Tabla de contenidos para April 2019 en Procycling

EDITOR Happy 20th birthday to… us! It’s two decades since the first edition of Procycling rolled off the presses, which makes us the same age as the Tour Down Under and older than Remco Evenepoel. It’s also 20 years since Lance Armstrong ‘won’ his first Tour, and this last anniversary has been far more relevant than we’d have wanted it to be after the recent revelations of a blood-doping ring in Germany, involving two Austrian cyclists and maybe more. The reactions have been predictable - the usual mix of condemnation, cynicism, anger, weary acceptance and a bit of sympathy. It also takes us back a few years - just when the sport assured us it had cleaned up its act, it has suddenly become quite legitimate to question everything again.…

The General Medical Council’s tribunal of former Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman was adjourned in early March, meaning that questions about allegations of ordering testosterone for nonmedical use and subsequently lying about it, along with charges of poor record-keeping, won’t be answered for several months. The tribunal was adjourned, after being held in private. Dr Freeman has reportedly been suffering from ill health, and failed to turn up to a parliamentary select committee hearing about the infamous Team Sky ‘jiffy bag’ saga in 2016. Team Sky themselves were heavily criticised by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport select committee when they published their report in spring last year, but have been keen to draw a line under the findings and move on. However, until Dr Freeman is ready to…

The New Zealand road is rough. It’s an angular chip held together by sticky tar that turns to soup every time the sun comes out and chews the bottom of your frame to pieces. I’ve spent hours pondering why kiwi roads are so bad. It’s not protection against the weather and I thought it might be a durability thing, but they seem to chuck a layer of rocks on every few months. But occasionally crashing on what amounts to a human cheese grater is not the worst aspect. Cycling is a growing sport in New Zealand, yet we remain very polarised about cyclists. Our issues come in two forms; awareness issues or attitude problems. It’s not ingrained in kiwis to look for cyclists before we turn, open a car door…

2007 A 22-year-old, fresh faced, Van Avermaet makes his Tour of Flanders debut in his first pro year, for Predictor-Lotto. However, he does not make it to the finish and records a DNF. 2008 Already shows his flair for Flanders and finishes an impressive eighth in only his second start in the race. Comes in, in the main group sprint, 21 seconds back on solo winner Stijn Devolder. 2009 While his Lotto team-mate Philippe Gilbert finishes third, Van Avermaet’s hopes are ended by a crash. He finishes the race in 35th, just over three minutes back. 2010 Misses the decisive race splits while team-mate Gilbert is again ahead up the road. He finishes in 39th place, more than five minutes back on winner Fabian Cancellara. 2011 Is constantly active and…

In Movistar’s 40 seasons, over 230 riders in total have ridden for the team. The majority – just under two thirds – have been Spanish, with French and Colombians next on the list. Jurgen Roelandts, however, is only the second Belgian ever to ride for the team. The first was Francis Vermaelen, in 1983, when it was sponsored by Reynolds and in its fourth year of existence. Vermaelen was a former amateur Belgian national champion, a solid allrounder and runner-up in the amateur World Championships in Goodwood, and the team’s first ever major international signing. Reynolds signed Vermaelen on the recommendation of Walter Godefroot with the deal being signed and sealed in the living room of the home of another Flemish champion, 1976 Tour de France winner Lucien Van Impe.…

Historically, there have always been riders able to ride well on both cobbles and in the hills. The difference in skill sets is not as great as that between those of a one-day racer and a grand tour champion (though if you go back far enough, the same riders could win both well into the 1980s). The archetype is perhaps Sean Kelly, who won all the monuments except the Tour of Flanders (in which he came second three times) in the 1980s. Kelly has the distinction of having won all of his monuments on at least two occasions. (He also won the Vuelta, though fourth was his highest at the Tour.) Modern equivalents to Kelly have been rare. Johan Museeuw dominated on the cobbles at the turn of the century…

Road cycling has always been one of the most professional of sports. This goes back to its popularisation in the late 19th century to highlight towns that wanted to stand out more prominently on the map and promote newspapers vying to spread sporting news. Wedded inextricably to money and marketing, it has often sidelined ethical concerns. For the most part, these have related to doping, but a new shadow has emerged in the shape of ‘sportswashing’, the term used to describe sponsorship that’s designed to revitalise the tarnished reputation of the backer making the investment. Initially, these backers were commercial enterprises. Among the first was French company Le Groupement, which launched a team to huge fanfare in 1994 only to scupper it a year later when the nature of its…

