Age and the Classics Contender

When Fabian Cancellara, Peter Sagan, and Jurgen Roelandts ascended the Ronde van Vlaanderen (RVV) podium last Sunday, we thought that it represented three generations of cyclists. Cancellara (RadioShack) is today 32 years old, Sagan (Cannondale) merely 23 years old, and Roelandts (Lotto-Belisol) is 27 years old.

We ask ourselves: How do classics contenders age?

Naturally, we went to Cycling Archives and explored the wealth of data to compare several notable cyclists of various era, and compare them to more recent heroes.

What of older heroes?

Thinking about the RVV we certainly thought of Briek Schotte (born in 1919), twice winner of de Ronde and one of the original hardmen. We then thought of Eddy Merckx (born in 1945) and his impossibly long list of victories. We also thought of Roger de Vlaeminck (born in 1947), a rival of Merckx. And of course Bernard Hinault (born in 1954) of a slightly younger generation much like Cancellara and Sagan.

We then plotted our perception of their accomplishment in classics races, versus their age. What we found was interesting.

Super Mario in Gent-Wevelgem

Peter Sagan's charismatic win in Sunday's Gent-Wevelgem was superb, sign of a true champion who knows when to take charge and when to push for the win. While many expected him to wait for the final sprint, he put in more than his fair share in a break of 13 riders, and left them all in the dust by attacking away. In the end, he had a 23-second advantage in a race that had been threatened with cancellation just hours prior.

His win reminded us of "Super Mario" Cipollini's three wins in Gent-Wevelgem: in 1992, 1993, and 2002. His first win was perhaps the most amusing one (Watch video starting at 1:55). What was to be a formality -- a field sprint -- had "Tashkent Terror" Djamolidine Abdoujaparov pull on Cipollini's seat post as Cipo was surging past him. The tug was enough to push Abdou ahead of Cipollini, however Cipo kept his cool and raised his arms in celebration anyway.

"I knew he'd get penalized," he said calmly.



Cipo's 1993 win was straightforward: he simply hit the gas and sprinted literally from the front, nobody was able to get around him.

The Roads to Milano-Sanremo

The latest freezing spell - blanketing snow on western Europe - had thrown a wrench into the preparation of many aspirants to the throne of Milano-Sanremo (MSR). It started with the change of day, from Saturday to Sunday. Suddenly, Belgium's little known Wednesday race the Nokere Koerse appeared to be the perfect last test before the lineup in Milan. Alas, snow forced cancellation of the event.

In previous post we have thought of how the pre-season, or early season, has changed. Which roads have the winners of Milano-Sanremo taken? We start with the latest, in 2012, when cheeky Australian Simon Gerrans won. He started his year with hard riding down under, including the Tour Down Under (TDU) and the various Aussie road races. Taking a break from racing, he resumed competition only in Paris-Nice (PN) on his way to victory.

Road to Samremo 2012.

On the other hand, second place Fabian Cancellara went to do the Tours of Qatar/Oman (TQO), then after some break from racing he went to Strade Bianche (SB), Tirreno-Adriatico (TA), and finally MSR. Third placer Vincenzo Nibali and fourth placer Peter Sagan, teammates in Team Cannondale, did nearly the same thing, although both skipped Strade Bianche. The fifth rider John Degenkolb did the harder route, from Qatar/Oman to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to Paris-Nice.

For Briek's Sake

I am just reminded again of the awesomeness of Briek Schotte.

It is so much so that 't Gaverhopke Brewery released a limited edition Koerseklakske.

If you don't know Briek, all you need to know is here:

http://bigringriding.com/post/1396565449/commitment

I can tell you more about "de Briek" lunch menu at the cafe near the museum of de Ronde in Oudenaarde, it is simple pasta with brown sugar and nothing more. 

Briek died in 2004 on the day de Ronde was won by a German, in front of two Belgians! By eyewitness account, winner Stefan Wesseman's wife was sitting in a cafe/bar in Oudenaarde when this happened. The Belgian crowd boasted that the race was won when two Belgians and a German entered the finale together. As the German winner crossed the finish line first, the crowd grew hushed, the silence so deafening that Wesemann's wife left the bar in awkwardness. 

Damn, Briek must have died heartbroken. 

Lieve Vlaanderen! 

(*) Koerseklakske refers to the leather helmet cyclists had to wear in Belgium well before helmet rules were widespread. 

