Lizzie Armitstead has won an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport over three missed out-of-competition anti-doping tests that could have seen her banned for four years. Athletes regularly miss tests, these things happen but the hushed nature of her provisional suspension and the way her absence from races was reported by some as a choice raises a lot of questions.
The race heads for the mountains and a hard ski station summit finish. Vaujany isn’t famous in cycling now a swank ski resort but it is a hard, selective climb and all this on an intense 140km stage.
A power and politics edition below with on-board bike cams and the weight limits, handling data on TV, politics in France and Italy, snails, beetroot and more…
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Marcel Kittel won today’s stage of the Tour de Romandie, hanging on over the climbs when other sprinters were dropped. It puts him at the top of the individual rankings table with eight wins this year.
There seem to be many pieces hailing Peter Sagan as “good for cycling” right now. I can see why given his style on the bike and off it at times is refreshing but at the same time a wheelie here or a quote there isn’t that radical. But can he, should he, be the new icon of men’s pro cycling?
The greatest race? Sunday’s edition could be a dud, an ode to the siesta but no matter what happens no other race is embraced by the locals as much as the Tour of Flanders. This is a sporting event like no other, a socio-cultural phenomenon that no other one day race can touch.
Some stage races end with a victory parade. Today’s got a hilly fast stage of just 134km featuring the Côte de Peille that cracked Michał Kwiatkowski last year and then the Col d’Eze. Geraint Thomas leads the race but faces a stressful day in ambush country with 10 riders within a minute of his yellow jersey. Don’t miss the early finish this afternoon.
“Legends are born here” says the race poster even if Kuurne has seen riders like Chris Sutton, Bobby Traksel and Kevin Van Impe win through in recent years as well as more famous legends like Mark Cavendish, Tom Boonen and Johan Museeuw.
Seen as revenge race to correct any mistakes in the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne is becoming a sprinters classic, perhaps the most sprint-friendly race after the Scheldeprijs these days although it’s got a series of cobbled climbs and the wind is forecast to get up too.