A Primer of the Cycling Calendar WRITTEN

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.

Team Preview 2021: Movistar

And so we come to the old stalwart Spanish team. The team that was home to Pedro Delgado in the late ‘80s, and that famous giant-among-men Miguel Indurain in the ‘90s. Yes, for 40 years, in unbroken succession they have operated, and for the past decade they have been known as the Movistar Team, for the Spanish telecom company has been the title sponsor now for a decade. For much of the twenty-teens Movistar was one of the titan teams of the sport. They had Nairo Quintana (Arkea-Samsaic) in his heyday, the King and hero of the New Generation of Colombian climbers, three times he finished on the Tour podium for them. For a couple years they had the Basque weapon Mikel Landa (Bahrain Victorious) in their ranks to wreak Grand Tour havoc. In 2019, Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) surprised the cycling world when he snatched away victory of the 2019 Giro d’Italia from the likes of Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma), Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo), and then teammate Mikel Landa. But those heady days of Spanish-speaking heavyweight Grand Tour stars forming triumvirates and tridents have come to an end. Carapaz was gobbled up by Ineos before he even lifted aloft that infinite Giro trophy. Landa wished to finally be free in the Grand Tours and left for a team with more spacious pastures in Grand Tour leadership. And Quintana, the King of Colombian cycling, the Movistar brand ambassador to all of South America, the one all thought would be the first Colombian to win the Tour de France, sorrowfully departed from the team at the end of 2019 to start afresh in the burgeoning French Arkea-Samsaic team. It was clear Quintana and Movistar’s partnership quest for Tour victory simply would not work out, their window had closed, they had failed. And so in 2020, where did that leave this Movistar team? They were on a decline; their empire was crumbling rapidly or even completely imploding. The departure of such titans and headliners of the sport left quite a hole in the team’s heart. These departures still even now cast large shadows that haunt the team managers and riders of the former and yet ultimately unrealized greatness of the team from the past decade. Thus in 2020, they began or were forced to transition and overhaul the team completely, and thus their results were meager and it was a season to forget. And thus they enter year two of the rebuild, surely it cannot be worse than year one. Let us review their lineup, let us see who their stars shall be.

In pride of place, we must begin with the veteran: wily ole Alejandro Valverde—the Green Bullet. For some fifteen years he has been with the team, give or take a year or two when he had to serve a multi-year suspension for doping. Now forty years old, some wonder why he is still around, why he has yet to retire? Truly, the answer is simple: he loves to ride…and even more to race! In most seasons past we have seen him win across the cycling calendar: from February to October, from Ardennes Classics that are his bread-and-butter to countless stages of the Grand Tours. We have seen him finish on the podium of the Tour de France in 2015. We have seen him win the Vuelta outright in 2009, even in 2019 he still finished 2nd on the podium. He has a record five wins at Fleche Wallone on the mighty Mur de Huy—one of the most famous “Walls” of the cycling world. For so long he was the nearly-man at the World Championships, but finally he overcame his seemingly cursed destiny and wore the Rainbows in Innsbruck in 2018. But despite all this, his 2020 season was one to forget where he finished with a Goose-Egg in the wins column. Perhaps, this is a theory of mine, perhaps this veteran Valverde’s career longevity comes from an enjoyable schedule of racing into shape. Perhaps his domination from February to October comes from the fact that he is always on good form all season…and yet never quite peaks in the way other headliners channel all their mental energy on peaking for their Monument and Grand Tour objectives. For the biggest objectives of the year, it seems many headliners make sure they are functioning at 100% of their potential, and if this means they are at 85% for the tune-up races along the way so be it. It is my theory this is not the case for Alejandro Valverde, I do believe he simply stays at a high level—90 to 95% of his potential—all season. And if he lacks the form to win a Grand Tour, or a Monument, or the Olympics, or the World Championships so be it. So be it, because often a 95% Valverde is capable of winning just about every race on the calendar, and he needs not go to the dark-depths of torturous training camps and straining mental energy for months and months on focusing for one coming big objective of the season—surely, such mental endeavors are what take the massive tolls on a career. Yes, this is my theory to Valverde’s seeming eternal youth. It is supported by the evidence that he openly states his distain for altitude training-camps and his high count of race days. And I do believe his dismal results in 2020 add to this theory too: three to four months of no racing, how could the veteran stay in shape? He loves not training, he loves racing: thus coming out of lockdown his results were anonymous. And with all of that in mind, what does 2021 hold for the man? It is rumored this is to be his final season, but this is one retirement I shall not believe until I see it. What shall be on tap? Surely, one last Ardennes campaign, but shall it be a full charge or only a victory lap on the races he has so often won? Shall he ride one last Tour de France, perhaps even take a swansong stage? Surely, he must make one last Olympic tilt in Tokyo. And surely, surely, it would be unjust or almost criminal to not ride a final Vuelta in front of his Spanish compatriots…I dare say, there would be the perfect place to retire at the season’s end: perhaps even dub new Spanish cycling nobility, and pass on the mantle of team’s heart to other promising Spanish knights within the team.

