Three days of living -observations on bike races I’ve gleaned from a distance

Spain, Italy, France... Northumberland?

Being a freelance cycling writer without work during the Giro d’Italia is a bit like being a tortoise without a shell. Rest assured, I have plenty of metaphorical irons in their corresponding fires, and all is well in the land of freelancing, but like said tortoise, without the ability to climb underneath my familiar safety blanket of three weeks being paid to throw myself full focus into the year’s first Grand Tour, I feel a bit ‘naked.’

In previous years I’ve gone to great lengths to produce features daily for my website and podcast daily, all alongside doing live shifts for various cycling media, and have been so frazzled after about six stages that completing the full Grand Tour usually leaves me needing a holiday. So I’m taking a different approach.

I’m consuming other media. Observing other races. Actually spending time with my family (I know, crazy right?). And generally trying to assimilate my obsessive need to be on top of everything that’s going on in this sport into my other ongoing work and life admin, in the hope that I’ll make to Rome – not literally, but figuratively – in the kind of mental state that will allow me to function in June, rather than enter a vegetative state that causes me to switch off until the Tour starts.

So, how’s that going for you, I hear you ask? Well, by way of diary of sorts, I’ll give you some insights into my weekend, the races that have transpired in the background, and some of the stories that have grabbed my attention, even though I’ve been fighting midges, covered in chalk dust and on social media black-out. It’s a bit of a different style to my usual writing, but I hope you enjoy it. Oh, it’s a long one, so feel free to settle in with a beverage of your choice and while away the – checks notes – 17.5 hours until we start all over again.

Thanks for reading, if you choose to continue!

Katy

FRIDAY – Multi-screen adventures and the next big (French) thing

It begins in Durres, Albania. I’m in a two-hour meeting (cycling-work-related but not Giro-specific) when the race rolls out and so I’m already behind come 2.00 BST, and my brain itches knowing that almost the entire broadcasted portion of La Vuelta Femenina has also occurred during my meeting, and that a French Cup race – the Tour du Finistère – is kicking off live shortly too. I resolve to stay off social media.

My social media interactions used to be a part of the racing experience for me – but the shine has dulled of late, due to a combination of Elon Musk’s complete ruination of my former favourite haunt Twitter, the dispersing of the cycling faithful across various platforms, my mental health, and the fact that Warner Brothers Discovery have made it night on impossible to take screenshots or capture video from broadcasts. The upshot of this being that my often visual posts are now reduced to me just typing ‘wow did you see that bridge’ accompanied by a grainy shot of my laptop screen. It’s just not the same.

I am positively buzzing to discover TNT Sports’ new multi-screen feature in full swing, and put in the hard yards getting over the total brain-frying omniscience offered by the technology to enjoy seeing the back of the peloton… and the front… and the break… and a heli-shot… with no actual data on screen, which is even more disorientating than the mere fact of having four things to look at simultaneously. I switch back to the single screen.

Friday’s stage is a bit of a banger, truth be told. The perfect combination of just a bit too hard to cause havoc, and not quite hard enough to flog everyone silly (last year’s Tour de France stage 1, take a bow here). Ned Boulting described the beginning of the stage as ‘formulaic’ which is spot on – Italian conti team riders, plus a couple of friends, a bit of a scrap for KOM points, even Taco van der Hoorn made an appearance in the breakaway before appearing to think better of it and head back to save himself for more baroudeur-ing later in the race, hopefully.

The final climb was tough and selective, and left us with only the hardiest of sprinters (Mads and Wout) and the majority of the GC favourites (minus Derek Gee and Thymen Arensman). Bang on script, Wout came second, to a storming Mads Pedersen, who claimed the first pink jersey for a Danish rider, and his first ever leader’s jersey – despite being one of the elite group of riders to have won a stage at every Grand Tour.

Bosh. Job done. Unscathed? Well, not quite. Our first two major casualties Mikel Landa and Geoffrey Bouchard sadly bowed out after a late crash caused them both significant injuries.

