The early season smorgasbord
Early season racing draws our focus from Abu Dhabi to Andalusia to Algarve
by Lionel Birnie
It’s that time of the season when our attention is divided across continents. Get the coffee machine on, line up the snacks, perhaps even put in a stint on the turbo, and settle in for six hours of racing from three different time zones. The day starts with the UAE Tour, which finishes in time for lunch (for those of us in Europe, anyway), then comes the Ruta del Sol in Andalusia, followed by the Volta ao Algarve, with the races helpfully staggered, thanks to the hour’s time difference between Spain and Portugal, so we can easily watch the finish of both.
But this feast is also a bit of a confusion of the senses, and I’m not talking about my smorgasbord of snacks. A World Tour rider made the point to me this week: ‘How on earth can the average punter follow what’s going on race wise? It’s chaos if you aren’t years deep in the sport.’
I am years deep in the sport and it’s been a challenge untangling the storylines this week. It’s not that it’s easy to confuse the desert with southern Spain or Portugal, but perhaps the fact UAE Team Emirates are all over everything is making it harder to contextualise events. At the time of writing – before Friday’s stages – Tadej Pogačar leads the UAE Tour having won the stage to Jebel Jais, Pavel Sivakov is leading the Ruta del Sol, with two teammates in the top six, and Jan Christen and João Almeida are first and second in Algarve.
If there is one key takeaway it’s that the power is concentrated in too few teams. But there’s also the continuing confirmation that Jonathan Milan is a heavyweight sprinter (no pun intended) who can also cope with a bit of uphill; the resurgence of Tom Pidcock, who looks like he could be on course to win Omloop Het Nieuwsblad next Saturday the rate he’s going; and the green shoots of recovery for Ineos Grenadiers.
But for a sport seemingly permanently in search of a compelling, over-arching narrative, it strikes me that this early season block of racing spanning January and February is the most in need of some sort of re-organisation and streamlining, which might also ensure that safety standards are improved.
After the cancellation of a race at the Challenge Mallorca at the start of the month because of an unsafe opening circuit, the withdrawal of most of the top teams from the Étoile de Bessèges because of cars on the course, and the farce of the opening stage of the Volta ao Algarve, there’s a clear indication that small races can no longer justify running things with flags and whistles.
I am struggling to remember an incident as chaotic as Wednesday’s first stage in Portugal, when the bulk of the peloton followed a vehicle down the deviation exit and sprinted parallel to the finishing straight where Filippo Ganna of Ineos, who had taken the right road, secured what should have been a valid win. Unfortunately for Ganna, the rules couldn’t be flexed to give him the stage win while neutralising the general classification standings. Cycling is in an odd place indeed if the rider who follows the correct course is penalised by being denied a victory because of what, incompetence, bureaucracy, or both?
Races have gone off course before, and unless hundreds of kilometres are lined with barriers, it’s always possible a poorly-located race arrow, or a badly-positioned marshal will steer the riders in the wrong direction. But getting a finish so wrong strengthens the argument of the riders that the organisers too frequently play fast and loose with safety and logistics. Meanwhile the race organisers struggle to generate the funds for more watertight conditions, especially in the face of rising costs and weakening political and public goodwill to close down roads and towns for the day.
The wider question, with One Cycling on the horizon (whatever that reveals itself to be), is this: what are these races for and will they all survive? In fact, should they all survive? Perhaps not, but maybe there’s a way to strengthen and redefine some of the races and create some sort of coherent pre-season competition that brings all these races together under one umbrella. Then the real stuff can start with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
The UAE Tour is financially important to the Giro d’Italia organisers, RCS Sport, but the race itself is formulaic. It’s just a stage race by numbers – uphill sprint, sprint, time trial, mountain, sprint, sprint, mountain. If there’s room anywhere on the calendar for a bit of creative experimentation with race formats, this is surely it, although there’s always the risk of creating another Hammer Series-style flop. It doesn’t need to be anything as wacky as ‘Lionel’s Wacky Races’ but all these short stage races with nothing at stake other than the stage win and the general classification decided on lowest aggregate time represents more of a missed opportunity for cycling than the perceived failure of the Netflix series.
The most obvious recent success story is the gravelly Clásica Jaén Paraíso Interior, which is both visually stunning, as it weaves through the largest olive groves in the world, and tactically interesting as a sort of Iberian cousin to Strade Bianche. In only its fourth edition, it’s more appealing to watch than the Clasica de Almeria and Vuelta de Murcia put together, and yet it’s held on a Monday when most people are (supposed to be) working, and only 13 teams were on the start line, as opposed to 18 at Murcia and Almeria, 16 at the Tour de la Provence and 20 in the UAE.
The early season has always been like this, of course – the equivalent of the peloton taking opposite sides of the roundabout and coming together for bigger objectives further down the road. The fact that the best riders very often tackle different preparation races, avoiding each other either by accident or design, is always something that’s appealed to me. It heightens the sense of anticipation as we approach the more important races in the spring and summer.
In this week’s episode, Daniel and I were joined by Brian Nygaard to get a Danish perspective on Jonas Vingegaard, who began his season for Visma-Lease A Bike in Algarve.
Vingegaard’s entire season will be defined by whether he can regain the Tour de France crown from Tadej Pogačar and his number one priority will be to get to the grand départ in Lille unscathed. In each of the past two years, one of the two main protagonists has suffered a severely disrupted build-up to the Tour. In 2023, Pogačar crashed out of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, fractured a wrist, missed a chunk of training and racing, and could not reach his best level at the Tour. Last year, Vingegaard had that horrific crash at Itzulia in April and, considering the extent of his injuries, it was a miracle he was able to be second-best to Pog at the Tour less than three months later.
