2023 over and out

Hey lovely people. 2023 is at an end and we’re about to launch headlong into 2024, and yes, it’s that bit of the year where you forget what day it is and you’re composed of equal parts cheese, leftover roast dinner and that Ariana Grande song.

While I cannot promise a perfect ten in terms of newsletter content, I’ll do my best to bring you up to date with some of the main news stories from the past fortnight, along with providing an imperfect summary of the first half of the busiest part of the cyclocross season, and well, frankly that will have to do. I’ll be back on form by the time we get to the first newsletter of 2024, honest.

Before you dive into the news, can I draw your attention to a piece I wrote for the site showcasing the career of legendary cycling photographer Phil O’Connor, who talked through the stories of some of his most iconic images, from an era of rolls of black and white film and having just one chance to take the perfect picture. It’s really one to savour.

Keep an eye on the site over the next couple of weeks as there will be heaps of material going up, including team previews for all men’s and women’s World Tour teams, interviews from the Astana-Qazaqstan and UAE Team Emirates media days, and more.

Now for the news.

THE NEWS!

Cian chaos concludes!

Speculation surrounding the controversial transfer of Cian Uijtdebroeks from BORA hansgrohe to Jumbo-Visma reached fever pitch just before Christmas as the rider appeared at the Jumbo-Visma team presentation dressed in full kit. Later that day it was revealed that the teams and the rider himself had come to a three-way agreement terminating his contract with BORA at the end of 2023.

I wrote about who he is, and what this could mean for cycling, for the Rival app - you can read four articles per month for free so if you want to understand what the fuss is all about, check out the app and follow my profile.

More new kits!

Since we last spoke the floodgates have opened, and plenty more new kits have been debuted – Israel-Premier Tech, SD Worx, Movistar and more. But there’s only one you need to go out of your way to catch up with, if you haven’t seen it yet. Yes, Soudal-QuickStep’s kit reveal, arguably the best ever. While it was clearly inspired by Alison Jackson, Julian Alaphillippe lip-syncing to Celine Dion with all the style and panache we’ve come to expect from him pretty much rendered any comments about the kit itself moot, because who really cared when all our days were vastly improved by seeing Loulou back to his showman best. Watch it now. Several times.

Tadej Giro-Tour Double!

With team media days taking place mostly around the Costa Blanca in Spain, plenty of news has been generated regarding rider programmes, team goals and suchlike, but one piece of scheduling news eclipsed all the others. Tadej Pogacar revealed he would ride the Giro d’Italia for the first time in 2024, and the following day at a press conference he confirmed he would be attempting the Giro-Tour double. It’s seen as the toughest combination of two Grand Tours that’s possible, and successes in both have been rare – the feat was last achieved way back in 1998 by Marco Pantani.

The team that has been announced to back him up at the Tour is arguably even stronger on paper than the support detail Jonas Vingegaard has had in tow for the past couple of years, though as always with UAE it could well be a case of ‘too many chiefs’. Either way, it seems the double may not be the primary focus for the irrepressible Slovene. When asked if he would prefer to win the Giro for the first time, or the Tour de France for the third time, his answer was simply ‘World Championships.’

Vuelta route revealed – sprinters steer clear!

Yes, the big reveal of the route for the third Grand Tour dropped earlier this month, and while it’s not news that the Spanish Tour really doesn’t favour the fast men, with the constant ups and downs and the gruelling climbing, this year’s edition is a particularly stringent case of sprinter-repellent, with 3 sprint stages reported though only one of them actually classes as ‘flat’. They are practically guaranteeing some weird results with a mix of sprinters and not-sprinters vying for stage wins, and probably a fair few breakaways. There’s also plenty of mouth-watering climbs for the GC riders to test themselves on, including the return of the spectacular Lagos di Covadonga.

Tour Down Under countdown!

