Table of contents for March 2020 in Procycling

Even by the modern standards of the international peloton, the 2020 iteration of the NTT team is an incongruous mix of nationalities and cultures. It has come a long way from its African roots - it didn’t start out this way, but Africa’s team now has a Japanese sponsor and a Danish manager. And, it has to be said, not many African riders. The 2020 roster counts seven, out of 29 - six South Africans and an Eritrean. It’s the lowest total in the history of the team, which started out as an 11-man squad in 2008 with exclusively South African riders, sponsored by MTN. Since 2008, the team has grown - the Qhubeka charity became a co-sponsor in 2011, and they started taking part in bigger events. In 2013…

Do we spy a Briton not on the BC Academy…? You do. Not many choose to leave the security of the British Cycling Academy programme, but Jake Stewart is among those forging his own path, living and racing in France for the Groupama-FDJ Conti team. He’s about to start his second year there. What’s his background? The 20-year-old from Coventry got into cycling through triathlon; his uncle used to race Ironmans and young Jake got the bug. But he soon realised his calling: “I was rubbish at running and swimming; I was only making up time on the bike,” he tells Procycling. From there he joined his local club Solihull CC, and then his pathway into British Cycling began. Why did he go to France? Riders on the BC Academy…

The Lotto team that Philippe Gilbert has rejoined in 2020 is both the same and very different from the one he left in 2012. (You could also add that Gilbert himself is both the same and very different than eight years ago, as well.) The Belgian squad is one of the oldest in a sport which has commonly seen teams last for seven to 12 years or even less, depending if they can find title sponsors once the first one has received enough return on investment. The team dates back to 1985, though a complicated process of genesis means that the indirect lineage can be traced even further back, to 1979. In 1985 the Belgian Lottery started sponsoring a team built partially from the remnants of the Tönnissteiner team, and…

The journey from Paris to Nice is more than just a few hundred kilometres between two of France’s most important and individual cities. There is distance also between the urban city culture of France’s capital and the Mediterranean horizons of the Côte d’Azur. France is no different from many other countries – its inhabitants hold the stereotypes of the dynamic hardworking, over-serious north with the relaxed, fun, warm south. The landscapes are different – the windy plains of the north are a different world from the mountains and sea of the south. The weather is different – cool and temperate in the north, or freezing cold in winter; warm to hot in the south. And in between, almost all of France separates the two. The Race to the Sun is…

Matti Breschel fought more than usual to stay competitive in the first Belgian classics of 2019. News programmes had reported that he was suffering from ankle problems, but gave no other insight into the drama that was the Dane’s life in February and March last year. The night after an unseasonably hot Omloop Het Niewsblad, he woke up with a swollen ankle, he couldn’t walk, and he was in excruciating pain. Panic and adrenaline pumped through his body, yet he didn’t dare go to his team doctor. He knew his spring season would be over if he revealed the swelling. But there was no way around it. Breschel didn’t finish the next day’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. Arthritis. That was the verdict from a dermatologist who Breschel sought out in 2013 because of…

HEROES OF PRO CYCLING No other sport can compare for pushing its competitors to the boundaries of physical and mental suffering in the way that cycling does. Read all about it in Heroes of Pro Cycling, free when you subscribe. GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE! For just £12.25 get three months of Procycling plus a free book Exclusive access to expert opinion, analysis and fantastic photography Get every issue hot off the press delivered direct to your door For more information and to subscribe go to MYFAVOURITEMAGAZINES.CO.UK/PROMAR20 or call 0344 848 2852* quoting code PROMAR20 UK CREDIT/DEBIT/PAYPAL PRICE 1 YEAR FOR £51.00 SAVING 35% TERMS & CONDITIONS This offer entitles new UK Direct Debit subscribers to pay just £12.25 every 3 months plus receive a free book worth £9.99. You will…

The Australian summer of racing is almost always exclusively dominated by Australian riders, on both the men’s and women’s side of cycling. It’s hardly a surprise, considering the home riders have the advantage of being used to the weather, the roads and the time zone, having largely been acclimatising since the end of the previous season unlike their European counterparts who have to make the long-haul flight over. In the same way that Richie Porte winning on Willunga Hill seems to be a sure-fire bet every year, so too is Mitchelton-Scott taking the Women’s Tour Down Under overall title. The strongest Australian team packed with strong southern hemisphere riders has an advantage its rivals had yet to be able to be able to match at their home race. Coming into…

