Well, we are deep in the midst of previewing the top teams for this new 2021 season of cycling. But, if you are new to the sport, rightly you must be asking: What are these teams and riders training for? Everyone in the world knows the Tour de France is in July, but surely preparation and early season races for that big event need not start in January and February. Surely they must be training for other earlier objectives. Let this report serve as a broad sweeping narrative laying out the biggest objectives of the cycling calendar—surely, the races to NOT miss this season. The calendar is long and bloated, at points there seems no rhyme or reason to it, overall it is hard to string together a season-long narrative besides the fact that we know what the biggest objectives are and we can measure or debate who has racked up the greatest haul all placings and winnings. Surely, in a nutshell the season is divided into arguably four to six parts: the early season races, the Spring Classics while simultaneously the Spring Stage Races run concurrently, the summer dominated by the Grand Tours and their proper warm-up races, and the season is closed out with the World Championships and Fall Classics. Now it is time to begin the review of these large blocks of the season. Fear not when I list them at too rapid-fire of a pace, each will be covered in more depth when that part of the season is upon us. Trust in my priming skills, if you are new to the sport, I shall hold your hand through the whole season so that you may experience cycling’s beauty and epic-ness.
For the past two decades the season has begun properly Down Under. There are a few Australian Crits and the Australian Nationals—for the Time Trial and Road Race, but the season is Officially underway with the Tour Down Under. The Tour Down Under is about a 6-day stage race around the burnt-orange hills of Adelaide taking place in the middle of January. This race has the prestige to be a World Tour race, meaning the World Tour teams—the top echelon of teams in the sport—are required to send a roster of riders to compete in this race. The Tour Down Under is now over two decades old—an ancient age for a stage race outside of Europe—and has had that World Tour status for years now. The World Tour teams care about placing well at World Tour races thus they usually send a squad of 6 to 8 of their riders already on decent form who are preparing for the Spring Classics to come in March and April. Teams shall usually have their squad there a few weeks before or after the Tour Down Under to do some Southern Hemisphere warm-weather training. The racing is fast and hard already, for many Australians come into the race already on top form having spent all winter training in Australia and they are motivated to do well on home roads. And yet despite the demanding racing, the length of the stages are short and everything is based closely to Adelaide meaning the riders stay in the same hotel all race. Thus with all of these perks, the cycling season starts in mid-January with this premiere early season event. Surely, if not for the Tour Down Under, the official start date would be much later. The Tour Down Under starts off the season with a bang, but not everyone opens up there, and thus the other opening races shall be listed.
The Tour Down Under has required more explanation for why or how a traditionally “summer” sport would start in January. It is the first “big league” race of the year whereas much of the rest of the early season is much more lowkey, much more of a “rust-duster.” Following Tour Down Under there is Cadel Evans’ One-Day race in Melbourne a week later which is growing in prestige. The week after that there is the Jayco Herald Sun Tour, which is a less prestigious race, but still attracts a handful of World Tour teams….but by then the calendar is already getting crowded. There is usually one or two weeklong stage races going on in Argentina or the Caribbean to represent the Southwestern Hemisphere at the same time as the Tour Down Under. The races themselves change or go under too often to fully keep track of, in recent years the Vuelta a San Juan has attracted a hand full of World Tour teams to send over their riders. The appeal of the South American races is the same as the Australian ones. And in recent years a new crown-jewel South American early-season race has been created: in mid-February, the 6-stage Tour Colombia has been held for a handful of years now. It seems every citizen in Colombia turns out to watch the race pass on the side of the road, and it is a sight to behold—especially because most of the greatest Colombian riders and their teams turn up at the start line in the hopes of winning in front of the home fans. Meanwhile over the past fifteen years, cycling has forayed into unexpected regions of the world: the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries have all set up a race. The first was the Tour of Qatar, known as great training grounds for riding in the brutally hard crosswinds—perfect training for the Spring Classics, but it has not been contested in recent years. Others have popped up like the Tour of Oman, a Saudi Tour, and most recently the 4-day stage races of the Dubai Tour and Tour of Abu Dhabi have combined to form the weeklong UAE Tour incorporating stages from both cities. Yes, with the absence of a Qatar stage race, UAE Tour is now attracting many of the greatest teams in the world, for such a race has great weather for late February, has ample opportunities for the sprinters to get early season victories, and additionally has actually found a few proper climbs for the GC men to stretch their legs. With so many warm weather options, the traditionally European early-season races have diminished in prestige. And yet, since the majority of the World Tour races take place in Europe and all riders are based there most of the year, the early season French and Iberian races still attract good fields. The Majorca Challenge races at the end of January are truly rust-dusting affairs. While the Valenciana 5-day stage race usually has a bit of higher competition even if most riders are still simply stretching the legs for the first race of the season. The same goes for the old French Etoile de Besseges race, and the newer Tour de la Provence race as well. The overlapping Volta ao Algarve in Portugal and the Ruta del Sol in Andalucia are each five stages and finish the week before Opening Weekend in Belgium—these and the UAE Tour close out the Early Season period of the calendar. After these races begin the Spring Classics.
