With a list of winners including Tom Boonen, Paolo Bettini, Cadel Evans, Mark Cavendish and Rui Costa, the World Championship Road Race is successful at sharing out the title of the ‘World’s Best’ across a number of different rider types. In very few other one day races could Vincenzo Nibali and Elia Viviani be considered
Tag: Michael Matthews
The Giro finished today with Alberto Contador overcoming aggressive Astana tactics to add another Grand Tour to his already impressive collection. The third week belonged to the boys in light blue however, with podium finishers Mikel Landa and Fabio Aru taking two stages each. This Giro received praise for its exciting and at times frenetic
The first Grand Tour of the season is finally among us. It’s easy to fall into the trap of saying the Giro d’Italia has the greatest history and the best climbs- something I do every May. By July, I’m absorbed with the madness of the Tour de France and I’m always staggered by the difficulty of the climbs in the Vuelta come September.
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
Tirreno-Adriatico had the names, the climbs, the crazy weather and quite possibly the bigger following but Paris-Nice remains my pick of the March stage races. Though I’ve frequently championed the Giro over the Tour, the Paris-Nice format usually delivers some cracking French racing and had returned this year to its better format. The race takes