On a hilly parcours like that of the GP Marseillaise, a team’s strength in depth is very important. Not everybody will survive the climbing, so the more riders a team has at its disposition towards the finale, the more options it has. Ag2r La Mondiale proved this perfectly. They engineered a situation where Benoît Cosnefroy, a hyperactive attacker in the mould of Julian Alaphilippe, got away with two rivals - Valentin Madouas of Groupama and Thomas Devriendt of Circus - yet still had strong riders to police the chase. This alone puts a team in a strong position - the rider ahead can shirk on his pulls in defence of his team-mates behind; his teammates behind can do exactly the same. That alone might have been enough, but the gap…

1.WT: One-day UCI WorldTour race / 1.HC: Major one-day race / 1.1: Minor one-day race / 2.WT: UCI WorldTour stage race / 2.HC: Major stage race / 2.1: Minor stage race / WWT: Women's WorldTour race SOPHIE HURCOM DEPUTY EDITOR WHY I LOVE… STRADE BIANCHE 7 March | Italy | 1.UWT/WWT When Piazzo del Campo came to be in medieval times, it was positioned at the joining of three roads in and out of Siena. The idea was for the square to be neutral ground. Rules were even put in place to ensure all buildings were homogenous. Today there’s only one road in and out that matters, when it comes to Strade Bianche: the climb of Via Santa Caterina to the finish. A road so steep its gradient zaps every…

PHILIPPE GILBERT Sophie Hurcom met the Belgian classics star to discuss his career so far, and the one final race victory that is missing from his palmarès. See page 34. ROHAN DENNIS With a high-profile withdrawal from the 2019 Tour and a transfer to Ineos, Rohan Dennis has been busy. Sophie Smith asked him all about it. Page 46. MILAN-SAN REMO How do you win Milan-San Remo? Who better to ask than the men who have done so. See our in-depth feature on page 54.…

3.7 km The length of the sector of pavé in Paris-Roubaix that has been named after John Degenkolb, as a thank you for the role he played in saving the junior race from cancellation last year. Degenkolb, who won the monument in 2015, crowdfunded €17,661 after hearing the junior race - which he also won - was at risk due to a lack of funding. The sector in his name runs from Hornaing à Wandignies to Hamage. He’s got a lifetime ban from direct involvement in all sport, but Lance Armstrong’s former DS Johan Bruyneel has set up a sports management company. Called 7evenPlusTwo, after the Tour de France titles that were stripped from Armstrong, Bruyneel’s company branding and website even features images of him and the Texan. LONDON CALLING…

At the English Institute of Sport we support athletes with their holistic life outside of being a cyclist, or whatever sport they choose. There’s a performance lifestyle advisor placed at each sport around the country, mainly looking at athlete transitions: onto a world class performance programme, their time on the programme, and then the transition into retirement, looking at their personal and professional development over those life-changing processes. If you think of psychology, or strength and conditioning or physiology, this is the newest of all of the support disciplines. When I retired from judo in 2013 I really struggled with who I was and with my identity. That’s why I went into performance lifestyle. It’s so important as athletes to be as well-rounded as you can be. As sports become…

The Majorcan sun is low in the sky by the time Philippe Gilbert gets back from training. He’s been out riding the island’s climbs and coastal roads since 9am and is one of the last riders back to the hotel in Palma as dusk sets in, wandering into the complex carrying his helmet in his hands as his cleats clip-clop across the patio floor, while most of his new team-mates are already showered and changed. It had been the same routine the day before. Others chose to enjoy a gentle pre-Christmas spin as the Lotto-Soudal two-week training camp wound down to its final days. Gilbert and a handful of others pushed hard for six hours. He’s wearing the blue 2019 kit of Deceuninck-Quick Step (a sponsor requirement for a few…

