Monday Shorts.

Mathieu van der Poel looks built for the road. When you look at riders like Lars Boom or Zdeněk Štybar you can see a crunched ball of muscle suited to shorter, explosive efforts but “VDP” is a different shape with limbs like spatulas and maybe he will cross to the road in time with great success?

Van der Poel is linked to a contract with BKCP until 2017 so any return to the road will be provisional.

It’s rare to see long contracts but arch rival Wout Van Aert is locked-up until 2018. Such longevity is great but you wonder if they’re locked into U23 pay deals for years?

The Road to Rio: An introduction.

"In January, the UCI and Rio 2016 organizing committee confirmed the 2016 Olympic road race and time trial courses, which means the road to the Olympic glory has started.

Yes, we know it’s still a year-and-a-half out, but many riders will be racing this season with one ultimate goal in mind: to be selected for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Riders will start earning Olympic points this summer, and national and regional championships will surely be hotly contested. The 2015 season will be the chance for riders to prove themselves and start vying for those limited team spots."

Doping controls destroyed race for Meeusen.

On Saturday morning the entire Belgian team had a doping control. A normal procedure but in the evening Tom Meeusen was again tested.

"Only Laurens Sweeck (also mentioned in the ozone case, ed.) and I had to pee again at 21.30," said Meeusen at the finish. "The fact that we had to turn up just made me so mad that I did not sleep all night. That's no excuse but I have had two weeks of doping accusations and now this..."

Meeusen still started strongly.

"In the first lap, I tried to push the pace and catch Mathieu van der Poel, but he was too fast. It was a shame that van Aert dropped his chain. Otherwise he would have stayed with van der Poel and the pace would have gone down.

UnitedHealthcare hopes American squad will net Sun Tour success.

US-based professional continental outfit UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling is hoping that a change of strategy will lead to success in this year’s Jayco Herald Sun Tour.

The team, which is no stranger to the event having been regular participants in recent seasons, comes to Melbourne with an all-American line-up for the first time, despite having numerous Australians on their roster.

"The UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team is looking forward to an awesome race in and around Melbourne,” explained sports director Hendrik Redant.

Teklehaimanot wants more success in 2015.

For Daniel Teklehaimanot, the path through professional cycling has been tricky and, at times, hugely frustrating.

A former African road and time trial champion, there was a lot of excitement around his signing with Orica-GreenEdge in 2012. However, the relationship was doomed to fail with visa problems blighting much of Teklehaimanot’s time at the team.

After a season with the MTN-Qhubeka team, Teklehaimanot is feeling positive about the year ahead and takes confidence from a good finish at Vuelta a España last season.

2014-15 Races & Results.

Ladies Tour of Qatar 2015 - Feb 3-6 (Stages),

Dubai Tour 2015 - Feb 4-7 (Stages),

Tour of Qatar 2015 - Feb 8-13 (Stages),

Giro d'Italia 2015 - May 9-31 (Stages),

Tour de France 2015 - July 4-26 (Stages),

Vuelta a España 2015 - Aug 22-Sept 13 (Stages),

UCI Road World Championship 2015 - Sept 20-27 (Stages),

UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships - Jan 31-Feb 1 (Results),

Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race - Feb 1 (Results),

Santos Tour Down Under 2015 - Jan 18-25 (Results),

UCI Road World Championship 2014 - Sept 20-27 (Results),

Vuelta a España 2014 - Aug 23-Sept 14 (Results),

Tour de France 2014  - July 5-27 (Results),

Giro d'Italia 2014 - May 9 - June 1 (Results).

More ...

Dubai Tour 2015 Live Dashboard ...

2015 Dubai Tour LIVE.

Wednesday's (February 4) Dubai Tour Stage 1 (the Westin Dubai stage) departs Dubai at 11:55am local (8:55am CET, 2:55am U.S. Eastern) and is expected at the finish at Dubai Union House Flag at around 3:30pm local (12:30pm CET, 6:30am U.S. Eastern). 

Dubai Tour live video streaming is expected to begin at around 2:00pm local (11:00am CET, 5:00am U.S. Eastern).

Van der Poel unflappable en route to elite World Championship victory.

Anto Moran on Pat McQuaid: “It wasn’t begrudgery; we acted for the love of cycling.”

Responding to claims by former UCI president Pat McQuaid that Irish begrudgery was the reason why he lost the Cycling Ireland nomination for the 2013 elections, Anto Moran has categorically denied this was any part of his motivation in declining his backing.

Moran was Cycling Ireland vice-president and a board member in the run up to the election.

In April 2013 the board held a vote to decide if it would nominate McQuaid to enable him contest the UCI election for a third term.

There was some debate beforehand due to a number of factors, including the Lance Armstrong-US Postal Service affair.

They ultimately opted not to do so, voting 91-74 against backing him.

Kazakh federation considered closing down Astana team.

After the doping cases of last year, the Kazakh Cycling Federation considered to close the Astana WorldTour team of Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali.

At the official team presentation in Dubai, the President of the national federation, Darkhan Kaletayev, revealed the considerations. "I can not deny that we considered to pull the plug on this whole project," said the president. "We have stopped the continental team and also looked at the image of the professional team.

But it was clear that the Astana team is an incredibly successful project for Kazakhstan."

Women take the lead at Middle East races.

The Ladies Tour of Qatar kicks off a series of stage races this month in the Middle East that cumulates with the Tour de France stars in Oman.