Belgian Succession

It is hard to believe, but Tom Boonen is aging. The Belgian boy wonder from east and north of Antwerp is already 32 years old, he may be at the peak of his prowess but he's ridden for 11 seasons. Just like his former mentor and teammate Johan Museeuw - whose career overlapped with Boonen's in near-perfect synchronous sequence - Boonen has become a much more focused rider than he was in his younger days. The overlap between the aging Museeuw and then-surging Boonen spoiled us fans in more ways than we realized then. We never had to look for a Belgian hero of the cobbled classics, for a new Lion of Flanders.

Tom Boonen in 2012, from Creative Commons under license CC BY-SA 2.0,
photo taken by Angelo Giangregorio.

This natural succession also benefited Patrick Lefevere's QuickStep team, who always had a popular icon to stand behind. Even in Boonen's leanest years of 2010 and 2011, when he merely won  Gent-Wevelgem and merely reached the podium in both editions of de Ronde. As we know, cycling is a team sport, therefore having such icons as Museeuw and Boonen helped the team secure sponsorship which in turn enabled the retainment of a royal retinue, a merry band of Belgians and Italians whose job security and raison d'etre revolved around those few sacred weeks in April.

Who shall succeed Tom Boonen as the Belgian kaseinfretter?

Can Old Dogs Learn New Tricks?

Several retired pros have gone on to have illustrious careers as team coaches and directeurs sportif (DS). Raphael Geminiani comes to mind: as a rider he won the King of Mountains jerseys in the 1951 Tour de France and Giro d'Italia, yet he is perhaps best remembered as the DS and team manager of the mercurial Jacques Anquetil. Not only was he the DS who could manage the tempestuous Anquetil to incredible feats, he was a business innovator who side-stepped restrictions on team sponsorship.

Classics talents and the grand tours

To lovers of the classics, one of the most frustrating aspect of being a fan is that we have to watch promising classics talents waste their potential by foregoing the classics in pursuit of General Classification (GC) glory in the grand tours. Countless riders have fallen into this pitfall, sacrificing their huge classics potential yet not quite succeeding in the grand tours.

With specialization become both more prevalent and deeper in recent years, we consider some active riders of today.

Komentaar: the 2012 Elite Men's World Championship Race

With one blistering attack on the Cauberg, Philippe Gilbert of Belgium opened up a mile-long gap from the front of the field in the 2012 elite men's world championship; effectively redeeming his 2012 season. We were impressed by the work of the Belgian team and of course by Gilbert's sense of timing. Despite having a different finale than the Amstel Gold Race route that the course borrowed heavily from, Gilbert bested our estimate that the Spanish armada would win by sheer weight of talent and history of teamwork. Had the Spanish bet on the wrong horse? Did team Italy work too hard in the middle part of the race? We share our thoughts below.

If Cavendish Were Joining OmegaPharma-QuickStep

Not even one full year into his tenure at Team Sky, Mark Cavendish is already rumored to be moving elsewhere;  super-team and classics powerhouse OmegaPharma-QuickStep (OPQS) is rumored to be the most likely destination. We've written quite a few pieces on this veritable team, but only focused on their spring classics goals.

Certainly there is much discussion as to why the sudden souring of relationship between Cavendish and Team Sky (Is it the failure to win the Olympic gold medal? Is it acrimony between Cavendish and Team Sky's GC leadership? Why did Dave Brailsford hint at it at all?), but let's look ahead at the prospect of Cavendish joining OPQS.

Cavendish is the world's top sprinter today, it is hard to argue against that unless there is a convenient obstacle near the finish that can be exploited by the likes of Peter Sagan of Liquigas-Cannondale. Here's what we make of the possibility of Cav joining OPQS.

Fall Classics: What We Look Forward to in 2012

With the end of the Tour de France and Olympic cycling competitions, we turn our attention to the Fall Classics, perhaps the lesser cousins of the Spring Classics.  What do we look forward to this Fall? There are a few factors that brings us more excitement than usual. In this post we first discuss these factors and we will follow up with short race previews.

Loire Valley in Fall.

Family Ties

Nothing supports the idea of "nature versus nurture" more strongly than family ties in sports. The human physique, perhaps more than psychology and other less visible markers of human quality, evokes genetic advantage, and cycling has its share of family ties. In this post we share a few cycling family stories.

