Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Sunday, April 20, 2025
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2024 Tour de France | 2024 Giro d'Italia
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before. - Mae West
Bill and Carol McGann's book The Story of the Giro d'Italia, A Year-by-Year History of the Tour of Italy, Vol 2: 1971 - 2011 is available in print, Kindle eBook and audiobook versions. To get your copy, just click on the Amazon link on the right.
Current racing:
- April 20: Amstel Gold Race
- April 20: Tour du Doubs
Upcoming racing:
- April 21 - 25: Tour of the Alps
- April 23: La Flèche Wallonne
- April 24 - 27: Vuelta Asturias
- April 27: Liège-Bastogne-Liège
- April 27 - May 4: Tour of Turkey
- April 29 - May 4: Tour de Romandie
- May 1: Rund um den Finanzplaz Eschborn-Frankfurt
- May 9 - June 1: Giro d'Italia
Latest completed racing:
- April 15 - 18: Giro d'Abruzzo
- April 18: De Brabantse Pijl
- April 12-13: Paris-Roubaix
- April 7 - 12: Vuelta Ciclista al Pais Vasco
- April 8 - 11: Region Pays de la Loire Tour
- April 9: Scheldeprijs
- April 6: Ronde van Vlaanderen
- April 5: GP Miguel Indurain
- April 5: Volta NXT Classic
- April 4: Route Adélie de Vitre
- April 2: Dwars door Vlaanderen
- April 2: Paris - Camembert Lepetit
- March 24 - 30: Volta Ciclista a Catalunya
- March 30: Gent - Wevelgem
- March 30: La Roue Tourangelle
Here's the update from Pogacar's UAE Team Emirates-XRG:
After his breathtaking ride to place second at Paris-Roubaix on debut, Tadej Pogačar turns his focus away from the cobbles and towards the Ardennes Classics this weekend. The world champion is set to lead UAE Team Emirates-XRG at the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday, where he will make his first appearance at the Dutch Classic since winning the race in 2023.
2023 Amstel Gold Race: Tadej Pogar has escaped and is heading for a solo win. Sirotti photo.
There, Pogačar will look to continue his remarkable spring campaign which has seen the 26-year-old win Strade Bianche and the Tour of Flanders, and finish on the podium at Milano-Sanremo and the ‘Hell of the North.’
The Slovenian will be joined in the Netherlands by a UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad full of climbing talent, as the iconic Cauberg climb is reintroduced into the finale for the first time in almost a decade.
Two days afterr La Flèche Brabançonne, it will be time for the first major Classic of the Ardennes season, with Pogačar raring to go for his return to the Amstel Gold Race.
Pogačar: “We leave the cobbled Classics with our heads high, I think we can be happy with what we did there and there were some great battles on the road.
“The Ardennes races will be a new challenge. They are three hard one-day races packed into a week but I feel we have the team to be able to challenge in each of them. But we will take it one race at a time starting with Amstel Gold and go from there.
“In that race I have some great memories from two years ago when I managed to win, let’s see what’s possible this year.”
Back in 2023, the Slovenian won the Amstel in style, after a ding-dong encounter with podium finishers Tom Pidcock and Ben Healy. The Irishman gave Pogačar a tough challenge before the UAE Team Emirates-XRG man showed Healy a fresh pair of heels and won the race with a nigh-on 30km solo attack. This Sunday, the challenge presented to Pogačar and UAE Team Emirates-XRG will be a different one.
After nine years of an alternate course, the traditional Cauberg finish has been reintroduced to the race. Standing at 6.5% for 800m, the Cauberg had brought the curtain down on the Dutch Classic for many a year, with Philippe Gilbert, in particular, becoming a master of its punishing slopes.
However, by 2016, the finish was deemed too predictable, and the race organisers went in search of a new and more volatile route, a move that proved effective when Mathieu van der Poel won one of the most exhilarating editions in 2019.
Six years on, with the likes of Van der Poel and Pogačar lighting up races from 100km out and more, the decision has been made to return the Amstel Gold Race to its traditional finale. The route is no easier, though, with plenty of climbs scattered across the final 50km and sure to create attritional racing.