The first World Tour race of the year is just four short weeks away, and this week the Tour Down Under revealed full start lists for the stage races in January for both the men and women. There’s no shortage of star quality across the board, including the likes of Julian Alaphilippe, Filippo Ganna, Caleb Ewan, Simon Yates, Chloe Dygert, Amanda Spratt, Grace Brown and Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig. See the full start lists here:

Champion cyclist dies

Some very sad breaking news this morning: former World Champion track cyclist Melissa Dennis née Hoskins passed away following an incident with a truck driven by her husband Rohan Dennis yesterday. Dennis has been arrested in connection with the incident. The couple have two young children. Rest in peace, Melissa.

Cyclocross Dispatch

You know me, I don’t shy away from a challenge – and summarising the past two weeks in cyclocross is up there with one of the biggest challenges of the year, given we’re knee deep in the mud of the kerstperiode and have just come through five straight days of racing. Let alone everything that came before. So please, bear with me – hopefully I’ve remembered everything. Here goes…

X2O Badkamers Trofee Herentals (16 Dec) saw the hardest fought battle so far this season for the current dominant force in women’s cyclocross. Fem van Empel was suffering from a cold, and had come down hard in training, so wasn’t feeling at her best, and Lucinda Brand pushed her all the way, losing out only in the sprint finish in the end. It was finally the head-to-head battle we’d all been hoping for. The men’s race saw the return of two big names – Mathieu van der Poel, and Tom Pidcock. Van der Poel, fresh from Spanish training camp, was in steam train mode, and he employed shock and awe tactics. About 30 seconds in he put in an injection of power, bid farewell to the rest, and that was all she wrote. The speed of the man was frankly terrifying to behold.

UCI World Cup Namur (17 Dec) – the usual messy crazy rutted course produced a great day of racing, and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado was able to notch up her 3rd World Cup win of the season, with Puck Pieterse and Lucinda Brand battling for second place, with Pieterse just edging out the former World Champion. Tom Pidcock scored his first victory of the season in the men’s elite race, despite a series of minor technical issues, and the Baloise Trek Lions pair of Pim Ronhaar and Joris Nieuwenhuis were able to lock their Pauwels Sauzen rivals out of the podium.

And then… it all kicked off. Yes, the beginning of the kerstperiode came around fast, and from here on out it’s going to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants version of this section as I attempt to bring you up to date with the many races that are occurring during the packed festive season. It began with a warm-up at the Exact Cross in Mol (22 Dec) which was billed as a head-to-head between Van der Poel and Van Aert, but proved to once again be a one-man show, with the World Champ triumphing by well over a minute. Lucinda Brand was the only one of the top women in attendance and she won relatively comfortably over her team mate Shirin van Anrooij, who had a season’s best ride to finish 21 seconds back in second. A strong ride from Laura Verdonschot rounded out the podium.

Antwerpen (23 Dec) saw the gathering of all the top women’s riders for the first time this season, and it was a good indication that we could perhaps expect the Van Empel domination to be challenged going deeper into the winter racing block, as Puck Pieterse and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado stayed within touching distance to push the Jumbo-Visma rider to her limits. She was able to hold them off to take her 11th win but with Lucinda Brand coming through to finish just 18 seconds behind, it offered hope that the close racing we’ve been missing so far this season would be in evidence in the coming days.

It was also the first clash of the season for the ‘big three’, and of the trio, only Wout van Aert was able to make it away cleanly – there were problems early on for both Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Pidcock at the beginning of the race, MVDP’s foot coming out of his shoe right from the line, and Pidcock crashing (and luckily landing on sand) after just a minute or two. But it was academic in the end – Van der Poel proved too strong once again, putting in a series of impressive attacks along the beach first to make up the deficit and then to take and build upon his lead. Van Aert finished second and on a bad day for Pidcock, the dogged Eli Iserbyt took third spot.

For the women, Puck Pieterse rode from the front in Gavere (26 Dec) and it paid off, as even with a spill on the first lap she maintained her lead, with Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado the closest to her. This too was the story at Diegem (28 Dec), with Pieterse capitalising on a fast city circuit to take her second win in a row, both at the race and this year. In between, the Superprestige Heusden-Zolder (27 Dec) didn’t feature Puck, but instead saw Fem Van Empel and Ceylin del Carmen Alvarado clash in the closest race of the season so far, and a competitive outing we had all been waiting for.

