Tabla de contenidos para December 2020 en Procycling

EDITOR Well, I survived October with my sanity intact after what has to have been the most intensive month of racing ever. In the space of just a few weeks we watched all the Belgian classics plus the Giro and the start of the Vuelta, and all that off the back of the Tour de France and Worlds last month. I could barely keep up - at some points I was watching three events at once. It was a challenge for my poor, fragmented attention span, and I think the nadir came when I watched several minutes of a Giro stage but with the commentary from the Vuelta, without realising. Mostly, I enjoyed it, though I don’t deny the words, ‘Too much cycling’ may have passed my lips at least…

DEPUTY EDITOR By the time you read this, hopefully the riders on Équipe Paule Ka will have found a new home for 2020, after the news emerged in October that the French fashion retailer was pulling its sponsorship of the team immediately. Just months after coming on board - apparently with a long-term deal - the team’s 13 riders and staff now find themselves out of work, scrambling for new contracts with the racing season already over. The team didn’t even get to race the Tour of Flanders, it was that quick. For all that sponsors such as Jumbo and Visma should be praised for investing in men’s and women’s cycling, the overnight demise of Équipe Paule Ka is a reminder of how, for many teams, long-term survival in cycling…

We finished the season with a classics campaign, which wasn’t normal. Usually we have the classics and everything like the Giro and Tour comes after. During the campaign it wasn’t that strange, it was only when we had finished and were going home that you realise it’s a bit weird. It doesn’t matter if it’s October or April, the weather was similar for the races. It’s just this time that you’ve come from the summer. We got quite lucky with the weather during the races, it wasn’t too bad, not much rain, although it was a bit windy on the last day at De Panne - epic - but that’s still classics weather conditions. We had a good time there. We won Scheldeprijs with Caleb, and John Degenkolb had a…

2012 Signs her first professional contract with the Belgian Sengers Ladies team and wins five races including the GC and two stages at the Tour de Bretagne Féminin. Finishes fifth in her first Worlds RR. 2013 Focusses on finishing her nursing degree, but still scores a string of top 10s at the spring classics, including ninth at Trofeo Binda, seventh at Flanders and fourth at Flèche Wallonne. 2014 Joins the Rabo-Liv team, and showcases her GC potential with wins at Festival Elsy Jacobs and the Ladies Tour of Norway. Finishes third at the Giro Rosa and runner-up at the Lotto Belgium Tour. 2015 Returns from a broken pelvis to win 13 races including Het Nieuwsblad, Flèche, La Course and a debut Giro title. In Italy, she moves into the race…

There will never be another classics season like it. The experiment forced on cycling by covid, in which the biggest one-day races were shoehorned into two ludicrously intense periods either side of the September Tour de France, will probably not be repeated. Italy, out of necessity, had already condensed an entire year into eight days by running Milan-San Remo, harbinger of spring, one week and Il Lombardia, the autumn classic, the next in August. The four weeks following the Tour were even more slapdash: the Worlds, Liège, Gent-Wevelgem and Flanders in four consecutive weekends. Yes, usually April packs in six big one-day races and a few more semi-classics, but usually we don’t also have the Giro d’Italia running concurrently, along with the Vuelta a España. We’ll start at the end,…

STAGE 1 Grosseto › Grosseto,16.8km (TTT) STAGE 2 Paganico › Arcidosso, 124.8km STAGE 3 Santa Fiora › Assisi, 138km STAGE 4 Assisi › Tivoli, 170.3km STAGE 5 Terracina › Terracina, 110.3km STAGE 6 Torre del Greco › Nola, 87.8km STAGE 7 Nola › Maddaloni, 107km STAGE 8 Castelnuovo della Daunia › San M. la Catola, 91.5km STAGE 9 Motta Montecorvino › Motta Montecorvino, 109.9km GENERAL CLASSIFICATION POINTS CLASSIFICATION KOM CLASSIFICATION YOUTH CLASSIFICATION…

During the 18th century, it was popular for young men to travel across Europe in search of art and culture, visiting countries like Italy and Germany. This adventure was known as a Grand Tour, but the resemblance between modern three-week stage races and the trips of young aristocratic men 200 years ago ends there. For the modern cyclist, the opportunities to take in the culture of the surrounding area as they’re spinning by at 40km/h while in the middle of three weeks of suffering are few and far between. This doesn’t stop Neilson Powless. The young EF Pro Cycling rider explains: “During stages I’m kind of making mental notes and even writing down some notes of places I want to go visit again afterwards, because I rode through towns and…