Just as with De Brabantse Pijl, circuit racing will draw the race to a close, with the final lap taking in the Geulhemmerberg, Kuitenbergweg and the Bemelerberg before winding its way to the Cauberg showdown. Once over the peak of the climb, the riders will have 2.5km of flat asphalt before reaching the finish line. This is a moment that often used to present a to-and-fro battle between those who attacked the climb and those looking to pace themselves back into contention.
Alongside Pogačar, the UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad will include Tim Wellens, who is set to start his ninth Amstel Gold Race, and a trio of debutants in Jhonatan Narváez, Domen Novak and Pavel Sivakov. The full Emirati squad is as follows:
– Felix Grossschartner (AUT)
– Brandon McNulty (USA)
– Jhonatan Narváez (Ecu)
– Domen Novak (Slo)
– Tadej Pogačar (Slo)
– Pavel Sivakov (Fra)
– Tim Wellens (Bel)
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Here’s the team’s announcement:
Marianne Vos has extended her contract with Team Visma | Lease a Bike until the end of her professional career. The multiple world champion and cycling icon will continue her partnership with the team, with whom she has achieved impressive successes over the past few years.
Mariannew Vos after the 2024 Elite Women's world road race championships.
Since the formation of Team Visma | Lease a Bike Women in 2021 – with Vos as one of the team’s leading figures – she has won stages in the Giro Donne, Vuelta, and Tour de France Femmes, where she claimed the green jersey in 2024. She also won the Amstel Gold Race, secured world titles on the road, in cyclocross and gravel, and earned Olympic silver in Paris. In 2024, Vos added her 250th professional victory to her already remarkable career, proving that her hunger for victories remains as strong as ever.
Vos looks ahead to the future with great confidence and excitement: “Team Visma | Lease a Bike feels like home to me – a place where I can be myself and where I can work every day with pleasure and motivation. I am grateful for the trust and support I receive here. Always pushing myself to the limit is still what I love to do the most. And in the coming years, I will do this with great joy in yellow and black. That’s why I’m happy that we are continuing together with a commitment that has no end date.”
Richard Plugge, CEO of Team Visma | Lease a Bike, sees the extension of Vos’ contract as a significant asset to the team: “Marianne is not only an exceptional champion, but also a role model for the entire team. Her drive to improve every day and her desire to continue developing herself perfectly align with who we are as a team. I am incredibly happy that she will remain part of the team until the end of her active career and continue building our story.”
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The team sent me this update:
From April 21 to 25, the Tour of the Alps; on Monday, April 21, the Giro del Belvedere; and on April 22, the GP Palio del Recioto.
A week of top-level cycling awaits VF Group Bardiani-CSF Faizanè, which will be competing in the Tour of the Alpsfrom April 21 to 25, a 2.Pro category race. The total route will cover 739 kilometers with an overall elevation gain of 14,700 meters. Naturally, the course favors climbers, with Luca Covili from Emilia-Romagna leading the way as the experienced rider for the Trentino race. He will be joined by Alessio Martinelli from Valtellina, Alessandro Pinarello, Vicente Rojas, Manuele Tarozzi, and Alex Tolio. The team will be directed from the team car by sports directors Roberto Reverberi and Alessandro Donati.
Luca Covili (in the lead) races in stage 10 of the 2019 Giro d'Italia. Sirotti photo
On Monday, April 21, the Giro del Belvedere—a classic on the international U23 calendar—will take place. The 168-kilometer race includes an elevation gain of 2,085 meters and will be held in Villa di Cordignano (TV), featuring the traditional climbs of Conche and Montaner, along with the new steep ramp of Piai della Vigna. Selected for the race are Federico Biagini, Lorenzo Conforti, Filippo Turconi, Santiago Ferraro, and Martin Herreño.
On Tuesday, April 22, the team will race in the Palio del Recioto, a prestigious U23 race that will see five of our young talents on the start line: Matteo Scalco, Luca Paletti, Filippo Turconi, Martin Herreño, and Santiago Cruz. Sports director Mirko Rossato will be leading the squad from the team car.
