Tabla de contenidos para August 2019 en Procycling

ISSUE 258/AUGUST 2019 EDITOR Have we seen the last of Chris Froome as a Tour winner, even as a racing cyclist? When news of Froome’s injuries from a training crash at the Dauphiné emerged, my initial reaction was that they looked career-threatening. It’s not just the injuries - broken femur, ribs, neck, sternum and elbow. It’s the stage of his life and career as well. A young rider would have time to rebuild and restart their career, while Froome is 34. Only one rider older than 34 has won the Tour, and that was in 1922. Age wouldn’t have been on the Brit’s side going into this year’s Tour. Going into next year’s after a long and complex rehab will be a new ball game. That said, I know not…

SAM DANSIE DEPUTY EDITOR The award for most controversial Tour de France team non-selection this year goes to Douglas Ryder and Dimension Data for dropping Mark Cavendish. In the aftermath of the decision, the whys and wherefores hadn’t yet leeched into public, but Di-Data’s decision will have been scrutinised in person and publicly by media who descended on the Grand Départ. Given the team ballsed up the squad announcement statement by not mentioning the Tour’s greatest sprinter once, even in passing, I'd be unsurprised to learn Ryder and Cavendish's relationship was irretrievably over. No doubt the rider’s lack of recent form will have contributed to the decision. But in the past, when teams have left star riders kicking their heels in July, politics and fraying relationships have had a bearing.…

Pinarello has been supplying British team Ineos with bikes since their first season in 2010. In that time, the Italian brand has enjoyed unparalleled success: six grand tours have been won aboard its bikes. The latest top-end offering, released in May, is the F12. It is a descendant of the F10 and before that the F8, which was designed in conjunction with aerodynamic experts at Jaguar-Land Rover. Outwardly, it is a similar shape to the F10 – the low seatstay junction is consistent across both models and the down tube is still recessed on its trailing edge, so air flows better over bottles. The chainstays and fork are slightly deeper, however. Most of the aero gains in the F12 come from the new Talon Ultra integrated stem and bar, which…

The past weeks have been all but what I had pictured and planned for. Just over a month ago I had a crash out training, where I hit my head. I actually wrote that last diary straight from the hospital bed, and I’m honestly struggling to remember what I pencilled down for you, so I hope it made sense somewhat or wasn’t in Swedish! I wish I could promise some more high quality reading this time around, but I’m still struggling with the aftermath of my head injuries. The subdural bleeding is at least healed up and has gone back by itself, which is really good news. Now it’s ‘just’ the symptoms of the concussion. I’ve been very fortunate so far in my career escaping serious injuries from crashing, and…

STAGE 1 10.6.19 BECCLES > STOW MARKET The morning television news has a yellow weather warning covering the southeast of England and East Anglia. The forecast is predicting 60mm of rain over the next 24 hours–a month’s worth in one day. Day one of the Women’s Tour is set to be a washout. It’s 7.30am and Canyon-Sram’s six riders emerge from the hotel one by one, dragging their suitcases to the corner of the car park of the Ipswich Holiday Inn. The purple, pink and orange stripes on their team cars are a splash of colour against the grey sky and concrete. Mechanic Jochen Lamade has been up since 5am, while Beth Duryea, the team’s marketing manager and DS, didn’t arrive until 3.30am, having driven straight from the previous day’s…

Sports scientists James Hopker and Louis Passfield have suggested a power-based addition to the anti-doping system. Hopker explains… “The power profile of a cyclist can be plotted as the relationship between different sequential records of power output and the corresponding time durations during a whole racing season. By overlaying these curves, you can see which riders are most powerful in which situations, and so provide a unique signature of a rider’s physiological potential at any time. A power profile may allow the determination of a pattern of performance capacity for a rider and can flag rapid progressions that arouse suspicion. “There are hurdles to overcome, of course. You’d require power validity and accuracy across the board. A possible solution would be the use of ‘neutral’ power meters that are controlled…

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2021 The year to which world champion Alejandro Valverde has extended his contract with Movistar. The 39-year-old has already stated the Olympic Games road race in Tokyo in 2020 is a major target and he will continue for another season after that. “This will certainly play a role in my decision” With his contract up at the end of 2019, Philippe Gilbert admits his future is uncertain after Deceuninck-Quick Step omitted him from this year's Tour de France team. Madison-Genesis, one of the longest standing and most successful teams on the British circuit, is to fold at the end of 2019. The Continental squad has provided a platform for a number of aspiring talents including Scott Davies, Tom Scully and 2018 British champ Connor Swift. Just six days separate the…