I scrambled to record a podcast episode, enjoy a beautiful sunny evening in my garden, and avoid checking social media. Somehow I failed at that last part and discovered that Aubin Sparfel had won the Tour du Finistère, beginning what would go on to be a weekend of complete turnaround for a Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale squad who’ve had a less sparkling first third of the season than they would have liked. Sparfel winning brought me joy, because I love to see a multi-discipline rider succeeding on the road, and I was made aware of social media folk raving about him being the ‘next big thing’ to come out of France. A full 3 weeks after Paul Seixas was apparently that. And just a week on from Lenny Martinez winning the queen stage in Romandie.

A former cycling powerhouse, France hasn’t had a Tour winner since 1985, but now they are gradually rebuilding their stock in the GC market, as their era of romantic heroes plays out its diminuendo with the retirement of Thibaut Pinot in 2023 and the imminent loss of Romain Bardet from the peloton. France are a nation quietly undergoing the process of producing the next generation of brilliant riders.

It’s only writing about it now, two days later, than the enormity of Sparfel’s achievement strikes me. I still haven’t seen the race, but it doesn’t matter, looking at the facts. Sparfel is just 19 years of age and, like Seixas, riding his first year out of the junior ranks. It was only his 8^th race day riding at professional level. Seixas has 14 race days to his name – five of them at World Tour level, and no wins as yet though he’s come very close. These two, teammates currently – could go on to become the next great French rivals – OK now who’s hyperbolising. I’m more than a little bit excited. Martinez still leads the way – and Arkéa’s Kévin Vauquelin too, is one of the strongest all-around riders France has had in some years. The future is bright for les bleu, blanc et rouge.

As for La Vuelta Femenina, I completely botched my skipping through the coverage, beginning the broadcast at the exact moment Mischa Bredewold and Marianne Vos sprinted for the line – assuming it was an intermediate sprint, before realising I’d skipped too far and has just seen the final. The perils of catch-up TV.

SATURDAY – Inflatable kayaks and Test Match Special

Time waits for no man, or so the old saying goes. Pro cycling season is pretty much the same. Hang on for grim death or risk losing touch. Race follows race and if you’re out of the loop for more than a day or two, then it’s difficult to dial back in – who’s in form, who’s at which race, what kind of stage even IS today?

It was a small mercy that on the hottest day of the year so far (probably) and with a diary free from commitments, that stage 2 turned out to be an individual time trial. No massive need to be across the action as it happened, no threat of missing the excitement of the breakaway formation, or the internal battles for points or KOM.

We headed north to the river Coquet in Northumberland with an inflatable kayak and wetsuits, some sandwiches and an over-excited spaniel, for a day soaking up the stunning weather and beautiful views. I put the TNT Sports commentary on my phone – I couldn’t see anything, it was far too bright and my screen far too small – but hearing Matt Stephens, Rob Hatch and co ruminating about intermediate splits and differentials on GC without the usual rising intonation and building tension of a regular stage was akin to having Test Match Special on in the background as you chill out in the back garden on a summer’s day. I watched my kids paddling upriver and entertained the dog by repeatedly throwing her ball into the river – receiving a full-on shower every time she returned with it – with the Boycott and Agnew of the cycling community, and it was truly one of the most blissful ways to spend an afternoon I can think of. The internet was intermittent at best, downright non-existent at worst, and the clouds of midges were determined, but I was able to glean the basics, before we headed home – that Ethan Hayter, Edoardo Affini and Jay Vine represented the best efforts, before Josh Tarling took the hot seat.

A brief spot of downtime at home allowed me to catch up on the conclusion – Wout van Aert below par, and confirming that he needs time to ride into this race; Primoz Roglič’s brilliant performance that put him just 1 second off the time of Tarling and proved he was ready for the challenge ahead; Mads’ brave efforts to retain pink – a feat that he almost achieved, but that slipped through his fingers at the last, as the maglia rosa was relinquished to Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe, for Roglič’s first stint in a jersey he won by rights in 2023, but has never raced in before.

