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PREFACE ISSUE 266 / MARCH 2020

EDITOR

N

ow the season is up and running, I’m settling into the new rosters and getting used to a few new team names and the transfers that passed me by during the off season. Some of these take longer than others to sink in - I keep saying Bahrain-Merida, instead of Bahrain-McLaren, and I still have to remind myself that Tiesj Benoot is with Sunweb, not Lotto any more.

Looking at the rosters makes me think the age of geographicallyspecific cycling teams is almost over. Yes, Ag2r and Groupama are still stubbornly French, each with 17 out of 28 riders from their home

HIGHLIGHTS

PHILIPPE GILBERT Sophie Hurcom met the Belgian classics star to discuss his career so far, and the one final race victory that is missing from his palmarès. See page 34.

ROHAN DENNIS With a high-profile withdrawal from the 2019 Tour and a transfer to Ineos, Rohan Dennis has been busy. Sophie Smith asked him all about it. Page 46.

MILAN-SAN REMO How do you win Milan-San Remo? Who better to ask than the men who have done so. See our in-depth feature on page 54.

Images: Velofocus, Stefan Schopf, Getty Images

EDWARD PICKERING

country. And Lotto is very Belgian 16 out of 27. But other WorldTour teams are getting increasingly international. EF Pro Cycling and Israel Cycling Academy Start-Up Nation have riders from 16 different countries - in the latter, only four are from Israel. And we’ve looked at the dwindling number of Africans in the NTT team on page 14.

Teams still identify with certain nations, but to compete in the WorldTour, they have to cast the net wide. It’s more important to have the best team possible than the best team possible of local riders. (One quirk in 2020 is that there’s a real British diaspora in the WorldTour. There are 24 altogether - nine are in Ineos, while 15 are spread over 10 more teams.)

Does this matter? On one hand, we’ve been saying for years that the sport needs to be internationalised, and what better evidence than a rainbow of nationalities in the WorldTour? Thirty years ago, most cyclists were French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish or Belgian. On the other, fans are the lifeblood of the sport, and the most accessible way to support a team is to find your local one and shout for that (as an Exeter City fan, I acknowledge this is a blessing and a curse). As cycling develops, maybe we have to make sure we don’t lose the local character that makes so many teams and races unique.

Get in touch with Procycling through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @procycling_mag

Procycling / March 2020 3

34 COVER: PHILIPPE GILBERT Can the Belgian make history in 2020?

“Except for a mountain stage, I’ve won every kind of race.”

FEATURES

46 54

INTERVIEW: ROHAN DENNIS

64 74 84 90 96 102

ANALYSIS: PARIS-NICE

We meet the enfant terrible of Australian cycling, who has now moved to Team Ineos

IN DEPTH: HOW I WON MILAN-SAN REMO Former winners of La Primavera explain how they won cycling’s longest race

CONTENTS

ISSUE 266 MARCH 2020

The Race to the Sun is one of cycling’s most iconic races. We look at why it has endured

INTERVIEW: MATTI BRESCHEL A revealing interview with the retired Dane, who is now slowly finding his feet as an ex-pro

INTERVIEW: BRODIE CHAPMAN We meet the Australian rider who has signed for FDJ-Nouvelle Aquitaine in 2020

INTERVIEW: PATRICK BEVIN CCC’s Kiwi sprinter-time triallist on his breadth of talents and becoming an expert in his disciplines

IN DEPTH: EPSTEIN BARR Procycling looks at the career-threatening condition which has hit several high-profile riders

RETRO: ANDREI TCHMIL We look at the career of the Russo-Belgo-Moldovan who won San Remo, Flanders and Roubaix

REGULARS GA L L E RY PROLOGUE O BJ ECTS OF D ES IR E B IKE O F T H E M ON T H D IA RISTS

6 14 22 26 30

SUBSCRIBE WISH LIST DE BR IEF THE G U ID E L AST WO RD

10 8 110 11 6 125 130 Procycling / March 2020 5

GALLERY THE WORLD’S BEST CYCLING PHOTOGRAPHY

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Procycling / March 2020

Santos Tour Down Under, stage 2 Stirling, Australia 22 JANUARY 2020 The WorldTour peloton is reminded that races cannot take place in a bubble separated from the real world as it passes through landscapes scorched by the terrible bushfires that have been raging in Australia, at the Tour Down Under.

Adelaide, the home of the race, was comparatively not hit by fires as bad as those elsewhere in the country, but the eerie, blackened surroundings still stood as stark evidence of the severity of the inferno. With many scientists believing on the basis of evidence and study that the fires, while part of a natural cycle, are largely exacerbated by man-made climate change, cycling is starting to look at its own very large carbon footprint.

Deceuninck-Quick Step have announced that they will attempt to become carbon neutral, but the sport has a long way to go, despite the justifiably green image that cycling itself has.

Image: Russ Ellis

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GALLERY

SANTOS TOUR DOWN UNDER, STAGE 3 Paracombe, Australia 23 JANUARY 2020 Richie Porte turns around to survey the damage he has wrought on the Tour Down Under peloton on the uphill finish to Paracombe. His attack, in characteristic out-of-thesaddle style, dropped everybody, with some of the best climbers and stage racers in the peloton unable to hold his wheel. Though a handful of riders, including defending champion Daryl Impey, would be able to close the gap during the flatter final kilometre, Porte still held on to an advantage which counted five seconds at the line, plus a time bonus of 10 seconds for winning the stage. Three days later, Porte would finally taste defeat on Willunga Hill, where he had won for six years in a row, but the foundation he laid on Paracombe, and the gains he also made at Willunga, would be enough to bring him a second overall title at his home race.

Image: SWpix

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GALLERY

VUELTA A SAN JUAN Alto Colorado, Argentina 31 JANUARY 2020 The spectacular scenery of Argentina’s San Juan region is the backdrop to the first true mountain summit finish of the 2020 season, on Alto Colorado.

The climb was the crux of the 38th running of the Vuelta a San Juan, which in recent years has been attracting a stellar field of WorldTour and ProConti teams, as well as some ambitious local riders. Two days previously, Belgian prodigy Remco Evenepoel had dominated the time trial stage, building a GC lead of 32 seconds to second place and over a minute to third, and race watchers were intrigued as to whether he would be able to defend his lead in the mountains. In the end, Evenepoel was equal to all of the climbers.

He ceded the stage win at Alto Colorado to Miguel Eduardo Flórez, but finished in fifth place, just four seconds behind. It was enough to clinch his second major stage race win following last year’s Tour of Belgium, just a matter of days after he celebrated his 20th birthday.

Image: Getty Images

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Procycling / March 2020

GALLERY

CADEL EVANS GREAT OCEAN ROAD RACE Geelong, Australia 2 FEBRUARY 2020 Carter Turnbull, of the Korda Mentha-Australia team, crests the Challambra climb that is the main obstacle on the finishing circuit of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race in Geelong.

Turnbull had been part of a two-rider early escape in the race, along with team-mate Elliot Schultz. Turnbull would survive until two laps to go, before the decisive break of 15 riders went over the top of the penultimate ascent of Challambra. On the final climb, six riders went clear, including favourites Simon Yates and Daryl Impey of MitcheltonScott and 2018 victor Jay McCarthy of Bora-Hansgrohe.

However, they were caught out by an attack from Ineos rider Pavel Sivakov and then Quick Step’s Dries Devenyns in the final kilometres. Despite Impey driving to close the gap, the duo stayed away to contest the sprint and Devenyns came out the winner. Turnbull would come in 6:55 down in 71st place, but his efforts gained him both the sprints classification and the King of the Mountains prize.

Image: SWpix

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PROLOGUE PROCYCLING: AT THE HEART OF THE PELOTON

TEAM NTT’S TRANSFORMATION

Images: Bettini Photo (left), Getty Images (left).

Out of Africa Even by the modern standards of the international peloton, the 2020 iteration of the NTT team is an incongruous mix of nationalities and cultures. It has come a long way from its African roots - it didn’t start out this way, but Africa’s team now has a Japanese sponsor and a Danish manager. And, it has to be said, not many African riders.

The 2020 roster counts seven, out of 29 - six South Africans and an Eritrean. It’s the lowest total in the history of the team, which started out as an 11-man squad in 2008 with exclusively South African riders, sponsored by MTN. Since 2008, the team has grown the Qhubeka charity became a co-sponsor in 2011, and they started taking part in bigger events.

In 2013 they went ProConti, brought

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on a raft of Europeans and scored a real coup when Gerald Ciolek won Milan-San Remo. They secured a Tour de France wildcard slot in 2015, and Steve Cummings won a stage in Mende on Mandela Day. 2016, their first year in the WorldTour and with a new sponsor in Dimension Data, was the sporting zenith so far - 32 wins, including Tour stage wins 27 through 30 for Mark Cavendish, plus another for Cummings.

Things have changed since. In 2018 and 2019 they scored nine and eight wins and Cavendish, laid low with Epstein Barr, has been a shadow of his younger self. 2018 was also the first season where fewer than half the squad were Africans - 14 against 16 non-Africans that year. It was nine against 19 in 2019 and now there are seven with 22 non-Africans.

The team has always been the baby of the indefatigably optimistic

New name, new kit; Doug Ryder’s South African squad looks and feels different in 2020 after a rebrand to Team NTT

129 Total victories for NTT in 13 years

ex-pro Doug Ryder, who set it up, partnered with the Qhubeka charity, and has tirelessly pushed his team up through the ranks. It was an easy team to be a fan of - its raison d’être was twofold, to promote African cyclists and to support Qhubeka’s work in providing bicycles to poor regions of Africa. In its early years, the team talked of wanting to disrupt the moribund tactics of the sport.

They were popular underdogs, and scored big wins against the odds.

But all was not well through 2019.

Ryder and respected DS Rolf Aldag fell out over the former vetoing Cavendish’s place in the Tour team.

The British rider was a contentious inclusion given his form, but the selected riders hardly shone a handful of top 10s for Giacomo Nizzolo and one for Edvald Boasson Hagen, plus an anonymous 16th overall for Roman Kreuziger.

And now it’s all change. Japanese telecommunications giant NTT, who own Dimension Data, are the title sponsors, and the smallest hint in

“I’m so tired of being an egotist... I’m tired of

NEXT ISSUE ON SALE 20.03.20

competition and I’m glad I got to live out my dream. I don’t care about results, now. F*ck em” M a t t i B r e s c h e l c o m e s t o t e r m s w i t h l i f e a s a r e t i r e d p r o r i d e r p a g e 74

a compromise on the African mission of the team has come in the hiring of Japan’s national champion Shotaro Iribe. Type the original team’s website, www.africasteam.com, into a web browser and it now quietly redirects to www.nttprocycling.com.

The ambitions of the team seem to have outgrown its home ever since they joined the WorldTour - in hiring riders like Cavendish, they could no longer be the exciting underdogs, though for two seasons at least, they competed at the very top of the sport.

Just as big a change: former CSC, Saxo Bank and Tinkoff DS Bjarne Riis has bought into the team and is now a sports director. Riis, of course, was one of the most conspicuous beneficiaries of the peloton’s widespread abuse of EPO during the mid-1990s, winning the 1996 Tour.

When the announcement that Riis was now a big part of running the team was made, it also emerged that the team had rebuffed a previous effort by the Dane to get involved in 2015, when his history made him incompatible with the ethos of the team. Five years later, enough has changed that he is not. Riis’s business venture, Virtu Cycling, is designed to promote Danish cycling, and with the Tour starting in Copenhagen in 2021, Riis may be aiming to increase his country’s representation in the team. Though African

Riis is a toxic figure for many fans, and can be taciturn and monosyllabic with the media, his former riders praise his management and motivational skills.

However, it all raises the question, what is the team for now? There’s still a lot about Qhubeka on the team’s promotional literature, and the South African riders, especially, talk a lot about the mission of the team giving them motivation beyond sport. There are more South African riders than any other nationality and the team is registered in South Africa. The development team is also still running, though it only has four Africans out of 10 riders. But the Japanese investment may dilute the ethos, and so may Riis’s influence.

Ryder says the aim is to become one of the best teams in the world, and there are some rated but underachieving riders on the roster.

If Riis can get the best out of riders like Michael Valgren and Boasson Hagen, the team may improve on the eight wins they got last year. But will it be the same?

The team talked of wanting to disrupt the moribund tactics of the sport. They were popular underdogs, and scored big wins against the odds

Non-African

NO OF RIDERS

25 20 15 10 5

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

MTN

MTN

MTN

(C)

(C)

(C)

MTNQhubeka

MTNQhubeka

MTNQhubeka

(C)

(C)

(PC)

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

MTNDimension Dimension Dimension Dimension Dimension Qhubeka Data Data Data Data Data (PC)

YEAR

(PC)

(WT)

(WT)

(WT)

(WT)

2020 NTT (WT)

SOPHIE HURCOM DEPUTY EDITOR

BRITAIN’S CRISIS HERE TO STAY Matt Holmes’ giant-killing victory atop Willunga Hill at the Tour Down Under, ahead of the climb’s king Richie Porte, was celebrated on social media as proof of the importance of the British racing scene. Holmes, 26, was in his first race for Lotto Soudal having been plucked straight from British Continental squad Madison-Genesis.

After crossing the line on Willunga, Holmes said he’d “never really raced up climbs before”, such was the difference in his race programme before.

Holmes is one of 24 British riders in the men’s WorldTour this year, the most there’s ever been. But just three days before his win, the British scene was dealt the latest in a string of blows that highlight how much cycling is struggling. The news that RideLondon is searching for a new title sponsor as of next year may be fairly minor, but it comes after Sweetspot, who organise the Women’s Tour, Tour of Britain and the Tour Series, also confirmed they are sans sponsor this year. RideLondon and the Women’s Tour are the only two races on the men’s and women’s WorldTour in the UK. They are both broadcast on national television and have high prize pots - remember Ovo Energy helping to bring in a prize fund at the Women’s Tour that was equal to the men’s race last year? So yes, they’re not cheap to run. But these races also attract the best teams and thousands of fans to the roadside. If the top end of the sport in the UK is unable to get sponsorship money to back them, how are other British races further down the chain without the same star power, meant to do so? Look around, and you’ll see they aren’t either.

The crisis facing British cycling is not new, with team closures and race cancellations par for the course the last few years. But it’s a crisis that’s clearly not stabilising. Brits have become used to riders like Matt Holmes being successful on the world stage and having international races on our doorstep. Unless things change soon, that will all start coming to an end.

Procycling / March 2020 15

PROLOGUE

COMMUNIQUÉ N E W S

3.7km The length of the sector of pavé in Paris-Roubaix that has been named after John Degenkolb, as a thank you for the role he played in saving the junior race from cancellation last year. Degenkolb, who won the monument in 2015, crowdfunded €17,661 after hearing the junior race - which he also won - was at risk due to a lack of funding. The sector in his name runs from Hornaing à Wandignies to Hamage.

He’s got a lifetime ban from direct involvement in all sport, but Lance Armstrong’s former DS Johan Bruyneel has set up a sports management company. Called 7evenPlusTwo, after the Tour de France titles that were stripped from Armstrong, Bruyneel’s company branding and website even features images of him and the Texan.

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G O S S I P

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C H A T T E R

“The way I do road cycling, it is possible to combine with mountain bike, but if you do the grand tours it’s not possible any more” After winning his third cyclo-cross world title, Mathieu van der Poel questioned whether he can continue combining road, cross and mountain biking in the future if he wants to progress to grand tours on the road. The Dutchman plans to switch his focus to mtb after the spring classics this season.

€30k The amount you’ll have to cough up to go on a cycling tour with Lance Armstrong and his former teammate George Hincapie in Majorca this year. At a mere cost of $6,000 per day, 12 riders on ‘The Move Mallorca’ will enjoy, “six nights/five days of riding with Lance and George, all accommodations, meals, bikes and more.” One quick scroll through Twitter and the general consensus was, to put it politely, widespread disbelief.

“There is room for us to build our own women’s team from the ground up” Having become a WorldTour superpower, Jumbo-Visma are considering launching a women’s team. With Boels-Dolmans exiting the sport this year, Jumbo manager Richard Plugge told Bicycling.NL there’s space for them to enter the market.

LONDON CALLING RideLondon is seeking a new title sponsor after Prudential confirmed it will stop backing the event in 2021. It comes after Sweetspot said its own Women’s Tour and Tour of Britain are also in need of new sponsors, with Ovo Energy having pulled out this year.

The RideLondon-Surrey Classic and RideLondon Classique launched in 2013 as a legacy event from the London Olympics, and the weekend also features a sportive.

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Organisers of the Tour of Hainan have been forced to cancel this year’s event due to the outbreak of coronavirus in China and the threat of the epidemic spreading. The week-long race was due to be held from February 23 to March 1, having been moved from its original autumn slot, when it was last held in 2018, to fit into the new UCI Pro Series.

$8,900 Raised by EF Pro Cycling duo Mitch Docker and Lachlan Morton for shaving their heads in aid of relief efforts for the bushfire crisis in Australia. The mullets and moustaches are (at least temporarily) no more for the once long-locked pair, who were racing at the Tour Down Under in Adelaide. The money will go towards the Salvation Army.

“It must be time for a change and more attention on safety” Deceuninck-Quick Step’s Mikkel Honoré said he was fortunate to not have any serious injuries, after being involved in a hit and run incident with a car while training. The 23-year-old Dane was released from hospital after a few hours with soreness and scratches.

Time’s up for Kiryienka Vasil Kiryienka was forced into retirement due to a recurring cardiac issue first diagnosed at the start of 2019. The 38-year-old former TT world champion has raced at Ineos since 2013 and was typically deployed to the front of the peloton to ride for hours on end, due to his high power output. Ineos later unveiled Cameron Wurf as the Belarusian’s replacement.

“I wouldn't have gotten a contract without doping”

Images: Getty Images, Sirotti (Uran).

He was banned for four years after being identified during Operation Aderlass for being part of a blood doping ring, and Austrian former rider Stefan Denifl has now admitted to doping between 2014 and 2018. The former IAM Cycling and Aqua Blue rider was speaking in court in Innsbruck where he’s facing charges of commercial fraud.

The Tour de France will open with a time trial for the first time in four years in 2021, as organisers ASO unveiled the route for the grand départ in Copenhagen. Stage 1 kicks off with a 13km test against the clock in the capital, before stages 2 and 3 take riders along the Danish coast where wind is likely to be a factor. “Flat stages do absolutely not mean easy stages,” race director Christian Prudhomme said.

“I came to Spain to build up my condition, not to break it down” Tom Dumoulin’s debut for JumboVisma was put on hold after illness ruled him out of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana. The Dutchman has not raced on the road since the Dauphiné last June and subsequently had multiple surgeries on a knee injury.

“He is a winner and has a winning instinct and I firmly believe is on his way to be successful at the classics” Trek-Segafredo general manager Luca Guercilina shows his faith in world champion Mads Pedersen as the team extends the young Dane’s contract through to 2022. Pedersen, 24, joined the American squad in 2017 and is aiming for a consistent spring campaign this year while wearing the rainbow stripes.

1

Rider who has ever won at WorldTour level on his debut race in the WorldTour, after Matt Holmes won stage 6 of the Tour Down Under. The 26-year-old Briton holds the remarkable tag after getting the better of Richie Porte on his stomping ground Willunga Hill.

€10,000 The amount each Women’s WorldTour team is required to contribute towards antidoping efforts in 2020.

The money will go towards enabling more riders to be tested throughout the season. The UCI will match the amount from the eight teams, meaning testing can be stepped up to all 21 races on the Women’s WorldTour and at training camps. In 2019, 29 athletes were tested as part of the UCI’s Registered Testing Pool, a figure that will be upped to 53 this year.

Lucky Landa avoids injury Mikel Landa is expected to start his season as planned, despite being involved in a collision with a car that failed to stop, while training near his home in the Basque Country. The Spaniard was taken to hospital but posted a picture giving a thumbs up, after doctors confirmed tests showed he had suffered no serious injuries.

PROLOGUE

Q&A

TIFFANY CROMWELL Canyon-Sram’s captain on learning Finnish, sea otters and money-saving puncture tips here’s home?

Home in my head is the Côte d’Azur so at the moment Cap d’Ail, but I’m about to move back into Monaco.

Otherwise, home for me is the Adelaide Hills as well. It’s where my family still is and although my life is more in Europe, that’s still homehome for me. Always a place if I desperately need to go somewhere, that will always be home.

W

What’s your favourite race?

The World Championships, simply because I think they are the spectacle. It’s the race we all want to get selected for, we all want to get those rainbow bands and I think there’s something special about it always being in a different place, with different characteristics.

What’s your secret talent?

I can do the splits. I’m quite flexible.

What’s the best prize you’ve ever won at a race?

I won a sea otter when I won the Sea Otter Classic [in California]. It’s a stuffed toy but a cute little thing.

If you had one extra hour in the day what would you do?

Spend it with all the people that I love most.

What’s the last app you downloaded?

A language app. I was attempting to learn Finnish and failing miserably my boyfriend is from Finland. It’s incredibly difficult. Good thing a lot of them speak English!

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“We all want to get those rainbow bands and there’s something special about the Worlds always being in a different place”

What advice would you give your teenage self?

To ask more questions, ask for advice, instead of just keeping it all inside. And talk about things.

When were you last star-struck?

I don’t really get star-struck… In Abu Dhabi in November, the guy who set the world record for the marathon was at the Grand Prix: Eliud Kipchoge. I thought that was kind of cool.

What’s your best cycling hack?

If you ever get stuck with a puncture and there’s a massive hole in your tyre, if your money notes are plastic like in Australia - you can put that in

to cover you. And then it also makes you remember to change your tyre because you want your money back.

What’s been your toughest day on the bike?

The Tour of California last year the whole tour was tough. I’d just come back from altitude and hadn’t re-adapted yet. I was dropped pretty early on the second-last stage, and it was one of those head-crack kind of days. It’s not where you want to be when you know you’re more capable.

What result are you proudest of?

The win at Het Nieuwsblad [2013], is still special. I was having a pretty tough time in my personal life, it was the first race of the European season.

I didn’t expect it - at the time we had Emma Johansson in the team and she was the main rider. It was a day where things went my way and I found myself in the position to win.

Image: Getty Images

What’s your favourite climb?

The Col du Braus is always a nice one.

It’s out the back of Monaco and from the L’Escarène side it’s always really beautiful both going up and going down. It’s a tough one to go up but it’s a fun one to go down, and you get the switchback shot.

PROLOGUE SCOUTING REPORT

JAKE STEWART He’s British, has a penchant for Belgian racing and is on a French team o we spy a Briton not on the BC Academy...?

You do. Not many choose to leave the security of the British Cycling Academy programme, but Jake Stewart is among those forging his own path, living and racing in France for the Groupama-FDJ Conti team. He’s about to start his second year there.

D

What’s his background?

The 20-year-old from Coventry got into cycling through triathlon; his uncle used to race Ironmans and young Jake got the bug. But he soon realised his calling: “I was rubbish at running and swimming; I was only making up time on the bike,” he tells Procycling. From there he joined his local club Solihull CC, and then his pathway into British Cycling began.

What sort of rider is he?

His heart lies in the classics and his best results have come in one-day races: second in U23 Wevelgem and

How’s he settled in?

Jake’s really been embracing the culture and the chance to race

RIDER TYPE CLIMBER PUNCHEUR

abroad. “I wanted to widen my horizons,” Jake says. “Meet more people I wouldn’t normally meet.”

His French skills still need a little work: “I’m trying to learn French but my team-mates are trying to learn English. They seem to pick up the language quicker - I speak French and they reply in English!”

SPRINTER

Why did he go to France?

Riders on the BC Academy split time between the track and the road, and Jake realised his future wasn’t inside a velodrome. So when the FDJ Conti team - linked to the WorldTour team - came calling for 2019, the decision was simple. He moved to Besançon, a city in eastern France, where he now spends most of the season.

ROULEUR Jake’s all-round strengths are totally wig. He’s got all the necessary attributes to become a classics specialist

third at U23 Flanders. “I’m punchy.

I ride well in the wind. I’m by no means a climber but I can fare well on short, steep climbs which you have in Belgian racing,” Jake says.

“I’ve got a quick sprint at the end.”

What’s the plan for 2020?

To turn consistency into wins. Then the big aim is to land a WorldTour contract for 2021, hopefully by getting teams’ attention with some wins. “I’ve proven I can be consistent last year; now I need that win.”

was looking for a fast rider like Jake before he joined the team. He’s a really good all-rounder, he can be fast in sprints but also really fast in the classics. I think he made a good step with us last year, and he will make another step this year and then I think he will be ready for the WorldTour.

He learned a lot on the bike last year. He had a good connection with our coaches and they got him into really good condition, but he learned

I

JENS BLATTER GROUPAMA-FDJ CONTI, MANAGER

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a lot of other things - in Besançon where the team academy is, the riders go there once a week for a lesson; how to train, performance, nutrition, how to cook, how to communicate to the media. We could see before that he was already a super strong rider, but now in the last 12 months he’s become a real leader.

I hope we will win the Paris-Roubaix under-23 race this year with him - that’s a race that suits him really well. All the classics are really good for Jake

because he can also survive on the small climbs, like those in LiègeBastogne-Liège. He’s one of the only fast sprinters who can survive there, and this makes him a really interesting rider.

With the new UCI rule that permits riders to switch between the Continental team and WorldTour team, for Jake this means he will do a lot of races this year with the WorldTour team. That will bring him closer to the level of the WorldTour.

Image: T.Maheux / Equipe Groupama-FDJ.

COACH’S CORNER

PROLOGUE

OBJECTS OF DESIRE T H I S

M O N T H ’ S

E S S E N T I A L

G E A R

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These black Club 3s from Chapeau can be worn year-round as mittens or gloves, depending on how cold it gets, £29.99 | $39.59 www.chapeau.

Light up yourself and the road with the Electric wind vest and arm warmers from Primal, £49, £20 | $64, $26 www.primaleurope.com

Supacaz’s Sticky Kush bar tape is in fact straight out of California and not a galaxy far, far away.

It’s also the tape of choice for Peter Sagan £30.72 | $40 www.supacaz.com

Images: Phil Barker, Olly Curtis, Neil Godwin.

Organise your life and all of your tools, with a custom storage unit from Dura Garages, £POA | $POA www.duragarages.com

Wake up to a cup of coffee from Bavarian-based co Merchant and Friends, who also supply the Bora-Hansgrohe team this year, £27.80/ £21 | $36.30/ $27.40 shop.merchantandfriends.com

Procycling / March 2020

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PROLOGUE EXPERIENCE

MAX RICHEZE The UAE Emirates lead-out man on life as an Argentinian in the WorldTour

I have three brothers, and we all race. Everybody in my family was a cyclist and two of us still are Mauro and me. My older brother Roberto works with my father now in his bike shop and my youngest brother Adrian lives in San Juan.

