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Doug Report Daily Cycling News Archive

Last Chance to Win - Azencross Loenhout!

Loenhout is situated right in the North of Belgium, not a place known for it's great weather. It is also the last chance for a CX victory in 2014, and many will be gunning for victory.

There is a bit of everything in the Azencross course. There's a bridge, which at the moment is very icy, and a section through the woods, but also the unique washboards. However, there are also a lot of long straights which should certainly play to the strengths of riders with a strong finish if the weather is dry. Icy and snowy conditions are prevailing at the minute however!

Van der Haar to skip Bpost Bank Trofee in Loenhout.

Giant-Shimano’s Lars van der Haar will not participate in the upcoming Bpost Bank Trofee event held on Tuesday in Loenhout, Belgium, in order to recover from a head cold. The Dutch champion is scheduled to compete next at the series’ GP Sven Nys in Baal on January 1.

Van der Haar placed fourth at the Superprestige Diegem on Sunday behind winner Mathieu van der Poel from the BCKP-Powerplus team, Tom Meeusen in second and Kevin Pauwels in third. The race was held at twilight and in cold temperatures.

Cyclocross LIVE stream - 2014 BPost Bank Trophy Cyclocross at Loenhout.

LIVE Tuesday: BPost Bank Trophy Cyclocross - Azencross Loenhout.  Live coverage gets underway at 2:45pm CET (8:45am U.S. Eastern) with the Elite Men race beginning at 3:00pm CET (9:00am U.S. Eastern).

Top 10 pro rider transfers of 2015.

Peter Sagan won the Tour de France‘s green jersey in 2014 and also led the way in off-season transfers with a reported £3million move.

The Slovak Champion may have suffered an off-year – which still included six wins and the Tour de France’s green jersey – but made the biggest transfer ahead of 2015. He signed for a reported €4m (£3.15m).

After maturing at Cannondale for five years, he could become a classics star in the hands of Bjarne Riis at Tinkoff-Saxo. Riis and directors like Sean Yates and Steven De Jongh will help the 24-year-old aim at wins in Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

Quintana announces race schedule.

Nairo Quintana will be one of the major contenders at the Tour de France in July but before he goes up against Alberto Contador, Chris Froome and Vincenzo Nibali, he will prepare for La Grande Boucle by riding the Vuelta a Andalucía and Tirreno-Adriatico. The Colombian will also return to the Vuelta al Pais Vasco.

Quintana has confirmed the first part of his schedule: Tour de San Luis (January 19-25), Vuelta a Andalucía (February 18-22), Tirreno-Adriatico (March 11-17) and Vuelta al Pais Vasco (April 6-11). His intention is to do some of the Ardennes classics, Amstel Gold Race, Fleche Wallonne and Liege-Bastogne-Liege, before he turns his full focus to the Tour de France. At the moment, the plan is to finalize the preparations at the Tour de Suisse. "It is a well-planned schedule that is focused on the Tour. This is the first part. The second half will be based on what is going to happen in France," Quintana told El Tiempo.

Ksenia Lepikhina: The mental game in Diegem.

"The day started off like any other race day. Well, perhaps not like any other race day. We didn’t have an early wake up call and we had plenty of leisure time in the morning to pack and prepare to leave. The drive to the course in Diegem was quiet and focused. Once we arrived and were registering for the race in a nearby mini castle, I had the shocking realization that I had forgotten my warmup pants as well as pins. That was the beginning of my mental struggle of the day."

Pre-season testing and bike-fitting - Avanti Racing Team.

Avanti, known for much of its history as Praties after its Tasmanian restaurant chain sponsor, is regarded as having been Australia's best Continental team (it moved to its New Zealand base for 2015) and as one of the best development teams in the world.

Its list of graduates includes WorldTour riders Richie Porte (Sky), Nathan Haas (Garmin-Cervelo), Nathan Earle (Sky), Jack Haig (Orica-GreenEdge) and Campbell Flakemore (BMC).

