Procycling

Belgium 27 DECEMBER 2020 Tom Pidcock battles the elements and the mud in the Dendermonde round of the cyclo-cross World Cup. The passing of Storm Bella left the ground sodden and the conditions very heavy. The Ineos Grenadiers’ 2021 signing would eve

Alpecin-Fenix will ride all three grand tours in 2021, after topping the 2020 Europe Tour rankings. This means that Giro, Tour and Vuelta organisers will now only have two wildcard invites each to give out. Mathieu van der Poel has signalled that he

Where’s home? At the moment, Monaco. I’m from Zoetermeer, near Den Haag in Holland, in the west. What’s your favourite race? The Tour of Flanders, because of the spectators around the course. It’s a magic week in Belgium. From Sunday to Sunday they a

Images: Neil Godwin, Olly Curtis, Phil, Barker. ■

The 2021 season is upon us. As I write this I’m at our January training camp near Girona after the most horrifically cold winter I have experienced in Andorra. Dealing with bad weather is a state of mind and I just got on with the work. One of the re

Trek seems like the perfect fit for Charlie Quarterman, the young British rider who wants to follow in Fabian Cancellara’s footsteps. After all, the Swiss giant spent the final six years of his career with the squad. 2020 was a tough year to be a neo

We are indisputably in the era of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert. The pair have eclipsed Peter Sagan and even Julian Alaphilippe as the dominant classics riders in the last two years, and the sport is optimistic that the exhilarating head-to-

The men’s WorldTour is officially a 19-team division. However, there’s a hierarchy, and you could roughly divide the teams into three categories - the superteams at the top, strugglers at the bottom, and everybody else in between. Through 2020, the s

Last year was different for everyone. For cycling, it was pretty good, compared with other sports, but I only did three races. I did Tirreno, the Tour of Poland and the Giro. I was really prepared for the year, I went to lots of training camps before

We’re at our first training camp of 2021 and 27 riders and 32 support staff have just been vaccinated with China’s Sinopharm vaccine. We know vaccinating elite athletes is a sensitive issue but UAE’s programme is ahead of most countries. Frontline wo

Last season was a strange, difficult one for everybody in the peloton. For B&B Hotels rider Kévin Réza perhaps it was the most intense of all. Like everybody in the peloton, Kévin had to deal with the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic. Unlike them,

The best female cyclist in the world since 2017 has been either Anna van der Breggen or Annemiek van Vleuten. The Dutch duo have been way ahead. One or other of them has won the Giro Femminile since 2017, the Worlds since 2018 and Strade Bianche sinc

After Tao Geoghegan Hart’s Giro d’Italia win, which was equal parts unlikely and deserved, David Brailsford waxed lyrical about the new direction he envisaged for his team. “We’ve done the train. We’ve done the defensive style of riding and we’ve won

On the men’s side, international road racing is currently fizzing with the energy and vigour of youth - Wout van Aert, Mathieu van der Poel, Remco Evenepoel, Tadej Pogacar, Mads Pedersen, Marc Hirschi, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Richard Carapaz, Jai Hindley

Typically, in the weeks and months after a rider wins their first grand tour, they’ll be revelling in the celebrations that come with their newfound fame, making the most of the press, media exposure and opportunities. It’s understandable: winning a

Some riders retire without ever having won a race. Others have to fight their whole career to get the taste of victory just a few times. But there are also riders who seem to have been born to win. After three seasons as a pro, Lorena Wiebes can coun

Ceratizit Challenge by La Vuelta, stage, 2020 Driedaagse Brugge-De Panne, 2020 GP Euromat, 2020 Spar-Omloop van het Hageland, 2020 Boels Ladies Tour, stage, 2019 (2) Ladies Tour of Norway, stage, 2019 Prudential RideLondon, 2019 BeNe Ladies Tour, sta

The Piazza del Campo is no stranger to sporting events. It hosts the Palio di Siena, a horse race with medieval origins. Ten horses and their riders thunder around the tight square for three laps, in a terrifying spectacle that often lasts less than

Movistar ventured into the unknown in 2018, after nearly four decades of being one of the most successful teams in men’s professional cycling. The team announced, at their sponsor headquarters of Telefonica, the launch of a women’s programme. The Spa

