Pro-cycling thread

They are all under contract for at least another year. It’ll be interesting to see if they can meet everyone’s personal expectations and maintain a harmonious team environment at the same time.

What's Sunweb's plan for 2020?

Develop more young riders whilst Matthews, Kelderman and Oomen step up?

Campanaerts off to Dimension Data’s care home for past-it riders.

They’ve only got twelve confirmed riders under contract for next season, hopefully the clear out will free up some space for some younger up and coming riders, specifically African ones.

Supposedly there has been some discontent at the idea that Dumoulin will have his pick of the grand tours and the others will fit around him but that could just be supposition. Wonder what went on in private to sour the relationship though; just not enough help in the mountains?

Mind you, the extra 1.5M a year in the bank can't have hurt

Just looked, and disovered that Jumbo Visma has a 14 million euro budget, approx 3 million less than Sunweb.

But then you think 'Dumoulin, Roglic, Kruisjwijk' that's a pretty good GC team', but not if they're all all expecting to be king of the hill. I don't understand how the maths or the politics will work here when Movistar's made a history of trying to do the same with three times the budget and had pretty disappointing results.

But Ineos have proved that if your riders are playing nicely that you can have multiple team leaders at a GT. I think that works when it's a slightly overcooked Froome and top-form Thomas or a top-form Bernal and a slightly less top-form Thomas but if Froome is fit next year we'll see how friendly Ineos will be.

On the subject of Ineos, I heard on the Cycling Podcast that Tao Geoghegan Hart is the leader for the Vuelta. Not seen it announced officially though.

Also, Bardet apparently told AG2R that he was considering quitting racing for good at the end of 2020 (when his contract expires) because of his TdF form. Explains why they've told him to head to the pub and get the pints in early this year then; try to avoid the burnout.

I think the level of expectation on Bardet is quite unfair but also comes with the territory of riding for a french team in what's perceived as being one of their 'national sports'.

Maybe if he rode for Green Edge or based in another country he'd be able to focus on just winning one day/shorter stage races and have more balance?

Yeah, I think Ineos were lucky how that panned out and to an extent that's also a credit to Thomas putting the team before his own interests... i.e if it were for his first tour victory he might not have been so magnanimous, or, if Bernal was a few years older and more confident he might have made demands that he get full backing from day one. If it was Bernal vs Froome they might have had full on civil war, even if Bernal was locked in to win it and Froome knew he only had an outside chance...

Cavendish not included in Dimension Data’s Vuelta team.

Surely he's either leaving Dimension Data or retiring this year by the looks of that. I'd assume leaving given if he was retiring you'd think DD would try to get some PR out of it at the Vuelta (or even the Tour if they knew then).

I’ve no idea if he’s retiring or not, but I’d be surprised unless he’s had medical advice which says he’ll never fully recover from Epstein-Barr.

Whilst I’m not surprised to see Gilbert go back to Lotto-Soudal, I am surprised they’ve given him a three year deal. He’ll be 40 when it ends.

Moving, not retiring. #tapsnose

Please god, not EF Education First?

Lol, no.
(I'm not there now)

They won tour of utah .. show some respect andy, after brexit we need the trade deals

Katusha! Trek!

Not a clue what’s going on here...

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Surely Cavendish can get another good pay day if he wants. He deserves to go out on his own terms and maybe even sneak a final TdF stage.

Wiggins has a competition giving away some tickets if you guess his average watts in a specific TdF TT. I guess Vayer has finally gone over the edge.

Valverde, Carapaz and Nairoman at the Vuelta!