Pro-cycling thread

So Wout Van Aert racing the UCI gravel world champs is still not pro cycling, right?

Imanol Erviti chose a bad day to retire.

Is there a good day to retire?

Erviti will be a big loss for Movistar, he's the rock it's built on. With Verona leaving too, they'll be short of experienced team riders. Jose Joaquin Rojas doesn't, yet, have a contract for next year but I don't know if he's planning to retire too. Losing all three in one go could be catastrophic.

🚨valverde in front group at gravel worlds🚨

https://youtu.be/0Dua8RZ2nHM?si=zo3u9t3RRpndRMZm

I’ve forgiven him.

I enjoyed the gravel world champs. I've never been able to get in to MTB or cyclocross with the repetitive little circuits so this was a nice variation on road racing. The coverage was meagre in its way but I can see how with some investment it could become very popular.

Final climb in today's stage of the Tour of Turkey looks a right bastard.

Looks like the world's longest driveway.

Imagine having had to lay those bricks...

"To categorise climbs at the Tour de France, race organiser ASO uses a simple formula, multiplying the distance by the average gradient squared. A climb must score more than 600 points for hors catégorie status at the Grand Tour. Using the same formula, Babadağ comes in at an astonishing 1,920. Mont Ventoux, by way of comparison scores 1,233 points, while the Angliru, Spain’s toughest ascent, yields 1,223. Perhaps one of the only climbs that comes close in difficulty is Italy’s Monte Zoncolan - 10km in length at around 12% - which comes in at 1,440 using ASO’s formula, still over 400 short of the Turkish giant. "

Good interview with Alex Dowsett here:

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/10/alex-dowsett-professional-cycling-is-fragile-billionaires-come-in-invest-and-get-blown-away

I've just ordered his book. I think it's a good rule of thumb that the talented but less successful riders write the better books and Dowsett has always had interesting things to say.

Not sure how he can be so confident in Jumbo after Hessmann.

Caleb Ewan returning to Jayco Alula where he and Dylan Groenewegen will share the Grand Tour responsibilities for congratulating Jakobsen and Philipsen on their wins.

Loool

You better be careful that @hippy doesn’t swing the ban hammer for such treasonous talk.

thankfully Groenewegen is not an Aussie!

rep

#dubtap

Giro 24 parcours looks well shit.

Why? Looks pretty good to me, lots of shorter hilly stages, gc stages not backloaded, a bit of everything.

Look like an awful lot of flat/almost flat days - only 3 hilly stages in the first 2 weeks. And Stelvio at the beginning of its stage is a waste. And 2 ITTs.

Given pretty much every Italian town is built on a hill, it continues to amaze me that the Giro organisation don't litter the race with short, punchy uphill finishes to offer something else other than sprint stages and mountain stages.

Can you use a link rather than embed when you're posting pictures of arseholes in a thread?

Ta

adds to To Do list