It's been a weird week. As I said last time, the season proper has ended, but there's still a few Continental events running to keep riders on their bikes, one of which was the Saitama Criterium, an invitational exhibition race organised by the Tour de France. John Degenkolb won it, but what we're interested in are the slightly (very) condescending publicity photos of riders taking in a totally stereotype-free Japanese culture.
You may recall a fortnight ago we saw Joaquim Rodriguez masquerading as a referee. Well let's keep with Joaquim, and see him as... a martial arts expert!
There have been more, obviously, most notably Chris Froome's garish yellow getup, his 'reward' for winning the Tour itself. Homework is to find it for yourselves, you'll appreciate it more.
Big news elsewhere, the UCI WorldTour and Women's WorldTour have been rebranded! Sort of.
Yeah, really all they've done is drawn a circle with some lines. They're parading this as a massive event, with all the colours being symbolic, particularly the three extra ones in the women's logo. Draw your own conclusions, or even your own logos!
Do you get bored when cycling's not on, and are you a sucker for a painfully weak tie-in? Then we have you covered. The Giro d'Italia's Twitter admins made their own fun this week, using Back To The Future as a paper-thin excuse to entertain themselves by live tweeting a stage from 1999. Spoiler: Marco Pantani won.
One last thing before we go, and it's time to bust out the Cute Child Klaxon. Mark Cavendish's daughter, Delilah, is riding a bike. The entire Women's WorldTour better start watching their backs...
Tuesday saw the second of the route announcements for the 2016 Grand Tours, the Tour de France. It was already known that the Tour would start in the Manche region, with the grand depart from the iconic Mont-Saint-Michel. But the full details were only unveiled on Tuesday in Paris. The press conference was attended by the traditional gamut of trotted-out riders, including last year's winner, Chris Froome.
Bring your Second World War textbooks, because the Tour's opening stage will allow the tv directors' history fetish to really hit its stride. Stage 1 will finish by Utah Beach, one of the D-Day landing sites, allowing for several extended helicopter shots of... well, beaches.
It's a flat stage too, allowing for a sprinter to wear the yellow jersey at the start of the race. The second stage is largely flat aside from a brutal 3km climb at the finish, with a peak steepness of 14%. There's a fair chunk of the stage exposed to the coast too, so the peloton being split like in stage 2 of this year's race is a very real possibility.
Stages 3 and 4 are both flat and made from sprinters, the only notable feature being the first of the pair, Granville-Angers, allowing for the older hands to make Open All Hours references. The Massif Central mountains kick in in stage 5, with three climbs in the last 35km allowing those with eyes on the maillot jaune to stake their first real claims.
Three Pyrenean mountain stages precede the first rest day, the first ending with a big climb up the Col d'Aspin, followed by an intense descent to the false flat finish. The following stage has four climbs, the first a 19km climb up the hors catégorie Col du Tourmalet. If that hasn't split the peloton enough, three more climbs before a steep, long descent into Bagnères-de-Luchon should really separate the leaders from the bunch.
letour.com
The rest day in Andorra is bookended by two stages riddled with climbs, with climbers and punchers alike fancying their chances. History would suggest that the leader by now will hold the jersey until Paris, with the last three Tours having their eventual winner in the maillot jaune by Stage 10. The next stage from Carcassonne to Montpellier won't shake up any standings but the green jersey, but stage 12 certainly could.
The finishing climb up Mont Ventoux is the one on which Chris Froome cemented his first Tour victory, beating Nairo Quintana to the summit by half a minute, and almost a further minute ahead of anyone else. He'll be tipped to do the same again, but his many challengers will be eyeing the 15km at 8.8% as a great chance to make up time, particularly the French riders looking to mark Bastille Day.
Equally, the time trial specialists will look to stage 13's ITT as their chance to shine. An unremarkable three stages will take the Tour into Switzerland for a second and final rest day outside France. Attention then turns fully to the mountains, where, for all the climbs and time trialling beforehand, everything will truly be decided.
Stage 17 finishes with two 8% climbs in short sequence, with all but 5 of the last 30km spent going uphill. A brief mountain time trial follows, from Sallanche to Megeve, likely to see riders facing battles not only with each other, but to leave something in reserve for the two pivotal stages that follow. It may only be 17km, but will provide a huge opportunity to make up valuable seconds, or even minutes.
