Weekly Pro-Cycling Review – 13/10/2020

Putting this together during a fascinating stage 10 of the Giro, but here is what happened last week in the world of the pro peloton. There were many surprises in the Giro, both good and bad, and some great one-day races to warm us up for the final few weeks of the season. So without further ado, let’s dissect the last seven day’s racing.

One-Day Races

The final of the hilly classics happened on the 7th with De Brabantse Pijl and it was almost a repeat of Liège-Bastogne-Liège with Julian Alaphilippe being pipped on the line after celebrating too early. Mathieu van der Poel was late in launching his sprint after being boxed in by Benoît Cosnefroy, and as such missed out on the win in a photo finish even with his vastly superior finishing speed. It was a really entertaining race on a tough and undulating finishing circuit with van der Poel and Alaphilippe constantly attacking in an attempt to drop all other competitors. It was only Cosnefroy who could hang on in the end with other hopefuls, including Kwiatkowski, unable to cope with the pace. In the women’s race, it would be Grace Brown who would build on her Liège-Bastogne-Liège form to take a hugely impressive win. The Mitchelton-Scott rider went solo on the finishing circuit and had to withstand the Sunweb duo of Liane Lippert and Floortje Mackaij for her first win of the season.

It was back to the world tour on Sunday with both the men’s and women’s editions of Gent-Wevelgem. The men’s race ebbed and flowed superbly, with groups coming and going constantly in the leadup to the finale. In the end, a nine man group powered clear containing the two pre-race favourites in Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel. However, it was neither of these riders who would take the win and they would both mark each other as Mads Pedersen would outsprint Florian Sénéchal and Matteo Trentin to continue his impressive season. It was a brilliant cat and mouse affair for the women with a strong chasing group always tantalisingly close to re-joining the front, but ultimately coming up short. A front group of nine women would contest the win with Jolien D’Hoore getting the better of Lotte Kopecky on this occasion.

The scene is set nicely for the next week with Scheldeprijs on the 14th and the big one, Ronde van Vlaanderen on the 18th and Brugge-De Panne closing out the classics season on the 21st, 20th for the women. Unfortunately that’ll be it for this season’s classics as after Amstel Gold’s cancellation at the weekend, it was also announced that Paris-Roubaix also won’t take place this year. A huge shame, but we’ll look forward to welcoming all races back next year, all being well in this Covid world. We’ll just all pray that it doesn’t rain on the 25th so we didn’t miss out on a wet Paris-Roubaix.

The Giro

With no other stage races on at the moment, it was all about the Giro d’Italia as stage 9 closed out a dramatic first week on the 11th. Even more dramatic perhaps was the Covid news this morning that saw the entire Mitchelton-Scott and Jumbo-Visma teams withdraw from the race, as well as Sunweb’s Michael Matthews. It was Matthews and Kruijswijk who recorded positive tests on the rest day after Simon Yates returned the same result a few days previously. All cycling fans will be keeping fingers crossed for an end to the Covid news so the race can continue all the way the to Milan. Still, until any more potential bad news arises, we can keep enjoying the racing!

After my last post, the Giro headed into the mountains of Southern Italy for a series of entertaining and surprising stages. Ganna was the first of those surprises as the Ineos man took stage 5 as the sole survivor of the day’s break. Drama unfolded behind as De Gendt rolled the dice for a win with Rubio in tow. The Movistar man offered no help however, and the grand tour veteran threw away his own chances so as not to offer Rubio an easy path to victory. Then followed two Démare with stage 6 being particularly impressive. The Frenchman now has three Giro stage wins and 12 total wins for the year. Enormous return for such a truncated race calendar. The weekend delivered two more breakaway victories. One for Alex Dowsett, who is attempting to secure a contract for 2021, and one for Ruben Guerreiro of EF Pro Cycling. That’s four breakaway victories out of eight road stages and we can expect a lot more in the second week. There have been quite a few moves at the top of the GC, but it’s still João Almeida at the top of the tree. Will he still be in this position in a weeks time? (I have just seen today’s stage, but I’ll comment on that one next week)

Rider of the Week

Several contenders for this title this week. The main players probably all come from the Giro where there have been some hugely entertaining performances. In terms of raw results the accolade has to go to Arnaud Démare and he probably adds to his weighting with his combative win on stage 6. Also in form was Filippo Ganna who has been attacking at will in this Giro so far. His win on stage 5 and further attacking style has won him many new fans the world over. Here’s hoping he can carry on with more of the same for the rest of the Giro! Mikkel Bjerg has also chipped in with a few results and breakaways galore on his grand tour debut, or maybe I should just give it to Almeida for his defence of the pink jersey.

In the end though, I think I’ll give it to Alex Dowsett. I always love a good story and a well deserved victory. His breakaway win on stage 8 an example of exemplary tactics and fine riding from himself and his team. I’m sure it was a popular win for cycling fans everywhere and here’s hoping it lands him a well earned contract for next year as he’s got loads more to give in the pro peloton.

Team Performance

A brief note on team performance before I sign off. Movistar are still looking for their first meaningful win of the year with only 3 podiums at either world tour of pro level. They probably won’t come close at Ronde van Vlaanderen and their Giro line up is looking a little too youthful and outclassed by other stage hunters to achieve much. The Vuelta starts in a week so here’s hoping they find more success there. They might be taking Valverde, Mas, and Soler along so their chances should be pretty good. Also looking for their first wins at the top two tiers of professional cycling are CCC and Cofidis. They have been closer on more occasions than Movistar though, but still without joy. The Vuelta could be happy hunting ground for Cofidis as they won a stage there last year; CCC might be relying on Matteo Trentin at Ronde on Sunday or Zakarin at the Giro for their potential success.

Elsewhere, the winning teams just keep on winning and over half of the world tour races this year have been shared between just 5 teams with a couple more looking to catch up. I’ll put together some cool stats to showcase all the team’s respective palmares for the year after racing concludes, but right now there seems to be a few very clear winners from this year, some that have done okay, and a few who have failed to impress. Still with a grand tour and a half still to come there are plenty of opportunities to salvage a season yet.