OnlyTifosi? Doping bust pro cyclist creates OnlyFans account after being sacked by team; Drivers fume at “waste of money” AI traffic lights for cyclists; Sarah Storey slams “appalling” Paralympics course; Tour of Britain thriller + more on the live blog

There’s a headline I never thought I’d write about professional cycling… and, considering the weird and often sordid side of the sport, that’s saying something.

But according to reports in the Italian cycling media this morning, Andrea Piccolo – the pro rider sacked by EF Education-EasyPost in June after he was caught trying to bring human growth hormone into Italy – has seemingly opted for a rather dramatic career change by setting up an OnlyFans account.

Yep, you read that right.

23-year-old Piccolo, who led the 2023 Vuelta for one day and finished fourth on stage six of this year’s Giro d’Italia, was stopped by authorities over two months ago while attempting to return to Italy following a training camp in Colombia, and was later revealed to be the centre of a targeted anti-doping investigation which led to his arrest.

He was found to be in possession of human growth hormone and immediately fired by EF, who said they would “cooperate fully with any investigation into the matter, and we encourage Andrea to be open and truthful with anti-doping authorities”.

> EF Education-EasyPost rider sacked for transporting human growth hormone was targeted as part of anti-doping investigation, UCI confirms

Piccolo then admitted to transporting four unspecified medicines, but launched the somewhat dubious defence that he is innocent because he “never tested positive” for any of them.

 (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

And after a summer without racing since his last competitive outing at the Giro d’Italia, cyclingpro.net has reported that Piccolo is now filling his time creating content for his newly opened account on OnlyFans, the (in case you weren’t aware) subscription social media platform primarily focused on videos of the… ahem, adult variety.

(Or you never know, the Italian could just be offering a pay-per-view insight into the ongoing influence of doping in the current peloton. To be honest, I don’t really want to check – but judging by the rumours concerning the ‘content’ of his videos, Piccolo may be telling the truth that the HGH wasn’t intended to aid his cycling career after all. Yikes.)

Piccolo’s eyebrow-raising (don’t go there) method of making up for his abrupt salary deficit following his EF sacking probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, however.

The 23-year-old’s partner, Colombian model and influencer Valentina Gomez, is already on the platform, while also amassing a whopping three million followers on Instagram (finally, an app road.cc is actually signed up for).

EF Education EasyPost rider Andrea Piccolo with his girlfriend Valentina Gomez 🩷 #GirodItalia pic.twitter.com/4KhUv6yEbl

— Lukáš Ronald Lukács (@lucasaganronald) May 13, 2024

In fact, Piccolo and Gomez’s relationship even provided some tabloid fodder for the likes of the Daily Mail after his arrest in June, with headlines focusing on the Italian’s “fall from grace” and “bad-influencer girlfriend”.

Look ma, cycling’s made the celebrity gossip pages! And he wasn’t even that famous in cycling circles yet, if we’re honest.

But who knows, maybe this whole OnlyFans stuff will take off and work out a whole lot more lucrative than a domestique’s salary, especially if he’s, ahem, ‘performing’ alongside his famous girlfriend?

(Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

So, to paraphrase cycling commentators throughout the 2000s, anyway, back to the doping story…

Following the UCI’s confirmation that Piccolo had been the centre of a criminal anti-doping probe, EF boss Jonathan Vaughters said the team had no knowledge of the investigation, but that it had shared general concerns with the UCI after they suspended Piccolo without pay in March for taking a sleeping aid (albeit a legal one) that was not approved by the team.

Despite claiming that they did not terminate the Italian’s contract at that time due to legal reasons related to the UCI’s employment rules, EF nevertheless picked Piccolo for the Giro, which he abandoned on stage 19, his last for the American squad.

> Cyclists behaving badly — times when the pros lost the plot

The news of the anti-doping probe into the young Italian came as another blow for EF, whose foundation as Slipstream in 2007 was based on championing clean sport and providing redemption for reformed dopers in a particularly murky period of cycling’s history, a stance which has since been shaken by historical accusations of doping for many of their riders, Matt White’s sacking for referring a rider to soon-to-be-banned ex-US Postal doctor Luis Garcia del Moral in 2011, and Tom Danielson’s four-year ban for testosterone in 2015.

However, I don’t think White and Danielson have set up OnlyFans accounts yet, to the best of my knowledge anyway.

Though maybe Piccolo will blaze the trail and open a new post-racing career path for ex-pros, sick of driving the team car or chaperoning VIPs around the Tour de France?

