Fri, May 10th | National Criterium Champs Banbridge, Co Down Promoted by Banbridge Cycling Club MensRace|StartList WomensRace|StartListThe post Start lists National Criterium Champs 2024, Banbridge, Co Down appeared first on Sticky Bottle.

In his first Grand Tour for Team Visma | Lease a Bike,Cian Uijtdebroeks has started strongly at the 2024 Giro d'Italia. After four stages, the Belgian is wearing the white jersey for best young rider and sits fourth in the general classification."He is the youngest Belgian in the Giro since 1974....

Alpecin-Deceuninck won't keep fond memories of Wednesday's Giro d'Italia stage 5. The team around Kaden Groves tried to force a selection among the sprinters, however in the end, it was not even among the sprinters for the win in Lucca. Soudal - Quick-Step's DS Iljo Keisse had a hard time trying to...

The strade bianche gravel road stage even if theres only a few kilometres of the dust roads. Todays stage suits the breakaway.Lucky Lucques: so much for the sprint stage, the course with the finale that suited the sprinters most in the opening week saw a breakaway take the win. Alpecin-Deceuninck drove the pace up the Passo Bracco to sap other sprinters but it reeled in the days early breakaway which meant there was open road for fresh attackers.A quartet went clear with 70km to go and stayed away with the chasing teams coming up short. You could see riders taking a pull on the front of the peloton and theatrically looking over their shoulders for the next rider to come through, only nobody was. Alpecins activity earlier probably left a lot of sprint trains and workers rinsed.In the streets of Lucca Andrea Pietrobon attacked the quartet just before the flamme rouge and got a gap and Enzo Paleni seemed to be the first to crack and chase which got Michael Valgren in touching distance of Pietrobon only for Thomas to come around like a crafty fox, the kind of skills hes honed on the track for years. He told the Bidon podcast the other day his dream would be to play for a stage from the breakaway. It came true.Its also overdue. Thomas is a talented and versatile rider but without the palmars or impact on the road so far, even if hes been French TT champion. Today he got Cofidiss first win of the season. If someone had to lose, spare a thought for Michael Valgren who got his best result after a horror crash in 2022, the final stage of the Route dOccitanie where he came close to needing a hip replacement and endured a long rehab to get here.The Route: 180km and 1900m of vertical gain. Theres 70km to the first climb, a procession but increasingly scenic and the climb to Volterra marks the change in terrain but little more.The first gravel sector is approached by a gentle downhill and by itself the 4.4km section is nothing scary, its flat and regular in surface, with even a tarmac portion along the way. The difficulty is moving up, anyone out of position here is going to struggle to recover as the road isnt wide and everyone will be thinking of what is up next.Theres only a brief passage on the main road before the second section begins and this is very different, the road plunges down and then rises after and it is much more technical and twisty, its the Bagnaia sector from Strade Bianche.Once the gravel is done the roads are hard going, plenty of unmarked climbs that pitch up steeply and twisting roads, its not easy for dropped riders to be towed back. The final section of gravel isnt so bad and runs along top of a ridge.The Finish: a tough wall to tackle 4km from the finish including the Via dei Poveri, a steep and narrow road that does get close to 20%, a real leg breaker before a gentle descent and into Rapolano for the finish.The Contenders: lets start with Tadej Pogaar (UAE) because while a breakaway is probably going to win, if things work out such that the move doesnt work or the GC teams are stressed to the point of trying to out-ride each other for position then hes the obvious pick to clean up in a sprint from a small group.However today should suit the breakaway and many riders will have marked today as such, there should be a good fight to get in the move as opposed to some riders from wildcard invitees floating away.For the breakaway most of the field are over four minutes down so a move can go without even posing a threat to Pogaars maglia rosa and of course he and his team can always lend it to the best placed rider up the road if they dont look much of a threat for the overall win. Is Filippo Ganna (Ineos) allowed to go away or is he going to be reserved as a luxury bodyguard for Geraint Thomas? Jhonatan Narvaez is a good match for the course here.Christophe Laporte (Visma-LAB) looks suited but the form is unknown, plus he had a hard crash yesterday, likewise team mate Attila Valter. Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) is a classics kind of rider with a fast finish but hes making his grand tour debut after a long spring campaign so no pressure to win. Max Schachmann (Bora-hansgrohe) will like the climbing. Andrea Vendrame (Decathlon-Ag2r La Mondiale) is a crafty rider who was looking strong in Romandie recently. Julian Alaphilippe (Soudal-Quickstep) will be up for today but his win rate is low these days. With no sprinter and no GC contender EF Education-Easypost will want to be in the action today so after Valgren yesterday, perhaps its Andrea Piccolo today.Wider range picks include Kevin Vermaerke (DSM Firmenich-PostNL) who is due a result, Nicola Conci (Alpecin-Deceuninck) who was fifth in Torino and because Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis) was going to be a pick today, maybe team mate Stefano Oldani doubles up instead?Vendrame, Narvaez, PogaarSchachmann, Alaphilippe, Pithie, ConciWeather: sunshine and 22C, a NE breeze will be a headwind at times in the finish.TV: KM0 is at 12.55pm CEST and the finish is forecast for 5.15pm CEST. Tune in by 4.00pm for the sterrato, earlier to watch the fight for position.Postcard from RapolanoThanks to the Eroica cycle ride and the Strade Bianche the dust roads of the Sienese hills have a vintage feel about them. One dusting and todays riders are teleported back to the good old days.Yes they are romantic but theres nothing too special about the sterrato roads. They are just roads with the usual Italian nomenclature, like Strada Provinciale 46. They maintained by municipal road crews rather preserved by volunteers tasked with protecting cultural heritage. School buses pick up kids every morning, commuters drive home on them in the evening and all with normal cars, no 4x4s required.Theyre not limited to this corner of Italy. Just to the south the Marche region has as many if not more of these roads but you can find them all over Italy, in the Veneto to the north-east we have the late-season pro races as a promotional pitch to attract gravel cyclists. Piedmont, the host region of the start has plenty, both amid vineyards but also into the Alps with old military roads like the Via del Sale and the Strada dellAssietta which includes the Finestre pass although these are very different, old military roads rather than everyday things. Either way there are a lot of options in Italy for gravel and well see if future editions of the Giro can embrace this, or does organiser RCS have a duty to promote the Tuscan versions because it owns the Strade Bianche race?The post Giro Stage 6 Preview first appeared on The Inner Ring.

More than ever, the topic of rider safety has been discussed among riders, experts and even the sports' highest stakeholders after the spring nearly turned into a survival game, with stars like Jonas Vingegaard, Remco Evenepoel or Wout Van Aert ending their spring campaigns all in hospitals, instead...

Wout van Aert is currently training on Spanish soil towards his planned comeback at the Tour of Norway. Together with ex-teammate Amund Grndahl Jansen, he set out for five hours near Girona.Van Aert and Jansen completed a five-hour training ride near Girona and Lloret de Mar. They covered slightly...