Tabla de contenidos para January 2020 en Procycling

ISSUE 264/JANUARY 2020 EDITOR A lot can happen in a decade. This time 10 years ago, Team Sky were just about to start and, let’s be honest, they were a bit average initially. Lance Armstrong was unretired and undisgraced. Fabian Cancellara had yet to win his first Tour of Flanders. And a British rider was probably not going to win the Tour de France any time soon, notwithstanding the fourth place that Bradley Wiggins had just achieved in the race. On the other hand, Marianne Vos was winning a lot of races, just as she is 10 years later. In a fast-changing world, some things remain reassuringly stable. Pedants will rightly point out that the decade technically ends in December 2020, but pedants didn’t have as good a time as…

Bahrain-McLaren are here to “disrupt” the world of cycling. At least, that was the message coming out of the McLaren hub (also known as the McLaren Thought Leadership Centre) when the team unveiled their new-look team, kit and bike to the world in December in Surrey. What they are going to disrupt still remains to be seen, but considering the team only dates back to 2017 it’s not taken them long to undergo a radical overhaul. In fact, you’d barely know this squad was the same one that has been racing the past three seasons and not just because the likes of Mark Cavendish, Mikel Landa and Wout Poels have come on board as the star riders, in place of Vincenzo Nibali and Rohan Dennis. The swapping of title sponsors…

Sat in a plastic chair with his back to the slow brown river, Peter Sagan removes his glasses, helmet and shoes, and starts peeling off his gloves. The Magdalena river must be a mile across. No longer ploughed by the romantic paddle steamers depicted in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, Colombia’s largest river flows 950 miles, reaching the Caribbean at Barranquilla, the country’s fourth city and largest port. Sagan has just ridden 160km in 40-degree heat up and down a closed motorway, and he is not a happy man. Who would be? Well, the thousand or so Colombian fans who joined him for the Barranquilla Sagan Fondo look pretty pleased. But for Sagan, who spent the dark, snowy nights of his childhood watching Slovakia’s ice hockey…

In 2019, there were 18 WorldTour teams in total. Of these, 12 have been permanent fixtures in cycling’s top division through the whole decade: Ag2r La Mondiale, Astana, Deceuninck-Quick Step, EF Education First, Groupama-FDJ, Lotto Soudal, Movistar, Ineos, Jumbo-Visma, Katusha-Alpecin, Trek-Segafredo and UAE Emirates. Some of these are complicated. EF, for example, were Garmin in 2010, absorbed the Cervélo Test Team in 2011 and merged with Cannondale in 2015. RadioShack 2010 merged with Leopard-Trek at the end of 2011 and begat what eventually became Trek-Segafredo. In other cases, teams have changed sponsors - Sky to Ineos, Caisse d’Epargne to Movistar, Rabobank via Belkin and LottoNL to Jumbo-Visma. And some teams are exactly the same: Ag2r, Astana, Lotto… In total, there have been 27 WorldTour teams this decade, with varying levels…

“Right, we’re just going to draw the raffle numbers… Have a safe journey home. Don’t get too drunk” Bradley Wiggins mystifies the French crowd swith his Tour victory speech on the Champs-Elysées The very pinnacle of British cycling came at 5:23pm on July 22 2012 in Paris. There, on the front of the bunch as the Tour de France approached the ChampsÉlysées, was the race’s winner-elect Bradley Wiggins, in full cry, leading out Sky sprinter Mark Cavendish, who by the way, was the world champion. Wiggins, who always looked beautiful on the bike, never looked so powerful and confident as in that moment; Cavendish was ready to sprint, tense, full of electricity and potential energy. The summer sun gave the colours – Wiggins’s yellow, Cavendish’s rainbow stripes - such sharpness…

PROCYCLING: What people remember the most about you is how you fought against Chris Froome… ALBERTO CONTADOR: To be honest, I fought more against a team than an individual, I fought more against Sky than Froome, unlike when I was battling, say, against Andy Schleck. It was me against fighting against their philosophy of racing. Sky’s way of racing forced me to change my training methods; from 2014 I started training at altitude and I got a lot of wins that year. Do you think the fact that Sky had so many financial resources gave them an unfair advantage? One thing is undeniable: this is the same situation as Barcelona or Real Madrid in football. The more money you have, the higher quality riders you can buy. It doesn’t just…

