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Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Wednesday, September 25, 2019

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2018 Tour de France | 2018 Giro d'Italia

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. - Alexander Pope

Cycling's World Championships

Current racing:

Latest completed racing:


Elite women's world time trial championships reports

We posted the organizer's report with the results

Here's the report from Annemiek van Vleuten's Mitchelton-Scott team:

Reigning champion Annemiek van Vleuten (The Netherlands) took home the bronze medal in difficult conditions at the UCI Time Trial World Championships in Yorkshire today.

Chloe Dygert

Chloe Dygert riding to the Gold Medal.

The two-time defending champion was looking to make in a hat-trick of wins as she headed down the start ramp in Ripon with the rain continuing to fall despite a delay to proceedings due to the poor weather conditions.

Mitchelton-SCOTT teammate Amanda Spratt had already taken to the course and the Australian crossed the finish line with the second fastest time before going on to finish 11th overall.

Meanwhile, Van Vleuten passed through the opening time check in second place, 1'09" down on the fastest time set by the charging Chloe Dygert (USA). Despite the time loss, the Dutch TT champion continued to push on in the tricky conditions, with puddles spread around the 30.3-kilometre course making line choice even more important.

With Dygert already finished, Van Vleuten knew the time to beat as she raced towards the finish, but the double Giro Rosa champion couldn't overhaul the deficit, eventually coming home in third place.

Annemiek van Vleuten:
"I'm disappointed that I didn't have a good day today. The course suited me very well, so I can't say it was the course, it's just not my day. I could also see afterwards from my power output that I can do better."

"I can't blame anything, it was just not a good day. Everyone was the same with the rain. It would have been different if halfway we had rain, but for everyone it was the same circumstances."

"Chloe Dygert showed she was on a super day. But it gives me a little bit of hope for next year, because I didn't have a good day. If I'd have been on a good day and then almost got beaten by two-minutes then I'd have been very disappointed."

Deceuninck-Quick Step riders heading to the World’s

Here’s the team’s post:

Julian Alaphilippe, Rémi Cavagna and Florian Sénéchal, (France), Kasper Asgreen and Michael Mørkøv (Denmark), Tim Declercq, Remco Evenepoel, Philippe Gilbert and Yves Lampaert (Belgium), Davide Martinelli and Elia Viviani (Italy), Alvaro Hodeg (Colombia), Bob Jungels (Luxembourg), Zdenek Stybar and Petr Vakoč (Czech Republic) – riders who between them have scored more than 50 wins for Deceuninck – Quick-Step since the start of what has been another tremendous season for the outfit managed by Patrick Lefevere – will all be present at the World Championships.

Philippe Gilbert

Philippe Gilbert won in 2012. Can he win another rainbow jersey?

Martinelli and Viviani have already made their appearance in Yorkshire, and came very close to taking a medal with Italy in the TTT mixed relay, while four of the riders mentioned above – Asgreen, Evenepoel, Jungels and Lampaert – will be in action also on Wednesday, when they’ll roll down the ramp for the 54.1km individual time trial between Northallerton and Harrogate, the longest race scheduled by the discipline in the last six years.

The United Kingdom has previously hosted the competition in 1970 (Leicester) and 1982 (Goodwood), but neither of the previous routes featured so many meters of elevation as this year’s race, which starts from Leeds and travels to Harrogate. There, a 14km hilly circuit featuring short and punchy climbs, technical and narrow roads and tricky corners, on what is expected to be a rainy day, promises to turn the 284km-long event into a race of attrition.

Since the team was created, back in 2003, three Deceuninck – Quick-Step riders have won the prestigious rainbow jersey in the road race on four occasions – 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2014 – making our squad the only one this century to have had so many different victors at the World Championships.

Selle Italia and Selle San Marco unite and diversify

Bike Europe sent me this update:

ROSSANO VENETO, Italy – Two historic “Made in Italy” cycling brands aim to reinforce their tie on the market by combining forces to create an even stronger commercial partnership. Selle Italia and Selle San Marco are consolidating their activities in one Group. Next to that Giuseppe Bigolin, owner and President of the two companies announces the start of a strategy which includes diversifying into other products than saddles.

In January 2016 Selle Italia’s Giuseppe Bigolin took over Selle San Marco. At that time, he acquired a majority shareholding in Selle San Marco. If that is now changed into 100 percent of the shares in the company that was founded in 1935 by ‘Commendatore’ Luigi Girardi, is not made clear in the last Friday issued press release.

At the time of the Selle San Marco take-over by Selle Italia, Giuseppe Bigolin said “The two production plants of the companies are to be unified. There will be synergies in many fields: logistics, R&D, supply chain and so on, but the companies and product identities will stay well separated. I like to describe this as a single tree where the trunk and the roots are the same, but their ramifications are separate and independent one from the other.”

You can read the entire story here.

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