Worlds in motion

Hey there cycling fans, how are you all doing? First off, allow me to extend my heartfelt apologies for the unscheduled interruption to your bi-monthly newsletter schedule. It wasn’t something I had planned, otherwise I would absolutely have informed you up front. Life and all it entails has conspired against me over the past couple of months but I’m back today to bring you the latest news, a few selected race results and a bit of general chat, in an effort to get back on track – I’ve missed you all!

It’s been a busy couple of months of racing, of course - the busiest! We sped from the Olympic Games in Paris to the Tour de France Femmes to La Vuelta a España and the Paralympics; we’ve had the Tour of Britain here on these fair shores, along with the European championships which concluded just last weekend, not to mention the two Canadian one-day races, all of which has led us nicely to Zurich, Switzerland, for a week of road racing action as cycling and para-cycling combine forces for an epic world championships which I am incredibly excited for.

ON THE WEBSITE

There has been heaps of content over at the website since the last newsletter, and hopefully you were able to keep up with it all – if not, here are a few highlights.

The Paris Olympics were a triumph, and along with Emma Bianchi’s brilliant guide to track cycling, which is perennially useful if you’re a relative track novice, we had Callum Devereux on the ground in Paris bringing us his thoughts on being a part of an Olympic Games as a fan – two really good reads, that I urge you to check out – one after the time trials, and another after the road races.

I wrote introductory posts for new cycling fans to both the Olympic Road Race and the Tour de France Femmes – the latter may still be of interest to anyone looking to become more invested in the women’s side of the sport in 2025.

There were daily posts during the Tour de France Femmes (most days), and since the conclusion of La Vuelta there have been two posts that centre wholly (or loosely) on the final Grand Tour of the year. First, new contributor Tristan Rees looked at the current Slovenian domination at the Grand Tours, comparing it to previous eras of national domination.

On my return to the site following a writing hiatus, I considered some of the Reasons to be Cheerful in cycling at the moment, despite the fact we are nearing the end of the season.

And finally, there’s a lovely new interview for you to get your teeth into. Anna McEwen spoke to double Paralympic gold medallist Ben Watson on his cycling life, as he heads to take on the men’s C3 ITT and road race in Zurich this week.

NEWS ROUND-UP

It’s been a while, and there has of course been a huge amount of cycling news in the intervening weeks, so I won’t attempt to produce a blow-by-blow account of all the goings on in the world of pro cycling or we’d be here all day.

As always, I’ve signpost you towards the news page over at the website, where Alicia Moyo and Rémi Massart have stayed abreast of all the latest stories, which at the current time mainly centre around transfers and team news for worlds.

Outside of race results, which I’ll cover as usual in the next section, here are my top 5 talking points from the past few weeks, to get you started…

5. LIDL-TREK AND FDJ-SUEZ MOST ACTIVE ON WWT TRANSFER MARKET

There have been a raft of signings confirmed since I last wrote to you, following the official opening of the 2024 transfer window on 1^st August. The landscape of the women’s peloton looks set to shift significantly in 2025, with many riders making moves. Lidl-Trek will lose their long-time GC leader Elisa Longo Borghini but have continued to add to their squad in preparation for the departure of the Italian, signing Anna Henderson and Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease A Bike) Emma Norsgaard (Movistar), and Niamh Fisher black (Team SD Worx-ProTime).

Meanwhile, FDJ-SUEZ are making waves, picking up Juliette Labous and Eglatine Rayer (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL), Célia Gery (junior), Ally Wollaston (AG Insurance-Soudal) and most recently Elise Chabbey (Canyon//SRAM). And there are still strong rumours circling that the French side are leading the race to sign Demi Vollering.

4. RED BULL LEAD THE CHARGE

On the men’s side, Red Bull-BORA hansgrohe are making the expected waves, picking up a raft of young talent and experience, including riders to boost their classics squad in Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ), Oier Lazkano (Movistar) and twins Mick and Tim van Dijke (Visma-Lease a Bike), along with climbers Finn Fisher-Black (UAE Team Emirates) and Giulio Pellizzari (VF Group-Bardiani CSF-Faizane) and all-rounder Jan Tratnik (Visma-Lease A Bike). They are still rumoured to be in the running to sign Remco Evenepoel - a rumour which the Soudal-QuickStep man has once again distanced himself from.

