Leaves are falling, all around me

Hey there cycling friends, hope you’re all well wherever you are in the world, and wholehearted apologies if I accidentally (sort of) gave you a Christmas song earworm with this week’s newsletter title. But like it or not, we are drawing ever closer to the end of road season, and in fact, the finale of the European season comes this weekend in Italy, with the fifth and final Monument of the season, Il Lombardia.

‘The race of the falling leaves’ is the traditional curtain closer for most of the men’s peloton, and while both men and women will compete in a series of races in China in the next couple of weeks, it’s time to let go and reflect on what’s been an interesting season in road racing, as we look ahead to another winter of cyclocross. Something I intend to do in the next couple of weeks, over on the website - where you’ll also find a whole heap more content, that’s been hanging around waiting to be published while I quite frankly procrastinate on an elite level.

This week’s newsletter features all the usual news headlines, a quick results round-up, and a few extra bits and bobs, and will hopefully land in your inbox prior to the weekend. Please stick with me through the winter, even if you’re not a cyclocross fan, as there will be plenty to stay up to date with, including enviously discussing the sunny and adventurous holidays the pros are enjoying, post-season; keeping up to date with all the new kits as they are released (serious and important cycling journalism at its best), and looking ahead to next season (OK fair enough, it’s not much, but hey, it will be fun, and the 2025 season will be here before you know it).

A word from our sponsor…

If you’re in the northern hemisphere, the nights are drawing in and the weather is frankly horrendous seemingly all over, so naturally our minds begin to turn towards warm climates and holidays. If you’re into cycling and nice things, look no further than our title sponsor Ciclos Major, a company providing bespoke cycling trips on the island of Mallorca, catering for all abilities from competitive cyclists and triathletes, to those who prefer a slower pace.

The company offer a wide range of benefits to cyclists looking to enjoy active trips to the island, with dedicated client care from the moment you leave the airport. This includes transfers, accommodation, hire bikes (if required) and daily guided rides led by one of a team of experienced guides, who cover routes both through the mountains and on the relatively flat roads in the centre of Mallorca.

They provide a free musette with cycling energy food, bidons and some bespoke kit, and have a support car on hand to help you out in the event of any mechanical issues.

Trips are suitable for individuals, small groups of friends, or larger groups or clubs (group discounts are available). Non athletes and families are also welcome at discounted rates.

They are ready to receive your enquiries and bookings. Click through to their website using the above image, and if you’re ready to book, then why not make use of the exclusive 5% discount for loyal writebikerepeat.com subscribers using the below dedicated booking form. Happy holidays!

ON THE PODCAST

Sanny and I have been producing weekly shows with race previews, reviews and plenty of news and chat – the latest episode looks ahead to Lombardia, covers transfers and wonders what Wout van Aert’s Strava AI might be telling him, after the Visma-Lease A Bike rider gets back on his bike for the first time since his Vuelta crash.

Available wherever you get your podcasts – links here –

NEWS! HERE IS SOME NEWS!

Of course it’s very easy to summarise the news from the past couple of weeks because almost ALL of it revolves around transfers – ‘tis the season, and all that. There have been a few ripples in the men’s transfer market, but some seismic shifts on the women’s scene – here are some of the headlines.

ELB bids farewell to Lidl-Trek!

Yes, after six long and successful years at the American side, the Italian champion, veteran racer and winner of just about everything at some point in her career, Elisa Longo Borghini, heads for pastures new in 2025. She will join UAE Team ADQ, a team that already boasts a strong Italian contingent, and she is joined by her teammate Brodie Chapman. It gives the Emirati side a whole new dimension, as they have primarily built their team around sprinters and opportunistic breakaway hopefuls in the past, and it’s another step towards evening the scores across the WWT teams in 2025.

Cille heads to Canyon!

Another huge move that’s just been announced this morning is that of Danish dynamite Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig from the French side FDJ-SUEZ, where she has spent the past five seasons, to Canyon//SRAM, where she will join up with Tour de France Femmes winner Kasia Niewiadoma, and a team of young talents that are really going places. It’s an exciting move and likely frees up space on the roster for FDJ for Demi Vollering, who it’s looking increasingly likely will sign for them for next season.

Decathlon-AG2R reveal full 2025 line-up!

Yes, in a surprise move, the French side not only announced a number of new signings, but also confirmed four contract extensions, all on the same day, thereby officialising their full squad for the 2025 season. It’s neat and tidy and allows us to begin to think ahead to 2025 and what it may hold for the Van Rysel-riding team who have enjoyed great success in 2024.

In another surprise move, the team also announced Luke Rowe as a DS the following day, confirming that the Welsh rider would leave INEOS Grenadiers, following his retirement from professional racing earlier in the season, to begin his career on the other side of the sport. The role begins in November, so Rowe can fully integrate with his new team in time for the new season - and learn a bit of French, no doubt!

Plenty more where that came from!

