We’re back with the GCN Racing News Show.
Coming up, after a brutal final week, the Tour de France reaches its conclusion in Paris,
we’ll go through 5 talking points, and get some more really interesting insight into
the power demands through TrainingPeaks.
Bike racing outside of the Tour de France resumes with the men’s and women’s Prudential
Ride London Surrey Classics, the GP Pino Cerami and the Tour de Wallonie.
Plus, we look at the latest attempt on the World Hour Record, and we’re going to see
how the riders are getting on at the NorthCape 4000 event.
The Tour de France has finished for another year.
No doubt you all know the results by now - Sagan won green, as expected, Julian Alaphilippe
the polka dot jersey, Pierre Latour the White jersey, Movistar fought really hard and achieved
their aim of the teams classification, with a stage win for Quintana along the way, but
the big prize went to Geraint Thomas.
And what we’ve learnt, is that Geraint is an EXTREMELY popular winner - cast your eye
over a few of the social media posts after he crossed the line on Saturday’s time trial,
and it’s evident that Geraint is extremely well respected, as a rider, as a worker, and
as a human being.
He’s won gold medals at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games, and World Championships,
won cobbled classic in the form of E3 Prijs, Paris Nice, the Criterium du Dauphine, and
now, against all expectation, he’s landed the big one.
Thomas’ win has been one built on strength, power and endurance, but also on good fortune,
a key component that, I think it’s fair to say, he’s managed to avoid pretty well
throughout his career.
Over 21 stages, he didn’t put a foot wrong, and apart from this minor wobble in the last
time trial, it’s been the perfect race.
We’ve got a video up on the channel now which looks back at his career, the highs
and lows, so make sure you check that out.
In the meantime, we will add even further to his highs by announcing him as this week’s
GCN Rider Of The Week!
Now, whilst it’s fair to say that the winner gets the majority of the attention, it turns
out that you don’t do too badly if you’re last.
Lawson Craddock crashed on the very first day of the race, fracturing his scapula, but
incredibly he managed to soldier through the next 20 stages and complete the race yesterday
in Paris.
He therefore has the unfortunate honour of being the only person in the history of the
sport to hold last place from the first stage to the last, but, in doing so, he’s raised
over $195,000 dollars and counting, to go towards the reparation of the Alkek velodrome
in Houston, Texas, which was badly damaged by Hurricane Harvey last year.
Chapeau Lawson.
We’ve also, in the last three weeks, seen Chris Froome show the utmost in respect and
sportsmanship.
There can’t be that many 6 time Grand Tour winners, or probably any in fact, who would
have accepted being second best within their own team at the Tour de France.
But not only did Froome do exactly that, he’s not had a bad word to say, he’s had nothing
but kind words for his team mate.
Thomas has long been a loyal lieutenant, and Froome has repaid that support with an incredible
show of his own loyalty.
Ironically, losing will likely be the biggest win for Chris Froome himself.
He’ll almost certainly gain more in terms of respect and popularity from the public
with his 3rd place this year than any of his four wins - he’s ridden like a true champion.
We have also, thanks to TrainingPeaks, had an insight into what it takes, physiologically,
to have success or even just get through the Tour de France.
Michael Hepburn, for example, finished in 10th in the Time Trial on Saturday, 1 minute
23 seconds down on Tom Dumoulin.
To do that, he had an average power of 418w and a normalised power of 436w for the 42
minute effort.
Pretty impressive off the back of three weeks of racing and some hard days in the mountains!
The start of stage 16 was somewhat overshadowed by the pepper spray incident, but, disregarding
that short break, it was an incredibly intense start to the stage in which it took over 100km’s
for the break to go.
From the gun, Mat Hayman did 486w for 2 minutes, had a normalised power of 380w for the 35
minutes to the pepperspray incident, and would end up with an ACTUAL average of 276w for
the 6 hour stage including the neutralised zone and the descent to the finish.
Mat’s a big dude, but that’s a lot of power!
At the other end of the scale from a weight point of view is Hayman’s team mate Mikel
Nieve, at just over 60kg.
Nevertheless, for the 65km mountain stage, he averaged 270w with a normalised power of
300w.
And that brings us nicely on to our final talking point…..
I personally checked out stage 17 myself a few days before the event, and I must admit
I was not only really looking forward to watching it, but also fascinated by that gridded start.
