Welcome to the GCN Racing News Show.
Coming up this week, we round up the highlights of the many national road and time trial championships
that took place over the last week - who will be taking their national colours into the
Tour de France and Giro Rosa?
We also look at the 2000km self supported GBDuro event, the Grande Partenza of the 2020
Giro, and Valverde reveals when he’ll finally hang up his wheels.
Let’s get on to the national championships highlights now, and we’re going to start
with the road races, and with France, where Warren Barguil of Arkea Samsic took his first
win in almost 2 years.
The 27 year old formed part of a 7 man group that would contest the win, but knowing that
he wouldn’t be the fastest sprinter, he attacked multiple times on the run in to the
finish in Le Haie Fouassiere.
However, he needn’t have worried - after a late attack by Guillaume Martin was reeled
in, Barguil proved to be the fastest finisher from his group.
Believe it or not, that’s only the 5th win of his career, the other two have come in
the Vuelta or Tour de France - when he wins, he wins big, and it’s good to see him back.
On the team’s website he talked about his struggles over the last couple of seasons,
to the point that he even thought about quitting the sport - here’s hoping he has a good
Tour de France.
In the women’s event there, it was yet more success for the cyclocross fraternity, as
Jade Wiel took the crown at the tender age of 19.
Wiel was racing as a junior just last year, so that was an impressive ride to say the
least.
Speaking of cyclocross, there was a bit of an upset in Belgium as Tim Merlier of Corendon
Circus took the honours.
What made it even more surprising is the fact that Merlier only signed with the team to
race on the road 2 weeks ago - in cyclocross he rides for Pauwels Sauzen Vastgoedservice.
The race ended in a sprint - Wout van Aert looked good but got himself a bit boxed in,
having to settle for 3rd, whilst Merlier and his team played it perfectly, outpowering
and outfoxing the big guns from Deceuninck Quickstep and Lotto Soudal, who failed to
even make it onto the podium.
In the women’s race there, we had a surprise winner in the form of 23 year old Jesse Vandenbulcke
of Dolcini Van Eyck Sport, who got to stand atop the podium with her 2 year old son Fabian,
how cool is that?!
The Spanish and Italian championships are always some of the most hotly contested, partly
down to just how many pros there are in those countries.
In the former, Movistar took charge of controlling, starting as they did with about 10 riders.
The winning move went on the climb of the Santuario de la Fuensanta, which featured
on the 19km finishing circuits which they completed 4 times.
Luis Leon Sanchez, Alejandro Valverde and Jesus Herrada were the trio that went clear,
the latter was dropped when Sanchez attacked in the closing 5kms, at which point Valverde
refused to work, sitting on Sanchez and then outsprinting him to the line.
Unfortunately that does mean that we won’t see the Spanish national champions jersey
at the Tour, because Valverde will of course be wearing the rainbow bands.
Hard not to see him taking at least a stage win with the way he’s going at the moment.
The women’s race was so hard that the first 8 riders all finished on their own, best of
them all was Lourdes Oyarbide, also of Movistar, who reached the finish line just under half
a minute clear of Irene Mendez.
Meanwhile in Italy, the course was too tough for reigning champion Elia Viviani to have
a shot at defending his title.
The finishing laps included a climb to Strela, which is where Davide Formolo started to put
the hurt on, attacking with 60kms still to go and pulling a small group clear.
Not happy with that, he went again with still almost 40kms remaining.
It was a long old effort, particularly given the quality of the group behind and the fact
that he never enjoyed a huge advantage, but he was strong, very strong, and eventually
took the gold medal by 27 seconds from a disappointed Sonny Colbrelli.
The Italian women’s national champs will take place at the end of July.
Over here in Great Britain, I don’t think there was a single rider or fan who was disappointed
to see Ben Swift take the title and the jersey.
Swift has had his fair share of injuries over the years, and at the start of this year had
one of his worst ever, crashing whilst training in Tenerife with Geraint Thomas and ending
up in intensive care.
He passed teammate Ian Stannard, who’d been in his usual beast mode for most of the day,
in the final metres of the race to take his first senior road title.
In the women’s, it was the culmination of the perfect week for Alice Barnes.
She’d already taken victory in the time trial the previous Thursday, and backed that
up with a very strong and measured performance yesterday afternoon.
That must have felt particularly satisfying for Barnes, having finished just outside the
medals in the European Games the previous week in both the time trial and the road race.
The winner of that road race was Lorena Wiebes, and she continued her incredible season by
winning the Dutch national title, once again getting the better of Marianne Vos.
In the men’s, Fabio Jakobsen won what was a reduced bunch sprint.
The US nationals were held in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the road races produced two very popular
winners.
Alex Howes of EF Education First has had his mind set on the stars and stripes jersey for
years, and this year he finally got his hands on it.
