> Wout van Aert has signed a contract with Visma-Lease A Bike “for eternity”. He’s not alone as Chris Froome and Michael Woods are said to have “retirement contracts” meaning they can ride for their team as long as they wish. These are just some examples among several of long term contracts and they’re becoming increasingly common.

Race Info: https://gpcqm.ca/grand-prix-montreal/ Parcours/Profile: https://gpcqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/23185505/222297-GPCMTL-PARCOURS-Mtl_2024-CMYK.png?ver=1716483304000 Startlist: https://gpcqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/14201809/GPCQM_Startlist_Etape_1-5.pdf?ver=1726337888000 Live TV map: https://gpcqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/31175922/carte_telediffusion_2024.jpg?ver=1725119962000

Lotte Kopecky started her 2024 road season by winning the overall at the UAE Tour, and seven months later she has ended her current run in the rainbow jersey (at least in terms of WorldTour racing) by winning the overall at Tour de Romandie – bookending her rainbow year with WorldTour GC titles that started with the 2023 Simac Ladies Tour.

The Belgian finished second in the opening stage sprint, second on the mountaintop at the end of stage 2, and third behind a breakaway of two in the final stage. The three podium finishes secured her the overall victory, six seconds ahead of teammate Demi Vollering and 46 seconds ahead of Gaia Realini of Lidl-Trek.

“I came here to see how my form was at the moment, and I’m quite happy where I am with the World Championships coming,” Kopecky said after the third stage.

Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) won the opening sprint stage and Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the final stage after a day in the breakaway.

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How good was the 2024 Vuelta a España?

Record heat, a brutally hard course, and animated racing made it interesting, but was it good?

This rough-and-tumble Vuelta had a lot going for it.

Primož Roglič won a record-tying fourth crown that seemed all but inevitable even with a banged up back and a late-race bad tummy. With the other three of the “Big 4” sitting on the sidelines, who was going to beat him anyway?

Ben O’Connor at least made it interesting after pulling a “Kuss” on the exact same stage that Sepp Kuss sprung clear last year to win. The Australian finally buckled to Roglič’s incessant tapping in stage 19, but he didn’t fully crack, and hung on for a well-deserved first career podium.

Behind those two, this Vuelta was a bit of a mixed bag.

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As if riding the 3,261 kilometres of the 2024 Vuelta a España as his last race was not enough, Spanish veteran Luis Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi) is celebrating his retirement by riding the 600 kilometres from the Vuelta finish in Madrid to his home in Marbella in the south of Spain.

Maté started his three-day return on Monday morning “without getting up too early” and will stay overnight in Puertollano, a town some 250 kilometres south of the Spanish capital.

He will then pedal on to Lucena, roughly 220 kilometres further south, before reaching his home in Marbella on the Andalusian coast after a shorter leg some time late on Wednesday afternoon.

Maté completed his twelfth and last ever Vuelta in 61st place overall, during a final season in which he also celebrated a final win, a stage in the Volta a Portugal.

“It’s partly to get used to the idea of leaving my pro career behind, but I’m going on being a bike rider, and this is like a transition, riding home from being a pro to riding a bike ‘for real’, " the 40-year-old told Cyclingnews.

...

After the rest day, O'Connor still has an advantage of almost 4 minutes over his closest rival, Primoz Roglic, and he's looking good. Roglic apparently hasn't felt as strong, and hasn't struck on the typical climbs we would expect him to use to put time into O'Connor and other rivals. Joao Almeida is out of the race with COVID, and Adam Yates is now UAE's top GC man, ~ 5:30 back from O'Connor. Sepp Kuss does not seem to be in top form and will probably not defend his red jersey. Richard Carapaz, Enric Mas, and Mikel Landa are ~30 seconds away from Roglic after the first rest day.

Sepp Kuss may be a Grand Tour winner leading one of the world’s best teams as he attempts to defend his title at the Vuelta a España, but that doesn’t mean that he has forgotten who he was before he took hold of the red jersey a year ago. On Friday, he showed the world that he is still the same old Sepp Kuss who can be relied upon as one of the sport’s best teammates.

“In our team, it’s not only about winning but about performing as a team,” Wout van Aert said after Kuss helped him secure his second stage win of the 2024 Vuelta. “A part of that is that everybody dares to sacrifice himself for the others.”

Van Aert, hunting stages in his Vuelta debut, was the pre-race favorite for stage 7, which featured a punchy climb late in the day – perfect for jettisoning the less versatile sprinters from the pack and putting Van Aert in position to outkick the survivors. Everything seemed to be going according to plan for Van Aert and Visma-Lease a Bike until Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) soloed away from the thinned-out pack on the descent off of the climb.