Moments after winning an astonishing 18th Paralympic gold medal in this morning’s C5 women’s time trial, beating French home hope Heidi Gaugain by four seconds, Dame Sarah Storey branded the short, 14.1km course selected by the organisers for most of the female TT races as “appalling”, “disappointing”, and a step back in the fight for parity in women’s cycling.

Today’s win marked Storey’s fifth successive Paralympic time trial win, as she overhauled Gaugain’s seven-second lead at the halfway mark with a blistering ride on the hillier run-in.

However, it was also the first time Britain’s most successful Paralympian had ever raced on a Games course shorter than 22km, with the 14.1km route failing to even match the length of a club 10-mile TT at home.

(Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

Speaking after her win, which was also her 28th Paralympic medal in total across swimming and cycling in a staggering nine Games appearances, the 46-year-old said that a number of competitors had complained to the organisers about the course’s brevity, with only one women’s time trial (the B event for visually impaired athletes) being contested over the two-lap distance of 28.3km. Seven of today’s men’s races, however, feature two laps of the course.

“It’s a short race. This is the shortest Paralympic time trial we have ever had, and I think it’s a real shame because we don’t get to showcase Para-sport in the way we want to,” Storey said at the finish. “You’ll have to ask organisers. There’s plenty of time in the day for us to do two laps like the men.

“Having fought so hard for parity in women’s cycling, to not have it is a real disappointment. I’ve had to put that aside and focus on what I could control, because I couldn’t control the race distance. But I hope they never do this to the women again, because it has been appalling.”

She continued: “It’s a hilly 10km. I do lots of those at home, so I have plenty of practice. But in championships you expect a race of minimum 22km, that’s what we’ve done in all the other Paralympic Games.

“Look back to that incredible course in Beijing, Brands Hatch with all the fans, Rio was flat but longer, Tokyo we had the motor circuit, three laps, it was a real challenge. This has been the most disappointing in that sense, given what came before it.”

(Ed Sykes/SWpix.com)

Storey also noted that a number of riders had contacted the Paris organisers about the course, but had heard nothing back.

“You can ask, you might not hear anything back,” she said.

Despite her disappointment at the course, Storey was nevertheless thrilled to add to her position as one of Britain’s greatest sportspeople, with another crack at gold in Friday’s road race to come.

 “I’m utterly delighted. I had a target to get five gold medals [in the time trial]. I feel so, so proud,” she said.

“You can put the challenges aside, we race the course and prepare for it, but it is brilliant, to have friends and family here, the cheering off the start line. I’m so pleased.”

The rain normally associated with the Tour of Britain was certainly falling in Spain today, giving way to a sketchy, uncontrollable finale ultimately won – as usually happens at the end of chaotic races – by the huge pre-stage favourite Kaden Groves, who capitalised on Wout van Aert’s injury-enforced absence to claim his third win of this year’s Vuelta, continuing his streak of hat-tricks at the Australian grand tour.

HE NAILED IT! 👏 Kaden Groves wins Stage 17 of La Vuelta in terrible conditions! 🌧️ #LaVuelta24 pic.twitter.com/WiRLawrPrd

— Eurosport (@eurosport) September 4, 2024

But the seemingly inevitable sight of Groves beating Pavel Bittner, the second-fastest man left at the Vuelta, by a bike length in Santander was preceded by a fraught, nervy stage in the rain, as Alpecin-Deceuninck and DSM-Firmenich struggled to control the breakaway trio of Thibaut Guernalec, Jonas Gregaard, and Xabier Isasa on the sketchy run-in.

After those day-long escapees were finally reeled in with around five kilometres left, another trio broke clear, powered on by Swiss champion Mauro Schmid, with DSM anchor Max Poole and the late-arriving Victor Campenaerts tucked firmly in the wheel.

But Schmid’s dogged effort ultimately came to naught with just 250m to go, as Groves timed his sprint to perfection to make it three at the Vuelta for the second year running.

Now, who was the road.cc reader who said at the start of the race that the Australian sprinter would have a hard time repeating his 2023 hat-trick? Come on, hands up…

"It's the kind of race where things can get out of hand pretty quick!"

Stevie Williams after winning stage two of the #TourOfBritain@IsraelPremTech | @ITV pic.twitter.com/b3icExua9W

— ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) September 4, 2024

Now there’s an understatement, Stevie…

> There’s a new fastest time up Box Hill – but what’s the world’s hardest Strava KOM to add to your collection?

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll bother…

The Box Hill KOMs are falling like Autumn leaves this September, aren’t they?

> Box Hill Strava KOM smashed (again) as cyclist conquers iconic climb at 33.7km/h

I’ve already noticed a few people question the legitimacy of the mind-boggling team effort that went into securing Jackson’s place in online British cycling history – but surely then all Strava times posted during races shouldn’t count either, as they’re not technically ‘solo’ efforts?