For the men, Wout van Aert was the sole representative of the ‘big three’ at Heusden-Zolder, and he took his time before striking the killer blow, riding with a large group of lead riders for the majority of the race. When he made his move, Eli Iserbyt was able to hold onto his wheel, and he shadowed the elder Belgian until the very last lap, when Van Aert was able to pull clear and head for victory just 8 seconds ahead of the resilient Pauwels-Sauzen Bingoal rider, who sealed the win in the Superprestige series with one fixture still to ride.

The men’s elite race in Gavere finished with a big three podium, with Van Der Poel once again victorious, and Diegem was another display of dominance, though the Dutchman waited a bit longer before breaking away. Tom Pidcock and Eli Iserbyt threw it down in the battle for second place, and they were barely able to be separated, but an expertly timed bit of shoulder-to-shoulder bike handling on one of the final turns saw Pidcock able to move clear to take second.

The following day in the sloppy mudfest at the Exact Cross Loenhout (29 Dec), with the top women all opting to take the day off, Sanne Cant was able to maximise, leading from the front to take her first win outside of the Belgian National championships since October 2021. Kristýna Zemanová and Manon Bakker completed the podium behind her.

The men’s race began with a mass pile-up causing over half the field to end up on the ground, and Lotto-DSTNY’s Florian Vermeersch to seriously hurt his elbow in the process. Another Vermeersch, Gianni, had his best day out on a cross bike since October 2019, taking second place to his Alpecin-Deceuninck team mate Mathieu van der Poel, who as the sole representative of the top string of male riders unsurprisingly won. Felipe Orts edged out Ryan Kamp to take third place.

And this brings us to the final race of 2023… the UCI World Cup Hulst (30 Dec) saw a full complement of top riders in both the women’s and men’s fields, and a resurgent Puck Pieterse surged clear in an early opportunistic move that saw her distance all her rivals, and that is where they stayed for the duration of the race. But it wasn’t without drama. With Brand, Van Empel and Alvarado forming a quality chase group, Pieterse rode strongly at first but made a couple of mistakes later on as fatigue started to creep in, allowing Alvarado to catch her and leading to a thrilling finale. Van Empel finally showed signs of weakness, dropped by her countrywomen and finishing in fourth, with Alvarado second and Brand third. It’s arguably the race of the season so far though, so catch up if you can.

The men’s race should have been a brilliant battle but first Tom Pidcock, then Wout van Aert, were ruled out of contention, the first crashing on the very first corner of the course, the second dropping his chain on an off-camber section. Van der Poel may well have won anyway, given the form he’s displaying this winter, but it would have been good to see what the others could have done about the World Champion on a course that should have suited both of them better than the others have of late. As it was, Van der Poel won from Joris Nieuwenhuis and Pim Ronhaar, with Wout van Aert able to work his way back to finish in 5^th . There was controversy as Van der Poel was fined 250 Swiss Francs for spitting at fans, who he claimed were abusing and throwing urine at him. A sour ending to a great week of racing.

THE LAST WORD… OF 2023

Yes folks, it’s really here – the final newsletter of 2023 is done and I would just like to once again express my gratitude to you, for joining me on this journey. It’s the first full year of the newsletter, a year in which I’ve relaunched my website and without you all out there to write for, it wouldn’t be worth it, so thank you truly for being a part of the writebikerepeat community. If you’d like to support the newsletter or the website going into 2024 you can do so in one of four ways:

1. Tell your friends! If you have a cycling fan in your life who might enjoy my content, do encourage them to sign up – let’s spread the love!

2. Buy me a coffee – and I will use it to stay awake to cram every second of cycling into my face in 2024 to make sure I can bring you the most up-to-date and insightful content.

3. Buy some merch! No time like the present to pop a cool casquette on your head, or hydrate with a yellow Tour inspired bidon. Head to the shop to browse.

4. Become a paying member of the site – enabling you to access discount codes to various cycling-adjacent brands, have a say in the content I produce, and even get a goody bag or merch item for free (dependent on tier).

See you all in 2024, hope you all have a very happy New Year!

Cheers,
Katy