My dad was a cyclist and we got our passion from him. We used to go to races with him. I started as a football player, but when I was 13 I started racing myself.

When I began, it was easy and I won my first race. Years later, I also won my very first race as a pro - stage 1 of the Tour de Langkawi [in 2006]. There were a lot of junior races in Argentina and even though I didn’t train a lot, I won a lot. It’s different now - I really need to train.

I raced a lot on the track. I raced as a junior in 2004, and then came to Italy as an amateur, following my brother, who came over first. All four of us eventually made it to Europe. I lived in Italy first - it was completely different to Argentina.

I lived in the Buenos Aires region, where it is flat, flat, flat, and I had no understanding of mountains.

Moving to Italy and training in the mountains was like starting all over again; it was really hard.

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Procycling / March 2020

RIDER PROFILE Born Bella Vista, Argentina Age 36 Turned pro 2006 TEAM HISTORY 2006 Ceramica Panaria 2008 CSF Group 2011 Nippo 2013 Lampre-Merida 2016 Etixx-Quick-Step 2020 UAE Emirates CAREER HIGHLIGHTS 2006 first, stage, Tour de Langkawi 2007 first, stage, Giro d’Italia (2) 2007 first, stage, Tour de Luxembourg 2008 first, stage, Circuit de la Sarthe 2016 first, stage, Tour de Suisse 2017 first, stage, Tour de San Juan (2) 2018 first, stage, Tour of Turkey 2019 first, National RR Championships

Richeze was leading team-mate Gaviria out at the 2016 Tour de Suisse but held on to win

My friend Ruben Bongiorno got me a place on his team, Panaria.

I was winning a lot in 2005, my last year as an amateur - I won 14 races and did a good race at the World Championships, but it was almost impossible to turn pro because South American riders were not so important for the teams. If you won 14 races as an amateur now, you’d go straight to the best team, with a good salary, but in the past it wasn’t like that. I was almost ready to go back home.

For me, being a professional was easier than being an amateur.

The amateur racing in Italy is very aggressive and the circuits are always hard. I found when I turned pro, I didn’t suffer as much. The pros are less aggressive - they ride harder but it is more controlled.

At Panaria, I was doing lead-outs for Bongiorno and Paride Grillo.

But one Giro, Grillo was sick and I had to do the sprints. I was second, third... always behind Petacchi. They disqualified him [for doping offences] and they gave me the stages, but for me it wasn’t the same because I was not the first

across the line. Yes, I won two stages, but I didn’t really win them.

Almost every rider from Argentina is a good sprinter. It’s flat, and we race a lot on the track.

Only [Eduardo] Sepúlveda is a climber, but he was a very good track rider when he was younger.

I’m better for lead-outs now, maybe because I’m getting a bit older. I don’t have the fast-twitch muscle fibres that I used to. When you are younger you are more explosive, with more power. I lost that. You can’t fight it - it’s natural.

Last man is my best position.

I can do almost the same speed as the sprinter, and I can do it a little longer. As a lead-out you cannot make any mistakes, or the sprinter can’t do his job. There is less pressure, but more responsibility.

The sprinter also can’t make any mistakes, otherwise...ciao.

I came to UAE to ride with Fernando [Gaviria]. We get on well and have our background in common. With Elia Viviani, we did some good races, but with Fernando the feeling is more natural. If I see Fernando, I know if he has good legs or not - we understand each other, and we are good friends too.

With Elia it was more difficult we had to speak a lot.

Winning the National Championships last year was really important for me, and also when I won three years ago in the Tour de Suisse, in front of Fernando and Sagan. I can still sprint for myself - I like the adrenalin and I still have ambition. When I have the possibility to sprint...bam!

Portrait: Ian Walton. Image: Getty Images.

We are only two riders from Argentina in the WorldTour, but being Argentinian is important for me, and I’m the national champion. There’s a big difference between cycling in Argentina and Europe - it’s more amateur back home. I need to be an example for riders in Argentina, and I hope that in years to come more Argentinian riders will come to Europe.

PROLOGUE

PRO BIKE

Elia Viviani’s

DE ROSA SK PININFARINA A new start for Cofidis and Viviani in 2020, with De Rosa coming on board ne of the benefits of winning a major championships these days is the opportunity to pimp bikes, jerseys and even one’s own skin with the requisite stars, stripes and colours. Elia Viviani, the current European road race champion, has not wasted his chance. His new De Rosa SK Pininfarina, which is new for both him and Cofidis in 2020, features the blues and bright yellow stars of the champ’s jersey. As you’d expect for a sprinter’s bike, the focus is on responsiveness and aero lines - the top tube has been flattened to reduce air resistance, and the seat tube curves gracefully around the back wheel along with a compact rear triangle. The frame weighs in at 950g, and is completed with Campagnolo Super Record components and Fulcrum wheels.

De Rosa and Cofidis are on the bleeding edge of fashion in cycling - Pininfarina is an Italian car design and manufacture company based in Turin, and the collaboration has echoes of Bahrain’s collaboration with McLaren and Ineos with Mercedes. Cofidis’s win drought at the Tour de France famously stretches back to 2008. The De Rosa SK Pininfarina is the bike on which Viviani and the team want to end that unenviable run of defeats.

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Images: Luca Bettini, Getty Images (Landa).

S P E C I F I C AT I O N

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Frameset De Rosa SK Pininfarina Finishing kit Look Keo Blade Carbon pedals, Vision handlebars and stem, Selle Italia SLR saddle Groupset Campagnolo Super Record

Procycling / March 2020

Crankset Campagnolo Super Record Brakes Campagnolo Super Record Wheelset Fulcrum Speed Tyres Michelin Power Competition

Ring the changes

Seat of power

Viviani’s enormous power output is measured on an SRM meter paired with a Super Record chainset of 53x39

For 2020, Viviani changes to a Selle Italia SLR, a short but broader saddle perched on De Rosa’s own seatpin

Fulcrum speed ahead

Look - a pedal

Bar room

Brake a leg

55T deep-section rims by Campagnolo’s sister brand Fulcrum are aero and stiff just what Viviani needs

Viviani’s substantial wattage is transferred into the drivetrain via Look Keo Blade Carbon pedals

De Rosa have fitted an integrated Vision Merton 5D ACR stem and bar, finished off with colourco-ordinated white bar tape

Campagnolo Super Record disc brakes ensure maximum stopping power: 160mm rotor on the front; 140mm on the back

Procycling / March 2020 27

PROLOGUE PERSPECTIVES

MORE THAN A BIKE RIDER BEN QUILTER WHY LIFESTYLE COACHING CAN BE SO BENEFICIAL TO PERFORMANCE

Illustration: Tim Marss.

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t the English Institute of Sport we support athletes with their holistic life outside of being a cyclist, or whatever sport they choose. There’s a performance lifestyle advisor placed at each sport around the country, mainly looking at athlete transitions: onto a world class performance programme, their time on the programme, and then the transition into retirement, looking at their personal and professional development over those life-changing processes. If you think of psychology, or strength and conditioning or physiology, this is the newest of all of the support disciplines.

When I retired from judo in 2013 I really struggled with who I was and with my identity. That’s why I went into performance lifestyle. It’s so important as athletes to be as well-rounded as you can be. As sports become more professional, at times there can be a feeling of being a commodity or a machine or on a conveyor belt. You give so much time and effort to something and then when it’s over it’s done, it’s finished. Then you’ve got to think about what makes you happy.

Unless we’re delivering something to a group in a workshop, everything we do is individualised. Quite often most of what we do is starting with the end in mind - what are you going to move on to when your sporting career is over? What can you do to give you a release, or a separate stimulus, outside of riding your bike, which is going to add to your performance, rather than take away from your time? Especially with some on the endurance side of cycling, those riders spend a lot of time on a bike on their own and that can leave you with a lot of time to think - sometimes good and sometimes not good.

Education is one of the more obvious aspects that we deal with - anyone who is looking to study.

The other things are more personal development: if someone wants to learn a language or develop a skill that helps them look after their own wellbeing, whether yoga or a musical interest. Some people have a passion, whether film-making or motorsport, completely unrelated to cycling. Lots of people want to write blogs and video diaries, and so it’s supporting them with training, giving them confidence,

Procycling / March 2020

Ben Quilter is a former Paralympic judoka, who won bronze at the 2012 Games in London, as well as multiple world and European titles during his career. He is now a lifestyle advisor at the English Institute of Sport, and works with British Cycling

exploring any business ideas and explaining how to have a social media presence. Then the big one we work in is retirement. #More2Me is our campaign and it’s about helping a cyclist understand they are more than just a bike rider, and other athletes that they are more than their chosen sport.

I think this work is definitely a product of greater awareness of the issues and a greater willingness for people to talk and be open about mental health.

Reflecting on my own experience as a young male in a hard combat sport, talking about feelings and emotions was not necessarily encouraged. Now, staff are having more training around mental health first aid and mental health strategies to manage it better.

Elite athletes are humans as well and they still face other stresses and pressures, whether it’s financial or family. All of those things exist on top of the stress and pressure of competing and training at a high level.

For me, through performance lifestyle you see an indirect performance impact. If someone is happier and healthier in themselves and they’ve got happier and healthier relationships, all of this helps contribute towards their overall situation and performance. Athletes can find themselves backed into a corner if performance isn’t going so well; they start to worry about the long term duration of their career. Sometimes, having something else removes a bit of that pressure. And hopefully it softens the exit.

One thing I always say to riders is that I can guarantee this will come to an end, and the best way is when you’ve had enough and are ready.

PROLOGUE PRO DIARIES

I haven’t ridden the race that often and the times I have taken to the start have mostly been miserable.

My first experience ended very quickly as I fell ill on stage 1 and didn’t start stage 2 way back in 2009. In 2010 I remember the weather was uncharacteristically good, just a strong tailwind making for a nervous ride south on stage 1, however the roads are never in one direction. The constant battle for position, numerous crashes and brake checks meant the majority of our team skidded through a set of tubulars on arrival at the finish.

2017 brought my best result. It was a true race to the sun. I was able to make the first group in the crosswind split on stage 1 which laid the foundations for a run at the GC. Stage 2 was one of the most epic days I’ve ever had on a bike. One of those days when time seemed to stand still. It was one degree and

DAN MARTIN

I S R A E L S TA R T- U P N AT I O N

P

aris-Nice has a reputation in professional cycling.

From the outside, you see what appears a normal yet prestigious and hotly contested race. To the pro rider, it’s one of the most dreaded weeks of competition you can attempt. The spring race that most will not want to see their name put down for, purely because it is notoriously one of the hardest week’s racing of the year. Cold, wet, windy, a highly motivated and nervous peloton racing on narrow roads with ever toughening terrain.

Its difficulty makes success even more valuable. A good result at Paris-Nice is a highly respected feat as it shows a complete rider who dealt with multiple challenges.

Completing a Paris-Nice is something that bonds a team.

Stories are told all season of events unseen by the TV cameras, personal triumphs and struggles, incidents that in hindsight become quite amusing but at the time it’s hell.

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Procycling / March 2020

Paris-Nice hasn’t always been Dan’s favourite, apart from 2017 when he finished in third

DAN’S CYCLING HACKS Nutritional science has developed, but sometimes a bag of Haribo is all you need ne thing that has progressed massively during my career is the knowledge we all have regarding nutrition. But sometimes the best thing is the obvious and easy answer. In reality, I have learned that

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during my formative years with the Garmin team I was very well taught and what we were doing was good.

As training intensity has increased though, I’ve found myself eating more on training rides and feeling much better for it.

Training the stomach to absorb carbohydrate efficiently is also an important adaptation, so now when I’m out riding I try to hit 50-60g of carbs per hour.

When heading out for a training ride, I make sure I’ve got nutrition with me, but on the other hand, it’s easy to keep myself topped up. Every cyclist should know that one of the best ways to keep energised is frequent petrol station stops to pick up bags of Haribo.

What else can give you so much sugar in such a short space of time?

Try it. There’s no need to get complicated - you will train harder and recover better.

Images: Getty Images. Illustration: David Despau

2

pouring rain with high winds smashing the peloton into pieces immediately. After 10km there were 10 groups of riders scattered all over the roads. Groups would come together and immediately split in two again, such was the strength of the wind. I learned a lot that day.

It’s days like these that are not seen outside of the cycling bubble, not understood even, which make the race the challenge that it is.

The fatigue and mental stress both accumulate towards Nice and make the seemingly easy hillier stages decisive. Those who cope better in the extremes of the north have the legs left to do damage in the sunnier mountainous south, and most years it’s with relief that you enter the hillier terrain. Still, that last stage in Nice is always one of the hardest.

The reality is that there is never a lucky winner of Paris-Nice. DM

PROLOGUE PRO DIARIES

JAMES KNOX

D EC E U N I N C K- Q U I C K ST E P

ostalgia has been hitting me this week.

I’m in the Algarve, putting the final touches on a winter of training before the season kicks off and every day I’ve stumbled on to something that brings memories flooding back. In 2014 and 15, while racing for Zappi’s Racing Team, we would come to the Algarve in January and February for some warm weather training and relaxed races. Of all the hotels across the region, we’ve ended up in one that I’ve stayed in before, during a race the filthy, piss-wet-through 200km stage 1 of the GP Liberty

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flying over the top of us and we could do nothing but watch. In the end me and the other guys I was with got caught, but in a nice twist of fate, and with help from wacky Portuguese bike races, I got a nice result. While sat on the back of a group coming into the finish, the lads ahead

Seguros in 2015, to be exact.

Since then the open road has

failed but I’m pretty sure I got

became showdowns for the boys

were sent the wrong way on a roundabout and I got a jump on

brought back more memories.

There must be something about

myself into the top 10 on the leaderboard, surrounded by

in the team to get some oldschool, all-out efforts in. It felt

everyone and finished ninth.

I followed Woods’s progression

the hypersensitivity of your surroundings while racing or

pros, which in 2015, riding for an amateur team, felt like a win.

like every training ride took us there... “Cachopo?! Again?!”

after this to the WorldTour and it was one of the moments where

training, because my memory is usually incredibly average, but

I was two minutes slower than my best this time around so that

Plus, there was a bar where they sold espressos for 60 cents.

I believed I had what it took to get there too. Three years later, I’m

I’ve got an almost photographic memory for roads. Using Strava

tells you enough about how eager we were to hurt ourselves back

Then out of nowhere we were back onto another old course,

still doing training camps in the Algarve, still enjoying the

as a reference I was able to pinpoint different parts of a race

then. Then, moving on through the pretty Algarve hills, we

following the final 25km of the 2015 GP Loule, living every

60-cent coffee and still trying to avoid eating too many pastel de

I did in 2015 on roads I’ve only ever ridden once before in my life

passed through Cachopo, a dead little village north of our base in

moment of the race again, even the pain in my legs on a few

natas. Not much has changed. JK

and it’s been fun looking back.

Our only ‘big’ ride so far took

Tavira. It’s been hard explaining to the guys on the team but this

kickers we had to get over. It was a landmark moment - I stayed

us over Malhão, a tough climb they use as a summit finish in

spot was a bit of a running joke.

A local pro who we

with the best guys during the race and then on the last

the Volta ao Algarve. We used to go out and race up it; we even

trained with would take us on loops passing

ended up doing a full lead out one time to go for the Strava. We

through and a couple of climbs out of the village

Procycling / March 2020

James spent January getting into shape and reliving his U23 years in Portugal

climb of the day followed a few Portuguese riders as they tried to break clear. Mike Woods came

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Illustrations: David Despau Images: Getty Images.

After three years as a pro I’m still doing training camps in the Algarve, still enjoying 60-cent coffees and trying to avoid eating too many pastel de natas

PROLOGUE PRO DIARIES

he 2020 season has officially begun, and myself and my Rally Cycling team-mates have been Down Under this month to kick off the year with some Aussie sunshine and a certainty of speedy racing.

Virtually everyone in Australia seems to be ridiculously fit and tan, so it’s quite intimidating for our pale North American limbs which haven’t seen the high intensity of the sun or a bike race in three months. Thanks to some surprisingly mild weather these last couple weeks, I’m happy to report that no third-degree sunburns have occured - yet.

on this continent. Some of us weren’t sure what to expect as far as air quality was concerned and the communities’ attitudes toward the races. However, it was apparent from the moment we arrived that the races were far from a burden to the communities here. In fact, I think they gave the impacted towns a platform to foster more support. Adelaide absolutely came alive with cyclists from all over Australia, with two additional pelotons of international riders united in offering their support for the fire relief efforts. Not to mention, the global audience of viewers back home are now even more aware of the situation. For the first time ever in the women’s race, the whole world could see what we were seeing, and that’s a powerful thing.

As we rode through one of the burn areas during stage 3 of the women’s race, you could sense a solemn attentiveness among the field as the smokey smells filled our noses and we saw the fresh scars of the fire’s pathway through the forest, across the road, and down the hill. It was eerie. Within an already quiet peloton, there was an extra layer of silence that I will always remember. Having a look into

was excited to start the road season. I was competing on the track throughout the off-season, at World Cups and six days and my winter was quite busy with a lot of travel. But because of that I knew how I would probably go once I got on the road. I had a feeling at the Rotterdam Six that I was good and recovering well, but most of the other guys, they are training for three months at the end of the season.

For Caleb, for example, his very first race of the season was the Schwalbe Classic Criterium. He wants to go for the win but he doesn’t know yet how good he is.

the area around the east coast.

We still could smell the smoke and see the damage when we went out training and on one stage during the race, which was sad to see.

The race was great for the team, especially Caleb. On the first stage of Down Under we missed it a little, we had a lack of communication and like a domino effect in the last 10 kilometres we were not in a good position. But anyway, he turned it around on the next day and showed his class to win the second stage. That was a better start already than last year where he didn’t get his first win until the UAE Tour in February.

We continued on the fourth stage with another win, and probably Caleb could have won on stage 5 but I made a little mistake and he made a little mistake. Still, we’re super happy to have won two stages in the sprints, and on Willunga Hill which was a big surprise.

We did get a bit of downtime in Australia because we’re there for a few weeks in the same hotel. We had three or four rest days before the race started; one day we went to the beach, one day we went into the city to have coffee and an ice cream, one afternoon I even went to the

This has been my second trip to Australia after Rally first came

that space, either from the helicopter above or from the TV

You have to find out in the race.

The day after the Six Days of

cinema to watch a movie. It’s nice to not have all the travel

in 2019, and as soon as we were picked up from the Adelaide

motos next to us, does more than just elevate women’s cycling -

Rotterdam I flew to Australia.

We had a week or 10 days before

and transfers to the start and finish each day, but two and

airport by the race organisation, I felt delighted to be back.

it elevates the environment and the communities that allow us

the first road race. It gives us enough time to adapt to the

a half weeks of eating more or less the same food... we went out

Maybe it’s the sunlight? I’m no longer a vampire of the

to do the sport. When those communities are in need of

time zone and the weather conditions, although this year

a couple of times just to make life a bit nicer!

Pacific Northwest? No, in all seriousness, it’s the warm

support on a global scale, bike racing becomes bigger than

it wasn’t too extreme. We had a few days over 30 but nothing in

Now I’m looking forward to a few days at home, six nights

welcome and hospitality that the Australians offer us here.

itself. I have so much respect for the TDU for recognising and

the high 30s or 40 degrees like we’ve had before. Then towards

to recover from the whole trip before I fly to Girona for the next

It is an absolute treat to start the season in South Australia,

utilising that. HF

the race it even cooled down.

Some nights it was just 15

training camp. RK

HEIDI FRANZ

R A L LY U H C CYC L I N G

T

ROGER KLUGE LOTTO-SOUDAL

I

where the Santos Tour Down Under takes incredible care of us.

degrees so we started to wear a jacket to go out in the morning

There were more than a couple of concerned family members

which felt a bit strange. Luckily Adelaide and the region around

of mine, most of all Grandma, who couldn’t fathom the races continuing with the devastating bushfires that continue to rage

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it hadn’t been too heavily hit by the forest fires. There were a few but nothing compared to what was happening in Sydney and

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Procycling / March 2020 33

THE BIG INTERVIEW

PHILIPPE GILBERT

ON THE EDGE OF HISTORY Philippe Gilbert has one goal left: win Milan-San Remo and become only the fourth rider to take all five monument titles. Procycling meets the Belgian who’s re-writing the history books Writer Sophie Hurcom // Portraits Jesse Wild

Procycling / March 2020 35

T THE BIG INTERVIEW

he Majorcan sun is low in the sky by the time Philippe Gilbert gets back from training.

He’s been out riding the island’s climbs and coastal roads since 9am and is one of the last riders back to the hotel in Palma as dusk sets in, wandering into the complex carrying his helmet in his hands as his cleats clip-clop across the patio floor, while most of his new team-mates are already showered and changed. It had been the same routine the day before. Others chose to enjoy a gentle pre-Christmas spin as the Lotto-Soudal two-week training camp wound down to its final days.

Gilbert and a handful of others pushed hard for six hours.

He’s wearing the blue 2019 kit of Deceuninck-Quick Step (a sponsor requirement for a few more days) but it does little to mask the fact Gilbert is the star of his new Belgian team’s show. As if to reinforce his A-list status, a TV crew flanks him as he walks, their camera light shining bright over his shoulder, a mic Gilbert’s 55km solo break on a boom above conquers the his head.

Ronde in 2017

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Procycling / March 2020

Picture the Hollywood movie about Philippe Gilbert’s life. He’d currently be in the final quarter, around half an hour from the end credits where the hero is one win away from something life-changing.

All of the classic sports films follow the same script, starting with a goal seemingly so unachievable no one thought the protagonist could come close to doing it. There are setbacks along the way, naturally, but gradually the pieces start falling into place and as the clock ticks on the running time there’s suddenly one final obstacle to overcome, typically something bigger than ever before. Think Rocky taking on the heavyweight champion of the world, or the British runners at the Olympics in Chariots of Fire. Even the Jamaican bobsleigh team in Cool Runnings. Gilbert is perhaps not an underdog in the same way as those film’s protagonists. But he starts this season with one final Poggiosized mountain to climb as he aims to win Milan-San Remo. If he does it, he’ll become only the fourth rider in history to ever win all five monument titles.

Few in the media took Gilbert entirely seriously when he declared again after winning the Tour of Flanders in 2017 that he was aiming to win all monument titles.

Having already won Il Lombardia (2009 and 2010) and Liège-Bastogne-Liège (2011), his 55km solo epic at Flanders took him a significant step closer, but the odds of completing the quintet were far from on his side. For a start, you have to go all the way back to Roger De Vlaeminck in 1977 to find the last of the three riders to

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

GILBERT’S MAJOR ONE-DAY RACE WINS

clinch the elusive five - Eddy Merckx and Rick Van Looy being the other two.

There’s also the fact that cycling has changed so much in the modern era since then. Top riders aren’t the multifaceted all-rounders they once were, winning GC races and sprints and classics alike. The specialisation of the sport and difference in the parcours means the skills to win each race are unique. You have to survive 300 gruelling kilometres in Milan-San Remo while still holding something back for a fast finish at the end. You need flat power and a big engine to get over the Flemish bergs and hellish Roubaix cobblestones. You need to be able to climb to win Liège and Lombardy. Winning two,

maybe even three monuments is hard, but possible. All five? The jack of all trades needs to be a master of all, too.

But then last April happened. Gilbert won Paris-Roubaix, and he is now one win away from making history. What once appeared only possible in Hollywood movies is now tantalisingly close.

When Gilbert sits down with Procycling in the hotel bar, the television crew still shadowing his every move, he’s under no illusions about the scale of what he’s already achieved, let alone what could happen if he wins Milan-San Remo.

“Already now, in modern cycling, doing what I’ve achieved is pretty crazy.

I mean, winning these different races, because when you look at the parcours they are completely different. It’s already something huge,” Gilbert says.

“Of course, you have Froome and Nibali winning the three grand tours but the three grand tours are always the same a few TTs, an uphill finish. It’s always the same concept - you have to be good at that climb, the TT you also have to be good.

With a classic it’s different, you really have to win it. It’s something crazy.”

Gilbert is one of the best all-rounders in the peloton, but he’s not the only rider hybrid in an era of sprinter-climbers and

climber-rouleurs. That perhaps makes it all the more strange that few others have seemed interested in even trying to win all five monuments. Arguably the only rider who’s tried and come as close since De Vlaeminck is Sean Kelly, and even that was 30 years ago. But after winning San Remo, Roubaix, Liège and Lombardy, Kelly was unable to better three agonising seconds at Flanders to complete the set.

“I was thinking at the time that Sagan was able to do it, but then I don’t think he’s even tried. Because I think it is really difficult,” Gilbert explains. “I was thinking that Kwiatkowski would do it in my eyes he’s the guy who had the abilities to do it. But then he turned to GC contender - but I think he will never do that in the end; he will never be that good.

Especially in that team [Ineos] he will always have someone stronger than him.

But that is his own choice.”

Gilbert is now 37. His pro career began in 2004 and his monument wins have spanned a period of 10 years. He’s the first to point out that he’s been able to adapt to the requirements of the races physically purely because he’s had time on his side to change his training. In the heady seasons of 2010 to 2012, Gilbert was the best puncheur in the world, dubbed ‘Mr Cauberg’ , such was his ability to blow away the field when it came to racing up short, steep climbs. He was light enough to climb but quick and punchy enough to hold his own in a sprint - qualities that don’t necessarily translate to the Flemish and Roubaix cobbles where a big engine and endurance are the most valued

2005

2006

2008

2009

During his third season for Française des Jeux, 22-year-old Gilbert wins his first one-day race at the Tour du Haut Var (then not a stage race), from a four-rider sprint that includes Cédric Vasseur.

Enjoys his breakthrough classics win and shows his cobbles pedigree early on, winning Omloop Het Volk and upsetting the favourites to solo to the line from 7km out.

Another Omloop victory after an even more impressive attack from 60km out on the Eikenberg. Reels in the break then attacks again to win alone. Ends the year with a first win at Paris-Tours.

Wins his first monument at Lombardia, beating Samuel Sánchez in a two-up sprint for the line after the duo escape on the final climb. It was only the second time Gilbert had ever finished the race.

Timeline images: Getty Images, Offside Sports Photography (2009). Images: Getty Images (left).

PHILIPPE GILBERT

Procycling / March 2020 37

Images: Getty Images.

