Cancellara Archives - Irish Peloton

March 31, 2017

Cobbled Classics – Doubles, Trebles and one Quadruple

For the purposes of this exercise the ‘cobbled classics’ are one of the following races: Het Volk (yes it’s still ‘Volk’, always will be), Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, Dwars Door Vlaanderen, E3 Prijs, Ghent-Wevelgem, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. We can argue about what constitutes a classic until the cows come home. Call Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne or Dwars Door Vlaanderen a semi-classic if you like, but this is the seven I’ve chosen to go with.

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March 20, 2015

Milan San Remo Tune-up

Which is the best race to ride yourself into form for Milan San Remo? Is it Paris-Nice? Or is it Tirreno-Adriatico?

While the respective race organisers ASO and RCS try to tempt the major G.C. riders to their races, the classics stars are also faced with a choice of how best to prepare for the first monument classic of the season.

Take a look at the results of Milan San Remo for the last few years and it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that Paris-Nice provides the better preparation. Last year’s winner Alexander Kristoff was present at the French race as were the winners of the 2012 and 2011 editions, Simon Gerrans and Matt Goss.

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January 2, 2015

A Monumental Loss of Tradition

(via https://www.flickr.com/photos/brendan2010/)

Norwegian, Swiss, Dutch, Australian and Irish -the nationalities of the five winners of the 2014 monument classics were unusually diverse. It was only the fifth time that all five races were won by riders from different countries. Notably the winners didn’t include any Belgians, French, Italians or Spaniards. This is not quite a first in cycling history, but it almost is.

Labelled ‘La Doyenne’ for good reason, the first ever monument classic that took place was Liége-Bastogne-Liége in 1892. Only one year has passed since then where none of the five took place, 1895. The following year after that barren Spring, Paris-Roubaix arrived, soon followed thereafter by the Tour of Lombardy and then Milan San Remo. In 1913, the Tour of Flanders completed what we now hold dear as the set of five biggest one day races and not a year has passed since then, despite the two World Wars, where at least one of them hasn’t taken place.

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April 9, 2014

Cancellara – Record Breaker

Cancellara wins the 2014 Tour of Flanders - his seventh monument classic.

Twitter is a transient beast. Almost as soon as you plop a thought or a fact or a piece of nonsense on the screen…it’s gone. For all it’s worth, an adequate Twitter search engine still does not exist, rendering this transient information largely inaccessible.

During Fabian Cancellara’s displays of strength in this year’s Milan San Remo and the Tour of Flanders, I happened across a few facts pertaining to his incredible consistency in the monument classics, tweeted them, but now they’re gone. So I’ve collected a few of the better ones here to illustrate just how impressive Cancellara has been over the past few years.

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September 13, 2013

The Most Versatile Classics Rider in Cycling

So which rider is the most versatile classics rider in the current peloton? Who has what it takes across all five of cycling’s hardest one day races, the monument classics?

If we are to judge simply on the number of wins in these five races, it has been a ding dong battle for supremacy for the last few years between Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen. Boonen has four Paris-Roubaixs and three Tours of Flanders, both records. While Cancellara’s total of six victories are spread between those two same races along with a single win in Milan San Remo.

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December 11, 2011

What a difference a pro makes

Eight months before the Olympic Time Trial takes place in London, Fabian Cancellara was out around Surrey doing a recon of the 44km route, as revealed in the latest Cycling Weekly magazine. When one of his entourage suggested that they skip a small part of the route, the Swiss time trial specialist replied “we’re doing it. We are riding every single metre“.

This is what champions do. They recon routes in the depths of winter. They attach a helmet cam to their heads as they do it. They watch the route video over and over in the days before the event. Then when it comes to the day itself, they are able to draw on all of the extra knowledge they’ve gained, thereby giving them a crucial edge over those opponents who are not willing to go to these lengths in their pursuit of victory.

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