Getting together in small coastal town of Nowra, New South Wales, Australia, members of the recently expanded team were meeting their official coaching partner FTP Training, at their coaches' local business – The Watts Factory – to be fitted with new bikes, to establish baseline fitness and to get to know each other. This was particularly important given the large number of fresh New Zealand signings, including U23 New Zealand national TT champion Fraser Gough, 2014 Tour of Tasmania winner Patrick Bevin and U19 Madison World Champions Luke Mudgway and Regan Gough.

2014-15 Races & Results.

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

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

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

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

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 ...

 (cyclingnews.com)

2014 North American Man on the Year: Tejay van Garderen .

Ask Tejay van Garderen about the best singular moment of his 2014 season, and he may give you a different answer, depending on the day.

Over a one-week span in late October, van Garderen provided two VeloNews editors with two different answers, first citing his mountaintop stage win at Vallter during the Volta a Catalunya, and later citing his mountaintop stage win at Monarch Mountain in Colorado during the USA Pro Challenge.

At Catalunya, in March, van Garderen beat the best GC riders in the sport — Nairo Quintana, Chris Froome, and Alberto Contador — on a day marked by rain and snow, and 20km of climbing.

2015 Wildcards.

One of the best stories in sport is seeing the underdog triumph. Enrico Battaglin’s stage win at the Giro was one example, the conclusion to a thrilling stage with two riders from wildcard teams sprinting for the stage win against Sky’s Dario Cataldo. It took plenty but started with a wildcard invitation, the modest Bardian-CSF team isn’t guaranteed a start in any race.

Europcar’s ejection from the World Tour and the merger of Cannondale and Garmin means only 17 teams have guaranteed entry to the top races. The other places can be given on an invitational basis. For the second division teams, officially labelled “UCI Pro Continental” teams, there’s no bigger prize than an invite to the Tour de France. Here’s a look at the candidates for an invite and the system as a whole. Decisions for an invite are due next month.

Top 14 stories of 2014: Shades of gray.

That guy’s a doper. A cheater. A liar. Can’t stand him.

That guy seems all right. Yeah, he used to dope, but so did everyone else.

The conventional definition of the word “perception” pertains to the inexact and shifting merger of action and reaction that is constantly calibrating itself, given the context. Perception is both impermeable and porous. Judgments are formed unconsciously. We like or loathe, often before we’ve had a chance to think why.

During July, millions of people heard Christian Vande Velde’s voice commentating on the Tour de France for NBC Sports. If confessing to past use of PEDs ever hurt the former rider, he was certainly able to recover.

Also during July, hardly anyone saw Dave Zabriskie or Levi Leipheimer. Perhaps the riders chose to keep it that way, or perhaps they didn’t have such an option as Vande Velde. It’s hard to know.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège 'almost an obsession' for Nibali.

Tour de France winner Vincenzo Nibali still has designs on competing in the Spring Classics, and particularly to win Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where he narrowly missed out on victory in 2012.

Nibali has won the overall titles at the Vuelta a España in 2010, Giro d'Italia in 2013 and the Tour de France in 2014, and while his Grand Tour ambitions remain intact, he is aiming to hit an early peak in late April for the Ardennes Classics.

Cycling resolutions: 5 things to do in 2015.

"It’s nearly that time of year when we make a host of wild comments about eating and drinking less in the coming year, losing that Christmas paunch by doing more exercise or cutting out the cigarette you have with your coffee.

Come New Year’s Day, however, such assertions are soon forgotten as you reach for that extra chocolate from the tub while sipping on your third glass of wine.

But if you want to set yourself some targets without giving up too much of the good stuff then set yourself some cycling-based resolutions."

Gibraltar Road.

When someone like Caleb Fairly of Team Garmin-Sharp calls a ride "long and hard," you know it's a doozy. It's also quintessential SoCal: Gibraltar's 12 miles of narrow blacktop rise from the Pacific to the summit of 4,000-foot La Cumbre Peak with hairpin turns, ghostly burn areas, patchwork asphalt, sandstone cliffs, manzanita trees, expansive views of the Santa Ynez mountains—and more-than-occasional 15 percent grades.

BMC TeamMachine SLR03 105.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "An immensely rewarding ride that's worth upgrading down the line."

Race Radios Banned.

PEZ: Daily Distractions.

(pezcyclingnews.com)

PEZ: The Last 2014 EuroTrash!

