Sports Poets Society

Quattro ore a bagnomaria, al massimo a tre minuti: il gruppo era sicuro di cuocerli a fuoco lento e riprenderli quando voleva, i coraggiosi di giornata, partiti pronti-via all'inizio della 18-esima tappa, 186 km piatti - e ventosi - da Ejea de Caballeros a Lleida. E invece proprio il vento, di spalle nel finale, ha giocato in favore dei ultimi due fuggitivi, non ripresi per un niente dalle poche ruote veloci sopravvissute sin qui. Ha vinto un carneade, il 29enne belga Jelle Wallays, fratello e nipote d'arte: lo zio Luc ha allenato sia lui sia Jens, che di anni ne ha 25 e corre in belgio con un team Professional Continental. Per jelle, settimo successo in carriera, il più importante. Welleys ha bruciato il compagno d'avventura, il norvegese Sven Erik Bystrøm, e anticipato la rimonta del gruppone, regolato dal tri-campione del mondo Peter Sagan sul campione d'Italia Elia Viviani. Nella top ten anche il redivivo Nizzolo, nono.  Tutto immutato nella...

Greg LeMond’s 1983 Worlds win established the  American as one of the bright young stars of the peloton.  But as Procycling recalls, LeMond first had to overcome  in-fighting in the US team and a crisis of confidence  before claiming the rainbow jersey Writer: William Fotheringham © PROCYCLING, issue 247, October 2018 Greg LeMond won the World Championships road race three times in 11 years : the junior title in 1979, and the professional title in 1983 and 1989 . Each marked a turning point in his career: the junior rainbow jersey in Argentina was his first major international title, pointing at what was to come; the rainsoaked rainbow jersey in Chambéry in 1989 was the apogee of cycling’s greatest ever comeback. But the 1983 win in Altenrhein, Switzerland , was the moment LeMond confirmed his status as the coming star of cycling, when he went from talented hopeful to champion. This was a pioneering era, the period when professional cycling ...

Egan Bernal emerged as Team Sky’s number one mountain domestique in his debut Tour de France. Procycling finds out how special the 21-year-old may becomeBy the end of the 2018 Writer: Alasdair Fotheringham © PROCYCLING, issue 247, October 2018 Tour de France, most fans would have been able to identify the lanky, angular features of Egan Bernal as easily as those of his more familiar Team Sky leaders, Geraint Thomas and Chris Froome. Day after day, Bernal was the second last, or often the last of Sky’s climbing domestiques tasked with keeping the team’s co-leaders in play on the main mountain stages. Blasting away for Froome and Thomas for 8km on Alpe d’Huez was arguably the Colombian’s finest hour , but in reality, in both mountain chains, Bernal was instrumental to the Sky machine. Bernal’s main trainer at the British team, Xabier Artetxe , who has been with Bernal at every race this year , is convinced: “ Without Egan, we wouldn’t have had two riders on the To...

© PROCYCLING, issue 247, October 2018 Consistency  has always been one of Peter Sagan’s biggest strengths. His versatility on a wide range of terrain means he can contest far more races than many of his rivals.  This was exemplified during the first week of this summer’s Tour de France . Sagan finished in the top 10 on every one of the race’s opening nine stages : in flat bunch sprints, on climbs such as the Mûr-de-Bretagne and across the Roubaix cobblestones. In total, Sagan recorded 14 top-10 finishes at this year’s Tour , the most he has ever achieved in a single edition of the race. His three stage victories make him one of five riders who have now won 11 Tour stages in total, alongside André Greipel and Louison Bobet. But perhaps more remarkably than his victories, over the seven Tours Sagan has started , he has now finished in the top 10 on 68 stages . Of the 130 stages he has ridden (he only finished four of the 2017 Tour before he was sent home ) ...

How big is Peter Sagan in Slovakia, where football and ice hockey are the dominant sports? One of the country’s top sports journalists describes the ‘Sagan E ect’ Writer: L’udovít Lučaníč © PROCYCLING, issue 247, October 2018 Slovakia has never had a cyclist to rival the appeal of Peter Sagan . We had an Olympic track sprint champion in Anton Tkác, who won gold in the 1976 Montréal Olympic Games, and professionals such as Milan Jurco, Anton Novosad or Jozef Regec , but such a great cycling personality as Sagan is today, Slovakia has never had in its history. He is a phenomenon on two wheels, a charismatic athlete who makes Slovakia more visible around the world and makes cycling more popular at home. When he is racing in the Tour de France or the World Championships he is watched in almost every home. I remember well my first encounter with Peter Sagan. It was in a mountain bike race in Žilina , his city . The slender, black-haired young man wore a jersey proba...

Peter Sagan is the closest thing cycling has to a box oice star and his popularity has never been higher. But as Procycling found out when it met him at the Tour de Suisse, behind the rock star image is a rider grappling with the extra demands racing makes of him Writer: Sam Dansie © PROCYCLING, issue 247, October 2018 Peter Sagan is maddening. He’s also cycling’s hottest commodity, its most exciting star, the only ticket in town. Races are desperate for him and fans can’t get enough of him. At the Tour de Suisse in mid-June, there was a perfectly ordinary-looking bloke in his 30s who had a tattoo of Sagan on his calf. This is now the ninth year of Sagan’s career and the alchemy of his multi-layered talent as a racer and his character as a person, continue to make the atoms in cycling’s little universe vibrate in unusual ways. Sagan had a great Tour de France . He was an omnipotent presence. He won three stages and wore the yellow jersey for one day. He finis...

(ANSA) - COMO, 13 settembre 2018 - Non ci sarà la tanto temuta ascesa di San Fermo della Battaglia, ma il Giro di Lombardia di ciclismo resta la classica monumento più dura. L'edizione numero 112, presentata oggi a Como, si disputerà sabato 13 ottobre, tra un mese, su un percorso che ricalca quello del 2017, quando Vincenzo Nibali con una prodezza su Civiglio bissò il successo del 2015. Da Bergamo a Como saranno 241 chilometri di inferno, con 4 mila metri di dislivello: Madonna del Ghisallo, Muro di Sormano e Civiglio, una filastrocca diventata tradizione. In quegli ultimi 70 chilometri si deciderà la 'Classica delle foglie morte', ogni metro potrà essere decisivo, perché il Lombardia e' spietato. Fino a oltre metà percorso i continui saliscendi (rappresentati perfettamente da Gallo e Brianza) inondano di acido lattico i muscoli dei corridori e non concedono tregua; le dure pendenze dei tre colli successivi, invece, danno la spallata a chi non ne ha abbastanza. ...