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The Pro Cycling Thread (Part 2)
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swingaleg
01-03-2015
Great win by Cav.........I suppose that race isn't really hard enough for the true Classics riders.......most of the big name sprinters were still there at the finish.

and that flat 40K towards the finishing line must make it difficult for a breakaway ?

Here's Eurosport's March schedule........

1 Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne
4 Grand Prix Le Samyn
7 Strade Bianche
8-15 Paris-Nice
11-17 Tirreno Adriatico
22 Milan - San Remo
23-29 Tour of Catalunya
27 GP E3 Harelbeke
28-29 Criterium International
31-2 April Three Days of De Panne


season really kicking off now
cmq2
02-03-2015
It started with Graham Watson's photo: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_CIUriXEAALm1-.jpg
and became : https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_HnCPwW4AEAALY.jpg:large
Edward_Sloley
03-03-2015
Heh. Truly a fitting picture for Stannard - it's all in the name:

This interesting surname of pre 7th century Olde English origins. It derives from the given name "Stanheard", composed of the elements "stan" meaning stone plus "heard" meaning hardy, brave or strong.

Looking elsewhere, the UK plays host to another annual sportive in the form of Velothon Wales; like RideLondon, it includes a UCI-sanctioned professional road race. Even just three years ago, the Tour of Britain was the sole regular road race event (not including anything below the third tier, which is .1); this year, there will be five.
swingaleg
06-03-2015
Victoria Pendleton has announced that she's to go into training with champion jumps trainer Paul Nicholls with the aim of becoming a licensed amateur jumps jockey and has set her goal to ride in the 'Foxhunters' at the Cheltenham Festival 2016

Brave girl.......

That is one hell of a dangerous game.......
Party Animal
06-03-2015
Originally Posted by swingaleg:
“
That is one hell of a dangerous game.......”

so is going down a Mountainside on a bike at 80mph
grassmarket
06-03-2015
Originally Posted by swingaleg:
“Victoria Pendleton has announced that she's to go into training with champion jumps trainer Paul Nicholls with the aim of becoming a licensed amateur jumps jockey and has set her goal to ride in the 'Foxhunters' at the Cheltenham Festival 2016”

Can Anna Meares ride a horse?
cmq2
06-03-2015
Video showing the poor state of the roads in Sunday's P-N prologue especially the disintegrating pothole filling at 47 secs. GoPro bouncing a lot on some sections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX-bOZwVuz8&t=32

Will the organisers remove the traffic calming for Sir Brad's low slung F-type?

Early afternoon finish at Strade Bianchi tomorrow. Only 90 mins on ES so they may be through most of the white roads when coverage starts. Weather forecast is cool and sunny. No Kwiatkowski, who won last year but second place Sagan will start.

Astana riding this race and both mini-tours.
Department_S
06-03-2015
What a week of cycling this will be. Strada Bianche, Paris- Nice and then on Wednesday the Tirreno Adriatico starts with the big 4 going head to head. Carlton Kirby will explode!!
swingaleg
07-03-2015
Is it just my impression or is it actual fact the T-A has now overtaken P-N as the big early season stage race ?

It does appear that all the top riders are now targeting the Italian race whereas 5 years ago I'd hardly heard of T-A and Paris-Nice was the big one

Maybe it's just because Eurosport never used to show T-A so it didn't get Europe wide coverage ?
Marti S
08-03-2015
Originally Posted by Department_S:
“What a week of cycling this will be. Strada Bianche, Paris- Nice and then on Wednesday the Tirreno Adriatico starts with the big 4 going head to head. Carlton Kirby will explode!!”

It's a shame we wont be able to hear him, chances are he will be doing the world feed, like he does for lots of Italian races, just hope it's not Matt Stephens on Eurosport.
cmq2
08-03-2015
Originally Posted by swingaleg:
“Is it just my impression or is it actual fact the T-A has now overtaken P-N as the big early season stage race ?”

I cannot recall a bigger imbalance between the race start lists. At P-N, the only top finishers from last year's GTs are Bardet, Peraud and Aru. Even the top sprinters favour the Italian race. The main ES evening highlights are P-N with the Italian race reshown much later. Not sure they have got that the right way round though Sky have a strong presence for the TTs and overall in France.

Originally Posted by Marti S:
“It's a shame we wont be able to hear him, chances are he will be doing the world feed, like he does for lots of Italian races, just hope it's not Matt Stephens on Eurosport.”

Rob Hatch and Sean Kelly commentating at P-N.
cmq2
08-03-2015
Surprising results at the P-N prologue. And, not affecting the riders, a near miss for the camera bike behind Wiggins (spoiler as timing on screen): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6VQTqDS0jE
Sherlock_Holmes
08-03-2015
Originally Posted by cmq2:
“I cannot recall a bigger imbalance between the race start lists. At P-N, the only top finishers from last year's GTs are Bardet, Peraud and Aru. Even the top sprinters favour the Italian race.”

Greipel, Kristoff, Degenkolb, Bouhanni, Demare, Boonen, Rojas, Hutarovich, Bozic, Coquard, Haussler and Matthews are all good to great sprinters,

In fact, only Cav and Kittel are missing in terms of sprinters in this race (and perhaps one or two of the Italians).

As for the big names in terms of the overall classification, the likes of Contador, Quantana, Valverde, Nibali, Uran and Froome are missing. But a field with Kwiatkowski, Thomas, Van Garderen, Wiggins, Porte, Kelderman, Costa, Talansky, Fuglsang, Bardet, Majka, Aru, Kiserlovski and Barguil is certainly not too shabby. In fact, quite a few of those names will turn up in the top 10 of the three big races this year.

