Indholdsfortegnelse for July 20, 2023 i Cycling Weekly

Remco Evenepoel is actively looking to move teams after growing unhappy at Soudal-Quick Step, who face an uncertain financial future. The world champion has three and a half years left on his contract at the Belgian team but isn’t convinced it can match his ambitions, which include winning the Tour de France – a race at which he is set to make his debut in 2024. Multiple insiders have told Cycling Weekly that Evenepoel wants an exit from the team he turned pro with aged just 18, and one WorldTour general manager said: “We have been informed that there is a possibility that the rider is looking to leave his current team.” Ineos Grenadiers are the favourites to sign the reigning Vuelta a España champion and met with his representatives…

“Uh-oh,” the email reads. “Someone stole your KOM.” It’s probably not the kind of thing you need when racing the Tour de France and we think we know someone who has been getting a lot of them. “We’re in the region of Romain Bardet who has all the KOMs here and I think he’s going to lose them all,” says Oliver Naesen, rider with Ag2r-Citroën, with just a tiny hint of glee ahead of stage 11 through the Massif Central. “The stage yesterday [to Issoire] and also three days ago [to Puy de Dôme] the pace was extremely high. We were raking in KOMs.” In this respect Bardet is like any of us when the WorldTour peloton comes to town; if you’re not losing the KOM you’re probably taking a…

It was during a scorching hot stage 10 of the Tour de France last week that Jasper Stuyven noticed that his legs were sapped, his energy depleted. “I looked at my computer and it said my temperature was 41°C. I had never seen that before,” the Lidl-Trek man tells Cycling Weekly. “I had just completely blown up after twice trying to follow attacks and I felt really quite overheated but I didn’t expect my temperature to be so high. Normally on hot days you stay around 38 to 38.5°C. I didn’t feel so good, to be honest.” Combating heat has become cycling’s new frontier, with cooling strategies taking on as much importance as finely tuned preparation, stage recons and riding on the rollers before and after the stage. “I immediately…

The Col du Tourmalet needs no introduction to cycling fans. The 17km Pyrenean climb that starts from the quiet, unremarkable mountain town of Sainte-Marie-de-Campan entered cycling folklore many years ago. Its green slopes are regularly visited by the men’s peloton, cyclo-sportive events and amateur riders out col bagging. Now the women’s peloton finally gets to add to that history. Coming on the penultimate stage, and straight after the descent off the Col d’Aspin, the climb will loom large in the riders’ minds throughout the race. Some will want to gain time or stage wins ahead of it, some will be happy to wait until they hit its slopes to make their moves. Either way, its presence means the GC standings as they are when the race passes through Sainte-Marie-de-Campan can…

Already this season, EF Education-Tibco-SVB have reached new heights, earning their biggest victory to date at Paris-Roubaix. Crafted by Canadian and former triathlete Alison Jackson, the win across the cobbles was testament to both the rider and the team’s boldness, always striving to fight a weight class above. Speaking to CW in April, sports director Tim Harris highlighted that “fortune favours the brave”, and to succeed at the Tour de France this summer, the team will have to be brave once again. Away from cycling, sponsor woes have struck the team. Legacy partners TIBCO and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) have opted not to renew their sponsorship for 2024 and question marks have been raised about the future of the team, with many riders out of contract at the end of…

This year has given very little for Liv Racing-TeqFind to write home about. The Dutch WorldTour squad have struggled for victories since Lotte Kopecky left for SD Worx at the end of 2021, and have even found podiums hard to come by. At last year’s Tour, Italian sprinter Rachele Barbieri made sure the team was represented in stage finishes, managing four top-10 results before she pulled out of the race ahead of stage seven. Barbieri has kept that consistency into 2023, adding a string of top-fives to her palmarès. The team’s standout result this year, however, lies with Katia Ragusa, who came within inches of an astonishing Paris-Roubaix title. The Italian, having been part of the winning breakaway move, ended up runner-up to Alison Jackson, saying: “To finish second in…

