Author: Harold Dalton

Tarra, Tour de Yorkshire. This year’s race was sensibly canceled due to COVID-19, and now the 2021 is also officially canceled due to uncertainty around the pandemic and what it holds for the future. Thankfully, the four-day race plans to return in 2022, likely in part due to being owned by ASO. Many a race of this stature would otherwise not survive two years off. Well, actually, money might be pretty tight over at the TdY, and that might partially be behind the decision to hold off running the race for another year, but let’s not dwell on it. And…

Cycling has a lot of great riders right now. So many, in fact, that narrowing them down proved extremely difficult. With young riders signaling a changing of the guard, discipline specialists, and more, we’ve had to leave off so many riders we’d love to talk about. So. Here are our five best riders of 2020. If you disagree, send us a message. We probably won’t read it though. Disclaimer: this list is all men. We had a longer statement here, but there’s not much more to do that hold our hands up and apologize for not covering women’s cycling enough…

Alex Dowsett has announced that he will attempt to break the UCI Hour Record on 12 December. He’ll be doing it at one of our favorite velodromes, the National Cycling Centre in Manchester, UK. Dowsett set an Hour Record in 2015, covering 52.937km at the National Cycling Center, before Bradley Wiggins stole his crown 36 days later. Now he’s BACK with a view to beating current holder Victor Campenaerts’s record of 55.089km. With a storied career behind him, including a Bronze medal in the Men’s Elite individual time trial at the 2015 UCI Road World Championships in Richmond, Dowsett stands…

Our friends at Movistar are putting a positive spin on their season. And why not? It’s been a solid season for the… for the… for the Telefonica-backed team. Sorry, we’re internalizing their messaging. Enric Mas is looking like he could be the future of Spanish cycling, winning the best young rider and fifth place at both the Tour and Vuelta. Young rider Alejandro Valverde continues to impress on the highest stage. And their women’s team is growing ever more powerful (seriously, thank you so much for that investment). So, we’ll let them have this. Here’s what they said when we…

Well, if ever there was a time to do it, it was November, as the season ended. Oh yeah, and a national COVID-19 lockdown. It’s probably more to do with the latter. New restrictions recently came into force in England, limiting movement, closing gyms and bars, and generally confining people to their homes. Oh, but schools and universities are still open, for some reason. Just to make the entire lockdown futile, probably. British Cycling attempted to appeal the restrictions, but failed. In response, the UK governing body has suspended all cycling activities and events in England. The suspension will last until…

Time to get fat! Here’s what Pat McQuaid, former UCI President, Irish national champion, and two-time winner of the Tour of Ireland, had to say: “The Covid-19 pandemic has played havoc with our lives this past 9 months and nowhere has this been so evident than the world of sport. My sport, cycling, was likewise affected and for a time it looked like the full season would be lost. “However the stakeholders led by UCI collaborating with organisers, teams, cyclists and fans created a protocol to deal with Covid-19 which would allow the major races take place in a shortened…

2020 has done Dirty Kanza like it’s done the rest of us. After early calls to change its name due to insensitivity to the original people of Kansas, it then found itself in a shitstorm due to comments from its founder. It was rescheduled. Then it was canceled. And in the midst of this, calls to rename the event resurfaced. Well, now it’s bouncing back for 2021. There’s a new date, and, rightly, a new name too: Garmin Unbound Gravel. Expect the Garmin part to be fluid, depending on who’s sponsoring the race at a given moment. Good news all…

The Movistar Team announced Monday that Leah Thomas (Cupertino, CA; 1989) has signed a contract for the 2021 season with the squad managed by Sebastián Unzué, which makes her the fourteenth, final name of the Telefónica-backed outfit for the next season. A cyclist only for the last seven years, having previously competed as a gymnast and at long-distance running, the American has steadily developed a big talent on the bike towards world-class performances in the most diverse terrains. A great time trialist -she was 7th at the World Championships and Pan-American champ in 2019, also claiming the victory at the Chrono des…