Tabla de contenidos para Review of the year 2019 en Procycling

EDITOR When I look back over 2019, it strikes me that this was not a predictable year. The results were full of surprises - I’d never have believed that Alberto Bettiol was going to win Flanders, or Jakob Fuglsang Liège or Bauke Mollema Lombardia, let alone Mads Pedersen the Worlds. Even in Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix, I was a little sideswiped by the winners. Julian Alaphilippe is a decent favourite for La Primavera, but I never thought Philippe Gilbert could win Paris-Roubaix. Now he stands on the edge of greatness, with only a San Remo victory to go to score the fourth career grand slam of the monuments in history. In the grand tours, I didn’t think Richard Carapaz would win the Giro, or Egan Bernal the Tour, though anybody…

It’s May and I’m standing at the Col d’Agnes, the highest point on the final stage of the Ronde de l’Isard, one of the most prestigious U23 races on the calendar. Motorbike marshals stream past, then a mini-caravane publicitaire reaches the summit. Just half a dozen vehicles, one carrying Miss Toulouse. But it’s the one in which Raymond Poulidor is travelling that the couple of dozen fans at this summit home in on. “Vite! C’est Poupou!” a man standing next to us urges his family, and they join the flock around the car. The 83-year-old steps out and engages in what has become a familiar routine, shaking hands, posing for pictures, acknowledging compliments, and smiling, always smiling. He’s like everyone’s favourite grandad. Poulidor wasn’t the last link to what is…

My dad took up cycling at a rather late age; I think he was mid-30s. My older brother got into it and I naturally felt that if my brother can, so can I. We lived in the Wicklow Mountains, in Ireland, so it was normal for us to choose mountain biking. It was a bit of coincidence, but because of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease [in 2001] we were forced onto the roads. We were a bit reluctant - mountain bikes were cooler than road bikes, but I quickly realised I enjoyed riding the road. My parents are Danish, so we spent every summer in Denmark. The first time we did a road race in Denmark, we quickly realised the difference in the Danish cycling scene was quite impressive. Ireland…

Before I start, I want to say what a pleasure it has been to write for Procycling. Every so often I take a moment to reminisce at the journey my career has taken me so far. To think at the start when I was a schoolboy time triallist looking to get into road racing, I would pick up cycling mags to learn about the world I was getting into, and now I am fully immersed at the top echelon (pardon the pun) of the sport. Hopefully someone else is starting his or her cycling journey reading this and looking forward to where it’ll take them. This year, as ever, there have been highs and lows. I’ve achieved things that I came to think may never happen, like getting a call…

Editor BEST MALE RIDER Primož Roglič was consistent and Julian Alaphilippe sparkled like champagne but Egan Bernal shades it for me. Compare his wins with Roglič’s: bigger wins in bigger races, with bigger stories. BEST FEMALE RIDER My head says Annemiek van Vleuten. But my heart has overridden my head, because Marianne Vos won 19 races this year – her fighting spirit is a force of nature. WHO ELSE IMPRESSED? I thought Thibaut Pinot had it in him to win the Tour, but tactical naivety on the Albi stage cost him the race and reminded me that cycling crushes dreams where possible. Lizzie Deignan’s achievement in riding a good season after starting a family is an important one, even if she’ll regret missing out in the Harrogate Worlds. BEST ONE-DAY…

Caleb Ewan didn’t go to a string of booze-fuelled A-List parties or rub shoulders in Premier League football corporate boxes following his commanding Tour de France debut this summer. “Unfortunately, not,” he laughs. Save for a McDonald’s run and trip to a nightclub with team-mates the night the Tour finished in Paris, Ewan faced something more grounding in the aftermath of his three-stage haul with new team Lotto Soudal: fatherhood. The 25-year-old left for the Tour before his first child, born six weeks prematurely, was discharged from hospital. When we speak over the phone in late October, he is multi-tasking as parents do. Ewan is talking about his third stage win, on the Champs-Elysées, the turf of sprinting immortals, when his daughter, Lily, begins to cry in the background. “Sorry,…