At the start of this season, Israel-Premier Tech decided to increase its support of the team known last year as Roland Cogeas Edelweiss, taking on a more prominent sponsorship role and upping the funding into the set-up. The return on investment so far has been promising. Already in 2023, the team has tripled its win tally from 2022, thanks in great part to the brace of victories Tamara Dronova-Balabolina earned at the Vuelta Ciclista Andalucía. The 29-year-old all-rounder has given the team more visibility in race finales. In fact, no other rider in the squad has more top-10s than her. There are also new names at Israel-Premier Tech-Roland this season, the best known being Olympic time trial champion Anna Kiesenhofer. When the Swiss rider joined, team manager Ruben Contreras said:…

The departure of top sprinter Lorena Wiebes at the end of 2022 spelled disaster for DSM-Firmenich, or so people predicted. Under the Dutchwoman’s reign last season, the team counted an astonishing 28 victories, all but six of them belonging to Wiebes herself. This year, without Wiebes, the team needed to step up. And step up it has. The focus still lies in sprints, except now Wiebes’s former understudy, Charlotte Kool, is leading the line, and has shown that she can beat the world’s best on the flat. Away from sprinting, DSM-Firmenich will enter this month’s Tour de France Femmes with GC ambitions, too. Juliette Labous’s performance last year often gets overlooked, but it is worth reminding that the Frenchwoman was the top-placed home rider in the overall standings, finishing fourth…

This has been something of a watershed season for the team, which said goodbye to one of its strongest riders in Spain’s Mavi García at the end of 2022, and is set to lose another – Marta Bastianelli – to retirement just a fortnight before the Tour de France Femmes starts. But this blow has been cushioned a little by the signing of impressive 21-year-old Italian rider Eleonora Gasparrini. The team is looking for its first stage win at the race and without García’s GC ambition may find itself freer to find it. Star: Eleonora Gasparrini Gasparrini has already racked up a fine set of results this season. She won a stage of the Tour de Suisse as well as the youth classification at the Volta Valenciana and at the…

SD Worx has long been the team to beat on almost any terrain, with Demi Vollering notching up an incredible list of wins throughout the first half of the season, albeit mainly in one-day races. This season has seen SD Worx performing better than ever. A litany of 39 wins, shared chiefly between Demi Vollering, Lorena Wiebes and Lotte Kopecky, has left their rivals scratching their heads as to how to beat the Dutch team, and head sports director Danny Stam said they “had not dared to dream” of such success. On recent form they are markedly better in one-day events and smaller stage races as opposed to the big tours though. Last year the team’s riders secured just a single stage win across both the Giro Donne and the…

The Norwegian-registered team began the season with what has proved to be its best result so far – fourth in the Cadel Evans Ocean Road Race, courtesy of 21-year-old British rider Josie Nelson. Since then there have been a lot of top-20 finishes. In the fiercely competitive arena of the Tour de France Femmes it’s not going to be easy to best this, but Nelson has shown what can be achieved at WorldTour level, so a top five and even a wild-card stage win is surely the dream this month. Tellingly, new signings Lucie Jounier and Jenny Rissveds are the first riders to have been named for the Tour Femmes team, though we’d hope to see Brits in there too in the form of Nelson and Jess Roberts. Star: Jenny…

Saint Piran’s dominance of the Men’s National Road Series continued as they pulled off a one-two-three at the Lancaster Grand Prix, with Zeb Kyffin leading the celebrations. The Continental team also pulled off a podium clean sweep at the opening round of the series in Lincoln and were even more impressive in Sunday’s second round. After race winner Kyffin narrowly avoided a crash in the early stages, the Cornwall-based team took command in blustery conditions. Kyffin was joined by team-mates Jack Rootkin-Gray and Harry Birchill in an early break and, as the race seemed to be coming back together, they attacked again on a climb and only Logan Maclean (AG2R under-23 team) could follow. The pace was eventually too much for Maclean, leaving the team-mates to grow a massive gap…

Tony Bell, whose humorous Cycling Weekly column ‘What’s He On’ will be remembered by many readers of this magazine, passed away earlier this month, aged 65. The Merseysider was a talented bike rider who turned pro for two seasons in the 1980s. He also possessed a politics degree and went on to write for the Independent and Observer newspapers. ‘What’s He On’ featured in CW from 2002-2006. Bell’s brother Mark, who passed away in 2009, was also a successful bike rider, winning the National Championship road race twice in the 1980s. Warm and witty, Bell made many friends among the cycling fraternity, including Manx rider Steve Joughin. The pair first met in 1974 at the Merseyside schoolboy circuit championship at Wavertree Park, and after Joughin moved to Liverpool a few…

