A top Belgian talent trying to leave their team and move to a squad famous for grand tour success? No, not Remco Evenepoel’s summer saga trying to swap Soudal-Quickstep for Ineos but Cian Uijtdebroeks. The 20 year old announced he is moving to Jumbo-Visma for next year but Bora-hansgrohe say he’s under contract and going nowhere. Cycling’s governing body the UCI has yet to have have its say but as we’ll see it’s bound to be involved too.

It makes for a spicy custody battle with a ring of farce but there are wider issues for the sport here too as we see more and more long term contracts, and increasingly more cases of riders getting out of them.

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José Catieau died aged 77 on the same day as the Tour de France start in France’s north was unveiled. The race paid tribute to various “giants of the north” who had worn the maillot jaune and among them was Catieau for his spell in yellow in 1973, a moment that was both a high and low for him.

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Here’s the pro cycling calendar for 2024, free to download for your diary or phone.

It’s packed with all the men’s and women’s pro races. So whether you’re making plans for next season, want to visit a race, or just need book sofa time or plan that work “meeting”, here it is…

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A retrospective on the team victory rankings for 2023 in the men’s World Tour, looking at the rankings, some extra stats and also a team-by-team report on their season.

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Ten neo-pros were picked at the start of the year as new names to watch. Once upon a time you’d have to look for a seventh place in a small race or spot them making the breakaway in a race over 200km as clues to their future but these days teams are happy to back young riders for the win on the right day so newcomers can jump on the podium in their first year. Plenty did just that…

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GCN+ is stopping. Subscribers have been informed that the live racing streaming service will halt in December, staff were told by Zoom just before.

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Time for a retrospective. Ten riders were picked to watch during the 2023 season, some as rising talents and others because of the role they could play, or even what their career path says about the state of the sport.

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Pro cycling often reaches for historical comparisons, this blog included. There’s a rich history to exploit and in moments where it can be hard to work out the meaning of a performance or the value of a race, comparing today’s riders and results to the past can supply context. It can also be misleading.

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A look at the World Tour rankings for the women’s teams aiming for promotion for 2024… and with one or two questions about their survival too which will be answered in the coming weeks.

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The One Cycling story is a big one with plans to reform the cycling calendar, bundling up the TV rights of races and making the sport more marketable. It’s a theme we’ve seen before with team managers linking up with private capital to try and reshape the sport… and failing because they were long on financial capital but short on cultural and political capital. There’s so little to go on for now we can only touch on it via this “shorts” blog post.

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