Category: Cycling

Team GB have prepared for high temperatures in Paris and precise fuelling for the 158km women’s road race. Here’s how to use their strategies on endurance rides

Great Britain’s best female road cyclists are gearing up to tackle the mammoth 158km road race in Paris at the beginning of next month: and it is not just the highly competitive field of riders they will have to contend with.

There have been warnings that this Olympic Games could be the hottest on record, with high temperatures and stifling humidity. The four-strong team, headed by Lizzie Deignan, who will compete in her fourth Games for Team GB, are hoping to push themselves into medal contention across almost 100 miles of gruelling and arduous technical racing.

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• Urska Zigart not being selected for Paris 2024 ‘didn’t help’
• ‘She deserves her spot. She’s double national champion’

The Tour de France champion Tadej Pogacar says the Slovenian federation’s decision not to select his girlfriend Urska Zigart for the Olympics was one of the reasons behind his 11th-hour decision to withdraw from the Paris Games.

On Monday the Slovenian Olympic Committee said in a statement that Pogacar had not been selected because of fatigue, less than 24 hours after he had won his third Tour title in Nice. However, Pogacar flew to the Netherlands to compete in a criterium race on Tuesday evening.

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• Pogacar left out of Slovenia team for Paris road race
• Cyclist’s next target may be world title in September

The Tour de France champion, Tadej Pogacar, has been ruled out of the Paris 2024 Olympics, the Slovenian Olympic Committee [OKS] said on Monday.

Pogacar, who won his third Tour de France on Sunday to complete a Tour and Giro d’Italia double in 2024, was not selected because of fatigue, the Slovenian Olympic Committee said in a statement.

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She’s one of Britain’s greatest ever athletes – yet has often felt like a failure and fraud. She talks about her Olympic golds, the misery that came with them, and the joy she has found since she retired

Victoria Pendleton is driving us to the stables in Dorset. We’re off to see her two horses, Vesper and Sarah. She has two bags with her – one containing her cycling gold medals, the other crammed with carrots and apples. She is convinced she’s going to feed the horses the medals. At times, you sense she wouldn’t mind.

Ask Pendleton for her greatest achievement in sport, and she’ll tell you about an event that occurred after she retired. She’d only been riding horses for a year when she raced at Cheltenham in 2016, finishing two and a half lengths behind the great Nina Carberry in the Foxhunter Chase. She’s never felt so elated, she says. Does that mean more than the gold medals? “In some ways, because it was totally unexpected. You’re dealing with a live animal so you never know what’s going to happen. All I went in with was my courage – my balls and balance, and nothing else.”

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• Cyclist set to retire after setting record for stage victories
• ‘It was just about enjoying it. There’s no pressure’

The British cyclist Mark Cavendish will likely retire after finishing the final stage of the Tour de France on Sunday, having finally achieved his ambition this year of breaking the all-time record for most stage wins at the Tour.

The 39-year-old Cavendish was the second cyclist to start the individual time trial from Monaco to Nice, which ends this year’s Tour, and looked emotional as he waved to the crowd on his approach to the finish line.

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Slovenian thought a Giro win alone was realistic, but a crash in the Basque Country put a rarer feat within his grasp

There is a good reason why Sunday will be the first time the Tour de France has finished with a time trial in 35 years. The 1989 race closed with the ultimate cliffhanger on the Champs-Élysées, with Greg LeMond starting as the underdog, and ousting Laurent Fignon of France by eight seconds, the tightest winning margin the great race has witnessed.

In subsequent years, organisers feared that any attempt to repeat the stage would be doomed in comparison with what that race produced, hence they persisted with the tried and tested format of a road race stage finishing with a circuit race up and down the Champs-Élysées.

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The yellow jersey won his fifth mountain stage – a record – ahead of the final time trial as he closed on total victory

• Report: Pogacar heads for Tour glory with fifth stage win of race

Some discussion of the Pog/hog thing.

Matthew Lysaght: “Absolutely not, in my eyes anyway. It was the Queen Stage, he’s in yellow and he clearly wanted to “layeth the smacketh down” on Visma. As they hinted on Eurosport, he could have eyes on Cavs record too and that is all the more reason to do what he did.”

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The Slovenian closed in on regaining the Tour and completing the first Giro-Tour double since Marco Pantani in 1998

• Report: Pogacar bursts clear in the Alps to tighten grip on Tour

125km to go: This course is full of small bits of descent followed by sharp climbs and hairpins. Treacherous stuff. There’s an intermediate sprint coming but the likes of Girmay and Philipsen will be nowhere near it. The gap is a minute now to the GC group. Those in the breakaway’s task, should they be up for it, is to act as bridges for Vingegaard. That relies on tactics and legs. The best-laid plans? Visma are going for it.

