Category: Cycling

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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Cycling’s finest sprinter says he achieved all he could in the sport, and that he is lucky to retire on his own terms

“Oh mate, for the last couple of years I’ve been broken,” Mark Cavendish says with a throaty chuckle as he considers the state of his body after decades on the bike. Cavendish will turn 40 next May and his extraordinary career finally ended last month when he won his final race in Singapore to follow his record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage victory this summer.

Cavendish is the greatest sprint cyclist the sport has seen and all the blurring wins and moments of history mean there are no regrets even when he feels so battered. “I have to do so much maintenance of my body now,” he says, “and I feel it most when I go running. It gives me a perspective on how many hours I’ve spent crouched over the handlebars while I’m trying to run. That’s when I realise how I’ve been in the same physical position for the best part of 30 years and at the highest level for nearly 20 years.

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Adelaide Olympian faces up to seven years in jail after pleading to lesser charge of creating likelihood of harm

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Cyclist Rohan Dennis will not be found responsible for the death of his wife – fellow Olympian Melissa Hoskins – but could be jailed for up to seven years after pleading guilty to a new charge.

Dennis, 34, had appeared in the Adelaide magistrates court on Tuesday to answer charges of dangerous driving causing death and an aggravated charge of driving without due care. He was arrested after Hoskins, 32, was struck by his vehicle in front of their home at Medindie, in Adelaide’s inner north, on 30 December 2023.

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