There’s an old cycling saw, beloved of TV commentators, known as ‘Chapatte’s Law’. It’s a rule of thumb stating that a break needs a minute per 10km to hold off a chasing peloton, named after Robert Chapatte, the French commentator who came up with the formula. Of course, Chapatte’s Law is years out of date - modern race dynamics are a lot different from 40 years ago. But what Chapatte wHould have made of the 2019 Amstel Gold is anybody’s guess. With 3km to go, Julian Alaphilippe and Jakob Fuglsang held a lead of 18 seconds over Micha? Kwiatkowski and Matteo Trentin. Next: Max Schachmann at about 30, then Bauke Mollema and Simon Clarke at 40 and a quintet led by Mathieu van der Poel another handful of seconds back.…

Of course, Richard Carapaz won the 2019 Giro because he rode the 3,546km of the race faster than anybody else. He earned fully the maglia rosa - he won two stages, and never faltered in the mountains. The same is true of Geraint Thomas in the 2018 Tour, for example - it’s a good model for a grand tour-winning ride. But a grand tour GC is a complicated thing, and two riders can look back at the 2019 Giro and consider it a missed opportunity. Before halfway, the race looked like it might become a battle between Primož Roglic and Vincenzo Nibali. Roglic had come into the race hot, trounced everybody in the opening TT, rode well in the first week then won the mid-race TT. At this point, of…

Julian Alaphilippe’s fizzing, exhilarating stage win in Épernay on stage 3 of the Tour de France was supposed to be about as good as it got for the Frenchman at this year’s race. A visit to the podium, a bonus couple of days in the yellow jersey, then he could concentrate on what he does best: televisual long-range attacks in the mountains to pick up mountains points and the polkadot jersey, gif-able moments on the descents and perhaps a few on-bike stretches, too. The situation as we looked at it that evening was this: the next day was flat, so the jersey was Alaphilippe’s for another day. Stage 5 to Colmar had a few middle mountains, nothing huge, but was more of a Peter Sagan day, rather than a Dylan…

At the beginning of November 1986 I went for a cycle ride through the outskirts of the city of Voronezh, 300 miles – or 15 hours’ train ride – south of Moscow. It was three years before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the height of Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, and I was on study leave for three months in a city that, at the time, was largely closed to West Europeans because of its important arms factories. On the off-chance I might find a bike to ride, I had packed a jersey and shorts – the jersey was a battered Del Tongo one, as worn by Giuseppe Saronni, which I had ripped up badly in a crash – and when I made friends with a lad who owned a racing…

143 Organisers of the Tour of Poland have retired the number 143 dossard from future editions in memory of Bjorg Lambrecht, who died during this year’s race. The 22-year-old Belgian sustained fatal injuries during a crash on stage 3. “We’ll remember you always," a statement from the race said. “It's not a decision I've taken lightly” For the first time since he turned pro in 2012, Romain Bardet will skip the Tour de France next year and instead focus on the Giro and Tokyo Olympics. VINO CLEARED Alexander Vinokourov has been cleared by a Belgian court of longstanding claims that he bought his win at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2010. A judge dismissed the case against the Astana team boss and runner-up Alexandr Kolobnev due to a lack of evidence, after prosecutors…

KADEN GROVES Australian Groves, 20, is stepping up to Mitchelton-Scott next year. Described as very fast and an exciting prospect by the team, he’s won races in Europe this year. PIERRE BARBIER 22-year-old Barbier has dreamt of being France’s number one sprinter since he was a child. He joins Delko Marseille next year after a string of top 10s in 2019. ALBERTO DAINESE The Italian has been a prominent figure in the U23s, winning nine races in 2018 and seven this year, including the European U23 road race. He joins Sunweb.…

Michael Valgren’s Classics rider Michael Valgren is a strong all rounder, so BMC’s Teammachine SLR01 One suits his needs well. Valgren’s Dimension Data team switched from Cervélo to BMC for 2019. Part of the package was the input of BMC consultant Cadel Evans, who has been involved in the R&D of the Swiss bike manufacturing company since he rode their bikes for the BMC team between 2010 and 2015. The design of the frame is based around BMC’s Accelerated Composites Evolution (ACE) technology, which speeds up the testing process and compresses huge amounts of modelling and prototyping time into short cycles. The result is a frame with clean lines and design features which combine aero performance with maximum stiffness and lightness. The D-shaped seatpost reduces the amount of material used,…