394 Race days contested by Gracie Elvin since she turned pro in 2012, as the Australian announced her retirement at the end of this season. The 31-year-old, who twice won the National Championships among her five victories, has raced for home team Mitchelton-Scott since 2013. “The UCI response doesn’t read as if they took our concerns very seriously” EF Pro Cycling boss Jonathan Vaughters speaks out after his team suggested the Giro should end after two weeks, over concerns that the race bubble wasn’t working properly, and that covid-19 was spreading. Case closed: Remco Evenepoel and Deceuninck-Quick Step have been cleared by the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation of any rule violations at Il Lombardia. DS Davide Bramati was filmed removing a package from Evenepoel’s pocket after the Belgian rider crashed and…

DS, LOTTO SOUDAL U23 He’s a climber, but he’s also pretty explosive. When it’s a finish on top of a climb with a small group, he can sprint. It was difficult to know at the restart which rider was on which level because of the long break; it was difficult to know who was the leader. So we started without a leader at Tour de Savoie Mont Blanc, because we had options. The race decided who would be our leader, and we saw that Maxim was in good shape. The months where we were in lockdown he worked pretty hard, and he did some training camps on his own. For him to come third at Savoie was good because the level there is always really high. With ProConti teams involved…

11 Core training. Sit-ups. Plank. All that stuff we are supposed to do but are mostly really quite lazy about and don’t. I met an osteopath last week who asked me, ‘What is your strongest core muscle?’ The look of surprise on his face when I took an educated, yet correct, guess was priceless. The diaphragm, was my reply. Try it. Next time you are suffering on the bike, breathe deep into your belly. It takes a lot of concentrating but if you really push your diaphragm out and down, it will add a lot of stability to your riding. I’m sure there is value to all the so-called core exercises, but I work a lot on all my back muscles, right from top to bottom, and my breathing muscles.…

The season has continued, but it’s closer to November now than October and with autumn well and truly set in, which is strange. It has been another busy period, and with no time at all at home since my last diary entry, it has been all go. I raced the Worlds in Imola and then from there went direct to the Gran Partenza of the Giro d’Italia in Palermo. The Worlds was a great week, I spent the whole week laughing and joking with the British staff and riders. Spending all year with a very international team makes you appreciate being around Brits for a week, I suppose. The race itself was bonkers hard, faster and faster all day until I truly exploded on the last lap. It was a…

Brabantse Pijl is my local race - I was born and grew up in Leuven, so I feel a personal connection with the race, and it’s a unique one for me to shoot. It makes it more relaxing when you can go to your own local cafe for a coffee before the race! The story of the 2020 race was of course the big names like Mathieu van der Poel and Julian Alaphippe taking part. As a photographer, it’s the best scenario to have big names at a smaller race - you have more space to get good shots of popular riders. But this year was also particular for the introduction of the Moskesstraat climb near Overijse, which is going to be one of the centrepieces of the World Championships…

Initially I wasn’t on the Tour team. The plan this year was always the Giro d’Italia. And then the pandemic hit. The whole world flipped upside down. When we got back outside again and started training I was still preparing for the Giro, and then probably some time through July I spoke with Whitey [directeur sportif Matt White] about the possibility of the race programme changing and me going to the Tour. For any pro cyclist, obviously they want to go to the Tour de France and I was no different. For the first part of my career I wasn’t thinking so much about it, and I was really enjoying going to successful Giros and successful Vueltas, with guys like Simon [Yates] and Esteban [Chaves]. The last few years I’ve…

The now defunct magazine Cycle Sport devoted in 1996 an entire issue to a Robert Millar retirement special, guest edited by the great climber, who now has a new identity as Philippa York. York wrote profiles of all the teams for whom she had raced: Peugeot, Z, TVM, Le Groupement… All bar one: there was a blank page given over to Fagor, with whom York had raced in 1988. The experience had been so painful that she didn’t want to recall it, or give those who ran the team any credit. It’s rare indeed for any team to inspire feelings like these, but York is happy to explain why she felt the way she did. “It was a complete mess as a team. Normally a cycling team is a bunch…

I think my first year on the WorldTour has gone okay. I know that the team is happy with me, and they’ve liked what they’ve seen so far. Unfortunately, I’ve not done a tonne of races. For me personally, it’s definitely been a bit of an awakening. What I found is that it’s not just that the races are hard and the paces are higher and the average power is higher, but you really have to know the courses and know the terrain. Especially in Belgium, the veterans and most of the guys racing have done these races and done the courses at least 10 times, five times even as juniors. Eighty per cent of the game is just knowing the race and the course. I was trying to study…

The eve of Ronde van Vlaanderen might as well be Christmas Eve. I rolled out for my final pre-race openers of the year into Oudenaarde, and you could sense the anticipation all around. The morning fog hadn’t cleared and there was a cold bite to the humid air. It was already noon, but it felt like 8am. Even with the restrictions on spectators this year, the bustle around the city and the cyclists everywhere made it very apparent - a holiday was descending upon Flanders. The anticipation was contagious, and I was giddy. I would get to end my season at the race I’ve always dreamed of doing. My first classic was Omloop het Nieuwsblad, back in February, if you remember. (Yes, it was the year 2020.) I couldn’t digest…

