Want to beat Peter Sagan? Then make him work. One small observation is that his position this year remains relatively upright and so he presents a bigger aerodynamic profile compared to his rivals. Once he’s done 50km in rotation with two breakaway companions, as we saw in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, then he’s likely to be low on energy. This won’t make him easy to beat, just an observation and an angle on how to tackle someone who otherwise looks formidable as his explosive power with 250m to go in Kuurne showed.
Classics
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Preview
No suncream. No sand. No sheikhs. No skyscrapers. Welcome to a weekend’s racing in Belgium with its crowds, cobbled tracks and muddy landscapes. The Omloop opens spring classics season and traditionally offers fine racing, often supplying action and suspense for hours.
Outside is Free (For Now)
One of cycling’s greatest attractions is the popular communion on a Sunday between the peloton and the spectators. A race goes to the people, it passes your front door and the local café, school, supermarket and church. No other sport can reach these places in the same way.
Now a survey of Belgian races has raised the prospect of charging for access to bike races and the idea of getting ticket revenue from roadside spectators. Outrageous? Not really. It’s been done before and happens already but it would mark a cultural and economic change if it spreads further. With this in mind it’s worth exploring further.
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.
Highlights of 2016 – Part IV
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.
Highlights of 2016 – Part III
Greg Van Avermaet and Peter Sagan come first and second in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. It sounds so plausible, so probable as both have enjoyed an outstanding year. What a difference a season makes because rewind to February and both were in a losing streak and often made the headlines for the way they lost races rather than won them.
Shrinking The Peloton
Less is more. Yesterday ASO, RCS and Flanders Classics announced in concert that they would shrink the team size for their events down by one. The grand tours go from nine riders per team to eight and the major classics from eight to seven riders. The race owners say it is to improve safety and enhance the sporting spectacle.
Highlights of 2016 – Part I
With the 2016 season over time to reflect on the racing and pick a handful of highlights. Paris-Roubaix comes first. It can be an easy pick because of extremism and eccentricy, it stands out because it’s so unlike anything else but this year’s race was gripping from start to finish and it was all live on TV too.
Going The Distance
What was longest event at the Olympics this year? The answer is the men’s road race, six hours and ten minutes and by some margin. That’s roughly double the duration of the 50km walk and three times longer than the marathon, the 10km open water swim and the triathlon. Games like tennis or cricket can last for days but they stop for lunch. Cycling’s unique selling point isn’t distance but this is big part of its identity, race names like Paris-Nice evoke distances normally done by plane, train or automobile and even the combination of all three.
Only now some races are being shortened to make them snappier for TV. Are we in danger of losing something?
Paris-Tours Preview
Usually a thrilling race thanks to the inclusion of some sharp climbs in the final moment which tips the balance from the sprinters to the attackers this Sunday’s race has scrapped these climbs to make the race more sprinter-friendly ahead of next weekend’s world championships in Qatar. This might make the race less of a thrill but it’s the chance for the sprinters to win back this race and viewers get a rare sprint royale, a rarity outside of the Tour de France.