Let’s relive that magical moment shall we?…….
I have never, EVER felt so let down!!
Now, in hindsight, perhaps we shouldn’t have expected fireworks from the gun, but
that really was a gimmick wasn’t it?!
Contrary to that, though, the rest of the stage was exciting, and what I particularly
liked was the fact that we got a lot of action, condensed into a stage that lasted just 2
hours and 20 minutes for the winner, Nairo Quintana.
From a viewing point of view, I felt that worked, and I’d like to see it again, but
we’d like to hear your thoughts.
At the top of your screen you will see a poll - let us know if you want to see more of these
kinds of stages in the future, and give your reasoning in the comments section below.
This weekend saw a whole host of events at the 2018 RideLondon including the Brompton
World Championships, the women’s Classique, the Men’s Classic and a range of sportive
distances of up to 100 miles.
25,000 amateurs took on the 100 mile route faced by tough weather conditions.
There were also a few famous names riding including rugby star Martin Johnson and the
runner Kelly Holmes.
Our very own Emma Pooley took part in both the Brompton race and the 100 mile sportive
where she was riding a 24kg Buffalo bike with extra weight from the oranges she was transporting
around!
Emma in fact won the Brompton race to add another world championships to her glittering
palmares.
She also managed to complete the sportive in 10hr4min50s, well done Emma!
The women’s race, the ‘Ride London Classique’, saw the riders take on a 64.1km course consisting
of 12 laps of a 5.3km circuit, starting and finishing on the Mall.
A high pace throughout meant little in terms of breakaway action, and so the race came
down to a bunch sprint, in which Kirsten Wild of Wiggle High5 caught her compatriot Marianne
Vos in the final few metres, whilst Elisa Balsamo of Valcar PBM rounded of the podum.
The win for Wiggle High5 comes only a few days after the team announced that they will
not register for the 2019 season, leaving the riders with uncertain futures.
Given a number of their riders performances, it seems likely this won’t be the last we
see of them in the women’s World Tour.
Disappointing news, and I’m sure Wild and her teammates will welcome the €25,000 prize
money that she won on the day.
In the men's RideLondon-Surrey Classic, a strong field took on the 183km route around
London and the Surrey Hills including Mark Cavendish, Elia Viviani, Caleb Ewan and Andre
Greipel.
Bora-Hansgrohe set the pace onto the Mall and teed up perfectly their sprinter Pascal
Ackermann, who beat Elia Viviani and Giacomo Nizzolo to the line.
Another big win for the German champion who is going from strength to strength.
We’ve also, last week, had a one day race in Belgium, the Grand Prix Pino Cerami, won
by Pete Kennaugh of Bora Hansgrohe - his first win in over a year, whilst a little further
south, we’re 2 days into the 5 day Tour de Wallonie where Tim Wellens is currently
in the race lead - that race will conclude on Wednesday.
There are a number of riders looking to better Bradley Wiggins hour record, and the first
of those was full time engineer Martin Toft Madsen from Denmark.
He had to crowd fund his way to the newly resurfaced Aguascalientes Velodrome at altitude
in Mexico.
Unfortunately for Toft, he came up short, clocking a respectable 53.360km’s in the
hour, having faded in the finale.
Much more on that coming up on tomorrow’s GCN Show.
And finally this week, it’s the Northcape4000, a 4200km event that takes riders from Lake
Garda to the North Cape, passing through a total of 10 countries in the process.
After 24 hours, the various entrants were already spread across three countries, some
still in Italy, many in Austria, whilst front runner, or rider, Karol Wroblewski, was already
in Germany have completed 500km’s.
As we record this Karol Wroblewski, is still in the lead, having covered around 1000km
and arrived in Javornik.
Talking of Ultra Endurance, the Trans Continental started yesterday at the top of the iconinc
Muur Van Geraardsbergen in Flanders - Katherine was there catching up with the riders before
the start, so stay tuned for that content on the channel very soon.
Dan will be back with an update on how they’re getting on this time next week, when he’ll
also be talking Clasica San Sebastian, the Tour of Denmark, the first day of the Tour
of Poland and Volta a Portugal.
Until then, if you’ve yet to watch our video on the career of Geraint Thomas, you can find
that just down here…...