No experience? No problem: Gilbert cruises over the Carrefour de l’Arbre sector at Paris-Roubaix on his way to a stunning victory

commodities. But Gilbert insists that his strengths have always been more suited to the cobbles; rather it was climbing that he had to train and nurture. He points to the apprenticeship he undertook as a young neo pro at FDJ when he was thrown into the spring races by boss Marc Madiot. His natural talent quickly shone through - at 23 he won Omloop Het Volk.

“I think I started in my eyes with the most difficult to win, with Lombardy.

I knew that one was a hard one to win for me. Liège also. I knew that Flanders and Roubaix suit me best, because of my characteristics. I am more able to ride fast on the flat and am really strong on the short climbs. I think I knew that I had more chances [there]. Winning Liège and Lombardy, I knew that I’d done one of the hardest things in my career,” Gilbert says.

“There were a lot of comments about it, like, ‘He is not able to ride on the cobbles’ , but I think when you win Het Nieuwsblad when you are only 23 it means you have some ability. I was winning at the age of 23 and 25 - quite early in my career - I was good every time on the cobbles.”

G

ilbert’s victory in Roubaix last April still flew in the face of convention. His 55km solo break to win Flanders was a once-ina-generation kind of win but at Roubaix, few thought he had a hope in Hell. He only weighs 69kg - history shows riders who conquer the pavé tend to weigh at least 75 kilos. He also lacked almost all of the race experience it’s said you need to win there

2010

2011

2012

2014

Becomes the first Belgian in 16 years to win Amstel Gold Race, showcasing his sprint up the Cauberg. Then retains his Lombardia crown, this time dropping Michele Scarponi on the last climb.

A historic year as Gilbert becomes only the second male rider to win Amstel, Flèche and Liège in one year. Follows his second monument with WorldTour titles at Clásica San Sebastián and GP Québec.

Gilbert’s biggest win yet, as he clinches the rainbow jersey at the Worlds in Valkenburg, the Netherlands, on a perfect course that includes the Cauberg, where he again attacks.

Beats Michael Matthews to win Brabantse Pijl for the second time.

Heads into the Ardennes and wins his third Amstel title, solidifying his nickname as ‘Mr Cauberg’.

40 Procycling / March 2020

too, having only ever started twice before he won in 2019. By comparison, the 10 winners before him had all raced an average of 8.4 times at the event when they won their Roubaix titles.

But Gilbert never once looked out of his comfort zone, and instantly reacted to every decisive split that took place.

He was the only rider to follow Nils Politt when he first attacked to try and split the peloton. When the leaders reduced to just six riders, Gilbert was among them. And when Politt accelerated again on the Gruson sector with 14km to go, Gilbert was straight on his wheel. Inside the velodrome, he duly beat the German in the two-up sprint for the line.

“Except for a mountain stage or an uphill finish, I’ve won every kind of race in cycling. I know how to win a race,” Gilbert says, matter of factly. “At the end, it’s the instinct that counts. I think I have that; when I’m coming to a point where I’m really deep in the final and I feel I have the win in the legs. I mostly don’t make many mistakes. I’m happy I have never sprinted into a second place or third place in a big race, except one time in San Remo I was third in a sprint for the win. But that’s the only time. When I was third the first time [Fabian] Cancellara was away so I was second of the group behind, so that’s only two times - for a race of this level.

“This is the will you have in yourself, of winning. I think I’m a bit like a sprinter when he’s in the last It’s been over 10 200 metres - you know years since Gilbert they find this energy to won Il Lombardia for the first time go even faster, to kick.

now, considering where his career has since taken him. But ask Gilbert about his childhood and where his love of cycling began, and he points to a desire he had even then, to fight and work hard for everything he had.

“I started without any experience, any equipment. I bought everything myself with the money I was earning working during the holidays or with prize money at the races,” Gilbert recalls.

“We didn’t have much money but I had good equipment and I bought it myself.

I started like that - Kevin De Weert [former pro, now the Belgian national coach] was there and he always had more money in the family and he always had two bikes the same, everything was the best equipment, and in the end I was fighting against him - it [the kit] didn’t make a big, big difference. I think I had this extra motivation. I always had it.”

“When I’m deep in the final and I feel I have the win in the legs. I don’t make many mistakes” Sometimes you see on TV everyone goes fast and one of them goes again, I think the guy who is able to go again is the one who wants to win more. I think I’m a bit like this in the final of a race. I’ve always had that.”

Looking at Gilbert sat in front of us, with accolades aplenty and all the celebrity that brings, it’s easy to forget he was once a young boy, growing up in Verviers, Belgium, not too different to thousands of other children who watched the classics and dreamed of one day racing them. How strange must it be for Gilbert to think of that version of himself

T

he big question now is, can Gilbert win Milan-San Remo? Unlike Roubaix, San Remo is familiar territory and he’s got a decent track record, having twice finished on the podium (the last time was in 2011), and another two times in the top 10. This year will also remarkably be Gilbert’s 16th time at San Remo, making it the most frequent race of his career while also putting him joint fourth on the race’s alltime starters list. Yet while experience is an asset in the classics, there are few exceptions to the rule for riders who have won a major race after that many

2016

2017

2018

2019

Wins the Belgian road title for the second time, five years after his first, beating Tim Wellens after the two riders escape together. Ends the season by confirming his transfer to Quick Step.

Wins his third monument, with a 55km solo ride at Flanders. Switches back to the Ardennes to win his fourth Amstel title, proving that even with the Cauberg removed from the finale he can still win.

Has to settle for podium placings and top fives throughout the spring. His only one-day win comes at GP d’Isbergues on return from injury after crashing out of the Tour de France.

Defies the odds to win Paris-Roubaix for the first time, and claim a fourth monument. Follows Nils Politt on the final stretches of pavé, before beating him in the sprint inside the velodrome.

Procycling / March 2020 41

Timeline images: Getty Images, Offside Sports Photography (2009). Images: Offside Sports Photography (left).

PHILIPPE GILBERT

Images: Getty Images.

attempts, although Mat On the start line of the 2011 Liège, Hayman’s 2016 Pariswhich Gilbert went Roubaix win on his 15th on to win try proved it is possible.

There’s also the fact that even including the Worlds road race, MilanSan Remo is the biggest one-day endurance test in the sport, ducking in at just under 300km. And its devil is in the detail. Former winner Mark Cavendish described the race to Procycling as one of the hardest to win; a race where every “fragment of time, every tiny movement” matters. “Every single watt ends up being important in the finale” , Cavendish said.

Put that to Gilbert though, and he’s unsure he agrees.

“It’s much harder to win Flanders or Roubaix because you have to save even more. When you see in the final of Roubaix and Flanders only the really best, best of the day can survive,” he says. “In San Remo it’s still, like, 15 guys, 10 guys.

It’s quite a lot. It means that that race is not so, so difficult. The course is like that and we have to do with it as it is, and try to do our best.”

One of the benefits Gilbert has is that he’s witnessed every scenario play out in the finale. How does he think he can win? At Flanders he caught the peloton unaware by escaping solo, and at Roubaix he got away in a small breakaway. It’s hard to see him being given slack if he tried to pull a similar move on the Poggio.

But if a small group was to come to the finish, you wouldn’t necessarily bet against Gilbert and his sprint. Gilbert will also benefit from the presence of his new Lotto team-mate, Caleb Ewan, who will start as co-leader. Unlike at Quick-Step where Gilbert was sharing the spotlight with Julian Alaphilippe, Ewan and Gilbert’s skillset complement each other.

The Australian is the fastest sprinter in the world right now and he was second in San Remo in 2018. Rival teams won’t want to tow Ewan to the line, so Gilbert could use that advantage to slip away.

“I know that if it’s really a bunch sprint with 60 guys, unless it’s a crash and I could go around... but I would never play on a crash because I don’t like that.

It would maybe be my only chance! But if it’s a sprint with 10 guys, seven guys, even five, I have more of a chance,” he says. “I think if I have a good day, after six hours I’m quite quick.”

42 Procycling / March 2020

“It’s much harder to win Flanders or Roubaix because you have to save even more. When you see the final only the really best, best of the day can survive. In San Remo it’s still, like 15, 10 guys” Gilbert signed a three-year contract with Lotto, to take him up to the end of 2022 and age 40. It’s almost unheard of in any elite sport for an athlete at this point in their career to be given a long-term contract, but then again Gilbert’s results show he isn’t like every other athlete.

While the Lotto team he rejoins today looks significantly different to the one he spent three years with from 2009-2011, it’s a team he says feels like home and it is where he enjoyed his first big career successes. He’s clearly enjoying the spotlight, revelling in the pressure rather than fearing it, as he sits down to a round table interview with a group of 10 reporters one night at the camp and happily reclines on the sofa as he talks for upwards of 45 minutes, answering in Italian, then English, then French, even when the questions were the same.

He’s defiant that those who say he’s too old to keep winning “don’t know me” ,

insisting that he’s still as motivated as he’s ever been to race and train. The repetitiveness of the cycling season is far from setting in, even if he’s starting his 18th year. “I like the progress,” he says.

“Like now, this moment of the year after you stop and you are building your condition and you see the body is fighting to get back into good form. It’s nice.”

If Philippe Gilbert’s life was a Hollywood movie, he’d get his fairytale ending this spring and win Milan-San Remo, to make him the most decorated classics rider the modern peloton has ever seen. But even if he doesn’t win this March, or if he never does, you get the sense that Gilbert is content with what he has already achieved. In some ways, the result in San Remo is irrelevant. Gilbert has his place in history secured no matter what, just for the fact of trying. “I was never even dreaming about this,” he says.

“I was just happy to ride the bike.”

PHILIPPE GILBERT

COUNTERPOINT Gilbert wears the Belgian tricolore in his most recent year with Lotto, 2011

THE SAME, BUT DIFFERENT Philippe Gilbert has returned to Lotto for 2020, after eight years away. Is it the best place to achieve his ambitions?

T Â

he Lotto team that Philippe Gilbert has rejoined in 2020 is both the same and very different from the one he left in 2012. (You could also add that Gilbert himself is both the same and very different than eight years ago, as well.)

The Belgian squad is one of the oldest in a sport which has commonly seen teams last for seven to 12 years or even less, depending if they can find title sponsors once the first one has received enough return on investment. The team dates back to 1985, though a complicated process of genesis means that the indirect lineage can be traced even further back, to 1979.

In 1985 the Belgian Lottery started sponsoring a team built partially from the

remnants of the TĂśnnissteiner team, and managed by Walter Godefroot and Patrick Lefevere. Its most prominent rider was Marc Sergeant, a sad-eyed Flamand who specialised in the classics and would end his career with a Tour stage win, a Belgian tricolore jersey and eight top-10 finishes in his favourite race, the Tour of Flanders.

It existed as an almost exclusively Belgian squad throughout the following seasons former world champion Claude Criquielion signed for the final two years of his career, and Johan Bruyneel rose to prominence as a stage racer there before moving to ONCE. Another early star was Johan Museeuw,

Writer Edward Pickering Image Offside Sports Photography

who won two Tour stages with them in 1990 and developed into a contender at the Tour of Flanders, with second place in 1991.

The next big signing was Belgian prodigy Frank Vandenbroucke, whose uncle JeanLuc Vandenbroucke was one of the sporting directors. Frank Vandenbroucke signed at the age of 19 for the 1994 season, but in a characteristic move, left at the end of the season. But they had already plugged the gap by taking on Andrei Tchmil as their leader in the classics. Tchmil would stay with the team until his retirement in 2002, and win Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix for them.

That was Lotto in the 1990s - it focused on one-day racing, bringing on riders like Mario Aerts and Frenchman Jacky Durand to pick up wins in the semi-classics, while Tchmil focused on the big ones. As Tchmil

Procycling / March 2020 43

THE BIG INTERVIEW

Philippe Gilbert was the best cyclist of 2011 - that year he won Amstel, Flèche, Liège, Brabantse Pijl, the Belgian Championships and San Sebastián. But how does that compare with other great seasons by individual cyclists? It’s comparable with Tom Boonen in 2012 - he won E3, Wevelgem, Flanders and Roubaix, and Bradley Wiggins the same year (Paris-Nice, Romandie, Dauphiné and the Tour). In 1987 Stephen Roche famously won the Giro, Tour and Worlds, plus Romandie.

His compatriot Sean Kelly won Paris-Nice, País Vasco, Catalunya, Roubaix and Liège in 1984, then the same set, swapping Milan-San Remo for Liège, two years later. But the greatest seasons of all were

by Eddy Merckx. The finest was arguably 1971, when he won the Tour, Worlds, San Remo, Liège, Lombardy, Paris-Nice and the Dauphiné in a single year. Between 1969 and 1975, he won at least three of the nine biggest races in the world - monuments, worlds and the grand tours - every year.

77 31

faded and retired, they 2008, but couldn’t bring Lotto brought in Peter Van the elusive yellow jersey.

Petegem, another classics Almost his final act for the specialist, who achieved the team, indirectly, was his Career wins for Flanders-Roubaix double for victory in the 2009 World Philippe Gilbert Lotto in 2003.

Championships road race.

The team’s next phase As McEwen faded and came with the signing of Evans left at the end of 2009, sprinter Robbie McEwen the team changed tack again, in 2002. The Australian was back to the classics, with the already a Tour de France stage signing of Gilbert in 2009. win to the good when he This coincided with the Of those came for signed, but he spent the next emergence of the Belgian as Lotto in 2008-2011 six seasons picking up 11 one of the most formidable more Tour stages and three classics riders in the world. green jerseys. He said that the team was He brought them Paris-Tours and the Tour never focused on giving him a full leadof Lombardy in 2009 and Amstel Gold Race out, which he insisted cost him wins in in 2010. But 2011 brought Gilbert and Lotto an era dominated by Cipollini and Petacchi, their best ever year - he won the Ardennes but his wins kept Lotto’s account ticking triple of Amstel Gold, Flèche Wallonne and over while Belgian cycling went through Liège-Bastogne-Liège, plus the Belgian a comparatively lean phase. road title and Clásica San Sebastián later In 2005, Lotto signed Cadel Evans and in the year, plus a stage win and the first made their first real foray into competing yellow jersey of the Tour de France. in the grand tour general classifications.

Gilbert’s departure at the end of 2011 The Australian brought the team a Tour de led to yet another tack, back to the sprints, Romandie title in 2006, and he improved with the acquisition of André Greipel. The from eighth in the Tour German sprinter would win 11 Tour de Evans wore de France in 2005 to France stages for Lotto. Meanwhile, they yellow for Lotto fourth in 2006 and signed some idiosyncratic riders who made in 2008, but was pipped by Sastre second in both 2007 and up in public relations what they lacked in quantity of wins. Australian Adam Hansen completed 20 grand tours in a row for Lotto, by far the record in the sport, while Thomas De Gendt became known as the most aggressive breakaway rider in the peloton.

Going into 2020, with Gilbert back, Lotto is set up for the classics, with John Degenkolb sharing a little bit of the pressure, and sprints with Caleb Ewan, who emerged in 2019 as the best sprinter in the world. They remain predominantly Belgian, and have resisted the temptation to spread themselves too thinly or make their roster too expensive by hiring a potential Tour de France winner.

Here is Lotto and Gilbert’s position this year: for Gilbert, it’s all about Milan-San Remo. Of course, La Primavera is as close to a lottery as the monuments get, and for all

As important as the racing support, Gilbert knows the team he has re-signed for, so the disruptive process of getting to know a new outfit has been smoothed

Images: Offside Sports Photography

Cycling seasons for the ages

PHILIPPE GILBERT

CLASSIC STAGE HUNTERS

Since 2001, 90 per cent of Lotto Soudal’s victories have been either stage wins or come in one-day races

MULTI-MONUMENT WINNERS Phiiippe Gilbert leads the way as the best all-round classics racer in the peloton today, but who are his nearest rivals?

MSR FLANDERS P-R LBL Lombardy

ONE-DAY RACES 123 MONUMENTS 5 TTs 14

3rd

1st

1st

1st

1st (x2)

Vincenzo Nibali

1st

24th

–

2nd

1st (x2)

John Degenkolb

1st

7th

1st

–

–

Alexander Kristoff

1st

1st

9th

–

–

Dan Martin

–

–

–

1st

1st

Peter Sagan

2nd

1st

1st

–

DNF

Niki Terpstra

38th

1st

1st

–

Alejandro Valverde

7th

8th

– 1st (x4)

Greg Van Avermaet

5th

2nd

1st

DNF 2nd

5th

–

GILBERT’S BEST ONE-DAY RACE RESULTS 1

OMLOOP

11

1

15

8

MILAN-SR

14

3

6

9

3

5

8

2

2

11

1

3

13

2

DDV E3

13

1

STRADE BIANCHE

7

3

GENT-WEV 15

FLANDERS

3

3

9

15

ROUBAIX 4

AMSTEL FLÈCHE

4

LIÈGE

1

1

6

5

1

6

1

3

15

10

3

1

7

8

SAN SEBASTIÁN

1

GP QUÉBEC

1

GP MONTRÉAL

3

1

LOMBARDIA Images Getty Images

his industriousness, Degenkolb will bolster Lotto in aggression and talent in the flat classics the past, he’s been out of and sprints the running more often than not. Two third places in 15 attempts, with a lot of anonymous results, bodes ill.

By comparison, Peter Sagan has ridden it nine times, with positions 17-4-2-10-412-2-6-4. Alexander Kristoff has similarly rarely been out of the top 10 since 2013, including first place in 2014. You’d say that these two have a better chance in the race.

Nevertheless, Gilbert only needs to get it right once, and he will have reliable back-up deep into the race (and an insurance card) in 2015 winner Degenkolb.

He’s got even more of an insurance card in Ewan, the 2018 runner-up - Plan A might be for Gilbert to attack, and his rivals be reluctant to chase, for fear of bringing Ewan into a group sprint.

Equally as important as the racing support, Gilbert knows the team he has re-signed for. Sergeant is still in charge, as he was in 2011, and so the potentially disruptive process of getting to know a new outfit has been made smooth by familiarity. The 2020 WorldTour is quite a different place from 2011, but Lotto still specialises in doing a few things very well rather than spreading themselves too thinly. For this year that means sprints and classics. And one classic in particular.

GC TITLES 27 STAGE WINS 229 GRAND TOUR STAGES 70

Philippe Gilbert

WORLDS

8

15

1

1

13

7

8

7

1

6

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

10

1

9

7

10

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

YEAR

Procycling / March 2020 45

46 Procycling / March 2020

ROHAN DENNIS

After an acrimonious split from Bahrain-Merida midway through the 2019 Tour de France, time trial world champion Rohan Dennis has a new home at Ineos. Procycling was at the Tour Down Under, his first race with the team, to see how he’s settling in

Writer: Sophie Smith Portrait: Chris Auld

Procycling / March 2020 47

R O H A N D E N N I S

Evans could only watch as team-mate Dennis won Down Under in 2015

itting on a plastic chair plonked on a grass oval following the first hill-top finish of the Tour Down Under in Paracombe, Rohan Dennis is chatting with Ineos sports director Brett Lancaster, saying something about the pace of accelerations on stage 3.

Down Under marks not only Dennis’s WorldTour debut with Ineos but his first stage race since walking out of the Tour de France last summer - to serious consequence. The 29-year-old won his second time trial world title in between, but in Paracombe felt the physical toll of consecutive days of racing and got squeezed out on the run-in to the Torrens Hill Road climb, where Richie Porte won the stage and laid the foundations for his overall title. Dennis and one other teammate have opted to get a lift rather than cycle back to the race hotel with the rest of the squad that has already left.

It’s the first day Dennis has recognised his transition to Ineos, which he joined three months after Bahrain-Merida terminated his contract in September, as anything other than “seamless”.

His new team-mate Luke Rowe hadn’t realised Dennis was flagging, towards the end of the stage. “I’m not a big talker on the radio and I found that Luke would have liked to have known that I wasn’t on the back of them,” Dennis tells Procycling.

“Communication is a big thing for him.

It’s a good thing, just something I’m not used to doing. I’m used to: work through it myself, get back to the

I’m not a big talker on the radio and I found out that Luke Rowe would have liked to have known I wasn’t on the back of them 48

Procycling / March 2020

team when I need to and not stress anybody out. But I think that in this team [it’s] the opposite. They go, ‘You’re stressing us out, we don’t know where you are.’ I have to really work on that communication side of things when it comes to the racing.”

Rowe is an established road captain at the British squad and Dennis says he’s especially clicked with the Welshman, who has provided some introductory guidance. “We just try to make it clear to him that he’s leader at this race and anything he asks for he’s going to get, within reason,” says Rowe. “You can have a leader for the day but if he’s not good he’s got to speak up, you know?

We’ve got to know that.

“Each and every day you’ve got to get the most out of each person and the best way to do that is communicate and knowing where to use your troops.”

It’s well known in cycling that Dennis has a streak of audacity as wide as the outback.

He entered the Tour Down Under in 2015 with the aim of supporting then BMC team-mate and Australian legend Cadel Evans in an overall bid. However, when Dennis saw an opportunity to attack on the short but steep climb to the finish line in Paracombe he took it, winning the stage

THE HIGHS 2014 World TTT Championships Features in BMC’s world championshipswinning TTT squad, in the first of their two winning rides at the event.

and ultimately the race title.

The same trait has also contributed to his own frustrations though, which boiled over on stage 12 of the Tour. Dennis in the past has been annoyed when teams haven’t listened to or followed how he believes a race should be executed. He’s absolutely unwavering on his beliefs.

“I’ve known Rohan for a long time.

I raced with him in the U23s and I’ve always got on really well with him. He’s always been a powerhouse of a rider and someone I’ve respected on and off the bike,” says Rowe.

“A lot of the reason he was annoyed last year was because he wasn’t … you know, there are a few things, mainly down to communication, which were letting him down and he felt hampered his performance. Hopefully here he can get the access to the best kit and teammates, who will 100 per cent buy into him when the time is right. “[It’s] just trying to get through to him that we’re the type of team-mates, I like

Images: Getty Images

At the 2015 Tour in Utrecht, Dennis set the record for the fastest ever Tour time trial

to think, that will go that extra mile, and just don’t be afraid to ask for any help any time. We really pride ourselves on giving him the best opportunity to succeed by supporting him the best way possible.”

Dennis admits he’s not accustomed to asking for help but will have to learn that too given Ineos, Rowe says, isn’t as autocratic as it appears from the outside.

“That’s one big misconception of the team. People seem to think it’s super strict,” Rowe says. “A lot of people who come here and guys who have left and gone to other teams, said the most fun they’ve had was in this team. I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to have fun off the bike then that will translate to good results on the bike.”

Before Down Under, Ineos flew out a mechanic from Belgium and sent a soigneur and sports director Brett Lancaster to support Dennis at the Australian time trial championships where he finished second to Luke Durbridge of Mitchelton-Scott.

“Rohan fits in really well with the team. He’s no different to anyone else.

2015 Tour Down Under Wins the GC at his home race to take the biggest stage race title of his career so far.

2015 Hour record Takes on and beats Matthias Brändle’s World Hour Record, riding 52.491km at the Grenchen Velodrome in Switzerland.

2015 Tour de France Wins the stage 1 time trial in Utrecht, beating multiple world TT champ Tony Martin and Fabian Cancellara. At 55.446kph, it’s the fastest in history.

2016 National TT Championships Takes the first of three consecutive wins in the Nationals.

2018 World TT Championships Wins the world title in Austria at a canter.

He puts over a minute into second-placed Tom Dumoulin.

2019 World TT Championships Successfully defends his title, despite not having raced since walking out of the Tour.

49

R O H A N D E N N I S

DENNIS’S RESULTS 1st

2nd

3rd

1st

Stage, Tour of Alberta 2013 Stage, Critérium International 2014 Stage, Tour of Alberta 2013 Stage, Circuit de la Sarthe 2014 Tour of Alberta 2013 Circuit de la Sarthe 2014 Stage, Tour of California 2014, 2016 Stage, Tour de Romandie 2014 Stage, Tour Down Under 2015 Stage, Tour of California 2014 Tour Down Under 2015 Tour of California 2014, 2016 Stage, Tour de France 2015 Stage, USA Pro Cycling Challenge 2015 (2) Commonwealth Games TT 2014 Stage, Tour Down Under 2015, 2016 USA Pro Cycling Challenge 2015 National Championships time triaL 2016, Stage, Paris-Nice 2015 Stage, Tour of Belgium 2015 2017, 2018 Stage, USA Pro Cycling Stage, Tour of Britain 2016 Challenge 2015 (2) Stage, Eneco Tour 2016 Stage, Tour of Britain 2016 (2) Tour La Provence 2017 Tour of Britain 2016 Stage, Tirreno-Adriatico 2017, 2018 Stage, Tour La Provence 2017 (2) Stage, Tour of the Alps 2017 Tirreno-Adriatico 2017 Stage, Tour de Suisse 2017 (2), 2019 Stage, Giro d’Italia 2018 Stage, Abu Dhabi Tour 2018 Stage, Tour de Suisse 2019 Stage, Giro d’Italia 2018 Tour de Suisse 2019 Stage, Vuelta a España 2018 (2) World Championships time trial 2018, 2019 rd Stage, Tour of California 2013 Stage, Tour de Suisse 2014, 2019 nd National Championships time trial 2013, Stage, Vuelta a España 2014 Stage, Tour Down Under 2016 2015, 2019, 2020 Stage, Tour of the Alps 2017 Stage, Critérium du Dauphiné 2013

3

2 On the hilly Worlds TT course in Innsbruck in 2018, no one could come close to Dennis

50

Procycling / March 2020

He loves a joke and the British guys, they like a lot of banter,” says Lancaster.

Dennis appeared happy at Down Under and cracked jokes whenever the opportunity arose. In a pre-race press conference, he teased outgoing race director Mike Turtur when the latter made “special mention” of hosting and showcasing the rainbow jersey at his event – referring only to Trek-Segafredo’s road world champion Mads Pedersen.

“We haven’t got a time trial in the race,” Turtur responded.

Dennis describes his second consecutive time trial world championship victory in Yorkshire last September as “the biggest job interview of my life”. This year he placed fourth overall at Down Under in what was a promising start with Ineos but not one completely free from the demons that derailed his 2019 campaign.

Happiness, or lack thereof, is effectively what Dennis attributes for his walk out of the Tour. At the start of stage 12 in Toulouse, Dennis had answered questions pertaining to the next day’s individual time trial that Bahrain-Merida (now Bahrain McLaren) expected him to perform in. He gave a soundbite on it and confirmed a rumour that Vincenzo Nibali, who left Bahrain for Trek-Segafredo disgruntled but on his own terms this season, had a stomach complaint.

No one had predicted that shortly into the stage, Dennis would dismount his bike, hitch a lift to the finish line and leave the race before Simon Yates won in Bagnères-de-Bigorre.

