Cunego | 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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October 21, 2011

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So the 2011 cycling season is over and inevitably, the countdown has begun to the 2012 Tour Down Under in January.

Well, actually the 2011 season isn’t quite done yet. There’s a race called the Tour of Hainan currently taking place in China, where Ireland’s David McCann finished in 12th place on yesterday’s opening stage riding for the Giant Kenda cycling team. McCann actually finished second overall in this nine-stage race back in 2008.

There’s also the Japan Cup which takes place this coming Sunday. This is a hilly one-day race which has been won in the past by prominent riders such as Claudio Chiappucci, Gilberto Simoni and Damiano Cunego.

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May 19, 2010

What’s gone wrong with the I-talians?

We’re just about half way through the 2010 Giro d’Italia and there has still been no Italian stage winner. Liquigas, a team consisting of six Italian riders did win the team time trial but there has yet to be an individual Italian stage winner (or ‘I-talian’ as Sean Kelly would have us say). So we are left to wonder why is it, that on their home turf, the race that most Italians base their whole season on, that none of them can win a stage? Perhaps, if we take a look at recent results elsewhere whe shouldn’t be all too surprised that the natives are struggling to find success in this year’s Giro.

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April 20, 2010

Drugs Week in the Ardennes

Davide Rebellin winning Amstel Gold in 2004. He went on to win all three Ardennes classics that year, the only rider ever to do so. He is currently serving a doping ban.

Looking back over the recent results of the Ardennes classics it’s understandable that cycling fans would become disgruntled by the names that constantly crop up. Well known journalist Lionel Birnie jokingly referred to this week on the cycling calendar as ‘drugs week’. This is due to the number of riders who have put in great performances at these races only to have been subsequently banned for taking drugs. Recent winners of the Amstel Gold race include Alexandre Vinokourov, Davide Rebellin, Danilo Di Luca and Stefan Schumacher. The Kazakh has recently returned from a racing ban while the latter three riders are all banned currently after testing positive for CERA. Damiano Cunego, the winner in 2008, despite being an ambassador for the ‘I’m doping free’ campaign has landed himself in the middle of the ongoing Mantova investiagtion into his Lampre team. Michael Boogerd a winner of Amstel Gold in 1999, now retired, has recently been implicated in the HumanPlasma doping investigation being carried out in Austria.

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November 4, 2009

A Tour/Monument double

Rik van Looy, Roger de Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx. The only three riders to have won all five monument classics.

In a previous post I discussed the difficulties of winning all five of cycling’s monument classics, a feat only achieved by three men, Rik van Looy, Roger de Vlaeminck and as usual with these kind of stats, Eddy Merckx. Seemingly, the last cyclist capable of such a feat was Seán Kelly in the 1980s. While winning one day classics is immensely challenging, targeting the General Classement in a Grand Tour poses a whole other set of challenges. While Kelly did win a Grand Tour in 1988 and Eddy Merckx is an exception to most of the rules of winning bike races, van Looy and de Vlaeminck never came close to winning a Grand Tour. This pair of classics specialists were hard men, masters on a bike, but men not equipped with the necessary attributes to challenge effectively over a three week stage race.

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September 16, 2009

To abandon or not to abandon?

The main contenders for the World Championships are all starting to call it a day in the Vuelta a España. This morning before Stage 17, the notable absentees from the start line included double stage winner Damiano Cunego and current World Champion Alessandro Ballan, the latter having now ridden his last race in the rainbow jersey, unless of course, he wins it again. The two Italians add their names to a long list of riders who’ve abandoned the Vuelta so far.

Alessandro Ballan and Damiano Cunego (along with Matti Breschel) on the podium of last year’s World Championship road race in Varese.

Riders expected to do well in the World Championships that are on that list include Fabien Cancellara, Oscar Freire, Tom Boonen, Sylvain Chavanel, Simon Gerrans and Pierrick Fédrigo. But the question I’ve been asking myself this morning is, does it actually benefit the rider to abandon with 5 or 6 stages left to ride. Perhaps, the rider would be better served finishing out the Spanish Grand Tour, keeping the body and the form ticking over? Ignoring the possibility of crashing and picking up an injury at top level racing, is it more beneficial for riders to complete the 21 stages of the Vuelta or to prepare alone over the final few days before the Worlds? Or perhaps avoiding the Vuelta altogether is a better option?

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