Wiggins

The Moment The Race Was Won: The Dauphiné

Wiggins time trial

Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) is on his way to Stage 4 of the Critérium du Dauphiné, a 53.5km time trial. The route featured a fast downhill start through vineyards and then a rolling road all the way to the finish in Macon. The wind was blowing strong, some riders were blasted off the road by gusts whilst fallen branches forced others to swerve. But Wiggins won the day, 34 seconds ahead of Tony Martin but more importantly, 1.43 on Cadel Evans. During the latter part the route used a long straight road and Wiggins could see Evans ahead. This was the moment the race was won.

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The Dauphiné Contenders

The race starts this Sunday with a prologue but we’ll need to wait for the high mountains the following weekend to decide the winnner.

Bradley Wiggins is a favourite but he’ll face Tony Martin in the time trials and Cadel Evans and others in the mountains. Here’s a look at the overall contenders for the race plus some thoughts on the likely stage winners along the way.

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Tour de Romandie: The Moment The Race Was Won

Wiggins La Chaux de Fonds

Bradley Wiggins sprints to win Stage 1 of the Tour de Romandie. There’s rarely a single winning moment in a stage race, instead a series of consistent performances. In plain arithmetic third place in the prologue and victory in the final mountain time trial delivered the result. But so did the sprint victory with the 10 second time bonus and above all the sign of confidence.

As well as watching Wiggins we also saw Luis Léon Sanchez in action and Andrew Talansky confirmed his talent too, more of which below.

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Saturday Shorts

Thomas Voeckler got played yesterday. Shortly after finishing Liège-Bastogne-Liège the Frenchman made his way to Frankfurt airport to fly out to Gabon. Once a French colony, today an oil-rich state on the west coast of Africa with exceptional wildlife, Gabon also has an annual bike race, the Tropicale Amissa Bongo. Named after a member of the Bongo family that rules the nation, the race has a diverse field of teams with Europcar.

Sadly the results are hard to come by. I can’t see them on cyclingnews.com but instead the superb AstanaFans.com has coverage (in Russian) because the Astana development team are riding, and with some success. The photo above by Elena Ryabovol shows the conditions for one of the stage transfers with riders, staff and media loaded into a military transport plane.

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Mods and rockers

Two video clips that are very different but both contain behind the scenes footage, one with a heavy metal loving soigneur and the other with Bradley Wiggins, a self-styled mod.

First is a video from the soon to vanish HTC-Highroad team and shows the work of a soigneur. “We need 30 hours in a day” is the opening claim from the team’s head soigneur Frits Van Der Heide. The film explains the role of the soigneur, French for “carer”. As you can see the day is long and it goes from supporting the riders to washing the team car. Just as the mechanics wash every bike, the team cars must have the showroom look too. There’s all the usual footage of soigneurs filling up musettes and the slow-mo footage shows text-book examples of how to grab them in the feedzone (arm forward, grab where the straps meet the bag).

I follow Frits Van Der Heide on Twitter and as well as cycling-related messages, it seems he’s into Black Sabbath and a keen Saab driver. He’s joined Saxo Bank for 2012.

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The Paris-Nice revelation

Paris Nice Podium

They call Paris-Nice “the race to the sun” because every March it leaves the Parisian capital and heads south for the Mediterranean and its pleasant climate. It is only a week long but this year’s race gave us plenty of clues for the whole year, from Matthew Goss to Denis Galimzyanov, and Tony Martin and Bradley Wiggins. Here’s a quick look back.

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Time Running Out

As a follow up to the item about young talents to watch, I thought I’d review some riders who have to deliver in 2011, the guys who are carrying a burden on their shoulders whilst also knowing that they haven’t got too many more seasons to impress. I’m concious that in naming riders here that … Read more

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