If you’ve ever thought about losing weight and getting leaner, chances are you have been tempted to try intermittent fasting. Advocates claim it can make you lose weight, prevent disease and help you live longer. Its huge popularity has been driven – at least in part – by influencers and celebrities including Rich Roll, Hugh Jackman, Elon Musk and Jennifer Aniston, all of whom attribute their chiselled physiques to the dietary regime. Gary Lineker recently revealed that he follows a one-meal-a-day diet to keep his weight similar to when he played professional football. But intermittent fasting has also gained a following among cyclists. It is reputed that Bradley Wiggins used fasted training rides to shed weight and improve his body’s ability to burn fat before he won the 2012 Tour…

Famously fastidious about his bikes and equipment, Eddy Merckx fits a new bottle cage to his eponymous bike. Merckx was always well-turned-out and always enjoyed fettling with his machines, but there’s an air of the staged promo shot to this image. The beauty of the picture is perhaps not Merckx himself but the simplicity of the workshop and the items in it. This is after all the greatest cyclist of all time, and most famous man in the whole of Belgium. Check out the telephone on the left, with the spare forks behind and the tubs hanging to the side. Then there’s the mudguards on the right, underneath the bench. Interestingly there isn’t a hex key in sight, instead there’s a full selection of spanners neatly displayed but done simply…

Comfort is at a premium in this year’s Tour de France. At the end of the second week of racing the tension had not been loosened, with just 10 seconds separating the two leaders of the race, Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates). Neither had the ability to relax going into the second rest day, nor do their teams, with things so finely poised. On the third Sunday of the race, things felt more like a chess match than a three-week long Grand Tour, with stage 15 just one of many stages where Vingegaard and Pogačar were inseparable. Vingegaard might have been in the yellow jersey on Sunday evening, but it was with the knowledge that his margin was one that could be taken away in an…

Time moves fast at the Tour de France. It took less than four hours for any British hopes of a podium – no one realistically thinks they can overhaul Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard at the top of the GC standings – to go up in flames in the heat of the French summer. Simon Yates (Jayco-AlUla) had started stage 14 at 2-13 off the podium. Although he had previously lost over a minute due a crash he was riding a solid race and was in touching distance of the podium. “I’m just going to keep doing my best,” he said, refusing to give up hope. “Jai [Hindley, then third] is maybe two minutes in front of me; that’s a big gap to close and we’ve been relatively equal, other…

MIRKO SUT, CHEF AT LIDL-TREK This is an easy recipe from the French area of Limoges that’s popular with the riders. Most of the time, the easier a recipe is, the easier it is to digest and this is the goal. In the Tour de France they have dinner very late and half an hour later, or an hour maximum, they are laying in the bed. If you have too heavy a dinner, then it’s not easy to fall asleep and sleep well and then you don’t recover. It’s like a little treat after a long day – I always try to prepare them a small dessert. Jasper Stuyven [who has a chocolatier business] has the biggest sweet tooth on the Tour team. Ingredients: 700g cherries, 3 eggs, 100g brown…

I’ve just passed the UAE team bus. I was riding my Brompton (leading out David Millar, effectively, on his carbon-fibre road bike, but that’s another story) past all the buses parked up in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains after stage 15. The crowds in the Alps have been massive, as if the cooker of Tour de France fandom had been turned up to 11. And here it was no different, thousands waiting patiently for a glimpse of the men they have watched from afar on TV, but this time up close and real. Shortly before I reached the UAE cluster of vehicles, I was passed by a slim looking rider in full UAE team kit, who I took to be a super fan, but who, on closer inspection turned out to be Rafał Majka.…

Last season was the inaugural year for the Cofidis women’s team, which races at ProContinental level. The team had a solid first year, including a ride in the Tour de France Femmes, though perhaps unsurprisingly its riders did not come away with any results to speak of. It appears to be making headway this year and its riders have already tripled their win tally on last season, with success at Bretagne Ladies Tour on two occasions. The star: Rachel Neylan Veteran Australian rider Rachel Neylan was the first rider home for the team in several stages of last year’s Tour de France Femmes. She is due to retire at the end of the season and will want to go out on a high here if possible. TEAM FACTS Nationality: France…

