“Just Zone 2”: Matteo Jorgenson issues snarky Strava swipe at Tadej Pogačar after world champion delivers another long-range masterclass at Giro dell’Emilia; Strava’s very harsh and personal AI advice; Weird cycle lane encounters + more on the live blog

> 450km a day, brutal heat and headwinds, and dodging kangaroos and truck drivers: Lachlan Morton completes epic 14,210km lap of Australia by bike in 30 days and 10 hours – over a week faster than previous record

Alright, for those who didn’t watch any bike racing over the weekend (and no cheating, please), could you please identify out of the following two photos the winner of the men’s world gravel championships.

This guy…

(Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)

Or this one?

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Team Visma | Lease a Bike (@teamvisma_leaseabike)

Yep, that’s right – it’s the lovely, clean-looking Mathieu van der Poel and his almost immaculately pristine Canyon that claimed yet another rainbow jersey yesterday, after a dominant solo ride at the third edition of the UCI Gravel World Championships.

On the hard compact gravel trails and twisty park lanes around Leuven (to be honest, I thought I had tuned into the UCI Shared-Use Path Worlds), Van der Poel and Marianne Vos burnished their multidisciplinary legacies… while F1 driver Valtteri Bottas finished 133rd out of 247 in the 35-39 age category (got to stick to the big stories after all).

(Simon Wilkinson/SWpix.com)

Vos outsprinted gravel newbie Lotte Kopecky to secure an astonishing 14th rainbow jersey in four different disciplines (that’s why she’s the real GOAT), while her fellow Dutch superstar Van der Poel dropped Florian Vermeersch to solo to his eighth worlds in three disciplines.

> 2024 UCI Gravel World Championships – how the race was won

But while Vos and Van der Poel were able to keep relatively sparkly for the podium in Leuven, down at Paris-Tours, it was a different story entirely – where the gravel tracks that now define the French classic combined with foul weather to create a muddy epic, which Visma-Lease a Bike’s Christophe Laporte took full advantage, outsprinting Mathias Vacek in a cagey run to the line on the iconic Avenue de Grammont.

Told you they’d be good! @ParisTours making the Gravel World’s look clean, both taking place on the same day.
Photos from @eurosport pic.twitter.com/HMc5UiXtDR

— Jez Cox (@JezCox) October 7, 2024

Now THAT’S a gravel race. Talk about 1,000-yard stares…

“More gravel worlds than the gravel worlds… and it’s not even a cyclocross post,” Laporte’s team wrote on social media after his hard-fought win.

“Paris-Tours looked more gravel champs than the actual one,” James wrote on Facebook.

“Double screening the world gravel champs, on nice dry hardpacked earth, and the utter mud-fest that is Paris-Tours. It would be hard to explain to an outsider which is the off-road event and which the on-road event,” cycling writer Michael Hutchinson added on Twitter.

Ouch.

The muddy brilliance of Laporte’s win also reminded me, in a roundabout way, of the longevity of Mark Cavendish’s career.

When Cav first burst onto the scene, Paris-Tours was listed as one of the Manx Missile’s biggest career objectives, due to its largely flat route and long-established position as the most prestigious sprinters’ classic.

Now, as we approach the end of Cavendish’s career, it’s almost completely recognisable. And that’s just the riders at the finish.

It’s been in the pipeline for a few weeks now, but this morning Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale confirmed that the Ineos Grenadier’s longstanding road captain Luke Rowe is set to join the French squad as a sports director next month.

Rowe – a cornerstone of some of Ineos and Sky’s biggest victories over the years, including five Tour de France wins – had indicated earlier this year that he was set to retire at the end of 2024, despite having a contract with the British team until the end of next season, after a shocking run of injuries and ill-fortune.

The 34-year-old hasn’t raced since a crash at the E3 Saxo Bank Classic in March, where he suffered a concussion that ruled him out of the spring classics and this year’s grand tours, while a projected farewell ride at the Tour of Britain was also called off last month.

With his tactical nous as one of the peloton’s most acclaimed and respected domestiques, Rowe has long been touted as a future sports director, and was widely tipped to stay on in a management capacity at Ineos, where he has spent the entirety of his 13-year pro career.