The men, including reigning Tour de France winner Vincenzo Nibali, race Wednesday in the Dubai Tour. Bradley Wiggins, Peter Sagan, Fabian Cancellara, and others land in Doha for the Tour of Qatar February 8.

Ladies first, however.

Last year’s stage win spurs Pieters on in Ladies Tour of Qatar.

With Kirsten Wild concentrating on the track Amy Pieters lines up at the Ladies Tour of Qatar as the only rider to have won a stage in last year’s race.

The 23-year-old Dutch rider had a breakthrough season in 2014 with a stage win in Qatar [ed she went on to finish second overall] and victory in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, and she returns to Qatar this week with hopes of repeating her success from twelve months ago.

Last season she claimed stage two of the race with Wild dominating all three other stages and running away with the overall win.

With youth movement at hand, cyclocross’ future looks bright.

In December, Sven Nys, 38, the biggest star in the history of cyclocross, walked off a muddy hillside in Overijse, laid down his bike, and told his fans he didn’t know when he would pedal again.

He returned, weeks later, a shadow of the man who has so dominated cyclocross for more than a decade.

Just under a year earlier, two-time world champion Niels Albert announced his surprise retirement. Diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition, racing was out of the question.

Bart Wellens, 36, a two-time world champion and a former star of his own cyclocross-themed reality show in Belgium, cracked the top 10 in a major series race just three times this season, and never reached the podium anywhere.

But on Sunday, at the world championships in Tabor, the future looked awfully bright.

Herald Sun Tour preview.

A great Australian cycling summer will be brought to an end later this week when a strong field takes to the start of the Jayco Herald Sun Tour.

The oldest Australian stage race may no longer be the biggest cycling event in the country and may only have one WorldTour team at the start but it is an excellent and very prestigious event that allows the local riders to gain a bit of confidence and achieve some results before they head back to Europe for the most important part of the season.

At the same time, it is one of the highlights for the local continental teams who will do their utmost to surprise the professional teams.

Gianni Meersman wins the inaugural Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

Daily Distractions.

PEZ: EuroTrash World Cross Monday!

Lance "the best of his generation", says Mercier.

Scott Mercier was one of the few elite American riders of his generation who refused to engage in the doping practices of the time.

He left the sport in 1997. He told the BBC he believes that Lance Armstrong was the clear winner of seven Tour de France titles and can still be a force for good.

He is a polarizing figure and always will be, but I believe he can be a catalyst for good, not just for cycling, but especially for those who suffer from cancer.

"This drug usage did not start with the Americans, it was part of the culture long before the Yankees invaded.

Vinokourov: “We want our credibility back as a matter of urgency.”

Reputation damaged by a total of five positive tests from the Astana WorldTour and Continental teams in the latter half of 2014, Alexandre Vinokourov has said that regaining people’s trust is a major priority for the setup.

“We want to get our credibility back as a matter of urgency,” the WorldTour team’s general manager said at the team presentation held prior to the Dubai Tour, according to Sporza.

Bobridge won't attempt Hour Record again until after Rio, says Decker.

Jack Bobridge's next potential cycling hour world record attempt will come after the Rio Olympics and certainly not in the next week.

Scot Graeme Obree, who set the hour record twice during the 1990s, has urged the Australian to back up quickly with another attempt.

Bobridge rode 51.3km on Saturday night in Melbourne, falling short of the 51.852km world mark that Austrian Matthias Brandle set last October.

Problems with Lampre not all yet resolved, says Pozzato.

Filippo Pozzato's low-key classics campaign last year released the usual welter of criticism in the Italian press though there was a degree of surprise, perhaps, that some of the most bracing public censure came from within his own Lampre-Merida team.

Immediately after the cobbled campaign, where 17th at the Tour of Flanders was Pozzato's best result, team manager Brent Copeland made no secret of his reservations about how the man from Sandrigo had prepared for the season.

Julian Kyer Journal: Trust the struggle.

"It’s noon and I am parked on the couch, wearing a hat, down vest, a sweatshirt, and a scarf. Two mugs sit on the table before me, one full of coffee that has long since cooled after my first nap of the day, the other full of yet another batch of double-brewed hippie tea meant to strengthen my immune system.

I was supposed to be on a 6 a.m. flight to team camp this morning, but when my thermometer told me I had a 102-degree fever in the middle of the night, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

While immensely frustrating, it should come as no surprise; when you train 4-5 hours a day during flu season, something is bound to hit you sooner or later."

Evans closes career at inaugural race that bears his name.

Mother Nature did not bid Australia’s most successful road cyclist a fond farewell at the inaugural Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race (CEGORR), named after the retiring 2009 road world champion and 2011 Tour de France winner, but the estimated 75,000 supporters lining the wet and windy Victorian roads near his home in Barwon Heads certainly did on Sunday.

It marked the final time Australian fans could “Yell for Cadel,” as Cadel Evans now rides off into the sunset after finishing fifth in the debut classics-style, 174-kilometer race that bears his name.

“To end one phase of my life and to begin another, it is just fantastic,” the 37-year-old Evans said post-race.

“I have dedicated my life to this sport, I discovered the passion for cycling as a 14-year-old in the ’90s, and I have been a full-time professional for 20 years.

Nys: Maybe it is time for some rest.

Unstoppable Pelucchi does it again in Mallorca.

Ligthart wins Grand Prix La Marseillaise.

Opinion: Evans’ legs did the anti-doping talking.