Dennis’s face was a mixture of hurt and fury when he left. His shoulders were squared off and he walked away from the race flanked by his agent, who pushed away a TV camera crew. Rumours of a rift over equipment began to circulate in the immediate aftermath, which former general manager Brent Copeland, who wasn’t at the race at the time, dismissed.

Dennis temporarily deleted his Twitter account in the melee that followed. He never competed for Bahrain again. At the time of going to print, he was in UCI arbitration with them, claiming breach of contract, wrongful termination and

Image: Chris Auld (opposite); Getty Images (above)

“malicious intent to cause damage to health and reputation”. Bahrain are not commenting while the process is ongoing.

Newly appointed general manager Rod Ellingworth says he is treating the team as not just a rebranded one, but a new one.

“I was good friends and I still talk to a lot of the riders and staff. I’ve even spoken to some of the McLaren people since. It was just the environment,” says Dennis.

When directly asked why he left the Tour, Dennis says: “Personal family reasons between the person I was becoming due to the situations I was put under, or the environment that I was in, that was causing me to be not a good or a happy person to be around.

“That environment was the team environment. It was snowballing, it was getting worse and, in the end, I didn’t want to be a statistic of a sportsperson who was potentially going to be divorced.”

I didn’t want to be a statistic of a sportsperson who was potentially going to be divorced

Dennis had frank family talks before Suisse, where he was runner-up to Bernal

He won’t be drawn on specifics about the ‘team environment’ but did consult with his sports psychologist Dr David Spindler in the aftermath and around his rainbow jersey build-up.

“I honestly believe if I did continue and finish the stage it would have been even worse because it would have looked even more planned. Looking like, ‘Now I’m going to exit just to annoy the team,’” Dennis says.

“Whereas me exiting was for the benefit of my family. I had a pretty frank conversation with my wife just before [the Tour de] Suisse and some of the things she said really brought it home about the type of person I was becoming because of the situations I was in and the way I was handling them.

“The team and I decided we would sort it out behind closed doors. Then it just snowballed from there and moves were

Procycling / March 2020 51

R O H A N D E N N I S

I made it clear my objectives weren’t anything to do with GC grand tourwise when I was talking to Dave Brailsford

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R O H A N D E N N I S

THE LOWS Looking to the future: Dennis had a fresh start Down Under with Ineos

Celebrations with the family after retaining the world TT title in Yorkshire

made that I don’t think were the best for everybody.”

Dennis didn’t anticipate that he’d be expelled during his first season with the team despite observing that he felt there were “clear incentives” to get him to “move on”.

“There was a lot of interest [from teams] directly after my exit of the Tour de France. There was speculation that it’s [terms with Bahrain] going to end quick and, ‘Okay, this could be a good deal,’” he says. “It died down soon after the Tour de France finished. We were thrown a curve ball of being terminated just before Worlds, which wasn’t really good. It was really post-Worlds that real conversations were starting to open up.”

2014 Mid-season transfer Initially signed by Garmin as a possible replacement for Bradley Wiggins, he is let go for an unusual mid-season transfer to BMC.

2016 Olympic Games TT Dennis’s handlebars break during the race while he is on course to win at least a silver medal. He manages to salvage fifth place but is outside the medals.

2017 World Championships TT A crash on the wet Bergen roads again cost Dennis dear in a world-level time trial. He finishes eighth on a replacement bike.

2018 Giro d’Italia Dennis is a couple of years into a ‘five-year plan’ to turn himself into a GC contender, but a lot of focus and planning result in only 16th place in the 2018 Giro. To date, it’s his best GC result at a grand tour, and in nine starts, he’s had six DNFs.

2019

Images: Chris Auld (opposite), Getty Images (above)

Tour de France

Bahrain terminated Dennis’s contract 12 days before the time trial world title in Yorkshire, but waited until after he had won the time trial and played a support role for Australia in the road race to announce it.

“Yorkshire, I knew physically that I could do it but there was a lot of weight on my shoulders with all the other stuff.

More or less, it was probably the biggest job interview of my life,” Dennis says.

Ineos confirmed in December they had given him the job and on one hand the appointment is a dream fit. Lancaster says Dennis is “tech driven”, and as a former Hour record holder he knows all about ‘marginal gains’. Ineos is also born from a British Cycling structure, similar to Cycling Australia’s institutionalised track programme that Dennis came through.

Yet there was conjecture as to how the 29-year-old’s own ambitions to develop into a grand tour contender would marry with the team that in 2020 boasts four proven grand tour winners and a long succession list.

Dennis, in recent years, has spoken of his perceived need to lose weight. He’s focused on climbing, arriving at hill-top finishes puffy-faced, eyes bloodshot and half vacant from the efforts. For a time, he surpassed Porte as being considered Australia’s ‘next’ Tour champion.

Mysteriously and controversially walks out of the Tour de France, having fallen out with his Bahrain-Merida team. He is released from his contract by the team in September.

But a month into his fresh start with Ineos, Dennis says that those ambitions are done. He’ll refocus on shorter stage races and time trials even though the Giro d’Italia, which along with the Tokyo Olympics is a major 2020 season target for him, features three time trials this year.

“If I’m ever going to win a grand tour, I’m in the right place. I just don’t think that’s what I really want to try and do any more,” says Dennis. “GC riders for grand tours have a completely different mindset and not just on the bike but also off the bike, having to sacrifice 99.9 per cent of having a life.

“I made it clear my objectives weren’t anything to do with GC grand tour-wise when I was talking to Dave Brailsford.”

Dennis has ridden solo for the last six months but at Ineos he will have to become a fortified team player. And he knows it. At the end of the Tour Down Under, Dennis wasn’t niggling, or trying to assert himself. He was listening, commentating, taking directions. Still fiery, but somewhat softer.

“You can see on my face how much the environment is different,” he says, smiling. “Even if there is a small issue, we talk about it in a constructive way and then we move on.”

Procycling / March 2020 53

MASTERING

LA CLASSICISSIMA What does it take to win Milan-San Remo?

Procycling speaks to seven winners of the first monument of the year about how they conquered one of the wonders of the cycling world Interviews: Alasdair Fotheringham, Sophie Hurcom, Edward Pickering, Herbie Sykes Photography: Gettyimages*

1970 MICHELE DANCELLI THE THING TO keep in mind is that no Italian had won for 17 years. That may not seem so unusual today, but back then the peloton for Milan-San Remo was 50 per cent Italian. There had been the usual Belgian and French winners, but also a Spaniard, a German and a Dutch guy, and even an Englishman. It had become a nightmare, and with each passing year everyone became more anxious about it.

My problem as a cyclist was that I couldn’t really help myself. If there was a little climb, or even a railway bridge,

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instinct would take over and I’d just attack.

It cost me a lot of races because I was a good sprinter, but the urge to go was just too strong. A lot of people said I’d never be a champion because I didn’t know how to ride tactically, but I’d already won two maglie tricolore and a load of others. I won 73 races in my career, including 11 stages at the Giro. I was maglia rosa for 14 days as well, so I guess I didn’t do too badly.

There was a small climb for a prime at Loano. I went with Carlo Chiappano, but he decided not to continue. We were still 70km from San Remo, so he went back to the group and I was alone. After 20km the car came across. They didn’t really know what to say, because on the one hand they were willing me to try, but objectively the

odds were stacked against it. I reasoned that there were some very fast guys in the chase group, and I felt really good.

So I decided to commit to it, and everyone knows what happened next.

I guess the win is still so famous because of the time I spent alone, because there were so many people on the roadside, and because I was quite a popular rider amongst the fans. The DS was Giorgio Albani, and he was crying. Ernesto Colnago was the mechanic, and he was crying. Pietro Molteni was the sponsor, and he was crying. I started crying as well.

Back then, everyone in Italy watched Milan-San Remo on TV, and I guess they must have been crying as well. It’s been 50 years, but people never forget.

M I L A N -S A N R E M O

I WAS IN form, but the important thing with Milan-San Remo was knowing how to manage your form. It’s an interesting challenge, because the entire basis of it is economy. You’re trying to expend as little as possible physically, but of course that’s quite demanding mentally. You won’t necessarily appreciate it just from watching it on TV, but over that sort of time and that sort of distance it’s all about not throwing it away.

I tended to do well in longer, flatter race distances. I had good stamina because I was a serious trainer, and that was a big part of it. It was all fine and well being quick, but to win that race you’ve got to retain as much of your speed as you can. I won ParisBrussels later that year as well, and that was another seven-hour race.

I was a good rider – I was Italian champion three times, after all – but I wasn’t one for the grand tours and I couldn’t win hilly races like Lombardy.

I could win Giro d’Italia stages and semi-classics, but I wasn’t considered a champion because I lost more than I won.

Someone calculated I came second over 100 times, and of course the job of a sprinter is to stay hidden until the last 500 metres. So unless you win you don’t make news, and I guess I just wasn’t considered newsworthy at that point.

The thing to remember is that everyone has been waiting for Milan-San Remo for months. It’s a little bit different nowadays, because the season hardly finishes. Back then, it finished with Lombardy and then you were five months thinking about and preparing for San Remo.

You had all the best classics riders there, and everything had been scripted for them to be the protagonists. I’d never won a race as big as that before, and I’d only ever been in the top 10 once there [the following year in 1981]. Then again, I was 29 and I’d figured out how to race it. I knew that if we came off the Poggio together there was a small

“IT WAS FINE AND WELL TO BE QUICK, BUT TO WIN YOU’VE GOT TO RETAIN AS MUCH OF YOUR SPEED AS YOU CAN”

Image: Offside Sports Photography (left), Sirotti (right).

PIERINO GAVAZZI

chance for me, and this time we did.

I probably wasn’t the winner that the press would have wanted, but you don’t win Milan-San Remo by luck. I won by a couple of centimetres, and someone said that if Guiseppe Saronni or Jan Raas had done what I did it would have been hailed as a tactical masterpiece. They were probably right, but I think that was when people started to appreciate me as a rider.

You only have to look at the top six in the results that day to understand that I must have been decent. Gavazzi, Saronni, Raas, Sean Kelly, Roger De Vlaeminck and Francesco Moser.

1980 Procycling / March 2020 57

M I L A N -S A N R E M O

SEAN KELLY IT’S A VERY easy script for Milan-San Remo. It’s not one of the more difficult tactics-wise. At 290k we all talk about the distance but it’s not one of these races where it’s a really difficult and a tiring race, like a Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix or Liège; they are much more energy sapping.

You get to the Cipressa and Poggio with a lot of riders who can be very aggressive.

“THE POGGIO IS AN EXPLOSIVE EFFORT, AT CRAZY SPEEDS”

When you get so close the previous years, you know that you’re capable of winning it. I came out of Paris-Nice in really good shape, I was one of the big favourites. The pressure was there, the expectation, the build up. Some guys can handle it better than others. Some guys can’t get it out of their minds, memorising the Cipressa and Poggio. I didn’t really have that. I was able to turn off, that was one of my strong points.

I remember Eric Vanderaerden was in my wheel the whole time when we came to the Poggio. I think that was the tactic from his team, ‘follow Kelly’, as he knew he could take me in the sprint because he was very fast. There was a point when Mario Beccia went away and then Greg LeMond went after him and I remember I moved my gears just a bit, and my gears moved two or three sprockets. I started cursing, and Vanderaerden thought I had a gear problem and went round me. But I just hit it from behind. I went on this big attack and having

a rival like Vanderaerden in front of me was an advantage - when you come from behind you already have built up that speed to come on to the wheel.

I was about to make it across and could see there was a team-mate of LeMond’s in between myself and that chasing group.

I made it to Beccia and LeMond and didn’t want him to get on too, otherwise there’d be two riders from La Vie Claire. So I went to the front and pushed it on again, and the three of us went on from there.

The Poggio is a huge explosive effort, at crazy speeds. That’s the first thing you say; get up the Poggio and then see what happens. I knew this was the opportunity so I just made the descent as fast as possible. I knew I could beat LeMond in the sprint, but you never know at the end of a long race. I made Greg go on the front, which is best because I had a little more speed, then took him in the final 50m. Still, you’re never sure until you hit the line.

Image: Sirotti.

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M I L A N -S A N R E M O

1994 GIORGIO FURLAN THE ABIDING MEMORY isn’t the athletic performance. Obviously it’s very long, but in reality the percorso isn’t too hard if the rhythms aren’t changing all the time. The main thing I remember is the stuff around the race, the stuff it provokes.

I began as the favourite and as protected rider at Gewiss. I’d won three stages and the GC at Tirreno-Adriatico, so the perception was that it was my race to lose.

As an Italian cyclist I’d been brought up on it, and by the time I got to Milan I’d been working towards it, subconsciously or otherwise, for three months.

I was 28 when I won. I’d won stages at the Giro, Flèche Wallonne and the Italian National Championship. I was one of those riders who won a few races each season, but

the monuments are the monuments and I still hadn’t won one. I’d thrown away some big races by making tactical errors.

I should have won Lombardy the previous year, but I’d made a mess of it. There was an edition of Liège I probably ought to have won as well, and when those things happen they start to play on your mind. You worry that you’ve missed the boat, and I was beginning to doubt myself.

By the time you reach the Poggio you’ve been racing for seven hours. That’s seven hours of accumulated stress. Living with pressure is part of the job of a professional cyclist, but as an Italian you know how much is riding on it.

Put all that together and the last hour amounts to a fairly intense experience.

Back then the race tended to get sorted out on the Poggio, and we

knew we had to detach the sprinters. Guys like Cipollini and Fabio Baldato were much quicker than me, and that partly explains why it was so fast going up it. We thinned the whole thing out, and I attacked about 1.5km from the top. I got the gap, and to be honest they never really got close to me.

There was a chase group of five or six, but the legs were good and I won by 20 seconds.

The team was perfect and I was lucky because there weren’t too many tactical cards to play. Even I couldn’t really get it wrong that day.

“BY THE TIME YOU REACH THE POGGIO YOU’VE BEEN RACING FOR SEVEN HOURS” Procycling / March 2020 59

60 Procycling / March 2020

AFTER MY FIRST Milan-San Remo victory in 2004, where I outpowered Erik Zabel at the last moment, some people thought that when I won it a second time in 2007 - in a much more conventional way, coming off Alessandro Petacchi’s wheel in the closing metres - that I had wanted to prove something. In fact, there wasn’t any unfinished business in 2007. Rather, I’d grown to appreciate that snatching my chance at the last moment like I did in 2004 had been just one more piece in the unpredictable jigsaw that is San Remo a race you can lose in every single metre from Milan, and which you only know for sure you’ve won in the very last pedal stroke across the line.

In 2007, I knew I was in good shape because I’d won in Majorca and in Andalucia. But more than that, experience is crucial in San Remo, you have to get an extra-sharp instinct for when attacks can work and when they can’t. So when Philippe Gilbert put in his big move on the Poggio, I knew I shouldn’t panic. One reason was the direction of the wind - that day there were tailwinds along the coast which helped keep the breaks under control.

There’s usually only one team that’ll work specifically for a bunch sprint, unlike the Tour de France where it’s three or four, and in 2007 Petacchi’s squad was doing the work. Again, experience told me I had to stick to Petacchi like glue, particularly because I always had lots of team-mates to bring me to the final kilometre, but I never had one that was designated to take care of me in the last 200m.

I was lucky, too. Petacchi’s team was putting in the hard yards but nobody messed up his squad’s strategy, which happens often in a race as chaotic as San Remo. Instead, Milram gave me everything I needed - the lead-out, the space and the lack of problems! In the last 200 metres I felt great and sure I could do something, because often in San Remo you can do everything right and then at the last possible moment it fouls up. But just sometimes the last piece of the puzzle falls into place exactly.

2007

Procycling / March 2020 61

Image: Offside Sports Photography.

ÓSCAR FREIRE

2008 FABIAN CANCELLARA SAN REMO IS THE hardest race to win, because there are a lot of ways to win. Can you attack early? Can you attack over the top of the climb? Go away on the downhill?

Make a last-minute attack on the flat?

Sprint? Or even go in an early escape? You can win in any one of these ways, but if you try it, you have only that one chance. And it’s not just five or 10 riders who can win, it’s 20. This was good for me, and not. I also had multiple cards - I wasn’t a bad sprinter,

“YOU CAN’T PLAN TO ATTACK, IT HAS TO BE ON GUT FEELING” 62

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and I could try in any of these ways. The problem is finding the best card to play and everything falling into place.

I never really prepared specifically for Milan-San Remo. In 2008, I was focused on doing well in the spring and then working towards the Olympic programme, and I always used Tirreno-Adriatico as a final preparation race.The parcours was an advantage - 2008 was the first time the race used the Manie climb. The effects were double - you had to stay in front and fight from much earlier than usual, and also I think it had an effect on the Cipressa and Poggio so the sprinters were more fatigued.

The Cipressa, especially the descent, is really hectic and you need your team around you. Then on the flat part after it, you need your team around you again - to have no escapers to cause trouble.

The Poggio is always where it splits.

When you go in you need to maintain a steady hard tempo, and then you see the attacks. The descent: pure high concentration. Don’t brake. Don’t lose

a single metre of speed. Then stretch the whole bunch out at the bottom, and there, sometimes there are options to attack.

Everybody is watching by then, so a move is not necessarily possible and you can’t plan to attack. It has to be on a gut feeling, and the perfect situation where every small detail has been right until that point.

I didn’t know I was going to attack, and it wasn’t me trying to show panache, I just felt in my gut it was right. It was like there had been a whole three course meal, and here was the dessert or the small glass of liqueur at the end. Maybe it looked easy, but we’d been racing for seven and a quarter hours. I was a specialist in prologues, and I knew I had this in me.

As a half-Italian, winning San Remo made me very happy and proud - it is still a high emotion for me. I came close many times again, but I made mistakes and rode too openly, too generously. I was always close, so it wasn’t just one win and then nothing.

That spring, I won Strade Bianche, Tirreno and Milan-San Remo. That was unique.

M I L A N -S A N R E M O

ALTHOUGH I HAD only raced here once in the past, I was quite familiar with the course because I was living in Monaco. We often trained along the Italian coastline and rode the Cipressa and Poggio. In 2012 I put my hand up for Milan-San Remo because I was adamant I wanted to do a classic distance race before the Ardennes. It was never on my radar as an objective, and we had Matt Goss in the team who was the defending champion.

I started San Remo in fantastic condition.

I was in great shape, but still I was plan B. Goss was being looked after the whole time and I was left to do predominantly my own race. Coming into the Poggio Matt said to me, ‘I haven’t got great legs, you’re

2012

pedals. Then I had this adulation, a huge amount of emotion on the line, you can’t believe it’s finished in the way that it did.

I remember looking at the history of the race, I was studious analysing the finishes.

I thought, there’s probably one breakaway in every 10 years that wins - I was fairly realistic about the chances of it succeeding.

But since my win there’s been a number of editions won from a break: Alaphilippe, Kwiatkowski... It’s about having the right guys who are prepared to attack and commit to the finish, and having the teams around those riders to do that.

Image: Getty Images.

SIMON GERRANS

welcome to take your chance.’ It was only from that point on that it was over to me.

I positioned myself ready to attack, I was in the right spot in the bunch, in the right gear and I was literally half a pedal stroke away from attacking, and Nibali went. I was straight onto him. He did the first major acceleration on the Poggio and when he flicked his elbow I was ready to come past.

I took a quick glance over my shoulder to see what gap we had and I saw Cancellara coming across like a steam train. I made sure I had a little bit left to follow the next acceleration he made past us, and once he got to us he drove it from then on, and that was the premise of the winning breakaway.

I was on my limit on that descent.

Cancellara attacked us out of every corner.

He nearly dropped us on a number of occasions. I had Nibali on my wheel not doing a turn, rightly so because he had his team-mate Sagan behind. The onus was on Cancellara. I’d never really sprinted at the end of a race like Milan-San Remo, so it was a bit of an unknown what your legs are going to feel like when you step on the

PA R I S- N I C E

MORE THAN A RACE Paris-Nice is established as arguably the most prestigious stage race before the Giro d’Italia. Procycling looks at its history and why it occupies a unique place in the sport Writer Edward Pickering Image Offside Sports Photography

The journey from Paris to Nice is more than just a few hundred kilometres between two of France’s most important and individual cities.

There is distance also between the urban city culture of France’s capital and the Mediterranean horizons of the Côte d’Azur. France is no different from many other countries – its inhabitants hold the stereotypes of the dynamic hardworking, over-serious north with the relaxed, fun, warm south. The landscapes are different – the windy plains of the north are a different world from the mountains and sea of the south. The weather is different – cool and temperate in the north, or freezing cold in winter; warm to hot in the south. And in between, almost all of France separates the two.

The Race to the Sun is one of the most venerable races in the WorldTour, dating back

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between Paris and Nice – the Lyon Républicain, Marseille Matin, Le Var and Le Petit Niçois. The six-stage race would kick off from the Café Rozès, on the Place d’Italie in Paris, with a 312km opener to Dijon. Thence to Lyon and via the Rhône valley to Avignon, Marseille, Cannes and Nice. The race almost didn’t survive the Second World War – it was cancelled for the duration of hostilities and ran for a single edition in 1946 before disappearing. For his part, Lejeune didn’t survive the war – he was executed for collaboration.

The race was resurrected in 1951 under the impetus of the mayor of Nice with the

to 1933, and it is now part of Tour de France owners ASO’s portfolio of events, which gives it heft.

However, it stood apart as an independent race, both in terms of its organisers and its unofficial mission statement, through all of the 20th century. ASO only acquired it in 2002.

It began as the ‘Six Jours de la Route” the Six Days of the Road, created by Albert Lejeune, who was the owner of the Parisian Petit Journal. He partnered with a series of local newspapers based along the route The flat, windy plains of Northern France are where Paris-Nice gets underway

1

2 MARCH 8 / 154KM

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name ‘Paris-Côte d’Azur’ and the journalist Jean Leuilliot was brought in as the organiser. Leuilliot would buy the race out in 1957 and it was under the auspices of his company Monde Six that the race grew into an institution. It cast itself as the indie underdog – a race with heart and soul, compared to the corporate behemoth of the Tour de France. The leader’s jersey, formerly a mix of azure and gold, then green for a year, then orange, settled on white in 1955 and thus it remained until ASO diluted it into white and yellow, and then yellow. After his retirement as a cyclist, Jacques Anquetil was brought in as race director, and Leuilliot’s two daughters, Josette and Jacqueline, took over from him until they sold the race to Laurent Fignon in 2000. Fignon, in turn, was forced to sell it to ASO after running into financial difficulties over the two editions he was at.

The route of Paris-Nice can be divided into very defined phases. Notwithstanding the fashion through the 20th century of prologues and team time trials, there are a few flat stages through the north of the country. These are often tumultuous affairs, with crosswinds ripping the race to shreds. Then the race hits the Massif Central for an almost mountainous and often chilly middle phase. Finally it emerges via the Rhône Valley into the Côte d’Azur for a few days in the sunny hills behind the coast. In recent years, ASO have been changing the character of the challenge with more obvious focal points flat time trials and high summit finishes.

Plaisir Plaisir The peloton will be no closer to the Riviera at the end of stage 1 than the beginning, with a loop around the Yvelines departement starting and finishing in the town of Plaisir.

It’s French flat all the way, which is to say that the route is punctuated by several small hills, including a steep cobbled climb at Neauphle-le-Château, where the Ayatollah Khomeini was exiled for a brief period in the late 1970s before returning to Iran to lead the 1979 revolution.

3 MARCH 9 / 166.5KM

Chevreuse Châlette-sur-Loing At last the race heads south, from Chevreuse, which lies in the gently undulating forests of its eponymous regional natural park. The open plains between Paris and the Massif Central sit open to the prevailing westerly winds that tend to be at their strongest in spring, and the opening flat stages of Paris-Nice are renowned for getting broken up by crosswinds. Nobody’s going to win Paris-Nice race on these roads, but the wind will likely mean several will lose it.

MARCH 10 / 212.5KM

Chalette-sur-Loing La Châtre The bike racing Tour de France may have been invented in 1903, but the idea was older.

In the 18th and 19th century, workers travelled the country on a series of apprenticeships, a tradition that was the theme of George Sand’s novel Les Compagnons du Tour de France. Sand lived most of her life nearby Le Châtre, which hosts today’s stage finish. The parcours is similar to stage 2 – though the route turning south west may turn this into more of a long slog into a headwind.

PA R I S- N I C E

KNET

ME

T

7

RC

PROLIFIC STAGE WINNERS

K X

B

E OB

EMANN

21

8

ANQUETIL

8

STEE

LS

7

IG A LT

9

K E L LY

14

1 Eddy Merckx

21

2 Sean Kelly

14

3 Freddy Maertens

12

4 Rik Van Looy

11

5 Eric Leman

10

6 Rudi Altig

9

7 Jacques Anquetil

8

7 = Tom Steels

8

9 Louison Bobet

7

10 Gerrie Knetemann

7

harness Paris-Nice to his will - though one of the most famous moments of his career, punching a striking worker who was blocking the road, came in this race, he could only manage a second and a third.

Paris-Nice is a bike race, but more importantly, it is a journey, and in common with very few of the most important races in the world, it has its own nickname.

As with the Hell of the North, La Grande Boucle and La Primavera, everybody knows what the ‘Race to the Sun’ is.

It’s a cultural, meteorological, temporal and physical journey, from one place to another, but also from cold to warmth, flat plains to mountains and city to sea. It’s more than a bike race.

12 MA

ER

TEN

10 11

LEM

S

AN

VA N L O O Y

This has coincided with a period of domination by Team Ineos, who have won six out of eight editions since 2012.

But the challenge of Paris-Nice is that apart from the summit finishes, it tends to be a race which favours attackers and punchy classics specialists. Its most successful rider was Sean Kelly, who could never master the heat of the high mountains in the Tour de France but found the perfect terrain and conditions for his strengths at Paris-Nice and won seven times in a row during the 1980s. Its roll of winners is illustrious - Tour winners Louison Bobet, Anquetil and Eddy Merckx took at least one Paris-Nice each, as did Miguel Indurain and Alberto Contador.

Interestingly, Bernard Hinault could never

4

5 MARCH 11 / 15.1KM TT

Saint-Amand-Montrond Saint-Amand-Montrond ASO never pass up a chance to celebrate a local hero (so long as the locality in question has also paid up for the privilege of hosting a stage), and ParisNice’s time trial starts and finishes in Saint-AmandMontrond, the home of Julian Alaphilippe. Home roads will favour another strong ride in a race whose GC should be a realistic target. After today, the race will be half done, fittingly as Saint-Amand-Montrond lays claim to being the geographic centre of France.