(A.S.O./Pauline Ballet)

However, reports emerged last month that Rowe was instead set to step into the team car at Decathlon, who have enjoyed a hugely successful 2024, winning 30 times (the most the team has achieved in a single year this century), including two stages at the Giro d’Italia, and a stage, second-place overall, and a long spell in the red leader’s jersey at the Vuelta a España courtesy of Ben O’Connor.

Ineos, meanwhile, have only mustered a paltry 14 victories this season, their worst return since the squad was founded in 2010.

> “Pogačar and Vingegaard are going to be hard to topple”: Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe say Ineos Grenadiers need some “honest conversations in the mirror” and just get back to winning some bike races

And this morning, it was confirmed that Rowe has been appointed an assistant sports director at Decathlon AG2R, and will start the role on 1 November – departing Ineos two months earlier than planned.

“I took a bit of time to reflect on my future and see what the new chapter would be,” Rowe said in a statement this morning.

“The Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale project appealed to me, particularly with the big step forward made this year in terms of performance, but above all with the future project and the long-term vision.

“I will be eager to bring my experience from the years spent at the highest level and to support the riders, especially in the classics.

“The other part of this new project is the team’s ambition to become more international. Obviously, there are some incredible French talents but, with this approach, the team can also be a very attractive option for English speakers and international riders looking to join the team.”

(Zac Williams/SWPix.com)

Rowe’s departure, now confirmed, will prove a blow for an Ineos management structure which has been in flux since Dave Brailsford stepped aside to focus on another fallen sporting giant, with recent years marked by Rod Ellingworth’s exit amid reported internal tensions, DS Steve Cumming’s ongoing absence at races since June, and Dan Bigham’s recent defection to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

> “It’s not prettier than it is, and the podium is just very far away”: Luke Rowe joins chorus of discontent as Ineos Grenadiers struggle in Spain at the Vuelta

And in September, amid other public displays of discontent from departing staff such as Bigham, Rowe himself admitted that the British team is currently “far away from the podium” when it comes to cycling’s biggest races.

“You can’t justify it. It’s a team with a huge budget. Riders are paid to win big races. That’s just not happening now. We’re not performing. Not that one person is failing, but it hasn’t been going well for a long time,” Rowe, who joined Team Sky upon turning pro in 2012, told Eurosport during the Vuelta.

“Staying at the top was difficult, we were chased. Now, we have to chase the rest. Several teams have passed us. I know the people at the top of the team, and they will start thinking and not give up. But it’s not solved in one or two years. I give them a few years, then Ineos will return to the top.”

The Scottish showboating legend is at it again – and he’s demonstrating some unorthodox goalkeeping skills that would make René Higuita jealous…

In case you missed it at the weekend, here’s our latest handy guide on bike cameras, the different types of cameras available, how and where to fit them, and what to do with your footage if you need to report an incident:

> Everything you need to know about bike cameras — how to choose, tips for recording quality footage, and what to do if you capture a near miss, close pass or collision

(Yes, it did take me a while to realise that I accidentally inserted the Danny MacAskill video into this blog post. And you’re right, doing somersaults and larking about around a sportswear manufacturer’s campus is a bit of a stretch for why you should use a bike camera. Though to be fair, if I could pull off his tricks, I’d be running about five cameras on my bike…)

While Tadej Pogačar was having the time of his life in the rainbow bands around rainy Bologna on Saturday, it’s safe to say world time trial and double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel wasn’t enjoying his day getting dropped and soaked quite as much.

The Belgian, who in his infinite wisdom sparked the move that led to Pogačar’s latest race-destroying attack, pulled out of the Giro dell’Emilia with 25km to go, after debris from the wet roads appeared to get in his eye, prompting this DIY post-race shower:

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by País do Ciclismo (@opaisdociclismo)

Dirt in his eye or not, Evenepoel will be hoping to bounce back from Saturday’s disappointment by setting his sights (get it?) at today’s Coppa Bernocchi, which the Soudal Quick-Step rider won following his own long-range attack in 2021.

The former world champion will be challenged on the hilly 174km course (albeit with a flat run-in) around Legnano by Primož Roglič and the flying Marc Hirschi, who took his sixth one-day win since the start of August at yesterday’s Coppa Agostini, the second in the series of Italian semi-classics leading up to this Saturday’s big monument showdown at Il Lombardia.

