You've heard of the 'curse of the rainbow jersey' – the phenomenon whereby winners of cycling's Road Race World Championships go on to have awful injury- or illness-blighted, or indeed simply unsuccessful, seasons in their beautiful white jerseys with the rainbow bands.
Surely such bad luck can be explained away by the weight of expectation heaped upon such riders after taking the sport's ultimate one-day prize.
Or, as many believe, it's simply self-inflicted as a result of perhaps celebrating their new status as champion of the world just a little too much, or committing to one too many public appearances or media demands for interviews at a time when other riders are already knuckling down to training for the season to come.
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Does the curse really exist, or can the rainbow jersey in fact bring you luck? Here are five examples of men's road race world champions who have gone on to have very successful seasons in the year after they won their rainbow jerseys.
1976 world champion Freddy Maertens' 1977 season
Freddy Maertens' Worlds road race win in Ostuni, Italy, in 1976, for which he'd started as the favourite, was the first of two world championship titles achieved by the Belgian, who won again in Prague, in the Czech Republic, in 1981.
But it was the 1976 title that paved the way to his vastly successful 1977 season in the rainbow jersey, while riding for the legendary Flandria team.
1986 world champion Moreno Argentin's 1987 season
1989 world champion Greg LeMond's 1990 season
2005 world champion Tom Boonen's 2006 season
2017 world champion Peter Sagan's 2018 season
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/reversing-the-curse-5-world-champions-whove-shone-in-the-rainbow-jersey
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