A follow-up of date changes following the health crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic led to a change in the place where the Grand Départ of the Tour de France 2021 will take place. Next year, the Tour de France will thus not start in Copenhagen in Denmark as initially planned (being prepared since June 2016 and officially announced in February 2019) but in Brittany. The first kilometers of this 108th edition of the Grande Boucle will take place in Brest in the Finistère department.
The date changes which prevent the Tour to start in Copenhagen in 2021
The coronavirus thus came to bother the plans of Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O., the organ ...> Read the whole story | 309 comments | shown 59957x
It's been a few months already but finally, the Tweets of the week make their comeback! It's not easy to write an article every week with the best of the best on Twitter in the world of cycling since this takes lots of time to read all the tweets, to make a selection and finally to write the article ... today we take a look at the past week in 10 tweets!
From Lars Boom and his stowaway in his suitcase to Bernard Hinault seen by Philippe Gilbert, we live the dream of BMX during the Olympic Games and some connection problems with ... Movistar.
Lars Boom's stowaway
Lars Boom (Rabobank) was probably at that moment not quite sure yet he would win the Eneco Tour one week later but when he was packing his stuff, his girlfriend, Niké Timmermans, saw that the rider of the Dutch team was about to take a stowaway with him ... and that was their own daughter Kee who perfectly fitted in the suitcase ...> Read the whole story | 2 comments | shown 4307x
As you probably know (since I explained the whole story here, here and here), the organisors of the grand tours (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España) have been in a conflict with UCI since several years already (since the end of 2004) about the UCI ProTour.
However, the conflict seems to come to an end soon since the UCI today presented its plan for the future of professional cycling with which the Tour de France organisor would have agreed ...
As a reminder, the main reason for the conflict were the selection rules for the participation of teams (UCI: all ProTour are automatically allowed to participate, ASO: wanted to continue to manage the team selection itself) and finally also the -sometimes hidden- goal of the UCI to obtain the TV broadcasting rights ...
Friends for once, friends forever ... that's what one could think after reading that Michael Boogerd announces on August 13th that he will stop working for Rabobank and that Thomas Dekker announces today (August 14th) that his contract with the Rabobank cycling team has been terminated with immediate effect.
The two riders, Michael Boogerd as former captain of the Dutch cycling team and Thomas Dekker as promising future leader, have always been good friends and in 2007 they were never far from each other at the hotel, before the start and after the race and on the road during the race ... They also always shared the same hotel room and were OK to pose together for my picture of Thomas Dekker and Michael Boogerd before the Tour de France 2007 prologue in London.
On a 245 kilometers track - 60 flat kilometers followed by 12 climbs and descents and with the last kilometer in a climb as well (8 to 10%) - Beijing today organised the road cycling race of the Olympic Games 2008. The riders passed the Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall of China.
Part of the track was formed by a 24 km circuit which the riders did 7 times.
143 riders from no less than 55 countries started this morning at 11AM local time and the Spanish and Italian teams were the big favourites.
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