Making the Point

I like to end the week on a bang, but events haven’t really helped. With my focus on the Giro d’Italia I’m left to tell you about yesterday’s individual, uphill, time trial which was designed to play to Wiggins’ strengths and set up an exciting last week as the favourites duelled it out.

However, with Wiggins at home recovering from a chest infection and the race becoming increasingly Nibali’s to lose, it wasn’t entirely as the plan. His main remaining rival, Evans, suffered, and lost yet more time to the Italian who powered through to win the stage and put himself in a position that will be hard to overhaul unless he suffers some sort of catastrophic collapse in the next week. He leads Evans by over four minutes.

Perhaps a more interesting battle at this stage is the fight for the points jersey. Evans sits second in this competition as well, with Cavendish leading him by only four points. Cav is aiming for a full set of Grand Tour points jerseys in the traditional style as a sprinter, while the allocation of points at mountain finishes means that a more rounded rider like Evans can challenge. The risk for Cavendish is that in fighting for the race lead Evans will gather points almost by accident, and, in addition, he may pay more attention to mopping up intermediate sprint points as his chance of the winning the Tour slips away. There are flat stages to come, but Cavendish will have to do something special in the coming mountains to stay on terms, and his frustration at missing the sprint after the sharp hill at the finish on Wednesday was clear as he crossed the line.

Plenty to keep you interested then.

Monday is a bank holiday so as usual don’t expect anything new here until Tuesday, when I will return for usual service, which may or may not include any riding, depending on my hangover from yet another stag do.

In the mean time I bring you late breaking news. Today's stage of the Giro has been cancelled due to bad weather (which makes you think it must be pretty seriously bad considering what they've ridden through already), and in worse news for the sport as a whole former Giro winner Danilo Di Luca has tested positive for EPO, despite all of the movement against doping in cycling it seems some individuals just can't resist. Di Luca had been popping up a lot at the front of this year's race and it puts his performance seriously in question. The positive result was from a test on 29th April and he has already been suspended twice in the past for doping. He has been removed from the race.

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Spoiling the Fun

The story I mentioned yesterday about Emma Way and her tweet about knocking a cyclist off has caused quite the media furore. It’s shown up everywhere and encouraged responses that border on the Daily Mail-esque even in the Guardian.

I never fully understand the anti-bike hatred of some car drivers, although it did annoy me a lot to see a rider sail through red lights on my way to work when we should be playing by the rules and taking the wind from those aggressive drivers’ sails. There was a good point made about the age and gender of the aggressive tweeters, not fitting the imagined profile of older white van-driving men. The stream of aggression that makes the roads a more dangerous place for cyclists even made Buzzfeed (courtesy of @cyclehatred).

It’s a relief to look at cycling where the cars are only there to help the riders out, like in the Giro (although perhaps not as much as Gavazzi thought, after he has been disqualified for drafting the team cars as he sat in last place overall). Yesterday’s stage was pan-flat with a nasty hilly kick at the end to mess with the sprinters’ fun. It was on this climb that Cavendish lost touch and his Omega Pharma Quickstep team gathered to try to pull him back in while Visconti from Movistar (again) desperately tried to hang on to a lead of about 30 seconds, taking advantage of confusion in the main group. With one kilometre to go he was hanging onto the lead, helped by some gutsy descending, and pulled out a win that belied all the pre-race ideas of this being one for the sprinters and therefore a shoe-in for Cavendish.

Movistar made it two wins in a row and are really shining in a way we’ve not seen before. Navardauskas came second, but seemed to be unaware that he had not caught the leader and the GC contenders came in marking each other and keeping the picture the same in the top three.

Meanwhile, this made me want to go to Wales again soon. A perfect example of creating a new destination bike-track in an area of declining industry and tourism:

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Born, Raised and Busted

There was more racing in the Giro yesterday and it was a day full of brave breaks and exciting risks. Ex-pink jersey wearer Intxausti won the sprint after a vicious climb filtered out the pure sprinters. Nibali made his point with an attack that put Evans under pressure, Gesink showed up for the first time in the race, but then a mechanical put him back into the peloton and out of the limelight again and in the end the top three remained the same.

