Welcome to the GCN Racing News Show.
This week, we’re covering the National Championships in Europe and America.
We’ve also got the Adriatica Ionica Race, which, for some, was the final tune up for
the Tour.
Plus, Halle Ingooigem, and, for something different, the 1000km non stop unsupported
Navad 1000, and an update from the TransAm and Tour Divide.
Let’s start, though, with the various national championships that took place last week - and
there were some usual suspects taking the honours in the time trials - Maciej Bodnar
took his 5th Elite TT title in Poland, whilst Edvald Boasson Hagen took his 10th, that’s
right, 10th Elite National time trial Title in Norway.
He needs to watch out though, as he only managed to put seven seconds into Andreas Leknessund,
who turned 19 one month ago.
Going one better than Edvald, though, was Svein Tuft, who took his 11th national TT
jersey over in Canada at the age of 41, although he probably won’t be adding to that haul
as this looks to be his last season.
It’s a remarkable record from a remarkable man, and Mr Tuft is our rider of the week
this week, well done Svein. 2 years Tuft’s senior, Amber Neben showed
the youngsters how it’s done, yet again, by taking her 2nd consecutive national TT
title in the US, Joey Rosskopf also backed his performance from 12 months ago in the
mens, 28s in front of Chad Haga, who gave this oversimplified summary:
“Guy stares past his hands at white lines for 3 rainy laps to set a new best time, then
has to wait 2 hours for last year's fastest guy to knock him down a step.”
Jonathan Castroviejo won his 4th TT Title in spain, which won’t do his chances of
Tour de France selection chances any harm - he was 37 seconds in front of the Izaguirre
brothers, who were separated by just a second.
Victor Campenaerts won the Belgian champs, although only 3 seconds in front of his teammate
Thomas De Gendt, whilst we had another example there of domination in the women’s event,
Ann Sophie Duyck taking her 5th national title On to the road races, and whilst Coryn Rivera
has never previously won the US National Championships on the road, her victory there on Saturday
marked her 72nd career national championship title, which really is some record.
Rivera outsprinted Megan Guarnier to continue her incredible run of form.
In the men’s, Jonny Brown surprised the more senior and experienced riders to become
the youngest US Elite National Champion ever, at just 21 year old.
Yet another Hagens Berman Axeon team rider to watch out for in the future - or indeed
right now to be honest, he is national champion after all.
Quickstep Floors dominated the men’s race in Belgium, Yves Lampaert and twice former
champion Philippe Gilbert found themselves in a group of three with Jasper Stuyven, at
which point it was just a question of which of the two would win.
Answer?
Lampaert, who attacked in the closing stages.
The women’s, though, was dominated by the other heavyweight Belgian team, Lotto Soudal,
Analies Dom beating teammate Valerie Demey.
Down in Spain, we had one of the oldest top 10’s that you can imagine.
Oscar Sevilla, 41, was 10th, Francisco Mancebo, 42, was 7th.
Also up there were Dani Moreno, 36, and the ever consisten Alejandro Valverde, 38, who
finished runner up behind the relative youth of Gorka Izaguirre, who took his first Spanish
title at the scant age of 30.
Another rider who’ll be wearing his national colours at the Tour is Michal Kwiatkowski
- he lost his TT title to Bodnar but got revenge in the road race.
And then, there’s Peter Sagan.
Now this might be a little unfair, but it does feel like he’s just decided to loan
the jersey to his brother for the past couple of seasons, but with the World Championships
probably being too hard for him to collect a fourth rainbow jersey this autumn, maybe
the prospect of having to race in standard trace team kit was enough to frighten Sagan
into winning his national Slovakian championships, marking his 5th Elite title.
The Sagan’s have dominated the race since 2011.
Talking about trade team kit, I love this from @perfilatore, showing how many days per
season Sagan has spent in his normal team kit - just 16.74% of race days since 2011,
and last year just 5% of his race days were in his normal kit, presumably in team time
trials.
In fact the last time he word standard kit outside time trials was the 2011 Tour de Suisse.
Remarkable.
Matej Mohoric won the Slovenian champs, outsprinting Domen Novak and 7 minutes ahead of Luka Pibernik
for a Bahrain Merida clean sweep of the podium.
And in Italy, we’ll have to wait another week for the men’s race, but the women’s
is already done, 20 year old Marta Cavalli taking her first pro win there.
Also 20, also taking her first pro win was Katherine Maine winning the Canadian title,
and there was another 1st pro win in the men’s with FDJ Groupama pro Antoine Duchesne set
to wear the red and white maple leaf jersey for the next 12 months.
Next up, we’ve got the Adriatica Ionica - a brand new race in Italy, which is good
news as many organisers of smaller races have been struggling with budgets of late.
It’s a 5 day stage race in north eastern Italy, that incorporates three sprint stages,
one mountain top finish up the brutal Passo Giau in Alta Badia, and a TTT, which is in
fact what kicked things off last Wednesday.