He got the better of local rider Stephen Bassett, riding for First Internet Bank, in a thrilling
finale where he looked to be out of the running on more than one occasion in the final 10kms.
The women’s race was equally as enthralling - Ruth Winder of Trek Segafredo attacked with
still more than 30kms of the race remaining, just after her teammate Tayler Wiles was caught.
She was joined by Lili Williams of Hagens Berman Supermint, but the youngster wasn’t
able to keep up with Wiles, who persevered alone.
The win, though, was far from guaranteed - a strong group was coming up fast, and Winder,
in her own words, was dying a thousand deaths, however she JUST managed to hang on, by a
single second, ahead of a fast finishing Coryn Rivera, with Emma White of Rally UHC in 3rd.
In Ireland, Sam Bennett and Eddie Dunbar proved to be the strongest in the field - it would
come down to a sprint between the two of them, and inevitably it was Bennett who was the
quicker, taking his 8th season win.
Third on the day was Ryan Mullen, who’d had an absolute nightmare on the lead up to
the race.
More on that later.
Bora Hansgrohe had a particularly good weekend, in fact - they took all three of the podium
spots in Germany, Max Schachmann taking the gold, whilst they also prevailed in Italy
with Davide Formolo, Austria with Patrick Conrad, and Slovakia with Juraj Sagan.
The significance of that is that Peter Sagan will be riding in a standard team jersey for
the first time in what seems like an eternity, away from time trials at least.
That said, he probably won’t get far through the Tour before he swaps it for a Green jersey.
Other riders that will take their national championships jerseys into the Tour de France
on Saturday include Alexey Lutsenko, who won in Kazakhstan, and Toms Skujins, who won in
Latvia, Sebastien Reichenbach in Switzerland, and Michael Morkov, who retained his Danish
title.
Bob Jungels won’t be riding the Tour, but took his 6th national title in Luxembourg,
only by a minute this year though, rather than the quarter of an hour he won it by last
year.
Other high profile riders who’ll likely be taking their national colours to the Giro
Rosa, which starts on Friday, include Lisa Brennauer, who took her 2nd elite title in
Germany, former world champion Amalie Dideriksen in Denmark, and finally Christine Majerus,
who took her umteenth titles in Luxembourg in the road race and time trial.
Speaking of which, on to some of the key time trials now.
Wout van Aert continued his run of impressive form by taking the Belgian title, beating
Yves Lampaert, a winner recently of a time trial at the Tour de Suisse, and young Remco
Evenepoel.
Over in the USA, it was 21 year old Ian Garrison who upset established pros such as Nielson
Powless and Larry Warbasse to take the stars and stripes jersey in the time trial - what
made it all the more special, was that just one week previous he had won the U23 title,
making him the first male rider to hold both since Taylor Phinney.
In the women’s, it was a lady at the other end of her career.
44 year old Amber Neben took her third straight title, 36 seconds clear of Chloe Dygert.
Over here in the UK - Alex Dowsett took his 6th national time trial title, equalling the
record of Stuart Dangerfield.
He was pushed very close, though, by John Archibald, a member of the HUUB Wattbike team
who holds the sea level pursuit world record.
In the Netherlands, World Champion Annemiek Van Vleuten smashed the women’s time trial,
putting over a minute and a half into her closest challenger, Ellen Van Dijk, averaging
over 48kph, and doing it all on one of the most bling bikes you are ever likely to see.
How cool does that look?!
The men’s there was won by Jos Van Emden of Lotto Jumbo, a team who also had success
in Germany with Tony Martin, who took his 9th national TT title, despite an early mechanical
problem.
Lotta Lepisto won the Finnish national time trial championships, one day before her 30th
birthday, so a double reason to celebrate for her, whilst Kasper Asgreen’s win in
Denmark marked Deceuninck Quickstep’s 50th national elite title.
Ryan Mullen managed to win the Irish time trial despite his nightmare experience leading
up to it - UPS lost his road bike, and KLM lost his time trial bike.
Not ideal the day before you are supposed to be defending your title.
Luckily he had his spare bike, but he had to borrow a helmet, a Garmin mount, and a
bottle and cage.
Clearly it didn’t seem to affect him, he won the time trial by almost a minute from
Eddie Dunbar.
Filippo Ganna took over the mantle as Italian TT champ from his Team Ineos teammate Gianni
Moscon, who could only manage 5th.
Ganna was separated by one second from second placed Alberto Bettiol, who’d go on to place
3rd in the road race - watch out for him at the Tour.
That’s it for the national championships - sorry we can’t mention ever single winner,
but a very big well done to you all, a national title is a big thing for every rider - I would
love to have won one myself but I never quite made it.
All eyes will now turn to the Tour de France, though, which starts this coming Saturday
in Brussels.
