The rain in Spain

Welcome back cycling fans to the second newsletter of the summer, and it feels as though the time gets away from me more and more lately, with stacks of racing action, tonnes of transfers and of course the third Grand Tour of the year all coming after 11 days of action at the World Championships in Glasgow, and making it pretty darn tricky to keep up.

If you’re receiving this newsletter for the first time, it’s because you signed up to writebikerepeat.com and I’m merging operations in an attempt to be more streamlined - these newsletters are an additional fortnightly supplement and bring you bang up to date with all the cycling news and race results from the past two weeks - hopefully you’ll find it adds to your enjoyment without being overly intrusive - particularly as we move into the off-season when there’s less racing to chat about.

Speaking of Worlds, I finally got around to putting down some of my thoughts about the experience, and what came out was a long, travelogue-style blog piece which includes reflection on the ‘super’ Worlds, first impressions of the velodrome, and a long impressionistic report from the men’s road race, one of the most exciting races of the season, in my humble opinion. I hope you enjoy reading it.

Now, on with the news.

NEWS! GET YOUR NEWS!

MAIN STORY: What’s going on at Ineos?

There’s been rumours aplenty swirling around the British team, who seem to have shipped half their squad to other teams and who were strongly linked with Remco Evenepoel, and there were all kinds of theories circulating on social media grapevines including the potential for a merger between the British team and Patrick Lefevre’s Soudal-QuickStep. This theory gained some traction, partly as it seemed to make sense on a number of levels, but since seems to have been put to bed.

So who exactly do Ineos have left? After selling Ben Tullett to Ineos Grenadiers, and losing Tao Geoghegan Hart and Dani Martinez, two of their strongest GC riders, questions were raised as to the direction the team is heading. Meanwhile, it wasn’t just the Evenepoel deal that seems to be off the table – other proposed transfers, including the likes of Carlos Verona, George Bennett and Victor Lafay who were all rumoured to be heading there, are all now apparently staying put.

They silenced at least some of these concerns by nailing down one of their key future GC hopes last week. Carlos Rodriguez extended with the team and in doing so, assures the future at least of the Tour de France GC hopes for the next few seasons at least. With the likes of Josh Tarling, Tom Pidcock and Magnus Sheffield there’s plenty of young talent coming through the ranks and let’s not forget about Egan Bernal, who will continue to work towards his best form in the coming months. Don’t despair Ineos fans: it will all make sense. At some point. Probably.

BITESIZE CHUNKS OF NEWS! YUM!

Tadej Pogačar is amazing human!

It goes without saying that my thoughts go out to those affected by the recent terrible flooding in Slovenia. Pogačar really went above and beyond earlier in August, holding a meet and greet fundraiser in Ljubljana to raise money for those affected, and proving that he really is a lovely human being.

Everyone now rides for Lidl-Trek!

Transfer season is in full swing and sadly for all the other teams, Lidl-Trek have signed EVERYONE.

OK, I’m being somewhat flippant but there is some truth in it – the American team are having a clear out in the middle aisle and assembling a really strong unit for next season. Since we last spoke they’ve brought in a bunch more names, including Patrick Konrad, Simone Consonni, Ryan Gibbons and Fabio Felline. Leave some left for everyone else, hey Trek?

Astana might be quite good next season?!

Another team quietly amassing resources for 2024 are the Kazakhstan team. Vinokourouv has been shopping and he’s actually gathered some great assets, including Ide Schelling from BORA, Anton Charmig from Uno-X and Lorenzo Fortunato from EOLO-Kometa – look out for them next season as they are clearly on the march. No news yet as to whether Mark Cavendish will extend his contract, although he’s recently said he’s ‘50/50’ over whether or not to continue his career for another season (go on Mark, you know you want to).

Big name signings!

There have also been a number of bigger signings around the cycling world. Movistar’s American all-rounder Matteo Jorgenson has sealed a move to Jumbo Visma, Dani Martinez switches from Ineos Grenadiers to BORA-Hansgrohe, and Mikel Landa heads to Soudal-QuickStep as part of Remco Evenepoel’s mountain support going forward.

Family affair at Canyon//SRAM!

Zoe Bäckstedt this week completed a mid-season transfer to Canyon//SRAM, the team her Dad Magnus joined as a sports director at the beginning of this season. The team have gone from strength to strength this season and the Bäckstedt  influence has clearly been a positive one. Onwards and upwards for Zoe.