AMUND GRØNDAHL JANSEN As a U23, he won at l’Avenir and the nationals, but since he joined Jumbo-Visma in 2017 he’s become a key member of Dylan Groenwegen’s sprint lead-out. KRISTOFFER HALVORSEN The 2016 U23 world champion in Qatar signed for Ineos two years ago and has four wins so far, including one at his home Tour of Norway in June. ODD CHRISTIAN EIKING The rouleur turned pro with FDJ in 2016, but after two years, joined Wanty-Groupe Gobert. He got his first pro win at the Tour de Wallonie last year.…

This month, I hauled myself through the Dauphiné and went straight to the ZLM Tour. Despite the short recovery window I punched out a respectable prologue, which would’ve been an emphatic and glorious win had there not been three people faster than me. I was top 10 (10th) on GC as well, which helped overcome the first and one of the toughest hurdles of the Tour de France: selection. Tour selection has happened for me twice before, once in 2014 when I was ready but picked up an untimely cold and had to be sidelined, and secondly in 2015 off the back of the Hour Record and a very flat stage race GC win. I was still carrying some much un-needed track weight and it was a stage 4 crash…

Lizzie Deignan is in the middle of the Stray, the attractive semicircle of parkland which wraps the southern edge of Harrogate town centre. The Stray is spacious and broad; schools have just thrown out so small gangs of uniformed children are meandering through while dogs run around and the grass is gently warmed by breezy sunshine. The Stray is quite broad, and when you are in the middle the cars driving around the perimeters look like toys and sound distant, but Deignan is easy to spot, even from the edge. She’s the one in full Trek-Segafredo kit, riding up and down one of the paths in front of a hardworking video cameraman and a crew putting together a piece for Harrogate Spring Water, who are, Deignan’s publicist informs us, the…

All eyes will be on Lizzie Deignan as she tackles the women’s World road race Championships in Yorkshire. This equals pressure, but she will also benefit from local knowledge and a warm home crowd. In football, it’s well known that playing at home is an advantage. Deignan might also be interested to know that in 58 editions of the women’s road race since the first in 1958, eight have had home winners. These range from Yvonne Reynders, the Belgian who won in Ronse in 1963 to the most recent, Marianne Vos, who won on home territory in the Dutch city of Valkenburg in 2012. Deignan can also take heart from the fact that one of the other riders to have achieved this feat is a Briton - Mandy Jones, who…

The making of Oomen the professional was two years with the Rabobank CT squad. “The basic stuff on the team was super,” says Oomen. “Passionate staff, good kit, everything was arranged pretty well and we had really good races. The logical step into the pros would have been with LottoNL-Jumbo, but Oomen had no shortage of interest thanks to big results in 2015 such as eighth at the Tour de l’Ain, fourth at the Tour de l’Avenir and first at the Rhône-Alpes Isère Tour. He says he was open minded and spoke to each team. Sunweb showed its interest early and offered a three-year contract, a year longer than the minimum stipulated for neo-pros. In the courting with Sunweb he says there were some “pretty long conversations about my personality.…

Every edition of the Giro d’Italia, it seems, exists as a function of the race’s past. “There are only two or three human stories”, Willa Cather wrote in her 1913 novel O Pioneers! “And they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” Her words could be applied readily to the Giro d’Italia, where some familiar plotlines have a habit of repeating themselves year after year, and generation after generation: head-to-head duels, late collapses and comebacks, epic mountain stages held in epic weather, betrayals… At first glance, the 2019 Giro seemed no different in this regard, but come the final weekend, it was increasingly apparent that some well-worn tropes didn’t stretch quite far enough to fit the overarching narrative of this year’s race. The anticipated…

The morning after he took his first yellow jersey, Lance Armstrong sat alone, crop-haired, in a simple white T-shirt, seemingly lost in thought, at a round table in the vast dining room in the Westotel, Nantes Atlantique. Empty coffee cups and crumpled napkins, discarded by his US Postal Service team-mates, littered the table. “Hi Lance,” I said as I strolled up to him, still filled with memories of a visit to Texas during which I saw him bald, emaciated and scarred, and witnessed his battle with cancer first hand. “I just wanted to say congratulations.” At first, he looked startled, then he warmed up. “Hey, sit down,” he said. That was twenty summers ago. Armstrong had won the opening time trial at the Puy du Fou theme park on July…

