2012 - Page 4 of 6 - Irish Peloton

June 18, 2012

The Grand Tour hat-trick: A stage win in each

The biggest stage races in the sport of cycling are the Grand Tours. Consisting of three weeks of racing, the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a Espana are each more than twice as long as the next longest stage race at the top level of the sport. To win one of these races is the pinnacle of any cyclist’s career.

Only five riders have ever won all three of these races. They are Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Felice Gimondi, Bernard Hinault and Alberto Contador. No rider has ever won all three in the same year. In fact, it is relatively rare to even complete all three in the same year.

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June 7, 2012

Is the Dauphine/Tour double a realistic possibility?

The following is a post written this time last year but Wiggins’s performance in the Dauphine so far this week has sparked more debate than ever as to whether it’s possible to win both the Dauphine and the Tour in the same year.

Of course we need to add 2011 to the figures at the bottom of the page where Wiggins won the Dauphine and DNF’d at the Tour and Evans won the Tour and finished second at the Dauphine.

Jens Voigt suggested on twitter today that Wiggins has peaked far too early. But does any rider really peak for the Dauphine? Isn’t Wiggins simply up against a peloton full of riders who are also aiming to peak for the Tour? Surely Wiggins is on the same upward form trajectory as all of his potential rivals and he is simply better now and will also be better than them in June. Only time will tell…

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May 10, 2012

Giro stage wins in the Rainbow Jersey

The 2012 Giro d’Italia isn’t a week old yet and Mark Cavendish has, perhaps unsurprisingly, already won two stages. But his first Grand Tour stage wins of the year are even more distinguished than usual, because he has taken these victories while clad in the rainbow jersey of world champion.

As tiny nuggets in the annals of cycling history go, winning a stage of the Giro d’Italia as world champion actually isn’t that uncommon. Cavendish’s wins means this is actually the 22nd year in which this has occurred. As it’s only been possible in 79 different years, it’s better than a one in four chance that any given world champion will win a stage of the Giro.

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May 10, 2012

Cycling and Football

Cycling is a strange sport. It’s a sport for individuals organised under the guise of teams. Spectators aren’t required to pay to go and watch it. It’s very difficult to sit down and watch a race if you have no idea who the main protaganists are or haven’t a notion of which riders are there and for what reasons.

Cycling fans, for the most part don’t support teams, they simply have a selection of favourite riders. Even if a cycling fan was to build up an affinity with a particualr team, that team may be called something different next year, or it may be based in a different country or it may be gone altogether.

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May 7, 2012

When is the leader of the Tour of Italy not the leader of the Tour of Italy?

Stage Three of this year’s Giro d’Italia ended in a massive crash caused by Roberto Ferrari. The two highest profile victims of the crash were the leader of the points competition Mark Cavendish and the leader of the entire race, Taylor Phinney.

The young American looked to have seriously hurt his ankle in the fall and actually didn’t cross the line with his bike to finish the stage. But he did climb out of an ambulance at the stage finish to collect his third Maglia Rosa of this year’s race. It remains to be seen whether Phinney will recover sufficiently to take part in the Stage Four team time trial. The rest day tomorrow will be of great benefit to him, but on viewing the pictures from the finish line, it does not look good.

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April 18, 2012

The height of hypocrisy?

Two days ago it was announced that the ‘A’ sample of Denis Galimzyanov of Team Katusha, taken on the 22nd March, had contained the performance enhancing drug EPO.

Rather than the usual blind denials and wacky excuses that we have become accustomed to as cycling fans, Galimzyanov made the decision yesterday to confess and apologise:

I recognize a fact of banned substance usage. I fully realized what I did. I deeply regret about what happened, and I apologize to the whole team and my teammates, along with my fans whom I disappointed. I am ready to suffer an appropriate punishment.

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