Happy New Year, it’s 2024, an Olympic Year and they seem to come around quickly. The Tour Down Under is just days away.
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 block that “work meeting” at the same time as the final hour of the GP E3, here it is…
40 questions… and now 40 answers from ex-pros locked up in castles to the case of one rider punished by the UCI but featuring on chocolate bars as a result.
Some boring admin. Mechanics have been busy with some software changes that make this site work.
40 questions and loyal readers will know the drill. Some are easy, some will defeat Google and a few of the answers give us a sideways look at the sport…
Visma-Lease A Bike kit looks a lot like the Jumbo-Visma kit. Team sponsors can change but the team keeps its visual identity, it’s a sensible idea as long as the sponsors are ok, very often they are so sensitive to their branding that they want “their” team to adopt every style and brand guideline they have.
A look back. In previous years five races have been picked as highlights but that was just too hard, there were more than five stages of the Tour de France that stood out, just picking between them was much. Some highlights in rapidfire…
There goes the dream of a fit and fresh Tadej Pogačar taking on Jonas Vingegaard next summer with the news that Pogačar will race the Giro d’Italia in 2024. The pre-race Giro preview here has suddenly got easier but there are more important knock-on effects.
The Paris-Nice route for 2024 is out early this time, normally it’s been unveiled in January. The race takes place between Sunday 3 and Sunday 10 March. The theme could have been test race ahead of the Tour de France and its finish in Nice in July but in fact very few roads are shared.
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.
