Category: Cycling

• Danish rider extends overall lead with third stage victory
• Britain’s Tom Pidcock grabs third spot on 151km ride

Mads Pedersen continued his domination of sprint finishes at the Giro d’Italia by narrowly winning stage five on Wednesday, his third stage victory of this year’s race which extended the Danish rider’s overall lead.

At the end of the 151km ride from Ceglie Messapica to Matera, Pedersen appeared to struggle with the pace on the climb to the finish, but recovered before starting his dash to the line early, just managing to hold off his challengers.

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Former world champion cyclist avoids jail after pleading guilty to committing aggravated act likely to cause harm after 2023 incident that killed Olympian Hoskins

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Olympic cyclist Rohan Dennis has received a suspended jail sentence over a road incident that led to the death of his wife, fellow Olympian Melissa Hoskins.

Dennis, 34, appeared in South Australia’s district court on Wednesday after pleading guilty to a charge of committing an aggravated act likely to cause harm.

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• Picnic PostNL rider claims maiden grand tour stage win
• Mads Pedersen finishes fourth and retains maglia rosa

Casper van Uden claimed his maiden grand tour victory in a sprint finish on stage four of the Giro d’Italia to top an all-Dutch podium in Lecce. The Picnic PostNL rider Van Uden powered ahead of his compatriot Olav Kooij (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Maikel Zijlaard (Tudor) in a bunch dash for the line. Mads Pedersen finished fourth to retain the maglia rosa.

After the first three stages in Albania and a subsequent rest day, the Giro returned to Italy in Puglia, with a mostly-flat 189-kilometre run from Alberobello to Lecce.

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• Five-time Olympic champion was ‘a functioning addict’
• Wiggins, 45, has been sober for a year after therapy

Sir Bradley Wiggins has revealed he became addicted to cocaine following his retirement from cycling and is “lucky to be here”. The 2012 Tour de France winner and five-time Olympic champion said his children wanted to put him in rehab amid fears the issue could prove fatal.

Wiggins, a father of two, is now 12 months sober, attends regular therapy sessions and feels “a lot more at peace” with himself.

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• 21-year-old wins stage two by 1sec for Ineos Grenadiers
• Second is enough for Primoz Roglic to take overall lead

Josh Tarling of Ineos Grenadiers set a time-trial pace even the race favourite, Primoz Roglic, could not match to win stage two of the Giro d’Italia by one second in Albania.

Tarling had a nervous wait before his first Grand Tour stage victory was confirmed as the 21-year-old Welshman watched Roglic come so close, but the Slovene had to settle for second place with the consolation of taking over the leader’s pink jersey for Red Bull–Bora–Hansgrohe.

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• Danish rider holds off Van Aert in bunch sprint to line
• Mikel Landa abandons race after crash late in stage

Denmark’s former world champion Mads Pedersen edged out Wout van Aert in a bunch sprint to win the opening stage of the Giro d’Italia in Tirana, but Mikel Landa was forced to abandon the race after a crash five kilometres from the finish.

Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) was positioned perfectly by his teammates for the climax in the Albanian capital and held off Belgium’s Van Aert to become the first rider this year – and the first Dane – to wear the overall leader’s pink jersey. Venezuela’s Orluis Aular (Movistar) was third across the line.

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Dominance of last year’s champion can become predictable and this event could be volatile with more opportunities for the peloton

The 2025 Giro d’Italia may lack the star power of the Tour de France, but it is likely to make up for it with dynamic and unpredictable racing when it gets under way in Tirana on Friday.

Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, the top three riders in last year’s Tour de France, are not racing, but the Giro will, as ever, throw up plentiful drama.

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Tour de France winner in 2018 is building for a final assault on the great race before a farewell in Cardiff

“Bike racing is all I have ever known,” says Geraint Thomas of the 19-year professional career that will end this summer with one final Tour de France and a farewell appearance in the Tour of Britain.

While many of his peers are relishing a Tadej Pogacar-free Giro d’Italia that starts on Friday, the 2018 Tour winner has opted against three weeks in Italy, favouring one last ride in July’s French hothouse.

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• Sprinter won five Tour de France stages in top career
• Messy exit from JaycoAlUla team took ‘significant toll’

Caleb Ewan, at his peak one of Australian cycling’s greatest talents, has stunned the sport by announcing his immediate retirement.

Ewan delivered his bombshell decision on social media, saying events of the last two years – especially around his messy exit from top Australian team Jayco AlUla – have “taken a significant toll on my relationship with the sport”.

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• Pogacar leaves rivals behind with uphill attack
• Le Court wins four-way sprint in women’s race

Tadej Pogacar launched one of his trademark uphill attacks to win the Liège–Bastogne–Liège classic race for the third time on Sunday. The defending champion made his move about 35km (22 miles) from the end of the undulating 252km (156-mile) trek to open up a gap of 10sec at the top, and then kept increasing it all the way to the line.

It was his third victory overall at the spring classic race, which is also one of the five “monuments” in one-day cycling along with Paris-Roubaix on the cobbles, the Tour of Lombardy, Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders. Pogacar now has nine “monument” victories.

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• World champion surges clear on race's brutal final climb
• Kévin Vauquelin second, with Tom Pidcock coming third

Tadej Pogacar bounced back in style after his Paris-Roubaix and Amstel Gold Race heartbreaks as he claimed a second Flèche Wallonne title with an early attack in the finale on Wednesday.

The world champion attacked when 400 metres from the finish on the brutally steep Mur de Huy and never looked back, prevailing over France’s Kévin Vauquelin and third-placed Tom Pidcock of Britain.

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British cyclist whose record of 11 Tour de France finishes from 12 starts stood until 2024

Barry Hoban, who has died aged 85, was one of the first generation of British cyclists to make a mark in European professional cycling, a prolific sprint winner whose UK record of eight stage wins in the Tour de France stood for 34 years until the greatest sprinter of them all, Mark Cavendish, reached his peak. His record of 11 Tour finishes from 12 starts stood until 2024 when it was eclipsed by Geraint Thomas.

Hoban’s life was intimately entwined with that of the British star Tom Simpson, who died on the Tour in 1967; like Simpson he was based in Ghent, in Belgium, he married Simpson’s widow Helen, and the complex resonances of Simpson’s tragic demise remained with the couple decades later.

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• Danish rider pips favourite Tadej Pogacar at the line
• Bredewold tops all-Dutch podium in women’s race

Mattias Skjelmose claimed a shock victory at the Amstel Gold Race as he won a sprint finish against favourite Tadej Pogacar and Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel on Sunday.

It was supposed to be a fight between world champion Pogacar and Evenepoel but Denmark’s Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) had not read the script as he beat Pogacar by the width of a tyre. Evenepoel, who recently returned from serious injuries sustained in a crash, was third.

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• Yorkshire-born cyclist won eight stages of Tour de France
• Famously beat Eddy Merckx at Gent-Wevelgem in 1974

The pioneering British road sprinter and Classics rider Barry Hoban has died at the age of 85. Hoban was for many years the UK record holder for stage wins in the Tour de France with a tally of eight during his 17-year professional racing career, a total bettered only by the greatest sprinter of them all, Mark Cavendish, in 2009.

Hoban’s first stage victory in the Tour, in 1967, was not one he cared to remember – or that he felt was really a win – as it came the day after the sudden death of his friend and rival Tom Simpson on Mont Ventoux; he was “permitted” to escape and cross the line first by the grieving peloton.

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