all words by Mike Franchetti
Goodbye Tom Dumoulin; it was the right decision to leave this year’s Giro. It was a miserable day in northern Italy won by a not-so-miserable Pascal Ackermann. It won’t be another stage for the (new) big German tomorrow as the tough uphill finish hands the stage over to the puncheurs. The Just Profile We start
Tomorrow we leave behind Frascati and its Tuscolan Villas, and head to Terracina for what should be a very straightforward sprint. It’s fair to say that this isn’t the most entertaining preview to write, nor will it be the most entertaining stage to watch. The Giro likes to keep us waiting. The Just Profile We
Welcome to the first of the daily Just Pro Picks for the 2019 Giro d’Italia. This won’t be a detailed preview but rather my picks for each day – because you just can’t have enough cycling tipsters during the first Grand Tour of the year. The Just Profile At an unspectacular 235km, organizers are clearly
The Giro d’Italia starts on the 11th May. After last year’s road from Jerusalem to Rome, we return for a full-blooded Italian edition with the Grande Partenza in Bologna. In 2020 we’re set to start in Budapest with organizers sticking to their recent formula; odd numbered years for Italy, even numbers across borders. I tend
The lumpy one-day classics keep coming with the calendar’s oldest Monument arriving on Sunday afternoon. Despite often falling to the bottom of the excitement rankings, it was the first one-day race I attended live and an event I’ll always look forward to. Moreover, this year I feel I can genuinely get behind four of my
La Fleche Wallonne is potentially great, potentially boring, and potentially rubbish. The conclusion to last year’s race was brilliant as we saw master (Valverde) and apprentice (Alaphilippe) duke it out on the Mur and a phenomenal underdog victory. The ‘apprentice’ now returns at an ugly short price (8/11) and I find it hard to back
Since launching Just Pro Cycling I’ve got very good at being wrong. I dismissed Philippe Gilbert’s return to cobbles and argued that Nairo Quintana would finally conquer the Tour. This post is an apology disguised as a list. I was wrong about Mathieu van der Poel who looks to be the new superman of road
They say a picture speaks a thousand words. I say that 500 is a more accurate figure: The two faces dominating this photo carry entirely different expressions. Wearing the Dauphine’s inverted polka dots is a rider with innocence and arrogance in equal measure. He’s unzipped, unleashed, and unaware of the hatred being stared into his
Just Pro Cycling 