Though the Early Season racing can be good viewing and at point sometimes there are three or four races being broadcast on the same day from different corners of the world, all know these are preparation and more indications of form for the main objectives to come for the season. The main objectives start to come with the Spring Classics, the second phase of the season. The Spring Classics begin with Belgium’s Opening Weekend on the last Saturday and Sunday of February with Omloop Het Nueiwsbald on the Saturday and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on Sunday. Before the Tour Down Under and the wealth of Southern Hemisphere races in January and February, these Opening Belgian Classics were not so prestigious, even they were only still “rust-dusters.” But nowadays, by Opening Weekend 90% of the World Tour riders have already begun their season and these are the first two Cobbled Classics that have a whole breed of specialty rider that can win them. The Saturday after Opening Weekend, the cycling world’s eyes shift to Italy to the Classic that is by far the youngest and yet no longer the “new kid on the block,” I speak of Strade Bianche. Meaning “White Roads” the barely decade-old race takes place around Tuscan Siena, the landscapes are beautiful, the white gravel is unique, and the finish into Siena’s town square is epic and perfect. Just the day after, on the Sunday comes one of the oldest and most prestigious stage races on the calendar: the 8-day Paris-Nice. The race is just what it sounds like: from the outskirts of Paris when it is harsh and cold in mid-March, the riders make their way towards Mediterranean Nice—in ideal years the race lives up to its nickname “The Race to the Sun.” In the 1980s and before that, such a race was still only a warm-up and rust-duster for many of the big names. Meanwhile strangely starting midweek and finishing midweek as well, a rival Italian weeklong stage race: Tirreno-Adraitico, the “Race Between the Two Seas” takes place across the Apennines of Italy from coast to coast. Why have two prestigious World Tour stage races overlap? This conflict highlights perfectly the bloated-ness of the calendar, but the races are truly in competition. Both wish to be the premier final “tune-up” race for the first Monument of the year: Milan-Sanremo. It is prestigious and rewarding to win the General Classification (GC) or a stage of Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adraitico, but many riders participate to race their way onto good form for Milan-Sanremo. Milan-Sanremo is one of the Five Monuments of cycling, the five most prestigious one-day Classics in the world to win. To win just one simply makes your career. Milan-Sanremo lives up to its name going all the way from Milan to the Riviera Italian town near the French border. In ancient days it was this race that was the “Official, Official” start of the season, an honor Omloop Het Nieuwsbald now holds. Sanremo is the longest race on the calendar at around 300km, and it is the only Monument sprinters have a chance to win. Sanremo takes place in Mid-March, afterwards the Classics riders return to Belgium for more Belgian Cobbled one-day Classics. The Friday after Sanremo, usually the last weekend of March, comes the Cobbled E3 Classic, the sponsor name changes, but all know it is one of the big Cobbled Classics to win. Two days later on the last Sunday of March is Gent-Wevelgem, another Cobbled Classic of high prestige, and one where the Crosswinds most notoriously rage. Meanwhile in Spain the World Tour Volta a Catalunya, the third oldest stage race in the world, is taking place simultaneously for the week: the race’s high mountains usually attract a good haul of GC riders honing or test their form against the men that shall be their rivals in the Grand Tours to come. After a midweek final tune-up cobbled race comes the first Sunday in April, and everyone in Belgium knows what that day holds. Yes, that is the Belgian Superbowl: the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, the Tour of Flanders in English. All the Cobble Classics have been riding around many of the same roads and over famous cobbled climbs, but this is what they all led up to, this is the one every Belgian wants to win as the entire region of Flanders watches. Flanders is the second Monument of the year, and to see all the crowds and the fierce racing, truly a viewer can see why this is a special race, can see why it is one of the five Monuments. Flanders is the start of cycling’s “Holy Week,” a jest of a name for occasionally it overlaps with the real Holy Week from Palm Sunday to Easter. During this Holy Week, yes there is another weeklong World Tour stage race in Spain. The Tour of the Basque Country, sometimes called Pais Vasco or recently Itzulia, is a stage race as prestigious as Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adratico, or the Volta a Catalunya: to win a stage or the race Overall is an accomplishment in itself, but additionally the Basque country is known for their shorter but punishingly steep climbs that are great preparation for the Ardennes Classics to come only a few weeks later. Midweek after Flanders comes the Classic Scheldprijs, it is not as difficult as the others and thus it usually attracts the best sprinters in the world and is known as the or one of the unofficial “Sprinters’ World Championships.” And then