Transfer news abounds, and as usual, to read full details on all the transfers, including some background on the riders involved, length of contracts and much more, head to the News page on the website, where regular posts will keep you abreast of all the comings and goings. Here are a few more transfers that have caught our eye over the past few days:

- Kasper Asgreen from Soudal-QuickStep to EF Education-EasyPost

- Marion Bunel from St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93 to Visma-Lease A Bike

- Pablo Castrillo from Kern Pharma to Movistar

- Niklas Behrens from Lidl-Trek Devo to Visma-Lease A Bike

All these and many more are detailed over on the site.

ANY OTHER NEWS?

Yes there are stories beyond transfers, believe it or not. Here are a few headlines:

Women’s Milano-Sanremo is go!

Yes, everyone’s favourite half an hour of racing action at the end of a really nice few hours looking at Italian scenery, Milano-Sanremo, confirmed a women’s race would begin in 2025. Or rather, return, as there has previously been a race for women in the area but it’s a revamped version, and though details are yet to be released about distance and parcours, I’m already salivating over the thought of Kopecky, Niewiadoma, Vos et al storming up the Poggio. Best of all, it won’t affect the Trofeo Alfredo Binda – one of the most historic races on the women’s calendar, that takes place the same weekend.

OH HAPPY DAY

It’s always nice to bring some good news to the table, and in a bumper year for peloton babies, this year saw a new arrival for Tom Dumoulin and his partner, as baby Oscar came into the world. The peloton of – I don’t know, let’s say 2044? – is going to be truly stacked, with the likes of Jay Vine, Victor Campanaerts, Ben O’Connor, Jonas Vingegaard and LOADS more welcoming new arrivals this year – that’s assuming of course, that their parents are inclined to encourage them to follow the same dream, though we regularly see riders following in their family footsteps.

More happy news, Elisa Balsamo got married, and it was probably the most striking and stunning wedding I’ve ever seen – check out her Instagram posts to see her, her new husband and the Lidl-Trek girls looking like a bunch of absolute rock stars.

ROAD RACING RESULTS ROUND-UP

Focus on: UCI World Championships, Zurich

A week of high-octane racing concluded with the elite road races a couple of weekends ago, and while the winners weren’t exactly unexpected in the end, the nature of their victories very much was.

The women’s road race (28 Sep) was as dynamic and attacking as expected, and in the end, the strongest team on paper, that of the Netherlands, were once again their own worst enemies, as Demi Vollering executed the ‘probably less than optimal’ race plan and ended up scuppering both her own chances, and those of teammate Marianne Vos, who may otherwise have been able to rejoin a small group heading to the final, where a reduced bunch sprint played out. The victor in that was, not all that surprisingly given the make-up of the group at that point, defending champion Lotte Kopecky. She retains the title she won in Glasgow and will wear rainbow bands for another year – a year in which she will be the central focus at Team SD Worx-ProTime, as Demi departs for pastures new, and hopefully finds a team where she can flourish once again.

It was a disappointing day for the Dutch, despite the stand-out sacrifice of Riejanne Markus who rode her heart out from the front, trying to give her leaders the best possible chance at success. A word too for Belgium’s Justine Ghekiere, who was MVP for me, turning herself inside out in the late break to give Lotte Kopecky the freedom to ride at her own pace – a strategy which at one point looked to have failed, as she dropped away from the leading group, but which later paid dividends as she calmly rode down the leaders and was able to take her shot. The same fate befell the USA’s Chloe Dygert, and she too was able to get back on and make it into second place – a big achievement for the rider who also made the podium in the ITT, coming third.

The men’s road race (29 Sep) was always going to be about one man, and so it proved in the end. But there were plenty of players involved in the game, and when Tadej Pogacar launched away from the bunch with 100km remaining in the race, the collective disbelief that he was capable of sustaining his effort all the way to the finish line was likely what drove the chase, which – unlike in many of his other long-distance solo victories – actually meant that the chase group remained within a relatively small distance of the Slovenian, for quite a long time.

He was aided on his kamikaze quest by loyal sidekick Jan Tratnik, who dropped back from an elite breakaway group to help pace his leader across, allowing Pogi the time he needed to recover ahead of the bigger effort of the day – his drive for the championship, which began with around 80km to go, and was initially supported by Tratnik, before he later leaned on Pavel Sivakov for company – riding for France, the trade team link paid dividends for Pogacar with Sivakov on the day, and the two were together at the head of the race until just over 50km to go, when Pog launched his solo move, never to be seen again.

There was plenty of excitement in the chase, with both last year’s champion Mathieu van der Poel and Olympic gold medallist Remco Evenepoel involved, but it was too little too late for the representatives of the Netherlands and Belgium, while Latvia’s own Toms Skujins was tearing it up alongside Ireland’s Ben Healy for a while, in pursuit of the leaders. In the end, Skujins sadly missed the podium despite his repeated attempts to animate the chase, and it was Ben O’Connor whose late move saw him take second place, in a brilliant ride that the Aussie can really be proud of, in a year in which he’s excelled himself. MVDP rounded out the podium, winning the sprint for bronze.

And so the curtain falls on another year of Worlds, and we have already begun to look ahead to next year’s championships in Kigali, Rwanda, which will see even more climbing on the menu, and already puts Pogacar in pole position to go for a second successive title.

