The Tour de France has issued its four invitations and as predicted they go to Cofidis, Direct Energie, Fortuneo-Vital Concept and Wanty-Groupe Gobert.
The Giro recently caused controversy by snubbing two Italian teams in order to invite teams from Poland and Russia. In both cases these wildcard picks are too tame, there are 22 teams to chose from yet only a few look capable of finishing a grand tour intact. This is a sign of a structural problem in the sport.
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.
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.
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?
Cycling has its theatres and many are in remote and rural settings. This makes them enjoyable to ride as what can be a packed climb is deserted the rest of the year but this means the sport takes place far away from the people. Here is a climb that starts right out of one of Italy’s major cities.
What’s the most famous climb in the Vuelta? The race climbed up to the Lagos de Covadonga yesterday – pictured – but arguably the most well-known climb in this year’s edition is… the Col d’Aubisque, used when the Vuelta slips into France for a day.
It’s telling that a foreign climb grabs the limelight, as good as the Vuelta can be when compared to the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia one big missing item is a repertoire of mythical climbs.
The moment the race was lost? Steven Kruijswijk started the day’s stage to Risoul with a three minute lead on Esteban Chaves and more than four minutes on Vincenzo Nibali. With his form and recent performances this looked more than comfortable. A crash on the snowy descent of the Colle dell’Agnello and a long chase,saw him finish the stage almost five minutes down on Nibali and surrender the maglia rosa to Esteban Chaves who had just lost time to Nibali on the summit finish to Risoul.
The 2016 Giro d’Italia was an unusual contest marked as much by illness, injury and accident as by tactics and attacks. No sooner did a rider occupy the top spot, whether as the lead hope for the overall classification or the fastest sprinter did they suffer misfortune or decide to pull out.
A procession and a sprint, that’s the usual formula for the final stage of a grand tour. Last year saw a breakaway stick and with so few sprinters left in the race it could happen again.
Yesterday’s stage had a fast start, saw the big names fighting hard on the Colle dell’Agnello, pulling on the long descent and emptying the tank on the summit finish to. Now they’ve got to do it all over again and Vincenzo Nibali will duel with Esteban Chaves.
Mountain stages have their ups and downs. The profile shows us that. Today brought a different kind, the tables were turned after Steven Kruijswijk crashed and cracked, Esteban Chaves took over the race lead and after weeks of feeling the pressure Vincenzo Nibali let it all out on the road to Risoul, won the stage and sobbed under the podium. And there’s still a giant mountain stage to go.