Surely, there are two Spanish heirs in mind, both in only their mid-20s: surely now would be the time to become new beating-hearts of the team. Yes, I speak of Enric Mas and Marc Soler. Marc Soler has been the homegrown Spanish talent for six or so years now. In 2015, as a young man, he won the prestigious Under-23 Tour de l’Avenir—the “Race of the Future” it is known to be—and in 2018 he won the prestigious Paris-Nice weeklong stage race. I remember too, when his Herculean efforts at the 2017 Volta a Catalunya where off the back of his efforts Valverde easily sealed victory overall. That was the race I first heard of Soler, when I watched him put Alberto Contador, Chris Froome (Israel Startup Nation), and many other famous GC names to the sword. I remember it was wonderful to see, I remember I thought we were discovering Spain’s next premiere Grand Tour rider. But after he won Paris-Nice in 2018, his progression has stalled out. Perhaps too often forced to work for others in the Grand Tours, perhaps too often causing friction around the team. At least last year, he finally took his first Grand Tour stage win at the Vuelta: the stage was thrilling and at least somewhat helped Movistar save face after such an embarrassingly quiet season. And thus we come to what is to be a crucial season in this rider’s career. He has appointments with the Giro and the Vuelta, surely he shall have a leadership role in at least one and he shall have to make it count. He shall have to make it count, because there is another Spaniard in the same team who now seems in position to be the next great Spanish Grand Tour hope. Enric Mas was the salvage replacement for the Quintana, Landa, Carapaz departures at the end of 2019. In 2018, Mas surprisingly finished on the Vuelta podium, and he signed with Movistar in 2020 once his Quickstep contract was up. He was not able to fill the void Quintana left, but in 2020 he proved reliable finishing 5th Overall at the Tour and the Vuelta. He is talented and likeable, and he shall ride the Tour this year: but he shall not have sole leadership.

The headline offseason signing this Movistar team made was of course of Miguel Angel “Superman” Lopez from Astana. Superman trades pale blue for powder blue this season. I brought up the departures earlier in this preview to emphasize the hole and shadow they left behind. With this signing, they truly begin to fill the void. They have replaced the King of Colombian cycling with the Superhero of Colombian cycling. I dare say, it is a match made in heaven. Superman Lopez shall be reliable to either sneak his way onto many a Grand Tour podium anonymously or light up multiple high mountain stages where he seems to fly away up the climbs wearing a metaphorical cape like his namesake. And please excuse this rude tongue-and-cheek comment I cannot pass up: he is reliable to stand on the Grand Tour podiums, but his time-trialing is so extremely poor than he is also reliable to never win one of them…and thus he is the perfect fit for Movistar, for surely that was their biggest problem for all of the Quintana years as well. Yes, alas! I do not think Superman Lopez is the prefect package to help Movistar win the Tour de France, but that does not mean he is a bad signing….quite the contrary, on his best days Superman Lopez is one of my favorite riders to watch, and he has the best nickname in cycling right at this moment. I wish him absolutely the best, this really does seem like the team where he belongs—even though he called them “idiots” during the 2019 Vuelta—and with his signing, I feel Movistar dispels much of the shadow left by their departed former titans.

