Author: Harold Dalton

At the start of the Tour, we picked seven riders who’d play a part in the overall story of the race. Here’s our retrospective look at their performances. Hey, how did Nairo get on this list? Egan Bernal A flash in the pan? Well, that might be harsh. Still, INEOS banked on the Colombian being the future of grand tours for a generation, but the rider that actually showed up never looked fully on pace. Eventually he began to drop time. Soon he was hemorrhaging it. After losing seven minutes to Roglic to end his Tour hopes, and then almost…

Listen on Anchor.fm Welcome to Tour de France Stage Zero, part three. We’re going to chat about what’s happened in the past week, and give our predictions for the final week. The government has banned gatherings of more than six people, which spells bad news for the Jumbo Visma team on literally every mountain in this year’s tour. It also means that one of our listeners is going to have to wait ten minutes before hitting play. Pandemic jokes in September. Good lord. What Happened Stage 10 – Sam Bennett Cries The first stage back, Stage 10, was a flat…

We weren’t entirely sure what the Levo line is. Well, we know now. We went straight to the website after seeing these videos. So that’s good marketing if the Specialized team was specifically trying to make the Cyclry team aware of this product line. It’s a line of electric MTBs, by the way. These ads are: 100% in our aestheticKinda funnyEmbeddable on our site The last point is the most important one. Here they are. And, this is terribly important, we have to say it: Nova Major, hello. We know you’re fictional, but do you want to write for our…

Vincenzo Nibali shared it first, but he’s not the biggest Italian cycling legend in this video: It starts with old Vinny Nibz going for a gentle spin. He goes through a misty forest. Is the implication that it’s a magical forest? It could be. After leaving the possibly magical forest, he encounters Fausto Coppi handing Gino Bartali a water bottle. “I hope they’re really adding Coppi in here and not Jar-Jar Binks.” Soon we’ve got an entire peloton of uncanny valley cycling legends. Then they do one of modern cycling’s most iconic moments: Pantani suffering a mechanical at the base…

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7HJhxQXmEUWG73F2WgfP6Y?si=CL_F4Yu3TyShaxPlQElhGg What’s been happening so far in this… most eventful of Tours de France? Stage 1 The first stage of the Tour de France is always packed with crashes. Add torrential rain and a Tour caravan that sprayed laundry detergent onto the streets an hour before the race passed through, and you’ve got something that looks more like an episode of Takeshi’s Castle than the world’s biggest sporting event. Of course, risk management is part of cycling. Those who are more skillful or confident can take the risks that improve their performance. Wanting the race to stop because you’re not…

This one feels a bit classist in 2020. As a working class boy with a thick Northern accent, this was actually a dig at the Southerners I spent my days dodging as I rode my bike around West London though. London still had a love-hate relationship with the Tour since it had hosted the Grand Depart the previous year. Everyone was suddenly aware of it and, because they were British, complaining about it. Thankfully, we were in France for it, feeling smug and ordering “deux Oranginas” so that nobody would think we were British. I ended up in a fountain…

We hate to say we told you so, but we know a guy… The UCI World Championships were canceled last month. Or at least, the location was: Aigle-Martigny was unable to host the event due to Covid concerns. But while the cycling community was hand-wringing about the loss of the Worlds, the UCI was seeking out a new location for the race. Now they’ve confirmed it. The Worlds will take place in Imola, Italy, from 24-27 September. And the course retains the challenge presented by the original Swiss route: the men will climb 5000m in their race. Imola hosts the…

It’s September, so it’s time for us to talk about August. Always look backwards. That’s our motto. That’s because if you look forward in 2020 you’ll see scary stuff. Racing News You know who won the Strade Bianche. No, not Remco Evenepoele. The other you know who. Wout van Aert. Remco did win the Vuelta a Burgos though. We congratulated him for it in the last monthly wrap, even though the race hadn’t started when we recorded. That was supposed to be a joke, but he’s really just that good. And to prove it, he drank his podium champagne, put…