Category: Cycling

• Van der Poel holds of Pogacar and Ganna in classic battle
• Wiebes wins first women’s race since 2005

Mathieu van der Poel outsprinted Filippo Ganna and Tadej Pogacar to win his second Milan-Sanremo Classic on Saturday, claiming the first Monument race of the season, while the European champion Lorena Wiebes won the first staging of a women’s event since 2005.

Dutchman Van der Poel, winner in 2023, came out on top in a sprint finish after the leading trio were involved in a game of cat-and-mouse close to the line, with Ganna finishing second and Pogacar having to settle for third.

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• Jumbo-Visma star seals glory on Promenade des Anglais
• US countryman Magnus Sheffield claims final-stage win

The American cyclist Matteo Jorgenson won the week-long Paris-Nice race for the second straight year on Sunday.

On a good day for US cycling Jorgenson, who rides for the Jumbo-Visma team, finished runner-up in the eighth and final stage claimed by his countryman Magnus Sheffield of the Ineos-Grenadiers team.

Jorgenson became the 10th rider with consecutive titles in the Race to the Sun, joining the likes of cycling greats Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Raymond Poulidor. Sean Kelly holds the record for most consecutive wins – seven from 1982 to 1988.

Sheffield went solo in the Col des Quatre Chemins climb with 12.5 kilometers left and crossed the finish line on the Promenade des Anglais with a 29-second lead over Jorgenson.

Florian Lipowitz, of Germany, was second overall, one minute and 15 seconds behind Jorgenson. The Dutch rider Thymen Arensman completed the podium, 1:58 off the pace. Sheffield was fourth in the general classification.

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Olympic gold medallist on his strained departure from Ineos Grenadiers, moving to Q36.5 and feeling revitalised

It’s July 2022 and Tom Pidcock is flying down the towering Col du Galibier at 100km an hour, pushing the boundaries of what is achievable on a road bike, his rear wheel sliding through each snaking vertiginous bend, leaving his peers far behind and French TV commentators aghast.

A couple of hours later, he raises his arms at the top of Alpe d’Huez, one of the Tour’s most feared climbs, taking an exhilarating stage win in his debut Tour de France. A new star is born. Few doubt that it is only a matter of time until he wears the yellow jersey.

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Australian cyclist’s day began at 4.09am in Wellington, New Zealand, and ended 18-and-a-half hours later in Auckland

Throughout his career, Lachlan Morton – among the world’s pre-eminent ultra-endurance cyclists – has spent some long days on the bike. The Australian has raced the Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia, ridden from Land’s End to John o’Groats in the United Kingdom, and last year spent a month riding 14,200km around Australia.

But no single day has compared to an effort last month, beginning at 4.09am in Wellington, New Zealand and ending 18 and a half hours later in Auckland. Covering the 648km from the New Zealand capital to its biggest city in less than a day, the Australian cyclist made history.

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• Filippo Ganna’s win for Ineos Grenadiers cancelled
• Lead car went awry at roundabout to cause chaos

The opening stage of the Tour of Algarve ended in chaos on Wednesday when most of the peloton took the wrong road just before the finish, and race organisers later cancelled the results.

When the riders came through a roundabout just before the home straight, the lead car went the wrong side of the barriers and the majority of the bunch followed suit, leaving the crowd bewildered as they watched two races unfurl.

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• 2018 Tour de France winner also won double Olympic gold
• ‘You can’t do it forever, I’m getting a few grey hairs’

Tour de France winner and two-time Olympic gold medallist Geraint Thomas will retire as a racing cyclist at the end of the season, the Briton said in a social media post on Monday.

Thomas, 38, won the Tour de France in 2018, after securing gold for Britain in the team pursuit in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. He was also part of the British team pursuit trio that won three golds in the Track Cycling World Championships between 2007 and 2012.

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• Individual pursuit champion sets mark twice in one day
• Morris is first woman to claim title in new 4km format

Britain’s Anna Morris won gold in the individual pursuit at the European track championships in Belgium after breaking the world record twice in one day.

The Welsh cyclist set a new world’s best of 4min 28.306sec in the qualifiers and bettered that in the final in Heusden-Zolder as she beat Italy’s Vittoria Guazzini in 4:25.874.

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• Ineos Grenadiers among teams to withdraw in France
• Vehicle came towards the peloton at a roundabout

Several teams have pulled out of the Étoile de Bessèges cycling race in France after a car came towards the peloton at a roundabout during the third stage on Friday.

Ineos Grenadiers said: “The safety of our riders and staff is of paramount importance. Following multiple incidents of public vehicles entering the race course our riders, together with other teams, have decided not to complete today’s stage at #EDB2025.”

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• Gas can be misused to artificially increase performance
• UCI’s ban will come into effect on 10 February

Cycling’s governing body has banned the repeated use of carbon monoxide rebreathing that some riders allegedly misuse to artificially increase their performances.

Following a meeting of its executive committee on Saturday in France, the UCI said it approved a ban on repeated inhalation to protect the health of riders. The ban starts on 10 February.

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• Injured men include Benjamin Boos and Bruno Kessler
• 89-year-old driver collided with cyclists in Mallorca

Six riders in Germany’s track cycling team were treated in a hospital on Monday after being struck by a car driven by an 89-year-old man. Their injuries were not life-threatening, though they included multiple fractures, the team said in a statement.

The six injured men included the 2024 track world championship medallists Benjamin Boos and Bruno Kessler. The individual riders’ injuries were not specified.

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• Mendelspeck rider was training in Trentino region
• Piffer’s brother also injured during incident

Sara Piffer, a promising 19-year-old Italian rider, died during a training outing on Friday, the Italian Professional Cyclists’ Association (ACCPI) said, after she was reportedly hit by a car.

The Team Mendelspeck rider Piffer was struck by the vehicle on a minor road during a training session in Italy’s northern Trentino region, according to Italian media.

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• Australian disappears from Team Jayco AlUla’s squad page
• No explanation forthcoming with Tour Down Under starting this week

He is among Australia’s greatest sprinters – winner of five Tour de France stages and half a dozen other grand tour stage wins. But at the moment, Caleb Ewan is nowhere to be found.

Last week, Ewan’s profile was featured on the team page of his World Tour outfit, Australia-registered Team Jayco AlUla. By this week, the diminutive sprint star has disappeared from the website. Of the team’s 30 confirmed roster spots, there are 29 riders listed – with one conspicuously empty slot on the webpage where Ewan’s image once appeared.

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Belgian cyclist and the first to triumph in the five great one-day classics known as the Monuments

Rik Van Looy, who has died aged 90, was the most dominant one-day cycle racer of the 1950s and 60s, nicknamed “the Emperor of Herentals” (after the Belgian city in which he lived) or “the Wheel Breaker”. He ended his 18-year career with a tally of 371 professional road race victories, which remains second only to that of Eddy Merckx. A double world road race champion, he was the first cyclist to triumph in the five great one-day classics known today as the Monuments.

He began racing at 14 and was lapped five times in his first race, but improved rapidly to win the Belgian amateur championship twice; he took a bronze medal in the amateur world championship at Lugano in 1953. He turned professional a week later and won his first two races in the following 48 hours.

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• Roberts rebounds from Paris heartbreak with world title
• Tokyo Olympic champion Martin wins third world gold

American Hannah Roberts roared back from her Paris Olympic heartbreak on Saturday by claiming her fifth consecutive BMX freestyle world title at the UCI Urban Cycling World Championships in Abu Dhabi.

Roberts, 22, set the bar with a 95.70-point first run, a score no competitor could beat. Her second run scored 94.58, a mark that would have been high enough to win the event.

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