World Tour: FDJ, Lotto, Argos and Saxo In, Katusha Fired

Weeks ago the UCI announced four teams were competing for final three places in the UCI World Tour and the lottery winners are FDJ, Lotto-Belisol and Argos-Shimano and Saxo Bank all stay in.

This arithmetic only works thanks to the sensational news that Katusha have been ejected and are left hoping to become a Pro Continental team for 2013.

Katusha look to be the big loser but it’s the system itself that takes a hit too. Plus on a secondary level smaller teams like Cofidis, Vini Fantini, MTN-Qhubeka or NetApp-Endura will find their chances of doing the big races shrink.

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Lowlights of 2012

Lance Armstrong Tour de France

Having covered the highlights of year over the past few days, time to reflect on what went wrong. There’s less to celebrate but more to learn. Here are five of the lows, again a personal selection.

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Highlights of 2012 – Part V

Boonen Roubaix

The trouble with lists is that you leave out more than you include. It’s been a good year for racing and so picking just five moments feels like defining the year by this selection when in fact the cycling season is never quite a series of stand-alone moments but instead a story full of chapters, plots and sub-plots. Put it another way, I can’t pick a fifth highlight, there are too many to chose from so here’s a look at a few more more moments from the year…

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Euro Café Culture

Coffee cycling

A piece by Cyclingtips discussed the rise and fall of café culture in Melbourne, Australia. There the café is a big part in the local cycling scene, a destination for many rides. Similarly Matt Seaton writes the of “mysterious affinity between cafes, coffee and cycling” in Britain.

If coffee, cafés, cakes and cycling often go together they rarely connect in Europe. In countries like Italy, Belgium or France, a coffee is consumed quickly and a café stop rarely features on the ride, if it does it is usually incidental.

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Highlights of 2012 – Part IV

Everyone predicted Marianne Vos would win gold in the Olympic Road Race and when she did people celebrated one of the best races of the year. It’s a paradox that the predictable result still provided one of the best races of the year but this was thanks to fine tactics, a dose of good fortune and grim weather.

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Custom Jerseys and Bikes

Minutes after crossing the finish line a rider can stand on the podium with a leader’s jersey that’s got their sponsors on the front. How this is done was the subject of a few emails from curious readers during the year and it’s worth explaining this again.

Similarly here’s a look at the custom team bikes used by riders in the big races, how some teams come prepared and others prefer to keep the mechanics on standby.

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Highlights of 2012 – Part III

Time to sing the praises of the little guy. It’s Stage 7 in the Tour of Turkey and Iljo Keisse attacks the breakaway and tries to go for the stage. Was it the best race of the year? No but somehow the result and the commentary marry together to make a great video.

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Highlights of 2012 – Part II

As part of a series of highlights of the year, here is Stage 18 of the Tour de France and Mark Cavendish’s sprint win.

Cavendish is sometimes called “Cannonball” and this time he sprinted like he was fired out of gun. The sprint into Brive on Stage 18 of the Tour de France is worth watching just for the speed of the final kilometre but there’s more to this than the final sprint, the first is the story of rivalry between Cavendish and André Greipel which made the sprints exciting, and the second story is one of accommodating riders with different goals on a team.

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The Theory of Relativity

Many athletic sports have their references, benchmarks and records. Running a mile under four minutes, breaking 10 seconds for the 100m sprint, sailing around the world in under 80 days and maybe one day doing a marathon under two hours. But road cycling has none of these, we barely notice the time taken to complete a race and usually the average speed is immaterial. Absolute speed counts for little. Everything is relative.

Sometimes it can be hard to review. When a rider wins a race were they the strongest on the day, are they the fastest in history? When Fabian Cancellara took Simon Gerrans to the finish in Milan-Sanremo who was the better rider? This caused debate at the time but history records only one name. But what if we could take more measurements during a race. Are there new measures we can use to compare performances or do these not matter?

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Highlights of 2012 – Part I

Thibaut Pinot Tour de France

I’m going to pick five moments from 2012. They are a personal choice. With any list you often omit more than you include but I’ll explain each moment. They’re presented in no particular order.

First up the scenes of joy as Thibaut Pinot won a stage of the Tour de France and behind team manager Marc Madiot goes beserk with joy and pride. But all is not quite as it seemed or was reported at the time…

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