Foldable Bikes Party

Thursday, 30 November 2017

Holowesko-Citadel will ride BMC bikes

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Holowesko-Citadel will ride BMC bikes after signing a three-year deal with the Swiss manufacturer that will see the US Pro Continental team through the 2020 season.

The move marks a homecoming of sorts for the team, which started as BMC-Hincapie Sportswear in 2012 as a feeder program for the BMC Racing WorldTour team. The team morphed into Hincapie Sportswear in 2013 as BMC created its own dedicated development squad in Europe, and the next year it moved onto Felt Bicycles, which the team continued to ride through this year.

Team co-owner George Hincapie finished his career with BMC Racing, spending three years there through 2012. The apparel company he owns with his brother, Rich, later supplied BMC's clothing.

"I'm thrilled to work with BMC Switzerland again. It's like returning to the family," said George Hincapie. "In 2009 when I signed with BMC Racing Team, people questioned the decision because I was moving to a smaller team. We then went on to win the Tour de France, and now BMC Switzerland is one of the most successful racing brands in professional cycling. Personally, I'm excited to now have our team associated with this brand."

BMC Racing dropped its development program in the off-season, opening an opportunity for BMC Switzerland to bolster the company's global presence elsewhere.

"BMC Switzerland is a performance-driven brand with racing deep in our roots and DNA across all forms of cycling disciplines including road, mountain-bike and triathlon," said BMC Switzerland CEO David Zurcher.

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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Giro d'Italia removes reference to 'West Jerusalem' following Israeli protest

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RCS Sport has removed references to ‘West Jerusalem’ from its official maps and route information for the 2018 Giro d’Italia after the Israeli government threatened to withdraw its support for next year’s Grande Partenza in protest.

The 2018 Giro gets underway on May 4 with a 9.7-kilometre time trial that takes part in the western sector of Jerusalem. When details of the three opening stages were unveiled in Israel in September, RCS Sport’s maps referred to the city simply as ‘Jerusalem,’ but the maps released during the presentation of the full Giro route on Wednesday listed the stage town as ‘West Jerusalem.’

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since seizing it during the Six-Day War in 1967. The country later annexed it, although the international community has never recognised that administrative move. Israel now claims Jerusalem as its undivided capital, but Palestinians believe East Jerusalem has been occupied illegally and hope to establish it as the capital of their future state.

In a strongly-worded statement to AFP shortly after Wednesday’s Giro presentation, Israel’s sports minister Miri Regev and tourism minister Yariy Levin claimed that RCS Sport’s use of the term West Jerusalem was "a breach of the agreements with the Israeli government” and described Jerusalem as “Israel’s capital [where] there is no east or west.”

“If the wording does not change, the Israeli government will not be a partner in the event," Regev and Levin concluded.

In a brief statement on Thursday morning, RCS Sport confirmed that it had removed references to West Jerusalem from its technical material relating to the 2018 Giro. The race website now lists the stage location as Jerusalem and not West Jerusalem.

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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Nibali warns Froome about the unpredictability of the Giro d’Italia

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Vincenzo Nibali seemed genuinely surprised and a little put out to discover that Chris Froome will target the Giro d’Italia-Tour de France double in 2018, with the Briton’s decision and eight-second video message stealing the limelight and suddenly overshadowing the Sicilian’s plans for next season. He made a point of reminding Froome of the difficulties of the Giro and warned that Italian riders will always have home advantage.

Nibali has already named Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the road World Championships as goals for 2018, and he plans to ride the Vuelta a Espana to prepare for the tough route in Innsbruck. He and his Bahrain-Merida team will make a final decision regarding the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France next week during their first training camp in Croatia.

Nibali suggested that he could even ride both races, but that would not fit in with his shot at winning the rainbow jersey. It is widely expected that Nibali will target the Tour de France and so be obliged to miss his home Grand Tour.

“I'll decide in the next week at the team camp and we'll officialise my race programme after also considering things with my team. We’ll decide together,” Nibali said.

“It's a beautiful and very interesting route, even if it’s best suited to Chris. The Giro is very particular, though, it’s never a logical race. There are eight mountain finishes but their difficulty increases gradually. The road to Etna is easier than the one we raced on this year and Montevergine is fast and so not very selective. The real climbs come in the final week with the Zoncolan, the Colle delle Finestre dirt road, Jafferau and Cervinia. The time trial is not long and seems about right for a 21-day race; it was too long this year.”

A warning about the weather

Nibali denied that his decision on the Giro d’Italia will be influenced by Froome’s presence. He suggested that Froome’s decision will benefit cycling, while pointing out he has already won all three Grand Tours in his career.

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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Pinot tempted by Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in 2018

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Having pored over the details of the route for the 2018 Giro d’Italia, Thibaut Pinot has said that he wants to return to the Italian Grand Tour next season. The Frenchman hinted that he could also join Chris Froome in backing it up with a ride at the Tour de France, before targeting the World Championships in September.

Pinot made his debut at the Giro last season and finished fourth overall, just 37 seconds off the podium. The climbing-heavy and time trial-light course has enticed Pinot, who says the finer details of his calendar will be meted out at a training camp next month.

“Of course, I would really like to take part in this Giro, especially after seeing the route,” Pinot told Ouest France. “We will have to wait for the training camp with my team in Calpe in December to discuss it. Next year will be a special year where I will also target the World Championships so there will be a programme to draw up.”

Pinot rode both the Giro and Tour for the first time this season. He went into his second Grand Tour hunting for stage victories after winning a stage and coming so close to the podium at the Giro. The 27-year-old bided his time in the opening weeks as he looked to conserve his energy for a tilt at the big mountains at the Tour, but he never got his opportunity as illness forced him to quit in the final week. Should he try the double again, he would do it differently.

