A look at which teams have won the most races so far this season and the big names come to the fore already, more than ever they’re squeezing out the others with the top three WorldTeams have half the wins so far this season. Rival teams wanting to challenge this, or just maintain their spot in the World Tour, are now in the busy season for recruitment.
The new rules against littering surprised some over the weekend, with the case of Michäel Schär being disqualified from the Ronde van Vlaanderen for throwing a bidon to waiting spectators provoking outrage online. However the incident with Kyle Murphy in the GP Miguel Indurain could be the real cause for concern.
It pays to read the rules as there’s still an easy way to gift bottles to spectators. The good news is that away from hiccups adjusting to the new rules over a weekend cycling is finally resolving its litter problem.
Kasper Asgreen leads Mathieu van der Poel over the Paterberg. The Dutch cyclo-cross specialist had tried every trick to find the smoothest path up the climb but Asgreen just rode over the cobbles and beat him to the top, a sign he had more power in the final hour.
The Ronde van Vlaanderen is more than a bike race in Belgium, and this year it marks the end of cobbled classics season given Paris-Roubaix’s postponement. It’s all or nothing this Sunday.
Enjoy Milan-Sanremo? In France only 20,000 people watched the race according to audience measurement data, compared to over one million one year ago. This could be a problem for the sport as what happens in France today risks happening in other countries too.
The longest race and the shortest of write-ups. Jasper Stuyven won Milan-Sanremo thanks to a bold late attack, which was a surprise win but no shock.
Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel and Julian Alaphilippe take on each other and the rest of the peloton.
The news that former Team Sky and British Cycling chief doctor Richard Freeman was found guilty of ordering testosterone, a banned substance, is big and got splashed all over the British press last weekend. There’s mystery as to who the hormone patches were intended for, and there’s now a circular firing squad of quotes from those in and around Team Sky. Away from the noise is the very real issue of a live anti-doping case as possession is a breach of the WADA Code and a case should be opened.
In 1972 Eddy Merckx was so confident of winning Paris-Nice that before the start of the final stage he posed for photos with a speedboat, a prize that year. Only Raymond Poulidor rocketed up the Col d’Eze to win the stage, take the race overall and collect the prize. Primož Roglič can show a cannibal-like trait at times but must also know a thing or two about not counting chickens until they hatch, or as they say in Slovenian, “not praising the day until the evening”. But on the morning of the final stage it did look like Roglič had Paris-Nice sewn up and he even had a good chance of winning the final stage too…
The final stage of Paris-Nice and usually a great day’s racing. A forced course change means less of a wild route today but it’s the last chance for a stage win.