6 MARCH 12 / 227KM

Gannat La Côte-Saint-André Paris-Nice 2020 skirts the north-eastern edges of the Massif Central for its fifth stage, the longest of the race at 227km. It crosses a few undulations, though never quite ducks in to tackle the hard climbs in the region.

The race gets as high as 822m above sea level, but there are only three cat-threes and a cattwo climb en route to the finish. This kind of stage can fall back to the sprinters, or see an uneasy truce while attackers take precedence.

7 MARCH 13 / 160.5KM

Sorgues Apt The archetypal grippy stage provides traps in abundance, with six cat-two and catthree climbs, none of which breaches much more than 600m altitude and mostly come in at five kilometres in length or under. But the relative shortness of the climbs is made up for by their frequency throughout the 160km. If the stage 4 time trial proved favourable to Julian Alaphilippe, this punchy territory will be home from home for him.

8 MARCH 14 / 166.5KM

Nice La Colmiane The old and the new are combined in the queen stage.

The early ascent of the Col de Vence is a nod to earlier editions of the race – the climb made appearances through the 1980s. And the high Alpine summit finish of Valdeblore La Colmiane is a new innovation, which also appeared in 2018.

It’s long, at 16km, and has steep sections, though its average gradient is a mid-range 6.3 per cent. It’ll be hard for gaps opened here to be closed again on the final Sunday.

MARCH 15 / 133.5KM

Nice Nice Though fans of a certain age will forever be nostalgic for the Col d’Èze TT, the municipal authorities in Nice have always preferred the Nice-Nice format of the final day, and this year’s stage comes in at a typically short 113.5km, with four climbs, two of them first category. It’s more ambush territory – but perhaps it’s advantageous to be defending rather than attacking here. The final 20km are a gentle descent back to sea level – perfect to bring attackers to heel.

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PA R I S- N I C E

10 DEFINING YEARS

FIRE & ICE Since Paris-Nice began in 1933 there have been 77 editions. Procycling picks out 10 of the stand-out moments and battles that make it one of the most enduring races on the calendar

However, Poulidor made a career, reputation and fortune out of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and on the final stage, he was watching Anquetil when Vittorio Adorni, third overall at 59 seconds, attacked. Anquetil knew exactly what he was doing when he sat up and didn’t chase – Poulidor and his Mercier team had to do so. But the effort tired them and when Anquetil set out on a solo attack, Poulidor had to chase alone. It was an unequal battle and Anquetil put over a minute into his rival to win overall. Anquetil first; Poulidor second, eternally.

1981 1933 T H E F I R ST E D I T I O N Paris-Nice wasn’t even called Paris-Nice when it was created, but the taste for stage races linking distant parts of France and organised by newspapers meant that the ‘Six Jours de la Route’ would be a success.

There was no getting through the early stages and letting the hills of the Riviera decide the race in those days – Alphonse Schepers of Belgium led a five-man break into Dijon on the first stage, two and a half minutes ahead of another group of 17 riders. He would not relinquish the lead after then following up his stage win with three more second places. The sport was renowned for its brutal long stages in the first half of the 20th century, but the organisers already showed a taste for experimentation – the final stage into Nice, won by Francesco Camusso with Schepers safely home in sixth, was only 110km long.

the French public perplexing – the more Anquetil beat him, the more the public cheered for Poulidor.

In the 1966 Paris-Nice it looked as if Poulidor would get at least some modicum of revenge on his great rival. While the young Eddy Merckx, then the future Tour winner Roger Pingeon led early on, Poulidor took over the race lead on the eighth stage, beating Anquetil handily on the latter’s favoured territory, a 35km time trial. With just two days to go, Poulidor led Anquetil by 36 seconds, and he duly stuck like glue to Anquetil’s back wheel the following day.

B AT T L E O F T H E N E W P R O S 2019 wasn’t the first time a first-year professional by the name of Van der Poel made waves in professional cycling. In 1981, Mathieu’s father, Adrie van der Poel, was making an almost equally impressive debut as his son would 28 years later. Van der Poel was in the right place at the right time in the crucial stage 5 split to SaintÉtienne, winning the stage from a group with the peloton almost nine minutes behind. But it was another new professional, Stephen Roche, also in the

1966 T H E L A ST B AT T L E By 1966, Jacques Anquetil’s reign as the supreme Tour de France champion was coming to its end. He’d won the 1964 race in a head-to-head battle with Raymond Poulidor which split France into two unequal halves, but didn’t return in 1965 (even if Poulidor couldn’t take advantage of his absence by winning). Anquetil always found Poulidor’s greater popularity with

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Sean Kelly had asserted his position as the dominant Irish rider through the 1980s, but Stephen Roche was about to embark on a season for the ages Cold as ice up the Col de la République for Vandenbroucke, as snow falls during the 1998 race

group, who went into the overall lead, his Peugeot team having won the stage 4 TTT. Van der Poel took the white jersey the next day, on a stage which passed over Mont Ventoux, but Roche and Peugeot had the strength in numbers to ambush Van der Poel during the Riviera stages. Roche took the lead back on stage 8 and won the Col d’Èze time trial on the final day to cement his win, with Van der Poel in second.

overreached himself by attacking on the notoriously twisty descent of the Col du Tanneron on the Riviera and sliding off his bike. Duclos-Lassalle, who had been distanced, swept past and took over the race lead. However, Kelly proved stronger than the Frenchman on the Col d’Èze to win overall by 40 seconds. He would never again be defeated in the race, going on to win seven in total, and not returning after 1988.

1982

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K E L LY ’S F I R ST

T H E B AT T L E O F T H E I R I S H M E N

Cycling journalists speculated knowingly about Sean Kelly’s reaction to his young compatriot Stephen Roche winning the 1981 Paris-Nice. Until then, Kelly, who turned pro in 1977, had enjoyed a decent career, with stage wins in the Tour and Vuelta, but the feeling was that he was underachieving.

What better than a 21-year-old fellow Irishman winning Paris-Nice to sting him into action?

The 1982 race came down to a battle between Kelly and the 1980 winner Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle. Kelly held the upper hand, winning two of the first six stages, but he only led by a handful of seconds and he

Sean Kelly had asserted his position as the dominant Irish rider in the peloton through the 1980s, but Roche was about to embark on a season for the ages. Roche was brilliant, and inconsistent, and he’d been underachieving every bit as much had Kelly did earlier in his career. He got most of his big wins in one season, 1987, when he won the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, Tour de Romandie, Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and World Championships. His second places in Liège and Paris-Nice should both have been wins. Roche had led for most of the 1987 Paris-Nice, though a hiccup on Mont Faron had given Jean-François Bernard the white jersey for a day.

However, he retook the lead, and Kelly couldn’t be sure of beating him on the Col d’Èze. They talk about the luck of the Irishmen, but they didn’t specify which one – when Roche punctured at a crucial point on the Col de Vence, some thought Kelly could have done the honourable thing and sat up, but his Paris-Nice-winning streak was at stake. He pressed on, and Roche was definitively distanced. A win on the Col d’Èze was scant consolation for the disappointed Roche.

1989 INDURAIN ANNOUNCES HIMSELF Stephen Roche was on the comeback trail in 1989. The previous year had been a write-off, owing to an injury, but at ParisNice the chance for redemption, and a second overall victory to go with his 1981 title looked highly possible after he snuck through the dangerous first half of the race and contemplated the stage 5 summit

finish at Mont Faron. Nobody considered a mid-race breakaway by the thenunknown Miguel Indurain as a dangerous move, especially since the junction between peloton and Spaniard had almost been made by the foot of the climb.

However, the Spaniard resisted the best riders in the world, coming second, but ahead of Roche. In the GC, Roche was second, 23 seconds behind Marc Madiot, with Indurain another 22 seconds behind.

However, inter-team rivalries between the French squads broke up the race the next day and the beneficiary was Indurain, who slipped into the winning move and gained another minute, going into the lead. Roche was riding well enough to win the final day TT on the Col d’Èze, but he could only put 32 seconds into Indurain, who held on to win the overall by 13 seconds.

1996 T H E S H O R T- L I V E D R I VA L RY What the head-to-head rivalry of then classics specialists Lance Armstrong and

Laurent Jalabert lacked in longevity – both got waylaid, in Armstrong’s case by illness, and... you know the rest; Jalabert was developing into more of an all-rounder – it more than made up for in needle. (Not that kind of needle.)

The race was fairly straightforward, though the fact that the Col d’Èze had been taken off the route altered the structure a little. Jalabert and his ONCE team had been dominant through the early spring and the Frenchman used the grippy midrace stages in the Massif Central to hold Armstrong at bay. The American was the best of the rest, but Jalabert’s two stage wins, at Chalvignac and Millau, gave him a 30-second buffer that he would never relinquish. The pair finished second and third, a small advantage with Armstrong, on the flat final day time trial, behind Chris Boardman, but Jalabert had won his second overall title at a canter. However, the Frenchman had annoyed the Texan – Armstrong felt that Jalabert was treating him with disdain during the race, both on a personal level and through the level of dominance his team exercised. “I won’t be

Kelly would never again be defeated in the race, going on to win seven in total, and not returning after 1988

Seven-times champion Sean Kelly races up the regularly used Col d’Eze on the outskirts of Nice

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Wiggins’ 2012 victory marks the start of the Sky era of dominance, now up to six wins

going on holiday with Armstrong this year,” said Jalabert on the finish line.

1998 VA N D E N B R O U C K E I N T H E S N O W Paris-Nice’s moniker, the ‘Race to the Sun’ is often well deserved, with the final days marked by temperate Mediterranean conditions, blue skies and sunshine.

However, the race often has to pass through winter in the Massif Central to get there. In 1998, there was no extreme weather protocol; indeed the poor weather excited fans. The race kicked off in rain and five degrees, and by the middle days, it was two degrees and snowing. Nevertheless, the race went on, with a couple of neutralisations when it got too much, and with the snowy summit finish of the Col de la République defining the race. Belgian Franck Vandenbroucke had won the

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prologue and led all the way to that point.

On the République, he simply rode the rest of the peloton off his wheel to win on his own. By the top of the climb, the temperature was minus five. And as if that wasn’t enough, when the race got to the south, the Mistral started to blow, though at least it brought blue skies with it. The worst was over for Vandenbroucke and he held on to win, to become the first Belgian champion since Freddy Maertens in 1977.

2012 THE MODERN ERA BEGINS The 2012 edition wasn’t the close-run thing that makes a great race, but it marked the beginning of the current era of the sport.

Bradley Wiggins had come third the previous year, behind Tony Martin, in an edition dominated by the mid-race time trial. He was also the reigning Dauphiné

champion, and he was about to put together one of the most successful stageracing years of the modern era. Paris-Nice would be the first part of a series of wins also including the Tour de Romandie, Critérium du Dauphiné and the Tour de France. The most complicated phase of the race came early, when crosswinds split the field on the early stages. Shepherded through the danger by Geraint Thomas, then more of a classics specialist with a four-yearly appointment in the Olympic velodrome, Wiggins got to the Massif Central the best-placed of the favourites.

An untimely puncture at the bottom of the crucial climb to Mende threw a spanner in the works, and he was threatened all the way to Nice by Dutchman Lieuwe Westra.

But with the race returning to the Col d’Èze for a final day time trial, Wiggins was the favourite, and he won both the last stage and the overall. Including that win in 2012, Sky have won six out of eight editions.

M A T T I

B R E S C H E L

When I’m no longer a cyclist, I don’t know who I am. Who am I now? This question haunts Matti Breschel who, after 15 years as a professional cyclist, ended his career last year

Writer Victor Lindholm // Portraits Sigrid Nygaard

M AT T I B R E S C H E L

Image: CorVos.

M atti Breschel fought more than usual to stay competitive in the first Belgian classics of 2019. News programmes had reported that he was suffering from ankle problems, but gave no other insight into the drama that was the Dane’s life in February and March last year. The night after an unseasonably hot Omloop Het Niewsblad, he woke up with a swollen ankle, he couldn’t walk, and he was in excruciating pain. Panic and adrenaline pumped through his body, yet he didn’t dare go to his team doctor. He knew his spring season would be over if he revealed the swelling.

But there was no way around it. Breschel didn’t finish the next day’s KuurneBrussels-Kuurne.

Arthritis. That was the verdict from a dermatologist who Breschel sought out in 2013 because of a swelling in his finger joint; an illness which broke out on the night between March 2 and 3 2019, and which is the reason we’re sitting here at a bar in sunny Amager, Copenhagen with Breschel, who has just announced that he’s ending his career.

“I was completely trashed mentally and physically. I could barely walk, and I had to crawl up the stairs at home to get to bed.

I told my wife, Maria, that if my life was going to be like this, she was free to take off if she wanted. I won’t have anyone caretaking me. It was very dramatic,” he says of the months after the attack.

You can’t tell by looking at him.

Everything seems fine. The summer will last a little while longer, and he’ll be a cyclist for a little while longer. He still hasn’t competed in his last race, but the

76 Procycling / March 2020

arthritis is throbbing in his body. In August, he stopped taking his medication because it was destroying him: “I think I pretty much got depressed. I slept 15 hours a day, and I couldn’t do anything but sleep and train. It wasn’t a life,” he says. “I fought so hard with it, and I realised I had to stop.

That thought crept in slowly. It’s a thought I’ve been terribly afraid of, because I’ll lose my identity. In a way, I don’t know who I am when I’m not a cyclist.”

That’s the question: who does Matti Breschel become when he’s not a cyclist?

T H E D EAT H LI ST But let’s start somewhere else. Who was Matti Breschel as a cyclist? He comes from a family of cyclists. His grandfather was the first. Later, Breschel’s father trained and competed with the golden 90s generation with names like Bjarne Riis, Rolf Sørensen, Brian Holm, and Jesper Skibby, and he was the one who got Matti and his brother started. In his younger days, Breschel zoomed around the streets of Faxe, his village, on his dad’s old bikes. In 1996, aged 11, he joined Køge Cycling Ring, a local racing club that dates back to 1934, and from that day forward, the family spent every weekend and vacation driving from one race to another in an old panel van and sleeping in the back. A rugged life, but also a life Breschel fell in love with.

““I COULD BARELY WALK. I HAD TO CRAWL UP THE STAIRS TO GET TO BED” Behind a big pair of sunglasses, wearing a slightly unbuttoned polo shirt, Breschel talks about the early years of cycling. “I told my dad that I wanted to race when I was very little. We didn’t have a lot of money, and it takes both time and quite a lot of money to become a cyclist. He said that if he was going to help me, I had to do it 100 per cent. I was probably about 12 years

2009 Danish champion Breschel spent 11 years of his career with home team Saxo Bank

M AT T I B R E S C H E L

Image: Getty Images (left), Jered Gruber (right).

old, and I didn’t really understand what that meant.”

Matti’s father, Tom Breschel, comes from a generation of riders that his son describes as old fashioned. They didn’t talk about feelings a lot, and they glared at each other and puffed out their chests: “There wasn’t very much positive energy between competitors at the cycle races. It was a tough world. I was really drawn to it, and I didn’t think about it back then, but it was pretty wild. My dad once asked me to make a death list of my five worst contenders.

He had a bit of a screwed up approach to cycling,” he says.

Breschel laughs, but there is seriousness behind those words. Maybe his father had a screwed up approach to cycling, but that approach shaped one of Denmark’s most characteristic riders. He was known as an aggressive rider, a winner, a real puncheur.

That’s how Breschel was as a cyclist, and that’s how he will be for a little while longer, but he’s readjusting, and it’s difficult. He takes a sip from his beer before continuing: “I’ve always chased that damn victory. I’ve been second and third at the World Championships, and I’ve never won a classic. People always asked me when I was going to win one, but it never came, and I’m starting to realise that. There’s a little peevish voice in my stomach telling me that I’m not good enough, that the suffering is over. I’m beginning to give in to that voice.”

But it’s a surrender mixed with a kind of fear, and that brings us back to the question of who Matti Breschel becomes when he stops cycling. He’s a restless soul who

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always ran away from normality. He says he’s a little afraid of it and doesn’t thrive in it, but he knows that life after cycling will look different.

He left Faxe when he was 16 or 17 – first to work as a model, and then to live as a professional cyclist in Italy, and that’s the self-image which is now cracking: first the great talent, then the respected winner residing in Tuscany around Lucca among the greatest stars of the sport.

In 2018, Breschel moves home to Denmark, and that’s neither an easy decision nor an especially advantageous move in relation to his career. Initially, he moves to Lille Salby outside of Køge with Maria, and their three children. They move into an old country house which is Maria’s childhood home. “It Breschel (c) wasn’t easy moving had to settle for to Denmark. I had second place at the 2010 Worlds a romantic idea of a Not to be, after country home where Breschel crashes I could grow some at his home Tour of Denmark in 2017 vegetables and take

care of the garden a bit. My friends would drop by when they felt like it. But that didn’t happen, and I lost my motivation for it. It was hard moving from Italy and suddenly having to train for seven hours in the Danish rain,” he says.

It wasn’t just the climate that affected him, either. One day he was walking around in his garden, about to cut up a tree that had fallen over into a few other trees. He bought all the equipment: chainsaw, helmet and workwear. It’s easy to envisage: the thin, long-limbed cyclist with a heavy chainsaw under a grey and wet sky. He got going with the saw, but it got stuck. Despondently, he left it in the tree trunk and bought a new chainsaw.

That one got stuck, too. Frustrated and despairing, he took an axe to the tree to get it loose. But no – it was impossible. He made a careless move, and a branch went into his nose and gave him a nosebleed.

He tells the story with a smile, but it’s also symbolic of the end of his career: “I was completely down in the dumps.

M AT T I B R E S C H E L

I couldn’t do it any more. I told Maria we had to move into Copenhagen. I couldn’t train. I couldn’t do anything, and I couldn’t make it work.” Shortly after, the family moved to Copenhagen.

The person sitting across from me is searching. He becomes hesitant and doubtful whenever we talk about the future, and he finishes off our first meeting with these pertinent words: “I don’t know what I am when I have to say what I do now.

Who am I, now?”

I T ’S OV E R In 2006, Breschel broke his back in the Three Days of West Flanders when he collided with a steel barrier in a sprint against Australian Robbie McEwen. He was signed into a Belgian nuns’ hospital where he wasn’t allowed any medication stronger than over-the-counter pain relievers.

Apart from his back he also broke something in his groin, and his urine was full of blood afterwards. Because of the severe pain, he floated in and out of consciousness under a bleak wooden cross until his team doctor finally had him moved. It may be this kind of suffering Breschel is sick of dealing with. The suffering of training, torturing his body, and the constant risk of killing himself.

Understandable, and the man picking me up in his Mercedes is a man who’s done with suffering. Now it’s the middle of September, the heat has left us, and Breschel has officially quit cycling. He has competed in his last race.

We’re going for a walk in Kongelunden on the island of Amager. In the car on our way, we talk about his last race and the feeling in his body now. Have you figured out who you are? “I have a strange feeling.

My mind is really very settled now that it’s over, but my brain hasn’t really understood the situation yet,” Breschel says. “I went to bed early last night because I thought I had to get up and train, but of course I didn’t.

I got back up, opened a bottle of red wine, sat down to read, and went to bed at two o’clock. It was a feeling of pure freedom, but I don’t have an answer. I don’t know anything yet about how it’s going to be.

It’s scary. I’m not very Career change: good at thinking about the Dane learns the future. I never the ropes as a DS have been.” with EF Pro Cycling

We’re going along Amager Strandvej toward Copenhagen airport. The wind is rough, and I ask Breschel to describe his last race, the Bretagne Classic: “I arrived around three o’clock and cycled for an hour by myself along the coast by the bunkers from World War Two. It was raining, and I thought for a long time about how this was my last pre-race ride. The race itself was f*cking hard. It was these little northern French roads in Brittany where you can’t just follow along. I couldn’t finish, but I felt like a cyclist. Looking at the pictures, I can see that I maybe don’t look like one any more. I’ve already gained a little weight, and I’ve never been in such bad shape.”

Most of all, he’s relieved. It’s over, and he’s burned out. He tells me he has been very angry and short-tempered and probably not a very present father toward the end of his career, and being present is what he’d like to be able to be. Now it’s family first, but is that possible after so many years on the road?

TO GROW UP AGA IN We enter the path between the trees at Kongelunden. The great green oak trees sway in the wind while planes from Copenhagen Airport regularly drown out our conversation. Breschel starts going into specific detail about what’s going to

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change in his life. Among other things, he’s going to buy a calendar. He never needed one before.

“I’m actually in the process of growing up now, though it might sound odd. I’ve always had my life planned out by others, and that won’t work any more. I have to step into a normal life, and I’ll have to be more structured.”

He feels both nostalgia and an eagerness to leave the cycling world behind: “I think it’s scary that the peloton will just continue on without me. I’m history now. I’m one of the riders that used to ride. I’m just a name

““I’M HISTORY NOW..

I’M ONE OF THE RIDERS THAT USED TO RIDE”” in the books, but on the other hand, I’m also tired of being treated like a child.”

We walk out to the coast and arrive at a central point in Breschel’s life: his lack of belief in authority. Breschel is drawn to the romantic, and he’s a very traditionconscious cyclist who does things his own way, which over the years has brought him into some stupid situations, as he describes it. “I’ve trained and eaten like my father did. I’ve trained and eaten like Rolf Sørensen did. They were my heroes. They were the ones who led me, and I accepted their authority, but that was it.”

In cycling teams today, in many ways riders are treated like children. Someone controls your bedtime, someone decides what you can eat – and others control your movement patterns. You’re a number, an investment in a machine constructed to win. That’s the place cycling is in now. It’s not quite as spontaneous any more, and every little thing is constantly optimised.

That’s the kind of control Breschel has always run away from. “I have a hard time listening to someone who’s never been on

a bike, and I’ve never been able to resist boundaries. I’m looking forward to nobody telling me what to do when. I’m seeing the possibilities now and the freedom, but also the risk of the black hole that opens up under many people when they quit.”

It’s understandable for a grown man to get tired of being treated like a child, but that’s also one of the unknown factors in Breschel’s new identity. He has been a cyclist since he was 15, and what will he be like as an adult? Who is he, and what will his life look like?

“I keep saying that I don’t know who I am right now, and that’s pretty wild.

I don’t know what to say, but I’m losing something that I love. Why do I have to lose something I’ve always loved? Is that what life is like?”

A LITTLE SNIPPET OF THE FUTURE In Danish director Daniel Dencik’s film The Disappearing Act about Breschel, there’s a scene where Maria describes what it’s like living with a cyclist. When he’s been completely focused on a race, it’s been like living with a madman – a psychopath battling the laundry basket, she says.

“Just pretend you’re not a cyclist. Just pretend for a few days.” But that’s probably the problem Breschel sees with the future he’s facing. He has a hard time imagining anything else.

We drive into his childhood town of Faxe.

The sun is high in the sky, and he’s just got home from the Vuelta a España, and he has now seen a little snippet of his future. He’s been offered a job, as a sports director of his last team, EF Pro Cycling. Getting the role involves training and an exam. For this reason, he followed along as a trainee in the car in Spain.

It was an ambivalent experience: “It was really weird. Now I was no longer riding along with my team-mates. I didn’t have to eat like a cyclist. Now it was just red wine and french fries, I didn’t just have to sit there and poke at a salad. Sh*t, man.”

Breschel shows me around town and points to places in the town he ran away from. He rarely visits and doesn’t really like being here. We walk down toward Faxe lime pit with the photographer. On our way down to the quarry, the landscape changes

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dramatically. From town to a small green forest and finally the white quarry itself.

Breschel points to a grove. This is where he drank his first beers, smoked his first cigarette. He points up towards where a man once drove his car off the edge and killed himself. It’s a landscape of memories. The white limestone shines, and the water-filled lime lakes illuminate the scene with their azure colour. The old quarry, which has been mined for over 800

years, is still going. Trucks shuttle back and forth. Their drivers greet us. Not because they recognise Breschel, but because that’s what you do here.

Did you buy that calendar? “No, actually not, and that’s a bit of a problem,” Breschel replies. “During the Vuelta, I was part of organising it all. I’m suddenly the one with the responsibility, and I really hate planning, but it’s also part of my growth toward becoming an adult. I have to learn.

Imagine if the whole team missed the start because I can’t get myself together. That wouldn’t work.”

We walk around in the quarry for a while.

I wonder what it was like to grow up here. Did you swim in the lakes, did you run through the night on the pale lime?

Breschel quickly

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punctures my romanticising: “It wasn’t particularly great. It was Buffalo

shoes and mopeds.

It wasn’t a tough environment, but people did wear Schott jackets with the tags turned around, so you could see they were racists.”

That’s probably part of what Breschel is still running away from, but the question is whether the solution lies in the job as a sports director. He actually thought it was pretty boring to be there. The long days in the car and the bad food don’t really speak to him. But he also knows that he just started, and that he probably has to get used to it.

“I watched the riders, and I really just wanted to ride a bike, but that’s over and done with. I know what it takes, and that fire is out.” The fire is out, and maybe that’s a good thing.

We leave the quarry and head up through town. We’re hungry, and we’re going to eat lunch. Breschel is no longer a cyclist, so we can go to the Wine Cellar Grill and have two roast pork sandwiches and a soda without having to worry about the consequences.

We’ve met once a week for the past month, and now we’re nearing the end. We’ve talked ourselves full, but over the greasy pork loin, Breschel still has something to add: “I’m so tired of being an egotist. I’m full up with myself, and it’s time to start thinking about my family. I’m tired of competition, and I’m glad I got to live out my dream. I actually don’t care about the results now. F*ck ’em.”

Those are pretty incredible words from a man who always chased victory and who always ran on madness. We get back in the car and drive home toward Amager one last time. We drive across the countryside, avoiding the motorway. He shows me his old training routes, memories from childhood appear, and soon, very soon life as a professional cyclist, too, will be only a memory.

One day he might be riding around Lucca in Italy to show his old training routes to someone else. Maybe he’ll be an old man, his name only remembered by dedicated cycling fans. All the doubt that 35-yearold Matti Breschel has in this car will have become life, and the question will have been answered: Who is Matti Breschel?

Right now, we don’t know.

Image: Getty Images (inset)

Breschel (r) races in his final Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, March 2019

B R O D I E C H A P M A N

ONE STEP AT A TIME Writer: Sophie Smith Image: Chris Auld

She was brought up in the remote Brisbane rainforest, follows a vegan diet and entered cycling through mountain biking and downhill. But in just four years, Brodie Chapman has gone from road racing novice to WorldTour rider. Procycling meets the Australian who’s taking her rapid rise step by step

rodie Chapman is an unconventional star in the making. Ahead of her third classics campaign, but first with a WorldTeam, Chapman has set a daily reminder on her phone that reads: ‘Tokyo gold’. “Not for me,” the Australian laughs.