3. JULIAN ALAPHILIPPE HEADS FOR PASTURES NEW

The two-time world champion, affectionately known as Loulou, called time on his decade-long relationship with the QuickStep organisation, recently announcing that he would begin a new period in his career at Tudor Pro Cycling. Alaphilippe has had a strong season, winning a stage at the Giro d’Italia, and will move on to join Fabian Cancellara’s Swiss Pro Continental side, along with a number of others including Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates), Marco Haller (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) and Fabien Lienhard (Groupama-FDJ).

2. PFP ON THE ROAD AGAIN

While many may have expected the all-round queen of cycling Pauline Ferrand-Prévot to take some well-earned rest at the end of a season that saw her pick up a number of world cup wins and an Olympic gold medal in mountain-biking, the French rider known colloquially as PFP surprised us all when she was named in the French selection for the World Championship road race, preceding her full-time return to the road in 2025 (her contract with Visma-Lease A Bike was officially announced this summer).

Her form on the road is a complete unknown, as she’s had exactly zero race days in 2024, but needless to say a rider of her calibre, and a former world champion to boot, will be a cause for concern for the other contenders - either way, it offers us a taste of what’s ahead going into 2025, a season which - not to put too fine a point on it - is going to be AMAZING.

1. WOUT x VISMA 4 EVA

The top story from the past few weeks for me has to be Wout van Aert’s announcement that he will stay at Visma-Lease A Bike for the rest of his active career. It’s the first time in cycling that this type of contract has been signed – and probably one of the first of its ilk in sport in general – and though we found ourselves grappling with the legalities of the deal (is such a contract even possible? Or was it more of a symbolic publicity stunt than a legally binding deal?) there was no denying what it meant for both rider and team – a continued commitment, and a public declaration that Van Aert is exactly where he needs to be, and is not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Check out the heart-warming announcement video, on Visma’s social media.

ROAD RACING RESULTS ROUND-UP

Once again, there are FAR too many results for me to do my usual run-down of everything that’s happened since the last time I wrote to you, so if you’d like a full, unabridged list of all the latest cycling results, I urge you to make full and extensive use of the wonderful FirstCycling.com as I do on a (multiple times) daily basis. They are not only working constantly to expand the site, adding disciplines, junior and u23 results and more layers of facts and stats than you even knew you needed, they are also thoroughly excellent humans and I honestly can’t recommend them enough.

That being said, here is a whistlestop tour of the highlights from August and September…

PARIS 2024: Remco Evenepoel rode to an astonishing double gold at the Paris Olympics, winning both the road race and the individual time trial in style. In the women’s races it was a stunning performance in horrible conditions by Grace Brown in the ITT, the Aussie taking gold in her final year as a pro, while in the road race, the USA’s Kristen Faulkner’s gutsy late attack saw her solo to victory.

TOUR DE FRANCE FEMMES: Kasia Niewiadoma won the overall classification at an incredible edition of the TDFF. There’s more to say about the race than I can fit here, and you can find plenty of amazing images from Justin Britton and daily recaps over at the site, but I never got around to summing up the race as a whole, and I will surely do so later in the year as a reflective post. Needless to say, it was a thriller, and the final stage up Alpe d’Huez was one of the single best days of racing and finales to a stage race that I can remember.

LA VUELTA ESPANA: The final Grand Tour of the year was the big, mad, chaotic surprise that we all should have expected given previous iterations, but it was still a delight. Breakaway win after breakaway win, Ben O’Connor wearing his first Grand Tour leader’s jersey for TWO WHOLE WEEKS, underdog stage winners and polka dot jerseys changing hands like hot potatoes, all topped off with perhaps a slightly unsurprising result, as Primoz Roglič claimed his fourth Vuelta on the final weekend of action. So much fun.

EUROPEAN ROAD CHAMPIONSHIPS: ITT success for Lotte Kopecky (Belgium) and Edoardo Affini (Italy), and two sprints in the road races won by Lorena Wiebes (Netherlands) and Tim Merlier (Belgium) respectively, were the story of the Euros.