It seems strange to look so far back into my archives for a greatest hit, but the happenings of the last two seasons make the Junior Tour of Wales in 2004 a definite greatest hit. I beat Geraint Thomas in his home race, with no team-mates to support me, when he was backed by a huge Welsh team. I didn’t just win though. I dominated. The Junior Tour of Wales was, and still is, a fantastic race, and a rarity in junior racing in that it is a hilly stage race. The organisation do a great job and the list of winners speaks for itself - Charly Wegelius, Roger Hammond, Alex Dowsett and Hugh Carthy among others. Five stages over three days is unthinkable now that I’m a professional, but…

I’m currently sat in Sweden, where it’s pitch black outside just after 4pm now we’ve switched over to wintertime, with a typical steady drizzle of rain. It’s a normal off-season day! It’s quite obvious the race season has gone by and finished. Every year it’s the same. The season can at times feel endlessly long, and you’re counting down the days until you get some downtime and a little break for the off season. But when it comes, it always feel like the spring was just around the corner, and it feels weird having a whole winter coming up and not weeks, but months away to the next race. This year is no different, even though my year as a whole has been rather different than any other previously. First…

Deputy Editor BEST MALE RIDER Egan Bernal rode with a level of maturity far beyond his 22 years as his wins in the Tour, Paris-Nice and Suisse attest. That he continued to ride on, at a competitive level through to Lombardy, where he finished third, when many Tour riders wind down post-July, says a lot about his attitude too. BEST FEMALE RIDER Marianne Vos’s imperious form was like the clock had wound back a few years to when the Dutchwoman was the unbeatable best. WHO ELSE IMPRESSED? Thibuat Pinot, Mathieu van der Poel, Julian Alaphilippe, Remco Evenepoel, Lorena Wiebes and Lizzie Deignan. BEST ONE-DAY RACE I enjoyed the unexpectedness of Paris-Roubaix. A Deceuninck rider might have won, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising a result, but no one rider came…

Primož Roglic is restless. He’s repeatedly picking up and putting down a piece of card he’s been given by Jumbo-Visma for the day, thumbing it between his fingers, before holding it up to his eye line as he gazes into the distance while he talks. When he’s done with that, he turns to his glass, once he’s drained it of sparkling water, and begins to tap it gently upside down on the table. He then takes two mobile phones out of his pocket and flips them over every now and again between taking quick glances at their screens. He yawns. The end of the season is agonisingly close, and Roglic is as restless as a child on the last day of term. It’s no wonder Roglic is eager to stop.…

WINS Herald Sun Tour stage, 2015 (2), 2016 Tour de Langkawi stage, 2015 (2) Vuelta a la Rioja 2015 Tour de Korea stage, 2015 (4) Tour de Korea 2015 Vuelta a España stage, 2015 Tour Down Under stage, 2016 (2), 2017 (4), 2018 Cyclassics Hamburg 2016 Tour of Britain stage, 2016, 2017 (3), 2018 Abu Dhabi Tour stage, 2017 Giro d’Italia stage, 2017, 2019 (2) Tour de Pologne stage, 2017 Clásica de Almería 2018 UAE Tour stage, 2019 Tour of Turkey stage, 2019 (2) ZLM Tour stage, 2019 Tour de France stage, 2019 (3) Brussels Cycling Classic 2019 SECONDS Tour of Beijing stage, 2014 National Champs Road race 2015 Herald Sun Tour stage, 2015, 2016 Tour de Langkawi stage, 2015 (3) Tour of Turkey stage, 2015 Tour of Norway stage,…

Egan Bernal won the 2019 Tour de France thanks to his exploits on a stage that never ended. It will doubtless become a pub quiz question but it also acts as a metaphor for a race that so captivated its audience that many really did not want it to end. The stage that never ended was thus, in a way, the perfect ending. But the events of stage 19 on Friday 26 July, lasting only two hours, 40 minutes and 31 seconds (another curiosity: everyone finished at the same time, though not every rider was given the same time), will be examined and discussed for years. It was to be the decisive stage of the 2019 Tour, starting in Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, climbing the monster Col de l’Iseran and then plunging down…