It will probably be a better race then last year, when Rojas finished in the top 5

And the difference between the two races with last year is not that great, as Froome was already planned for Tirreno (but got replaced by Porte due to illness), Valverde was not racing in either race (probably still banned at that point?) and Nibali did race P-N, but basically as a tourist (he never takes these one week races seriously).

As for today's result, not too surprising as both Kwiat and Dennis are more suited to this type of work (they slip down the rankings in a proper time trial), whereas the likes of Wiggo, Martin and Van Garderen need more miles to get really going.
Edward_Sloley
08-03-2015
A prologue in which not only the RR World Champion takes the spoils, but the ITT World Champion finishes outside the top 10! When was the last time that happened?

Must feel good to have the hour record as things currently stand, but I wonder how Rohan Dennis feels to come second in yet another ITT (albeit only just)...
cmq2
08-03-2015
Originally Posted by Sherlock_Holmes:
“ Greipel, Kristoff, Degenkolb, Bouhanni, Demare, Boonen, Rojas, Hutarovich, Bozic, Coquard, Haussler and Matthews are all good to great sprinters,”

Your definition of top and 'good to great' is obviously a little different to mine. Especially the latter part where you included riders classed as sprinters but not actually successful at the highest level in 2014 . I accept I missed a couple like the highly successful Degenkolb.

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Holmes:
“As for the big names in terms of the overall classification, the likes of Contador, Quantana, Valverde, Nibali, Uran and Froome are missing. But a field with Kwiatkowski, Thomas, Van Garderen, Wiggins, Porte, Kelderman, Costa, Talansky, Fuglsang, Bardet, Majka, Aru, Kiserlovski and Barguil is certainly not too shabby. In fact, quite a few of those names will turn up in the top 10 of the three big races this year.

It will probably be a better race then last year, when Rojas finished in the top 5 ”

Some names likely finishing top ten this season does not put them in the same class as those in your first sentence. Which was the point I was making. No-one is arguing that it needs the top riders to produce great racing.
grassmarket
09-03-2015
Chris Froome out of the Tirreno-Adriatico with a chest infection - will do the Tour of Catalonia later in the month instead.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/31796290
cmq2
09-03-2015
Originally Posted by grassmarket:
“Chris Froome out of the Tirreno-Adriatico with a chest infection - will do the Tour of Catalonia later in the month instead.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/cycling/31796290”

...and Kittel out of T-A with a virus.

Boonen is out for up to six weeks with an AC-joint dislocation in a crash today. The same affliction that Cavendish suffered on Stage 1 last July. http://www.etixx-quickstep.com/en/ne...-classics/2124

Thanks to the BBC News report, I do not need to wait for the 7pm highlights for the result.

I wonder how many will admit turning up at T-A with a TUE? I suspect that will be the question at every opening press conferences.
Sherlock_Holmes
09-03-2015
Originally Posted by cmq2:
“Your definition of top and 'good to great' is obviously a little different to mine. Especially the latter part where you included riders classed as sprinters but not actually successful at the highest level in 2014 . I accept I missed a couple like the highly successful Degenkolb.”

Trust me, I signed up for an on-line tour pool last year and almost everyone had those sprinters in the flat stages (forgot to mention Sagan, don't know if he starts in Tirreno, but he was plain horrific in last year's tour ).

Anyway, the success of a sprinter is not only measured in wins, but also how close they can come in a final sprint. And the likes of Greipel, Bouhanni, Hutarovich, Matthews, Degenkolb, Rojas and Kristoff (today even) have all had (in most cases multiple) sprint wins in the last year.
Devvi_Doyle
12-03-2015
Originally Posted by cmq2:
“...and Kittel out of T-A with a virus.

Boonen is out for up to six weeks with an AC-joint dislocation in a crash today. The same affliction that Cavendish suffered on Stage 1 last July. http://www.etixx-quickstep.com/en/ne...-classics/2124

Thanks to the BBC News report, I do not need to wait for the 7pm highlights for the result.

I wonder how many will admit turning up at T-A with a TUE? I suspect that will be the question at every opening press conferences.”

Speaking of TUEs, Nicole Cook had a pop at Chris Froome's use (and the UCI for allowing it) in the Guardian a couple of days ago:

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/201...e-steroid-tues

I saw on Froome's twitter yesterday when someone asked him, that he said he had only ever had two TUEs in his career. I don't know whether he means two instances of TUE in total, in which case that's not too much of a big deal, or whether he means he's only ever had two types of TUE. Would love for all the TUE data to be made public, or at least the UCI to publish an anonymous over all figure per race. How many treatments each day on average were there during last year's TdF, for example?
grassmarket
14-03-2015
Great stage going on in the Paris-NIce at the moment, a real battle between Kwiatkowski in yellow and Porte and Geraint Thomas in pursuit.
swingaleg
14-03-2015
I've been watching T-A live and P-N highlights which come on straight after.........

Today stage of T-A has finished,............

Waiting for paris nice to come on now on ES2

By the way the guy who runs Paris-Nice has said that he expects the two big early season stage races will not overlap in the near future.......
cmq2
14-03-2015
Action packed P-N live on ES1 at the moment. Not to be missed.
fluffed
14-03-2015
GT back to his crashing ways..
cmq2
14-03-2015
I felt the first crash. The camera was perfectly placed to catch it.

Thirty-six seconds is a lot of time to lose in a 10km ITT - but it is uphill.

Kwiatkowski had a suffering stage looking completely spent at the finish. The cold got him or he started out ill?
grassmarket
14-03-2015
Originally Posted by cmq2:
“Kwiatkowski had a suffering stage looking completely spent at the finish. The cold got him or he started out ill?”

No, I think he'd been putting a whole lot of work in trying to build the break from about 50k from home.
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