Procycling: How are things for you both, as we go into the 2019 season? TONY GALLOPIN: I’ve had a good winter. I took things seriously and everything is going well. With January came harder training and efforts, so it’s tiring, but I feel good. When you say ‘good winter’, what does that entail for a professional cyclist? TG: The main thing is to be in good condition and healthy, to be able to train properly after the break at the end of the season. To do that you have to take things seriously, but also make the most of the extended time at home with the family. The aim is to get to January at 100 per cent. And Samuel, i s that the same fo r you? SAMUEL DUMOULIN:…

There’s a framed photo of Walter Godefroot on the wall of my office, filched from a copy of the long defunct Miroir du Cyclisme magazine. The image, which has likewise long since disappeared from the picture archives [a shot from the same sequence, in black and white, is shown on page 101 - Ed], is from Paris-Roubaix in 1978, when Godefroot was close to the end of his career but nonetheless came in 11th. He’s shot from the side, from a motorbike, and is pin-sharp, especially his eyes, which are fixed on what lies ahead. Behind him, ranks of furrows fade away across a ploughed field to a distant, rain-drenched horizon. Like a rugby player who has just come off the pitch on a filthy wet day, Godefroot is covered…

1 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE Points: 3,896 Movistar, Age: 39 210 points for second at Murcia and Valenciana, and a UAE stage 2 SIMON YATES Points: 3,177 Mitchelton-Scott, Age: 26 An extra 20 points for winning stage 4 at Ruta del Sol 3 PETER SAGAN Points: 3,025 Bora-Hansgrohe, Age: 29 Hasn’t raced so no new points since the Vuelta San Juan 4 GREG VAN AVERMAET Points: 2,959.47 CCC Team, Age: 33 Second at Het Nieuwsblad, plus points at Oman and Valenciana 5 ELIA VIVIANI Points: 2,914 Deceuninck-Quick Step, Age: 30 Won 40 points for his stage 5 win at the UAE Tour 6 TOM DUMOULIN Points: 2,809 Sunweb, Age: 28 132.14 points for sixth overall and stage placings in the UAE 7 JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE Points: 2,762.95 Deceuninck-Quick Step, Age: 26 A stage…

STAFF WRITER PARIS-ROUBAIX 14 Apr | France | 1.WT There are so many races, picking Roubaix as one of your favourites seems obvious. Of course, you love Roubaix, that’s like saying you love Christmas, or chocolate. Who doesn’t? There are many reasons I love Roubaix, why cycling fans love it, why so many of the pros pick it when we ask in our regular Q&A what their favourite race is. There’s nothing else in cycling like Paris-Roubaix, nothing else in sport that’s even comparable to it. There’s its brutality; pavé that are so uneven it’s hard to walk across them, let alone ride a bike. The unpredictability. There’s the 117 years of history, the stone showers, the concrete velodrome, the contrast between how unremarkable Roubaix is and this one day…

STAFF WRITER In the week of International Women’s Day, cycling crossed a major threshold as the route of the inaugural Women’s Tour of Scotland was unveiled. History has officially been made, as the stage race will become the first-ever UCI-ranked event to be launched for women without a men’s equivalent already in existence. The threeday, 2.1-level race, from August 9-11, will start in Dundee and travel southwest to Glasgow before finishing up in central Edinburgh. Perhaps most significant, however, is how much the UK continues to be one of the leaders, if not the leader in promoting women’s cycling. Great Britain, of course, is already home to one of the biggest stage races in the sport – the Women’s Tour. Since it was launched in 2014, the five-stage race has…

Until the end of last year, Ag2r La Mondiale rode Factor bikes, but they have switched to Eddy Merckx for 2019 and 2020. If everything goes well, there’ll be a two-year extension beyond that. The hope, one presumes, is that some of the five-time Tour de France winner’s race-winning aura will rub off on to a team which has all but reached the summit of the Paris podium. A long-term deal might also suit Ag2r - they’ve hopped around various bike suppliers in recent years, including Focus, Kuota and BH, as well as Factor. Bardet’s EM525, named after the commonly agreed total of race wins by the eponymous rider, is new for Ag2r. According to the company, it will weigh in at 6.8 kilogrammes and is designed to perform well…

