Just as there’s a season-long calendar of all the major men’s and women’s races to download, here’s the Giro for your phone or electronic diary.
Calendar
2013 Pro Cycling Calendar
With a new year, a new calendar. You can now see the upcoming races with with the Tropicale Amissa Bongo being followed by the Tour de San Luis in Argentina and then the Santos Tour Down Under whilst the Euro season-opener, the Grand Prix Cycliste la Marseillaise is now in view.
The full calendar of mens and women’s pro races is at inrng.com/calendar or look for the link at the top of the page or see below to download a copy.
Cycling Calendar Statistics
I have a mental picture of the cycling calendar where April is packed with racing and August is a sleepy month, the post-Tour de France blues set in and there’s not much going on. But after publishing the calendar of races on Tuesday I toyed with the numbers and the chart above shows the distribution of men’s pro racing throughout the year. It turns out April is a quiet month with just 51 days of racing and August has more days of racing than any other month of the year.
2013 Calendar and iCal
Pro cycling’s off season is arriving but if the racing stops, the planning doesn’t. Whether you’re plotting a victorious classics campaign or a trip to Europe you need to know when the pro races are.
Here’s the 2013 pro cycling calendar. It is blank for October but skip into 2013 and you’ll find the races appear. In addition below you’ll find a link to download an iCal file to import the same calendar into your organiser, phone and computer diary.
Saturday shorts
The Amstel Gold race is on tomorrow but this is a busy weekend with some excellent alternative races. Sometimes a big race can overshadow the others, for example two weeks ago the Flèche d’Emeraude was on at the same time as the Tour of Flanders but I doubt many noticed the clash.
By contrast there’s the Tro Bro Leon race on Sunday which criss-crosses Brittany and uses farm tracks. These are dirt roads and muddy in the wet. Sometimes called the Paris-Roubaix of Brittany, the comparison isn’t quite right since the Tro Bro Leon has no cobbles, even if it does have dangerous roads. Instead of a cobble, the winner gets a piglet to take home. Rouleur Magazine’s blog has a nice feature on this, including a picture of the prize piglet. It’s a nice race in its own right. Even the website is good.
Downloadable race calendar
You can now download a calendar of all the major pro races for 2012, both men’s and women’s competitions.
This is no collection of stripped down women nor scenic images, instead just a functional Google calendar and ICS/iCal file. One or two clicks and it’s on your iPhone / Outlook etc calendar.