The pressure is on for FDJ-Suez as the team takes aim at its home race. Last year’s edition proved a mixed bag; from the lows of Marta Cavalli’s abandon, which came after the Italian was concussed in a high-speed collision on stage two, to the highs of Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig’s stage victory the following day on a lumpy run-in to Épernay. The season so far has proven a similarly up-and-down story. Grace Brown began the year with fireworks in Australia, winning the Santos Tour Down Under, the first WorldTour event of the year. Brown’s team-mate Loes Adegeest then claimed the squad’s second win, at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race. The team’s campaign in the Ardennes, however, failed to match their dizzying results from 2022. That year, Cavalli reigned…

“Feel free to underestimate us,” the team says on its website. “We are ready to kick ass!” Could CW be made to eat the lowly ‘CW rating’ score it has given the team? We’d certainly be happy to see Uno-X do well at this year’s race, though as the team also says, “Patience is key.” Uno-X has certainly taken a significant step up this season, with top-10s in four WorldTour Classics – Ghent-Wevelgem, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Brugge-De Panne and Ronde Van Drenthe. What’s more, the fact that these were taken by different riders points to a useful strength in depth that the Norwegian team could use to potential stage-winning effect this month. Star: Amalie Dideriksen The former world champion (Doha, 2016) currently boasts the team’s only victory outside of a…

Despite the successes of the men’s team, which won its first Tour de France with Jonas Vingegaard in 2022, the Jumbo-Visma women’s squad is still a relative newcomer in the peloton. The team was launched in 2021 with three-time world champion Marianne Vos as its leader, and is still finding its feet. “We are a WorldTour and a development team in one,” said manager Rutget Tijssen at the start of the year. “On the one hand, we strive to take first places, podium finishes, and stage victories. On the other hand, we focus on the athletes’ individual processes. For me, the riders’ success this year will depend on their physical development and increased tactical proficiency.” This season, the team is yet to match the triumphs of its previous two campaigns,…

With a fat streak of Belgian pedigree running straight through it, it’s no surprise that Fenix-Deceuninck’s riders excel when the going gets tough. Rolling Classics territory is the team’s strong point, with top-fives in Paris-Roubaix, Strade Bianche and Ghent-Wevelgem this year thanks to Marthe Truyen, Puck Pieterse and Christina Schweinberger respectively. At the time of writing none of those has yet been named for the Tour Femmes squad but it seems a good bet that at least one of them will be. That will give the team a real chance of scoring a stage victory in one of the lumpy days in the first half of the race. Last year De Wilde brought the team its best finish in the Tour Femmes, sprinting to seventh place, just behind Lorena Wiebes…

Formerly Trek-Segafredo, the US-based team has only recently undergone a rebranding, bringing the supermarket on board as a title sponsor and with a new kit to boot. “A lot is changing on the surface,” the team said when it launched the new look last month. “And yet deep down, not much is changing at all,” it added, citing unchanging core values of rider development and family atmosphere. The face of the team is one of freshness and fun, as well as being highly capable across a variety of race types. The team has had a solid early season, with WorldTour wins including the UAE Tour thanks to perennial Italian all-rounder Elisa Longo Borghini, who also won a stage. And then there was a win for Shirin Van Anrooij at the…

It hasn’t been easy to keep up with the revolving door of sponsorship at the British registered team. Originally Drops when it was launched in 2016, last year it rode as Le Col-Wahoo. As well as the title sponsor, its roster has changed considerably for 2023. It has lost a number of successful Dutch and Belgian riders, but now has a brace of New Zealanders and two new French riders. Kiwi Ella Wyllie has already scored success, winning the young riders classification at the Itzulia Women stage race. Star: April Tacey The fast-finishing 22-year-old has been with the team since turning pro in 2020, making history that year when she won the first stage of the Virtual Tour de France ahead of Kristen Faulkner and Chantal van den Broek-Blaak. TEAM…

