You’ve got to love pro cycling for its beauty, scintillating tactics, and huge variety of races, riders and teams. But really, cycling is so special because of its wacky unpredictability. The 2016 season had some wild, unbelievable moments — here are five of our favorites.
Milano-Sanremo finish sprint crash
It looked like it was going to be an epic sprint showdown in the season’s first monument. Greg Van Avermaet, Fernando Gaviria, Peter Sagan, and Fabian Cancellara were queuing up for the finish. And then … Gaviria nearly takes out the bunch after a touch of wheels! And we are left with Arnaud Demare, winner of Milano-Sanremo 2017.
Cancellara crashes in Roubaix
Fabian escaped Sanremo unscathed, but he wasn’t so lucky on the stones in Roubaix, hitting the deck at a crucial moment late in the race. We hate seeing one of the sport’s greatest stars crash, but we loved watching Sagan miraculously hop over Cancellara’s Trek with one foot unclipped.
Chris Horner chucks his bike
There have been a lot of bike throws in the history of the sport, so when Horner got a little testy with his bike at the Philly Cycling Classic this year, we started thinking about which throws we’ve loved over the years. So first, we analyzed and ranked Horner’s style and form. Then, we compared it with the canon of cycling’s best bike tosses.
Chris Froome socks a crazy Colombian fan
Froome was pretty feisty at the Tour this year. Not only was he attacking the race like a madman, he wasn’t taking any guff from obnoxious fans, especially this one guy, wearing a yellow wig and clearly a big fan of Nairo Quintana and the rest of the Colombians. Much like we did for Horner’s hissy fit, we had to see how this incident compared to famous altercations throughout cycling’s history.
Froome runs up Ventoux
Yep, Froome was a busy man in July. No word on whether he’ll consider branching out into Ironman triathlons at this point, however.
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