Early Season Review

I did start writing this earlier this week, but since the coronavirus has cancelled the final 2 stages of the UAE Tour and is threatening several other races, mostly in Northern Italy, it might change the tone of this piece. Still! I’m going to carry on regardless as if nothing will be different and hope for the best outcome. We all hope for undisturbed racing throughout the whole season, but everyone’s health and well being come first. Whatever will be will be.

With the start of the Spring Classics campaign right around the corner, and being part way through the second world tour stage race (now cancelled after stage 5) of the season, it seems like the perfect time to assess what’s happened so far and what we can expect in the coming weeks. It seems slightly strange that we’ve seen 111 victories by world tour and pro level teams so far and we’re not even out of February yet. So who’s won what? Who’s lagging behind? Where have the surprises been? I’ll hopefully sum all that up here.

Early Season Victories

Before covering who’s leading the field and enjoying excellent starts to the season, there is only one world tour team yet to score a single win. CCC Team are the ones with that unfortunate title, but there are three teams with only one win each, so it’s not all bad, and there’s still plenty of season left. They’ve come close with 3 podiums in world tour and pro races, and their dynamic duo of Greg Van Avermaet and Matteo Trentin will be licking their lips at the start of the classics season.

Lotto Soudal are dominating world tour stages with four wins courtesy of Caleb Ewan and a surprise from Matthew Holmes on the Willunga Hill stage of the Tour Down Under. Mitchelton-Scott and Trek – Segafredo have picked up the two GC prizes on offer so far at the Tour Down Under and the UAE Tour, and Deceuninck – Quick Step the only world tour one-day win at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

Elsewhere, three world tour teams are seemingly dominating this early season with half of the stage wins and all of the overall victories in pro level races. Unsurprisingly Deceuninck – Quick Step are on this list along with UAE Team Emirates. This is due in no small part to the immense performances of Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogačar who have picked up nine wins between them. The third team is Astana thanks to Alexey Lutsenko and Jakob Fuglsang, with the speculation about contact with a certain doctor not affecting their form.

In the pro ranks, Androni Giocattoli – Sidermec have started strongly and they picked up their 10th win of the season today. Only UAE and Quick Step can claim a better return. Nairo Quintana is also enjoying his freedom from Movistar and has triumphed four times for his new team, Arkéa Samsic.

Four nations have held their 2020 national championships already and they’ve proved very lucrative for EF Pro Cycling and Mitchelton-Scott. The latter claimed both Australian titles and the South African ITT, whereas EF swept up in Columbia. The surprise result came from the New Zealand road race where Shane Archibold (DQS) pipped George Bennett (TJV) to the title, and poor Bennett was also beaten to the ITT crown by team-less Hamish Bond. NTT Pro Cycling were the other team to taste success with the South African road race title for Ryan Gibbons.

Standout Performance So Far

In addition to the aforementioned Pogačar and Evenepoel, a few other riders have risen above the rest with some cracking rides. Chief among these in my opinion was Jai Hindley at the Herald Sun Tour. The 23 year old won the two more mountainous stages to take the overall win ahead of riders like Simon Yates and Neilson Powless. An excellent start to 2020 for him and here’s hoping for a successful season for the young man. Especially with a gap to fill in GC responsibilities at Team Sunweb after Tom Dumoulin’s departure.

Injury Update

Unfortunately, some riders have already fallen victim to serious injury and potentially promising starts to the season have turned into weeks or months on the sidelines. The rider I’m mainly thinking of here is Matteo Moschetti, Trek’s young Italian sprinter. After picking up two early one-day wins, he came to grief on stage 3 of Etoile de Bessèges where he dislocated his femur and fractured his hip. He faces several months out and is a serious doubt for the Giro d’Italia where he had a successful debut last year.

Also on the injury list are Iván Ramiro Sosa, broken finger; Ben Hermans, broken collarbone, fractured ribs and scapula; Tony Gallopin, fractured scaphoid; and Christophe Laporte with a broken wrist. There are others you can check out here: https://www.procyclingstats.com/statistics/start/injuries but these are the main headlines.

Fantasy Cycling

Good news for fantasy cycling fans globally! With the start of European Spring racing comes the opportunity for multiple fantasy cycling competitions to get stuck into. Kicking off tomorrow is the Road.cc Spring Classics game, which features 15 races spread from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to Eschborn-Frankfurt.

Also in the works, George Chapman’s Velogames has tweeted that he’s updated his site infrastructure in preparation for the season long competition openers at Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. He also plans to start the Spring Classics competition at Milano-Sanremo, so stay tuned for that one. Road.cc will also be running standard and purist competitions for Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico, and the former will likely open around the middle of next week.

I’ll put together a guide for when the Velogames competitions go live, to aid intrepid fantasy gamers everywhere. Or just end up confusing everyone and leading you all on a wild goose chase that leads to picking the wrong riders.

I think that about covers everything for now. It’s my intention to start writing short weekly updates to summarise all things cycling in a bite-size easy to digest bulletin. I’ll put up the first one after this initial round of Spring one-day races and before Paris-Nice kicks off, and then try and stick to a reasonable schedule after that. In the meantime, take it easy cycling fans.