As a teenager I spent two September evenings, in 1979 and 1980, in the dark interior of Wembley’s Empire Pool (now known as the Wembley Arena), where a tight wooden track with 51-degree banking had been set up for the Skol Six. I had lived a quiet life, so it was an exotic spectacle as midnight drew near: the sound of Alan Elsdon’s trad jazz band against the white noise of a string of professional cyclists whizzing round the boards. There were now-forgotten six-day specialists such as Willy Debosscher and Nils Fredborg, homespun British racers such as Maurice Burton, Paul Medhurst and Tony Gowland, along with imported Australians Don Allen and Danny Clark and others. The shape of the string constantly changed like a mesmeric two-wheeled kaleidoscope, with one man…

Everybody is brave when they’re sitting on the couch. It’s easy to be motivated and dream freely of all the things we’re going to do come July in France. It can even feel powerful to make some plans to light up the race – win a stage or spend a day in yellow. But as Mike Tyson said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The cycling equivalent of a right hook square to the head is riding over the Col de l’Iseran in 40 degrees with Wout Poels pulling at a million watts a kilo. If we survive the first week with our morale intact and if we have successfully implemented our strong goldfish reflex (the ability to forget instantaneously what we have just gone…

1st Stage, Tour de l’Ardèche 2009, 2010 (3) Stage, Tour de l’Aude 2010 Stage, La Route de France 2010 Stage, Tour of Chongming Island 2011 National Championships RR 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 Stage, Thüringen Rundfahrt 2011, 2014 Omloop van het Hageland 2012 Gent-Wevelgem 2012 Omloop van het Hageland 2014 Ronde van Drenthe 2014 Commonwealth Games RR 2014 Stage, Ladies Tour of Qatar 2015 (2) Ladies Tour of Qatar 2015 Trofeo Alfredo Binda 2015, 2016 Boels Rental Hills Classic 2015, 2016 Philadelphia Cycling Classic 2015 Stage, Women’s Tour 2015, 2016, 2019 GP de Plouay 2015, 2017 World Championships RR 2015 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2016 Strade Bianche 2016 Tour of Flanders 2016 Women’s Tour 2016, 2019 Tour de Yorkshire 2017 2nd Stage, Tour Féminin en Limousin 2007 National Championships RR 2009, 2010,…

Riding a bike was a way of getting around the place when I was young. It was mobility, it was freedom for a young guy like myself. I had an older brother and a father who were really active, sporty people, so I grew up loving jogging and cycling. But we lived in the middle of nowhere, out in the countryside. If we wanted to go somewhere there wasn’t a bus we could get on. Mum and dad were busy so we would take our bikes. Doing that, I got a real love for actual riding and being out on the bike. I was always a kid that wanted to do sport to the highest level. I enjoyed training. I enjoyed pushing myself. I did a few races when I…

“WE ARE DEALING WITH ONE OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST DOPING SCANDALS. THERE WILL COME NEW INSIGHTS. WE HAVE NOT REACHED THE END YET” These are the words of Lars Mortsiefer, a member of Germany’s anti-doping agency, at his country’s recent anti-doping conference in Berlin. Mortsiefer’s warning arose from questions about Operation Aderlass (‘bloodletting’ in English), the Austrian Federal Criminal Police Office’s eight-year undercover doping investigation that became public in February this year when investigators raided sites in Austria and Germany. Aderlass led to the online outing of Austrian skier Max Hauke, filmed with a blood bag connected to his arm at the cross-country skiing world championships in Seefeld, Austria, and the arrest in Erfurt, Germany, of the physician Mark Schmidt, formerly a team doctor for the Gerolsteiner and Milram cycling…

1 JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE Points: 3,720.95 Deceuninck-Quick Step, Age: 27 60 points for winning a stage at the Critérium du Dauphiné 2 PRIMO� ROGLI? Points: 3,536.28 Jumbo-Visma, Age: 29 Third place at the Giro and two stage wins earns 875 points 3 JAKOB FUGLSANG Points: 3,116 Astana, Age: 34 The Dane to third thanks to 500 points for winning the Dauphiné 4 ALEJANDRO VALVERDE Points: 2,859 Movistar, Age: 39 Returns to racing and wins La Route d’Occitanie for 125 points 5 THIBAUT PINOT Points: 2,751 Groupama-FDJ, Age: 29 Fifth at the Dauphiné and first at the Tour de l’Ain gets 350 points 6 GREG VAN AVERMAET Points: 2,657.33 CCC Team, Age: 34 Kept his tally going with two (2) points at Hammer Limburg 7 PASCAL ACKERMANN Points: 2,405 Bora-Hansgrohe, Age: 25…