When they start coverage on BBC2 they will be lucky if they see the last 3Km, strange scheduling

After bossing the race all day, Belgium will be gutted if Boonen cannot cross the line first. With so much real talent in the group they must be confident that making the race hard will give Boonen the edge.

Sagan again!

Sliver for Cav

#1 defends his RR title... Makes up for the troubled showing at the Olympic XC MTB.

Cav gets baulked by Matthews.

Sagan's English is improving. So much for feeling very tired after a long season and Eneco tour.

Unlucky for Cavendish. But even if he had not lost his wheel though Sagan looked unbeatable.

3 champions on the RR podium.

Matthews didn't baulk Cavandish, Cavendish made a split decision and just came up fast on Matthews, stopped pedalling and then just couldn't do anything to catch Sagan. That's bike racing. As Sagan pointed out he hardly had any room when he made a decion to go left and could have lost out. Maybe if Cav had taken Blyth's wheel he might have been in a better position.

There is still a bit more road cycling to go. The Tour of Abu Dhabi starts on Thursday, with a pretty strong World Tour line-up, so presumably petrodollars are being lavishly distributed. Degenkolb is listed as being one of the riders, not sure if the Debusschere rematch is on though.

http://www.abudhabitour.com/teams2016.php

Then next weekend we get the Tour of Hainan from China - I seem to remember last year that this was pretty much an exclusively Asia-Pacific field, though.

And indoors, the European Champs from France start on Thursday night.

144 competitors did not finish. That's almost as many as in the 2013 RR - when you consider how much hillier (and wetter) Florence was compared to Doha, that's crazy.

As a domestique, Adam Blythe's 12th place (and last man to finish s.t. as Sagan) is worth a mention, as is 13th place (as an Eritrean) for Natnael Berhane.

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It has been a heck of a year for Peter Sagan.

13 pro victories as world champion, plus the 2016 WorldTour ranking and yesterday's win to keep custody of the stripes for a second year in succession...no surprise that he also leads the rolling World Ranking by a chunk. Best season for a reigning champ since Boonen 2006; also the biggest numeric tally since Cav 2012.

Speaking of those two...

I believe that's a first. Also worth noting the podium is probably the 'winningest' for some time with well over 300 wins between the medallists.

It has been a good season for Cav. His big targets were the TdF opening stage (for a day in the maillot jaune), Rio omnium and Doha RR - which as a whole were rather ambitious, even for a sprinter of his calibre. He got the first (plus three) and won medals in the other two, even though he wanted a different colour in both; he also added the 'bonus' madison rainbow jersey to his collection.

Boonen had a good late season for someone in his twilight years, including that victory in RideLondon.

As with the previous post-Olympic season*, Glasgow hosts a round of the Track World Cup (4-6 November, plus TP qualification on the 3rd). The team BC has named is broadly similar to that competing in France - Tennant replaces Bostock, Barker was not selected and an additional women's endurance squad (Team Breeze) was selected instead of the women's sprint squad.

[* For UCI ranking purposes, seasons always conclude with the World Championships so it's still Olympic season (in name only)]

I didn't watch the road championships because I don't agree with major sporting events being held in dictatorships.

I've just clicked the link to the details of our cycling teams in the upcoming events. It seems we're preparing for the future. It's time for some new cycling stars to shine.

Scott Thwaites Strava file from yesterday after he finished in the chasing group. Terpstra's data from the lead group is in brackets for comparison.

Heading north into wind at 37kph
9km up to turn at 44kph
2km straight after right turn at 67.6 (65.8) kph
Down to Al Thakira at 59 (62) kph
30km down to the Pearl 59 (60) kph
First four laps 46 (47) kph
Last four laps 44 ( ~47) kph

Noticeable that Terpstra was slower on the key section presumably from being better placed. The leaders were always marginally faster than the chase until the last four laps when they accepted defeat and slowed.
https://www.strava.com/activities/746635250/analysis
https://www.strava.com/activities/746744475/analysis

Gaviria has a dislocated shoulder from on bike collision with the Durbridge:
https://twitter.com/CyclingTodayEn/s...02775584739328

The UCI said riders likely to be lapped were to be stopped. The third group was pulled prematurely with two laps to go. At that point, the lead group had 22km left to take nearly 10mins out of Group 3 to catch them before the finish: essentially Group 3 would have had to sit up and coast round at 32kph (on flat roads) for that to happen. As they lost 10.5mins in 227km, Group 3 were hardly going to lose the equivalent in the remaining distance.

Tour de France 2017 route revealed - climbers' race anticipated.

Surprised they didn't have this on Eurosport, they usually do. Starting off in Dusseldorf, with a first stage ITT and a first-week mountain top finish.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/37688216

http://www.letour.fr/le-tour/2017/us/overall-route.html

It was on live this morning. It will be repeated at 9 p.m. on Eurosport 2 (subject to ES usual messing around with schedules) - well worth a watch, especially as a reminder of how incident packed the 2016 Tour was.

Here's the schedule for the Euro track championships.......

http://uec.ch/documents/track/2016/2..._programme.pdf

(big gap between days.......you have to scroll down)

Four finals last night and Katie Archibald got Silver in the women's elimination race

Highlights tonight are the Team Pursuit finals, the Team sprint finals, the women's Sctrach race and Mens Elimination race

Tinkoff seem to have gone retro with their kit in the Abu Dhabi tour, they are just signing on right now.

Unfortunately for most, Eurosport arent showing the whole stage live but it is on Abu Dhabi sport 1 for the whole stage, although it is pan flat so after a break away forms it will probably be a bit boring until later.

Bit of a bummer if you were going by the Radio Times which had todays stage of Abu Dhabi starting at 1.30

I happened to have the TV on and just flicked over at about 1.00pm and coverage was just starting with only 20K to go.........

It was all over before 1.30 !

Our young British squad starting to pile up some decent minor medals in Yvelines - men's sprint team qualified in first place the final, bronze for the women's team pursuit, now the men's team pursuit getting bonze as well.

Other teams seem to have bit more of a mix between experience and newbies, obviously the French sending out a decent squad. Sylvian Chavanel in the French team pursuit squad! Atmosphere a bit of contrast to what you get in British meets.

Bit frightening when the commentator mentioned that all four British girls in the team pursuit were born 1995/96........

Silver in the men's team sprint.........they'll be disappointed with that as they were the fastest qualifiers

Oh dear, Kirsten Wild only third in the scratch race, and here was me thinking I was having a bad week. Silver for Eleanor Barker, our Olympic team pursuit girls obviously getting a bit of of a chance to broaden their range.

She beat Katie Archibald to win yesterday's elimination race.

I thought Wild was going to win but Barker beat her to silver. Brilliant result. Considering we have a less experienced team I think we're doing okay so far.

Not really...two of them are still teens and the eldest 21 y/o, so they punched above their weight. Certainly a trio to watch this season.

Germany, on the other hand will be disappointed as they produced the fastest ride in the comp for bronze but weren't fast enough in the previous round to get gold for it.

Here's the live results site.