Tour of Qatar Obituary

The UCI announced today that the Tour of Qatar and the Ladies Tour of Qatar have been cancelled, a victim of their lack of success. This was the racer’s race, enjoyed by participants but it didn’t woo locals nor foreign audiences and now it’s run out of money. A UCI press release issued today cites “difficulty attracting sponsor financial support”.

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Roads to Ride: Cormet de Roselend

Chapelle Roselend

Scenery, altitude, length, gradient, little traffic and variety: the Cormet de Roselend has it all. The only thing missing is celebrity status. The Tour de France has only used it a few times for the blunt reason that the pass was only tarmacked in the 1970s.

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The Christmas Holiday Quiz

A Christmas quiz with 40 questions. Some are obvious, some odd, most can’t be Googled and a few are fiendish. By all means have a go and there’s a token prize for the winner but most will probably find fun in the answers that will appear here next week.

1: Name the “Santa” dressed in red pictured above.

2: Name the (sometimes) helper dressed in green(edge) kit below.

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Highlights of 2016 – Part V

How to choose a fifth highlight from the year? Easy, pick several instead. There are plenty of exciting moments during the year and if it feels reductive to limit it to five, then even sticking with 10 means leaving out plenty of good times. We might find overlapping races incongruous but this can mean twice the action. Here are some more of the joyous moments from 2016.

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No Way To Run A Sport

Do other sports hang out their dirty washing so obviously at times? Probably but pro cycling has its moments, see how the ex-Lampre team doesn’t know if it’s going to ride or not just weeks out from the start of the new season or the farcical decision by the major races to shrink the number of participating riders without agreeing with anyone else resulting in a rapid climbdown.

Sometimes pro cycling seems trapped in a loop with regular failings and flops that repeat themselves. It’s tempting to launch into a rant but the irony is that a lot of these flaws can be fixed.

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Highlights of 2016 – Part IV

Esteban Chaves Bergamo

Recollections are often biased to recent events. A list of the best albums of all time can often be disproportionately weighted with music that was riding high in the charts just the other day. So picking the Tour of Lombardy can seem a recent recollection but hopefully it stands the test of time.

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Why Have So Many French Cafés Closed?

Riding some of the Tour de France route last summer under the pretext of route recons for this website’s stage previews was a pleasure. Cycling through rural France in the height of summer is always a joy.

Along the way there was a common theme of closed village cafés. Place after place so many had shut for good that there had to be a reason behind this trend and a mental note was made to explore what’s happening.

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Supporter Kit

A reminder that supporter kit is for sale. If you’ve enjoyed reading this year then why not get something for yourself and tip some coin this way at the same time.

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