Professional Cycling 2021 - A Belgian, a Dutchman and a Frenchman rides into a classic
03-04-2021
, 07:22 AM
Winter is over and it is time to watch a lot of people in lycra pants sit on bikes for hours on end over the next many, many months.
The UCI World Tour began on 21st of February with UAE Tour where the prodigal Tour de France champion of last year, Tadej Pogačar, won ahead of Adam Yates and another rider coming off a breakout season, João Almeida.
This past Saturday, the spring classics kicked off with a win for Davide Ballerini from "the usual suspects", classics-powerhouse Deceunink-Quickstep team in Omloop Het Niuewsblad. The day after in Belgium, ex-world champion Mads Pedersen won the sprint after a hectic race that saw Mathieu van der Poel's breakaway group getting caught 2 kms from the finishing line, largely due to the work of Pedersen's compatriots Kasper Asgreen and Søren Kragh Andersen, who kept attacking and thus reeled in the breakaway. Some cups of coffee must be owed.
The season is well and truly underway, and virtually every weekend (and many weekdays) will feature top tier cycling.
This Saturday it is a relatively new race, having only begun in 2007, Strade Bianche. This race has become an instant classic and fan favorite (signed by yours truly) due to the beautiful scenery and crazy race, often on the white gravel roads ("Strade Bianche" translates to "white roads") of Tuscany, starting and finishing in Siena.
Three of the past four years, the winner of Strade Bianche has also won Milano-Sanremo (Kwiatkowski, 2017, Alaphilippe, 2019 and van Aert, 2020), the first Monument on the calendar, so it is usually a good indicator of who is in top form for the early classics.
So who can we expect to see at the front of Strade Bianche, and probably many, many other classics? If you ask me (and most bookmakers) there are names that will be #1 and #2 for most races (and one other person who shares the spotlight in some of the classics, depending on the routes). It is the Benelux overlords of present day cycling: Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert.
For a number of years, they have more or less won everything between them in cyclo-cross. A couple of years ago, they went fully into road racing as well, and that has essentially been the beginning of a new era of cycling. These two lifelong competitors are often on another level compared to their competition.
Especially WvA destroyed the opposition for most of the previous season, winning Strade Bianche, MSR, two TDF stages and finishing second in the World Championships both for TT and for road race. But in the final, big race of the season, the Tour of Flanders, Mathieu van der Poel showed that van Aert could be beat in one of these otherwise tailor-made for van Aert classics. In many ways, the images of them riding as a duo towards the finishing line to settle things between them looked like something we could see again, and again and again over the coming years.
However...
There is one man, who keeps pushing the boundaries and who has shown he can rival the two behemoths: Julian Alaphilippe.
The World Champion has time and time again outdone himself, he has shown that he can win anywhere. He finished second to WvA in MSR, but he beat him in the World Championships, and had he not crashed into a motorcycle in Tour of Flanders, perhaps he could have beaten both MvdP and WvA, because he was flying until his crash.
There's many interesting stories waiting to unfold this season. Evenepoel's comeback after his terrible crash, will the youth continue to dominate, who will win the Olympics and strip Greg van Avermaet of his "stylish" gold helmet?
Only time will tell which riders will immortalize themselves in this most exciting season (hopefully there will be more winners than COVID cancellations).
The UCI World Tour began on 21st of February with UAE Tour where the prodigal Tour de France champion of last year, Tadej Pogačar, won ahead of Adam Yates and another rider coming off a breakout season, João Almeida.
This past Saturday, the spring classics kicked off with a win for Davide Ballerini from "the usual suspects", classics-powerhouse Deceunink-Quickstep team in Omloop Het Niuewsblad. The day after in Belgium, ex-world champion Mads Pedersen won the sprint after a hectic race that saw Mathieu van der Poel's breakaway group getting caught 2 kms from the finishing line, largely due to the work of Pedersen's compatriots Kasper Asgreen and Søren Kragh Andersen, who kept attacking and thus reeled in the breakaway. Some cups of coffee must be owed.
The season is well and truly underway, and virtually every weekend (and many weekdays) will feature top tier cycling.
This Saturday it is a relatively new race, having only begun in 2007, Strade Bianche. This race has become an instant classic and fan favorite (signed by yours truly) due to the beautiful scenery and crazy race, often on the white gravel roads ("Strade Bianche" translates to "white roads") of Tuscany, starting and finishing in Siena.
Three of the past four years, the winner of Strade Bianche has also won Milano-Sanremo (Kwiatkowski, 2017, Alaphilippe, 2019 and van Aert, 2020), the first Monument on the calendar, so it is usually a good indicator of who is in top form for the early classics.
So who can we expect to see at the front of Strade Bianche, and probably many, many other classics? If you ask me (and most bookmakers) there are names that will be #1 and #2 for most races (and one other person who shares the spotlight in some of the classics, depending on the routes). It is the Benelux overlords of present day cycling: Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert.
For a number of years, they have more or less won everything between them in cyclo-cross. A couple of years ago, they went fully into road racing as well, and that has essentially been the beginning of a new era of cycling. These two lifelong competitors are often on another level compared to their competition.
Especially WvA destroyed the opposition for most of the previous season, winning Strade Bianche, MSR, two TDF stages and finishing second in the World Championships both for TT and for road race. But in the final, big race of the season, the Tour of Flanders, Mathieu van der Poel showed that van Aert could be beat in one of these otherwise tailor-made for van Aert classics. In many ways, the images of them riding as a duo towards the finishing line to settle things between them looked like something we could see again, and again and again over the coming years.
However...
There is one man, who keeps pushing the boundaries and who has shown he can rival the two behemoths: Julian Alaphilippe.
The World Champion has time and time again outdone himself, he has shown that he can win anywhere. He finished second to WvA in MSR, but he beat him in the World Championships, and had he not crashed into a motorcycle in Tour of Flanders, perhaps he could have beaten both MvdP and WvA, because he was flying until his crash.
There's many interesting stories waiting to unfold this season. Evenepoel's comeback after his terrible crash, will the youth continue to dominate, who will win the Olympics and strip Greg van Avermaet of his "stylish" gold helmet?
Only time will tell which riders will immortalize themselves in this most exciting season (hopefully there will be more winners than COVID cancellations).
03-04-2021
, 11:15 AM
Great OP 
Guess I had better go look and see if any of the early season classics are being broadcast here, it was pretty great to see a few last season.
Guess I had better go look and see if any of the early season classics are being broadcast here, it was pretty great to see a few last season.
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