Tag: UCI Nations Cup

The piece we ran recently by reader John Day about staying with Mrs Deene in Belgium aroused a lot of interest on social media but it was spread over a number of different pages and apps. We thought it would be a shame to let some fascinating and funny comments go to waste so we pulled a selection together for you.

Despite having the advantage of starting as last man in the Dauphine’s 5.7 kilometre prologue time trial, Britain’s defending champion, Bradley Wiggins (Sky) couldn’t best the time set by 21 year-old world under 23 world time trial champion, Luke Durbridge (GreenEdge-Orica & Australia).

Oh dear. I hate this carry on, writing about drugs scandals. And please, Froomists don’t pick me up on a point of semantics; to the man in the street, it’s a ‘drug scandal,’ pure and simple. OK, here goes. What’s up? The winner of the 2017 Vuelta a España, Christopher Froome of Team Sky returned an Adverse Analytical Finding for the asthma drug ‘salbutamol’ on Stage 18 of the race.

Barring accidents or a dreadful time trial on Saturday it looks like Alejandro Valverde has stitched up his first Grand Tour (at last!). At the end of all of the big stage races we need to ask some questions and La Vuelta a España throws up some thought-provokers!

Turned Tables. For the past couple of years, Garmin have been on the back foot in the sprints at the Tour particularly. The HTC train has been dominant, they've won the Teams TTs at most Grand Tours, and Cav has just been winning sprints at will. The Garmin squad has had some shocking injuries, have just been on the wrong side of the TTs, and despite being at times agonisingly close, Ty hasn't been able to get Cav.

Hola! It's 15.10 Saturday and we're two kilometres from the finishing line of the Angliru - it's cold, nippy hand, freezy feet cold. It's been glorious weather until now, but low cloud has descended and we're a wee bit panicky about photography, albeit there's around two hours 'til race time. Davie had us up early, we got lost trying to exit Oviedo in the correct direction, but on the second pass we picked up the A630, hung a right to El Foz and in no time were drinking café con leche in a café at the foot of the Angliru.