The peloton rolls through Siena at the start of stage 12 of the Giro d’Italia. The Tuscan hilltop city usually hosts the finish of Strade Bianche, but this time the riders were able to go downhill from the start. The stage finished in Bagno di Romagn

IN PICTURES The 2021 season was exciting from start to finish, but it really ended on a high, a major high, with Lizzie D winning the first ever Paris-Roubaix Femmes. That moment was the highlight of my career as well as year. To be working for Tek-S

£8,599 ||| $8,400 Go get those Strava KoMs with the R5 from Cervélo, Jumbo-Visma’s climbing bike. The Canadian company have improved on the previous model, with the emphasis on less stiffness so it doesn’t feel as harsh on the road. It is a WorldTour

INT CLIMBERS EXT SPRINTERS PERFECTIONISM MENTAL TOUGHNESS EMOTIONAL STABILITY SELF-BELIEF Team Sky, it was once said, changed the face of cycling by shearing £100,000 from a rider’s £1-million salary and spending it on a coach. By increasing coaching

I have called Harrie countless times over the past 15 years, and not once has he answered the phone without enthusiasm. That first question always used to be followed by the inevitable second: “When are we going again?” He would be referring to the m

It has been an up and down year. I only won one race and I like to do more. On the other hand, if you see the classics, especially in Belgium, I didn’t have a problem and I was in the front. I would like to win more than being so consistent. I’m 24th

Images: Olly Curtis, Neil Goodwin. ■

Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2020 is quite an important race in the career and life of Lizzie Deignan. Perhaps not as important as Paris-Roubaix 2021, which we’ll get to later, but there was something about the strategy and execution of her victory that wasn

The agonisingly slow development of the women’s elite racing calendar has had various negative effects, but there’s one that’s only obvious when you try to figure out precisely where one of the greats fits into the pantheon. The lack of equality of o

NEWS • GOSSIP • CHATTER Olympic road race champion Anna Kiesenhofer announced in December that Swiss Krono Group will support her until 2024. The Austrian has not ridden for a professional team since 2017, and rides instead as an independent amateur.

We carry our past and our childhood with us. For EF Education-Nippo rider Neilson Powless, the winner of the Donostia Klasikoa on 31 July, these include a chilling tale of racial violence and revenge he heard many times growing up. Simon Antoine, an

YOU HAVE THE LEADERS AND THEY GET MOST OF THE SPOTLIGHT. THAT’S THE WAY CYCLING WORKS. Then there are the people that work for the leaders. It is not a bad thing. I’m not frustrated about it. All you need to know for yourself is that the leaders prob

Where’s home? Dendermonde in Belgium, where my kids go to school, not far from where I grew up. There are probably better places to ride your bike in the winter, but Belgium has a good tradition and history, and you can always find nice roads. What’s

LIZZIE DEIGNAN: At junior level, do athletes stand out for their mental or physical approach, and which is most significant? PHIL WEST: With you specifically, it was more about your attitude than the physical thing. Although you could still see you h

You cannot separate a rider from their training routes, especially when it’s the ones they grew up on. Lizzie Deignan is having a quick blast around a circuit called the ‘After School Loop’, a grippy 12-mile loop starting and finishing in Otley, taki

A very tall Dutch rider with prospects in the classics, then? Daan Hoole is stepping up to the WorldTour in 2022 with Trek-Segafredo after four years with the talent factory that is SEG Racing. What has he achieved with SEG? The Dutchman finished nin

After finishing fourth in the inaugural Tour of Flanders Dutch rider Mirjam Melchers went on to win the next two editions “In those years we were really struggling to get a bit more professionalism and that we could compete in those races really help

Stress can paralyse many riders when the desire to avoid disappointment – whatever shape it takes – becomes overwhelming. With mortgages to pay and mouths to feed, it’s clear why. But in perversely counterintuitive fashion, this stressful remit can a

Few riders can claim to be the truly dominant rider of a year. Of course, there is always someone with the most wins, and it’s common to end the year with a best sprinter, a best stage racer and a best classics rider, but it is rare for one rider to

A lot of teenage boys can say their world turned with a kiss on a dancefloor or perhaps the first guitar chord they ever heard from a soon-to-be favourite band but not many would attribute the same life-altering potential to a cycling magazine. Yet I

1 The single race that cut through to the mainstream more than any other this year was the women’s Olympic road race. Of course, the fact that the winner Anna Kiesenhofer is not a fulltime pro and holds down a job as a postdoctoral fellow in mathemat

It was a return to a semblance of normality with the usual calendar structure in 2021, but we approached the year after the shortest off season ever. In hindsight I would have started my season later, not due to missing fitness but being mentally tir