130km to go: One absentee from the breakaway is Richard Carapaz, who is chasing polka-dot points. Does that mean his EF-Education team will push hard to get their man up the road, lending help to UAE? It does. Ineos Grenadiers need something from Carlos Rodriguez too.

1. Tadej Pogacar (SLO) UAE Team Emirates 77

2. Jonas Vingegaard (DEN) Team Visma - Lease a Bike 58

3. Remco Evenepoel (BEL) Soudal - Quick-Step 42

4. Oier Lazkano (ESP) Movistar Team 41

5. Richard Carapaz (ECU) EF Education - EasyPost 37

6. Jonas Abrahamsen (NOR) Uno-X Mobility 36

7. David Gaudu (FRA) Groupama - FDJ 30

8. Carlos Rodríguez (ESP) INEOS Grenadiers 24

9. Ben Healy (IRL) EF Education - EasyPost 21

10. Tobias Johannessen (NOR) Uno-X Mobility 19

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Victor Campanaerts of Lotto Dstny scored a superb sprint win from a three-man break after a highly active hilly stage

• Jeremy Whittle’s stage 18 report from Barcelonnette

179km to go: Attacks from the start. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin Deceuninck), who knows a thing or two about a long-distance breakaway, is up there.

Allez!

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Jasper Philipsen made it a hat-trick while Mark Cavendish missed out on his final chance of a Tour stage win

Mark Cavendish on his aims for today: “We try for a sprint. Eighteen years ago … 16 years ago, sorry, in Nîmes, I had a stage win.

“I’ve been here since, but I’ve not been here for a bunch sprint since, I think. Nils Pollitt won in ’21, same finish as that last km or so. And the wind could play a factor.”

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Pogacar took over a minute on the defending champion to take an even tighter grip on the yellow jersey

• Report: Pogacar pounces again to deflate Vingegaard

What a brutal climb to start the day. Not much fun for those who barely made the time limit on Saturday – that includes Mark Cavendish. Monsieur Prudhome waves them away up the hill, and it’s French riders to the fore on this 7km climb.

The Professional Cyclists’ Association (CPA) said it will take legal action against a spectator who threw potato chips at UAE Team Emirates’ Tadej Pogacar and Visma-Lease A Bike’s Jonas Vingegaard during the Tour de France stage 14.

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As if custom made for the Netflix era, the pair bring contrasting personalities and styles to their repeat head to heads

Choose a picture that sums up this Tour de France and it might be this one: Tadej Pogacar on the right, Jonas Vingegaard on the left, barely a tyre’s width between their front wheels as they sprinted for the finish line on Wednesday, with the Dane scraping home the winner.

Each great rivalry on the Tour has created its key image, and it may be that in years to come this ranks alongside Raymond Poulidor and Jacques Anquetil rubbing elbows on the Puy de Dôme, Fausto Coppi handing Gino Bartali a bottle of water – or was it the other way round? – and Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond crossing the line hand in hand at l’Alpe d’Huez. Or, for the connoisseurs, Hinault and the Dutchman Joop Zoetemelk in a unique escape to contest the finish on the Champs-Élysées in 1979.

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The two-time winner seized the Pyrenean stage and took 43 seconds from defending champion Jonas Vingegaard

• Report: Pogacar wins stage 14 to extend overall lead
• News: Pidcock Covid exit, two weeks before Olympics

A look at this stage’s profile presents the view of how difficult it is going to be.

Could ‘G” pull out soon? He admits here he’s tested positive.

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• Ineos Grenadiers rider returns home to begin recovery
• Pidcock is one of Team GB’s main medal hopes in Paris

Tom Pidcock is out of the Tour de France after testing positive for Covid-19, a little over two weeks before he aims to defend his Olympic mountain bike title in Paris on 29 July.

The 24-year-old Yorkshireman narrowly missed out on a second career stage win in the Tour when he finished second on stage nine last week, but will not start Saturday’s stage 14. Instead Pidcock will return home to recover but with limited time to go before he heads to Paris as one of Team GB’s main medal hopes.

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Jasper Philipsen won a messy sprint finish at the end of an eventful stage livened up by a strong breakaway, crosswinds and a late crash

• Read Jeremy Whittle’s stage 13 report from Pau

152km to go: The gap remains at 28 seconds, so this breakaway could get reeled in yet.

152km to go: A breakaway group of about 20 riders have opened a gap of 37 seconds over the peloton but the riders of Jayco-AlUla are trying to close it down because they don’t have anybody in it and have been ordered to rectify the situation by their team boss.

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