Tomorrow morning 238 riders will start the 99th Tour of Flanders, or Ronde Van Vlaanderen to give the race its proper, untranslated name. The race is the second Monument of the year and the first on the cobbles of Belgium. Unlike Paris-Roubaix the cobbles and race length provide only half the challenge with hilly sections also
Category: Previews and Reviews
Chris Froome, returning from illness, may have gone to Volta a Catalunya as team leader but it was team-mate Richie Porte who underlined his fantastic start to the season with another World Tour win. The first Girona climbs confirmed Froome was just riding for fitness and when Porte was given the chance to lead he showed strong legs
At 293km, Milan-San Remo is the longest of the five Monuments and is sometimes referred to as a ‘Sprinters Classic’. This year the recent trend of sprint wins continued with Giant-Alpecin’s John Degenkolb delivering from a reduced bunch. The German endured the climbs well and played the waiting game well into the final kilometre. Last year’s
With March comes two of the first big UCI Stage Races of the Year; Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. Though the former has history and prestige, Tirreno-Adriatico’s route across Italy attracted a host of the best climbers. The ‘Race of the Two Seas’ started and ended with a time trial and contained a Queen Stage that ended
Niki Terpstra has defended his Tour of Qatar title, making it eight wins in ten years for his Belgian based team at the windiest race of the year. He produced an excellent time-trial to see off his rivals, but Alexander Kristoff applied late pressure by collecting back to back wins and earning 20 bonus seconds.
Whilst sprinting may be a consistent theme across the three Persian races, Dubai certainly stands out in terms of scenery albeit some man-made. Uniquely, each Dubai stage starts out from the same Marine club, branching off in different directions each day. Stage two finished in the beautiful artificial Palm Islands (Palm Jumeirah). Only after enjoying
The Tour Down Under once again delivered a week of action worthy of kicking off the cycling season and by the time things wrapped up three Australians were top of the pile. Richie Porte and Cadel Evans fought hard but were outdone by 24 year-old Stage 3 winner Rohan Dennis. The BMC rider took the
Just Pro Cycling 