Pro-cycling thread

Matthews has gone back to greenedge, which kind of makes sense given their stage hunting model

Because brexit?

I wonder what's wrong with Sunweb. Is it just they can't decide what they are doing as a team or is there some structural issue that has riders looking to leave early. That said, it may have been as much the team asking him to bugger off given I assume he's expensive and hasn't delivered a huge amount there since the first season

Probably though he has delivered their best result of the year so far.

Bling being back at an Australian team seems right, and probably what he wanted, with some of the recent confirmed transfers like Adam Yates, they can afford him again.

He's got a better palmares than anyone else on Sunweb.

To be fair, that’s not difficult.

He’s younger than I thought, for some reason I though he was in his 30s.

He must have been pissed having trained and lost weight in support of the Dumoulin grand tour project, for Dumoulin to get injured and transfer away...

Yeah, I remember an interview from a year or two ago where he said he had foregone any GT sprint win possibilities to tow Tommy D in the early slopes of the high mountains.

I was always surprised Mitchelton-Scott let him go in the first place. I appreciate Gerrans was a similar rider to Matthews, and the former is a rider I really respect, but one was close to the end of his career and the other was on the way up. A good team would keep the up and coming rider.

He only does it for the French ones

Rumours confirmed; Annemiek Van Vleuten off to Movistar for the next two years.

https://twitter.com/MitcheltonSCOTT/status/1300360865850499072?s=20

Bling in AVV out. Big loss.

apparently his antipathy towards Gerrans was part of his move away. Felt Gerrans was de facto DS and didnt allow room for his development

I'd be looking to distance myself from Goldman Sachs types as much as possible too.

Cervelos are like glass

Has anyone seen the 30 for 30 ESPN Lance Armstrong pop up anywhere else lately? It was on BT Sport initially, but am wondering if it appears on Netflix/Amazon/Sky Documentaries at some point...

I downloaded it. Nothing new in it to be honest, but it killed some time on a boring day

This is good;

https://twitter.com/vincenzonibali/status/1302618117588373506?s=21

Matteo Trentin has signed a two year deal with UAE.

Total suicide line between the barriers and Gaviria from Pascal Ackermann to win today's stage of Tirreno Adriatico. Made me wince.

Need to report a mugging; Gaviria just robbed on the line by Ackermann on the opening stage of Tirreno.

could have been a very nasty 'Jakobsen', he squeezed past right at the point the barriers stuck out on the road. scary stuff

https://twitter.com/pasiociclismo/status/1302968354051969025?s=20

I was half watching as I was on a work call, but Ackermann just appeared from nowhere on the right hand side. Watching the overhead shot, he came from a long way back.

an absolute madman sprint. and race organisers without brains. how can they do this after what happened in Poland?