Serse and Fausto Coppi: brotherly love,
from  http://www.webalice.it/pl.cortesi/Serse&FaustoPR1949.jpg .

One of the better-known examples to English-speaking fans is Nicolas Roche of Ag2R-LaMondiale, son of Irish cycling legend Stephen Roche who married a French woman. Father Stephen was best known for achieving the treble in 1987: winning the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, and World Championship. Son Nicolas has been a GC leader or co-leader first with Cofidis and recently with Ag2R. He has won the Irish National Championship several times, and has nearly broken into the top-ten of the Tour de France. He has expressed his wish to switch teams for next year, and we are eager to know what he will do next. Even when riding a big race, he shares his thoughts on his blog for the Irish Independent.

FdJ: A Classics Powerhouse in the Making?

The win of Nacer Bouhanni in the French national championship road race, with teammate Arnaud Demare in second place, further reveals the worth of Francaise des Jeux's investments in their many young guns. All season long we have pondered the apparent friendly competition between Arnaud Demare and Yauheni Hutarovich, both having finished in the top ten of Kuurne-Brussels-Kurrne, and now Bouhanni has emerged as a contender for the sprints himself. Fans speak of Hutarovich as if he were "over the hill", but the fact of matter is that Hutarovichs is still 29 years old, Demare is merely 20, and Bouhanni is only 21.

Photo by Laurie Beylier under license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Sagan the Żagań

Nowadays, few riders make news the same way Peter Sagan (Liquigas-Cannondale) does, that is by not winning a race or a stage. So complete is Sagan's domination of stage-hunting in short stage races from the Tour de Suisse, Tour of Oman, Tirreno-Adriatico, to the Tour of California and the Tour of Poland.

Given his punchy characteristics, and his performance in the last edition of Milano-Sanremo, is Sagan a credible classics contender?

From Brendan Ryan, shared under CC BY-BC-SA 2.0. 

Is the Maillot Blanc a Good Predictor of TdF Success?

The Maillot Blanc of the Tour de France (TdF), or the White Jersey, is awarded to the highest finishing rider under 25 years of age. It suggests that that the winner has high potential of doing well in the future. In this article we attempt a quantitative analysis as we did in the Rise of Nations article.

As we are interested in the White Jersey as indicator of future performance, we examine the GC rank of a rider when he wins the White Jersey, versus his top GC performance since winning the White Jersey. We hope that this penalized one-hit wonders.

(c) Julius Kusuma

We limit the scope up to 2006: we think this to be a good stopping point, as many white jersey winners since then still contend actively. We realize that increasing one's rank on the GC of the Tour de France is an exponentially difficult endeavor, so we show a log-log plot, that is, both the x-axis and the y-axis are shown logarithmic-ally.

What insights were able to gleam?

Andy Schleck and Jan Ullrich: a Comparative Study

It is no doubt that Andy Schleck and Jan Ullrich are some of the most naturally talented cyclists of all times. Despite Ullrich's well-known issues with motivation and weight control, and Andy Schleck's lack of coach, they seem to have uncanny ability to get fit just in time for the Tour de France. Both name the Tour de France as their single most important goal of the season, although to be fair Andy Schleck occasionally produces a win in the Ardennes classics.

In a previous post we examined Andy Schleck's superhuman ability to get fit for le Grand Boucle in no time, leaping and bounding ahead of competitors. Unfortunately, winning the TdF on the road seems to be a challenge for both of them. We think that examination of these riders' performances in the warm-up race leading up to the TdF, be it Critérium du Dauphiné (CdD) or Tour de Suisse (TdS), is illuminating.

We now chart GC performances of both rides in the Tour de Suisse - the favored race of both riders excepting this year (arguably, this year's choice was made by Johan Bruyneel) -  and GC performances in the Tour de France.

Jan Ullrich and Andy Schleck: from Tour de Suisse
to Tour de France, in linear scale

 Read on as we share our analysis below.

The Road from Tour de Suisse, or Can Andy Schleck Deliver in le Tour de France?

With much discussion on Andy Schleck's lack of form as we approach the Tour de France, we take a quick look at his performance, and that of other contenders, as they go from the Tour de Suisse to the Tour de France. 

Below we show the 2010 and 2011 comparison of performance in the Criterium du Dauphine (CdD) / Tour de Suisse (TdS) versus performance in the Tour de France (TdF). GC rank in CdD/TdS and GC rank in TdF is plotted on the y- and x-axis respectively.