RACING ROUND-UP – 15 Aug-1 Sep

There’s been an incredible amount of racing in the past two and a half weeks, so much so that I’m going to have to keep it very brief – summer holidays are here and there’s just too much happening to go into great detail. Let’s crack on, shall we?

Vuelta a Burgos (15-19 Aug)

The first stage was a sprint won by UAE Team Emirates’ Sebastian Molano. The next day was a viciously tough team time trial – Jumbo Visma were the victors, and their leader Primoz Roglič won stages 3 and 5 after that as well as the overall, from Aleksandr Vlasov in 2^nd and Adam Yates in 3^rd Oh, and Oier Lazkano (Movistar) won stage 4.

Tour de Limousin (15-18 Aug)

Stage 1 was won solo by Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) with Benoit Cosnefroy the best of the rest. Coincidentally, that was also how the GC ended up, with Grégoire also stealing victory on stage 3. Luca Mozzato (Arkéa-Samsic) and Hugo Page (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty) won the sprints on stages 2 and 4 respectively.

HIGHLIGHT!! The Tour of Leuven (15 Aug) a lumpy one-day race with plenty of climby sprinty drama, was won by Arnaud de Lie from a selective breakaway which included men’s U23 road race winner Axel Laurance – the man has stamina! This one is well worth a watch if you fancy a random race to catch up with.

At the PostNord Danmark Rundt (Tour of Denmark) (15-19 Aug) Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X) launched a late breakaway to deny the sprinters in stage 1. Fabio Jakobsen got back to winning ways, cleaning up on the two bunch sprint days, stages 2 and 4. The Lidl-Trek Danes owned the rest of the race, with Mattias Skjelmose victorious on stage 3 and Mads Pedersen winning the time trial on stage 5 and wrapping up the overall victory in the process, with his teammate and countryman in second place.

Pedersen went from strength to strength, continuing on from Denmark to the BEMER Cyclassic (20 Aug) in Germany the following day where he won amidst an incredibly strong field of sprinters and classics specialists.

In other one-day races that weekend, the dynamite duo of Instagram video diary fame, Lotto-DSTNY teammates Victor Campanaerts and Jasper de Buyst, each had the opportunity to raise their arms, Campanaerts winning the Druivenkoers Overijse (19 Aug) and De Buyst the Egmont Cycling Classic (20 Aug). It’s really great to see such valuable teammates get their chances to go for wins and actually get them so bravo to those guys, who I’m a big fan of.

Renewi Tour (23-27 Aug)

The former Benelux/BinckBanck Tour returned renewed (see what I did there – I’m probably about the 800^th person to make that joke) with a fresh name, and was a great race as it always has been in the past. Stage 1 was a bunch sprint featuring many of the world’s best, and as such it was not hugely surprising that the win was taken by the world’s best this year, Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck.

Stage 2 was an individual time trial, won by INEOS wunderkind Josh Tarling, who took his first World Tour win, and like his teammate Filippo Ganna he seems determined to demolish clocks wherever he goes. Mike Teunissen (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), won stage 3 from a late breakaway, Sam Welsford (Team DSM) the stage 4 sprint, and Matej Mohorič continued his good season with a win on the final stage. Tim Wellens of UAE Team Emirates took the overall GC victory.

Søren Wærenskjold continued his late season run of form with an overall win at the Poitou-Charentes (22-25 Aug) stage race. He won stage 1 and held on to take GC. The other stages winners were Paul Penhoet (Groupama-FDJ); Samuele Rivi (EOLO-Kometa); Bruno Armirail (Groupama-FDJ) and Marc Sarreau (AG2R-Citroen Team). The Deutschland Tour (23-27 Aug) also saw five different winners from five stages: But it was Soudal-QuickStep who took the spoils, with Ethan Vernon winning the Prologue and Ilan van Wilder taking stage 1 and the overall win, his first pro wins at elite level. Gregor Mühlberger (Movistar), Madhis Mikhels (Intermarché-Circus-Wanty), and Arvid de Kleijn (Tudor Pro Cycling).

On the women’s side, Daria Pikulik of Human Powered Health won the one-day Konvert Kortrijk Koerse (18 Aug) and Simone Boilard (St Michel-Mavic-Auber 93) won the GP Oetingen (19 Aug).

The only stage race since the last newsletter was the Tour of Scandinivia (23-27 Aug). It was a hard-fought battle of the north, taking place across Norway and Denmark (no Sweden this year sadly), and Lorena Wiebes was back to her best for SD Worx taking the sprint victories on stages 1 and 3. FDJ-SUEZ’s Grace Brown won the individual time trial on stage 4. Her teammate Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig returned as the defending champion and won two hard-fought victories on stages 2 and 5, but it wasn’t enough to clinch the overall victory, which went to Movistar’s Annemiek van Vleuten, the most consistent rider across the five days, at one of her final opportunities to take a stage race victory in her career as she edges ever closer to retirement.