Mont Blanc will loom into view on stage 19, with the finish at Saint-Gervais in the shadow of Europe's largest mountain, although Montée de Bisanne some 50km from the finish is a longer, steeper and higher climb than the final summit. The final stage, from Megève to Morzine, has two climbs that max out at over 10%, with a long descent to the finish. It's a town where Nairo Quintana has won in the past, and if he's in with a shout, as he was last year, he'll have every reason to like his chances of achieving a Tour victory.
Whoever holds the yellow jersey on July 24th, they'll also be holding champagne on the ceremonial final stage on the Champs-Élysées, where the sprinters will find out the hard way if they conserved enough energy in the Alps for the slingshot onto the most famous road in cycling.
So what does all this mean? Firstly, it's undeniably a Tour for the climbers. Chris Froome will fancy his chances of taking a third win, although certainly he'll have several contenders. Astana look set to be united behind Vuelta winner Fabio Aru, with Nibali concentrating on the Giro. Alberto Contador will surely be giving everything to win what he may have already decided is his last Tour. Quintana will be aching to improve on his two second place finishes behind Froome.
And what of the French riders? No less an authority than Bernard Hinault has read the riot act to Thibaut Pinot, Romain Bardet et al, and suggested that this could be the year a Frenchman retakes the top spot. We've never heard that before, have we? But with or without the dawning of a new French era, it's a route that has been designed for drama, and to encourage lead changes. Fasten your seatbelts...
One of the good things about the end of the season is that riders suddenly find themselves with a lot more time on their hands. Some merely use this time to Instagram some artsy beach shots, but some others delve into their minds and produce some gems of tweets. Here's some of this week's best:
As a bit of background to the above image, Katusha made efficient use of their time off by having a Riders vs Staff football match. As Joaquim Rodriguez is injured, he was roped in to referee and... well. The power might have got to his head a tad.
Now, if you'll excuse me, STATBLAST!
No proffesional rider in the world raced more kilometers than kristian90 did this year... 15 996km!… https://t.co/TtHhsRQcFp
Congratulations to Kristian Sbaragli for his ironman season. On to ironwomen, it's been hard to go on Twitter this week without seeing Laura Trott winning something at the European track championships. The Matrix Pro Cycling rider picked up three titles this week, taking her overall career total to 10.
Have you ever heard of cycleball? Neither had we until the UCI tweeted about it this week. A quick search of YouTube reveals it's two teams of two riders, using their bikes to smack a ball into a goal. Think indoor football on bikes.
If there aren't impromptu games breaking out in parks worldwide within a few weeks, I'll be very disappointed. Speaking of disappointing, we're a bit late here, but hopefully this will mark the last time these godawful team pictures from Lotto-Soudal ever see the light of a screen. We draw your attention to Louis Vervaeke's pose in particular.
And finally, sometimes captions can't do a tweet justice. So we'll just translate for those of you who don't speak Spanish, and leave you with The Unbeaten Green Bullet.
At the risk of attracting ire from followers of the Continental Tours, particularly the Africa and Asia tours, I'm taking it upon myself, as a barely-started cycling blogger, to declare the 2015 season officially over. I'm largely basing this decision on the UCI holding their first annual Cycling Gala, marking the end of the WorldTour season.
At the season opener, the Tour Down Under, Rohan Dennis got off to a winning start just as he would in the first stage of the Tour de France that summer. Cadel Evans retired following his third place finish, opting to bow out in front of his home fans rather than at the end of 2014. Aussies swept the podium, with Richie Porte filling the second step. Porte went one better at the first of the European races, the Paris-Nice, two stage wins helping him to the GC victory.
Porte won again two weeks later at the Volta a Catalunya, following the two Italian races. The Tirreno-Adriatico, in particular, was the first chance to see the big names slugging it out. 2014 champion Alberto Contador faced competition from Nairo Quintana and Vincenzo Nibali. Nibali barely featured, while Quintana won the vital stage 5 to take a GC lead he would not relinquish, with Contador back in 4th overall.
The cobbled classics were typically hard fought, with many riders attempting three or even all four. Zdenek Stybar and Niki Terpstra were unlucky to finish 2nd twice each, also with each losing out in a sprint. Alexander Kristoff pipped Terpstra in the Tour of Flanders, while John Degenkolb won the Paris-Roubaix from Stybar. Luca Paolini's win at the Gent-Wevelgem would be his last win before being ejected from the Tour de France after testing positive for cocaine.
