Innehållsförteckning för December 6, 2018 från Cycling Weekly

It wasn’t on the slopes of a famous mountain, or lying bloodied on the tarmac in Jerusalem where Chris Froome’s Giro d’Italia campaign nearly came unstuck. It was on the gently rolling roads of Abruzzo surrounded by farms, woodland and picturesque villages. Stage 10 of the Giro d’Italia had a few warning signs attached to it; there was a big climb at the start, but the parcours wasn’t anything that should have unduly troubled the GC favourites. This was a course that looked set for a breakaway win. And it was, with Matej Mohoric (Bahrain-Merida) winning in a two-up sprint over Nico Denz (Ag2r). But as the leaders forged on, in the bunch Froome was fretful. “It was a flat finish but quite a lumpy start and I was battling…

Somewhere in cycling heaven, the “heads of state are all present and correct” to receive Paul Sherwen. A loss for his wife and children, many friends, the global community, and the cycling world. I don’t know what it is like to watch the Tour de France on TV without him. He will be dearly missed. Jeff Overstreet Very sad news. Spent most of my youth and adult years listening to Paul and Phil Liggett commentating on the Tour. Barry Holderness I grew up listening to Phil and Paul commentating on the Tour. One of the many reasons cycling is so dear to me. Rest easy mate, the world has lost another good ’un. Dan Owen Paul was my favourite announcer, always so knowledgeable about the French countryside and terrific colour…

If it hadn’t been for Debbie Wharton, Geraint Thomas might never have pinned on a race number, let alone become a Grand Tour winner. Wharton was the driving force behind resurrecting the cycling track at the Thomas family’s local leisure centre in Maindy, Cardiff. Just by chance, one day in the late-Nineties, action taking place on the track caught young Geraint’s attention. “He’d been to the leisure centre for a swimming lesson while we were running a session on the track for some little kids,” remembers Wharton. “When he came out from the pool with his dad, they had a look over the fence — and came back a few days later asking to have a go. It just went from there.” Thomas was 10 at the time, and the…

2015: Stage 12 — Lannemezan > Plateau de Beille He did an unbelievably strong performance in the mountains three years ago, in particular on stage 12 when there were not many people left and he was the last one left with Froomey. Joaquim Rodriguez won the stage from the breakaway, and there were maybe 10 guys — all of the leaders. G was pulling for the whole climb until the top and it was super-cold and raining; if G had stopped and someone attacked then Froome would have been on his own and it would have been like a fire. He was climbing on a really hard stage with all the best, and it was a really solid performance. 2017: Stage 1 — Düsseldorf ITT All the guys did a…

“Simon always stood out, though he’s always been shy,” says Keith Lambert — twice British road race champion (1974 and 1980), former directeur sportif and current GB Academy coach — who managed Simon Yates and brother Adam at under-23 level. “I saw a lot of him from being a DS at his early races, and could see his determination right from the start. He wanted to just train and train — you couldn’t tire him out.” After selection by the British Cycling Olympic Academy programme aged 18, Yates won medals from 2010-2013 at the junior Track World Championships, National Championships and Track World Championships, among other events. In his 2013 breakthrough year, Yates’s road career began to blossom, winning stages at the Tour de l’Avenir, Tour of Britain and the…

Simon Yates probably hoped a custom Scott Addict RC would have been arriving a little earlier in the year with a splash of pink after a storming start to the Giro d’Italia. However, his Vuelta redemption ride gave him the opportunity to showcase this stunning red-tinted Scott. Mitchelton-Scott mechanics set to work on the Sunday morning in Madrid to give the bike logos, bar tape and seat tube a touch of red rather than the all-out red-wash effect that we may be accustomed to with Team Sky’s Pinarellos of recent years. Choosing to ride the lighter but less aero Addict over the Foil is a decision made with Yates’s climbing prowess in mind, especially as the frame comes in at 790 grams with the fork at 300 grams. However, Yates…

It might have been Team Sky that turned Chris Froome into a Grand Tour winner, but it was the Safari Simbas, a Kenyan training group, that built the foundations of his ability. Based near Nairobi, the Simbas is a charitable project that gets underprivileged Kenyan youngsters on to bikes; it is run by former pro and Kenyan national champion David Kinjah. Froome, who was born in Kenya, first rode with the group aged 12, having met Kinjah on a local charity ride. His mentor-to-be did not have high hopes. “We would see these white kids on bikes,” Kinjah tells CW, “and we never took them seriously because they were not any good as cyclists at all. They were the children of rich white people, settlers here in Kenya.” Though Froome…

These days the weeks before a Grand Tour are marked for Geraint Thomas as a top GC contender by rounds of interviews and glamorous publicity appearances. The days before his first Grand Tour in 2007 were marked with a game of darts in a pub in Croydon, with some sweaty Cycling Weekly journalists. But that’s not to say the young Welshman wasn’t taking his debut Tour seriously; he was the only one of a four-man team of pros that included Charly Wegelius, Enrico Degano, Filippo Pozzato, who was sticking to orange juice — perhaps mindful of his neo-pro status. It must have worked because he ended up the highest British finisher on the Tour’s first road stage to Canterbury (42nd). That day, as for most of the Tour, 21-year-old Thomas…

