What’s the biggest one day race of the year? The World Championships? The Olympic road race? There’s plenty to say this Sunday’s Tour of Flanders is the biggest and the best. A combination of the route, the prestige, the history and the roadside crowds make this race unmissable.
The Route | The Contenders | The Weather | TV Viewing | Startlist | History
How good is your maths? If you can count, have a go at the number of riders listed on the Katusha team as of tonight on the UCI website. I make it 28 riders and one neo, a total of 29 riders.
All seems normal so far. Only the Russian team today announced it has signed Alexander Kolobnev. And that is against the UCI rules.
Pro cycling is a nakedly commercial sport. The above cartoon by Pellos mocks the way the 1956 Tour de France consumes the environment with branding. Half a century later only the sponsor names have changed. Riders act as mobile billboards to sell Quickstep laminated flooring and Liquigas bottled gas.
However this culture is set to clash with the Olympic Games, now just four months away. One thing that didn’t exist in 1956 was social media and the International Olympic Committee has very strict rules in place about the use of blogs, Facebook and Twitter during the games. Here’s a look at the ad rules and social media guidelines.
In the a piece for cyclingnews.com I look at how teams on a small budget can aim to get in the UCI’s World Tour. Inspired in part by the book/film “Moneyball” that looks at baseball and prompted by Ag2r La Mondiale’s position as the only top team yet to win this year I wanted to see if there ways to build a winning team on a shoestring budget.
EDIT: since publishing this in March I’ve put a full preview online. Go here: https://inrng.com/dauphine for full stage analysis, the jerseys, the history and much more.
ASO have unveiled the route of the 2012 Critérium du Dauphiné. The 8 day stage race is a great contest in its own right but also resembles the Tour de France in more ways than one.
Just like last year’s edition, the Dauphiné will feature some of the same roads as the Tour, making it an ideal test ahead of July. Here’s a summary of the route.
| Wins | Team |
| 21 | Omega Pharma – Quickstep |
| 13 | Liquigas – Cannondale |
| 13 | Team Sky |
| 8 | Greenedge |
| 7 | FDJ – BigMat |
| 7 | Lotto – Belisol |
| 6 | Garmin – Barracuda |
| 6 | Movistar |
| 5 | Vacansoleil – DCM |
| 4 | Katusha |
| 3 | Rabobank |
| 2 | BMC Racing |
| 2 | Lampre – ISD |
| 2 | Radioshack – Nissan |
| 2 | Saxo Bank |
| 1 | Astana |
| 1 | Euskaltel – Euskadi |
| 0 | Ag2r – La Mondiale |
I won’t be doing a running commentary every Monday but this time last week I listed the World Tour teams by win and in the space of seven days several teams without a win finally got the result they needed.
Astana’s Janez Brajkovič won a stage in the Tour of Catalonia as did Samuel Sanchez for Euskaltel-Euskadi. Cadel Evans won Stage 2 and the overall in the Critérium International. Note these three riders are just who’d you’d expect to appear once the roads head for the mountains. In addition, promising all-rounder Diego Ulissi won two stages in the Semana Coppi e Bartali. This leaves Ag2r – La Mondiale as the World Tour gooseberry.
Tom Boonen won the sprint to the line. As you can see from the image above he is level with the lime green Peter Sagan and the red and white Oscar Freire with 200m to go. But this was not the crucial moment of the race. Instead an acceleration 30km from the finish on the Monteberg climb made all the difference.
It’s not just the clocks that change. Recently this race was a mid-week test, sandwiched between the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Still a prestigious race in its own right, it was often for the sprinters and it would also allow the “losers” from the Ronde to fine tune their moves ahead of Roubaix. Now it stands on Sunday and is part of the World Tour calendar, a promotion to a higher status.
A very quick look at the Critérium International race that takes place on the French island of Corsica this weekend.
Many will have eyes on this Sunday’s Gent-Wevelgem race. Rightly so but 1,200km away we’ll see the likes of Cadel Evans, Frank Schleck, Chris Froome and others going head to head in a time trial today and summit finish tomorrow, all with the stunning island scenery on roads to be used for the Grand Départ of the Tour de France next year.