Amazing how you can magic up a new venue for the World Championships in two or three weeks, but it takes a decade to sort out a women’s Tour de France.....
I love cycling but I love the planet too. Not good to see Tour officials or team personnel ‘putting the boot in’ - as Wiggins put it - to climate protestors
It's totally beyond my comprehension that you could be 22, full of hope and optimism, leave to race your bike in the morning and be gone forever by the afternoon. Too often cycling exacts far too high a price on the athletes.
Quinn Simmons is free to profess his political beliefs. Equally
@TrekSegafredo
are free to decide whether those beliefs sit well with a brand whose men's team wore 'No To Racism' masks at the TDF in support of BLM and that also invests significantly in women's racing.
Amazing how so many people on here are much better bike handlers than seven time GT winner, Chris Froome. You should all give him a masterclass when he's better.
I really hope Jan Ullrich gets well. One of the things that really, really stinks is that Ullrich was shunned at the 2017 TDF Grand Depart, while so many of his peers from GenEPO were feted and lionised. That's just shit.
Suddenly everyone is an in-race moto driver who’d never make a mistake in 25 years.
They didn’t mean to do it you know! And they’ve been punished - and humiliated.
Why not blame the crowd control? The lack of barriers? The placing of a bonus at the top of the climb?
Seriously the UCI need to call time on these absurd transfers. How can Grand Tours complain about environmental protestors while continuing to design totally inappropriate courses like this?
Final stage of 2023 Giro d'Italia in Rome instead of Trieste, according to 🇮🇹 media Trieste Prima. Riders will travel by plane after penultimate stage (Monte Lussari uphill-TT). Staff & race caravan will have more than 700 km transition by vehicles.
#Giro
Pogacar making the Giro look like one of those ‘Ride with the Pros!’ high-end holidays, where the ex-pro can’t resist dropping everyone on the climb back to the hotel
The near-complete silence across cycling regarding
@BouhanniNacer
being racially abused is pretty shaming of the sport, it’s participants, and it’s stakeholders.
Where is the outrage? Does anyone care??
I’m told that Binian Girmay’s representatives were called by the Home Office this morning and told that he now has a UK visa. I’m also told that he applied on June 1.
As you try to make sense of the Team Sky story, remember what we were all asked to buy into when it all started: it wasn't doctors, Jiffy bags, TUEs or Tramadol. It was transparency, professionalism, accountability and propriety — and the mood lighting on the team bus.
Hard to take this morning's news in. My thoughts are with his family and with everyone who worked so successfully with Richard Moore on the Cycling Podcast.
Busy day yesterday, with the Vuelta and TDF 2021 launch — a Super Sunday in fact. Meanwhile, in a quiet corner of Soho, had coffee with the Giro champion (pic by
@pgoding
)
Woke up on a Monday morning in Paris in July 1997, to similar headlines - 'Just how many will he win? Will he beat the record? He's only a kid..' etc. Jan Ullrich never won another TDF. Talent isn't always enough: it's as much about how you cope with success as achieving it.
That Froome ruling timeline again:
December:"It must be resolved before the Giro.."
May: "It could take two years..."
June:"It's less than 50-50..."
July: "It's sorted! Simples...have a great Tour!
Sprinters are always going to take risks. They accept that crashing is sometimes the consequence of those risks. They’re a tough, hard and ruthless breed, but they’re not cannon fodder. It’s time the governing body and race promoters stopped treating them as if they are.
If his gears hadn’t slipped, I’m sure Mark Cavendish would have broken Eddy Merckx’s record in Bordeaux today. Polemics about Philipsen wandering around would have been washed away as everyone feted the record man. How many more chances will he get though?
I still don’t really understand all the ‘it was the rogue medic’ statements and displays of shock from people who knew the weight of the paint job on the bikes their riders used.
Polarising day on the Tour.
Do you write about the race or the idealistic kids getting labelled imbeciles?
Driving to the hotel past the disappearing glaciers of Chamonix, I hope I got it right .
Unfortunate that Dr Freeman was unable to attend the GMC hearing this morning. Happily however, he is available for talks, podcasts or interviews about his book.
Rotten day for
@CaleyFretz
and the cycling media. Let me add to the gloom by saying there won’t be another issue of Stelvio for me sadly (or indeed for anyone). Thanks to all the brilliant contributors and also to those who supported it. 😞
So ok, I know it’s the issue du jour, but racism in cycling... why is it such an exclusively white sport? Why are there so few pro cyclists of colour? Look at other sports - cycling’s diversity is worse even than golf or tennis and that’s saying something....
Nico Portal was well-liked by many not because of his nationality, his team or his successes, but because he was always friendly, open and upbeat. It goes a long way in life.
So we need to ask who appointed all these people -Sutton, Leinders, Freeman. Who vetted them and managed them? How did BC and Sky miss the potential for it ending in this farce? This has all been great theatre but the real issue lies elsewhere.
Stunned by the decision of
@UCI_cycling
to stage the Worlds in Rwanda, a regime of “enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, excessive use of force, unfair trials and restrictions on the right to freedom of expression.”
(Amnesty International).
This from DQS: ‘An error was made in the laboratory with the sample that the individual gave yesterday, meaning they were taken for restesting this morning. The result of this second test has been returned as negative and we will continue to race as normal.’