The Rapha Lincoln GP continues to be a high point of the domestic racing calendar. It’s also an event that appears to suit Alex Richardson to a T. In May, the Saint Piran rider notched up his second win in the race, heading up an impressive 1-2-3 finish for the Cornish team. The bike that helped Richardson to victory, which included 13 ascents of the Flanders-esque Michaelgate climb, was Trek’s latest rocket ship, the Madone SLR. The seventh generation of the famed aero bike cuts quite a silhouette, in no small part because of the IsoFlow technology, which is ostensibly a hole in the seatpost that redirects air flow, limits turbulence and reportedly saves watts. Certainly Richardson’s matt black Madone looks as stealthy as it does fast. While the colourway…

James Turner, 47, a cyclist and IT manager from Chobham, Surrey, uses intermittent fasting in preparation for the racing season I practise intermittent fasting mainly to get down to my race weight pre-season and manage my weight during race season. Generally, my off-season weight is 80kg and my race weight is 75-76kg. I find that doing an extended overnight fast followed by a fasted ride twice a week is enough to achieve my weight goal, which, in turn, benefits my performance in races. I train 10 hours a week on the bike as part of my training programme. On fasting days, I skip breakfast then cycle 45km to work. Once I get to the office, I’ll forgo food, then eat lunch around midday, which represents roughly a 16-hour fast. On…

How has the Tour de France been so far? This is my third consecutive Tour and for me this one has been the easiest. I think that’s because we’ve had a lot more easy sprint days where the peloton has been more relaxed. Last year was unbelievable – there was never a day off. But this year the GC fight started on day one and that was important for the peloton’s stress. Why did you make the transition from sprinter to leadout man? When I was the leader at Intermarché-Wanty [in 2021], there was so much pressure – everyone expected me to win. When it doesn’t go so well, it’s not nice, and no fun. I said to my girlfriend [Dutch F1 reporter Stéphane Kox] that if a good team asked…

The time limit is what a considerable proportion of the Tour de France field spends their stage worrying about during the mountain days. Happily, working out the time limit is simplicity itself. First, you need to know the ASO’s difficulty coefficient for the stage. This will range from one to six. One is a sprint stage, five will be a brutal, short mountain horror show and six is reserved for time trials. Two, three and four are for increasingly difficult stages in between. Then you need the average speed of the stage winner. If you’re trying to make the calculation while, for example, hanging on to the back of the autobus for grim death, you’ll need to predict this by guessing how far away the front of the race is,…

The icons of the Swinging Sixties were small. There was Austin’s Mini car, Mary Quant’s miniskirts and Alex Moulton’s revolutionary small-wheeled mini-bike. Launched at the Earl’s Court Cycle Show in 1962, the Moulton was an immediate hit with London’s fashionistas, but demonstrated that despite its diminutive size it was a bike for grown-up cycling too. John Woodburn broke the Cardiff-London record on a Moulton that same year, and in 1963 Tom Simpson rode one at Herne Hill, declaring that, according to Moulton, he would race on one “next week” if he wasn’t under contract to Peugeot. Demand for Moultons was huge. Even a doubling in size of its new Bradford-on-Avon factory wasn’t sufficient. It was only when the British Motor Corporation stepped in to manufacture Moultons at its Merseyside plant…

Chris Froome’s future at Israel-PremierTech has been thrown into doubt despite having a contract until the end of 2025, after the team’s manager slammed the Briton for not being “value for money.” In an extraordinary interview with Cycling Weekly at the Tour de France, Israel’s billionaire owner Sylvan Adams said that since Froome joined the team in 2021 he has “absolutely not” been worth his multi-million-euro annual salary. He added: “Chris isn’t a symbol, he isn’t a PR tool, he’s supposed to be our leader at the Tour de France and he’s not even here, so no I couldn’t say he’s value for money, no.” Froome raced both the 2021 and 2022 Tour but wasn’t selected for this year’s race after failing to convince his team that he was worthy…

STAGE 10 CELEBRATIONS Today was a day I had already underlined when looking at the stages way back in December. Having had a well-needed rest day, which as usual went by in an instant, I was really motivated. We’d even looked at the first 30ks or so on our ride just to make sure we’d get in the move. It was one of those days everyone knew was going to be a break: too hard for sprinters and not hard enough to shake up the GC. I think most of us were a bit shocked to see Jonas and Tadej following a move on the very first climb, it was then I started doubting my chances of winning the stage. I kept fighting but just couldn’t stay with the bunch…

Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) rubber stamps his sprinting authority in Moulins as he takes another stage win at this year’s Tour de France. In doing so, he becomes the sixth sprinter this century to win four stages at the Tour. His win in Moulins at the end of stage 11 was his finest yet, coming from behind, without the help of a lead-out man and winning by over a bike length from Dylan Groenewegen. Philipsen surged past the Jayco-AlUla rider in the last 25 metres with such speed that he was well clear as they crossed the line a second later. The beaten Dutchman was quoted by Dutch media as saying, “I’m really sick of this,” when back at his team bus. Behind the pair, Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) was the…

Can anyone stop Annemiek van Vleuten from wrapping up cycling’s Grand Slam next week? The Dutchwoman, world champion, defending champion, Olympic champion – there are a plethora of titles I could use alongside her name – lines up in Clermont-Ferrand this weekend for the Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift with the Giro d’Italia Donne and La Vuelta Femenina already in her back pocket. And with a summit finish atop the Col du Tourmalet on the penultimate stage, few would bet against her. After a lacklustre (by her high standards) spring campaign I started to wonder if her retirement at the end of the 2023 season was in the back of her mind and she was already winding down. No chance. She is as dominant as ever, wearing the Giro…

Founded in 2016 with just nine riders, Canyon-SRAM has grown into one of the most aggressive teams in the peloton. The squad boasts a host of all-rounders, with strong climbers for the hills and rouleurs for the flatter terrain. Still, it is perhaps a surprise that, until this May, the team had gone almost four years without a win at WorldTour level. The breakthrough came at the RideLondon Classique, courtesy of former time trial world champion Chloé Dygert, whose return to road racing this season has invigorated Canyon-SRAM. “When you have more trust in each other, everyone gives a bit more effort into the final and into the leader we’re racing for,” the American said. “When everyone gives 100% to the goal, podiums and winning follow.” Last year, the team…

This year could not have started better for Human Powered Health. On just their second race day of the year, the team earned their first WorldTour victory when Daria Pikulik sprinted into the leader’s jersey on stage one of the Tour Down Under. The win was unexpected, particularly for the rider who took it. “I can’t believe that I won,” Pikulik said afterwards. “It’s my first WorldTour race in my cycling life.” Despite being a WorldTour team, Human Powered Health are relative minnows in the women’s peloton, and any top-five race results are to be savoured in the American camp. At last year’s Tour de France Femmes, the squad’s best stage placing was 21st, taken by Dutch climber Nina Buijsman on the final day. The recruitment of leading French rider…

Before Annemiek van Vleuten joined Movistar in 2021, the team had enjoyed little success outside of the riders’ respective national championships. Founded in 2018, the squad was mostly made up of Spanish names in its early days, with the riders targeting top-10 results, happy to play second fiddle to the superteams. All of that has since changed. Two victories in 2020 skyrocketed to 21 in 2021, before the team went on to score its best-ever win tally last season, triumphing in 24 events. It’s not all van Vleuten either, 23-year-old Danish talent Emma Norsgaard has slowly but steadily been growing her palmarès, and is still looking for a breakthrough victory at WorldTour level. Arlenis Sierra and Sheyla Gutiérrez have also contributed to the glory. This season, Movistar boasts its strongest…

Misfortune has reigned over Jayco-AlUla’s season so far. In March, the team thought they had taken a hard-fought third place at Strade Bianche, thanks to Kristen Faulkner’s rampaging solo attack, before the UCI stepped in and disqualified the American for using a blood glucose monitor while racing. Faulkner was “extremely disappointed”. Since then, WorldTour podiums have proven hard to find for the Australian team. After a promising start to the season, with Alex Manly winning a stage at the Tour Down Under, the results have dried up. While the squad’s former captain Annemiek van Vleuten was crafting her victory at last year’s Tour de France, BikeExchange-Jayco (as they were then) were riding a different race, scoring top 10s and looking busy at the front. Their best GC finisher was 29th…