We can clearly see that unlike other contenders, Andy Schleck has uncanny ability to literally bound ahead of competition, significantly improving himself from the TdS to the TdF.

This year's preparation is a bit different though, with Andy Schleck racing the CdD instead of TdS.

What do you think his kans is for the Tour de France? Share your thoughts below.

Where Should Nibali Go To?

With news (and non-news) breaking that Vincenzo Nibali is leaving Liquigas-Cannondale at the end of the season, we ponder the choice that he might make. We think that Nibali is a very exciting all-rounder, one of a very select cadre of riders that give truly positive meaning to the term "all-rounder." He's one of the best descenders in the business, a former winner of the Vuelta a Espana with true legitimacy to the Giro d'Italia crown, winner of several week-long stage races, and finally an exciting contender in the classics. His attacks in Milano-Sanremo and Liège-Bastogne-Liège were daring even if he didn't end up winner. Certainly Italian national coach Paolo Bettini agrees.

Liquigas-Cannondale has been his home for all his pro career. As we pondered some time ago, the squad is becoming too full, bursting with talent across generations.  Nibali's most inconvenient teammate is perhaps Ivan Basso, twice winner of the Giro d'Italia who is revered as god in Italy. This makes it hard for the team to not let him choose his races, especially for the Giro. As a result, Nibali is sitting out this year's Giro d'Italia, even if it is a more suitable corsa for him than last year's.

Where should Nibali go to? Should he go to Astana Version 3 to follow Giuseppe Martinelli the legendary team manager? Martinelli was behind the successes of Marco Pantani, Stefano Garzelli, Gilberto Simoni, Damiano Cunego, and now of Alexandre Vinokourov, Maxim Iglinsky and Enrico Gasparotto? If he does, he might have to dampen his classics ambitions a bit, but he may gain leadership in the grand tours, at worst shared with Roman Kreuziger.

Clearly, Nibali is a hot commodity, and as The Inner Ring rues, the transfer season is effectively all-year long for those high-potential cyclists.

What other teams do you think he should consider?

Is an Italian Renaissance Near?

As we approach the Giro d'Italia, our minds wander to the heights of the Dolomites, the strade bianche of Toscana, and the hills of Trento. We count many great Italian classics specialists among our favorite, including Paolo Bettini's with his attacking style and Damiano Cunego's with his constant (attempts at) re-definition of himself. Indeed, the 2002-2008 period could be seen as the Golden Era of Italian cycling, during which they won many classics and world championships.

In the Rise of Nations article we pondered the fate of Italian cycling, and we ask, is there a crisis just beneath the surface? Who shall take the mantle of Paolo Bettini as King of the Classics?

Rise of Nations: Italy's monuments and worlds wins over the years.

Who are the young guns who we think will show their potential this year?

Valverde: Return of the Prince

This spring classics season marks the return of Alejandro Valverde from doping suspension, a rider that has divided cycling fans due to his insistence of innocence and the way his doping suspension was handed out.

We want to be clear on this: we think that Valverde is an exciting rider, and that we think his doping suspension was deserved. We are bothered by his claims of innocence, but at the same time he has served his sentence.

Valverde's "prince of Spain" special bike.

We basically look forward to thinking of him in terms of racing accomplishment.

Regardless of your opinion on the innocence or non-innocence of Valverde, it is astonishing to see a big team, Caisse d'Epargne -now- Movistar, stand behind their man unconditionally. This is the same team Reynolds that won the 1987 Tour de France with Perico Delgado, and became the legendary Banesto team that won the 1991-1995 Tours de France with Miguel Indurain, plus a host of great many grand tours and other races.

Remembering Frank Vandenbroucke

It is hard to speak of Philippe Gilbert's breakthrough 2011 season without hearing echoes of Frank Vandenbroucke in the back of my mind. This post is not about Gilbert - we'll have plenty of opportunity to discuss him, his astonishing 2011 season, and his coming 2012 season. And verily, to Gilbert's great credit I think his character is nothing like VDB's.

But enough about Gilbert. This post is about the rise and fall of VDB, about why so many pinned hopes on him, and about how the level of idolatry by the Franky Boys grew to fever pitch.

To those of us who follow the classics, "VDB" as he was affectionately known was considered the Second Coming of Jesus. There are several reasons for his fans' unyielding fanaticism.

VDB riding a Cyfac under  Cofidis MBK's paint scheme.