STRADE BIANCHE 09.03.19 1 The Palio di Siena is a chaotic booze-up-cum-horse race held twice a year in Siena’s Piazza del Campo, which features 10 horses, representing 10 of the 17 districts of the city, skidding and galloping three laps of the dusty track. The Piazza del Campo isn’t huge: the Palio is usually over in 90 harum-scarum seconds. You could argue that the 2019 women’s Strade Bianche, which shares its finishing location with the Palio, was over in even less time than that. Annemiek van Vleuten attacked on the final gravel section of the race, midway up the punchy climb to Le Tolfe. In the 75 seconds it took her to reach the top, she’d built an unassailable lead. Marianne Vos and Kasia Niewiadoma tried to follow, but were…

By stage 10 of the Giro Rosa this July, Marianne Vos was in full, swashbuckling flow. She already had a hat-trick of wins under her belt; it had been five years since she’d matched that total here. She was confident, she had momentum on her side and she was clearly enjoying racing. As the peloton swept through Udine’s Piazza San Giacomo heading towards the finale up to the city’s castle and the finish line, Vos sat comfortably in third wheel behind Kasia Niewiadoma and Kirsten Wild. But when Wild overran the final right-hander and stuttered into the barrier, Vos didn’t hesitate. There were still 400 metres to go, up a dragging cobbled hill - maybe too early to start a sprint. Others certainly wouldn’t want to try leading from this…

DJAMOLIDINE ABDOUJAPAROV 9 Tour stage wins 1 Giro stage win 7 Vuelta stage wins Tour green jersey 1991, 1993, 1994 Gent-Wevelgem 1991 IVAN IVANOV 2 Vuelta stage wins 6th overall in Vuelta 1989 DIMITRI KONYSHEV 4 Tour stage wins 4 Giro stage wins 1 Vuelta stage win 2nd, World road race Championships 1989 VLADIMIR PULNIKOV 4th, Giro d’Italia 1990 10th, Tour de France 1993, 1994 SERGEI SUKHOROUCHENKOV 1st, Olympic Games road race 1980 1st, Tour de l’Avenir 1978, 79 1st, Peace Race 1979, 1994 ANDREI TCHMIL 1st, Paris-Roubaix 1994 1st, Milan-San Remo 1999 1st, Paris-Tours 1997 1st, Tour of Flanders 2000 1st, E3 Prijs 1994, 2001 1st, UCI World Cup 1999 PIOTR UGRUMOV 2nd, Tour de France 1994 2nd, Giro d’Italia 1993 3rd, Giro d’Italia 1995 2 Tour stage wins…

Designed with cyclist Kitty Pemberton-Platt, this version of the No.88 Camden KPP watch comes in a set with an extra black nylon strap for use when riding, £169 | $217.51 www.camdenwatchcompany.com The essential guide to the 2019 season, complete with all the stats and stories of the year, including essays from Richard Carapaz, Philippe Gilbert and Annemiek van Vleuten, £50 | $64.23 www.theroadbook.co.uk Don’t let the elements stop you riding: keep your valuables safe inside this compact Essentials case, £30 | $38.54 www.altuvita.com A classic climb, the Stelvio, with a classic sweatshirt design. For men and women, from £38.99 | $50.08 www.bandofclimbers.com Three stylish prints to celebrate three of cycling’s most stylish victories. Buy individually or get all three as part of the ‘Panache’ collection, £40 /£102 | $51.39 /…

1 THERE'S A FIRST FOR EVERYTHING There were first-time winners in all of the monuments and grand tours in 2019. That’s not unusual – 2018’s champions in these races were also first-timers, though you have to go back to 2011 to find the next instance of this. But there was still the sense that everything was up for grabs this year and that former winners were not going to be granted the automatic right to add to their palmarès. Julian Alaphilippe’s victory in Milan-San Remo has been a while coming. But Alberto Bettiol barely figured in the pre-race prognostications at the Tour of Flanders, yet was both the strongest and the cleverest rider at the most important part of the race. They said that Philippe Gilbert could never win Roubaix…