A Continental ranked rather than WorldTour team, Ceratizit-WNT can afford to head to the Tour de France Femmes without feeling too much pressure. If they can make it into a long break or two and rack up some TV airtime, that will be one goal ticked off. A stage win, of course, isn’t outside the realms of possibility, especially from a small break that goes the distance. But the team is missing fast-finishing Italian Maria Giulia Confalonieri, who netted its only top-10s in last year’s Tour Femmes (fifth place on stage six to Rosheim was the nearest she came to a win). One rider to watch out for this year though is new French rouleur Cédrine Kerbaol, who at just 22 has been getting solid results all season, including a…

The talismanic Ashleigh Moolman continues to rack up the results despite the fact she will be turning 38 this year. A strong climber and capable all-rounder, the South African has been second on GC in the Giro Donne on two occasions. However, she was unable to finish last year’s inaugural Tour Femmes after falling ill while in the top five and leaving a day later. This year she will feel she has unfinished business. “My level is higher than it’s ever been,” she said last August after announcing she would postpone retirement to sign for AG Insurance from SD Worx. Assuming she is on form, a good ride could see her win a stage or mount the final GC podium. The team will also look to Moolman’s Belgian team-mate Justine…

As a French Continental team that gets to enjoy fewer top-flight races than its WorldTour team counterparts, the pressure will be off for Arkéa’s riders at the Tour Femmes – at least in terms of results alone. It will be far from a jolly potter around l’Hexagone though, as the sponsor will be looking for maximum airtime, with riders inserting themselves into breakaways as often as possible. As we saw in the Giro d’Italia with riders like Derek Gee and Ben Healy though, the plucky triers can often become one of the stories of the race – which is the sort of exposure sponsors dream of. Anais Morichon will hope to improve on her 25th in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges last year, while promising new Irish signing Megan Armitage could do the same.…

Having raced last year as St Michel-Auber93, the team brought Mavic on board as a title sponsor for 2023, and bolstered the squad with riders including Roxane Fournier, formerly of SD Worx. So far this season she has proved a success, backing up results-merchants Simone Boilard and Coralie Demay – who were the first riders named for the team’s Tour Femmes squad. The team has notched up some solid results already this year, including fifth at Paris-Roubaix and second overall in the Bretagne Ladies Tour. Fournier has proved to be a deft signing, having registered many of the team’s top results. Star: Simone Boilard The Canadian has racked up results relentlessly for the team over the past two seasons and has age and ambition on her side going into this…

Fred Wright is hoping that his form from the Tour de France will give him a shot at becoming road world champion as he looks ahead to the Glasgow Championships next month. “Looking at last year, at the Commonwealth Games, I was going really well in that two-week period after the Tour,” the Bahrain Victorious rider told Cycling Weekly. “I managed to soak it all up. I think if I can come out of this Tour still feeling OK, then the Worlds should be good.” He was speaking as British Cycling announced the riders it will take to August’s World Championships and paracycling World Championships in Glasgow. “It suits me. I’m really looking forward to it, it’s a big goal” The road selection remains a long list at this point,…

I have never seen a rider at that age come back to his former glory after a very bad accident. Froome was no exception and the owner took a risk employing him and expecting results like before. I always thought they hired him for the name and the subsequent publicity. Santi Kalf I mean until this season, just the name Chris Froome brought more publicity to the team than any of their other riders’ results did! But signing a 35-year-old who’d not raced for 18 months after almost dying and sustaining multiple injuries was always a huge risk. Lee Wood They made a mistake hiring him and it cost them WorldTour team status. They could have bought a host of younger riders for the money they paid him. And in…

Café du Cycliste Road Shoes £290 The Café du Cycliste Road Shoes are built upon a lightweight unidirectional carbon sole to provide maximal stiffness and power transfer. The sole has rubber lugs on the front and rear to provide traction while walking and also to protect that carbon sole. The microfibre upper includes perforations at the front and along the side of the shoes for heat dissipation as well as an abrasion protective surface to prevent damage. A ‘fishgrid technology’ heel is used to prevent your ankle slipping out of the shoe even during maximal efforts. Retention is done via lacing with 14 holes with an elastic loop that holds the laces in place to prevent them moving around when riding. Inside, there is a Solestar insole to provide full…