Winners there?
Quickstep, and they backed that up with a sprint win for Viviani from a reduced group
of 50 on stage 2.
That marked the 11th victory for Viviani and the 40th for Quickstep, making them statistically
the most successful rider and team so far this season, and that was before Viviani took
their 41st and 42nd victories on stages on stages 4 and 5.
In the latter, it was Mark Cavendish that Viviani beat - and that marked the best result
for Cavendish since he crashed out of Milan Sanremo in March - could he be coming good
in time for the Tour?
Time will tell but it certainly looks like it.
Speaking of which in last week’s poll, 68% of you said that Fernando Gaviria will win
a stage of this year’s Tour, not long now until we find out, that race starts a week
on Saturday and don’t forget, we’ve got you covered with highlights of each and every
stage, over on our Facebook page.
This week’s poll is another simple one, how many stages will Mark Cavendish win at
the Tour?
0, 1, 2, 3, or more than 4?
Let us know your thoughts in the poll on screen and also in the comments below.
Stage 3 was the defining point in the GC though, finishing, as mentioned, on the Passo Giau.
9km’s at 9%, it’s a true test for any climber, and rising to the top that day was
Gianni Savio’s latest prodigy, Ivan Ramiro Sosa, a performance which was enough not only
for the stage win, but also for the overall honours two days later.
Sosa averaged 350w for 2.3km’s for his attack: Many of you will know that Team Sky’s Egan
Bernal rode for Androni Giocattoli last year, and it seems as they’ve found another super
talent in Sosa, who already impressed amongst illustrious company at the Tour of the Alpes
in April.
No doubt he’ll be courting the attention of a number of WorldTour teams, and I’m
sure Savio will be calculating the transfer fee as we speak.
Halle Ingooigem has long been established as a nice little preparation race for the
national championships in Northern Europe, and particularly Belgium, and we had a decent
turnout amongst the local pro teams again this year.
The race took in a number of ascents of the Tiegemberg, a tarmacked climb often used in
Belgium’s biggest one day races, and it encouraged a lot of attacks in the closing
stages of the race.
However, despite the attackers efforts, Quickstep Floors and Verandas Willems were able to bring
it back for a bunch sprint, only to be outdone by Lotto NL Jumbo’s Danny Van Poppel, who
pipped young Fabio Jakobsen by just a few centimetres.
It marked the first win for Van Poppel since February.
Over to the ultra endurance world now, and before I update you on the Trans Am and the
Tour Divide, I want to start by giving a quick nod to the Navad 1000.
This was the first ever bikepacking event in Switzerland - 1000km long, 31,000 metres
of climbing, from Lake Constance to Lake Geneva.
‘no entry fee, no outside support, no prizemoney, no excuses, nonstop’ is how organisers describe
the event, which began in 2015.
Stěpán Stránský won the event, but not far behind and 1st woman was ultra endurance
legend Lael Wilcox, who finished in 4 days, 10 hours and 6 minutes.
Lael is the only woman to have won the transam bike race, but this was the bike she chose
for the Navad 1000, a Specialized Epic Hardtail with plenty of modifications, and I’m particularly
pleased to see that she’s chosen good old fashioned bar ends - I like to use them myself
over much shorter distances.
Onto the Tour Divide now, and the front runners or riders there have finished, Lewis Ciddor
continued where we left him last week to finish first.
The Australian averaged 180 miles a day over 15 days, 2 hours and 8 minutes where he reached
New Mexico and the finish line - what an accomplishment.
Alexandra Houchin continues to lead the women’s event, she, as we record this, has around
700 miles remaining.
The TransAm also finished last week, at least for the front runners, and it was a quick
one.
Two riders managed to get inside last year’s record time, and the winner was Marcel Graber,
but NOT on a conventional bike.
He used a three wheeled Velomobile, not dissimilar to the one I had a little go in at CeramicSpeed
in Denmark, to cover the 7000km’s in 6 days, 16 hours, and 40 minutes.
To put that into perspective, that’s over a day ahead of the record set last year by
Evan Deutsch.
Coming in 2nd on a more standard bike was Peter Andersen, who also broke last year’s
record.
It has caused a bit of controversy on forums, with plenty of discussion as to whether a
velomobile is fair game, but by the rules it is, and since the transam’s first official
rule is that there is no complaining about the rules, there isn’t really a discussion
to be had.
Tanja Hacker won the women’s event, on a standard bike, that despite taking a couple
of wrong turns in Montana.
That’s all for this week’s show - give us a thumbs up if you’ve enjoyed it.
Next week I’ll be back with a report on the remainder of the national road championships,
including Italy, the UK, the Netherlands and France, and I very much hope you’ll join
me then.
In the meantime, if you’d like to watch a fantastic Ask GCNything with one of the
best racers of all time, Marianne Vos, then make sure you watch this video with Emma.