The Inner Ring - Part 130

The Sanremo Paradox

Saturday, 21 March 2020Thursday, 15 March 2018

Peter Sagan leads on the Poggio having blown the field off his back wheel. Michał Kwiatkowski and Julian Alaphilippe are chasing and there’s just 6km to go. If you’ve been watching on TV this is a moment of almost unbearable tension.

Milan-Sanremo is the longest race on the pro calendar yet it’s often dependent on events in the last five minutes. Why all the hours of airtime when surely you could just tune in for the final 10 minutes? All the details make the Poggio’s ascent and descent so thrilling.

Improving TUEs and Installing Health Tests

Thursday, 15 March 2018Wednesday, 14 March 2018

In the wake of last week’s report from the UK parliament plenty readers have emailed in to ask for a reaction. Only it’s hard to have much of a response there’s not much new apart from seeing it printed on parliamentary headed paper and getting front page coverage in the UK media rather than back page or cycling-specific coverage. Whatever the British parliament does, the story is set to rumble on and on and it’s been hard to add to past pieces (here and here). Instead a quick look at TUEs where things have already changed but there’s room for improvement.

The Moment Paris-Nice Was Won

Monday, 12 March 2018Monday, 12 March 2018

Are you sitting comfortably? On Sunday morning Marc Soler was sat comfortably in sixth place overall, wearing the white jersey of the best young rider under his rain jacket and had taken a strong second place in the Saint Etienne time trial earlier in the week. He’s a promising rider and was already in a very satisfactory position. Only it wasn’t enough for him and he took off on the steep climb to Peille with 47km to go and won the race overall.