Cyclingnews features editor BEST MALE RIDER Primož Roglič continued his extraordinary development, with victory at the Vuelta after a formative Giro podium. He won four of the five stage races he entered – and his tally of 13 wins was bettered only by Dylan Groenewegen, a sprinter. BEST FEMALE RIDER The 100km solo to win the rainbow jersey was enough, but Annemiek van Vleuten also won Strade Bianche, Liege, and the Giro, in a race of her own. Other riders won more but Van Vleuten won bigger. WHO ELSE IMPRESSED? Julian Alaphilippe had a sensational spring and lit up the Tour, while Egan Bernal won the Tour at 22, plus Paris-Nice and Suisse. On the women’s side, Marianne Vos wound back the clock with 19 wins. BEST ONE-DAY RACE Amstel…

13 SAM BENNETT Years with team: 6 13 PASCAL ACKERMANN Years with team: 3 6 MAX SCHACHMANN Years with team: 1 4 PETER SAGAN Years with team: 3 2 EMANUEL BUCHMANN Years with team: 5 2 DAVIDE FORMOLO Years with team: 2 2 F, GROSSSCHARTNER Years with team: 2 1 MACIEJ BODNAR Years with team: 3 1 SHANE ARCHBOLD Years with team: 3/1 1 PATRICK KONRAD Years with team: 5 1 JURAJ SAGAN Years with team: 3 1 CESARE BENEDETTI Years with team: 10…

Ever since 1992, when Liège-Bastogne-Liège switched from its city centre finish to an uphill finale in the suburb of Ans, quite apart from the impact on the racing, there has been one unexpected consequence. Op-ed pieces in the sports sections of the French-speaking Belgian newspapers began to appear, invariably pleading for the route of cycling’s oldest monument to be changed back. “Rendez-nous La Doyenne. Give us back our ‘old lady, ’” - the nickname of Liège-Bastogne-Liège - the articles would demand. But even if, when translated, the requests sounded like somebody’s mother had been kidnapped rather than being the collective defence of a time-honoured race route, their message remained clear. The newspaper op-eds reflected the widespread feeling that the finish in Ans had cauterised the racing in Liège, reducing the…

When Denmark’s Mads Pedersen won the rainbow jersey in Yorkshire, it might have come as a surprise to many that he was able to outsprint versatile Italian strongman Matteo Trentin to finish the job and become the new men’s elite road world champion. To others, it was the perfect culmination of his short career so far. But maybe equally as much, Pedersen’s win was testimony to just how far Danish cycling has grown itself into a new golden era. Danish riders have always been a fixture in the peloton, but in the last few years the level and impact of Danish riders in the sport have taken significant steps forward, in all categories and age groups. From world-class track racing to the highest level of road cycling, there is an…

For over a week, France believed. You have to ask, deep down, did Thibaut Pinot believe as well? Pinot has had a complex relationship with his country’s biggest race. The heat of July, both literal and figurative, has always been too much for him. When he discovered the Giro d’Italia, a few years ago, he found a race which suited his mentality, and for several seasons Italy has been his focus, and his comfort zone. However, in 2019, Pinot came back to the Tour de France in the shape to do himself justice, following DNFs in 2016 and 2017, and a DNS in 2018. Whatever has changed since then, it worked. Pinot was one of the defining personalities of the 2019 race, and he influenced the race as much as…

Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: “Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.” Bauke Mollema probably couldn’t agree more. As the cycling season eased through autumn, the Dutchman achieved the best victory of his life in Il Lombardia, and a career which looked to be entering its late stages looks to have started all over again. Mollema is there or thereabouts in so many big races, but he’s won 14 times in total over 12 seasons as a pro. Depending on your outlook, that’s not very many considering his obvious strength, or a decent return given that he cannot sprint. The lack of fasttwitch fibres which prevents him from punching past his rivals on the finishing straight is one side of a coin; the other is the…

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