Tinkoff-Saxo CEO: ‘Team is fine for 2015’ .

Tinkoff-Saxo is in solid financial footing — at least through the 2015 season.

That’s what team CEO Stefano Feltrin told VeloNews following comments from Tinkoff-Saxo owner Oleg Tinkov, which went viral over the weekend,  raising doubts about the squad’s financial stability.

Tinkov told Bloomberg TV that sanctions against Russia, coupled with plummeting oil prices and a beleaguered ruble, could spell trouble for the team’s future.

When contacted by VeloNews, Feltrin countered that Tinkov’s comments were in the context of a worst-case scenario, and said the team’s finances are in order, despite worsening economic conditions in Russia.

2014 The Season in photos.

"We flounder with short attention spans through the buzz of viral content and modern culture, but with one instant captured in 1/1000th of a second you sometimes need to stop, drown in the image and absorb the moment.

With so many of these moments in 2014 captured by our talented and dedicated photographers, we can look back at the pro cycling season and tumble into its most significant and pure events and see them as one, or as a whole.

For all of its elation, suffering, disappointment, scandal and magnificence that the summation of these moments depict, this is what “the beauty of cycling” means to me."

Basso focused on being Contador's super domestique in Giro-Tour double.

Ivan Basso has put aside any talk of retirement and told Cyclingnews that he can be Alberto Contador’s super domestique in the Spaniard’s quest to win the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France double.

Basso, 37, moved to Contador’s Tinkoff-Saxo squad at the end of the season and has enjoyed two training camps with the team in recent months. After seven years within the Cannondale Liquigas set up, the move also sees him return to Bjarne Riis, for whom he rode for between 2004 and 2006.

“There was no real talk of retirement because I had another few possibilities and I wasn’t ready to really stop.”

Longo Borghini confirms retirement.

Paolo Longo Borghini has decided to leave professional cycling. The 34-year-old now former Cannondale Pro Cycling rider, brother of Elisa Longo Borghini, announced his decision during a ceremony organized to celebrate the two samples of Ornavasso, his city.

His adventure in professional cycling, which began in 2004 with the Vini Caldirola and continued with Barloworld, Flaminia, ISD and Liquigas, lasted eleven seasons, in which he had the opportunity to race alongside great champions like Ivan Basso, Vincenzo Nibali and Peter Sagan, in addition to have the satisfaction of winning the GP Nobili Rubinetterie in 2006.

U.S. cycling community stricken by multiple tragedies over Christmas weekend.

The American cycling community was rocked by a spate of tragedies over the Christmas holiday weekend.

Two riders were killed on the road in incidents involving motor vehicles — one a hit-and-run in Baltimore, and the other a head-on collision during a group ride in the Bay Area — while a third cyclist was seriously injured in a hit-and-run incident on Christmas morning in Colorado.

A fourth tragedy struck the Kansas cycling community with the death of Joel Dyke, one of the co-creators of the Dirty Kanza 200; his death was not cycling-related.

All four occurrences happened over the span of three days — between Thursday, December 25, and Saturday, December 27.

Virtual Cycling Platform Zwift Lines Up Competition.

New virtual training platform Zwift has popped up in the news several times in the past few weeks, in outlets ranging from cycling-specific media to papers like The Telegraph. Not only has Zwift started competitions rumored to help UCI teams sniff out new talent, but it also brought in legendary racer Jens Voigt for a promotional race and made a deal with Pinarello to make its Dogma F8 road and Il Bolide time-trial frames available as options for riders on the Zwift platform.

"But what is the Zwift platform, you ask? For those of you who shun sites like Strava and prefer adventure touring to sweaty trainer sessions, Zwift may be completely unheard of. The company is focused on “fitness entertainment,” and is essentially an interactive video game played with participants from around the world. It describes the experience as "massive, multiplayer video-game technology meets the indoor cycling community.” (Let’s admit that the description reads as "regular nerds meet cycling nerds.”)."

Zefal Air Profil LL Mini pump.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "A little extra size and weight reaps considerable in-use benefits."

David Rome: Best of Home Wrench 2014.

Another twist in the Neri Sottoli tale.