all words by Mike Franchetti
They say a picture speaks a thousand words. I say 750(!) is a more accurate figure. When Ramunas Navardauskas took bronze in Richmond he became the first rider from Lithuania to medal at the cycling World Championships. He wore a shocked grin on the podium. It proved that medals of the non-gold variety can sometimes be
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
The 100th edition of the Giro d’Italia starts this Friday. There’s not much more I can say that I haven’t said multiple times before; it’s an excellent race, it’s my favourite race, and it absolutely monopolizes three weeks of the year.
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 are a handful of times throughout each year where cycling fans are treated to two great races a day. This season we’ll see Scheldeprijs clash with Pais Vasco, the Tour of Britain boldly take on the Vuelta Espana and, of course, a World Tour battle between Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. These are usually enjoyable occasions with deliberately spaced out
Even for a Giro-lover like me, there’s something about the Tour de France which takes pro cycling to a whole new stage. From a commercial point of view, the Tour secures more mainstream media attention than any other event on the calendar. From a cycling front, the race is the high point of the season
Prior to Sunday’s race, Liège-Bastogne-Liège looked to be suffering from a case of the ‘Valverdes’. Symptoms include races controlled by a string of navy jerseys, little-to-no meaningful attacks and a measured final sprint propelling Alejandro Valverde away from his less-explosive rivals. The ‘Valverdes’ have well and truly struck down the Monument’s close relative La Flèche
With Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico marking the return of the World Tour, I’ve been looking into which riders have been racking up stage victories since the turn of the decade. What started as a rummage through http://www.procyclingstats.com ended up as a fixation on answering the question – which races have the greatest number of ‘home’ wins?
Just Pro Cycling 