May 28, 2017

Grand Tour Final Day Victories

A Grand Tour has never been closer. Five riders could still conceivably win this race. Any of the five could have a puncture, have a bad day or need a poo at a bad time – which could leave the door open for any of the others to take the overall victory.

The favourite remains Tom Dumoulin. He is the superior time trialist having put time into all of his rivals on the Stage 10 time trial to Montefalco. Every time trial is different – length, terrain, weather etc. But let’s take what we learned from Stage 10 and apply it to today’s test. The table below shows how many seconds per kilometre Dumoulin put into his rivals over 39.8km and how much time this would translate to over a shorter 29.3km stage.

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May 27, 2017

Closest Grand Tour Ever

Two stages to go of the 2017 Giro d’Italia and Nairo Quintana, Tom Dumoulin and Vincenzo Nibali are separated by just 43 seconds. But not only that, look down the general classification a bit further and there is also a mere 90 seconds separating Quintana and Domenico Pozzovivo back in sixth place, with Thibault Pinot and Ilnur Zakarin in between in fourth and fifth. This is remarkably close after over 85 hours of racing.

Is this the closest Grand Tour of all time?

Well, of the last 30 years, it certainly is. Any further back than that and data is hard to come by. You’re in the realm of trawling through newspaper archives for each edition of each race. And given the short window that this stat is in anyway relevant – if anyone else feels like doing that to themselves, go for it. You’ve got a few hours left before the G.C. in this Giro looks completely different.

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June 22, 2016

The Tour Preparation Puzzle

Nobody knows. You don’t know. I don’t know. Christian Prudhomme doesn’t know. Chris Froome doesn’t know. Even David Brailsford doesn’t know.

Nobody knows who is going to win the 2016 Tour de France.

My day job is in sports betting. Even if you have solid mathematical models taking all of the previous 102 editions of the Tour into account you’d still be nowhere near knowing who will win. If you had the results of every cycling race ever, the performance data from every training ride of every rider, analytics on tactical performances of every team and the biological passport data from every rider in the race, you still wouldn’t know.

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March 15, 2016

Milan-San Remo Preparation

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 events, 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 John Degenkolb was present at the French race as were the winners of the 2014, 2012 and 2011 editions, Alexander Kristoff, Simon Gerrans and Matt Goss. Additionally, all three podium finishers last year chose Paris-Nice – Degenkolb, Kristoff and Michael Matthews.

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February 17, 2016

The Attraction of Uncertainty

By losing the race on the last day, Sevilla was following an established Vuelta tradition in which the outcome remains uncertain until the final day. It’s a pattern that distinguishes the Spanish race from the Tour de France, where the winner nearly always has a very clear, unassailable margin.

As is written by Adrian Bell and Lucy Fallon in the book Viva La Vuelta. The race referred to is the 2001 edition where Ángel Casero managed to overhaul the Colombian Óscar Sevilla in the final time trial to win the Vuelta without winning a stage and without ever wearing the leader’s jersey.

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July 30, 2015

Top Five in the Tour de France

Much was made before this year’s Tour de France of the salivating showdown we had in prospect between the ‘Fab Four’ of Vincenzo Nibali, Chris Froome, Alberto Contador and Nairo Quintana. The four are all Grand Tour winners and had never all competed in a race together until this past July. We weren’t really treated to a four-way showdown due to Contador and Nibali struggling in the opening couple of weeks and it looked like Froome had the race sewn up after the first summit finish until Quintana finally made a race of it in the final Alpine stages.

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