Lance Armstrong’s old boss tells UCI president to “stick to selfies and dubious deals” after call for smaller Tour de France teams to stop Pogačar; “Canyon to Brompton in one step”: Bike delivery nightmare; Awful Italian bike lanes + more on the live blog

The Tour de France is nearly here and that means only one thing… It’s time for Johan Bruyneel and David Lappartient to reignite their long-running feud!

(And there was you thinking Thursday’s team presentation marked the start of the Grand Départ festivities. Not when the Hog still has access to social media and a burning desire to condemn cycling’s governing body on the eve of the sport’s biggest race.)

> “What baffles me is that they make these decisions without considering the industry”: Lance Armstrong’s old boss Johan Bruyneel hits out at UCI’s tech rule changes – and claims it’s all part of a French conspiracy

So, what has the UCI president done to piss off everyone’s favourite banned sports director this time? Well, in a recent interview with Warner Bros. Discovery, Lappartient suggested that the best way to prevent cycling’s superteams dominating the Tour de France (cough, UAE, cough) was to further reduce the number of riders in each squad.

In 2018, during the height of the Sky era, team sizes were reduced from nine to eight at the grand tours (and eight to seven in every other race), and Lappartient believes that a further cut to seven or even six riders per team would prevent the kind of suspense-killing strangleholds we’ve seen in recent years.

“Is it really wise to limit the number of teams in the Tour de France to 22 or 23, each with eight riders? That way, the strongest teams manage to stifle the action and completely dominate a 3,500-kilometre race,” the UCI president said, without pointing the finger at any team in particular.

“With 25 teams of six riders each, the race becomes less predictable and decidedly more spectacular.”

> Bruyneel accuses UCI of “hypocrisy” after governing body hits out at Tour de France for granting access to controversial Belgian — despite lifetime doping ban

That suggestion hasn’t gone down too well with a certain Mr Bruyneel, who knows a thing or two about stifling a Tour de France with a super-strong, turbo-charged, dominant team.

“There has never been a president of cycling more disconnected from the sport than David Lappartient,” the former US Postal boss, the man behind the wheel of Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour wins, posted on X.

“His latest idea? Three-week Grand Tours with six-rider teams. It’s another reminder that he has no real understanding of how professional cycling actually works.

“Instead of trying to reinvent a sport he clearly doesn’t understand, perhaps Mr. Teflon Lappartient should stick to what he’s best known for: taking selfies and doing dubious deals with heads of state.”

Ouch. Don’t peak too soon Johan, we’ve still got four weeks to go until Paris. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to launch a few more long-range attacks at the UCI before the Tour’s over.

You might need to call Dr Ferrari for a social media performance-enhancing top-up at this rate though…

Speaking of excessively dominant eight-rider Tour de France squads, UAE Team Emirates have just unveiled their line-up for this year’s race. And it’s every bit as stupidly strong as you’d expect.

As Tadej Pogačar aims for a record-equalling (if you dismiss ol’ LA, of course) fifth Tour win, the world champion will be supported by what look like, on paper, one of the strongest teams ever assembled for three weeks of racing around France.

On the flat, Pogačar will be shepherded by front-of-the-bunch veteran Nils Politt, Tim Wellens, and Florian Vermeersch, while in the mountains he’ll have Felix Großschartner, Brandon McNulty, Adam Yates, and Mexican wonderkid and Dauphiné winner Isaac del Toro at his disposal.

You know what, I can see where Lappartient is coming from.

 

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“The Tour de France is always the biggest challenge of the season and also the race that motivates us the most,” Pogačar said in a statement published by his team.

“Every year, you arrive at the start knowing that anything can happen over three weeks, and that’s what makes it so special.

“We’ve prepared really well as a team, everyone has worked incredibly hard, and now we’re excited to finally get started in Barcelona.

“I feel good, I’m looking forward to racing, and I know I’ll have a fantastic group of teammates and staff around me. We have a lot of confidence in each other and have built up a lot of experience together over the years.”

Be afraid, be very afraid.

If you’re currently waiting on a new bike to be delivered, it’s probably best if you look away now:

UPS tracking stated “damage reported”
by
u/Holiday-Strawberry25 in
CanyonBikes

Yikes. That’s nightmare fuel, that is.

Unsurprisingly, US-based cyclist and Reddit user Holiday-Strawberry25 wasn’t too happy with the state of their new Canyon when it finally got delivered a week late.

“The delivery driver said other drivers had refused to deliver because the state of the damage,” they posted.

“He said they had to tape up the box in order to move it. I refused to sign (obviously). I can only imagine how bad the damage is inside of the box.

“I’m sure I am not the only one who’s received their bike in similar condition, just hoping the exchange process is quick and I won’t have to pay import duties on the replacement.”

When someone asked the obvious question (‘how’s the bike?’), they replied: “No idea. I didn’t sign for it. I didn’t have the patience to unpack, document, pack it up, and arrange a return pickup.”

Fair enough. That’s what we call in the business, Schrödinger’s Bike. And it’s fair to say UPS’s Ace Ventura-inspired bike delivery method has baffled quite a few cyclists in the comments.

“Honestly almost comical at that point. Looks like they played soccer with the damn thing,” wrote dolpsc. Ahem, it’s football.

