With the new road season a week away here are ten riders to follow this year. This isn’t a top-10 list of the world’s best, more a collection of riders with interesting aims and stories whether trying to beat a stellar 2016 season, finding new challenges, or trying to revive a career that’s gone quiet.
Here are the answers to the Christmas quiz. A lot of the questions were set to raise issues and make suggestions, for example pointing out there’s no minimum wage for the Women’s World Tour, that junior riders should be doing cyclo-cross ahead of the road or that almost nobody gets eliminated by the time cut in a grand tour these days or how the Giro’s fair play prize ought to be celebrated more.
The route for the 2017 Paris-Nice race has been published today and so here’s a quick take on the eight stages.
Welcome to 2017, also known as 2016 – The Sequel. Here’s the pro cycling calendar for your organiser, phone or computer diary. All of the major UCI men’s and women’s pro races around the world are included and below there’s a quick explainer on how to subscribe, the meaning of the UCI labels and more.
At the start of the year 10 riders were picked to see how they’d get on, not necessarily because they were going to come, see and conquer 2016 but because there were interesting stories around them. How did they get on?
The UCI announced today that the Tour of Qatar and the Ladies Tour of Qatar have been cancelled, a victim of their lack of success. This was the racer’s race, enjoyed by participants but it didn’t woo locals nor foreign audiences and now it’s run out of money. A UCI press release issued today cites “difficulty attracting sponsor financial support”.
Scenery, altitude, length, gradient, little traffic and variety: the Cormet de Roselend has it all. The only thing missing is celebrity status. The Tour de France has only used it a few times for the blunt reason that the pass was only tarmacked in the 1970s.
A Christmas quiz with 40 questions. Some are obvious, some odd, most can’t be Googled and a few are fiendish. By all means have a go and there’s a token prize for the winner but most will probably find fun in the answers that will appear here next week.
1: Name the “Santa” dressed in red pictured above.
2: Name the (sometimes) helper dressed in green(edge) kit below.
At the start of the year ten neo-pros were picked as riders to watch. How did they get on?
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.