The last 10, 12 years I spent at Conti level with my former team, Raleigh and then Vitus Pro Cycling, and having to make the decision to close the door on that last year was heart wrenching. It was pretty emotional having to shut the service course d

The 2020 season was a second consecutive year of breakthrough performances by young riders, from Tadej Pogacar at the Tour, through Remco Evenepoel in every stage race he entered, to Marc Hirschi at Flèche Wallonne. And in his first year as a profess

At 21 years and 364 days, Tadej Pogacar became the youngest winner of the Tour de France in 116 years when he won the 2020 edition of the race. Egan Bernal’s 2019 victory came at 22 years and 196 days, making him the fourth youngest ever. Then we hav

Team Association should be a game all cycling fans play. Name a team. Then say whatever first comes into mind. La Vie Claire: kit. Festina: doping. US Postal Service: Armstrong. ONCE: Alex Zulle’s spectacles. Molteni: Merckx. Sky: the line (and where

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Tao Geoghegan Hart’s victory in the Giro doesn’t exactly make life difficult for Ineos Grenadiers, even if it was relatively unexpected. There are precisely no circumstances in which the team wouldn’t have taken that win. However, that’s not to say t

£9,199 ||| $12,565 The Aeroad is Canyon’s flagship aero bike, the bike they claim will be the quickest you’ll ever ride. It weighs just 7.14kg thanks to the full carbon frame, with each part shaped to cut through the wind. Race like Mathieu van der P

1.WT: One-day UCI WorldTour race / 1.Pro: Major one-day race / 1.1: Minor one-day race / 2.WT: UCI WorldTour stage race / 2.Pro: Major stage race / 2.1: Minor stage race / WWT: Women's WorldTour race DRÔME/ARDÈCHE CLASSIC 27-28 Feb | France | 1.Pro I

21-27 FEBRUARY 2020 PODIUM 1st Adam Yates 2nd Tadej Pogačar 3rd Alexey Lutsenko The UAE Tour was ground zero for the covid-19 crisis as it hit cycling. Though it’s a race that can be hard to love, with the lack of varied terrain and atmosphere, along

The challenge of Milan-San Remo has changed little over the last few decades. Apart from occasional flirtations with tougher climbs, the length of the race and then the final hills, the Cipressa and Poggio, have defined the event. What’s interesting

The forested Wallonian climbs of Liège-Bastogne-Liège are right in the sweet spot of being long enough to favour climbers and short enough to give the puncheurs a chance. The winners’ list mixes grand tour champions and classics specialists, though i

Theoretically, the Tour of Flanders is no more difficult to win than any other race. There is, after all, a victor every year. However, there’s something unique about the combination of challenges that the Ronde presents. The measure of how hard it i

After a few years of exuberant experimentation with its route, following the innovative leads of the Giro and Vuelta, the Tour has settled into a more traditional shape for 2021. For all that the organisers ASO sent the peloton into the Alps as early

More than any other major one-day race, Il Lombardia tilts the playing field definitively towards the climbers. The puncheurs and classics specialists can hope for a good result at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the hilliest of the spring classics, but the cl

For the first time since 2002, the cycling world road championships will return to Flanders in Belgium. Though the organisers have resisted the temptation to incorporate the iconic climbs of the Flemish Ardennes into their circuits, the races have an

To break through as a professional cyclist, the theory goes, you need to have been racing at a high level from when you are a teenager. By age 22, most young riders have long been signed up to a top team. There are, of course, those few who prove tha

Tell me about Joe. Joe Laverick is a 20-year-old from Grimsby, who has just signed for Hagens Berman Axeon for 2021, after racing with Chambéry CF, Ag2r’s feeder team, in 2020. He got into cycling after playing football to a reasonably high level. Go

The Giro d’Italia has always needed Italian winners, and the 1977 edition was a case in point. It was billed as a showdown between a local sporting David and a marauding foreigner. The previous September, the Worlds road race in Puglia had been a two

Of all the races lost to the covid-19 pandemic, the most keenly missed was Paris-Roubaix. The Queen of Classics is one of the most prestigious events of the year, with a unique parcours and challenge. It’s a paradox, or perhaps absolutely typical of