Fewer time trials and steeper hills await a field of previous winners and bright prospects in the year’s final Grand TourA shadow was cast over the Vuelta a España by Thursday’s withdrawal of Nairo Quintana as the Colombian prepared his appeal against a positive test for the painkiller tramadol during the Tour de France, but even without the 2016 race winner, the final Grand Tour of 2022 is set to be contested by the race’s strongest field in recent years.The unexpected return of the triple winner Primoz Roglic after his crash in the Tour de France means there will still be five previous winners in the field when the race begins in Utrecht on Friday – Alejandro Valverde (2009), Chris...
Since the summer of 2012, there have been six overall wins and 27 stage wins achieved by British riders in the Tour de France. That domination is now at an endThe abrupt eviction of Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas from Sir Dave Brailsford’s Tour de France lineup ensures that, for the first time in several seasons, this year’s race will begin without a past British yellow jersey winner in the peloton.Since 2012, British champions have dominated the three-week race, through Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas. That serial success has been interrupted only in 2014 and 2019. Related: Team Ineos: Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas dropped for Tour de France Continue reading...
Achieving clarity while racing the Tour de France for Dave Brailsford with two leaders is bad enough but three would be a very crowded marriage indeedTo understand how it is that six weeks before Chris Froome might have been starting out on his quest for a fifth Tour de France he is contemplating his imminent departure from his team of 10 years, you have only to consider two of Sir Dave Brailsford’s favourite catch phrases. Mission clarity. Compassionate ruthlessness.The unhappy 2012 Tour when Bradley Wiggins and Froome failed to gel perfectly taught Brailsford about mission clarity: make sure your leaders know the hierarchy and be certain they will stick to it. The emergence of a young, thrusting talent in the...
From Chris Froome’s breakaway in the Giro d’Italia to an epic Wimbledon showdown, my year featured a number of breathtaking highlightsWhen the New York columnist Jimmy Cannon was starting out in journalism, the playwright Damon Runyon gave him some impeccable advice: “The best way to be a bum and make a living is to write about sport.” The game has changed in the intervening 80 years, but Runyon’s words still hold true. So as 2018 comes to an end, here is this bum’s favourite memories of the sporting events he witnessed at first hand … Continue reading...
The route is designed to be more open, with more climbs amenable to attacks, and power meters could be banned. But there is little to cause Team Sky sleepless nightsIn yet another attempt to make the Tour de France a more open race, which will be seen as a further move to break Team Sky’s domination, the organisers are to push for the abolition of the use of power meters. The ubiquitous device which helps a rider to gauge his effort by recording power output as he rides also “annihilates the glorious uncertainty of sport”, according to the Tour organiser, Christian Prudhomme.It remains unclear whether this will be put in place for the 2019 edition, which looks particularly mountainous and...