“If I do the Giro-Tour double next year, I will try to make the Tour in a better shape than this year,” Pinot explained. “You must always learn from your mistakes and this year I made a few. So, if I come back on the Tour next July, I will be in better condition.

“It's not easy, but there will be another week next year between the two races. Everything will also depend on my start to the season and the goals that the team sets for me.”

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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A history of Giro-Tour double failures

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After becoming just the third rider to win the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana in the same season, Chris Froome (Team Sky) has set his sights on another major goal: winning the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France double in 2018.

Of the Grand Tour combinations, the Giro-Tour double is the one that has been achieved the most. Seven riders have completed it 12 times compared to three apiece for the Tour-Vuelta and the Giro-Vuelta. However, it has proved elusive in recent years, with Marco Pantani the last rider to achieve the double in 1998. Previously, Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, Stephen Roche and Miguel Indurain have all won the two events in the same season.

There are a number of factors in this, with luck also playing a role, and Lance Armstrong's dominance of the Tour de France also having an impact. The decision by a larger proportion of riders to target a single event and changes in the calendar are also contributory factors.

Pantani is the only rider to have done the double since the gap between the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France stretched out to five weeks. It has previously been as little as three. When Chris Froome makes his attempt, there will be six weeks between the two. How this will impact his effort, nobody yet knows.

Some Giro winners have gone on to ride the Tour the same year but have done so as support riders, such as Paolo Savoldelli in 2005 and Vincenzo Nibali in 2016. Just six riders have attempted to win both back-to-back since Pantani in 1998, with varying degrees of success, but none have managed to win both.

Cyclingnews takes a look back at those attempts and why they went wrong.

Gilberto Simoni (2003)

Denis Menchov (2009)

Ivan Basso (2010)

Alberto Contador (2011)

Ryder Hesjedal (2012)

Alberto Contador (2015)

Nairo Quintana (2017)

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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Giro d'Italia 2018: Five key stages

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On his lone appearance in the race almost 30 years ago, Paul Kimmage was moved to bemoan that the Giro d'Italia was far harder than previously advertised. 'Where was the Giro of legend, where riders laughed and joked for five hours and raced for two?' he wrote after an especially relentless slog across heavy southern roads between Potenza and Campobasso during the opening week of the 1989 Giro.

If anything, the Giro has only grown harder in the decades since. True, at the turn of the century, Mario Cipollini still had the sway to warn a young Thomas Voeckler off the idea of attacking early on a flat stage, and in 2004, the gruppo seemed to call a truce at various points as Alessandro Petacchi quietly annexed nine sprint wins, but such instances are increasingly rare in the modern Giro, where every day counts.

The 2015 edition of the race was a case in point. Alberto Contador lined up targeting a Giro-Tour double and, with that goal in mind, RCS Sport seemed to have designed a particularly amenable route. With the most difficult stages shoehorned into the final week, Contador had – in theory – a chance to ride his way into form as the race left San Remo.

Astana, however, had other ideas, and from the Riviera down to Campania and all the way back north, they waged guerrilla warfare against Contador, lining out the peloton at every opportunity, and turning the supposed procession into a trial by ordeal. Although Contador reached Milan in the pink jersey, it came at a cost. Exhausted, he was a shadow of himself at the Tour de France – which had, of course, been part of Astana's game plan. As one Astana staff member explained, Fabio Aru's job wasn't so much to win that Giro as to make sure Contador was too tired to challenge Vincenzo Nibali at the Tour that followed.

In 2018, for Alberto Contador, read Chris Froome. For Astana, read Movistar (and others). The four-time Tour winner may be about to receive a monstrous payday to compete at the Giro, but he won't get too many free rides between Jerusalem and Rome next May.

In that context, picking out five key stages at the 2018 Giro feels almost redundant, but – at a remove of six months – some stages leap off the map all the same.

Stage 9, May 13: Pesco Sannita - Gran Sasso d'Italia (Campo Imperatore), 224 kilometres

Stage 14, May 19. San Vito Al Tagliamento - Monte Zoncolan, 181 kilometres

Stage 16, May 22. Trento – Rovereto (ITT), 34.5 kilometres

Stage 19, May 25. Venaria Reale – Bardonecchia, 181 kilometres

Stage 20, May 26. Susa – Cervinia, 214 kilometres

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Australia's women's track endurance squad on long road to Tokyo 2020 success

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Off the back of the Oceania track championships, the Australian women's endurance team has decamped to Adelaide for its first training camp under new coach Jason Bartram. After four year's in the men's endurance programme, Bartram took up his new role in July, replacing Gary Sutton, and is charged with guiding the squad to Olympic and Commonwealth Games success from next year.

For Bartram and his riders, the camp is the beginning of his push for gold medal success at the home 2018 Commonwealth Games in April and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The Australian track nationals in early February will be another important event.

While the squad has undergone changes in recent years with retirements, the core of Amy Cure, Annette Edmondson, Ashlee Ankudinoff, Rebecca Wiasak, Alex Manly and Georgia Baker assembled in Adelaide for the camp. Also at the camp is a group of riders Bartram believes will be crucial to long-term success on the track, Macey Stewart, Lauren Perry, Josie Talbot, Danielle McKinnirey, Nicola Macdonald, Chloe Moran and Kristina Clonan.

"This year is all about gaining momentum, momentum in the training environment," Bartram said. "It is exciting to see there are a few key areas where we can make great improvements and we believe we can close these gap to the current world's best.

"But to do this, it is about having consistent time with the team to actually focus on the gaps. And we find that when we race, when we have to travel to races on a regular basis, you are two, three weeks and you are mostly thinking about the next performance as opposed spending the time to be better in the longer term."

For Bartram, he believes that competition and high-level training is key for his riders and will pay off at international championships

You can read more at Cyclingnews.com

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