And yet, despite the signing of Superman Lopez, Movistar is still clearly in year two of this rebuilding project. Last year, with the departure of their older premiere headliners who tied up so much budget, they were replaced by a multitude of young talent….and most interestingly the cast was extremely international, departing from their Spanish or Spanish-speaking roots. Brit Gabriel Cullaigh, American Matteo Jorgenson, Norwegian Mathias Norsgaard, German Juri Hommann, Swiss Johan Jacobs are all back for another year with young Colombians Einer Augusto Rubio and Juan Diego Alba. All are talents under 25 years old, which shall pan out? Surely there is talent here, and surely in this rebuild Movistar must be figuring out how best to make them gel, how best to facilitate success and breed a winning culture again…for O! too often during those Quintana years, surely, all realized the team was mostly too much cobbled together talent with too little cohesion to win the day. And with this year’s signing of Ivan Garcia Cortina perhaps they have found a young Spanish leader to be competitive in Northern Classics this year where historically Spaniards have so often wilted in the past.

Yes, it is a great time of transition at Movistar this year. Perhaps not all the eyes of the cycling world will be on them any longer, but this I think shall prove a pivotal year in their trajectory for the whole next decade perhaps. Which of their young talents shall get results? How much will Mas and Soler improve this year? Shall Superman have such a strong team lineup that he may be able to win a non-time-trailing-heavy Grand Tour? And what of their talisman, their ancient elder, their leader through and through? Is this really Valverde’s last season? If so, how many beloved swansong victories shall he take?

Team Preview 2021: Ineos Grenadiers

Thus a little over halfway through these team previews we come to the big one I have been dreading. Surely the Quickstep preview was an early summit finish, AG2R and Bora-Hansgrohe were tricky lumpy transition stages, and the Jumbo-Visma and UAE previews were days in the high mountains. Yet this one, this team—despite not being the top team in 2020—their preview shall be the Queen stage of this chunk of early season preview episodes. The Ineos Grenadiers have an even more enormous abundance of riches than Jumbo or UAE, and it is only a glancing fact that the greatest Grand Tour rider of this generation, Chris Froome (Israel Startup Nation), has departed from the team. Froome’s departure seems little loss to these Grenadiers who are surely hungry once more to return to win the Tour de France they have straggle-held for the past decade…and they wish to win everything else as well! The headlines being churned out from the British rumor-mill is that the times are a’ changing at the Ineos Deathstar headquarters. Perhaps because their riches are so abundant, the headlines may come from a genuine place, and a new strategy must be sought. So here are what the headlines are appearing to say: Ineos want to race “like Brazil.” To the international audience, let me tell you, a statement like this would puzzle many Americans—in fact it might even attract some Americans to read the piece and not just draw their conclusions from the headlines as usual. But fear not! I was able to piece together the analogy like a first-grader putting two and two together to make four. This Brazil reference surely refers to the Brazilians’ favorite pastime: soccer, in American parlance. From the fringes of my history knowledge, I do believe—but please correct me if I am butchering this as only an American can—I learned the Brazilians were the ones to revolutionize this ball-kicking sport. They made it into a real contest of endurance. They made it into the so-called “Beautiful Sport.” They made it into a dynamic spectacle as all their players ran right and left, up and down the pitch with flowing and sweeping kicks and punts to their open teammates—no longer did men stay or shift in their zone like the wooden figures of a foosball table. Surely, if Dave Brailsford, the team boss of Ineos, is saying this is how Ineos plans to race this year: that is quite the radical change, and it shall need to be seen to be believed. Too long and too often we have seen the Sky/Ineos Deathstar squad relentlessly pacing in the high mountains at levels to where it would be suicide for rivals to go on the attack. It was a suffocating process, and made for bad viewing though it was O! so effective for this British team. But it seems what they propose to do—to ride “like Brazil”—is to throw off the shackles of not only the peloton-straggle-holding of the Grand Tours and stage races they wish to target, but of their own domestiques and leaders. I can only think of one reason why they would actually practically try to commit to this: they have too many big names. They have too many heavyweights to keep happy, they have more big names than big races to promise them leadership in. Thus with only fair or semi-coordinated collaboration they will come to the Grand Tours and even hilly Classics with two or three cards to play, and from there the road will decide which of their leader’s will get their full support later into the race. “Surely this is a bold strategy, Cotton.”