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It doesn't take a wealth of big names to make a sprint compelling huh?

spoiler

Kasia Niewiadoma won the 2024 women’s Tour de France by four seconds, the narrowest margin in the history of either the women’s or men’s race, clinging on to the yellow jersey, despite an Alpine assault from the defending champion, Demi Vollering.

On Saturday afternoon, a defiant Niewiadoma had said: “I lost four seconds, so that’s nothing,” after Vollering had picked up that much via time bonus. Twenty-four hours later, though, for the Pole and her Canyon-SRAM team, four precious seconds at the top of Alpe d’Huez meant everything.

“Four seconds seem to be magical now,” she said. “Throughout my whole career there were so many times I missed out on victories. I feel like this week was perfect for me and my team. To be able to win big races, you need everything on your side.”

They seem to just not really be covering it. No highlights show that I can find tonight and the tour of Denmark and tour de l'avenir are more prominent on the website. What gives?

AMNÉVILLE, France (Velo) – Demi Vollering and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift peloton won’t forget the race’s return to its native land in a hurry.

After avoiding a huge pile-up during four days of Benelux road furniture, a left hand bend after a roundabout outside Amnéville led to carnage at the end of stage 5.

A crash 20 riders from the front of a speeding peloton with 6km to go took down fifteen riders in a tangle of bodies and bikes and changed the course of the 2024 race.

Race leader Demi Vollering (Team SD Worx-Protime) and second-placed Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) both hit the deck. Pieterse was up quickly, despite cuts to her hip, knee, elbow, chin and back, only losing 28 seconds come the finish.

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Like a mini documentary focusing on EF Education's Richard Carapaz's win in stage 17. Inside the bus and so on.

Did anyone predict Primoz or Juan Ayuso dropping this year? :(

Yes.

> We’re seeing several stages in the Tour de France when nobody attacks. In the past there was always a move hoping for some publicity and the chance of beating the odds. No more…

> Normally we’ve seen an early breakaway go. The flag drops and a handful of plucky riders take a flier. Race director Thierry Gouvenou has branded them “4×4” moves, as in four riders go up the road and get four minutes. This blog has labelled them 4x4x4 as four riders get four minutes in a forlorn move. These moves almost never work.

> The stage began without a rider that had finished the day before: Mads Pedersen. The Dane was suffering from injuries sustained on stage 5 and ultimately abandoned the race. During the stage we have seen crashes and small injuries for Warren Barguil and Sandy Dujardin. Oscar Onley and Soren Kragh Andersen also came down on the day.

Shame, that.

> There’s a lot to master for neo-pros and Docker’s book is a manual for newcomers making their way in the peloton. This could mean a niche readership even if they’d do well to read it but reading the advice and anecdotes is of wider interest as it touches on tactics and other skills that sofa spectators can enjoy.

The first Time Trial of the Tour.

Evenepoel should be the main favorite, but Pogacar did some serious performances at the Giro, and Vingegaard on past Tours has dominated the discipline.

The difference between Pogacar and Vingegaard could shape the Tour. If the later is able to recover time, it will be interesting, but if Pogacar gains even more time, the Tour could be almost over.

Cicone starts at 16.44 and with two minutes between them until Pogacar starts at 17.00

> Stage 6 of the Tour should be a calm day on the bike, with only 163 kilometers to race, mostly completely flat with a finale into Dijon. A small fourth category ascent early in the day, but after that it is just an old-school Tour day where there is nothing to keep an eye on besides the final sprint.

After the opening weekend's hilly stages and yesterday flat one, the race has today a hard mountain stage.

3900 meters of climbing and they will go above 2000m (they will climb up to 2627m on the Galibier).

Pogacar should test Vingegaard, and it could be too much climbing for Remco.

But, even with the precious climbing data, the slopes may not be hard enough to make differences. They should go full gas the whole climb and some riders can break when surpassing the 2000m mark.

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I remember asking this years ago on r***** but I'll ask again because I think this is a fun topic. Every sport has them - what are the unwritten rules of pro cycling?

Any answer would be great, but I also want to ask about something I just saw. Is there a rule among cyclists about intermediate sprints that you can try for points, but not very hard? I see mid-range pushing at these things and I always wonder why at least one rider doesn't just go all out to get the points.

Welcome new fans! Check this out if your confused by all the TDF terms and so on.