I crammed cycling into my eyeballs full throttle after that, determined to bring myself up to date, before I had to go out again. Next up, the final 10 kilometres or so of La Vuelta Femenina. After Anna van der Breggen led most of the way up the climb, Demi Vollering, resplendent in red, put the general classification to bed while taking her second stage victory – a 100% record on the two mountain stages – and I fizzed with excitement thinking ahead to the Tour de France Femmes. It was another strong climbing performance from Cédrine Kerbaol, a rider who has come of age at this Vuelta – no longer a stage hunter or one-day specialist but a real, bona fide GC contender, still at the tender age of 23. She made her case of ‘signing of the season’ for EF, though Monica Trinca Colonel pushed her close, the top performer for Liv-AlUla-Jayco, the Italian already coming good on the promise that attracted the Australian team to pick her up from team BePink in the off-season after her first season of cycling at the age of 25. There were strong rides from Nienke Vinke (Team Picnic-PostNL) and Usoa Ostolaza (Laboral Kutxa-Fundacion Euskadi), along Valentina Cavallar (Arkea-B&B Hotels) and Marion Bunel (Visma-Lease a Bike). These performances deserve a closer look and I’ll attempt to dive deeper in due course. But I had another race to squeeze in – the GP de Plumelec-Morbihan, the 3^rd of a quadruple-header of Breton races that honestly warm the cockles of my little Francophile heart.

I managed to distil my experience of this race down to the basics. Skipping forward in pockets of 10 seconds, eyes keen for any change in the commentators’ tone of voice or any obvious attacking. I’d forgotten that it was a race where a fairly large group usually makes it to the finish, before a final uphill sprint to the line separates the puncheurs from the rest.

Fresh from his return to racing in Romandie, Benoit Cosnefroy was first from the bunch after Lewis Askey in Boucles de l’Aulne on Friday, but in a race he’s won twice before, he well and truly proved that he was BACK with a storming push to the finish line ahead of Vauquelin and Venturini from Arkéa, much to my delight. The puncheur extraordinaire is back, and with it, his team’s good fortune rolled on through the Breton weekend.

Back in real life, we went out to watch the finals of arguably the biggest bouldering competition in the north-east, the ASBO, and my evening of sporting excellence continued, sat cross-legged on the floor of a climbing wall, the air heavy with chalk-dust, with around 200 other enthusiasts cheering on the cream of the crop of local talent as they crimped and cranked their way to success. Ticked that day off as one where I somehow managed to cram in adventure, competition, and a smidgen of relaxation.

SUNDAY – Wrong turns and truncheons

A day of rest? Not likely. With a busy young family, another sunny day and no work-based excuses to exempt me from being involved (not that I wanted any), there were sunny fields to traverse on our daily dog walk, and yet more climbing to be had as the young ones took inspiration from their elders at last night’s comp and did some training of their own. So, I fired up the mobile hotspot, sat in a bright yellow wingback chair in the very comfortable surroundings of Eden Rock Newcastle, and picked up where I’d left off in the Giro earlier in the day, finally bringing myself up to date – via a surprise attack from a goat – with just under 20km remaining and Lidl-Trek back where they clearly feel they belong in this first portion of the Giro d’Italia: smack bang at the front of the pack.

There was another race I was more interested in, that day though. Tro Bro Léon – the climax of the French Cup weekend tour of Brittany, the gravelliest of road races, with its series of rough farm tracks or ‘ribinou’ to contend with and a piglet for the best-placed Breton. One Breton riding the race for the first time was Valentin Madouas, who featured on the widely acclaimed race publicity poster for the 2024 edition, an honour which may have enticed him to participate, even if the prospect of a win on home soil didn’t. He joined a host of other debutants as the race attracted one of its strongest line-ups in recent years, with the likes of Matej Mohorič, Biniam Girmay, Alberto Bettiol and Arnaud Démare lining up in the hope of becoming successor to last year’s winner, Lotto’s Arnaud de Lie.

No amount of star turns could hold back the charge of the resurgent Decathlon-AG2R though, and in particular 23-year-old Bastien Tronchon.