Alejandro Valverde dominated the Ardennes Classics, winning both La Fleche Wallonne and the Liege-Bastogne-Liege in the space of five days, just as he had in 2006. Since then only Phillippe Gilbert had won more than one in a year. Indeed, he was only beaten into second in the Amstel Gold Race by a long sprint from Michael Kwiatkowski, coming within a whisker of the triple.
At the Giro, it was another Spaniard who wrote his name in the history books. After three Australians (Gerrans, Matthews and Clarke) held the maglia rosa in the first four days, Alberto Contador took control on stage 5, and only relinquished the jersey for one day before finishing almost two minutes clear of Fabio Aru in Milan. Aru's second place, coupled with the young riders' jersey win, and both team jerseys, made it a successful Giro for the Astana squad.
CyclingWeekly
Contador's victory put him alongside Bernard Hinault as the only men to have won multiple times in each Grand Tour, and set Contador up for his stated aim to win all three Grand Tours consecutively. His win at the previous year's Vuelta also made him the first since Marco Pantani in 1998 to win two consecutive Grand Tours. The race may have lacked the start power of Nibali, Quintana and Chris Froome, but the win nevertheless helped cement Contador as one of the all-time greats of the sport.
Froome's two stage wins and last day victory in the Criterium du Dauphine made him the hot favourite to regain the Tour de France title he lost last year, and he did not disappoint, winning both the yellow jersey and the polka dot for King of the Mountains. It was a dramatic Tour, with first Fabian Cancellara, and then Tony Martin having to relinquish the yellow jersey through injury-forced withdrawals.
Mirror
Unfounded allegations of doping plagued the Tour for both Froome and Sky as a whole, with verbal and even physical abuse, particularly in the Pyrenees, where Froome was punched by one spectator, and doused in urine by another. The release of Froome's power data was a slightly baffling choice from Team Sky, not least because out of context, it meant little. Regardless, despite a very late attack from his nearest challenger Quintana on the final two stages before Paris, Froome held on to the jersey he'd held since stage 7 to win by just over a minute.
In the points competition, Peter Sagan took his customary green jersey despite failing to win a stage for the second straight year. His five second places and two combativity awards may have been some further solace, but much more was to come for the Slovakian in 2015.
Elsewhere in the Tour, MTN Qhubeka announced themselves on the world stage. Their debut wildcard entry to the Tour was marked by their Eritrean rider Daniel Teklehaimanot holding the polka dot jersey for four days, after a successful attack on stage 6. The team finished with riders in the top 10 of the mountains and young rider classifications, and 5th in the teams, a superb showing. The top team, however, was undeniably Movistar, with Quintana and Alejandro Valverde giving them a double podium finish, to go with Quintana's young rider and the teams classification wins.
The four weeks before the Vuelta a Espana contained three WorldTour events, with Adam Yates taking his first one-day and WorldTour victory in the Clasica de San Sebastian following a well-timed attack. Movistar's Jon Izagirre also took a maiden WorldTour victory in the Toue de Pologne, while the Eneco Tour was won by defending champion Tim Wellens.
The Vuelta began with something of a farce, as the Team Time Trial course was neutralised due to several ill-advised sandy sections along Marbella's beach. Most GC contenders' teams did not contest the time trial with any vigour, although Tejay van Garderen's BMC team took the opportunity to warm up for the Worlds with a stage win.
Stage 2 contained a different sort of controversy. A crash split the peloton, with Fabio Aru and Vincenzo Nibali notably being held up. Both eventually caught up, but tv footage showed Nibali being given a slingshot by his team car in the process. The commissaires disqualified Nibali from the race that evening.
On the topic of controversy, bizarrely motorbikes were a hot topic of conversation. Saxo Tinkoff threatened legal action towards the Vuelta organisers after two of its riders were knocked off by tv camera bikes, including Peter Sagan in the run up to a sprint he was tipped to win. But also, wild allegations of motorised bikes were thrown around, stemming from Movistar 'hiding' a damaged bike in their team car following a crash. Normal procedure, they said. What followed was bordering ridiculous, as following Frank Schleck's win in stage 16, five bikes belonging to riders from several teams were inspected for motorised shenanigans. Hardly surprisingly, nothing was found.