Edit: fix a typo

Second stage of the tour, two hard climbs for the sprinters in the last 30km.

I expect another stage like yesterday's, but with more puncheur riders than climbers. DSM will try to keep Bardet's jersey.

If he is in good shape maybe Van Aert could win, also Pedersen. Too hard for Van Der Poel. And we always have Pogacar.

🚵‍♂️🚵‍♀️🚵

I'm going to miss seeing Sepp K charging up those hills the most.

Go Matteo J!

(Got my US bias in full effect, eh)

For another year is time for the Tour to start.

This start is a hard stage, maybe we we'll see some GC contenders playing (I dream). Anyway it would be interesting.

Let's commented here how the stage is going.

For those who cannot watch it procyclingstats.com is a good place to follow.

Bienvenues à le Tour

Hopeful Jonas recovered after all the injuries, but I somehow doubt it that he'll be at 100% after those injuries without much time to recover. While I'm rooting for PogRog, I fear a repeat of Giro, where Pog dominated and made it boring to watch. Or perhaps Remco will kick in, but then again he was also injured and didn't do well at Dauphine. What's you take?

...should we migrate somewhere else?

We need at least one active mod to make it worthwhile to invest time in this community and set up a bot, etc.

It's back! And it covers the 2023 race. I'm digging it so far. Seeing the seat post cam during sprints is amazing.

‘It was close’ - Primož Roglič on surviving attacks to win Critérium du Dauphiné

Primož Roglič managed to survive late-stage attacks by his closest rivals in the general classification to hold on to his lead - barely - and win the Critérium du Dauphiné for the second time in his career on Sunday. He claimed the overall by a slim eight seconds on Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease A Bike), the smallest advantage since 2001 when Christophe Moreau won by one second over Pavel Tonkov.

Going into the final day's racing, another arduous mountain trek after the Queen Stage, Roglič had a seemingly unassailable margin of 1:02 seconds on Jorgenson, and 1:13 on Derek Gee (Israel-PremierTech). But it almost came undone on the final ascent of the ascent of Col des Glières (9.4km at 7.1%) with some steep pitches exceeding 10%.

The Slovenian was distanced in the final five kilometres after Jorgenson and Gee followed an attack from former Spanish champion Carlos Rodríguez (Ineos Grenadiers). An acceleration that Roglič simply could not follow as he watched the trio pull away from him, forcing him to continue to claw his way up and try to limit the damage.

The distance to the leaders continued to increase but Roglič went ‘all in’ as the road flattened out slightly in the final two kilometres and crossed the finish line 48 seconds behind stage winner Rodríguez, and runner-up Jorgenson.

“I was hearing all the gaps [from his DS] all the time. I was happy that the others didn’t go faster. I was just tired. It was close but finally, I’m satisfied for the team.” Roglič said.

This time around the Slovenian’s overall victory was completely different from his first in 2022. Two years ago, Roglič and his then Jumbo-Visma teammate Jonas Vingegaard rode away together to claim the final stage, and win the overall with 1:41 margin over his closest non-teammate rival in third place.

This year, not only did Roglič come to the Tour de France warm-up race with a new team, Bora-Hansgrohe, but he was returning to racing after being injured in a terrible crash at Itzulia Basque Country in April.

History seemed to be repeating itself when Roglič went down in the mass crash that caused the neutralisation of stage 5. But after undergoing assessment from his team's medical staff, he not only started the following day but powered away to claim the mountain-top stage win and take over the yellow leader’s jersey.

“It’s crazy to be able to win the Dauphiné after everything that happened, the crash and everything that came in between. It’s incredible.”

Not only was the eight-day stage race an opportunity to test his form, but it was also an important test for his team. After all, they had only raced together 14 days before the start last weekend. Bora-Hansgrohe also won the best team classification, with over seven minutes on Ineos Grenadiers.

“It’s definitely something we needed with the team, to work on the positioning, the communication, many things. I haven’t been with these guys for five years.”

Roglič was his usual stoic self when asked if the victory boosted his confidence for the Tour de France.

“Now the Dauphiné is one thing and the Tour is another. I first want to be happy because you don’t win a race like this every day.”

“For sure, you take everything that you get at the end or you have to take,” Roglič told FloBikes and other reporters at the finish line when asked if he would take third place on the Tour de France today if offered the chance.

“But still at the beginning, everyone has the same possibilities. To win it or be second, third or whatever position, So first of all, we have to be happy with the whole team we did a really nice race. Great job. We have to enjoy it. And then just going to the Tour and being relaxed.”