“I don’t think I could’ve damaged the box even further even if I wanted to,” Adostein added.

Another Canyon customer shared their own delivery horror story:

Not too sure the bike enjoyed the ride, if I’m honest.

“Seems normal. $15k bike, $.25 treatment,” wrote zombie9393. “In this case the bike was fine, but it was more luck than anything there wasn’t damage.”

Meanwhile, others speculated about the type of delivery method favoured by the couriers, with suggestions ranging from “ocean” to “Amazon drone delivery from 100 feet”.

Or maybe, as some noted, we’re all actually just looking at the accidental birth of Canyon’s first ever folding bike.

“Canyon to Brampton in one easy step,” ZennerBlue wrote. Or not so easy, if it was supposed to be your bike.

British cycling infrastructure: ‘Yeah, we’re pretty useless, most of us don’t have much in the way of protection, and a lot of our designs aren’t great and a bit half-arsed, if we’re honest.’

Italian cycling infrastructure: ‘Hold my limoncello.’

Yep, this slalom-style beauty – if we can call it that – comes courtesy of Vaiano, a Tuscan town just north of Florence. And where every single cyclist is a champion cyclocrosser, by the looks of things.

“These things only make sense on paths you DON’T want cyclists to use. Just totally indefensible,” wrote Chris on Facebook, seemingly baffled that the UK’s love of both barriers and making things as difficult as possible for people on bikes has emigrated to the continent.

> “Drivers don’t have to push their cars”: Park barriers designed to stop “speeding” cyclists are forcing families onto busy road with no bike lane, cycling campaigners say

“Any testing at all would have prevented this,” added Alex, while a number of people in the comments noted that the tightly-packed nature of the barriers (three sets of which I can easily make out in that photo) made the cycle lane essentially unusable for cargo bike or wheelchair users.

“Why don’t they do that with the car lane???” asked Oliver. Now there’s a question.

I’m heading to that part of Italy for the autumn classics this year, I’ll have to test out that cycle lane when I’m there. Might need to work on my bike handling skills before then…

A move to ever-smaller grand tour squads isn’t the only democratising method David Lappartient has suggested in recent days.

The UCI president has also renewed his call for a salary cap to be implemented in professional cycling, in a bid to prevent the biggest, wealthiest teams from stockpiling talent (a tale as old as time, just look at La Vie Claire).

“To keep the sport attractive and balanced, it’s essential to prevent the best riders from all ending up on the same team,” Lappartient said.

The UCI attempted to introduce a budget cap last year, but the plan was rejected by the teams, including some smaller outfits Lappartient said were acting against their own interests.

“We worked intensively on this for a year and a half alongside the teams, and specifically with the AIGCP investing significant sums in external consultancy,” he said.

“The budget cap system was ready for launch, but at the time, the teams spoke out against it. We were very surprised that it was the smaller teams that voted against it.”

Pointing to Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Lappartient claimed Arkéa’s owner was forced to put more and more money into the team every year, only for results to decline, leading to him withdrawing his funding and the team stopping. The UCI president says he now believes similar smaller squads, faced with the same threat of extinction, have now changed their minds on the reality of the budget cap.

“Despite the initial rejection by the smaller teams, who, in my opinion, acted against their own interests, there is now a global consensus on the need for a budget cap,” he said,

“Although the final mechanism still needs to be defined, the work done two years ago provides an excellent foundation.

“My position is clear: without a budget cap, the wealthiest teams will progressively increase their revenues and monopolise the best riders, making survival even harder for smaller teams. Such a scenario is detrimental to the sport.”

It was an action-packed weekend in West Wales (west Wales? Definitely not West wales in any event) as the British national championships came to a conclusion with the men’s and women’s road races.

The women’s race was characterised by Josie Knight going long. And I mean really long. With 64km remaining, the track specialist had an 8 (eight) minute lead over the peloton. For a while it looked like we might have had a worthy successor to Anna Kiesenhofer and Lotte Claes in the category of unexpected breakaway triumphs.

But, on the closing punchy circuit in and around Aberystwyth, the gap started to come down, and it was Zoe Bäckstedt who made the definitive attack with 55km remaining that slowly reeled in Knight, eventually catching and dropping Knight to take a TT-Road double. Knight valiantly hung on for second whilst defending champion Millie Couzens outsprinted Pfeiffer Georgi for the final spot of the podium.

In the men’s race the action was cagier after the day’s early break, comprising Owain Doull and new under-23 champ Ben Wiggins was caught. The decisive move came with 70km to go when Connor Swift, Lewis Askey, Fred Wright, Mattie Dodd and Elliot Rowe broke free. The latter two were in a battle for the under-23 victory and were left to it on the final lap as the other three broke clear for a sprint a trois.

There, Fred Wright outkicked Biniam Girmay’s lead-out man Askey to take the second national championships of his career, having previously won the jersey in 2023. In fact, the national championships remain Wright’s only victories since turning professional. Whether the national champs count as a ‘pro win’ is, of course, another matter of pedantry altogether…

(Image Credit: SWPix.com via British Cycling)

Podcast klaxon!

> “My husband said I made it look too easy. But I was having a great time”: North Coast 500 record breaker Caroline Livesey on Scottish downpours, rescue rice puddings, and the joy of cycling