Back to sporting matters, the red jersey changed hands eight times during the Vuelta, between five riders. Esteban Chaves took the jersey from Peter Velits, who was first over the line for BMC in stage 1, before losing it to the revelation of the Vuelta, Tom Dumoulin. The Dutchman recovered from a broken and dislocated shoulder sustained in the Tour de France to trade the lead with Chaves over the course of the less hilly first half of the Vuelta, but he dug deep to keep in touch through the mountains. He gained almost two minutes on the leader following the mountains, Aru, and three on Joaquim Rodriguez to retake the red jersey by just three seconds.
CyclingWeekly
Defying the odds, Dumoulin withstood several attacks to actually extend his lead by a further three seconds in the following stage 19. Sadly for Dumoulin, and his rapidly growing list of supporters, the penultimate stage 20 proved one too many. Astana, united behind Aru in Nibali's absence, powered up the third of four climbs, smashing the peloton to pieces, and Dumoulin did not have the energy to respond. Indeed, he lost four minutes, dropping to 6th in the GC standings.
Few, perhaps with the exceptions of eventual podium finishers Joaquim Rodriguez and Rafaj Majka, would have begrudged Dumoulin a place on the GC podium for his efforts. The overall combativity award from a public vote showed that his spirited race will perhaps be the abiding memory of this year's Vuelta. Despite Dumoulin's heartbreak, it was a well deserved first Grand Tour win for Aru, although marred slightly by allegations of him benefitting from another sling from a teammate, this time the hand of Luis Leon Sanchez on stage 19.
Spaniard Alejandro Valverde marked his home race by taking the points jersey and 7th overall, as well at the team classification again with Movistar. The points gained gave Valverde an almost unassailable lead at the top of the UCI World Rankings, as he closed on a second successive win.
Attention turned then to the World Championships, held in Richmond, Virginia, on a course that has a slight rise leading up to the finish, sure to test tired legs. BMC took the men's TTT, with Velocio-SRAM winning the women's. Linda Villumsen and Vasil Kiryienka were the individual time trial champions, but much of the attention was on the road race.
Following several attacks up the twisting, cobbled Libby Hill Park on the final lap, Peter Sagan burst clear, and an unco-ordinated group was unable to reel him in The Slovakian rolled home three seconds clear, to take a famous win, arguably even greater than his four consecutive green jerseys in the Tour de France.
In the women's race, nine elite riders broke away towards the end and contested a sprint, with Britain's Lizzie Armitstead beating Giro and La Course winner, Anna van der Breggen, into second. This rounded off an excellent year for Armitstead, where she also won the UCI World Cup, thanks to wins in the Trofeo Alfredo Binda-Comune di Cittiglio, The Philadelphia Cycling Classic and the GP de Plouay. Anna van der Breggen's wins in the Tour's sister event, La Course, and the Giro d'Italia Femminile cemented her as one of the premier names in women's cycling.
The introduction of La Madrid Challenge (won by Shelley Olds) provided a trio of Grand Tour sister events, although of those only the Giro Rosa is anything more than a one-day exhibition on the final stage of the men's race. The nine day Giro on its own course is an established major event, albeit no longer a true Grand Tour, but the issue of parity remains.
Many seasons wound up after the World Championships, but the serious issue of the season ending Il Lombardia remained, with Vincenzo Nibali claiming his first WorldTour win of the year at the last opportunity.
The inaugural UCI Cycling Gala marked the end of the season, with Contador, Froome and Aru being given special awards to mark their Grand Tour victories. Alejandro Valverde was confirmed as the individual rankings for the second year in a row, with compatriot Joaquim Rodriguez and teammate Nairo Quintana rounding out the top 3. Movistar pipped Katusha to the teams award by just 13 of their 1619 points, thanks to a good showing in the World Team Time Trial. Unsurprisingly given their dominance of the podiums, Spain took a fourth consecutive nations title.
And so ends the 2015 UCI World Tour. We'll be looking at prospects for 2016 soon, and naturally covering it as it happens. Until then, if you've got any fond memories of this season, or think we've missed something, do leave a comment below.
Welcome to a brief look through the madness that is cycling's Twitter accounts. We're wittily calling it Best of Twitter, although if you think you're clever, feel free to suggest a name. Only one way to start, with the World Champion riding an unconventional ungulate:
Cheers Peter. The more bookish among you may have noticed (and possibly attended) the release of David Millar's new book, The Racer, and its accompanying signing tour. Slight hitch, David broke his arm in a skateboarding incident. Lucky there were several people on hand (!) to swap a signed page for a signed cast!