The rumor-mill’s wheel continued to turn in the tranquil English brook—it did not stop at just the Brazil rumors. It is said that the team’s heart, the only man left from its founding in 2010, Geraint Thomas will be the leader at the Tour. Geraint Thomas, the 2018 Tour winner, the 2019 Tour runner-up, and the 2020—sorry, let us not even speak of Thomas’ backwards and truncated 2020 season filled with frustration after frustration. At 34 years-old, surely he only has a few more years left, and the toilsome life of a cyclist surely niggles at the man. Yet for such reasons, surely Thomas wants even more to make these final years count, and only relax once the Final Curtain comes down. He has worn Yellow in Paris once before, but now he wishes to make another proper assault at it again, to join the even more elite club of riders that have worn Yellow in Paris twice. Surely it is a tall order, and with this “racing like Brazil” business, how much team support should he expect? It is said that Tao Geoghegan Hart, the 25-year-old who shocked the cycling world by winning this year’s October Giro d’Italia, will not return to defend his Giro title, but instead shall make his Tour de France debut. How much leash shall Geoghegan Hart have in this Ineos team that plans to “race like Brazil” and yet also have Thomas as the official leader? What about the leash on the Ecuadorian Richard Carapaz? The winner of the 2019 Giro d’Italia, the runner-up in the 2020 Vuelta a Espana—bested only by Roglic (Jumbo-Visma)—surely at the Tour he deserves a “1b” leadership role, no? And forget not too Carapaz’s Tour de France last year where he came in undercook for he was preparing for the Giro, and yet still in the final week he was the ironman of the mountains laying down long range attack after long range attack—making the best of all of his chances. In addition to that, who else shall round out this squad—surely, at least two more leaders can be found to join this already juggernaut squad.

Whether he will join the Tour squad after remains to be seen, but the rumor-mill is saying young Colombian sensation Egan Bernal is finally going to make his Giro d’Italia debut. The winner of the 2019 Tour de France seemed to enter the 2020 Tour on good form to defend his title, but whether it was really top form enough remained to be seen, and the answer at best was inconclusive when he abandoned the Tour in the third week with a back injury that had supposedly been hindering his progress for the entire Tour. We shall see if he’s managed to fix such injuries over this off season, already he has unwound the legs in the Etoile de Besseges stage race. The Giro route has yet to be announced, but surely Italy’s long and high-altitude climbs will be to his liking. And surely the tifosi will love to see such a champion line up to win their Grand Tour. But who of this Ineos team shall line up along side him? I think the only assured bet is that new Italian pride-and-joy, Filipo Ganna…Top Ganna they call him! He utterly stomped his authority when he became the Time Trial Champion of the World. Surely, he is the top man for Gold in Tokyo this summer; surely he looks like the man who could win the next ten Time Trial World Titles. And last year at the Giro he won all three Time Trials and a road stage to boot in his Grand Tour debut. Already at Besseges he has notched two wins for this 2021 season. Surely, he shall be at the Giro this year to not only support Egan, but dazzle his homeland compatriots as well; and O! how we shall love to see it, surely none have looked as calm or superb on a TT Bike since Bradley Wiggins or Fabian Cancellara. But who else shall join Egan and Top Ganna at the Giro this year? Perhaps Rohan Dennis and Pavel Sivakov? Dennis was instrumental in Tao’s Giro win last year, and Sivakov is as much a talent as Tao…perhaps he even deserves a “1b” leadership status behind Egan.