Sitting on a plastic chair plonked on a grass oval following the first hill-top finish of the Tour Down Under in Paracombe, Rohan Dennis is chatting with Ineos sports director Brett Lancaster, saying something about the pace of accelerations on stage 3. Down Under marks not only Dennis’s WorldTour debut with Ineos but his first stage race since walking out of the Tour de France last summer - to serious consequence. The 29-year-old won his second time trial world title in between, but in Paracombe felt the physical toll of consecutive days of racing and got squeezed out on the run-in to the Torrens Hill Road climb, where Richie Porte won the stage and laid the foundations for his overall title. Dennis and one other teammate have opted to get…

Epstein Barr needs treatment and rest so that the body can heal itself, but it’s also important to consider treatment for the mind. When giving an account of how he dealt with Epstein-Barr virus, Beñat Intxausti makes a point on how important the support of his teams and the company of his girlfriend were to overcome the condition. “My girlfriend is the person I have to thank the most,” he stresses. “She has stood by my side during this whole situation, overseeing me 24 hours a day for almost three full years.” The case of Esteban Chaves is paradigmatic. For the Colombian, mononucleosis was the nadir of a long period of adversity. “Perhaps the pressure for the results, perhaps the injuries I suffered, perhaps the people I lost on the…

SPECIALIZED S-WORKS VENGE DISC - SRAM ETAP £9,750 ||| $12,650 “Aero is everything” proclaim Specialized on their marketing material. And it is, though it’s not the whole story - the latest iteration of the S-Works Venge has also dropped a bit of weight: 460g according to the manufacturers, with mass shed from several different places. The lines on the frame are simple and clean, and deep-section Roval CLX64 wheels maintain the aero theme. Components are Sram Red eTap throughout, and the frame is finished with a gloss metallic white paintjob. It’s a bike that looks fast, and rides even faster. www.specialized.com ROVAL CL 50 WHEELSET £1,750 ||| $2,270 The modern competitive rider wants aero performance from his or her wheels, but also to maintain handling confidence, meaning that a mid-section…

Rik Van Slyck, Deceuninck-QS DS We had two options with Dries Devenyns and Sam Bennett. It’s always the same question in this race; who will attack, when will they attack and will the sprinter get over the climbs for the finale? We know the race well - Dries has been very close before, one time he was top five. We gave Dries a free role, to go whenever there was an attack on the local laps in Geelong. There was a lot of wind, so this was the first difficulty; Dries had to be in a good position because the peloton started furiously. In the second half onto the local circuit, there were also crosswinds but it was not enough to split up the peloton. The second challenge was the…

You’ve won the first race of the European 2020 season in the opening race at Challenge Mallorca. Is that just a coincidence or does it matter? It matters. I was confident before the race, but this was still my first race of the season and I didn’t really know how my level would compare to the other sprinters [Pascal Ackermann of Bora-Hansgrohe finished second - Ed.] until I went for it today. Such an early victory at this point in the season, particularly for a young rider like me, feels special. How far were you from the finish line when you knew you’d won the race? Honestly, I had no idea until about 10 metres to go when I looked up and saw there was nobody ahead of me. Did…

Santos Tour Down Under, stage 2 Stirling, Australia 22 JANUARY 2020 The WorldTour peloton is reminded that races cannot take place in a bubble separated from the real world as it passes through landscapes scorched by the terrible bushfires that have been raging in Australia, at the Tour Down Under. Adelaide, the home of the race, was comparatively not hit by fires as bad as those elsewhere in the country, but the eerie, blackened surroundings still stood as stark evidence of the severity of the inferno. With many scientists believing on the basis of evidence and study that the fires, while part of a natural cycle, are largely exacerbated by man-made climate change, cycling is starting to look at its own very large carbon footprint. Deceuninck-Quick Step have announced that…

Where’s home? Home in my head is the Côte d’Azur so at the moment Cap d’Ail, but I’m about to move back into Monaco. Otherwise, home for me is the Adelaide Hills as well. It’s where my family still is and although my life is more in Europe, that’s still home-home for me. Always a place if I desperately need to go somewhere, that will always be home. What’s your favourite race? The World Championships, simply because I think they are the spectacle. It’s the race we all want to get selected for, we all want to get those rainbow bands and I think there’s something special about it always being in a different place, with different characteristics. What’s your favourite climb? The Col du Braus is always a nice…

