- The rainbow jersey is the most coveted
in our world of cycling.
It gives you respect and recognition for an entire season.
So each year the world's best riders compete
for the honor of wearing it
but some of the world's best riders never actually get to.
Coming up the seven greatest cyclists of all time
who've never won the UCI World Championships.
Fabian Cancellara had two great passions
and two great strengths when he was a pro rider:
time trialing and classics.
So as a time trial rider he was pretty much unbeatable
in his hay day.
Spartacus won a total of four world championships
in the time trial and two gold medals at the Olympic games.
And as a classic specialist he won the Tour of Flanders
and Paris-Roubaix on three occasions each.
Now somewhat surprisingly for a time trial specialist,
he actually packed quite a mean sprint at the end of a race
particularly from a reduced group.
All the attributes then that you need
to win the World Championships however,
Cancellara never even won a medal on the road side
at the World Championships.
In 2009 and 2011 he did come quite close to winning
both the time trail and the road race at the Worlds
but he never quite managed to pull it off.
Basically there was just never the perfect course
for Cancellara when he was at his best.
There is absolutely no doubt that Jacques
is one of the best Grand Tour riders of all time.
Through his career he won five Tours de France,
two Giros d'Italia and one Vuelta a Espana.
However, his prowess over three week races
never really transferred over to one day races,
in fact he only ever won one monument,
that being in 1966, Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
So perhaps not a huge surprise
that he never won the World Championships.
He did go close on one of his 10 participations,
also in 1966, but ended up beaten by local favorite
on the Nurburgring, Rudi Altig.
However, apparently he was reasonably pleased
with his 2nd place finish
because in 3rd was his arch rival, Raymond Poulidor.
It is quite common in cycling for the best Grand Tour riders
to not focus too much on the World Championships,
particularly in the modern-era
which is becoming particularly specialized.
However the Spainard, Big Mig, bucked that trend
because he was constantly targeting those rainbow bands
but never quite managed to pull them on.
His best year at the Worlds came in 1993
and already before the Worlds he'd won the Giro d'Italia
and the 3rd of his five successive Tours de France,
so he put himself in with a rare opportunity
of taking cycling's Triple Crown.
The only riders ever to have achieved that are Stephen Roche
and Eddy Merckx.
Now Indurain did do very well
in a properly miserable day in Oslo in Norway
because he won a reduced bunch kick
ahead of likes of Maurizio Fondriest and Johan Museeuw.
However, unfortunately for Indurain,
19 seconds before he won that bunch kick,
another rider reasonably unknown at the time,
had already crossed the line,
his name, Lance Armstrong.
Irishman Sean Kelly has one of the most interesting
and varied palmares of any professional cyclist.
So as a sprinter he won the points classification
at the Tour de France and the Vuelta on four occasions each.
As a classics rider,
he won four out of cyclings five monuments
with only the Tour of Flanders missing
but he was also a very strong GC rider.
So he won Paris-Nice overall seven times in a row
and also won the overall classification at Vuelta a Espana.
So you would you expect then that he's another rider
that should have won the World Championships in his career
but he fell short of the mark,
his best results were two bronze medals,
one of those came at the 1982 World Championships
over in Goodwood here in the UK.
There he was beaten in a 3 up sprint by Giuseppe Saronni
and also Greg LeMond.
But Saronni's sprint was so impressive
at the end of that that he was given the nickname,
La fucilata di Goodwood, the gunshot of Goodwood.
Which I think sounds better in English than it does Italian
or that might be my Italian.
The best classics rider of all time,
with De Vlaeminck's record he can certainly
lay claim to that title.
He along with Tom Boonen hold the record
for the number of Paris-Roubaix victories.
They've got four a piece.
But De Vlaeminck is also part of an exclusive club
that have won all of cyclings monuments.
Other riders on that list are Rik Van Looy
and Eddie Merckx.
So with his pedigree in one day races,
you'd have thought the World Championships
would have been right up De Vlaeminck's street.
Surprising then that he only competed
at the World Championships on four occasions
and that his best result in them was 2nd.
That came in 1975,
he was a part of a group that also included Eddy Merckx
but unfortunately for him,
Hennie Kuiper of the Netherlands attacked
and won by 17 seconds.
De Vlaemink won the sprint for 2nd place
but was banging his bars in frustration
as he crossed the line.
We shall now turn our attention to a couple of riders
who haven't won the World Championships, yet.
But could do so this year over in Innsbruck in Austria.
The first of those is Anna van der Breggen.
Now the Dutch woman has pretty much dominated
the women's side of the sport over the last few years
and her list of results really is quite incredible.
She has won La Fleche Wallonne four times,
Liege-Bastogne-Liege twice, the Giro Rosa twice,
and she's the current Olympic Games champion too
but has never won the Worlds, yet.
This year is a massive opportunity,
one of the hardest courses that we have seen in decades,
so it's got her name written on it really.
Now she can win on her own
or she could win from a small group,
so two ways to go about it for her.
It's basically hers to lose we think this year.
And finally we've got Alejandro Valverde,
who is the nearly man of the World Championships.
Taken part 11 times, come back with six medals,
four of them bronze, two of them silver,
none of them of course have been gold.
In fact, no other rider in the history of the sport
on the men's side have come home with that many medals
from World Championships in the road race.
Now the issue often seems to be internal rivalries
within the Spanish squad.
So 2012 and 2013, the race looked like Spain's to lose,
and on both occasions somehow they did manage to lose it.
This year though,
not only does the course suit him down to the ground,
not only is his form great,
but also there doesn't seem to be another rider
within the Spanish squad that will rival him
as the sole team leader.
Could this be his year?
We will find out this coming Sunday.
Right, that's all for this video.
I hope you've liked it.
If you have give it the thumbs up.
If you would like to see our full preview though,
myself and Si talked all about the course in Innsbruck,
and all about the riders
that might be winning the races there
and you can find that video just down here.