finally on the Sunday after Flanders comes the Queen of the Classics, the Hell of the North, the third Monument of the season, the most prestigious one-day race in the world: Paris-Roubaix. It is the final Cobbled Classic of the season, but unlike the Flandrien ones, this one takes place in the north of France over much rougher cobbles that make the Flemish ones look like child’s play. This race is always a spectacle, and almost always lives up to the superlatives it has received. After Roubaix, the Spring Classics feel to be winding down, but the climbers still need to have their fun. There is the midweek Brabantse Pijl race, and on the Sunday after Paris-Roubaix comes the first Ardennes Classic Amstel Gold. Despite the grouping, Amstel does not actually take place in the Ardennes, but actually in the only hilly part of the Netherlands. It is a hybrid race that suits the Classics men that dominate the cobbles, or in some editions a climber that can sprint will take the victory. Midweek is the prestigious Fleche Wallone that finishes up the mighty steep “wall” known as the Mur de Huy (“the Wall of Huy”)—it takes a proper climber to win this race. And the final Spring Classics portion of the calendar comes to an end with the most prestigious and grueling Ardennes Classic, arguably the oldest race on the whole cycling calendar, the Fourth Monument: Liege-Bastogne-Liege, one in the past Grand Tour-winning climbers would compete for. And with that the most intricate and tricky part of the season is thus finished being described.
But the phases of the season still do not even divide evenly there! During the Ardennes Classics week, there is another World Tour weeklong stage race going on in Switzerland: the usually bad-weathered Tour of Romandie. The Tour of Romandie is by far the biggest and last preparation race before the Giro d’Italia, the Tour of Italy, the first three-week Grand Tour of the year. A week or two after Romandie, depending on the year, the Giro begins early in May. The Giro dominates the entire month of May, there are other minor tune-up races than Romandie, and in the past the weeklong Tour of California has been run during the Giro’s second week…but all of that is sideline news compared to the second biggest race in the entirety of the sport. In a way, the Giro kicks off the long cycling summer, it sets the tone of cycling “constants” in one’s life. The Giro sets the tone for the summer of Grand Tours: the hype and epic-ness are fulfilled, and as far as passion and character are concerned? The Giro probably has more of both than any other race on the calendar, including the Tour. But when the Giro finishes, eyes begin to shift immediately towards the Tour. Usually a week after the Giro finishes the ultimate Tour tune-up race, the Criterium du Dauphine takes place. It is a World Tour weeklong stage race on the same level of prestige as Romandie or Catalunya or Paris-Nice, but it is noteworthy that most of the GC riders here will all have at least one eye on the Tour three weeks later. The Dauphine is the ultimate preparation race for the Tour, because it is run by the same organization as the Tour—they even treat it like a mini-Tour, and run the stages over some of the exact climbs to come a month later at the Tour—but the Dauphine is not the only premiere Tour-prep race. Three weeks before the Tour begins, the Dauphine finishes up and the brutal 9-day Tour de Suisse, “Tour of Switzerland,” starts up. The Tour de Suisse has a long history, and it is perhaps more of a jewel to win in its own right than most of the other weeklong World Tour stages race, but or thus that is because it is a very brutal race. Usually the weather does not corporate, many of the stage profiles are extremely tough—no easy days here—and it finishes only two weeks before the Tour than the perhaps-ideal three weeks before like the Dauphine. After Suisse, a week later, and one week before the Tour all the European countries host their National Time Trial and Road Race championships to decide which riders will get to wear the country’s flag for a whole year. The week after this, on the first Saturday of July (give or take a week during an Olympic or World Cup year), the Tour de France, the second three-week Grand Tour of the year, begins. It is the largest and most important race on the calendar, for most sporting fans around the world have heard rumor of its existence. To win a stage of the Tour, or any Grand Tour for that matter, is an extremely big deal: to win a stage of the Giro or Vuelta is probably only a step below winning the GC of a prestigious weeklong stage race like Paris-Nice or the Tour of the Basque Country. To win a stage of the Tour, arguably if it is a great stage or one in the highest mountains is a bigger deal than winning the entire Paris-Nice or any other World Tour weeklong stage race GC outright. But so much has been written of the Tour we can quickly move on to the lesser-known races. After the Tour, all the riders make appearance fees showing up to fixed local untelevised criteriums in Belgium, Holland, and northern France, but many other real World Tour races continue. The Saturday after the Tour is the hilly or even mountainous one-day Classic of San Sebastian named after the city in the Basque Country that hosts the race—though cycling fans are tuckered out from watching racing by that point, this is never one to miss. On