Who was the best rider of the 2010s? On the women’s side, that’s a relatively easy question to answer. Marianne Vos ended the year as CQ Ranking’s highest-ranked rider five times in those 10 years, and though other riders have been catching her up and even beating her in the second half of the decade, she’s still near the top of her game. On the men’s side, it’s far more complicated. CQ Ranking listed Alejandro Valverde as the highest points scorer three times in 10 years, but systems like this reward consistency as much as brilliance. Likewise, the rider who won the WorldTour the most times in the last decade was Joaquim Rodríguez - a very good rider and a great all-rounder, but who never won a grand tour. Perhaps…

BIGGEST CLASSIC WINS TOTAL CAREER WINS ONE-DAY RACE WINS STAGE RACE GC WINS TOTAL RACE DAYS RACE WIN PERCENTAGE CAREER PODIUM PLACES WINS BY YEAR TOP TEAM-MATES Which of Marianne Vos’s team-mates has she raced alongside most, and won the most races with? ANNEMIEK VAN VLEUTEN Teams: DSB Bank-Nederland bloeit, Rabobank Women Team Race years: 2009-2014 JEANNE KOREVAAR Teams: Rabobank Liv Race years: 2016-2019 ROXANE KNETEMANN Teams: Rabobank Liv Race years: 2012-2016 MOST BEATEN Racing in the era of Marianne Vos hasn’t always been the easiest for the rest of the peloton. But which rider has finished in second-place to Vos most often? GIRO ROSA DOMINATION Vos has raced six editions of the Giro d’Italia Femminile, making her debut in 2010. After a five-year absence she returned in 2019 and…

Posing alongside Greg Van Avermaet and Marianne Vos outside the CCC bus on time trial day at the 2019 Tour de France, 32-year-old Valeriya Musina fits in seamlessly and, it must be said, quite glamorously. Though dressed for a warm, breezy summer afternoon in the south of France, she looks every bit the pro athlete that, until recently, she’s been. Musina played for the Russian basketball team aged just 16, before a move to Louisville saw her graduate into a high class guard for the university team, though ultimately she didn’t quite scale the heights internationally. But at 183 centimetres she’s become one of the poster girls of Polish basketball as her club, CCC Polkowice, became the dominant force in her adopted country. Despoiling this triptych of sporting sinew is…

30 The age of Travis McCabe as he signed with Israel Cycling Academy, becoming one of the older first-timers in the WorldTour in 2020. The twotime US criterium champion has spent the majority of his career racing in North America and rode for Floyd's Pro Cycling in 2019. “This trophy should be a cake that I can divide into equal pieces” Remco Evenepoel praises his team as he becomes the youngest ever winner of the Kristallen Fiets, awarded to the year's best Belgian rider NO WAY FOR NORWAY Organisers of the Tour of Norway may put the race on hiatus in 2020 due to a budget shortfall. With the Arctic Tour of Norway, Hammer Stavanger and Ladies Tour of Norway all also sharing funding from the Norwegian government, the organisers…

CHARLIE QUARTERMAN The 21-year-old British U23 TT champ joins Trek after racing for their feeder team Leopard Pro Cycling. His two top 10s at the Baby Giro caught their attention. ATTILIO VIVIANI Elia’s younger brother joins him at Cofidis, after racing with the team as a stagiaire. The Italian, 23, will play a team role and is already learning French. EINER RUBIO The 21-year-old Colombian joins Movistar after a successful year as an amateur in Italy. Results include second at the Baby Giro and sixth at Il Piccolo Lombardia.…