I’m pleased to confirm that next month I’ll be covering the 2022 men’s and women’s Tours de France for
@guardian_sport
.
I’ve done a few now. I even had coffee with that Maurice Garin on the bus once.
"Some people have short memories, the sceptics say. Unfortunately for Vingegaard, many Tour watchers also have long ones..."
My story for
@guardian_sport
You either know what’s going on so are complicit, or don’t know what’s going on and are therefore incompetent to lead or govern. Either way you have to go, surely?
I was blessed and privileged to edit
@Procycling_mag
for several years. I loved the people and the mag. We published great writers, great images and often important groundbreaking stories. It’s loss leaves a vacuum in content on world cycling.
This is just terrible. It is not fair, ethical or professional to stage races in which riders are subjected to such appalling risks. Adequate security is always about budget and professionalism. If that's not in place, then the race should not be held. 1/2
After a crash at
#PiccoloLombardia
caused severe injuries, we have an update on
@EdoLM
's condition.
This news is extremely difficult for Edo, his family and teammates to process. Through it all, we will always remain
#TogetherForEdo
❤
💻
Richard Freeman joins Geert Leinders in the banned doctors club.
Both worked with Team Sky during their heyday.
Leinders, now subject to a lifetime ban, worked as a consultant to the team.
UK Anti-Doping announce that former British Cycling and Team Sky doctor Richard Freeman has received a four-year ban from sport following anti-doping rule violations for possession of a prohibited substance and tampering. British Cycling response below.
Famous cyclist and Grand Tour winner takes the knee. It was always likely that this particular rider would be the first. This will baffle/annoy some but it should also shame them and their sponsors into similar action, which is what’s needed.
There’s never been so much money in professional cycling yet the precarious situations of the best professional journalists has recently been emphasised yet again. It’s both distressing and reprehensible that a sport founded on media growth should treat writers this way.
Pleased to confirm that I will be covering the 2023 Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes for
@guardian_sport
and also podcasting for
@radio_cycling
.
When I was working on ‘Ventoux,’ I had a great chat with Jean-Louis Pages, the charming, and funny, former ‘director of sites’ for the Tour. Here’s what he said when I suggested putting in a double ascent.....
My first TdF. I spoke to Greg that morning. He wasn’t happy, perplexed both with his form and with the state of the sport. At the time I didn’t understand. I do now.
“It’s increasingly apparent that the UCI under Lappartient are at a crossroads. They can tinker with their sport, or they can actively promote change on sportswashing, racism, gender equality and environmental impact.”
My story for
@lacourseentete
It's official: the appointment of trade envoy Lord Beefy Botham confirms that Britain is now as corrupt, laughable and chaotic as Italy under Berlusconi, only with shittier weather and hardly any truffles.
There are six weeks between the Giro 2018 ending and the start of the 2018 Tour, 20th anniversary of the Festina Affair. If Froome starts the TDF, case unresolved with accompanying media frenzy, you really have to question what has been learned, if anything, in those 20 years.
So all the talk from only a few weeks ago about rider safety, minimising risks of injury, organisers taking more responsibility, etc etc, has clearly already been forgotten.
Can’t blame the riders for being angry. That stage was farcical. It was also totally avoidable.
While other sports have made an effort to acknowledge the BLM movement, at the Tour de France, it has been business as usual — zero recognition. That's why I wrote in June that the peloton of whiteness must now embrace change.
Why is the Tour (and WT cycling in general) so silent on Black Lives Matter, when every other sport has acted? Reza, Cookson, Brailsford and Stetina on the Tour’s detached stance
Trying to understand Froome's extraordinary ride today isn't easy. The inevitable scepticism is all about context, and history. You can't escape it. Neither - fairly or unfairly - can he.
Been several near-misses for Simon Yates before this
@lavuelta
- and not just the 2018
@giroditalia
. Also won the hardest climbing stage of this year's Paris-Nice and should have held on but lost by four secs. Definitely not an overnight success.
I think those mocking the peloton for schoolboy cheating, less than a day after Gino Mader’s horror crash, are pretty classless.
Pro racing certainly has its fair share of embarrassing behaviour but it is also brimming with sportsmanship, courage and fearlessness.
The 1998 Tour de France was dubbed 'The Race of Disgrace' due to the Festina doping scandal.
@friebos
returned to the scene in Gare de Corrèze where the infamous scandal became clear.
If you needed to show the uninitiated a suitably stunning image of the grace, beauty and inspirational quality of road racing, this would be hard to beat.
This sleazy, abusive and archaic attitude is grim. Pro cycling still has a major diversity problem with gender, race and inclusivity and it's something that really needs to be squashed.
Live blog: Cycling world condemns comments made by Belgian journalist Sven Spoormakers about the clothing of a female reporter. When challenged he replied: "If I would interview a female athlete with my balls out, you'd be joking about it too".
#cycling
Surely discretion and common sense applies? A rider tossing a bottle to a bunch of school kids in a village is different to a rider throwing a bottle into a ravine in a deserted national park — isn't it??
Richard Virenque, the rider at the heart of the 1998 doping scandal that inspired the creation of WADA, was a torch bearer for the Olympic Flame in Toulon.