AND THE REST…

We’ve had heaps of stage races too – Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility) won the Arctic Race of Norway (4-7 Aug), Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease A Bike) won the Vuelta a Burgos (5-9 Aug), his teammate Jonas Vingegaard closed out his season with victory at the Tour of Poland (12-18 Aug) and Arnaud de Lie (Lotto-Dstny) won the PostNord Tour of Denmark. Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) won the Deutschland Tour (21-25 Aug) and Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates) the Renewi Tour (28 Aug-1 Sep). Stevie Williams (Israel-Premier Tech) won the Tour of Britain (3-8 Sep). Most recently, Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain-Victorious) took his first GC title at the SKODA Tour of Luxembourg (18-22 Sep).

Great Britain’s Joe Blackmore (Israel-Premier Tech) won the lauded under-23 race the Tour de l’Avenir (18-24 Aug), underscoring his incredible potential after a break-out year.

In one-day racing, Marc Hirschi (UAE Team Emirates) won the World Tour-level San Sebastian Klasikoa (10 Aug) and Bretagne Classic (25 Aug) and a whole HOST of other smaller one-day races, proving he’s the in-form rider heading into Worlds that ISN’T named Tadej or Remco. Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease A Bike) won the BEMER Cyclassic (8 Sep), and in Canada, Michael Matthews (Team Jayco-AlUla) won the GP Québec (13 Sep), while Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) made the expected impact on his return to the peloton, winning the GP Montréal (15 Sep) after a 22km solo.

On the women’s side, Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx-ProTime) took the overall classification at the Tour de Romandie Féminin (6-8 Sep) ahead of her teammate Demi Vollering, while their teammate Mischa Bredewold continued a strong month for the Dutch side, winning her second Classic Lorient Agglomération (24 Aug) in a row in Plouay.

FINAL THOUGHT: ALL EYES ON ZURICH

That brings us bang up to date, and to Zurich, Switzerland, where the UCI World Championships are currently in full swing, and it’s been a great week so far, with the individual time trials concluding today (Tuesday – with the exception of the mixed team TTT) and the road races beginning tomorrow (Wednesday).

The elite champions in the ITT matched those from the Olympics, with Remco Evenepoel and Grace Brown both achieving a historic double – a first for both men and women – while in the junior categories there have been wins for Paul Seixas (France) and Cat Ferguson (Great Britain), and Ivan Romeo (Spain) and Antonia Niedermayer (Germany) in the U23s (women’s U23 race still takes place as part of the elite women’s race). Check out this amazing photo of women’s winner Brown taken by Harry Talbot:

It's lovely to be able to watch the talents of a new generation of riders coming through every year at Worlds, and we’re in for a real treat with the road races over the coming days, as a course with a fair amount of climbing should see some really attritional races. Of course, the hot favourite for the men’s race is Tadej Pogačar. He’s proven all season that’s he a level above everybody else, and he is laser-focused on making the rainbow stripes his own, to top off a year that has already seen him do the Giro-Tour double.

Remco Evenepoel would love to do the double-double, and it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he could push Pogačar all the way. Outside of the two favourites, there are a host of other riders who could feature, depending on how the race plays out. Everyone’s third favourite for the win seems to be Marc Hirschi, who is in the form of his life and has the home turf advantage.

In the women’s race, it’s wide open, with a whole range of riders who will be pushing for the front of the race – even more so than the men’s race, the large team sizes will really play a part in how the women’s race plays out, with wildcards from the Netherlands, Belgium and France likely to try and launch early moves and allow their leaders to conserve energy. Look out for Ferrand-Prévot potentially playing such a role, along with maybe Puck Pieterse for the Netherlands, or Justine Ghekiere for Belgium.

There are plenty of riders who could do the job in a race that’s extremely hard to predict, but I think Demi Vollering will do it this time around, and don the rainbow stripes for the first time in her career, assuaging the disappointments of the latter half of the season somewhat along the way.

You can read my full preview of the women’s road race on VoxWomen. Enjoy the races!

THE LAST WORD

takes a deep breath

And we’re done! Thanks for sticking with me if you’ve read this far. It’s been a slog to bring you back up to date, but I felt duty-bound to at least briefly mention all the major goings-on from the cycling world that have occurred in the two months since I spoke to you last. I’ll now resume my fortnightly pattern, so the next time you hear from me, we’ll be looking ahead to the final Monument of the season – Il Lombardia.

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, so you can show off your support to your friends – you’ll be the envy of the Sunday morning group ride with a Worlds casquette and bidon, mark my words!

Until next time, thanks for reading, and take care.

Cheers,
Katy