Or do you also reckon the Foran boys are gaming the Strava system?

Just a month after announcing that he was set to leave the Ineos Grenadiers after the Paris Olympics – complete with a very public denouncement of the British squad’s current failings – aero guru Dan Bigham has returned to the WorldTour as the new Head of Engineering at the ambitious and recently moneyed Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

Former hour record holder and team pursuit world champion Bigham revealed on the eve of the Olympics, where he added a silver in the team pursuit to his collections, that he was set to leave his performance engineer role at Ineos Grenadiers after Paris, saying the struggling team “should be doing things a lot better”.

Bigham – who worked with the Danish track cycling team at the Tokyo Games, having felt the British track set-up was dismissive of his ideas, before returning to the fold the following year – also claimed that Ineos have “lacked clarity” since Sir Dave Brailsford’s departure and expressed “frustrations” at missed performance gains.

(Ed Sykes/SWpix.com)

“How I want to do performance is not particularly aligned with how Ineos wanted to go about it. I wanted more autonomy, more ability to action my ideas. And I wasn’t really getting that at Ineos," he explained, confirming there were similarities with his situation with GB a few years ago.

“I feel that a lot of performance we’re leaving on the table and that frustrates me because it’s clear as day we should be doing things a lot better. Let’s be honest, Ineos are not where they want to be, not where they need to be and the gap is not small.”

> "They should be doing things better": Dan Bigham announces Ineos Grenadiers departure just before starring for GB's track cycling team at the Olympics, expresses "frustrations" over "significant performance" gains being missed

And a month on from that very public criticism, Bigham has now jumped ship to one of the British squad’s rivals, Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, who have appointed the 32-year-old to their newly created role of Head of Engineering, which the German outfit say will “further enhance the technical performance potential of the team” currently led by three-time Vuelta winner Primož Roglič.

Joining Bigham, who is expected to set aside his racing ambitions to fully focus on the role, at Red Bull will be Jonny Wale, who collaborated with the aero specialist on his HUUB Wattbike pursuit team and his successful hour record attempt in 2022.

According to the team, this new ‘engineering unit’ will work alongside other Red Bull entities, such as Red Bull Advanced Technologies, to “focus on optimising all aspects of performance and the integration of new and innovative technologies into cycling”.

“For the past decade, I have balanced the life of an elite athlete with my passion for advancing the sport of cycling through engineering,” Bigham said in a statement today.

“Having achieved nearly everything I dreamed of on the bike, I am now ready to fully dedicate myself to supporting the next generation of winners. The opportunity ahead of me at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is immense. No other team can match this level of combined knowledge, capability, and expertise across its network, and I am eager to leverage it to the fullest.”

Red Bull-Bora’s chief DS Rolf Aldag also said: “With Dan and Jonny, we have absolute experts in the combination of cycling and engineering know-how. At Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, our new engineering unit meet the top know-how of our partners like Specialized on the one hand and the innovative technology entities of Red Bull on the other. This combination is unique in cycling and promises enormous potential.”

Wout van Aert suffered no fractures in the horrific crash that abruptly ended what had until that point been a storming Vuelta a España for the Belgian, but will undergo “intensive care” on the deep wound in his knee, Visma-Lease a Bike confirmed last night.

Van Aert was once again making a nuisance of himself in the breakaway during yesterday’s stage to the iconic Lagos de Covadonga, as he targeted both the race’s green and mountains jerseys, when he crashed hard into the banking on the fast, wet descent of the Collada Llomena.

After gingerly getting on a spare bike, the 29-year-old – a winner of three stages at this year’s Vuelta during a dominant, redemptive ride after an injury-ravaged season – finally pulled across to the team car, clearly in distress and blood dripping from his knee, abandoning the race.

Following Van Aert’s DNF, Visma-Lease a Bike DS Grischa Niermann confirmed that his star rider had been taken to hospital by ambulance and was undergoing examinations.

Powerful shot of Van Aert's distress, while the Vuelta continues, from @GettyImages pic.twitter.com/OyaQAaVIXT

— Jeremy Whittle (@jeremycwhittle) September 3, 2024

“Of course we are so sad seeing him leave the Vuelta in this manner. Luck has not been on our side this season. We all feel for him,” Niermann said.

And last night, the team said in a statement: “Wout van Aert has not suffered any fractures from his crash in La Vuelta. The three-time stage winner had to withdraw due to severe knee pain caused by a deep wound. That wound requires intensive care. Wout will travel back to Belgium to continue his recovery.”