Thought i'd capture it before they cut off the cast today. Book tour memories. pic.twitter.com/uhNuPfxOfs
And finally, to end on a serious note, two time Giro d'Italia winner Ivan Basso announced his retirement, only a couple of weeks after beating testicular cancer. All the best, although we're not sure whether management in the Tinkoff squad or his blueberry farm will prove the more rewarding post-cycling career.
Yesterday at the Expo Milano, the full route for the 2016 Giro d'Italia was unveiled, to much fanfare, in the presence of just about any rider with a link to being a champion or Italian that the Giro organisers, RCS Sport, could muster. Messrs Sagan, Contador, Nibali, Valverde, Kittel, Viviani, Dumoulin, Moser, Basso et al were there to see the announcement in person, but for those of you not on the VIP list, here's what to expect from next year's first Grand Tour.
As had been previously announced, the Giro starts, as with 2015's Tour, in the Netherlands, this time with an individual time trial in Apeldoorn on Friday 6 May.That's followed by two stages between Arnhem and Nijmegen. Nothing to report other than the Dutch tourist board throwing everything at getting Dutch cycling on the map (which Tom Dumoulin almost did single-handedly at the Vuelta last month) and the stages being flat. I know, I'm surprised too.
The first of three rest days follows, existing solely to give the riders and teams time to fly from Arnhem down to the toe of Italy's boot, ready for the Giro proper to begin on the Tuesday. Catanzaro will be the first Italian town we see, as stage 4 sets off up the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The next four non-threatening stages cut inland and track the Appennines on this tour of Italy's mountains. That being said, only a summit finish at stage 6 is likely to shake up the GC to any real extent, before the race continues north to the second of the three ITTs.
This one bears a serious mention. Stage 9's 40km time trial will travel through the Chianti vineyards, for a stage that should produce some stunning visuals, as well as by far the biggest chance for the TT specialists to stretch their legs, with two thirds of the Giro's ITT distance being covered. If any time trialists have any designs on wearing the maglia rosa, they'll have 15 May circled already.
They might just be able to hold onto it for a few days, as following a rest day the Giro spends four days in the flatter part of the country until stage 12. The medium-mountain stage 13 skirts along the edge of the Alps, providing two pairs of peloton-splitting summits and signalling the beginning of the Giro for the climbers.
The day after, the first official mountain stage bites hard. The trip through the Dolomites from Alpago to Corvara is punctuated by six peaks, five of which tower well over 2km above sea level. That 2km is climbed steadily in the first half before the first summit, the average 7% Passo Pordoi. That, though, pales compared to the 9km, 9% climb up Passo Giau, still over 40km from the end of the stage, and one where you can expect the serious GC contenders to be attacking with vigour, before the next day's third, and final, ITT.
There's a twist even in that, however, as stage 15's 10.8km almost entirely consist of an average 8.4% climb, with only a brief false flat start and a mere 6.8% gradient to finish. A mountain time trial, with a maximum 11% gradient, should set a lot of Italian cats among a lot of Italian pigeons.
The ultimate winner of the maglia rosa will only be decided in stages 19 and 20, however. The former has only two Alpine peaks, but the first is the year's Cima Coppi, the second highest mountain the Giro's ever tackled, the Colle dell'Agnello. It's only ever been featured once before in the Giro, in 2007, although oddly twice in the Tour de France. Quirks of geography and cycling aside, the long descent could be just a telling as the climb, so the contenders should bring their A game.
Stage 20 will provide the contenders with four summits to tackle, with the 20km-long slog up the Colle della Lombarda perhaps being the key. The eventual winner of the Giro will be all but certain after a small climb up to Sant'anna di Vinadio. A processional 150km ride into Turin will be all that separates the maglia rosa from victory on 29 May.
So, after all that, what does it all mean? Well, firstly that the Giro looks like it could tempt a lot of riders. Tom Dumoulin's recent heroics in Spain, coupled with the three individual time trials, might just tempt teams to send a TT specialist as a GC contender, although that vicious mountain time trial might just scupper those dreams. Equally, six summit finishes will give the climbers a great deal of optimism for their overall chances.
While many would think it's too early to be making predictions for who'll be there, let alone win the Giro itself, I'm brave and/or daft enough to think that, with Froome's eyes inevitably on back-to-back Tours, Nairo Quintana's thoughts might just linger on a nice, celebratory glass of Chianti...