Stage 5 of the Critérium du Dauphiné was neutralised after two mass crashes with 21km remaining that saw a vast number of riders fall, including yellow jersey Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step), Primož Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates).

The commissaires brought the race to a halt after the peloton was hit by two almost simultaneous crashes on a stretch of wet downhill road on the run-in to the finish in Saint-Priest.

Following discussions between the riders, the commissaires and the race organisation, it was later decided to cancel the remainder of the stage.

In an announcement on race radio, the organisation explained that they were unable to ensure medical support for the peloton in the closing kilometres given that the ambulances following the race were all required to bring riders to hospital.

It was decreed that the peloton would ride the final kilometres into Saint-Priest together, but there would be no stage winner and no time awarded for the general classification.

“In accordance with the jury of commissaires of the UCI it's been decided that due to the fact there are no ambulances can take care of the security of the riders because they are all busy going to different hospitals, the race will be neutralised,” was the Englishlanguage statement on race radio.

“The race will be neutralised and the peloton will ride all the way to the finish line under the escort of the Garde Republicaine. The times will not be taken into account, there will not be a winner for today's stage.”

Laurens ten Dam and his fellow former professional Thomas Dekker had arrived in America for last weekend’s Unbound Gravel.

24 hours after landing, they headed out for a three-hour training ride near Marietta, Oklahoma, finishing up outside a Mexican restaurant where they planned to have lunch. Presumably not wanting to disturb their fellow diners, all sweaty and dirty after hours out riding, they decided to have a quick makeshift shower with a bottle of water in the parking lot outside.

“After Thomas had rinsed me off, I quickly changed my pants between the car doors,” Ten Dam said on his Live Slow Ride Fast podcast. “But as I do that, I hear someone shouting very angrily across the street.”

Their European comfort with nudity was clearly too much for one local, who promptly called the police.

“Suddenly there were five police cars. The man who had shouted at us was also there and said: ‘You should go to jail for this’,” Ten Dam continued.

“Within five minutes there were five police cars. At that moment, the man who had been yelling at Thomas comes over and yells for Thomas to be put in jail.”

“Walking around naked on the street apparently caused so much offence …” Dekker explained. “It’s really not allowed there.”

“We were told that we had been charged with indecent behavior. The charges stated that we sprayed each other with water bottles like two ‘gay cyclists’,” Ten Dam explained what the pair were told by police, before Dekker added the officers had “the IQ of a shrimp.”

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One of the UK’s leading young cyclists has been forced to pull out of this week’s Tour of Britain after being hit at “high speed” by a 4x4 driver, who she said then verbally abused her.

Kate Richardson, who won the women’s individual pursuit at the British Track Cycling Championships in February and was a European under-23 champion last year, said she had broken her collarbone again after the “incredibly scary” incident.

“I was on a narrow single track road, no more than 3m wide, on a blind bend and clearly the driver couldn’t wait 10 more seconds to overtake me,” she wrote on Instagram. “He decided to try and squeeze his huge 4x4 past me at a high speed, hitting me hard and knocking me off my bike.

“Initially, he just drove on but turned around and came back later to verbally abuse and threaten me before getting back in his car and driving off again. Thankfully another driver came across the scene pretty quickly and kindly helped me up and drove me home.”

The 21-year-old from Glasgow, who posted pictures of her badly damaged cycling kit, said she had also suffered road rash and severe bruising across her right hip in the incident. She confirmed she would miss the Tour of Britain, which starts on Thursday.

“I’m currently uncertain about what the rest of the season holds,” she added. “This is a lot more than just a physical injury, it was incredibly scary and I count myself lucky that I walked away relatively unscathed compared to what it could have been.”

Richardson, who also won the women’s edition of the Lincoln Grand Prix on the road last month, said she had reported the incident to South Yorkshire police.

“Mentally though, it will take a while to overcome,” she added. “Knowing that once again I’ll be missing a key racing block, whilst knowing what sort of shape I’ve worked so hard to be in, is hugely disappointing and hard to get my head around.

“The police are dealing with the incident, and with witnesses and potential CCTV footage I’m hopeful that some sort of justice will prevail.”

> It is only a 15-second video but, riding around the Alps, a rider managed to find himself riding together with Jonas Vingegaard, Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte. The Team Visma | Lease a Bike riders are getting ready for the Tour de France and it is possible to see them at work.

It's a little stalkerish, but I think I would record this too, if somehow this happened near me.

Just happy to know there all coming back, really.

Competition! Alps! Let's go!