FAME “BEING A TOUR WINNER IS MENTAL. YOU WALK TO THE CO-OP TO GET SOME MILK AND 75 PER CENT OF PEOPLE CONGRATULATE YOU. IT’S AMAZING. BUT AT THE SAME TIME, IF YOU JUST WANT MILK IT CAN BE INTENSE.” PEER PRESSURE “WHEN YOU ARE A 12-YEAR-OLD BOY IN CARDIFF, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE ROCKING UP TO SCHOOL WITH SHAVED LEGS.” WELSH “I REGRET NOT PAYING A BIT MORE ATTENTION TO WELSH LESSONS AT SCHOOL. MY WELSH IS PRETTY ROPEY, AS BACK AT MY SCHOOL, PEOPLE DIDN’T TAKE WELSH LESSONS SERIOUSLY. MY DAD CAN SPEAK IT, SO I WISH HE’D TAUGHT ME SOME.” BROKEN BONES “ IT WASN’T SO MUCH THE FRACTURING OF THE PELVIS THAT WAS THE PROBLEM AS THE FACT THAT I HAD 20 DAYS OF THE HARDEST BIKE RACE IN THE…

The fact that Simon Yates was berating himself for not performing better less than 48 hours into his first ever Grand Tour speaks volumes about his ambition in the three-week races. In fairness, he probably had more desire than most to show well on the day in question, seeing as it passed within shouting distance of his home town of Bury — and the terrain suited his strengths perfectly. As you’ve probably guessed, we’re talking about the 2014 Tour de France and that unforgettable Yorkshire Grand Départ. Following a day-one sprint finish in Harrogate, Yates, riding for Orica-Green-Edge, had hoped to do well on the York to Sheffield stage, which had been described as a ‘mini Liège-Bastogne-Liège’. But despite his best efforts, Yates was unable to make it into the…

Rolling up to the family-owned, cycling-themed Drop Off Cafe in Edenfield just north of Bury, it is clear the passion for the sport is alive and well. A bright yellow steed perched upon the cafe’s sign invites both bike and rider into the cafe’s confines to shelter from the brisk autumnal conditions. As a gaggle of Bury Clarion riders stride in to get their pre-ride coffee, wearing a mish-mash of the old and new club kit, they discuss the fortunes of Manchester’s two football clubs from the night before. Nevertheless, it’s the success of two local cyclists who have reached the pinnacle of the sport that is the reason why we have descended on Ramsbottom just north of the town that the young Yates brothers resided in. Bury Clarion’s growth…

From a British point of view, the focus of the 2008 Tour de France was on the emergence of a young Manxman that went by the name of Mark Cavendish. Four stage victories before departing the race early for the Beijing Olympics, had given cycling fans a glimpse of what was to come over the next decade. However, what was unbeknown to many fans was the debut of a rider that had yet to fully confirm his nationality, as Chris Froome started the first Grand Tour of his career under a Kenyan licence for the Barloworld squad. Australian rider Baden Cooke was Froome’s team-mate as he lined up in Brest on stage one. “He was pretty green, and probably carrying eight kilograms or more than his race weight that he…

KEY British Cycling programme Family Co-national champions Commie Games room-mates Team Sky Orica-GreenEdge GB Worlds squad Barloworld team T-Mobile team…

2010 STAGE 3 WANZE > ARENBERG PORTE DU HAINAUT It was only Thomas’s third Grand Tour and his first Tour de France since his debut in London three years earlier. However, this was a more polished Thomas resplendent in the British champion’s jersey in Team Sky’s first Tour de France. Rather than just glide round the cobbles and stay out of trouble, the 24-year-old drove the front group to maintain their gap before taking second on the sprint to the line behind stage victor and eventual green jersey winner Thor Hushovd. Thomas’s performance resulted in a stint in the white jersey, which he would hold until stage seven, the one shining light in a disappointing debut Tour de France for Sky. “Dave Brailsford coined the phrase ‘Plan G’, suggesting that…

Despite plying their trade overseas in mainland Europe, the Yates brothers have never been far away from home support this season. Paul and Adele Van Der Kamp have made the most of their semi-retirement and followed their fellow Bury Clarion cyclists on the biggest stages of them all. “We followed the Giro, the Dauphiné, the Tour de France and then went down to the Vuelta,” says Paul. “It was always a wish of mine to follow the races from start to finish in their entirety. We thought now is the time to do it, it was just an added bonus that Simon was in the Giro, Adam was in the Dauphiné and Tour de France and then Simon won the Vuelta, which was the icing on the cake.” Having cycled…

Mudguards were invented as soon as we moved on from the penny farthing — not least because the new breed of feminist cyclists needed something to attach a skirt guard to, so that they didn’t reel themselves into their back wheels and die in a hideous metaphor. For 100 years or more, mudguards were almost universal — the only exceptions being serious racing bikes. Even then, serious racers used mudguards when not actually racing. Then one day, some genius had the idea of training all winter without them. This has a number of remarkable benefits. You get a free gravel enema. If you go riding with a like-minded friend, you can receive a free facial exfoliation from the spray off his or her rear wheel, something that would cost a…