have to watch out for the climbs, descents, corners, bad weather and more over the next three weeks Chris Froome runs the added risk of being taken out of the race by a tribunal or seeing his result disqualified after the race finishes in Rome, an obvious concern for the event itself too. The probability of these events is unknown but the risk exists which is awkward.
Prize money in cycling rarely makes the news. Sometimes when people see how much the men collect they’re surprised it’s so low… until they see how little the women get. But what do the riders actually collect? The net sum received by the winner is often a tiny fraction of the headline prize for first place.
In the wake of last week’s report from the UK parliament plenty readers have emailed in to ask for a reaction. Only it’s hard to have much of a response there’s not much new apart from seeing it printed on parliamentary headed paper and getting front page coverage in the UK media rather than back page or cycling-specific coverage. Whatever the British parliament does, the story is set to rumble on and on and it’s been hard to add to past pieces (here and here). Instead a quick look at TUEs where things have already changed but there’s room for improvement.
On the same day Michael Valgren won the Omloop, Astana team staff got an email saying their employer was waiting for sponsorship cash and the team later confirmed it is in financial difficulty. This followed news on Friday night on Vesti.kz where team manager Alexandr Vinokourov warned his team had not received its funding for 2018 and was paying travel costs out of “savings”.
The team’s not bankrupt but management must be nervous: why make this public because even if the promised cash shows up it will only deter riders from renewing or joining the squad?
Chris Froome is set to resume racing at the upcoming Ruta Del Sol race in Spain. So far, so normal as it’s common for stage race specialists to start their season here, Froome himself did so in 2015 (pictured) and you might remember his battle with Alberto Contador. This isn’t a normal situation with Froome’s ongoing anti-doping case following the excessive quantity of salbutamol from last year’s Vuelta. There are lots of questions, here are a few answers…
Having picked five highlights of the year, a scan of some of this year’s lowlights. In no particular order here are a few boos, hisses, gripes and cock-ups…
A collection of Froome and Sky loose ends. First one of this week’s blog topics was going to be how Team Sky could be coming to an end. No, not for the reasons in the news, instead down to corporate activity far away on Wall Street. Disney has announced it is buying 21st Century Fox, the company which ultimately owns Sky. You might have seen the 21st Century Fox logo on the Sky kit. It seems probable the Sky brand lives on, the threat to the team comes from the Murdoch family,nif James Murdoch goes and does something else. He’s been the pro team’s biggest backer and without him the new owners may decided enough is enough… or current management think their sponsorship has had a good run, time to try something less accident-prone.
The UCI has announced that Chris Froome has given an Adverse Analytical Finding for Salbutamol following a test during the Vuelta a España. The announcement alone is curious given two newspapers seem got a scoop to have got hold of the story but add in that it’s Froome, that he could be stripped of the Vuelta title, serve a ban and that the substance in question has particular rules make this a complex topic and Twitter today has seen more speculation than a Bitcoin chatroom. Let’s try to explore the matter at hand…
Movistar announced a men’s squad of 25 riders for 2018, down from the 28 rider squad they had this year. BMC Racing go from 28 riders down to 24. The peloton is getting smaller and the men’s World Tour peloton will shrink by 16 riders, not as much as initially feared but still a trend across most teams.