The Big Predictions Pod
What's in store for 2023 and what's the difference between a prediction and speculation anyway?
by Lionel Birnie
Daniel dusted off The Cycling Podcast’s crystal ball between Christmas and New Year to indulge in some speculation ahead of the 2023 season.
It raises the question, what’s the difference between a prediction and speculation? For me it’s when the specific strays into scattergun territory. Once you’ve suggested more than a couple of potential winners of a race you may as well go through the start sheet and name them all. The Big Predictions Pod was a speculation-free zone in that raised some intriguing and thought-provoking ideas.
At one point in the episode Daniel said, ‘No one will remember these predictions, so it doesn’t really matter.’ How wrong you were, Daniel. How wrong you were.
So, here they are, preserved for the purpose of comment and review as the season unfolds.
Now it’s over to you, our listeners and readers. On the eve of the start of the new World Tour season, leave your predictions for 2023 in the comments section below.
In the meantime, this is what the members of our panel think is going to happen in 2023…
Joe Dombrowski, Astana rider
– Alejandro Valverde will come out of retirement to ride the Vuelta a España
– Jumbo-Visma will win all three grand tours
Ciro Scognamiglio, La Gazzetta dello Sport
– Wout van Aert will win the second monument of his career
– Remco Evenepoel will win the Giro d’Italia
– We will see a new Tour de France champion – so not Pogačar or Vingegaard in yellow in Paris
– Filippo Ganna will be on the podium at Paris-Roubaix
– Biniam Girmay will be the first elite men’s World Championship road race winner from Africa
– No king of the mountains titles for Ciro, because beaches rule
Laura Meseguer, El Cycling Podcast
– Enric Mas to win the Vuelta
– Juan Ayuso and Carlos Rodriguez to have a big year – Spanish cycling is back to the highest level
Renaat Schotte, Sporza
– Rain for Belgium all year long
– Remco Evenepoel to win the Giro – although that sounds too obvious
– Tadej Pogačar to win the Tour of Flanders and Wout van Aert to win a muddy edition of Paris-Roubaix
Magnus Aarre, TV2
– One nation will win all three grand tours – with that nation being Slovenia. It’ll be the year of Rogačar or Poglič. Rog to win the Giro, Pog for the Tour and one or other of them for the Vuelta
Marco Pinotti, Jayco-Alula coach
– Watch out for Luca Vergallito, nicknamed il bandito for stealing Strava segments, and winner of the men’s Zwift Academy who will ride for the Alpecin-Deceuninck development squad
Rob Hatch, voice of cycling, Eurosport-GCN
– Mark Cavendish will win his 35th Tour de France stage to take the outright record he currently shares with Eddy Merckx.
(Speaking of Cavendish, Daniel explained in that episode a couple of weeks ago that the deal to join Astana was more or less done barring a few details concerning Cavendish’s personal sponsors.)
François Thomazeau
– A last hurrah for the Pinot-Bardet era
– Groupama’s development squad bears fruits as two 19-year-old riders graduate to the World Tour team – Romain Grégoire, winner of the under-23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège last year; and Lenny Martinez, son of mountain bike and road rider, Miguel Martinez, and grandson of 1978 Tour de France king of the mountains Mariano Martinez.
– Otherwise, a transitional year for French cycling
Thom Lockerby, Friend of the Podcast
– Undaunted by the decidedly mixed reaction to its LIV golf endeavours, the Saudi sovereign investment fund will seek to enter and disrupt cycling. While Riyadh may not be a cycling hotbed, new developments on the Red Sea are ripe for cycling growth. Look out ASO.
Brian Nygaard, wine expert
– We’ll see two Danish Monument winners – Mads Pedersen and Mattias Skjelmose
– UCI to reduce the weight limit on bikes from 6.8kg
– Daniel to buy himself a cat
Daniel Friebe
– Another big motor racing entity will get into pro cycling
– There will be a huge mid-season, or end-of-season, transfer breaking one of the young guns out of their long contract
– Another Pogačar or Ayuso-style 19- to 21-year-old phenomenon will emerge. Perhaps it’ll be Tour de l’Avenir winner Cian Uijtdebroeks of Bora-Hansgrohe
– Watch out for 21-year-old Italian Andrea Piccolo at EF Education-EasyPost
– The Netflix Tour de France series will be a smash hit
– Magnus Sheffield will win a Monument
– Arnaud De Lie will win Milan-Sanremo
Larry Warbasse, AG2R rider
– Roglic will win the Giro
Now it’s over to you…
Join Daniel, Lionel and Dan Martin at Pod Live Sport
Tickets for The Cycling Podcast’s appearance at Pod Live Sport on Sunday, February 12 are on sale now. It’ll be our first live event since before the pandemic and is likely to be our only one of 2023, so we’d love to see as many of you there as possible.
Out now for Friends of the Podcast…
We released two episodes for Friends of the Podcast over the Christmas period. In The Summer of 2012 I looked back to that year’s Tour de France, won by Bradley Wiggins, with the benefit of a decade’s worth of hindsight. The episode features two colleagues from the press room, Owen Slot of The Times, and Edward Pickering, then of Cycle Sport magazine. I didn’t know it at the time, but the Cycle Sport Podcast, which Richard, Ed and I recorded every few days during that Tour was the final step towards creating The Cycling Podcast.
In the other episode, Orla Chennaoui caught up with cycling’s ultimate family. Dad Magnus Backstedt is a Paris-Roubaix winner, mum Megan Hughes represented her country at the Commonwealth Games and World Championships and daughters Elynor and Zoe will line up alongside – and against – each other in the World Tour this season.
Coming soon…
Rebirth of a Team. Doug Ryder has spent the past year building a new team. Q36.5 Pro Cycling may not be a direct continuation of Team Qhubeka but Ryder has carried forwards more than 15 years’ worth of experience from building MTN Qhubeka into the World Tour team that was known at various points as Dimension Data and NTT Pro Cycling. From modest beginnings, the team caused an upset when Gerald Ciolek won Milan-Sanremo in 2013. After that came grand tour stages, the yellow jersey at the Tour de France and a team that was riding for more than just the glory of crossing the line first. Now Ryder is setting off on the same journey all over again, retracing his steps from outside the World Tour if not quite from square one. In this forthcoming episode for Friends of the Podcast we recap the Qhubeka story and find out more about Q36.5.
The Cycling Podcast Féminin returns next week with Rose Manley and Orla Chennaoui joined by Lizzy Banks.
Luke Plapp will show the world his full potential.
Bardet will be on the Tour podium and a big year for Ineos - Thomas wins the Giro, Bernal wins the Vuelta