We get to possibly my greatest-ever hit. I remember feeling an incredible serenity for the entire day that April: laughing and joking in the bus where I stayed until the very last minute, and somebody pointing out that I was the last to cross the start line. I felt in complete control and felt I was there purely to enjoy the race. I remember a nature call and a joke with Alex Howes that left me laughing uncontrollably. Once we got to the business end of the race, I attacked on the flat section at the top of the Redoute climb but seconds into my attack I stopped, angry with myself that I was wasting energy. We had a new climb that year, a long drag on a wide road…

I’ll be frank with you guys. I owe you that. It sort of comes with what I wrote about last month, and the whole reason of writing and sharing a personal diary: the true, honest journey. And mine hasn’t been all smooth sailing lately. As you all can see if you look further down here, my number of race days is still zero, and my absolute stagnation of kilometres is quite obvious. I should’ve been racing by now. That was the ‘normal’ plan. But things don’t always go to plan, unfortunately, even though that’s what we strive for. Coming home from my first training camp for the year with my new team, I got sick. That’s definitely never what you plan for as a cyclist. Health is everything in sport.…

It wasn’t that long ago that it was commonplace to see Italian riders winning the big spring classics. Go back over the last 20 years and the likes of Filippo Pozzato, Michele Bartoli, Alessandro Ballan, Mario Cipollini and Andrea Tafi were just some of the Azzurri riders who enjoyed big success and often finished on the spring podiums. Tafi won Roubaix and Flanders in 1999 and 2002, Cipollini won Milan-San Remo and Gent-Wevelgem in 2002, while Pozzato won E3, Omloop Het Volk and San Remo. Yet the strength in depth of Italian classics talent has dwindled in the years since. The last regular Italian spring classics winner was Luca Paolini, who followed up a 2013 Omloop victory with a 2015 win in Gent-Wevelgem, while Oscar Gatto, who won Dwars door…

PEDRO DELGADO 1981 Tour de France winner 1988 MIGUEL INDURAIN 1986 Tour de France winner 1991-5 MELCIOR MAURI 1994, '96 Vuelta a Espana winner 1991 MARCO PANTANI 1999 Tour de France winner 1998 AITOR GONZALEZ 2001 Vuelta a Espana winner 2002 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE 2004, 07-08, 14, 17 World road race champion 2018 DENIS MENCHOV 2009 Giro d’Italia winner 2009 NAIRO QUINTANA 2012 Giro d’Italia winner 2014 PHILIPPE GILBERT 2016 World road race champion 2012…

1st Tour of Poland 2008 Circuit Franco-Belge 2008 Tour de Luxembourg 2012 Eurometropole Tour 2012 Tour Mediterraneen 2013 Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2018 Eurometropole Tour 2012 Belgian national road race championships 2008 2nd Volta ao Algarve 2008, 2010 Tour of Belgium 2008 Tour of Denmark 2008 Four Days of Dunkirk 2009 Tour of Poland 2009 (2) Eneco Tour 2010, 2012 (2) Tour Down Under 2014 Tour of Qatar 2014 Tour de Suisse 2015, 2016 Tour de l’Eurometropole 2015 Nokere Koerse 2008 E3 Prijs Harelbeke 2011 Belgian national road race championships 2015 3rd Eneco Tour 2008, 2011 Circuit Franco-Belge 2008 (2) Tour of Qatar 2009, 2014 Ruta del Sol 2009 Tour Down Under 2010 Eneco Tour 2011 Tour de Luxembourg 2012 Ster ZLM Tour 2012 Eurometropole Tour 2012 Tour of…

1st Stage, Tour de Luxembourg 2010 Flèche d’Emeraude 2011 Stage, Tour du Limousin 2011 Clásica San Sebastián 2013 Stage, Tour de France 2014 Stage, Étoile de Bessèges 2015, 2017, 2018 Stage, Paris-Nice 2015 GP de Wallonie 2016 Étoile de Bessèges 2018 Stage, Vuelta a España 2018 2nd Stage, Circuit de Lorraine 2009 GP Cholet 2011 Stage, Route du Sud 2011 Stage, Tour of Oman 2013 GP de Wallonie 2014, 2017 Stage, Étoile de Bessèges 2015, 2016, 2018 Étoile de Bessèges 2015, 2016, 2017 French national road race championships 2015, 2016 Stage, Critérium du Dauphiné 2016 Clásica San Sebastián 2016, 2017 Tour La Provence 2018 French national time trial championships 2018 Stage, Tour La Provence 2019 3rd Stage, Tour de Wallonie 2010 Stage, Tour de l’Ain 2010 (2) Tour de Luxembourg…

