Category: Cycling

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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Triple Olympic medallist is fiercely honest about the storm of emotion that engulfed her in the Paris velodrome and being unable to tell her family Matthew Richardson would soon be joining her in Britain

‘It’s a good question,” Emma Finucane says as she thinks searchingly of the most important lesson she has learned about herself after a year like no other for the 21-year-old sprint cyclist. She won three Olympic medals, including one gold, and two world champion titles while carrying a secret she could not even share with her family for many months.

Finucane’s fierce honesty and questioning introspection is rare in such a young rider who is in the foothills of a career that may yet transcend the achievements of British Olympic track riders led by Jason and Laura Kenny and Chris Hoy. Her candour and intelligence soon emerge as she charts the physical and psychological depths explored at the Paris Olympics before she talks openly about the way she and her boyfriend, Matthew Richardson, who won three sprint medals for Australia at the Games, knew he would soon switch countries and move to GB Cycling. That decision shocked and dismayed his former teammates and supporters.

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• Bike collided with the open door of vehicle in Belgium
• Incident broke double Olympic champion’s bike in two

The double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel suffered fractures to his rib, right shoulder blade and hand, his team, Soudal-QuickStep, said on Tuesday. According to ­Belgian media, the 24-year-old crashed into an open door of a postal vehicle while he was on a training ride in Oetingen.

Evenepoel, who claimed gold in the men’s road race and time trial at the Paris Olympics, was conscious after the incident, with the impact breaking his bike, reports said.

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After issuing the findings of its review into the Olympic hero’s defection to Great Britain, AusCycling’s upset is understandable

Conflicting national allegiances in sport are no simple thing. It is hardly unreasonable for someone with more than one national background to feel competing tugs when it comes to flying the flag on the international stage. Emotion and pragmatism collide to force hard decisions.

Australia is a deeply multicultural nation – more than one in four Australians were born overseas, while millions more have parents born elsewhere. We are a nation of complex sporting allegiances. I have dual nationalities; if it wasn’t for the fact that I have all the sporting talent of a gnat, I might have to consider which country to represent.

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• British cyclist confirms retirement after 18th season
• Deignan plans to continue to work in the sport

Lizzie Deignan, the London 2012 silver medallist and former world road race champion, has confirmed that 2025 will be her final year in the women’s peloton.

“Next year will be my final season,” said Deignan, who has moved back to her native Yorkshire after a long period based in Monaco. “It’s been a question that’s been asked of me, over and over, the last couple of years – ‘When are you going to retire?’ – and I have been thinking about it.”

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• British rider delivers victory in Singapore Criterium
• ‘I couldn’t have wished for a better send-off than here’

Mark Cavendish claimed victory in his final race as a professional cyclist. The 39-year-old produced a trademark sprint finish to cross the line first in the Tour de France Prudential Singapore Criterium.

Cavendish’s fellow competitors gave him a guard of honour before the race and the Manxman was understandably emotional at the end.

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• Briton’s last race is Tour de France Criterium in Singapore
• ‘I have achieved everything that I can on the bike’

Mark Cavendish has confirmed he will retire on Sundaytoday, ending a career that includes the all-time record for most stage victories at the Tour de France and four world titles on the track and road.

The 39-year-old, who announced his retirement last May before reversing that decision five months later, revealed his decision with a post on Instagram, which showed his greatest victories before ending with a simple message: “My racing career … completed it.”

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Former world champion appears in Adelaide court 10 months after partner, a fellow worlds winner and Olympian, died outside their family home

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The former world champion cyclist Rohan Dennis has delayed pleading to charges over the death of his wife, fellow Olympian Melissa Hoskins, so negotiations with prosecutors can continue.

Dennis, 34, 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 last year.

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• Race begins in Lille on 5 July and returns to Paris finale
• Tour de France Femmes begins in Brittany on 26 July

Mountains, crosswinds, cobbles and time trials: none of the hazards of the 2025 Tour de France route, unveiled in Paris on Tuesday, are likely to derail the seemingly unstoppable Tadej Pogacar, winner of almost every race worth winning in 2024.

Next summer the Slovenian – once a cheeky prodigy but now a ruthless terminator – will be back at the Tour’s Grand Départ, for a race that starts in Lille on 5 July and returns to the traditional finale, after a one-year absence because of the Paris Olympics, on the Champs-Élysées in the capital on 27 July.

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The courage with which he faces his diagnosis is typical of a man who engages with life in his own way, with perspective

At a certain age, joked Sir Chris Hoy in October 2011, you don’t even buy green bananas. The throwaway remark was intended to underline the complexities and unpredictabilities of being a “senior” athlete – Hoy was then 35, seemingly blessed with eternal youth – but it seems grimly apposite in the light of the Scot’s announcement that he has terminal cancer and may have only between two and four years to live.

There has been universal warmth and admiration for the way Hoy has dealt with his diagnosis, revealed publicly in an interview with the Sunday Times. An upcoming memoir, All That Matters, will go into further detail, along with relating the multiple sclerosis diagnosis of Hoy’s wife, Sarra. The unflinching courage shown by Hoy, the acknowledgment of the tremendous difficulty of processing and communicating what has happened to their family, underlines that here is a remarkable human being, who engages with life – and death – in his own way, with a humbling degree of perspective.

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