Live coverage of the Tour of the Alps will be available on Eurosport 2 and streamed on Discovery Plus from 13:40 (CET).
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The MPCC sent me this:
At the end of the first quarter, the MPCC found out only 4 cases of doping in professional cycling, most of which were detected at Continental level. Faced with new doping techniques, our movement also hopes that all the stakeholders in our sport will remain active in the fight against this scourge.
After an eventful 2024 for the anti-doping stakeholders, from the positive tests of world tennis leaders Jannik Sinner and Iga Swiatek to the political tensions between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and its American counterpart (USADA), the 2025 first quarter have witnessed a relative calm. WADA is in the midst of an elective process for its presidency – Poland’s Witold Banka is the favorite to succeed himself – and at the same time has to deal with the US administration’s refusal to pay its share (3.6 million $) of the governing body’s budget, which was around 52 million $ in 2024. Even though the anti-doping control body insists that its work will not be jeopardized, this tension reflects the difficulty of maintaining unity in a battle that is key to the credibility of sport.
On its side, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has elected a woman, for the first time in its history, coming from Africa : the former swimmer Olympic champion Kirsty Coventry. With her background as a top-level athlete, the Zimbabwean had already made a commitment to athletes and against doping by joining the IOC Athletes’ Commission before becoming its Chair between 2018 and 2023. The youngest president in the institution’s history has often spoken of responsibility, particularly towards young athletes. ‘’It’s so important to have those conversations with young athletes to say ‘you are good enough by yourself, you don’t need to take extra’ ’’, she said a few months after winning the presidency of the Athletes’ Commission.
PROVIDING THE MEANS AGAINST DOPING
The election of Kirsty Coventry as head of the IOC may therefore raise hopes of a change in the world of sport: for the benefit of women athletes, in a still very male-dominated field, for young people, with the aim of practicing sport in a healthy way, whatever the level, but also for the African continent, where sport is a powerful fuel for social advancement and the promotion of countries through their champions.
Funding controls means playing a part in the fight against doping. Taking a stand on the physical and mental health of athletes, especially the youngest, is also being a player in the fight against doping. The MPCC has never ceased to do so since its foundation in 2007, and has maintained a constant state of vigilance by communicating frequently with the bodies that govern professional cycling (UCI, ITA, WADA, among others), by taking actions (cortisol tests at races) and by speaking out against doping.
The 2025 doping numbers, January 1 - March 31.
ONLY 4 DOPING CASES IN CYCLING
The Credibility Figures are some sort of this monitoring in cheating, not only in cycling but in sport in general. In the first quarter of the year, we identified more than 180 cases of doping and sporting fraud (doping control refusals, corruption of athletes or officials, etc.) reported in the press, by national anti-doping agencies and international federations. Nearly a quarter of these cases concerned athletics (43) and the first quarter of 2025 confirmed the growing importance of MMA (13). For cycling, only 4 cases were reported among professionals, 3 of which were linked to the establishment of a biological passport extended to Continental riders by the Portuguese Federation (UVP-FPC).
Keeping the light on
Within six months, the Adop – the Portuguese anti-doping agency – has already convicted six riders of doping, but most of the time well after the period in question, thus exposing the limits of the battle. This is a proof that the fight against doping must not stop, but rather be strengthened. In this respect, the MPCC was delighted with the UCI’s reaction regarding the ban on carbon monoxide inhalation and now hopes that WADA will take over and extend this decision to all sports, considering the major health risk. Our movement also hopes that the ITA, which monitors most of the controls in our sport and has investigative powers, will look into these new doping methods and ensure that the teams comply with the UCI rule against the use of carbon monoxide.
Aware of these realities, those involved on the sports field – teams, riders, representatives, support staff and race organisers – must step up their commitment to the fight against doping and to the safety for riders, through preventive action and a responsible attitude and discourse. Those of us who are members of the MPCC should encourage our colleagues to join us, so that we can work towards greater credibility for our sport
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