2010 Off on the wrong foot: Team Sky’s inauspicious first season PAGE 42 2011 Why the 2011 Flanders was a classic race, and a bellwether for the sport PAGE 48 2012 British cycling’s golden decade, and the cost of dominance PAGE 52 2013 When Lance met Oprah: the defining chapter of cycling’s doping story PAGE 56 2014 In pictures: the 10 most important riders of the decade PAGE 60 2015 Best of enemies: Alberto Contador on his rivalry with Chris Froome PAGE 68 2016 The strongest team of the decade: how Boels changed the sport PAGE 74 2017 Last of the patrons: why Boonen and Cancellara dominated the classics PAGE 80 2018 The greatest: the career of Marianne Vos, in numbers PAGE 86 2019 Top stages: we pick the best…

DAVIDE VIGANO (2010) Spent a sole season with the British team, with his best result a fourth place finish on the final stage of the Volta a Catalunya. Went on to bounce around the pro peloton at Leopard-Trek, Lampre-Merida, Caja Rural and Team Idea before retiring in 2016 with Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec. KJELL CARLSTRÖM (2010-11) The former Liquigas rider and four-times Finnish road race champion took Paris-Nice stage honours in 2008 before joining the British outfit. Carlström, 34, rode the 2010 Vuelta a Espana and 2011 Giro d’Italia with Sky before retiring from the sport at the end of that season. JOHN-LEE AUGUSTYN (2010) A sixth place finish on the Kitzbüheler Horn stage in the 2010 Tour of Austria was the best result for the South African, who suffered an injuryplagued…

Emma O’Reilly is sitting in a room above a pub in Brighton in Sussex, describing the decadelong stress pains in her chest and shoulders that suddenly lifted on the night that Lance Armstrong confessed to doping. O’Reilly, one of the first of the Armstrong inner circle to break ranks and reveal the truth about the Texan, was long isolated in classic whistleblower’s no man’s land, caught between her former workmates and those who wanted to exploit her secrets to bring down the champion. That, as O’Reilly now acknowledges, was a lonely place. On one side, Armstrong and his team manager Johan Bruyneel, doing everything to make her life hell; on the other, journalists pressing her on her obligation to the truth while, she felt, making promises they couldn’t keep. In…

One of the golden rules of cycling is that riders working together should beat an individual. Another golden rule is that a team who has the fastest sprinter in a group should work to ensure a sprint. One last golden rule is that you don’t beat Quick Step on the cobbles in spring. So when the situation with an hour to go in the 2015 Omloop Het Nieuwsblad was: three Quick Step riders, Tom Boonen, Niki Terpstra and Stijn Vandenbergh, away and clear with Sky’s Ian Stannard, the question was, could Stannard at least salvage a podium place? Quick Step held all the cards. Maybe Terpstra could attack and force Stannard to chase, setting up Vandenbergh for the counter. Or vice versa. Either way, Boonen could sit on Stannard and…

“I can accept the decision, but I don’t agree with it because I think I didn’t do something wrong in the sprint.” Peter Sagan following his controversial DQ from the Tour after inconclusive video evidence of a stage 4 crash There is a bed and breakfast near Oudenaarde where Tom Boonen guards your bedroom door. Hundreds of people must have peacefully drifted off in that room, safe in the knowledge that standing between them and any would-be nocturnal assailant is the formidable sight of six-foot-four of quadriceps and dazzling euro-mullet. It wasn’t the real Tom Boonen of course. It was a life-sized cardboard cut-out stapled onto the door. And rather than standing with his arms folded, staring you out as you tried to turn in, he was clutching a foot-long…

Raymond Poulidor’s death on November 13 was the end of an era. In the same way that Gino Bartali’s demise in May 2000 was the point when Italian cycling lost its most visible link with its golden age, so the death of ‘Poupou’ means French cycling is now bereft of the man who more than anyone else came to represent the zenith of the popularity of the Tour de France in its homeland in the 1960s and 1970s. For a rider who, famously, never wore the yellow jersey - or the rainbow jersey for that matter - becoming arguably the most popular cyclist of all time ranks as an immense, and paradoxical achievement. Just as Bartali was not the last great of the Coppi era to disappear - Fiorenzo Magni’s…