“But I think I can go in a good support role for Amanda Spratt and that’s pretty clear that’s what the plan would be.” She adds: “I’ve only been racing for three years.”

The spring classics double as Olympic qualifiers for Chapman, as she tells Procycling, and building towards them is also part of her integration with FDJ Nouvelle-Aquitaine Futuroscope. “For some people it’s a matter

B

of whether you make the Olympics or not but for me, I look beyond that to, ‘If I make the Olympics, am I just going, or am I going to truly play a role and help Amanda win a medal?

That’s what motivates me every day.”

Chapman in January is playing the team card well but there is no denying she is a born winner. On paper it appears the 28-year-old has just come across road cycling and with her raw talent deigned to experience it.

“I know it definitely appears that way.

I started riding road bikes when I was working in a bike shop. I was about 20. But I was never really interested in racing, it was nothing I knew about. I was really into mountain biking and downhill, four-cross, hanging out at the dirt jumps, fixed gear riding. I actually

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B R O D I E C H A P M A N

applied for a job there to buy a BMX, which I did in the end,” she says.

Chapman admits that she had reservations about road cycling before dabbling in Australia’s National Series (NRS) and then signing with UCI squad TibcoSilicon Valley Bank for the 2018 and 2019 seasons, competing across America and Europe.

“I didn’t really see professional women’s cycling as an option.

I thought it’s such a niche that I didn’t dream about it,” she says.

In reality though, Chapman has done the work to reach the WorldTour – remarkably in four years. She reminds me of Mark Cavendish when speaking about how she approaches goals. Both break things down to stepping stones; you can’t start at zero and go straight to 100. You begin at one, then two, three and four. Chapman did that the hard way, not coming through any institutionalised programmes like a lot of her peers.

“I remember writing down goals:

‘I want to get upgraded from B-Grade to A-Grade’. I think it’s still on my Instagram, the letter I got from Cycling Queensland saying you’ve made it to A-Grade. I was like, ‘This is it!’” she says.

“I made it to A-Grade and won some races in Queensland. I was like, okay, I want to go into the NRS, or the VRS [Victorian Road Series] even. So, I moved to Melbourne where there was going to be more racing, hoping to get into a VRS team. I bypassed that, and Holden Cycling took a bit of a chance on me and put me into the NRS team.

“I had written down in my diary, ‘I’m going to be a professional cyclist,’ but I often say yes to lots of things and follow where it takes me.

I worked really hard to get where I am, it didn’t just appear. I didn’t get talent scouted from another sport. I’m not saying it was easy it’s very hard to go into cycling.”

Chapman had mixed feelings until the 2018 Australian National Road Championships where she

“I had it written down in my diary: ‘I’m going to be a professional cyclist.’ I’m not saying it was easy - it’s very hard to go into cycling”

Representing Australia at the Olympics is a major goal this year Chapman in the gold and green of Australia at the Worlds last year

finished sixth. She then placed 15th at the ensuing Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race before the Herald Sun Tour - the platform that changed her life. Chapman was called in as a substitute, for now FDJ team-mate Lauren Kitchen, to play a support role in the national squad.

Instead she won the opening stage, finishing eight seconds clear of runner-up Annemiek van Vleuten, and went on to claim the race title.

“I was a bit naïve to exactly how it all operates. We didn’t have radios, so I took some opportunities, but I definitely didn’t go into the race trying to win,” she says.

A N AT U R A L I N S T I N C T Chapman competed on instinct.

“I know that’s obviously not how cycling works. If you get an instruction on the radio or you’ve got a very clear plan, then you do it.

But I initially got away on a climb where I was trying to set it up to come back. It was very early in the race, so it wasn’t something you expect to win from,” she continues.

“I felt like I’d been itching. I knew I was quite good, but I had no point of comparison and neither did anyone else. I’d hardly done any racing in Australia or outside of Australia at all. It was just like my legs were ready to go and see what I could do. It was good to be in a field of really strong riders and [know] where I stood.”

Ironically, it was road captain Kitchen who helped recruit Chapman to FDJ this season.

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“I knew her from there [Herald Sun Tour] and then having followed her and knowing her as a person from that time, I’ve seen how she is in the team and that’s quite a big thing for me. Her traits as a rider, and then her wanting to progress, suited what our team needs,” says Kitchen.

“Now we have Cecilie Ludwig for the finals and Brodie is working on attacking long and that’s why she’s been doing it in the last races, with the intention of when we get to Europe, for the big races, she can then do that with Ludwig behind.

“I’m working on that plan so then she’s confident to do that.”

Chapman opened her 2020 season competing in Australia’s ‘summer of cycling’. She placed ninth at the national road race behind winner Amanda Spratt, was 33rd at the Tour Down Under and won Race Torquay, which is a prelude to the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race where she

1 st 2018, Herald Sun Tour, stage 2018, Herald Sun Tour 2019, Gravel and Tar La Femme 2019, Tour of the Gila, stage (2) 2019, Tour of the Gila 2019, Tour de Feminin 2020, Race Torquay

3rd 2019, Herald Sun Tour, stage 2019, Herald Sun Tour 2019, Colorado Classic, stage

2nd 2019, Tour of the Gila, stage 2019, Colorado Classic, stage 2019, Colorado Classic

Procycling / March 2020 87

A quick learner: Chapman adapts instantly to the pro road scene at the Herald Sun Tour

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B R O D I E C H A P M A N

Happy Chapman after her first major win at the Herald Sun Tour in 2018

finished 10th. We’re speaking, after the women’s Down Under, in the same hotel lobby where Chapman, during a spell as a writer and digital editor, once interviewed an emerging Caleb Ewan.

The 2019 Tour of the Gila champion thinks like a winner but has a broader perspective than someone who left school as a teenager and has lived in a cycling bubble ever since. That she has found a harmony between the bubble and the real world is rare.

“I remember seeing those AIS [Australian Institute of Sport] selection camps wishing I’d known about it. I came into professional cycling a lot later than everyone else. I feel like I’ve had a good bunch of experiences early in my life and dabbled in everything, so now I know I’ve arrived purely because I’ve worked to be here and want to be here. It was an opportunity among many,” she says.

The 2019 Tour de Feminin stage winner has been a vegan for more

than a decade and is well read on sports nutrition as a result, especially when it comes to a job that she used to have to take annual leave to do.

“I found out about how cruel the industry was to animals and decided that I don’t want to ever be a part of supporting that, and the way I can do that is just by changing what I eat,” she says.

“I work with a registered sports dietician and she helps me make sure I’m getting enough calories.

“You can get all your nutrients and calories from vegetable food.

You just have to eat more than you think. People love to comment on that. ‘Are you going to eat all those oats?’ And I’m like, ‘Absolutely!’”

Chapman was raised in Mount Glorious, a rural area about 30km out of Brisbane, Queensland, in the middle of the rainforest with a population, according to a 2016 census, of 296 people.

“It’s up in a rainforest. My primary school was about 40 kids,

“My primary school was about 40 kids,give or take. We pretty much just ran wild in the rainforest and spent most of our time outdoors” give or take. We pretty much just ran wild in the rainforest and spent most of our time outdoors,” she says.

“It’s an alternative community in many ways; there is a reason people go live up there. But I’m most grateful for my respect for nature, animals and wildlife, [it’s] what I really learned up there the most.

A lot of the values I was brought up on are now becoming a lot more mainstream but to me they were just the way I was brought up. We always had to sort our rubbish and recycle, you never disrespected nature. You had to learn to respect dangerous snakes and spiders that were in the house.”

PAV I N G H E R WAY Chapman’s mother is a sign language interpreter and her father is a manager at a mental healthrelated not-for-profit. No one in her immediate family has an affinity with cycling but are all “super active people”. Chapman’s mum and sister accompanied her to the Grafton to Inverell Classic the first year organisers allowed women to contest the full 228km distance.

“I think about six of us entered, women, in men’s C-Grade,” she recalls. “[I] rolled turns, tried to apply all the things I’d learned on bunch rides. I rolled in, I think, eighth overall in that grade, so it was pretty affirming. It was a good challenge and paved the way for that event now to really include women’s participation a lot more and offer prize money and recognition.”

Kitchen believes Chapman, who describes herself as something between a climber and puncheur, will succeed at FDJ. “She has a different background having not come through juniors or been on a bike her whole life, so I think that makes it interesting as well. She wants to race her bike and that’s what we need. We need this spark,” she says.

“Brodie in a sense is a young rider in the sport. [I’m] trying to tap into what she can do, help her progress and get the most out of her in a way that will also benefit the team.”

While Chapman is just getting started, she’s also conscious of time.

“I’d love to win in the future.

I would love to win Liège-BastogneLiège, Flèche Wallonne, an Olympic gold. But I’m looking realistically at my career, like, how long have I got? I’m 28 now, the next Olympics is in Paris, which is likely to be flat, so my goal at the moment is to build myself into a strong time trialist.

I would love to aim for world championship and Olympic medals in that discipline.”

If there is one thing Chapman has proven she can do, it’s achieve a goal.

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PAT R I C K B E V IN

After a breakthrough 2019, capped with fourth at the Worlds TT, New Zealander Patrick Bevin tells Procycling about earning his place in Europe, becoming an expert of his craft and why time trialling is anything but boring

OF TI E Interview Patrick Fletcher Image Chris Auld

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he opportunity to make it out of New Zealand was small. Basically, no one had done it without the track. Our cycling federation is very track focused.

It’s a great programme with a lot of resources but it wasn’t their priority to develop road guys. We had enough, as young riders, to develop, but to come to Europe and get opportunities was really hard – it was hard to show you were worth coming onto a team. You have to remember, when you leave New Zealand to go to Europe, you’re going to the other side of the world, and it’s hard, financially. You don’t want to be one of those horror stories, where guys go to club teams and end up in an absolute mess.

You want to go somewhere you can actually get better – not just race a kermesse in Bevin gets the better Belgium and go no of the likes of Ewan further. So you end and Sagan at the 2019 up probing for Tour Down Under

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opportunities that just aren’t there.

You think ‘what do I do?’, and you come up short.

I felt a bit stuck, and that’s why I ended up going to the USA at 18 to race for Bissell. It was a Continental team run by a New Zealander, Glenn Mitchell, so I was looked after, but I was kicking around thinking, ‘It’s a laugh, I can see the world,’ and I fully expected to be back at university at some point. I had a nice time there but it ran its course after three years. The racing scene slowed down and the team stopped.

I ended up coming back to New Zealand and joined Avanti Racing in Australia, living out of a suitcase between there and home. Avanti was something of a pipeline.

They had a race programme where they could give guys opportunities. It was the first time I’d been on a team trying to push guys into the WorldTour.

I can’t imagine what my parents must have been thinking. They don’t really understand cycling, but they supported me, they persevered. I wouldn’t change

“If, deep down, you didn’t truly believe you were going to make it, you’d hang it up and go down the path of least resistance” things now, which is easy to say once you’ve made it to the WorldTour. At the time, though, you just don’t know. There’s no one there telling you how to do it.

You’re on one side of the world trying to race, and trying to live on the other. You just kind of follow your nose, keep racing, and never forget it’s about racing your bike. I didn’t really know, but if deep down you didn’t truly believe you were going to make it, you’d hang it up and go down the path of least resistance. In my year of riders, I think I’m basically the only one still racing.

When I made it to the WorldTour with Cannondale in 2016, it didn’t really feel like I’d ‘arrived’ - it was more like I’d just gone through the next door and started again at the bottom. There were

PAT R I C K B E V IN

ups and downs. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t living out of a suitcase, but I underestimated how hard it is being so far away from home. It’s easy to say, ‘Ah it’s a long way’, but it goes deeper than that. You have to settle here, balance your life, and do it in a brand new environment.

The biggest struggle was coming out of a good year and all of sudden being thrown into the WorldTour, and probably trying to change too much. That’s kind of the mentality when you come to these teams, and you go with it because that’s what you’re told.

I sought out the opportunity to come to BMC. My two years at Cannondale were up and I wanted to go to a team that focused more on time trials, so I pushed for months and months to come here. I kind of kept knocking on the door until they signed me. It’s hard to sell yourself as a time triallist without results. It’s a double-edged BMC was known for sword; you’re not its time trialling going to get the prowess, which is why results without the Bevin pushed to join

the guy who covers the distance in the shortest time wins the race – but the amount that goes into that is staggering.

Attention to detail really matters – it can be the difference between finishing second and 24th. There are two main elements to time trialling: power and aerodynamics. Everyone is here because they have a good engine, so it’s about making the most of the technical side, which is where some teams have got left behind. I’ve seen big improvements here, and a lot of it is down to the support I’ve had, the equipment, the testing, the focus.

The power numbers haven’t changed much – it comes down to applying it better.

Bevin got his WorldTour big break in the green of Cannondale in 2016

support, and you’re not going to get the support without the results. It was tough, but I persevered just long enough. We had that whole thing with Cannondale potentially folding, so the market was suddenly flooded with riders and you’re trying to go to one of the best teams in the world, so it was touch and go. I was pretty much the last guy onto the boat at BMC. Time trialling really lends itself to guys who focus on it. It’s hard to convey just how many moving parts there are and how complicated it is, because it looks simple –

I’ve become more or less a student of aerodynamics and physics in the last three years. The internet is a great resource – people love giving this stuff away for free! There’s a wealth of data out there, and I try to glean as much as you can from it, from other guys, and other sports.

It’s not a quick fix, and it’s not one size fits all. It’s forever changing, and we’re forever learning. There are so many pieces of this puzzle that have to keep going back together. Even with the team’s resources, you really have to push, because the percentages get smaller and smaller and smaller the further up the results sheet you go.

A majority of my training has been self directed for the past 18 months now, which is another interesting one. Obviously you use what’s around you, but you want to keep looking at the problem and solve the problem, because it comes down to never being happy with your results. You always want to be better, and you simply can’t do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.

I definitely drive the mechanics mad with my tinkering. For a while there, I don’t think I did two races on the same set-up. Again, over the off-season we’ve just made huge changes, going right

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“You want to win – anything, everything.

Whether you make it or not, that’s sport, that’s life, but you keep pushing until you find out”

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PAT R I C K B E V IN

back to the basics, like crank length. You can’t be afraid to innovate and improvise.

If I was happy with fourth at the Worlds [in 2019], I wouldn’t change a thing.

Innovation is tough because you have to hang yourself out there, and there’s no guarantee the next thing is a better thing until you race it, but I love it. It’s an awesome part of our sport, to be pushing into and finding out how fast you can go.

The biggest click came at the 2018 Vuelta al País Vasco. I was second in the TT there and second in California a month later. It was like, ‘Okay, I can legitimately post these results,’ which is what I’d been trying to sell for six months. I gained consistency... That’s been my thing: steadily grinding away and getting better.

In 2019, crashes at the Tour Down Under and Tour de France put big holes in my season. It was nice to come back at the end of the season with fourth at the World Championships, but it was frustrating because I was in triage mode. It was a good result, and it was a step forward, having been eighth the previous year, but it’s disappointing when you can’t say ‘that was my best performance as an athlete’ only ‘that was my best performance in the circumstances’.

How far can I go? We will find out.

That’s the game, isn’t it? It’s trending in the right direction and that’s been

BEVIN’S BEST TIME-TRIAL RESULTS YEAR

RACE

2019 2019 2019 2019 2019 2019 2018 2018 2018 2018 2017 2016

World Championships Vuelta a España, stage Tour de Suisse, stage Tour de Suisse, stage Tour de Romandie, stage National Championships World Championships Tour of California, stage Tour of the Basque Country, stage Abu Dhabi Tour, stage Tour de Suisse, stage National Championships

RESULT 4th 2nd 5th 8th 4th 1st 8th 2nd 2nd 8th 10th 1st

satisfying, but the goal is to win, and you have to believe you can. If there wasn’t a part of you, deep inside, actually wanting to win you’d go a different direction – especially with time trialling, because it’s so hard, for so little reward.

You want to win – anything, everything.

Whether you make it or not, that’s sport, that’s life, but you keep pushing until you find out. I guess for me there’ll come a time when it’s like, the power’s not getting any better, the equipment’s not getting any better; that’s the peak of my performance. I don’t think I’m there yet, and there’s still a lot left.

Because, while others have been time triallists since forever, this has been a two-year project for me here.

Time trialling is human performance, without the circus that is pro cycling.

People want the drama; I don’t want the drama. Fundamentally, for me as an athlete, time trialling is very pure. There are no gimmes – you don’t accidentally win one, it doesn’t fall your way due to tactics. The best guy on the day wins, no matter what. To say it’s boring is pretty unfair until you see guys going 55km/h on a bicycle, unassisted. That’s pretty amazing. Until you see what’s behind it, it’s too easy to basically want reality TV played out in sport. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but, at the end of the day, it’s a very pure human performance aspect of our sport that’s incredibly hard to master, and I guess it’s about mastering something. It’s almost not about winning; it’s about finding out how far you can go.

It’s a funny mixture of measuring yourself, but wanting to be the best. You’re measuring how good you can be, but against a benchmark. At the Worlds last year, that benchmark was very clearly Rohan Dennis, but I’m not as far 2019 was a season of bad luck and injury off him as the for Bevin, starting with result suggested. a crash Down Under

“Time trialling is very pure. There are no gimmes – you don’t accidentally win one, it doesn’t fall your way due to tactics” 2020 is a great year to be a time triallist.

You have three at the Giro, then the Olympics and the Worlds. With Romandie then the Giro, you have five TTs in five weeks. You’re going to see all the top time triallists lining up at the same events throughout the year, and I love that. In previous years time trialling has been slightly neglected but I feel we’re back with some great sporting courses – there’s a great variety of time trials and we’re going to see everyone lining up at them.

It was disappointing to miss the Tour Down Under this year [with a cardiac arrhythmia]... I feel completely fine now, and it’s just a matter of rest and recovery to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

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The enemy within The Epstein Barr virus can lead to mononucleosis and be career-changing for a professional cyclist.

Procycling looks into an illness that has affected multiple riders and which has no cure Writer Fran Reyes // Illustration Peter Strain

E P S T E I N B A R R

n February 9, 2016. Beñat Intxausti landed in the Canary Islands, fresh from doing a few races in Spain on his debut for Team Sky. The Basque rider had placed third in the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana, sharing the podium with his team-mate Wout Poels.

Knowing the weather in his home region of Bizkaia was going to be grim, he decided to fly to Gran Canaria for a solid week of training before travelling back to the Iberian Peninsula and racing in the Vuelta a Andalucía. His target was the Giro d’Italia, where he had won two stages in different editions and even worn the maglia rosa.

“I came back home on Monday, flew on Tuesday, then woke up ill on Wednesday,” Intxausti tells Procycling. “At first it was just a headache and flu-like symptoms, like feeling sore and uneasy in your muscles. I thought it was mere fatigue, so I went out for a normal training ride. After two hours, I was dead.” And so it began.

You may not be aware, but it is quite likely that you carry the EpsteinBarr Virus (EBV) in your body. “By age five, 95 per cent of the world’s population already has the antibodies for EBV in their body,” says José Ramón Yuste, infectious diseases doctor at the Clínica

Universidad de Navarra, a cuttingedge medical facility in Pamplona.

“Most people first encounter the virus in their early years. But they don’t notice, as most EBV infections are asymptomatic in kids.”

It’s by age 15 that EBV infections manifest more promptly. “We call it the ‘kissing disease’ because it transfers from one body to the next via saliva, by those first kisses of a teenager or by simply sharing a glass of water,” explains Yuste.

“Mononucleosis, or glandular fever, is one of the many ways EBV surfaces. Commonly, it’s the one that arises when the individual first gets infected. Its symptoms are fever, a sore throat, and headaches.

It heals spontaneously, and usually for the better. But the virus stays

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Image: Getty Images.

At the Giro in 2015, Intxausti won a stage and wore the KOM jersey

E P S T E I N B A R R

Image: Getty Images.

in the body forever, and sometimes it can resurface again with different symptoms.”

Mononucleosis can easily be confused with winter flu and it goes away quickly, within weeks or even days. “The older the individual, the more acute the symptoms are,” stresses Yuste. “Although under normal conditions, the body gets back to normal as EBV gets under control thanks to T-lymphocytes.”

However, if the individual is an older sportsperson, this may not be the end of the story. “Normally, exercise improves immunological response and diminishes the risk of infection. But endurance exercise such as that of a cyclist has the opposite effect as it alters T-lymphocytes. When EBVinfected cells unleash, they replicate and this provokes an inflammatory response that reduces sporting performance.”

As things stand, there is no universal way to prevent or at least control the damage Epstein-Barr

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“It was one step forward, one step back.

I slowly got into a vicious cycle in which there were no deadlines” BEÑAT INTXAUSTI

In 2018 Intxausti raced only four times, once at the Hammer Series

virus might do to an elite athlete.

There are so few cases of chronic, intense EBV that there is not enough research as to find a definitive treatment. In other words: there is no cure. At this point, medicine becomes a sort of art in which experience and intuition take the reins to find an ad hoc solution for the struggling individual. “In specific cases, we are deploying a strategy to prevent the replication of EBV,” explains Yuste.

“In short, we employ the treatment we would normally use for other viruses. But this is not a recommended treatment for EBV, as

there isn’t enough evidence to prove its worth.” In America, the National Institutes of Health is looking for a vaccine. But there is relatively little research and lots of uncertainty around this disease.

Thor Hushovd was 34 when, in March 2012, he contracted EBV and suffered the subsequent mononucleosis. “In hindsight, I think a cold I had was the beginning of it,” says the 2010 world champion.

“I spent three days in bed, just resting and sleeping, something I hadn’t done since I was a kid.

I later recovered and performed okay in the classics, nothing special, then took a break with my sights set on the Giro d’Italia.

I remember one ride after ParisRoubaix. Just an hour of training was enough to completely smash me. I came home, laid on the couch and slept for three hours straight.”

It took Hushovd two full years to find out what he thought was a simple cold was actually mono.

The Epstein-Barr virus is hard to diagnose, as its symptoms are easy to confuse with many other illnesses and, even if it remains in the individual’s system forever, neither the virus nor the antibodies are evident in regular testing.

“I was desperate for a while,” says the Norwegian. “It came down to a point where I wished I had an answer to what was wrong with me, even if it was a bad one. I wanted someone to tell me I had a heart

condition. But that didn’t happen, and my body kept working badly.”

Mark Cavendish had a similar experience. He was first diagnosed with EBV infection in April 2017 and, after he was given clearance, it took him more than a year to find out EBV was hampering his performances in 2018 too.

Intxausti, who was 30 when he got infected, was relatively luckier.

“Within 15 days, I underwent a battery of tests and the team’s physician diagnosed me with mono.

I was told my recovery would last for a month.”

The only known treatment is for a full rest until the glandular fever goes away and the body learns how to get along with the virus. But this

is not easy, especially for a professional athlete. “‘You need to be patient,’ they told me,” Intxausti says. “But, as the weeks went by, I only felt worse.”

The problem with EBV is that the feeling of fatigue doesn’t necessarily completely or permanently go away: it vanishes to later materialise again. “On the bike, one day I was okay and the next turned out awful,” explains Hushovd. “It was up and down the whole time, and that’s the most frustrating part”.

Intxausti shares the same feeling: “It was one step forward,

Hushovd made the decision to end his career during the 2014 classics

one step back. I slowly got into a vicious circle in which there were no deadlines, recovery time or return date. The recovery process was out of my control. And all I could do was be patient.”

The Basque rider tried different strategies to deal with the feeling of sickness: “Sometimes I set

“I wished I had an answer for what was wrong me, even if it was bad” THOR HUSHOVD

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E P S T E I N B A R R

Image: Kristoff Ramon (top left), Getty Images (bottom left), Bettini Photo (top right).

SUPPORT STRUCTURE Epstein Barr needs treatment and rest so that the body can heal itself, but it’s also important to consider treatment for the mind. When giving an account of how he dealt with EpsteinBarr virus, Beñat Intxausti makes a point on how important the support of his teams and the company of his girlfriend were to overcome the condition. “My girlfriend is the person I have to thank the most,” he stresses. “She has stood by my side during this whole situation, overseeing me 24 hours a day for almost three full years.”

The case of Esteban Chaves is paradigmatic.

For the Colombian, mononucleosis was the nadir of a long period of adversity. “Perhaps the pressure for the results, perhaps the injuries I suffered, perhaps the people I lost on the way or the combination of all that led me to a point at which I hated cycling,” he says in the ‘Behind the Smile’ documentary released by Scott Sports in September 2019. The Colombian decided to spend his recovery time at home with his family and friends to bounce back.

“I had hit rock bottom. Now I’m grateful I can ride for seven hours and enjoy it. And I couldn’t have done it without my family.”

One picture tells the whole story. It was taken in the Giro d’Italia 2019, and shows Chaves addressing the media while his parents merge into an intense, emotional hug. It was not captured atop San Martino di Castrozza, where the Colombian rider won a stage, but rather two days before in Anterselva, where he was the runner-up to Ag2r’s Nans Peters. That’s the moment when Chaves and his family realised he had overcome EBV - and the personal life crisis that coincided with it.

100 Procycling / March 2020

sporting goals for myself, but I never accomplished them.

I couldn’t even live a normal life.

I got tired pretty quickly when I was on my feet. I slept poorly because of headaches. My mood was affected, also - I’d say it was not an outright depression, but I was blue, lowspirited and despairing. I had grown tired of my situation, of my bike, of my routine. Occasionally I wished to give myself a break and go on a trip for the weekend. But, when I did that, I still felt awful. I was too tired to be outdoors, and too bored of staying indoors. The worst of it was I didn’t know what to do to feel better. I couldn’t control my body, nor my life.

“And it’s also hard to watch the sport from the sidelines,” Intxausti continues. “Even if the team is understanding and supportive, as it was, it sits uncomfortably to be paid a salary while being unable to race or even train properly. So I asked the coaches to race because I needed to feel I was part of the group.”

In 2017, Intxausti volunteered to go to two races for which Sky was short of riders. In the first one, Clásica San Sebastián, he lasted 100 kilometres. In October he raised his hand to attend the Tour of

Guangxi. On stage 1, a flat ride around Beihai, he got dropped by the bunch and was the last rider to reach the finish, more than seven minutes behind the winner. He pulled out on stage 2. “Any time I pinned a number on to my back, my heart told me I could finish the race somehow - but my mind, and reality, said otherwise.”

In 2018, the Spanish National Championships were one of the four events he attended. While his presence in the road race was a token, in the individual time trial he focused his race on getting to the midway point, so he could at least provide a guide for his team-mate Jonathan Castroviejo.

