The Volta a Catalunya dates back to 1911, making it over 20 years older than the Vuelta Espana. It’s therefore no surprise the race has been part of the top tier calendar since the inaugural ‘Pro Tour’ in 2005 and has an honours list stacked with big names. Despite its rich history, Catalunya has never
Author: MikeFranchetti
What should we call riders like Tony Gallopin? ‘All-rounders’ seems a fair suggestion but such a tag would cover the likes of Fabio Felline, Michal Kwiatkowski and Edvald Boasson Hagen; three very different riders. Gallopin certainly fits under the ‘Puncheur’ umbrella but that group is expansive and includes plenty of one-day specialists. He’s not explosive
Tirreno-Adriatico starts tomorrow; the unpredictable, sometimes fantastic, sometimes snowy, sometimes boring, springtime rival to the ASO’s Paris-Nice. I was unable to write a ‘Quick Picks’ for Paris-Nice but I can assure you I would have talked up Richie Porte (currently 15 minutes down) and Romain Bardet (currently sitting on his sofa eating croissants and reading
I confess I was not as excited for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Belgium’s curtain-raising classics weekend as the rest of the cycling world. Perhaps I was foolishly distracted by Green Mountain and the Abu Dhabi Tour, intrigued to see if Rui Costa and company could upset the leading GC guys. I’ve had no such distractions
Strade Bianche is back and this time it’s on the World Tour. Here are five reasons why it deserves to be acknowledged as one of the best races on the calendar. 1. The white gravel roads, obviously. When the Colle Delle Finestre popped up in the 2005 Giro d’Italia we were given a taste of
The Abu Dhabi Tour swaggered into the cycling season in the autumn of 2015. It was a strange race but it felt right in the awkward mid-October slot. The race format consisted of three obvious sprint stages and a ‘Queen Stage’ featuring a dance up to Jebel Hafeet. The format has stayed exactly the same
There’ll have been various points throughout Carlos Sastre’s career where he’d have been told not to look back; his solo stage victory ahead of a raging Jan Ullrich on Ax 3 Domaines comes to mind, as does his career defining attack on Alpe d’Huez en route to landing the Tour de France. However, now retired
With both the Ruta Del Sol and Volta ao Algarve kicking off tomorrow, it looks as though I’ll fall one short of an Oman/Andalucia/Algarve preview hat-trick. Whilst Ruta Del Sol boasts a week of hard racing in Spain’s most southern region, the Volta ao Algarve will be the more open race. Both races tackle some steep
Just Pro Cycling 