ARDENNES PREP ITZULIA BASQUE COUNTRY 8-13 Apr | Spain | 2.WT While the classics riders are locking horns in Belgium, in north Spain the Basque Country offers the climbers a chance to flex their leg muscles. The mix of rolling terrain and steep punchy hills mean the startlist is usually a blend of GC riders and those prepping for the Ardennes the following week. Traditionally the route also features a time trial, and though the winners’ list favours home riders – six of the last 10 have been Spanish – the reigning champion is Primož Roglič. A FLANDERS DRESS REHEARSAL E3 BINCKBANK CLASSIC 29 Mar | Belgium | 1.WT Not much has changed for the final tune-up before the Tour of Flanders, aside from a new sponsor and name. The…

NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 19.04.19 It was thought that organised and widespread doping rings were as much a thing of the past in cycling as successful breaks in the Tour’s flat stages, black team strips and earlyseason warm-up races. However, cycling was given an unwelcome reminder of its less-than-spotless past with the first public revelations from a police investigation into organised blood-doping in Austria and Germany indicating that Nordic skiers had been involved in cheating. Leaked footage of Austrian crosscountry skier Max Hauke apparently drawing blood as the police caught him in the act gave the scandal its defining public image: a shellshocked Hauke, tubes protruding from his arm, while police working on Operation Aderlass – ‘bloodletting’ - surround him. It wasn’t long before cycling was pulled into the maelstrom.…

DAVIDE VILLELLA The hilly classics specialist turned pro in 2014 Last year’s Tour of Almaty was his first pro win, while he won the mountains jersey at the 2017 Vuelta. GIULIO CICCONE The 24-year-old climber joined Trek-Segafredo this season. He spent three years prior with Bardiani-CSF and won a stage at the 2016 Giro d’Italia. SIMONE CONSONNI The former Italian U23 road champion turned pro with UAE Emirates in 2017. The sprinter won his first pro race in 2018 at the Tour of Slovenia.…

This month’s column is taking slightly longer than normal to put together and had I not left it till late it would’ve read very differently. Why? Well three days ago things were good, I was more than holding my own in the UAE Tour and I’d pulled a bigger and stronger portion of the TT than I’ve ever done. Our result wasn’t great but the margins were small and our race goals weren’t geared towards a strong TTT performance. It was a nice indication of good form. I was comfortably looking after both Marcel Kittel and Ilnur Zakarin during the stages and going deeper into the lead-out than I would do regularly, due to Rick Zabel heading home early. Stage 6 threw me a monthlong curveball, though. It was littered…

Greg Van Avermaet looks more scruffy Hollywood celeb than cyclist who has spent a bitter Belgium winter of change preparing for a highly publicised spring classics assault. He moves unfussed through a polished stone hotel lobby in Oman where regal, perfume-scented sheiks, athletes, journalists and US military officers all congregate to talk business. Van Avermaet is a regular at the Tour of Oman and uses its undulating roads, carved through sheer rock mountain, to prepare for the classics – perhaps the most discussed aspect of his career. Until now. The 2016 Olympic road champion is accommodating and so affable that he can be hard to read. Twelve months ago, I’d likened Van Avermaet to Matt Damon – a Jason Bourne assassin on the bike and genuine nice guy off it.…

Greg Van Avermaet has won most of the important spring one-day races in north Europe, from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, through E3 and Gent-Wevelgem, to Paris-Roubaix. However. the glaring hole in his palmarès is his home race, the Tour of Flanders. In his golden spring of 2017, when he won E3, Gent-Wevelgem and Roubaix, he got caught out by Philippe Gilbert’s long lone escape, inishing second behind his compatriot and one-time team-mate. Had he not been held up by Peter Sagan’s crash on the Oude Kwaremont, he might have won. He was also second in a four-rider sprint in 2014, to Fabian Cancellara. Both times he’s inished second, he’s been strong enough to win, and he’s also finished five more times in the top 10 (see opposite). That’s encouraging, because he’s…