Look, I’m not saying it was easy to follow this race. Or ride it, apparently. The weather was appalling, the dirt tracks churned up and the riders smattered with muck and barely recognisable. The camera crew were clearly having a nightmare, and we were treated to numerous placeholder views of the Breton coast – stunning, but not what we came for. When we did have coverage it was often the helicopter shot, and piecing tougher who was where along a narrow, winding course, particularly when grappling with internet issues of my own and the regular interjections of kids wanting me to ‘look at this!’ my understanding of the race situation was sketchy at best, downright faulty at worst. At one point I thought Madouas was leading, with Fred Wright on his wheel – two riders I’d be very excited to cheer to the finale – only to discover they were chasing on behind the lead group.

There were mechanicals aplenty. Tronchon himself had a flat tire, and later, away and gone or so it seemed, Vauquelin flatted, victory slipping from his grasp as quickly as he stormed into a leading position. Tronchon was a machine though. He even took a wrong turning into a car park at one point, while leading, only to turn himself round and head off back up the road, catching the two-man group he’d already left once. He was later joined by his teammate, Pierre Gautherat, and Uno-X Mobility’s Fredrik Dversnes, who had attacked, only for the intrepid Decathlon duo to chase him down. He then crashed and suddenly, a one-two scenario presented itself. With Madouas and Anthony Turgis chasing but not making ground, it was simply a case of deciding who’s day it was. The chosen man was Tronchon – any other outcome would have been criminal, given how completely ON IT he had been all day.

(My notes app auto-corrected ‘Tronchon’ to ‘Truncheon’ – ironic as he really did give the competition a bit of a beating. Sorry, I’m always a sucker for a terrible sports pun having been indoctrinated by a tabloid-reading, sports-obsessed father growing up).

It’s a bit of a blur after that. I must have caught the end of the Giro at some point - more Mads doing Mads things, Lidl-Trek in the ascendancy - and Valentin Madouas won a piglet called Leon.

MONDAY – A barren day, in more ways than one

Tim Bonville-Ginn on BlueSky posts: ‘No cycling available to watch in the UK tomorrow.’ and it’s like a slap in the face. After a weekend everywhere but at home, I’ve dispatched my family to work and school and I’m ready and raring to go. But as in many previous years at Grand Tours, overseas Grande Partenzas or Grand Départs usually feature an additional rest day, to allow for relocation to the host nation. Even though in this case, Italy really isn’t far from Albania. But y’know… logistics.

Despite knowing it’s coming, the rest day still feels unexpected, and somewhat jarring. A strange sort of pause before anyone really wants one, before we’ve really melded our brains into three-week race-mode, sunk down into the brand new narratives and unfolding stories of the race, and got ourselves settled in for the long haul. I feel disconnected, and find myself trawling Instagram to see if the teams have anything fun planned for our entertainment, but it’s too early really. I walk the dog and listen to Never Strays Far, in the thrall of nostalgia, as I recall the first time I listened to the podcast four years ago, on a particularly memorable Giro.

It rains, the tiniest amount. You can almost hear the ground sucking the desperately needed moisture down into the depths of the cracked soil. I was tempted to draw a metaphor with my thirst for live sport but a day off the madness is not all that serious really, compared to the very real threat of water shortages we face if this extended dry spell continues.

Back home later and I scroll through the emails I’ve mostly avoided over the weekend. The Giro d’Italia press office, whose missives I receive twice daily, led their post-stage 3 mailshot with the headline ‘TOTAL MADSNESS’ and it made me smile (what did I tell you – tabloid upbringing). Also, it did actually strike me as the perfect summary of the race’s time in Albania. This little self-contained three-stage block was dominated by one man – despite the fact that he didn’t win all the stages, or even wear the maglia rosa the whole time – the ebullient Dane was the centre of gravity around which the race revolved. He heads back to Italy in pink, and with a solid head start in the points competition, will likely be in ciclamino just as soon as the GC battle takes precedence. A big guy, a bigger character, Mads Pedersen has defined this year’s Grande Partenza. Let’s see just how deep he can go – and if Wout van Aert can mount a decent challenge for a stage win, as he rides himself back into form. And all the rest…

I’ll be back with more musings in a bit – in the meantime, let me know if there are any of the stories from any of these races you’d like me to dive deeper into – there are probably 100 articles I could write about the last three days of racing, and yet, with the Giro continuing apace, I’ll be lucky to manage one or two of them – doesn’t mean I won’t give it a good crack though.