Sports Poets Society

Vincenzo Nibali has won all three grand tours, along with two monuments - San Remo and Lombardia. But in 2019 he’ll take on the ambitious target of the Giro-Tour double. Can his aggressive riding and experience bring him his greatest achievement yet?  Writer Barry Ryan Procycling UK, ISSUE 252 / FEBRUARY 2019 The double take. Vincenzo Nibali gets it a lot, on his travels abroad, and especially among his own people in Italy. The morning after Il Lombardia last October was no different. At the Bahrain-Merida hotel, an elderly woman approached with widening eyes. “It’s Nibali,” she said. The previous afternoon, Nibali had stalked Thibaut Pinot all the way to Como but fell short of a third win in the season-ending monument. Given the circumstances, both the result and the performance were remarkable. Barely two months earlier, Nibali had undergone a percutaneous vertebroplasty procedure after fracturing a vertebra when a spectator caused him to crash on Alpe d’Huez at...

Nibali has built one of the most wide-ranging palmarès in the sport’s record  books. We look at the qualities that have allowed him to do so Writer Sam Dansie Procycling UK, ISSUE 252 / FEBRUARY 2019 It’s a matter of orthodoxy that Vincenzo Nibali is the most versatile rider in the current peloton. The bald ledger of his palmarès brooks no argument. He is one of two active riders to have won all three grand tours and the only one to extend that breadth further with a monument – in fact, he has three: Milan-San Remo and two editions of Il Lombardia. He’s finished second at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and, in 2013, fourth at the road Worlds despite a bad crash with two laps to go. He was 24th on his debut at the Tour of Flanders. Nibali’s record doesn’t just stand up as the most complete right now, it’s one of the most complete of all time: one of only seven to win all the grand tours; one of just five to win all the grand tours and a monument. Nibali’s former directeur spor...

by EDWARD PICKERING Procycling UK, ISSUE 252 / FEBRUARY 2019 Can you imagine a peloton without Team Sky? No, me neither. It’s only January, so there is a lot of 2019 left for things to change, but from the moment Team Sky announced that this season would be the last under the current sponsorship, cycling has been indulging in a parlour game of possible outcomes, including the nuclear option: the end of the team. Finding £30 million, or thereabouts, is possibly going to be David Brailsford’s hardest ever challenge, but I’ve been following the Team Sky principal for enough time to know that until official confirmation is published that the team will end, it would be better not to assume that the task is beyond him. Whatever happens, this has suddenly become the big narrative of the 2019 season, and as I write, the riders have barely raced yet. But Sky is not the only story of the year as we begin the new season. We’ve looked at some of the other likely narratives in th...