And in the headline act of the U23 season, Mexico’s Isaac del Toro and the Netherlands’ Shirin van Anrooij won the Tour de l’Avenir, with this year the first iteration of the women’s race. The future is indeed bright.

LA VUELTA A ESPANA: THE RESULTS SO FAR (IN BRIEF)

I’ll write at length over at the site but for now, here’s a summary of the stage winners and red jersey wearers at the final Grand Tour of the season.

Stage 1 was a team time trial won by Team DSM - it was a bit left field (see below for reasons) and resulted in the first red jersey wearer being, very unexpectedly, U23 time trial champion Lorenzo Milesi.

Stage 2 was won by Andreas Kron of Lotto-DSTNY and the red jersey changed hands, to another Italian, EF Education-EasyPost’s Andrea Piccolo.

Remco Evenepoel was the victor on stage 3, and he took control of the leader’s jersey for the first of three days. Kaden Groves won a pair of bunch sprints on stages 4 and 5, and stage 6 saw Jumbo-Visma stalwart domestique Sepp Kuss take victory from a strong breakaway group, which also contained Groupama-FDJ’s Lenny Martinez, who became the youngest rider to ever wear the leader’s jersey at the race on the same day.

FINAL THOUGHT: LA VUELTA BRINGS THE DRAMA (AND NOT ALWAYS THE GOOD KIND)

Well. La Vuelta, eh? I wrote a tongue in cheek piece for the website a couple of days before this year’s third Grand Tour began, setting out my stall for why I have often thought it was the best of the Grand Tours in the past. You can read it here:

I did not bargain for the utter chaos that followed. Yes, La Vuelta brings a strange kind of laid back chaos which you just don’t find anywhere else. But while it’s a great stomping ground for young riders and those who are trying to redeem their season, it can also be a mixed bag in terms of safety, with rough road surfaces often a problem, but nobody could foresee the madness that ensued from stage 1 onwards.

The team time trial was a fiasco. Beginning in the evening, a storm brewing over Barcelona ensured dark skies and wet conditions, and so dark that it was next to impossible to see the riders on the broadcast by the time the final teams rolled out for their attempts. It was just the beginning. Reports of riders having to navigate the ride back to the bus in the dark, with the roads re-opening before everyone had safely departed, just added insult to injury. And then the rest of the stages happened, in which:

• Stage 2 was an organisational catastrophe as ice-rink roads caused by rain led to a neutralisation, and debates over where the GC times would be calculated from, and crashes, and general confusion, and chaos. More of it.

• Oh and tacks on the road, apparently. If all that weren’t bad enough.

• Remco Evenepoel collided with a spectator and crashed as he celebrated his victory on stage 3.

• Police thwarted a planned protest which would have gallons of oil poured onto the roads of the stage 4 route.

• Crashes causing serious injury to a number of riders including most recently Thymen Arensmen of Ineos Grenadiers.

Of course, crashes and danger are part and parcel of the sport. But there are measures that can be taken to reduce these risks and it’s fair to say, the Vuelta organisation has left much to be desired in terms of rider safety so far this year. Let’s hope we see a marked improvement throughout the rest of the race.

THE LAST WORD

Summer is over and we head into autumn with the end of the season on our minds… after La Vuelta, there are a few more stage races, Italian classics and then we’re barrelling headlong into the mud for the next cyclocross season and it feels kind of crazy that almost a year on from launching this newsletter, we’re back around to this point again.

Next week the Tour of Britain is in town and although I won’t be able to attend in person this year, I will be working on the Tour as part of a brand new podcast, On Yer Bike. It’s being produced by some top broadcasters who really know what they’re doing and is a fun and informative look into the world of cycling, centred around the race but also looking at stories from the wider world of the sport. Tune in wherever you get your podcasts to see what it’s all about, or listen here:

Until next time, feel free to buy me a coffee if you’ve enjoyed the content, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks when some of the madness has settled down a bit. Maybe. (Probably not).

Cheers,
Katy

IN MEMORY: This post is dedicated to the memory of Lotto-DSTNY development rider and winner of U23 Paris-Roubaix Tijl de Decker, who tragically passed away in a training accident in August. RIP Tijl.