The decision to retire was out of my hands. When I was younger I always thought 38 would be a good age to stop. I didn’t want to stop, really, it’s just that the opportunity wasn’t there to continue. I didn’t want a fuss, I just wanted to stay quiet and in my own little world. But then I decided it wasn’t wise so I did an announcement. I’m not prolific on social media but my mum sent me some stuff and I went on and had a little look - I’ve had lots of messages and lots of positive, nice things. I’m a little bit surprised and overwhelmed by all the messages of support. The last two seasons have been frustrating but also challenging; it’s also given me the…

eing national champion is a career highlight for any rider. In cycling it seems to mean so much more than it does in other sports, as your achievement is honoured and symbolised for a whole calendar year with a jersey. You can’t underestimate the amount of extra attention you receive, as you stand out from your trade team-mates. The year i won was my first as a professional, and I won in dominant fashion with a long solo breakaway which made it extra special. I had won the Route du Sud stage race in France the week before, so was clearly a favourite, but the nationals is always a tricky race to judge as that status means the top riders are heavily marked. Ireland isn’t exactly the hilliest place. Added…

“Watching the Tour de France in 1991 and seeing Indurain win planted a seed in my head. That seed grew and grew.” Cadel Evans delights in becoming Australia's first ever Tour winner There was a moment early on in the 2011 Tour of Flanders when it looked as if the race had been killed stone dead. The trigger had pulled by Fabian Cancellara, the reigning champion. In 2010, 12 months previously, he and Tom Boonen had attacked over the Molenberg with 45km to go, then he’d dispatched the Belgian on the Muur in such violent fashion that even now, almost a decade later, there’s a vociferous corner of the internet occupied by motor-doping truthers convinced that there was more than muscle power turning his pedals. Twelve months on, it looked…

PHILIPPE GILBERT Has won every monument except San Remo, along with the Worlds, making him the one-day rider with the broadest palmarès. Now stands just that Primavera victory away from cycling immortality, and one of the greatest ever achievements in the sport CHRIS FROOME The grand tour rider of the decade, with four Tour wins plus a Giro and two Vueltas, putting him joint fourth on the all-time list. His assets: climbing, time trialling, improvising and never giving up. But he was also bolstered by the most efficient grand tour-winning team in history ALEJANDRO VALVERDE Even in his late 30s, he won big titles: his 2018 Worlds win capped a career in which he dominated the Ardennes, with four Liège wins and five at Flèche. Also a perennial high finisher…

“It’s part of cycling and always has been: we profit from the draft of cars. They block the wind. It is not forbidden” Arnaud Démare denies accusations that he illegally took a tow up the Cipressa to win San Remo Among all the victories Boels-Dolmans have racked up, team manager Danny Stam doesn’t hesitate for long to name the team time trial at the World Championships in Doha, in 2016 as the one that stands out most. A TTT in the desolate Qatari desert might not necessarily be everyone outside the team’s first pick for any all-time greatest win list - it doesn’t have the blockbuster value of their Giro Rosa titles, or the tradition and history of any number of their classics wins. The event doesn’t even exist any…

Not many riders can win 10 races in a year. Even fewer can average winning 10 a year for an entire decade. Though his career is drawing to an inexorable close, André Greipel won more races between 2010 and 2019 than any other rider. He took 117 wins in total in that time period, narrowly ahead of Peter Sagan, who won 113 times. No other rider broke 100 victories in the calendar decade, though Mark Cavendish was only just short, scoring 94 wins. Next up: Marcel Kittel on 89, Elia Viviani on 78 and Alexander Kristoff on 77. Greipel’s best season in that time was 2010, during which he took 21 wins while riding for HTC-Columbia. Winning 20 races in a single season is such a rare achievement that it…

You’re both from South Africa, riding for a South African WorldTour team. You’re relatively rare… JAY THOMSON: It’s unique, I suppose. Do you feel unique? REINARDT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: It’s different. Coming from South Africa it’s not easy. I don’t think we have a cycling culture like they have in Europe. Adapting to European racing and living in Europe is a bit harder. JT: It’s a completely different environment. A cold day in South Africa means 10 degrees. It gets really cold at night in South Africa but during the day it’s warm. In Europe, there’s snow, rain, small roads and things like that. It’s quite a big change from where we started. Are you both based in Europe? JT: I live full time in Europe because my family is…