OTHER RESULTS

Yes, believe it or not, some other races have been going on, and there have been a host of young Brits on the march, with Max Poole taking his first pro win for Team dsm-firmenich PosNL at the Tour de Langkawi (29 Sep-6 Oct), Cat Ferguson winning again, stunning the competition at Binche-Chimay-Binche (1 Oct) and storming to victory ahead of the likes of Charlotte Kool, and Zoe Backstedt, who at the time of writing leads the SIMAC Ladies Tour (3-8 Oct) in the Netherlands, having won the first stage time trial – her first World Tour victory and indeed, her first pro victory, following a period away from the sport suffering from illness.

Backstedt retained the jersey after stage 2, and began stage 3 as the lone representative of her team, with all the others having retired due to crashes or ill health. Forced to defend her own jersey, Backstedt managed to hang on to the lead group on stage 3 during crosswinds that led to echelons, and she continues to lead in a race defined by flat, fast finishes, with Lorena Wiebes of Team SD Worx-ProTime winning both of the bunch sprints so far, and another one imminent as I write. With only one stage going over 1,000m altitude gain, retaining the lead all the way to the final day will be a big challenge for the young Brit, with world champion Kopecky and the rest snapping at her heels, but one which likely won’t phase her.

There was off-roading to be had, both at the UCI Gravel World Championships (5-6 Oct) in Leuven, where Mathieu van der Poel made up for losing his road rainbow bands by winning another set, on his third different surface, while on the women’s side, Marianne Vos added to her incredible palmares with a world gravel title - the Queen persists in absolutely dominating in anything she puts her mind to. The same weekend, the riders of Paris-Tours (5 Oct) looked even more mucky and distinctly more run down than those who had done the actual off-roading, engaging in an epic race that looked absolutely brutal, but was a lot of fun to witness, and eventually resulted in victory for Visma-Lease A Bike’s Christophe Laporte following a long-range two-up breakaway effort.

In Italy, torrential rain and flooding has played havoc with the one-day classics, with Tre Valli Varesine (8 Oct) staged in horrendous conditions. In the women’s race, which continued despite discontent among the peloton, Cedrine ‘Kerboom’ Kerbaol triumphed over the elements and the rest of the bunch for Ceratizit-WNT, before the men’s race due to take place later in the day was cancelled. Neilson Powless won solo yesterday at Gran Piemonte (10 Oct), marking a return to form for the American following a difficult season in which he has suffered with a  knee injury.

For all the rest of the results in full, please head to FirstCycling.com, where all the best cycling stats reside.

FINAL THOUGHT – In memoriam: Muriel Furrer

It’s a tough pill to swallow, looking back at the last newsletter, to remind myself where I had gotten up to, in terms of the racing action, only to discover that I had sent it just a couple of days before the impossibly tragic and untimely death of 18-year-old Swiss rider, Muriel Furrer.

To have to write about athletes passing away as they undertake their passion, at the highest level, is not something I ever thought I would have to do. Yet sadly in the past couple of years, it’s been necessary to commemorate the passing of several young lives, lost during races, and it never, ever gets any easier.

Muriel was a young multi-discipline talent who excelled off-road and on it, in cyclocross, and on the mountain bike, where she won a bronze medal as part of the Swiss team in the mixed relay at the European mountain bike championships just this year. Her talents extended onto the road, where in Zurich, she was competing for her country in the women’s junior road race, on home roads – she lived just ten minutes from the site of the crash that ultimately led to her death, from a serious head injury.

The UCI have yet to issue a full report on the incident, but Barry Ryan covered UCI head David Lappartient’s press conference in this article for Cycling News.

As far as the circumstances surrounding Muriel’s death, I will update you with any further information that is released officially, but decline to comment on the specifics at the current time, as there still appear to be some unknowns.

As a community of cycling fans, we can only hope that safety is improved in races going forward, and I look forward to hearing the UCI’s response in full, as and when it is published. Though riders regularly come into difficulty when out training, racing conditions should unquestionably be as safe as they possibly can be, given the speeds that the riders are able to reach on machines that are as light and quick as they have ever been, and with minimal protection. I am dearly hoping that we see continued efforts to improve safety for riders who are already putting themselves at great risk, just by competing at these speeds, and in light of the intensity of being a part of the modern peloton and current racing conditions. Nothing is worth the pain and sorrow of the losses that have been incurred by the cycling community of late - the situation must surely be improved, and fast.

In the meantime, I’m sending thoughts and strength to Muriel’s family, friends, teammates, and all those who knew and loved her. She was a bright young talent, busy proving herself on the biggest stage of all – at the World Championships.

And I really, really hope I don’t have to write another one of these, ever again.

THE LAST WORD

That’s all folks – we’re almost at the end of road season, and the next newsletter will also see the first ‘Cyclocross Dispatch’ of the winter season – I for one cannot believe it’s already that time again.

If you’d like to support the newsletter, or my ongoing quest to provide free, entertaining and informative cycling content, please consider buying me a coffee, or even buying something from the writebikerepeat.com shop, where you can purchase casquettes, bidons, tote bags and more.

Until next time, take care of yourselves,

Cheers,
Katy (@writebikerepeat)