Four riders in search of three podium places. No, it’s not a Pirandello play, it’s the world championships and Tony Martin, Fabian Cancellara, Bradley Wiggins and Taylor Phinney are all aiming for the rainbow jersey.
It’s always a fine test but Wednesday’s race promises one of the best contests in years with several big names stating this is a major goal, all whilst a cast of outsiders are waiting to take their chance too.
Three teams in one day? Yesterday brought the news that Euskaltel-Euskadi had stopped negotiations with Formula 1 driver Fernando Alonso for the sale of the team licence and there was confirmation in Cycling Weekly that Vacansoleil-DCM was stopping and via Twitter it seems Team Sojasun have no replacement sponsor for 2014.
Cycling teams come and go but there’s something wrong with the way the sport works when decisions concerning the elite of the sport get taken only months away from the new season and so late into the end of the current one.
This Sunday sees the UCI World Championships start with the team time trial. If a team time trial isn’t new, the format is still a novelty at the worlds after it was introduced last year.
Here’s a quick explainer of what is involved, why there’s no rainbow jersey for the winners and how it’s very different from the team time trials we might see in a stage race. Plus a quick look at the contenders for Sunday in the men’s and women’s races.
Here’s the new Italian jersey for the worlds by Castelli. The marketing says it’s faster than a standard jersey, a 20W survey at 40km/h. But if the Italian tricolore flag is green, white and red why do the Italians wear blue?
What makes a great climb? The gradient, the view, the challenge or its use in the great races? For many it is the last category that trumps the others, it’s what makes people flock to Alpe d’Huez yet ignore the nearby roads.
2011’s Mountain High book covered many of the notorious climbs and now Mountain Higher is here to show you “Europe’s extreme, undiscovered and unforgettable cycle climbs.”
With the Vuelta done here is the listing of team wins so far this season. This will be the penultimate version this year as we’re now into the final section of the season with just 47 of the 553 days of racing remaining.
Stage 18 of the Vuelta and the summit finish to Peña Cabarga. At just 565m above sea level, this was a short and sharp finish and the kind of climb where Vincenzo Nibali might have hoped that Chris Horner’s 41 years might have cost him some of the spring in his pedalstroke. But they approached the finish it was Horner who pulled away from Nibali and this showed who was climbing better. The American narrowed the gap to just three seconds and with two mountain stages to follow, the race was his to win.
Three weeks later and the Vuelta rolls into Madrid. The final stage of a grand tour often has a feeling of anti-climax with the result being settled but after more than three weeks it’s good to have a stage that incorporates ceremony and celebration as well as a full-on sprint.
It could all come down to the time bonus at the top of the final climb of the final stage. However Chris Horner is in the ascendant, he’s been putting time into Vincenzo Nibali in recent days and could extend his three second advantage.
But with rain a possibility Horner will find the Angliru so steep he cannot use his trademark out of the saddle climbing style for fear of losing traction.
Ahead of the long weekend of the GP Cycliste de Québec and the GP Cycliste de Montréal the event has held a sprint challenge where three riders are set off at a time and do a road version of a track sprint. It’s a novel format and a way to extend interest in the race given the riders are already on site in Québec. It is a stunt and only a step away from those cyclist vs horse shows we see.
But I keep writing Vuelta previews saying “tune in for the sprint finish” which sadly implies we should ignore the previous four hours of racing, I don’t mean to say this but know that viewers don’t have infinite time to watch the race cross landscapes. These sprints do focus the action and create a show.