In late 2018, Esteban Chaves got in touch with Intxausti to find out about his experience with EBV. The Colombian had caught it at some point during the Giro d’Italia that year. The ‘Corsa Rosa’ had been a dramatic race for the Colombian he tasted glory when he won atop Mount Etna in a one-two with team-mate Simon Yates, and then defeat when he nosedived to the bottom half of the GC as the race

E P S T E I N B A R R

went on. The final stage in Rome was his last race of the season as his team, Mitchelton-Scott, communicated he was sick on the eve of the Vuelta a España, which had originally been a big target.

The Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in February 2019 was the scene for Chaves’s comeback. He was nowhere near victory, but he was able to contribute to victories

by Matteo Trentin and Adam Yates as a domestique. Chaves was, as his DS Laurenzo Lapage put it at the time, “starting from scratch”.

After those hard times, Chaves got back to somewhere approaching his best in the same race that had knocked him out a year previously, by triumphing from the breakaway in a mountain stage at the Giro.

There is a way out of the tunnel for those who get Epstein-Barr virus late in their sporting lives. Not everyone finds it, however. “In my case, it was after suffering a lot in E3 Harelbeke in 2014 that I decided to stop racing at the end of the season,” explains Hushovd. “Some months later my team, BMC, which was very supportive throughout the whole process, sent me to the United States to further test my health.

I sat down with a different doctor who looked at the whole picture with a new pair of eyes, and he realised all my symptoms correlated with having an EBV infection.” But it was too late: Hushovd had already called it quits.

As for Intxausti, he joined Euskadi-Murias in 2019 after three full years of struggle. At the modest

Basque outfit he landed on his feet, taking on a mentorship role while still struggling to finish most races.

Yet at some, like the Volta ao Alentejo, he could play a fuller part in his team’s strategy. “I worked along with my team-mates and we won three stages with Enrique Sanz. I even caught a breakaway on the last day. It felt wonderful.”

Even if the damage Epstein-Barr virus has done to some cyclists’ careers is irredeemable, there are some positives to it. “I’ve come to know myself and my mindset better,” says Intxausti. “Having

Chaves marks his comeback from illness with a win at the Giro in 2019

Mark Cavendish has one win since being diagnosed with Epstein Barr

“It’s hard to watch the sport from the sidelines... It sits uncomfortably to be paid a salary while being unable to race” BEÑAT INTXAUSTI

been this f*cked up has helped me realise how lucky I am in my normal life. I don’t complain any more when I’m training and it rains.

I’ve come to appreciate things I wouldn’t notice before. I’ve realised what I am capable of and how much I love riding, and cycling.” What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, even in the case of an enemy we carry within.

“And, to anyone who might undergo the same process as me, I can only advise him or her to relax and be patient,” he continues. “Everything goes past, everything heals, and time’s arrow marches forward to deliver you where you need to be.”

However, at the start of 2020, Intxausti announced his retirement at a press conference, aged 33, citing Epstein Barr. “After a long time since the disease, with recoveries and relapses, this past year I took it as a last chance. Now I look forward with optimism,” he said.

Procycling / March 2020 101

RETRO ANDREI TCHMIL

BEAST FROM THE EAST Andrei Tchmil remains one of only 11 riders in cycling history who have won Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Procycling looks back at the life and career of one of the toughest riders who ever lived Writer William Fotheringham Image Offside Sports Photography/l’Equipe

ome classic wins are pure works of art, and Andrei Tchmil’s victory in the 1999 MilanSan Remo is one of those. With about 700 metres remaining, the compact rider in the lime green and orange Lotto jersey surges up the left of the lead group. It’s a textbook attack from about four places back in the line, as the riders jostle for position in the build-up to the sprint they all know is coming, and which they all know will be won by Erik Zabel, as it had been the previous two years.

“Everyone was afraid to take off, but he made a clear move and won it,” recalls Max Sciandri, who finished 21st.

However, there was much more to it than that. Tchmil had come fifth in 1998 behind Zabel, but 1999 was a subtly different context, although superficially the same with a large group contesting the finish.

Marco Pantani had put in a big attack on the Cipressa, and the intense pace that move created had whittled down the front group. “There were sprinters without gregari, and gregari without sprinters,” says Tchmil. “I’d come over the Poggio in about fifth, so I knew that I was very strong. I wanted to attack there, but didn’t want to risk it.” One year, he had had a duel on the descent with

S

another rider; both had been caught on the run-in. That stuck in his mind.

“Gabriele Colombo attacked, and then Beat Zberg, I thought it was a good moment to go after Zberg went.

I was ready to go, I looked behind, and saw Sciandri on my wheel. I’d beaten him at Paris-Tours a couple of years before; he would either let me go or I’d have a good chance against him in a sprint. I knew Zabel was behind me; I said to my team-mate Jo Planckaert, ‘Don’t follow me,’” Tchmil says. “When we caught Colombo that created the moment. We slowed slightly - from 47kph to 45kph when we got to the left turn on the Via Roma, where the gregari would normally start to pull, like they did the year [Mario] Cipollini won. And I went.”

Twenty years on, the images of Tchmil holding off the peloton are classic, in both senses. He hangs tight to the barriers on the right - the wind is coming from that side, and he said later he wanted to use the spectators for shelter. As he negotiates the final chicane, he casts two rapid glances over his shoulder, but never looks for long enough to disrupt his pace for a second. At the finish he is barely The torrid conditions didn’t stop Tchmil two lengths ahead of Zabel, who will winning the 1994 go on to win La Classicissima for Paris-Roubaix

I N A S S O C I A T I O N W I T H

102 Procycling / March 2020

RETRO ANDREI TCHMIL

the next two years. Tchmil is the man who stops him winning five in a row.

This was Tchmil’s third major classic win after the 1994 Paris-Roubaix and the 1997 Paris-Tours. He would win one more, the following year: the Tour of Flanders. The depth of his recall of those wins speaks volumes for the way he lived those races. San Remo, you sense, was the most complex of the four.

“I was always in the first 10 at San Remo when I didn’t crash or puncture,” Tchmil says from his home in Moldova. “But there was always someone faster, someone leading out the sprint. I realised that I had no chance to win unless it was a group of maybe 12 or 13.

But it was always good weather, not like in 1991 when Chiappucci attacked on the coast and won.

I knew I couldn’t win a sprint and it wasn’t going to be decided by a climb, so I had to prepare myself.”

All that spring, he got ready. “At Paris-Nice that year I won a sprint by waiting until the final kilometre and I knew that sometimes when you attack in the finale, people aren’t ready.” Like others, he talks with relish about the challenge of San Remo, the need to save your strength for seven hours, but to crack the position paradox: you don’t want to be so far back in the bunch that you waste energy sprinting out of corners, but you don’t want to catch too much wind at the front.

Tchmil was a rider with the ability to win a race pretty much every which way. Roubaix 1994 came in a marathon 60km break after a duel with Johan Museeuw. In 1999

he took the opening stage of Paris-Nice in a sprint from a small group that was dominated by the Rabobank team, who had taken the race apart in the crosswinds. MilanSan Remo was a classic late move to stymie the sprinters; two years later, he outwitted Sciandri at the end of ParisTours, while Tchmil’s final major win, Flanders 2000, was a solo victory not dissimilar to that of Alberto Bettiol 19 years later: just him, on his own, pursued by an elite group, each of whom was hoping that someone else would make an effort to close a gap.

“In the back end of a classic, the one guy you didn’t want to see coming up on you was Tchmil,” says Sciandri, now a directeur sportif at Movistar, who found himself in precisely that situation when he attacked over the final climb in Paris-Tours in 1997, to be joined by Tchmil shortly afterwards. Seemingly resigned to his fate, Sciandri finished second to the Lotto leader.

“He had more balls than me,” recalled Sciandri. “At a certain point in the finale he said he was going to stop pulling; I kind of hesitated and he attacked. He was not a guy you wanted to be sprinting against after 240km. He was very, very strong mentally. He made it on his own.”

“I was fascinated by the classics: the battle for position, the effort before the climbs, the tactics between the big riders”

Tchmil was born in Khabarovsk, close to the USSR’s border with China, but was raised at the other end of the bloc in Odessa, a cosmopolitan Ukrainian port which is home to the Black Sea fleet and has a celebrated opera house. His mother was a soprano at the opera and as a child he read the works of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. He recalled hiding in a box backstage at the opera house in order to meet his mother. He was fascinated by painting and once, at a race in Spain, he bought an Adoration of the Magi and had it transported back to Belgium in the team truck. He swapped nationalities several times - from Russian, through Moldovan and Ukranian to Belgian.

“He was a bit different to the other Russian guys who came over with Alfa Lum - a bit more European in a way,” believes Sciandri. It was in Moldova, where his grandmother lived, that Tchmil began to race; he turned professional in Italy but remains the last Belgian winner of Milan-San Remo. For the bulk of his career he raced for Belgian teams: SEFB, GB-MG, and finally Lotto. The turning point came when the Alfa Tchmil (c) is flanked Lum experiment ended after two

by Zabel and Spruch years in 1990. Most of the riders on the Milan-San transferred elsewhere in little Remo podium

I N A S S O C I A T I O N W I T H

104 Procycling / March 2020

mercurial Jean-Luc Vandenbroucke; Patrick Lefevere and Museuuw at GB-MG. Arguably, the last two were the biggest influences. At the end of 1993, having ridden two relatively low-key years at the GB-MG super-team for Lefevere, Tchmil finished sixth in the World Championships at Oslo.

That should have secured him a new contract, but in the view of Lefevere and Museeuw he had ridden on his own account rather than helping to enable a victory for the captain of his trade team. It was one of those classic conflicts of interest that the Worlds throws up. “When I came back from Oslo, Lefevere threw me out. It had a huge effect on me. I can never forget the moment when he told me I wouldn’t race for them any more. Some guys would have been destroyed by that, psychologically, but it had the opposite effect.

“I got very, very angry and spent the winter training.

I went running, I went to the gym, I did everything I could to make them pay the next year with the results I would get. It wasn’t anger that was directed at anyone in particular, but a general feeling that allowed me to surpass myself and do my professional duty. I trained in the rain; I wasn’t afraid of the cold. Nothing else interested me.” The picture of Museeuw on his garage wall

I N A S S O C I A T I O N W I T H

Procycling / March 2020 105

Image: Offside Sports Photography (left), Getty Images (right).

groups: SEUR in Spain, Carrera in Italy. Tchmil paddled his own canoe and headed for Flanders.

“I’d always been part of the classics squad at Alfa Lum. I was fascinated by those races: the constant battle for position, the effort before the climbs, the tactics between the big riders. It was hard to imagine any of that in the USSR. I got second in Pino Cerami, rode a good Harelbeke, and I remember a Tour of Belgium where I was best climber on every stage apart from the one through the Ardennes,” Tchmil says.

From a telephone box outside the Alfa Lum base in Rimini, he called Walter Dalgal, who ran the secondstring SEFB team. There was a place for him, but the budget was tight. Later, he realised that was a standard tactic to enable the team to pay the minimum. He took the train to Liège to meet Dalgal and sign the contract. “The money wasn’t important.” Of course it wasn’t - at Alfa Lum, he and the others had been on pocket money. “I had a salary, and I could ride as a leader on my own account.”

Dalgal was to be his first real mentor, explaining the intricacies of the classics to him. There were other big characters around: Jos Braeckevelt, who was a fixture in Belgian cycling until his death in February 2019; the Tchmil takes on his long-time rival Johan Museuuw, and wins, at the 2000 Flanders

RETRO ANDREI TCHMIL

showing the Belgian winning the Tour of Flanders was there for one reason: to act as an incentive.

Usually, riding for Lotto against Museeuw and Lefevere’s Mapei armada, Tchmil was at a numerical disadvantage and had team-mates who weren’t as strong. “There was one time I was third in Flanders, Museeuw was off the front, I was in a ninerider chase group with four from Mapei.”

Most of the time, Tchmil had to box clever, but his first classic win, the epic Paris-Roubaix of 1994, wasn’t so much cleverness as pure hatred. With 60km to go, Tchmil made his move into the northerly that had dumped snow on the race early on. The lead group had been reduced in the absurdly muddy conditions, meaning there were few domestiques left, but there was no thinking in the move other than: “I wanted to annoy Museeuw.”

“Normally you look back. This time I decided not to.

The plan was to wait when someone might come across; the one person I wasn’t going to wait for was Museeuw.”

Russian-born Tchmil raced with Belgian squad Lotto for nine years until he retired

TRIPLE CROWN ONLY 11 RIDERS HAVE WON ALL THREE OF MILAN-SAN REMO, THE TOUR OF FLANDERS AND PARIS-ROUBAIX OVER THE COURSE OF THEIR CAREERS

Image: Getty Images.

RIDER Rik VAN STEENBERGEN Louison BOBET Germain DERYCKE Fred DE BRUYNE Rik VAN LOOY Eddy MERCKX Roger DE VLAEMINCK Jan RAAS Hennie KUIPER Andrei TCHMIL Fabian CANCELLARA

MSR 1 1 1 1 1 7 3 1 1 1 1

RVV 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 1 3

PR 2 1 1 1 3 3 4 1 1 1 3

First Win 1944 1951 1953 1956 1958 1966 1972 1977 1981 1994 2006

Last Win 1954 1956 1958 1959 1965 1976 1979 1983 1985 2000 2014

Tchmil had to stop on the next section when a motorbike crashed in front of him. The pair raced within sight of each other for 20km. From the car, Vandenbroucke told his leader to wait; Tchmil said he would rather die. The rest was muddy history.

The duel took on more bitter connotations at times, made still more acute when Tchmil was naturalised as a Belgian - and fanned again when he proved less than willing to work for the fading Belgian sprinter Wilfried Nelissen when he signed for Lotto. There would be banners at the roadside in the Tour of Flanders calling Tchmil “Judas”; Tchmil spoke of seeing hands raised on the Muur van Geraardsbergen in an attempt to knock him off his bike. There were jeers and hisses from the hardcore Flandrian supporters; “real venom” wrote Harry Pearson in A Tall Man in a Low Country. At one Flanders finish, the catcalls from the crowd reduced Tchmil’s wife to tears.

Tchmil’s duel with Museeuw would be resolved in part when Tchmil won in Flanders in 2000, but it remains the defining factor in his career, a duality to mention in the same breath as Van Looy-Merckx or Moser-Saronni. “It was a sporting rivalry, in the sense that we hated each other, but it was a correct hatred. We would chase each other down in a race, but never put each other in the ditch.

It was always à la pédale,” he says. Last year, they met up and had a beer, or several, at an old riders’ do; the hatchet has been buried, but the memories remain very intense.

Post-retirement, Tchmil’s career encompassed a spell at Katusha and a period as sports minister of his native Moldova. For the past five years, he has sold his own brand of bikes from his factory in the Moldovan capital Kishinev. It’s work he likes because he can be his own boss, but that need to forge his own path is a thread that runs through his whole career.

Here is a man who so determined not to over-race that he insisted on a clause in his contract with Lotto that stated if he won a classic, he had no need to ride the Tour de France. He repeatedly tells me: in cycling, winning is all that counts, and the best way to win is usually the simplest: on your own.

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Procycling / March 2020 111

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Procycling / March 2020 113

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114 Procycling / March 2020

Debrief A N A L Y S I S

•

I N S I G H T

RACE OF THE MONTH / SANTOS TOUR DOWN UNDER / 21-26.01.2020

Porte loses the battle but wins the war The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu may have had the 2020 Tour Down Under in mind when he said, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

Images: Getty Images

WorldTour neo-pro Matt Holmes follows Richie Porte before overtaking him for the win on Willunga

Richie Porte knew who his biggest enemy was on Old Willunga Hill, on the final stage of the race: the same as the previous two years, the defending champion Daryl Impey. But he would have had less knowledge of the British neo-pro Matt Holmes, a survivor of the early

R A C E R E S U LT RIDER

TEAM

1

Richie Porte

Trek-Segafredo

2

Diego Ulissi

UAE Emirates

3

Simon Geschke

CCC Team

116 Procycling / March 2020

•

TIME 20:37:08 at 0:25 st

13

Australian winners of the TDU in 22 editions

D A T A

break, who glommed on to his back wheel after he’d made his customary attack on the lower slopes of the climb. Against Impey, whose advantage of two seconds going into the last day this year looked very shaky, Porte gained his victory. But Porte had had to ride up the three-kilometre climb a full minute faster than Holmes, and the effort just about gave the Lotto rider a chance to sit in up the shallower final kilometre while Porte took the wind, then jump past. For the overall victory gained, Porte’s first since 2017, he suffered his first defeat on the climb in seven years.

Porte versus Impey at the TDU has been a classic brawn against brains battle, with the South African winning in 2018 and 2019. Impey’s modus operandi has been to spend the opening stages crediting his account with bonus seconds picked up in the sprints, especially on the rolling stages, and building enough advantage to give him a buffer when

EDWARD PICKERING

SOPHIE HURCOM

PATRICK FLETCHER

EDITOR

DEPUTY EDITOR

F E AT U R E S E D I T O R C Y C L I N G N E W S . C O M

Ed has noticed that Trek have won at least one race in January every season going back to 2015. Hitting the ground running takes the pressure off for the rest of the year.

Sophie likes the look of the brewing clash of the titans between Deceuninck and Lotto.

Bennett and Ewan look matched and the season’s only just started.

2019 was a blip for Fernando Gaviria, but with injury behind him and Max Richeze back in front, the Colombian could re-take his place among the world’s best sprinters.

the inevitable Porte assault comes on Willunga. Impey’s a better sprinter than Porte, so the Australian had no choice other than to watch the deficit grow. However, in 2020, the parcours also included the summit finish at Paracombe on the third stage. Advantage Porte.

Sure enough, Impey gathered a few bonus seconds, but nowhere near enough to insure against the chunks of time the Australian could put into him on the uphill finishes, not to mention the time bonuses on these stages. The Australian won on Paracombe and his second place on Willunga cemented his GC win.

Porte has now been the strongest climber in the world in Australia in January for seven years straight.

It’s what we’ll remember him for.

Conversely, as the years have passed, fewer and fewer pundits have extrapolated from his dominance here to speculate about his ability to win a grand tour.

Nobody had an answer to his accelerations, at least nobody who started on a level playing field.

The Australian has a characteristic way of attacking: a sustained, asphyxiating spell of acceleration and he stays out of the saddle for a long time - at It’s been three least 100 pedal years since Porte last revolutions in won the overall title at Down Under the case of

Paracombe. The question is, can he do it on a hot July day in France?

Every year he dominates at the Tour Down Under, whether he wins the GC or not; every year there is a reason he doesn’t replicate the performance at the Tour, with the one exception of his fifth overall in France in 2016. Will 2020 be different?

Through the rest of the race, it was business as usual: four flat stages, four sprints, with Caleb Ewan taking two wins, and Sam Bennett and Giacomo Nizzolo one apiece.

This all suggests that the Tour Down Under has become a bit samey. In its 22-year history it has evolved from a training race, into a sprint-fest, and now into a mixed race of set sprints and one or two uphill finishes. The race has been close every time, so there’s been suspense, but the pattern is becoming predictable. However, in 2020, the pattern of Porte wins on Willunga was finally broken.

Can the race now break out of the pattern that it has settled into?

KING OF WEEKLONG RACING The 2020 edition of the Tour Down Under wasn’t Richie Porte’s first win in the event, but his victory underscored the fact that among current riders, he is the king of the one-week stage races. Of the preTour de France one-week stage races on the WorldTour calendar, Porte has won five of them on at least on occasion - the Tour Down Under, Paris-Nice, Volta a Catalunya, Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse. He’s also come second in País Vasco and in the Critérium du Dauphiné. The only blank spot is Tirreno-Adriatico, where he last raced in 2014 but pulled out with a stomach upset while lying fourth overall.

No other current rider in the peloton can match that record.

Nairo Quintana has won four of these races, and Alejandro Valverde and Primož Roglic have won three.

Even Chris Froome, the most successful grand tour rider of the last decade, has only won two.

We’ve listed all the current WorldTour and significant ProConti riders to have won at least two of these race GC titles, and listed their best result in each of the other races. Nobody has yet ever taken victory in all eight.

Every year Porte dominates at the Tour Down Under; every year there is a reason he doesn’t replicate the performance at the Tour de France

P O RT E VS T H E R E ST AT W E E K- L O N G R AC E S RIDER

TDU

PN

TA

CATA

VASCO

ROM

DAUPH

SUISSE

1st

1st

-

1st

2nd

1st

2nd

1st

5

-

2nd

1st

1st

1st

1st

9th

3rd

4

2nd

2nd

18th

1st

1st

3rd

1st

9th

3

-

-

1st

44th

1st

1st

-

-

3

Geraint Thomas

3rd

1st

3rd

34th

40th

3rd

1st

2nd

2

Egan Bernal

6th

1st

16th

3rd

-

2nd

-

1st

2

Chris Froome

Richie Porte Nairo Quintana Alejandro Valverde Primož Roglič

WINS

75th

-

2nd

6th

-

1st

1st

47th

2

Roman Kreuziger

-

3rd

3rd

8th

10th

1st

19th

1st

2

Luis León Sánchez

1st

1st

22nd

4th

5th

10th

12th

32nd

2

-

28th

16th

1st

20th

-

-

1st

2

Miguel Ángel López

Procycling / March 2020 117

ANALYSIS / INSIGHT / DATA

PROCYCLING PICK / WOMEN’S TOUR DOWN UNDER / 19.01.2020

Winder ends the Australian summer Coming into the 2020 Down Under, Mitchelton-Scott had won every edition of the race since it began in 2016. That first year, Katrin Garfoot took the lead on stage 1 and never relinquished it to the finish four days later. In 2017 through to 2019, Amanda Spratt took the GC titles in fact, last year Mitchelton were so dominant they even took a general classification one-two, with Lucy Kennedy sneaking onto the podium in second place behind Spratt.

Again in 2020, they lined up with an exclusively Australian-New Zealand starting six that included Spratt (crowned national road race champ the week before and so in good form) and Kennedy.

But something was afoot this year. For a start, British WorldTour neo-pro Matthew Holmes usurped Porte to the line in Willunga. And then Trek-Segafredo, more to the point Ruth Winder, knocked Mitchelton off their perch for the first time in Down Under history.

Things looked to be very much going to script when the four-stage race got underway. Australian Chloe Hosking won the stage 1 sprint in Macclesfield (taking her career tally to four to make her the race’s most prolific rider). A day later, as is customary, Mitchelton piled on the pressure, this time on the lumpy run-in to Birdwood.

They split the bunch and put Spratt, along with team-mates Kennedy and Grace Brown, into a five-rider

he Australian summer of racing is almost always exclusively dominated

by Australian riders, on both the men’s and women’s side of cycling. It’s hardly a surprise, considering the home riders have the advantage of being used to the weather, the roads and the time zone, having largely been acclimatising since the end of the previous season unlike their European counterparts who have to make the long-haul flight over.

In the same way that Richie Porte winning on Willunga Hill seems to be a sure-fire bet every year, so too is Mitchelton-Scott taking the Women’s Tour Down Under overall title. The strongest Australian team packed with strong southern hemisphere riders has an advantage its rivals had yet to be able to be able to match at their home race.

Images: Getty Images, Velofocus (Winder / top).

T

118

R A C E R E S U LT RIDER

TEAM

1

Ruth Winder

Trek-Segafredo

10:11:07

2

Liane Lippert

Team Sunweb

at 0:05

3

Amanda Spratt

Mitchelton-Scott

at 0.06

Procycling / March 2020

TIME

Winder accelerates away on the uphill finish in Stirling to take the stage 3 win For the first time in Tour Down Under history, a nonAustralian won the race overall title

2

GC titles Ruth Winder has won

lead group. Kennedy and Brown did all the legwork to keep them away, before Spratt beat Winder and Sunweb’s Liane Lippert in the sprint to take the win and overall lead.

Advantage Mitchelton.

The problem with winning streaks though, is that they have to come to an end. Spratt’s lead was slender at just four seconds (in 2019, by comparison, after stage 2 Mitchelton already had an unchaseable 51 second gap) and in Trek-Segafredo and Sunweb, sat in second and third on GC, Mitchelton also had two teams with the resources to counter-punch.

Mitchelton tried to keep the pace high and police the front on stage 3, but they couldn’t fight a battle on two fronts. Sunweb sent Anna Henderson up the road first to sweep up the bonus seconds in the first intermediate sprint, before the

ANALYSIS / INSIGHT / DATA

CADEL EVANS GREAT OCEAN ROAD R ACE / 02.02.20

VIEW FROM THE TEAM CAR Rik Van Slyck, Deceuninck-QS DS

first sign appeared that it was not to be Spratt’s year. On the second intermediate sprint, Winder accelerated away to pick up three bonus seconds ahead of Spratt to take her within one.

By the time the peloton reeled in the break for the finale on the uphill finish in Stirling, Mitchelton had burned all their matches, Spratt was isolated and Winder skipped away again to take the stage win and this time a 10-second bonus to move her into the race lead. Winder was now plus seven seconds, over Lippert and Spratt.

Mitchelton aren’t used to having to chase, not here anyway, and when the final stage came down to a battle for intermediate bonus seconds it was Sunweb and Trek who had the upper hand. Winder held on for the win and Mitchelton’s reign finally came to an end.

We had two options with Dries Devenyns and Sam Bennett. It’s always the same question in this race; who will attack, when will they attack and will the sprinter get over the climbs for the finale? We know the race well Dries has been very close before, one time he was top five. We gave Dries a free role, to go whenever there was an attack on the local laps in Geelong.

There was a lot of wind, so this was the first difficulty; Dries had to be in a good position because the peloton started furiously. In the second half onto the local circuit, there were also crosswinds but it was not enough to split up the peloton. The second challenge was the climbs; Challambra Crescent and Melville Avenue taken on four times - they’re short and steep but it can be enough to The CEGORR was domestique split up in a break, Devenyns’ first like we saw. victory since 2016

We told Dries to sit and wait until the last lap to see what was happening behind. Before they hit the last climb there was still a possibility that the peloton could come back together. We knew there would be attacks to drop the sprinters, then we said to Dries, whenever somebody moves, you follow.

Dries has enough experience and is clever enough to know… it was the right move he made to follow and close the gap to [Pavel] Sivakov. Dries played a poker game and could say, ‘I can’t push full, my sprinter is coming.’

Dries has a good basic sprint. We told him to come out of Sivakov’s wheel and start his sprint as late as possible.

Once he was over Sivakov, it’s difficult to come back.