1st Stage, Ruta del Sol 2019 (2) Stage, Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2019 Stage, Tour of Guangxi 2018 European Championships road race 2018 Paris-Tours 2017, 2015 Primus Classic 2017 Stage, Vuelta a Espana 2017 (4) Stage, Vuelta a Burgos 2017 Stage, Tour de l’Ain 2016 Stage, Tour de Wallonie 2016 Stage, Giro d’Italia 2016 Stage, Tour of Britain 2015 Stage, Tour du Poitou Charentes, 2015 (2) Stage, Tour de France 2014, 2013 Stage, Tour de Suisse 2014 2nd Stage, Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2019 Binche-Chimay-Binche 2017 Stage, Vuelta a Espana 2017 Stage, Giro d’Italia 2016 Giro del Piemonte 2015 Stage, Eneco Tour 2014 Stage, Tour of Turkey 2013 Stage, Volta ao Algarve 2012 3rd Stage, Vuelta a la Murcia 2019 Stage, Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana 2019 Stage,…

Jürgen Roelandts is a master of disguise. When asked how his Belgian colleagues in the peloton reacted to his joining Movistar in 2019, he says it is simple: the whole concept is so alien to his compatriots, sometimes they no longer realise he is actually still Jürgen Roelandts. They simply see another rider wearing Movistar’s distinctive jersey. “Even now in Valencia, when I see a lot of Belgians I haven’t spoken to in a long time, they don’t recognise me,” Roelandts tells Procycling during the Spanish early-season race, the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. “They are so surprised to see me in blue. Today I went alongside Oliver Naesen and got really close to him and he was like, ‘What is this Movistar guy doing to me?’ They are just…

2004 After winning titles on the track as an U23 rider, Bronzini secures her first professional victory on the road aged 21, at the Damesronde van Drenthe in Holland. 2005 On her Giro Rosa race debut, Bronzini showcases her credentials as one of the fastest riders in the peloton by winning three stages from bunch sprints, along with the points jersey classification. 2007 Signs with Italian squad Safi-Pasta Zara and wins eight races that season, including two stages at the Trophee d’Or Feminin and the Giro della Toscana. 2009 Goes back to her roots on the track and wins a debut rainbow jersey, securing the win in the points race at the Track World Championships. 2010 Wins the world title on the road, in a frantic final sprint in Geelong,…

MONUMENT GRAND SLAM We’ve looked at which team has won the most monuments over the course of their entire history. It’s no surprise to find that Deceuninck lead the way, with 17 monument wins over 16 seasons, though they only completed the ‘grand slam’ of all five with Bob Jungels’s win in Liege last year. Lotto Soudal are the only other team to have won every single one. SPREADING THE LOAD With the season two months old, only three teams have wins into double figures. We’ve analysed how many riders have contributed to those wins, and Astana lead that table, with nine different winners. WINNING SQUADS We’ve counted up all the career wins by all the riders in the WorldTour. Leading the way is Dimension Data, whose riders between them…

MILAN-SAN REMO 23 Mar | Italy | 1.WT How do you win Milan-San Remo? Do you attack on the Poggio, or do you wait for a sprint? Recent history suggests the climb is the crunch point. In 2017 Peter Sagan attacked on the Poggio, drawing Michał Kwiatkowski and Julian Alaphilippe with him, before they contested the victory. Last year Vincenzo Nibali launched a maverick attack on the Poggio and held off the sprinters’ chase. But in the past 20 years wins have been evenly split between bunch finishes on the Via Roma and attacks on the final climb. Ciolek’s 2013 win came from a small group that formed from a Poggio attack; Gerrans’ 2012 win came off the back of a Poggio attack. But Démare, Kristoff, Degenkolb, Freire and Cavendish…

TROFEO ALFREDO BINDA 24 Mar | Italy | 1.WWT This race is interesting because the course isn’t for climbers and isn’t for sprinters, it’s for everyone. You get a fast and hectic start. The first 50ks are always nervous. We then hit a 6km climb, which is gradual. There’s little hills, undulating roads and it never gets easy, then we reach the first of four laps of the Cittiglo circuit. There’s time for a break, because we climb but we also descend – once we are on the laps, it’s mentally easier. The peloton is smaller and it’s easier to move from back to front and control the situation. The last two laps are brutal. The Casale climb is short but steep, and from that moment you don’t have much…

Again? Really? I thought we would never have to deal with this again. It was a not a good week for sport in general, and for cycling as well. The case of blood doping in Austria has hit cycling. Two riders from the country have confessed that they were involved in this affair - Stefan Denifl and Georg Preidler. I was under the hope that something like blood doping would be a thing from the past, that the new and younger generation would have learned from history and that nobody in modern cycling would go back there. I was sad, mad and disappointed when I read the news. Now, one can say it’s not only cycling, but other sports as well. Yes, but why does our sport have to be…