Closer to home, there was some fun news in terms of one of those stories of comeuppance that everyone can enjoy. For once a driver gleefully tweeting about clipping a cyclist was chased up by the police, and the victim identified as well. You can read the full story here, on the ipayroadtax site.

Ha!

Anyway, I promised a film from Brook MacDonald on the year he won his first World Cup event and stepped up with the big boys:

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Brett, Brook and the Berg(line)

Those riders in Italy were on what must have been the most well deserved rest-day ever after several days of winter mountain weather.

That leaves me free to bring you other events and top of the pile is the Bergline RedBull event from this week’s most mountain biking country, Germany. This is one of the Gold-level events on the FMB tour and brings out the big guns of freestyle mountain biking.

Brett Rheeder won the final, his first in a Gold FMB event and putting some bigger names in the shade, including Sam Pilgrim’s backflip stepdown:

Red Bull #BergLine results: 1st @brettrheeder, 2nd @sampilgrim, 3rd Anton Thelander twitter.com/redbullbike/st…

— Red Bull Bike (@redbullbike) May 19, 2013

Have a look at how it unfolded here in a full replay.

In more film news, the latest downhiller to launch a film to get you excited for the World Cup season is Brook MacDonald. This is out today:

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Riding at the Weekend.

Like many of the big names in British cycling at the Giro I was suffering with a cold this weekend. However, I didn’t let it stop me form my planned riding and I headed out in the wilds of Hertfordshire to put together a tougher ride based on my exploring last week.

the riding out there is in no way technical and so the challenge came from adding distance, as much of it off-road as I could. My planned route hit a couple of snags firstly where what looked like a road I could link two tracks on, on the map, was marked as private property on the ground. A footpath linked it up in the end and I’ll leave you to decide if I rode or walked it depending on how law abiding you think I am. Secondly a new cycle route had appeared, starting right next to a bridleway I was looking for, and my assumption that it was the right way led me a fair way out of my plan. Still it’s those things that help you build and improve this sort of ride. I was faster on the parts I’d ridden before without having to navigate and next time I’ll iron out the issues and refine it.

Still, here it is, 67KM and 4 hours starting a half-hour drive from home.

Talking of local riding, it sounds as if Swinley Forest has had some work done to formalise the routes. I may get there to check it out soon.

Moving on to professional cycling there’s as much as ever to cover

The UCI MTB World Cup launched with Cross Country in Germany this weekend with the first Downhill event to be Fort William on the 8th June.

Meanwhile in Italy on Friday Cavendish was adding another win to his tally for this year’s Giro and then the weather and the mountains combined for the weekend making for stages that were cut short and for a time invisible with TV pictures unable to be broadcast. More riders pulled out with illness, including Dave Millar:

Quit the race today, finally gave into sickness. One question: is the TV coverage always this (uhhh, how do I put this...) suspenseful?

— David Millar (@millarmind) May 18, 2013

Through the murk, rain and horrendous conditions Nibali strengthened his hold at the head of the race, with a question over whether there was an agreement with fellow Italian Santambrogio to allow him the stage win as Nibali put the hammer down to grind his rivals into the mountain. Evans lost time and it now looks like the Italian’s race to lose.

Sunday’s stage was also shortened due to bad weather on the Galibier and the day started neutralised by the riders with racing only really picking up with 70 or so kilometres to go. After that a number of breaks went out as the main contenders marked each other in the pack. Visconti made it stick holding a 40 second lead at 10Km to go up to over a minute's lead and a stunning stage win in epic conditions as the snow fell on the Galibier. Back down the road Nibali kicked to put his rivals under pressure, and it was Evans who suffered the most, psychologically giving the Italian more of an advantage.

While the road guys were focussed on going uphill, there was a reminder of how to go downhill from a certain Aaron Gwin:

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