Fin de la Saison

Il Lombardia, the “Race of the Falling Leaves” and Paris – Tours, the “Race of the Dead Leaves”, held last Saturday and Sunday respectively, signaled the end of what was an absolutely marvelous European road racing season. The Grand Tours (Italy, France and Spain) were exciting and unpredictable from start to finish, the Classics, as always, gifted us with edge-of-seat races – who will ever forget Mathieu van der Poel’s win at the Amstel Gold Race – and a brilliant new generation moved in to take command. Ecuador, Colombia and Slovenia topped the podiums of the three Grand Tours, bringing a great passion for cycling to those regions and certainly inspiring more of those country’s athletes to take up the sport. 2019 was a very good year for cycling despite all of the gloom and doom one constantly reads about regarding our beloved sport. If only cycling understood how to sell itself instead of always cowering in a hunched over position of apology, like a submissive dog, the sport would be in such a better place. Oh for some leadership.

Egan Bernal, the 22-year old Colombian winner of the Tour de France continued to show just what an phenomena he is with an end of season streak of performances that put everyone on notice: he’s perhaps even more than we’d thought. His win at “home” in the Gran Piemonte and his third place at il Lombardia, sprinting Spanish Champion Alejandro Valverde to the line, shows that Bernal is a true bicycle racer, not your stereotypical pure climbing Colombian. Lots of drama to look forward to next year as Team Ineos tries to sort out their embarrassment of riches for team leaderships in the big races. Chris Froome has apparently already stated that Bernal will work for him in next year’s Tour….

Primož Roglič, the Slovenian ski jumper turned racing cyclist, finishes the season as the World Number One with four wins in major stage races, including the Vuelta (Tour of Spain) a third place in the Giro (Tour of Italy) and two Italian single-day classics. The Slovenian has only been racing for seven years, so he’s in fact physically much younger than his 29 racing age and has at least seven more years of top performances ahead of him. His young compatriot, Tadej Pogačar, who at 21-years old was on the podium of the Vuelta and winner of the Tour of California, mercifully put an end to his season after an 18th place in the Yorkshire World Championships. Pogačar raced 62 times this season, winning seven times and only DNFing twice. He’s clearly a rider that needs to be held back, not pushed, and, with his still tender age, I continue to worry that his team is not patient enough and too eager to collect his results. I could very well be completely wrong, perhaps 20 is the new 24, but only time will tell.

I felt bad, in a way, for World Champion Alejandro Valverde this season because he was in fact the strongest racer on his Movistar team but was too often unsupported and relegated to a supporting role. His incredible collection of second places this year (12) shows that had he been more commanding, more -dare I say it – Lance-like, ordering his troops to fall into line, that he could have turned many of those second’s into wins. One saw it at the Tour de France: Valverde the consummate professional, cleaning up the messes made by Nairo Quintana and Mikel Landa, making the efforts and decisions on the road to keep the team intact. Then, when it was time for the team to rally back around him, nada, nothing, as best illustrated by his second place on the final mountain stage of the Tour, a race he should have won. Valverde has been racing since he was 10-years old, his nickname was “El Imbatido” (unbeaten), and 30-years later, he’s still at the top of the game. Valverde represented the Rainbow Jersey denoting World Champion in the very best manner, always in the picture, always in the action, even at races like the Tour of Flanders (8th in his first-ever participation) ones not even remotely suited to his talents. Old school at its finest, with the allure of the sure-to-be boiling hot Tokyo Olympics calling him to one final season. 

Remco Evenepoel, the 19-year old Belgian superstar, is being brought up slowly and surely like a young prize fighter. He’s raced 58-times this year, but in mostly smaller races (tours in Argentina, Turkey, Norway, Italy and Germany) including two of the Hammer Series, a set of imaginative races that the UCI is desperately trying to kill, one World Tour race (Tour of Romandie) and two big time trials, that solitary race against the watch known as the “Race of Truth”. The first, the European Championships, he won, and the second, the World Championships, he mounted the podium with a silver medal. Evenepoel is in fact the truth, and the expansion of his abilities and how he manages next year’s certain-to-be-tougher schedule will provide great entertainment for us all. 

There were so many wonderful stories from the peloton this year, van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Mads Pederson (Bauke Mollema certainly felt the presence of the World Champion on his Trek-Segafredo team when won il Lombardia on Saturday, having the Rainbow Jersey in the House does that to team moral) not even getting into Richard Carapaz and Julian Alaphilippe. It’s been my pleasure to bring you some of them this year. Cycling is the most beautiful sport in the world and like anything of great beauty, it needs protecting. Let’s hope that after all of the fantastic performances this year, that the powers heading the sport take note, realize what a great treasure they have in their hands, and act responsibly, imaginatively and accordingly.