2019 was the year of the early retirement. First it was Marcel Kittel. Aged 31, the gloriously coiffured German was not happy. His form, known to swing wildly between totally unbeatable and […]
Pro cycling perspective and the lure of retirement
**Reduced price for one week only** The Grand Tour Diaries 2018
In 2018, some pretty damn entertaining bike racing took place. There was Chris Froome’s Lazurus-like comeback at the Giro d’Italia; Geraint Thomas’s composed demolition of the Tour de France; Simon Yates’s redemption […]
Tour de France 2018 Stage 14: “Ignore ’em Froomey, they’re not worth it”
When the Tour de France races up to the airfield at Mende, in the region of Occitanie, as it did today, exciting things happen. We always get a great race. That final […]
Tour de France 2018 Stage 12: Froomey, we have a situation
Post-stage Thomas, having consolidated his Yellow Jersey, continued to give it the genial jack-the-lad Welshman, praising Froome and toeing the team-leader line. As TV’s Ned Boulting noted yesterday, regarding Team Sky’s internal politics: “at the very least we have a situation.”
Tour de France 2018 Stage 11: Sky-shaped
The Tour de France, for the riders, is death by a thousand cuts. The drip-drip of hourly, daily, weekly suffering leaves us, in the end, with one bloke who’s less broken than […]
Chris Froome and the tangled web of medical admin
We cycling fans now have a working knowledge of exercise induced asthma and a pretty good understanding of the effects of salbutamol. We even have such a deep understanding of the composition of Chris Froome’s urine that, if we close our eyes, we can almost taste it.
Giro d’Italia 2018 Stage 19: Froome’s Masterpiece
If you’re a masochist – which, if you take your cycling seriously, there’s every chance you are – you might have enjoyed watching Simon Yates fall to pieces on the slopes of the Colle della Finestre today while Chris Froome took flight.
Haters gonna hate, dopers gonna dope, Froome gonna Froome
What can I say? I made a mistake. I’m only a simple, error-prone human. I knew, even as I was doing it, that I shouldn’t be scrolling down that far. Especially on […]
La Vuelta 2017 Stage 9: Frooomey! Frooomey!
“Made for TV” seems to be a buzz-phrase in pro cycling at the moment – describing a race that is something of a set-piece event designed to look good to a TV […]
