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Marcel Kittel gets his season off to the perfect start. He beat Mark Cavendish again, the Briton has yet to beat Kittel when they’ve raced together in a sprint finish. See of yourself with Cycling Quotient’s useful Head to Head feature but this is as much a function of the calendar and race programmes as it is comparative speed and power.

The season has barely started but look how busy it is with racing in Dubai, Australia, France and Spain right now and that’s just the men; the women are in Qatar too. Much is made of having the “best riders in the best races” but there’s something to be said about riders going their separate ways during the season too.

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The first rider has been caught with a motor at a UCI race. Until now thoughts focussed on whether technology and logistics, such as how would a motor work, the possible gains and whether anyone would be reckless enough to try it. Finally someone has been caught and it opens up a range of moral and ethical questions. Is a motor worse than EPO?

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This blog doesn’t do many product reviews but the virtual world of Zwift is worth exploring both as a consumer product and a theoretical concept too.

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It’s all new. It’s all the same. The 2016 season is underway and everything looks so familiar. Nobody’s using disc brakes nor geolocation and instead it’s back to races in out of season tourist resorts, the ritual pinning of numbers and a peloton packed with calliper brakes.

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What’s the fastest way to become a millionaire? Start as a billionaire goes the joke only plenty won’t be laughing right now as stockmarkets and commodity prices crash. Several high profile team owners have seen their fortunes descend faster than Peter Sagan off the Rochette. In the first of a two-part series looking at the wealthy backers of the sport here are the billionaire and millionaire World Tour team owners and sponsors.

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Is massage a waste of time? No but it may only offer tiny performance gains says a meta analysis of sports science literature.

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After last week’s Riders to Watch for 2016, here is a selection of neo-pros to introduce. Previous picks have included several second year pros but this year’s intake seems so promising that all the names below are novices. Here’s a look at some promising riders with big results, fat contracts and some musical talents.

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Here’s a selection of ten established riders to watch in the coming season. Some stand on the cusp of a big win, some face challenges on the road and others face new challenges like leadership and cohabitation with new team mates.

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Who is the better rider, Peter Sagan or Alejandro Valverde? It’s topic for a café chat but they can and are ranked arithmetically by the UCI and Valverde topped the rankings for 2015. Now cycling’s governing body is launching a new rankings system f0r 2016. Released by stealth with a Christmas Eve press release it’s got little coverage since.

Still, points can be the currency of the pro cyclist’s jobs market and the ranking system often matters to teams and fans alike. With this in mind here’s an explainer along with tables listing all the points to scroll past. There’s also a warning about confusion because if the UCI is launching a new ranking it’s also keeping an old one and they’ll both have similar sounding names.

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A Christmas quiz with 50 questions, some are obvious, some odd, most can’t be Googled and a few are fiendishly difficult. By all means have a go and there’s a prize for the winner but most will probably find fun in the answers that will appear here in the coming days.

1. Can you name the joyous Noël pictured above, he’s now a sports director with a large team?
Noël Dejonckheere who was world points champion on the track and now a DS at BMC Racing.

2. Jesus H! No, nothing blasphemous, just the first name and initial of two World Tour pros. Name them.
Jesus Herrada (Movistar) and Jesus Hernandez (Tinkoff-Saxo)

3. Which Danish pro has a name that sounds like Christmas?
Christopher Juul-Jensen, Jul being Christmas in Danish.

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