The mind games have clearly already begun, Romain Bardet sneakily stole a Strava KOM
from Richie Porte last week.
I did have a laugh at that tweet - even though I’m sure it was tongue in cheek, Richie
was probably still a little upset to get the Uh Oh email just before his biggest objective
of the year.
Many teams have now announced their squads for the biggest race of the year, and there
was a surprise omission when Deceuninck Quickstep announced theirs, which didn’t include Philippe
Gilbert - winner of Paris Roubaix this year of course.
Now, it’s fair to say that their line up looks formidable anyway, Viviani for the sprints,
Mas for the GC and Alaphilippe for just about everything else, but it was still a surprise
to see Gilbert left at home.
Apparently he has yet to sign a contract extension, and rival Belgian team Lotto Soudal are knocking
at his door, so that might have played it’s part.
Mitchelton Scott also have a very strong line-up, which has a surprise inclusion - Simon Yates
joins his twin brother Adam.
It’s going to be very interesting to see what role he plays at the race - his Giro
didn’t go to plan of course, so is he looking to make up for that at the Tour?
Well, according to Simon, he’s there to support Adam - that’s quite the domestique
deluxe.
The 2020 men’s and women’s WorldTour calendars were released by the UCI last week - in the
latter, there will be a total of 22 events spanning 4 continents, all of which will have
live television coverage.
One of those events is the Deakin University Women’s Road race at the start of the year,
which received a promotion to the top level of the sport.
Also on that list are Fleche Wallone and Liege Bastogne Liege - it had been rumoured that
ASO would demote those races to a lower category to that they didn’t have to produce live
coverage of the race, but they’ve committed to showing those races live, which is great
news.
Meanwhile, the Tour de France is to start a week early in 2020 so as not to clash with
the Olympic Games road race in Tokyo.
It will begin on June 27th and conclude on 19th July, 6 days before the men’s road
race.
It also means that other Worldtour races in June, such as the Dauphiné and Tour de Suisse,
will also move forward by a week.
However, the Giro won’t, which means there are just 26 days between the two biggest Grand
Tours next year.
Speaking of the Giro, last week RCS Sport announced details of the 2020 Grande Partenza
in Hungary.
Stage 1 will be a 9.5km individual time trial around Budapest, which will be followed by
2 further stages of just under 200km’s, which look flat enough to guarantee bunch
sprints.
The race then flies down to Sicily for a short stage there.
Another announcement last week was that Barnabas Peak has just been signed to Mitchelton Scott,
so maybe he’ll be on the start line, as the only current Hungarian WorldTour rider
- that said, it could be tough to make the team in your first year as a fully fledged
pro.
Movistar revealed last week that World Champion Alejandro Valverde has extended his contract
through to the end of 2022, although it sounds as though he will finish competing at the
end of 2021, and spend the following year helping to develop young riders.
There was some bad news for the riders and staff at Team Virtu Cycling, who will cease
to exist at the end of this year, leaving riders such as European Champion Marta Bastianelli
searching for a new home.
The announcement was made by team owner Bjarne Riis, who cited lack of sponsorship as the
reason for the decision.
Let’s hope they can all find themselves something for next year - at least they’ve
found out reasonably early in the season so they have some time to make arrangements.
On to the GBDuro ultra endurance event now - a self supported 2000km event from Lands
End to John O’Groats here in the UK. if you watched the GCN Show last week you’ll
know that team EF Education First’s Lachlan Morton had been leading the way.
The Australian covered the 630kms to the first checkpoint 7 hours faster than his closest
rival, and that really set the precedent for the rest of the event.
He would reach John O’Groats after just under 112 hours of riding time, describing
it as the hardest things he’s ever done in his life.
Unlike other ultra endurance events, the GBDuro has timed stages, allowing the riders to get
some proper rest before they continue on to the next leg.
And finally on this week’s Racing News Show, Thomas Voeckler has been named as the new
French national coach, a role he will take up at the beginning of 2020, replacing Cyrille
Guimard.
One legend replacing another.
If ever there’s a reason to put cameras inside team cars, this is it - I’m absolutely
sure we’ll get some incredibly facial expressions from Monsiour Voeckler.
Right, that’s all for this week.
Stay tuned for our Tour de France preview show, which will be coming out on the channel
this coming Wednesday - where you’ll find out details of all the key stages and riders
taking part, plus of course, our infamous predictions.
Don’t forget that you’ll also be able to get daily highlights of the Tour de France
and Giro Rosa on our Facebook page, but also here on YouTube, stay tuned for more news
on that.
OK - I’ve got another video suggestion for you now, in case you missed it at the weekend.
Hank followed James McDonald as he attempted to break the 24 hour distance world record
at the Newport velodrome.
Check out how he got on down here……