Around the Cauberg, in the south of Limburg, it’s a quiet, grey Thursday afternoon and that feels a little strange. There should have been a hive of activity at the most famous cycling climb in the Netherlands. In the revised race calendar, the Amstel Gold Race was planned to start in two days’ time on October 10. But the only Dutch classic was cancelled over a week ago, due to the ever increasing numbers of coronavirus infections. Therefore there is no construction work happening at the top of the Cauberg and the adjacent Landal-holiday park is empty of organisers, team and riders. Except for one rider: Anna van der Breggen. The news of the cancellation, of course, hadn’t bypassed her, but her presence in Valkenburg has an altogether different reason.…

Teniel Campbell endured nine weeks in complete isolation inside her home during the covid-19 crisis before things started to unravel. She moved to Bottanuco, on the edge of Bergamo, Italy, last December in what was supposed to be the start of her new life as a professional cyclist. But instead she found herself inside the coronavirus red zone when the virus swept across northern Italy during the peak of the first wave of the pandemic this spring. The 23-year-old was in a foreign land, had just joined the Valcar-Travel & Service team, and was on the other side of the world from her family and friends in Trinidad and Tobago, with no idea when she’d be able to travel home and see them again. She wasn’t allowed to go outside.…

This year’s Giro Rosa was all going so well for Annemiek van Vleuten. It was different from her two previous wins. There were none of the long Alpine climbs or individual time trials where she had made the difference before, but from the very start the Dutchwoman was in control, gliding serenely, it looked, to a third consecutive overall victory. She started stage 7 between Nola and Maddaloni defending an overall lead which had increased to 1:52 since she comprehensively won stage 2. But then, around 500 metres from the end: disaster. The stage had been dynamic. The breakaway’s last survivor was dispatched on the day’s final climb, and CCC-Liv’s Soraya Paladin led a group of around 25 women into the closing kilometre hoping team-mate Marianne Vos could win a…

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Paris-Tours used to be one of the biggest one-day races of the season and arguably the most prestigious behind what are now described as the five monuments and the World Championships. The winners’ list is an illustrious one: Rik Van Looy, Joop Zoetemelk, Francesco Moser, Sean Kelly and Erik Zabel all won it. Famously, it’s the one classic that Eddy Merckx never won, which only adds to the history and lustre of the race. Even into the 2000s, it was one of the more established and secure events on the UCI’s 10-event World Cup schedule. It’s also one of the oldest races. Though Milano-Torino claims a first event in 1876, there were only two more editions in the 19th century and it has missed several spells along the way. Liège-Bastogne-Liège…

Lizzie Deignan is back. The former world champion has looked at her best since racing returned post-lockdown, with three wins and another six top-10 finishes. What was even more impressive about her wins is that two of them came in unexpected fashion for Deignan, from long-range breakaways rather than sprint finishes. Liège-Bastogne-Liège was the most notable, with the Trek-Segafredo rider forming part of a nine-woman group that went clear with 50km to go, before forging ahead alone on the Côte de La Redoute 30km from the finish. Unlike her previous biggest one-day wins, such as the Tour of Flanders and Strade Bianche in 2016, and the Worlds in 2015, she did not win from a sprint between a select group of favourites, but by forging ahead on her own. Deignan…

BEST TEAM OF THE MONUMENTS We might have been missing Paris-Roubaix in 2020, but which team performed best across the monuments? Jumbo-Visma have had a storming season, winning San Remo and Liége and coming second in Lombardia and Flanders - the latter which came down to a bike throw. Classics heavyweights Deceuninck-Quick Step will be disappointed not to have added another monument to their palmarés, but they still managed three top-five finishes in the four races, likewise Sunweb and UAE Emirates who scored two podium positions and a top 10 result in a third race. Alpecin-Fenix’s results were completely down to Mathieu van der Poel SAN REMO: 1 LOMBARDIA: 2 LIÉGE: 1 FLANDERS: 2 SAN REMO: 2 LOMBARDIA: 58 LIÉGE: 5 FLANDERS: 5 SAN REMO: 3 LOMBARDIA: 19 LIÉGE: 2…

Usually I’m a pretty normal, laid back dad. But at 5pm on September 19, I was screaming at the television, sitting right up against it, while my kids looked at me like I was an alien. What was happening? Fan favourite Tadej Pogacar took the Tour victory from the unbeatable-looking Primož Roglic. I explained to my kids that evening that I had witnessed one of the most unexpected turnovers in the history of sport. This was historical. The corona Tour was a five-star edition because of a battle between the two Slovenians. It was like Rocky Balboa beating Ivan Drago, I told my kids. I admit that the comparison didn’t get through to my six and eight-year-old, but I assume you readers will understand. This was what cycling is all…