The last rumor from the rumor-mill’s day of work says the new transfer Adam Yates shall be at the Vuelta, perhaps even the leader. He is quite the transfer splash, after a couple of lackluster years and stymied progression at Mitchelton-Scott, Adam jumped ship will his twin brother Simon Yates (Bike Exchange) stayed behind. The Yateses come from Lancashire, thus Adam injects back in some of the British identity that was originally the core of the team. But to come to the team, and before even racing he is assured a Vuelta leadership role? I am skeptical, I even question if I read the headlines rightly. That said, I think the transfer shall pay off for Adam, I think Ineos will get the most out of him where Mitchelton just alas! could not. Who shall join Yates for this Vuelta appointment? Perhaps it is too early to tell, for surely some of the top names will double back from the Giro or the Tour. One name yet unmentioned is the returning veteran, an Australian hero, Richie Porte—fresh off a Tour podium. He was such a weapon in Sky’s dominance a few years ago—low key one of the most reliable weeklong stage racers in the world. But in the Grand Tours he has had trouble stringing together a complete and error-free three weeks. Last year he did at the Tour, and the deal was already signed for his return before that. Shall he ride out his last remaining years as a super domestique, or shall Ineos give him one last shot in a leadership role? Maybe anything is possible if they plan to “race like Brazil.” What of the rest of the Vuelta team? Another new signing has already shown intent and desire to ride the Spanish Grand Tour: Tom Pidcock. Yes, the ascending cyclocross star has signed with Ineos, and they are even letting him weave in a mountain biking program with the Spring Classics in the lead up to Tokyo. He has studied Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) and Mathieu Van Der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) well, surely he wants to keep his range for he believes it shall reap him many successes across the calendar. What other rider has goals to someday win a Grand Tour, but also be the lightest rider to win Paris-Roubaix? Anyways, after Tokyo, Pidcock would like to make his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta. But to earn a Grand Tour spot on this team is already proving to be a tall order.

Deep into this preview, I still have yet to mention many names that must not go unnoticed. And yet, I struggle to elegantly weave them in from out on here. Dani Martinez has transferred over from EF, last year he took a stage of the Tour and won the Dauphine outright. Quite frankly, I do not understand why he came to this team where he will get far fewer chances to win, but these are the realities we are working with. Michal Kwiatkowski is back once again, what a rider and teammate he is; surely, I hope this he is let off the leash much more often in the coming Grand Tours and unleashed in the Spring Classics once more. Perhaps Ivan Sosa and Jhonatan Narvaez shall accompany Egan’s Giro foray, Narvaez won a stage of the race last year, and Sosa is supposed to get on swimmingly with Egan. What about newly imported Laurens De Plus from rival Jumbo-Visma? Surely he shall be a weapon in the mountains. What about Jonathan Castroviejo, Salvatore Puccio, Andrey Amador, Eddie Dunbar, and Sebastian Henao? All proven, reliable, and strong domestiques to round out multiple Grand Tour rosters. And what of their Spring Classics squad? Shall all be domestiquing for Pidcock already? Or shall Luke Rowe or Dylan Van Baarle or Owain Doull win something big before they work for the GC men on the flat stages of the Grand Tours? And what about the fallen-from-favor and now mysteriously elusive Gianni Moscon, where was he in 2020? Shall he return to top form in 2021?

Believe it or not, I did not end up mentioning everyone on the Ineos roster, but surely those named had need to be mentioned: all would be top stars on almost any other team. And at this point I cannot keep going on. Now I declare this labor is over. The Queen stage is done. The heavy lifting is behind us. Surely, with these previews, it is downhill from here.