What’s most striking about the two riders’ provisional race programmes is that they are currently scheduled to meet only once before the Tour – at the Critérium du Dauphiné in June. That is one of only two stage races on Pogačar’s schedule, the other is the UAE Tour, which he leads. The Slovenian has decided to race a full programme of spring Classics, starting with Strade Bianche and finishing with Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The only significant gap in his diary is April 13 – Paris-Roubaix day – and speculation about whether he’ll line up in Compiègne will continue right up to the moment the start list for the Hell of the North is confirmed.
In a way, the stakes are higher for Pogačar due to the win-or-bust nature of one-day races. Vingegaard, on the other hand, is plotting a more conventional stage racer’s route to Lille, via Algarve, Paris-Nice, Catalonia and the Dauphiné, and it’s conceivable he could win them all, giving him the upper hand in terms of confidence going into the Tour.
The fact the pair are avoiding each other for so long will become one of the season's defining storylines. We will be able to assess their form but without knowing how they’d shape up against each other. If something changes between now and the Dauphiné and they find themselves in the same event, the race in question would enjoy a significant boost in interest, but it’s the waiting that generates the appetite. Far be it for me to say that sometimes there’s something more appealing than an extensive smorgasbord of snacks readily at hand.
All of which brings me back to the original point about which races deserve our interest and attention at this time of year. The factors are the same as they ever were – the startlist is the biggest indicator. A case in point is O Gran Camiño in northern Spain this coming week. All eyes have been on that race the past two years because it’s where Vingegaard started his season – he won both times. This year Visma-Lease A Bike are not riding, so it slips down the league table as a result. As ever, it is the riders who make the race, and the race that attracts the riders.
This time next week there’ll be no mistaking where our focus should be. It’ll be the Friday before Opening Weekend and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, a race that demands attention regardless.
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February’s edition of The Cycling Podcast Féminin features a number of junior world champions talking about the defining moment of their early career. You can listen to it here:
Bright Young Things
by Rose Manley
The ‘bright young thing’ has long been a source of unending obsession in the cycling world. While some like Remco Evenepoel have built on their great promise, others such as Edvard Boasson Hagen have never quite managed to fulfil the expectations set upon them.
The current ‘bright young thing’ in women’s cycling is Cat Ferguson. A British teenager who last year took 18 podium places in 22 race days, including wins in both the road race and time trial at the junior world championships and at Belgian semi-Classic Binche-Chimay-Binche where she held off some of the world’s greatest sprinters.
She has been a regular name on The Cycling Podcast Féminin in the past few months, which is even more remarkable when you consider that she has still only raced as a stagiaire.
So it got me thinking: what have been the fates of those other precocious teenagers over the years? Take a quick glance at a list of the women’s junior road world champions and some names will jump out – Nicole Cooke, Ina Teutenberg, Jolien d’Hoore – riders who became prolific champions in the elite ranks (not to mention the GOAT Marianne Vos, of course). But look a little closer and you’ll find other names who never raced past the age of 18 or whose names don’t even return a relevant Google result.
My starting point to the feature was Lucy Van der Haar née Garner who took back-to-back titles in 2011 and 2012. I remember interviewing Lucy in my nascent years as a cycling journalist. She was then (as she is now) one of the most engaging people on the circuit, a real regular for the cycling media, so I was stunned to hear in our conversation that her confidence had taken a real battering all those years ago. Since that time, she has retired from cycling, had a baby and set up her own nail studio in the Netherlands. Frighteningly, she’s still only 30 years old.
I spoke also to Zoe Backstedt, for whom expectations could hardly have been higher as the offspring of Paris-Roubaix champion Magnus and former British champion Megan Hughes (even before winning the junior world title twice). Now at Canyon-SRAM, she spoke about the quirks of racing the World Championships against riders who have barely raced on the road at all.
One such rider, mountain biker Laura Stigger raised eyebrows by going on to win the championships in what was only her second road race ever. Laura then spent many years away from the discipline to pursue a mountain biking career. Fittingly, I spoke to her on the eve of her return to road racing, this time with the world’s biggest team, SD Worx.
And then of course, I couldn’t do the feature without speaking to Cat Ferguson who as the elite peloton’s most recent recruit also benefits from the sport’s many years of professionalisation. Bigger teams, bigger contracts and career longevity all allowing the newest ‘bright young things’ the opportunity to become ‘bright old things’ too.
Amaraterra bring the soundtrack of our Giro to London
Any time I hear the opening bars of Amaraterra’s Cozze, I am transported to Italy in May. The song by the London-based pizzica band has been our Giro d’Italia theme since we began daily coverage in 2016.
One of our greatest nights was a sold-out show at the Clapham Grand theatre in south London in November 2018 when almost 700 people came to see us talk before Amaraterra took things up a notch with a live set to round off the evening.
If you’d like to see Amaraterra live, they’re playing at Brixton Jamm on Saturday, March 15. Tickets are available from ethical ticketing portal Himanitix. They’d love as many friends of the podcast to make it as possible and, yes, they will play our Giro theme Cozze as part of their set.
If you want to know more about the band and the origins of the traditional pizzica music, Richard Moore recorded this special episode, Strictly Amaraterra, during lockdown in 2020 when all live music was suspended and the band needed help to keep going until gigs could be organised again.
Charlotte’s Gent-Wevelgem tribute to Richard Moore
Friend of the Podcast Charlotte Elton has raised the money needed to buy the special paint for her tribute to our co-founder Richard Moore at Gent-Wevelgem next month. She has got official permission to write on the road too. However, every euro donated over and above the cost of the paint will go to Sir Chris Hoy’s Tour de 4 charity, so she is keen to raise as much money as possible for a very worthwhile cause.