We are only two riders from Argentina in the WorldTour, but being Argentinian is important for me, and I’m the national champion. There’s a big difference between cycling in Argentina and Europe - it’s more amateur back home. I need to be an example for riders in Argentina, and I hope that in years to come more Argentinian riders will come to Europe. I have three brothers, and we all race. Everybody in my family was a cyclist and two of us still are - Mauro and me. My older brother Roberto works with my father now in his bike shop and my youngest brother Adrian lives in San Juan. My dad was a cyclist and we got our passion from him. We used to go to races with him.…

Paris-Nice has a reputation in professional cycling. From the outside, you see what appears a normal yet prestigious and hotly contested race. To the pro rider, it’s one of the most dreaded weeks of competition you can attempt. The spring race that most will not want to see their name put down for, purely because it is notoriously one of the hardest week’s racing of the year. Cold, wet, windy, a highly motivated and nervous peloton racing on narrow roads with ever toughening terrain. Its difficulty makes success even more valuable. A good result at Paris-Nice is a highly respected feat as it shows a complete rider who dealt with multiple challenges. Completing a Paris-Nice is something that bonds a team. Stories are told all season of events unseen by…

2005 During his third season for Française des Jeux, 22-year-old Gilbert wins his first one-day race at the Tour du Haut Var (then not a stage race), from a four-rider sprint that includes Cédric Vasseur. 2006 Enjoys his breakthrough classics win and shows his cobbles pedigree early on, winning Omloop Het Volk and upsetting the favourites to solo to the line from 7km out. 2008 Another Omloop victory after an even more impressive attack from 60km out on the Eikenberg. Reels in the break then attacks again to win alone. Ends the year with a first win at Paris-Tours. 2009 Wins his first monument at Lombardia, beating Samuel Sánchez in a two-up sprint for the line after the duo escape on the final climb. It was only the second time…

1970 MICHELE DANCELLI THE THING TO keep in mind is that no Italian had won for 17 years. That may not seem so unusual today, but back then the peloton for Milan-San Remo was 50 per cent Italian. There had been the usual Belgian and French winners, but also a Spaniard, a German and a Dutch guy, and even an Englishman. It had become a nightmare, and with each passing year everyone became more anxious about it. My problem as a cyclist was that I couldn’t really help myself. If there was a little climb, or even a railway bridge, instinct would take over and I’d just attack. It cost me a lot of races because I was a good sprinter, but the urge to go was just too strong.…

“If, deep down, you didn’t truly believe you were going to make it, you’d hang it up and go down the path of least resistance” The opportunity to make it out of New Zealand was small. Basically, no one had done it without the track. Our cycling federation is very track focused. It’s a great programme with a lot of resources but it wasn’t their priority to develop road guys. We had enough, as young riders, to develop, but to come to Europe and get opportunities was really hard – it was hard to show you were worth coming onto a team. You have to remember, when you leave New Zealand to go to Europe, you’re going to the other side of the world, and it’s hard, financially. You don’t…

The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu may have had the 2020 Tour Down Under in mind when he said, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.” Richie Porte knew who his biggest enemy was on Old Willunga Hill, on the final stage of the race: the same as the previous two years, the defending champion Daryl Impey. But he would have had less knowledge of the British neo-pro Matt Holmes, a survivor of the early break, who glommed on to his back wheel after he’d made his customary attack on the lower slopes of the climb. Against Impey, whose advantage of two seconds going into the last day this year looked very shaky, Porte gained his victory. But…

FIRST WIN OF THE YEAR How many WorldTour teams have already scored a victory? As we went to press, 14 WorldTeams had already managed at least one win, with Mitchelton-Scott fastest off the mark. Luke Durbridge won the Australian national TT champs just over a week into 2020. Next up: Cofidis scored their first win as a WorldTeam when Attilio Viviani took arguably a soft win at the Tropicale Amissa Bongo, while Deceuninck-Quick Step opened their account on the first day of the Tour Down Under. 2020 has been teed up as the year of Jumbo versus Ineos, and there’s nothing to choose between them so far, and also nothing in their trophy cabinets. With bigger targets to come, both were stuck on zero a week into February. *Yet to…