We knew there would be attacks to drop the sprinters, then we said to Dries, whenever somebody moves, you follow

Procycling / March 2020 119

ANALYSIS / INSIGHT / DATA

WHAT WE'VE LEARNED THIS MONTH REMCO CAN CLIMB, AS WELL AS TT he Vuelta a San Juan was the week-long stage race by numbers: some sprint stages, a time trial and a summit finish. The winner would be the week-long stage race specialist by numbers - the archetypal hybrid of the climber who can time trial; or the time triallist who can climb.

Sure enough, Remco Evenepoel won the time trial. He’s the reigning European TT champion and was best of the rest at the World Championships behind Rohan Dennis. Furthermore, he won the 15.5km San Juan test handily. Only Filippo Ganna, the world individual pursuit record holder, was anywhere close - and even he was 32 seconds behind. The next rider, Óscar Sevilla, was at 1:08. Everybody else was quite closely matched - while just over a minute separated first and third, the time gaps were very small after that. The next 90 seconds encompassed third place to 42nd.

The young Belgian had therefore built a buffer. But it turned out he didn’t need it. On the summit finish at Alto Colorado, 2,624m above sea level, he finished fifth on the stage, just four seconds behind the winner Miguel Eduardo Flórez to take the race lead. All he had to do then was navigate the final two flatter stages.

Yes, Alto Colorado is not the steepest climb, with an average gradient of 4.4 per cent. But it’s long, at 19km. It’s a sign that there are going to be very few races that are out of Evenepoel’s grasp.

T

120 Procycling / March 2020

GP LA MARSEILLAISE / 02.02.20

#TACTICS 101: MAKING A BREAK STRONGER n a hilly parcours like that of the GP Marseillaise, a team’s strength in depth is very important. Not everybody will survive the climbing, so the more riders a team has at its disposition towards the finale, the more options it has.

Ag2r La Mondiale proved this perfectly. They engineered a situation where Benoît Cosnefroy, a hyperactive attacker in the mould of Julian Alaphilippe, got away with two rivals - Valentin Madouas of Groupama and Thomas Devriendt of Circus - yet still had strong riders to police the chase.

This alone puts a team in a strong

O

position - the rider ahead can shirk on his pulls in defence of his team-mates behind; his teammates behind can do exactly the same. That alone might have been enough, but the gap was not huge and even with Ag2r riders interrupting and disrupting the chase, it couldn’t be guaranteed to hold. Cofidis were one of the biggest teams to have missed the break, and they initially launched the chase, which made some headway, but not enough. Cofidis switched to Plan B - bridge the gap between the peloton and the group.

That gave Ag2r the luxury to sit tight when Cofidis rider Jesús Herrada attacked to try and bridge

ANALYSIS / INSIGHT / DATA

TROFEO FELANITX / 30.01.20

Press Conference: Matteo Moschetti

How far were you from the finish line when you knew you’d won the race?

Honestly, I had no idea until about 10 metres to go when I looked up and saw there was nobody ahead of me.

Cosnefroy (in the centre), corners during the Grand Prix Marseillaise, his first win of 2020

up, and the move actually suited Ag2r. If Herrada made it across, it would mean one fewer team to pursue, and Herrada is a strong climber but not the best sprinter, so not competition for Cosnefroy on the flat finish. It actually strengthened Cosnefroy’s position to let Herrada join the front group, even though on the surface it looked like it had cut his odds of winning from 33 per cent to 25.

Cosnefroy won the sprint handily, from Madouas and Devriendt, with Herrada’s efforts having come to more or less nothing. All Cofidis had done was make Cosnefroy’s victory more certain.

Did you have any idea what kind of terrain you’d face during the race and in the finale?

Yes. The whole team knew the finish really well because we’d done a training camp here last week and one day we came through here in Felantix to see it, which was good because there was that chicane in the middle of the final kilometre. It was a complicated bunch sprint.

Last season you finished your first year as a pro very late, at the Tour of Guangxi in October. How useful was that to keep your race form through to the earliest part of 2020?

It helped. But also I had three weeks off, and I needed that period of total rest because it had been a very tough season. I had no problems in winter training so I came here confident I had good shape, and for a sprinter, probably more than anybody else, feeling confident is very important for winning - like today.

Trek-Segafredo’s Moschetti celebrates his early season victory in Mallorca

R A C E R E S U LT RIDER

TEAM

TIME

1

Matteo Moschetti

Trek-Segafredo

2

Pascal Ackermann

Bora-Hansgrohe

st

3:41:29

3

Jon Aberasturi

Caja Rural-Seguros RGA

st

4

Enrique Sanz

Kern Pharma

st

5

Andrea Pasqualon

Circus-Wanty Gobert

st

Procycling / March 2020 121

Images: Sirotti (top left), Bettini Photo (bottom right).

You’ve won the first race of the European 2020 season in the opening race at Challenge Mallorca.

Is that just a coincidence or does it matter?

It matters. I was confident before the race, but this was still my first race of the season and I didn’t really know how my level would compare to the other sprinters [Pascal Ackermann of BoraHansgrohe finished second - Ed.] until I went for it today. Such an early victory at this point in the season, particularly for a young rider like me, feels special.

How did you position yourself?

[Team-mate] Jasper [Stuyven] took a long, hard turn up to the chicane and then me and [Emils] Liepins were right behind a Lotto rider who led through the last couple of corners. Liepins led me out and then I went for it for myself.

ANALYSIS / INSIGHT / DATA

Deceuninck-Quick Step

6

Trek-Segafredo

4

UAE Emirates

3

Lotto Soudal

3

Mitchelton-Scott

2 2

Nippo Delko One Provence

ONE-DAY RACES WINS UP TO FEB 2020 There's barely been any one-day racing yet in 2020, but one team a Belgian squad we know well as masters at one-day racing - are already edging into the lead with the most wins

WINS

BY TEAM

EF Pro Cycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Bora-Hansgrohe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

STAGE RACE WINS Wins at the Tour Down Under, Vuelta a San Juan and Tropicale Amissa Bongo have Trek, Quick Step and Natura4Ever tied at the top of the stage race win table so far in January, although none of those teams have picked up any other stage race jerseys on offer so far

MEN’S WINS BY RIDER

Deceuninck-Quick Step . . . . . . 2 Trek-Segafredo . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Movistar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Bora-Hansgrohe . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Ag2r La Mondiale . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Mitchelton-Scott . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 EF Pro Cycling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Cofidis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Israel Start-Up Nation . . . . . . . . 1

TEAM

WINS

PODIUM

POINTS

TEAM

KOMS

1

0

0

0

0

2 Deceuninck-Quick Step

1

0

0

0

0

3 Natura4Ever-Roubaix

1

0

0

0

0

4 UAE Emirates

0

1

1

0

0

5 CCC Team

0

1

0

1

0

6 Team Medellin

0

1

0

0

0

7 Nippo Delko One

0

0

1

0

0

8 Cofidis

0

0

0

1

0

9 Ineos

0

0

0

0

1

10 Movistar

0

0

0

0

1

1

Trek-Segafredo

2

3

RICHIE PORTE

SAM BENNETT

TREK-SEGAFREDO

U A E E M I R AT E S

DECEUNINCK-QUICK STEP

Biniyam Ghirmay Remco Evenepoel Matteo Moschetti Caleb Ewan Giacomo Nizzolo Matthew Holmes Rudy Barbier

Nippo Delko One Provence Deceuninck-Quick Step Trek-Segafredo Lotto Soudal Team NTT Lotto Soudal Israel Start-Up Nation

The Argentinian lead-out pilot transferred to UAE Emirates this season to work with Fernando Gavira. And the pairing is paying off so far; Richeze was by Gaviria's side in the final kilometres during all three of the Colombians sprint stage wins at the Vuelta San Juan.

It makes sense as the majority of racing so far has taken place in Australia and South America that the most winning nations would be riders from those countries. Richie Porte and Caleb Ewan took two wins each Down Under, while Fernando Gaviria and Miguel Flórez won four times in San Juan

4

4

4

4

3

MAX RICHEZE

AUSTRALIA

COLOMBIA

ITALY

FRANCE

ERITREA

U A E E M I R AT E S

Procycling / March 2020

2 2 2 2 1 1 1

BEST DOMESTIQUE

MEN’S WINS BY COUNTRY

122

2

FERNANDO GAVIRIA

ANALYSIS / INSIGHT / DATA

WOMEN’S WINS BY RIDER

WOMEN'S WINS BY TEAM

ONE-DAY RACES WINS

Mitchelton-Scott Trek-Segafredo Team Sunweb Tobcp-Silicon Valley FDJ-Nouvelle

UP TO FEB 2020

2

2

All square so far with only a handful of one-day races in 2020; the Aus and Colombian Nationals, Cadel Evans Road Race, Race Torquay and the Gravel and Tar la Femme

1

AMANDA SPRATT

RUTH WINDER

LIANE LIPPERT

MITCHELTON-SCOTT

T R E K- S E G A F R E D O

TEAM SUNWEB

Brodie Chapman Chloe Hosking Simona Frapporti Sarah Gigante Marcela Hernandez Niamh Fisher-Black Arlenis Sierra

FDJ-Nouvelle Rally Cycling BePink Tibco-Silicon Valley Bank Bigla-Katusha Astana

BEST DOMESTIQUE The Finn played a crucial role in her team-mate Ruth Winder's Tour Down Under win; she got in the early breakaway on stage 3 - which Winder went on to win - but more importantly swept up crucial intermediate sprint seconds on the final stage, to stop Winder's rivals getting ahead.

2

2

Team Sunweb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Mitchelton-Scott . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 FDJ Nouvelle Aquitaine . . . . . . . 1 Ciclotel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Rally Cycling Astana BePink Bigla-Katusha Ciclotel

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

STAGE RACE WINS Okay, so at the time we went to press there had only been one stage race on the women's calendar; the Tour Down Under, won by Trek's Ruth Winder. But by comparison, in 2019 it took the American squad until May to secure their first GC win; at the Emakumeen Bira .

TEAM

WINS

PODIUMS

POINTS

TEAM

KOMS

1

0

0

0

0

2 Team Sunweb

0

1

1

1

1

3 Mitchelton-Scott

0

1

0

0

0

1

Trek-Segafredo

WOMEN’S WINS BY COUNTRY Images: Getty Images, Velofocus, Bettini Photo.

As with the men's peloton, it's no surprise the Australian's are streaking ahead so far in terms of wins with the majority of racing taking place on their home turf. Brodie Chapman, Chloe Hosking and Amanda Spratt are all credited with topping up their country's win tally.

LOTTA HENTTALA

3

2

1

1

1

T R E K- S E G A F R E D O

AUSTRALIA

USA

NEW ZEALAND

GERMANY

ITALY

Procycling / March 2020 123

THE NUMBERS

FIRST WIN OF THE YEAR

STAGE RACE WINS

How many WorldTour teams have already scored a victory?

The dominant recent generation of stage racers - Chris Froome, Nairo Quintana, Vincenzo Nibali and Alejandro Valverde - are starting to slow in terms of GC wins. Last year, these four picked up one between them - Valverde at the Route d’Occitanie. But they still head the field of current riders in terms of career GC wins. The fastest-rising is Primož Roglic . He won four last year.

Alejandro Valverde

24

Chris Froome

16

Nairo Quintana

14

Vincenzo Nibali

13

Tony Martin

10

Primož Roglič

10

STAGE RACE WINS

As we went to press, 14 WorldTeams had already managed at least one win, with Mitchelton-Scott fastest off the mark.

Luke Durbridge won the Australian national TT champs just over a week into 2020. Next up: Cofidis scored their first win as a WorldTeam when Attilio Viviani took arguably a soft win at the Tropicale Amissa Bongo, while Deceuninck-Quick Step opened their account on the first day of the Tour Down Under. 2020 has been teed up as the year of Jumbo versus Ineos, and there’s nothing to choose between them so far, and also nothing in their trophy cabinets. With bigger targets to come, both were stuck on zero a week into February.

Edvald Boasson Hagen . . . . . . 9 Jakob Fuglsang . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Richie Porte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

A

DATE

RACE

Jan 8

Australian TT Championships

Cofidis

Jan 20

Tropicale Amissa Bongo stage 1

Attilio Viviani

Deceuninck-QS

Jan 21

Tour Down Under stage 1

Sam Bennett

PARIS-NICE CHAMPIONS With the Race to the Sun coming next month, we’ve looked back at all the riders to have won the GC on two or more occasions. Sean Kelly famously leads the way in a prestigious list of riders.

RIDER RIDER

WINS

SECONDS

THIRDS

Sean Kelly

7

0

0

2

Jacques Anquetil

5

0

1

Eddy Merckx

3

2

2

Luke Durbridge 1

Lotto Soudal

Jan 22

Tour Down Under stage 2

Caleb Ewan

3

Trek-Segafredo

Jan 23

Tour Down Under stage 3

Richie Porte

4

Laurent Jalabert

3

2

1

NTT Pro Cycling

Jan 25

Tour Down Under stage 5

Giacomo Nizzolo

5

Joop Zoetemelk

3

1

1

Israel Start-Up Nation

Jan 26

Vuelta a San Juan stage 1

Rudy Barbier

6

Raymond Poulidor

2

0

2

2

0

8

2

0

1

UAE Emirates

Jan 27

Vuelta a San Juan stage 2

EF Pro Cycling

Jan 30

Colombian TT championships

Bora-Hansgrohe

Jan 31

Trofeo Serra de Tramuntana Emanuel Buchmann

8= Raymond Impanis

2

0

1

Movistar

Feb 1

Pollença-Andratx

8= Miguel Indurain

2

0

1

8= Richie Porte

2

0

1

12 Alexandre Vinokourov

2

0

0

12= Fred De Bruyne

2

0

0

Ag2r La Mondiale

Feb 2

GP La Marseillaise

*Yet to win as of Feb 6: Astana, CCC Team, Groupama-FDJ, Ineos, Jumbo-Visma

Fernando Gaviria

2

6= Alberto Contador

Dani Martínez Marc Soler Benoît Cosnefroy

Maurice Archambaud

Image: SWpix

TEAM Mitchelton-Scott

Geraint Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Thibaut Pinot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Greg Van Avermaet . . . . . . . . . 6

R A C E

C A L E N D A R

/

M A R C H

2 0 2 0

SOPHIE HURCOM DEPUTY EDITOR

WHY I LOVE… STRADE BIANCHE 7 March | Italy | 1.UWT/WWT When Piazzo del Campo came to be in medieval times, it was positioned at the joining of three roads in and out of Siena. The idea was for the square to be neutral ground. Rules were even put in place to ensure all buildings were homogenous.

Today there’s only one road in and out that matters, when it comes to Strade Bianche: the climb of Via Santa Caterina to the finish.

A road so steep its gradient zaps every last drop out of the riders right at the end of the newest ‘old’ classic.

Perhaps it’s the blend of old and new that makes Strade Bianche unique. The mix of a battle between the riders, and the peace and tranquility of ‘Il Campo’.

DATE 23-29 Feb

RACE UAE Tour

UAE

CAT

DATE

RACE

CAT

2.UWT

3 Mar

Le Samyn

Bel

1.1

7 Mar

Strade Bianche

Ita

1.WWT

23/2-1 Mar Tour du Rwanda

Rwa

2.1

7 Mar

Strade Bianche

Ita

1.UWT

28/2-1 Mar Vuelta Castellon by VCV

Esp

2.2

8 Mar

GP Industria & Artigianato

Ita

1.Pro

29 Feb

Faun-Ardèche Classic

Fra

1.Pro

8-15 Mar

Paris-Nice

Fra

2.UWT

29 Feb

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad

Bel

1.UWT

11-17 Mar

Tirreno-Adriatico

Ita

2.UWT

29 Feb

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad-vrouwen elite

Bel

1.1

13 Mar

Drentse Acht van Westerveld

Ned

1.2

1 Mar

Spar-Omloop Het Hageland-Tienen-Tielt Winge

Bel

1.1

14 Mar

Bevrijdingsronde van Drenthe

Ned

1.1

1 Mar

Royal Benard Drome Classic

Fra

1.Pro

15 Mar

Bevrijdingsronde van Drenthe

Ned

1.WWT

1 Mar

Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne

Bel

1.Pro

18 Mar

Danilith Nokere Koerse

Bel

1.Pro

1-5 Mar

Tour de Taiwan

Tpe

2.1

18 Mar

Danilith Nokere Koerse

Bel

1.Pro

3 Mar

Le Samyn des Dames

Bel

1.2

19 Mar

GP de Denain-Porte du Hainaut

Fra

1.Pro

1.WT: One-day UCI WorldTour race / 1.HC: Major one-day race / 1.1: Minor one-day race / 2.WT: UCI WorldTour stage race / 2.HC: Major stage race / 2.1: Minor stage race / WWT: Women's WorldTour race

It’s got none of the history of its rivals, but has all the authenticity. Tuscany’s white gravel roads ensure its character and colour is unlike any other on the calendar.

Still, when the race began in 2010 it was a fairly radical concept - getting riders to race over gravel wasn’t always so on-trend. In a sport that dislikes change, for Strade Bianche to have established itself as part of the mainstream is a testament to its success.

Procycling / March 2020 125

The first signs of spring: the cobbles of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad kick off classics season

NOT TO MISS

OMLOOP HET NIEUWSBLAD 29 February | Belgium | 1.UWT / 1.1 Most leap year superstitions see traditions turned on their head - if you believe things such as women can only propose once every four years, that is.

What this means for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on February 29 remains to be seen, but the organisers don’t seem to

want to leave much to fate and have unveiled a route for 2020 that’s the same for the men and women as it was last year. The first race of what the purists still call ‘Opening Weekend’ sticks with the new-look finale brought in last year; the men take in nine of Flemish Belgium’s cobbled sectors and 13 climbs, the last of which are the Muur and Bosberg, before a flat 13km run-in to the

No time for team time trials TIRRENO-ADRIATICO

traditionally hosts the race start, will hold

11-17 March | Italy | 2.UWT

a flat 134km road stage to kick the race off.

Interestingly, while only one team has ever

Put the team time trial on the endangered species list in 2020, as RCS’s decision to omit

won the opening TTT and won the race overall - BMC in 2016 (though Greg Van

the opening TTT from Tirreno-Adriatico this year - the first time since 2015 the race

Avermaet’s impressive title was helped by the cancellation of a mountain stage

hasn’t started with one - means there are currently just two WorldTour level TTTs on the men’s calendar all season, at the

line in Ninove. The women race fewer kilometres (126 to the men’s 200) but finish on the same Muur-Bosberg finale.

Le Samyn in 2012 was the last race held on February 29, when a fresh-faced 20-year-old Arnaud Démare took one of his first major pro wins. The Belgian classics usually favour experience over youth. But perhaps we’ll see tradition turned on its head again this leap year.

FLASHPOINT

due to bad weather) - the TTT has still played a significant role in shaping the final GC. For the last three years, the team

PARIS-NICE

UAE Tour and Vuelta a España. In fact, the

that’s won the TTT has finished second overall.

2020 race will be the first time since 2011

But RCS has decided that high mountains

Any GC riders not starting Paris-Nice will have a close eye on stage 7, we think, thanks to the

the ‘Race of Two Seas’ hasn’t

inject more excitement than TTTs into a GC

inclusion of the Col de la Colmiane, which also happens to be the first summit finish of this

kicked off with any kind of test against the clock. Instead, Tuscany’s Lido di Camaiore which

contest. Stage 3 to Sassotetto looks hardest, featuring six climbs, including a summit finish to the ski resort.

8-15 March | France | 2.UWT

year’s Tour de France. While it’s unlikely to be where the Tour’s yellow jersey is clinched as it appears as early as the end of stage 2, it’ll be a different story at Paris-Nice where it’s the race’s last major climb. At 16.3km long it twists, turns and switches back all the way to the top, although the steepest eight per cent gradients actually come at the bottom. Do well here, and it

126

Procycling / March 2020

sends a warning come July.

BEST FOR CHRIS FROOME’S RACE RETURN UAE TOUR 23-29 February | UAE | 2.UWT Chris Froome has picked the UAE Tour for his race return, eight months after crashing last year. Now in its second year, after being formed from a merger of the Dubai and Abu Dhabi Tours, the addition of Froome will please organisers due to the media interest he’ll bring. Other names such as Mark Cavendish, Rohan Dennis and Tadej Pogačar are starting.

The seven-stage race is likely to be decided on the climbs of Rafisah Dam and Jebel Hafeet.

RACE CALENDAR / MARCH 2020

Jip van den Bos

the normal leaders get their chance here. The race ends with four laps of a hard circuit. There are some cobbled sections and corners where you always want to be in front, so the speed is high.

The cobbles are pretty bad, but the hardest bit is the roads which go into the cobbles. It’s hard to start the cobbled section in front, and then you have to go over it. It always breaks. Danny [Stam, DS] told me to go and sit in the last wheel and attack on the last hill, and that’s exactly what I did.

I instantly had a gap. Over the last cobbles with 2km to go I knew I just had to get to the finish, I couldn’t go wrong.

2019'S WINNER ON… LE SAMYN DES DAMES 3 March | Belgium | 1.2 I had raced Le Samyn three times before and I knew it suited me.

Not all the teams and best riders go there. There are a lot of good riders, but the group is less big.

It’s really a hard race, but the climbs are a bit shorter.

I think also for a lot of teams riders who are not

A SPANISH WINTER BREAK VUELTA A CASTELLON BY VCV 28/2-1 March | Spain | 2.2 Riders in the women’s peloton who don’t want to fly to Australia can now build a base in eastern Spain thanks to the new Vuelta a Castellon. With the four-stage Setmana Ciclista Valenciana taking the role of the first European women’s stage race of the year, the peloton can stay in the area to contest the new three-stage race just five days later. Ex-pro Ángel Casero, who also runs the Vuelta a Comunitat Valenciana, is behind the race as director.

WARMING UP FOR THE CLASSICS KUURNE-BRUSSELS-KUURNE

Images: Getty Images, Bettini Photo (Roglic), CorVos (bottom left).

1 March | Belgium | 1.1 While Kuurne doesn’t get plaudits as big as Omloop Het Nieuwsblad the day before, it still forms a crucial part of ‘Opening Weekend’. It’s largely flat and more of a semi-classic, so doesn’t bring out the A List, but it still has sectors of cobbles and it is a nice taster of bigger things to come. Bob Jungels won last year on his debut with a solo attack 15km out, to solidify his credentials as GC rider turned cobbles contender.

A NEW BEGINNING BEVRIJDINGSRONDE VAN DRENTHE

while the men’s race languishes at 1.1 ranking.

15 March | Netherlands | 1.WWT

In 2020, organisers have made a few tweaks to both races, most notably the start location to

While the men’s Ronde Van Drenthe has the history and dates back to 1960, the Dutch race is

the city of Assen, with the finish staying in Hoogeveen to the south. The courses have

one of those rare events where the women’s race is both newer and covers a shorter course

altered slightly too, meaning the men and women both take on the manmade Vamberg

but still has a higher status. Since 2016, the newly-sponsored for 2020 Bevrijdingsronde

climb - a hill made on a landfill site - three times before racing over two sectors of cobbles

van Drenthe has been part of the Women’s World Tour (and the Road World Cup before it),

in the last 20km. Marta Bastianelli is the defending women’s race champion.

The conditions were torrid in the Netherlands last year, as the peloton turns brown from the mud and dirt en route

Procycling / March 2020 127

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Vanmarcke / Tour of Flanders / Ganna

THE LAST WORD

LAURENS TEN DAM He wasn’t a classics man, but for Laurens the real start of the season is in Belgium

T

Those men of steel like Johan Museeuw or Peter Van Petegem raced hard and afterwards they would drink a Trappist to relax and chill with their team-mates 130 Procycling / March 2020

Those men of steel like Johan Museeuw or Peter Van Petegem raced hard and afterwards they would drink a Trappist to relax and chill with their team-mates.

Three days later? They do it all over again until the Ronde van Vlaanderen or Paris-Roubaix. Then their season was finished As a kid, I dreamed of being one of these men but my physical characteristics pushed me in another direction.

There were no weeks of one-day racing in Belgium for me.

I did Spanish stage races where we rode our climbing legs into shape for July. Now that I am retired that will change.

I will find time to be in the Flemish heart of cycling in the coming months. I’ve heard great stories about the Tour of Flanders for cyclo tourists, which takes place the day before the race. Over 10,000 people riding on the course. With those small roads people have to wait in line to climb the Koppenberg. In that line the pre-race party starts. I’ll be there with a group of 10 friends from all over Europe. But to be honest, most of all, I want to enter one of those tents next to the parcours, let’s say on the Oude Kwaremont, order a pint of beer and start a conversation with one of the old men at the bar. I can’t wait to hear their stories about races ages ago. The races in Flanders where legends were made.

It is not far, who wants to join me? LTD Laurens mightn’t have lasted long on the Arenberg, where Roubaix comes alive

Laurens ten Dam is an ex pro cyclist. He lives by his motto, ‘live slow, ride fast’, while doing podcasts, organising gravel events and running a coffee brand and clothing label. His big 2020 goal? Racing Kanza!

Illustration: David Despau. Image: Getty Images.

he cycling season starts February 29. Period.

Okay, I must admit. I followed the Tour Down Under a little bit. Richie Porte not winning on Willunga Hill was a big surprise for me.

I followed Remco Evenepoel’s victory at the Vuelta a San Juan more closely - at the end, he is one of the youngsters I wrote about in my last column. And the Sunday of the cyclo-cross World Championships I didn’t move from my couch. All I needed for company was a Belgian ale and the Mathieu van der Poel one-man show winning the title.

But let’s face it, the real cycling season starts with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. It’s the traditional Belgian opener. Those overseas races and those that take place in the south of Europe are a warm-up for the real thing. Don’t get me wrong, the peloton races damn hard there and wattages go beyond the imagination of normal human beings and retired pros.

Nowadays everybody starts the season ready to go. Remember those well executed training camps? But I am talking about cycling history and the DNA of a nation in Belgium.

The cycling year starts the week before Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and it lasts until Paris-Roubaix, which because of its characteristics is counted as one of the Belgian spring classics too (the finish is less than 15km from the Belgian border). These are the six holy weeks of cycling in Flanders.

Every single step that the favourites make become headlines in the newspapers. The conversation in the many bars surrounding the Flemish Ardennes has only one subject.

Every tiny village has a local hero, which means they have to run a fan club which follows every race of their favourite.

And if that local hero doesn’t exist, they get creative - they start a fan club for a foreigner. That is no joke. Cees Bol, a friend I train with, has a big Flemish fan club even though he doesn’t have a Dutch one.

I used to be a skinny climber. I excelled in the high mountains of the Tour de France in July. But I wanted to be part of the classics. I wanted to be one of those men.

Those men who raced the Muur van Geraardsbergen or the Kwaremont every weekend and Wednesday in another race.