the Sunday is the RideLondon race in Britain, also another good show, and around this time too would be the Olympic Road Race when it is such a year. Two weeks after the Tour many smaller four- or five-day stage races start springing up from Norway’s Arctic Circle to the deserts of the Tour of Utah. The most prestigious race around this time is the Tour of Poland weeklong World Tour stage race, sometimes used as a last preparation for the Vuelta a Espana. The Eneco or now called BinckBank Tour, another World Tour weeklong stage race take place around this time too, racing through the Netherlands and Belgium reminding us all of the Spring Classics that felt so long ago by this point. But by mid-August, whether the cycling community is ready or not, the Vuelta a Espana, the Tour of Spain, begins. It is the third Grand Tour of the year, and thus the third biggest race in the cycling calendar behind the Tour and the Giro. For most of its history the Vuelta was known as the “Little Brother” to the Tour and Giro, but over the past decade or so it has reinvented itself with relatively shorter stages and many brutally steep summit-finishes throughout the race—the Vuelta has become a sprinter’s nightmare. It does still fit to call it the “Tour de France with a Hangover,” but it is lowkey one of the best races on the calendar. For GC riders, this is the last major objective of the year, last-chance-saloon. The racing here is fiercer and more unbridled, for many riders this is their last race of the year, and they want to make it count, or salvage their season if they have yet to turn up many results. Some still use the Vuelta too as preparation for their last objective of the year: the World Championships that come two weeks after the Vuelta’s finish. If riders are tuning-up for Worlds but do not attend the Veulta, they will probably race either the weeklong Tour of Britain that usually overlaps with the Vuelta’s second week, or they will travel to Canada for the two intense hilly one-day races: the GP Montreal and GP Quebec City, both taking place two days apart. And with that the cycling summer comes to an end, and only the brief autumn is finally left.
Two weeks after the Vuelta, at the end of September, the World Time Trial and Road Race Championships take place. A different site is selected every year for Worlds: sometimes the course is in flat Denmark where the sprinters have their fun, sometimes the course is in mountainous Austria where a proper climber gets a rare chance at glory, usually the course is neither extremely mountainous nor extremely flat and it takes a rider of great endurance that can at least somewhat climb but also sprint to win the race. Worlds is not one of the Five Monuments, it is in a category of its own, and it is extremely special to win. For the winner of the World Championships gets to wear the Rainbow Jersey for a whole year until the next World Champion is crowned—it is the special white jersey you have seen with the Olympic colored bands running across it: Blue, Red, Black, Yellow, and Green. And after the World Championships, the season then really is clearly winding down, as it has been since the ending of the Tour. There are some minor one-day races in Northern France or Belgium, but the only real block of racing are the Italian Fall Classics and the one-off Paris-Tours. For the two weeks after the World Championships, most of the top riders make their way to Italy to compete in one-day Classics like Milano-Torino, the Giro dell’Emilia, and others. They all lead up to the Fifth Monument of the year, il Lombardia (the Tour of Lombardy), nicknamed the “Race of the Falling-Leaves” because of its early-October date; in recent years it has become one for the proper climbers, GC riders coming off the Vuelta have performed extremely well. That same weekend is what was historically the sprinters’ last big appointment Paris-Tours in France, but alas! that race has lessened in prestige even as it attempts to reinvent itself including wild gravel sections. And with that there is usually one last weeklong World Tour stage race in China or somewhere in the Far East in mid-October, and then the road season is over.
For those who are not yet sick of cycling, by that point top-level cyclocross is already underway in Belgium, and that holds everyone over until the Road Season starts up again Down Under in January. Thus the cycling calendar is covered in the quickest overview I could give. I’m sure it was too fast, and yet too long a primer—did I not tell you the calendar was bloated, with little rhyme or reason? There is a banging opener in January, an assortment of objectives in the Spring, the Grand Tours in the summer, and the end of the season in the Fall with Worlds and the Italian Classics. There are World Tour points available throughout, but there are no playoffs or season-ending championships; why, the Tour, the biggest race in the sport, comes randomly two-thirds of the way through the season. Anyways the point of this episode was to have a massive reference for how the whole calendar fits together, but other previews shall surely be provided for the rest of the season as well where the character and details of each race shall be described more indepth-ly. But for now, my energy is spent, and I must end this laborious affair describing the beautifully bounteous and bloated calendar of cycling.
Cycling Odysseys 