Remco checks out Tadej’s new threads before the Giro dell’Emilia (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

“Things didn’t go as planned for us in Emilia, but that’s cycling, and this only motivates us even more for Monday,” Evenepoel’s Soudal Quick-Step sports director Davide Bramati said in a statement this morning.

“In the past three seasons, we won twice and racked up a total of four podium finishes in Bernocchi, so it goes without saying this is a race we like a lot and where we hope to be again in contention for a good result, on what will be a demanding and quite selective parcours.”

The new cycle path in Poole’s Baiter Park seems to not only be going down a treat with local cyclists, but also enthusiasts of a different, somewhat less sustainable or healthy form of transport, judging by this photo from the weekend:

“My favourite encounter on the new Baiter cycle path so far,” Paul, who posted the photo on a local active travel page, wrote.

“Coal powered! To be fair they are wearing protective flat caps and driving at a considerate speed.”

No hi-vis though. Tut-tut.

Paul’s mini steam train encounter in Poole got us thinking – what’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen on a cycle path? Let us know in the comments!

AI. Stay out of my life. pic.twitter.com/ie0VB5toEq

— Simon Warren (@100Climbs) October 7, 2024

Ouch.

If I needed another reason not to bother with Strava, this is it. I don’t need lambasted about my horrendous lack of fitness from an AI robot and its “personalised insights”. I’d much rather live in constant denial, thank you very much.

> Wheels featuring self-inflating/deflating tyre system used by Marianne Vos to win Gravel World Championships now available to pre-order priced from £3,200

While Katie Archibald’s miraculous and speedy return to competition has grabbed the headlines, there are plenty more intriguing subplots in the 23-rider British squad heading to Ballerup for next week’s track worlds, off the back of GB’s lowest Olympic medal tally for two decades.

In what will be an event marked both by bleeding newbies and saying farewell to the old guard, Dan Bigham is set to ride in British colours for the final time in the individual pursuit, before he hangs up his wheels to focus on his new role as head of engineering at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe.

> Dan Bigham appointed as Head of Engineering at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, just month after quitting Ineos Grenadiers and claiming British team “should be doing things a lot better”

He’ll be joined in the men’s endurance squad by Ethan Hayter, Ollie Wood, Charlie Tanfield, along with three new 20-year-olds set for their worlds debuts, including Josh Tarling, who will be looking to put a disappointing end to the season – defined by his two agonising fourth places in the Olympic and world time trials – with a strong showing on the boards.

Tarling’s fellow 20-year-olds Noah Hobbs and Harry Ledingham-Horn will also be making their worlds debuts in Denmark.

Emma Finucane celebrates gold in the team sprint in Paris (Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

Olympic silver medal winning team sprinters Jack Carlin, Hamish Turnbull, and Ed Lowe have all opted out of this year’s worlds, though the women’s sprint team is at full strength, with Olympic champions Katy Marchant, Sophie Capewell, and Emma Finucane all lining up, while Finucane will aim to defend the individual sprint world title she won in Glasgow last year.

Meanwhile, the returning Archibald fronts a strong women’s endurance line-up, featuring Josie Knight, Anna Morris, Jess Roberts, Neah Evans, Meg Barker, and Sophie Lewis.

“While some riders rest after a heavy season, this gives other riders an opportunity to step up and stake a claim for a podium squad place,” GB’s performance director, Stephen Park, said after announcing the squad.

“The world championships after the Olympic Games is always an exciting mix as our Olympic medallists are riding high from a successful Games and will hopefully end the season with some more medals to add to their palmares.”

Just under four months after the freak fall in her garden that left her with a broken leg and ripped ligaments, and which ruled her out of the Paris Olympics, Katie Archibald is set to make a lightning-fast return to elite competition next week, after being named in the Great Britain squad for the track world championships in Denmark.

The double Olympic gold medallist tripped over her garden step in June, breaking two bones in her lower leg, suffering severe ligament damage, and dislocating her ankle. The 30-year-old was, unsurprisingly, forced to miss what would have been her third Olympic Games, amid fears that her season had been prematurely cut short.

> Team GB star Katie Archibald set to miss Paris Olympics after tripping over garden step and breaking leg, ripping ligaments, and dislocating ankle in “cruel” fall

However, after four months of recovery and rehabilitation, Archibald is, somehow, ready to race at the highest level again, and was today named in GB’s women’s endurance squad for next week’s track worlds in Ballerup, Denmark, alongside team pursuit bronze medallists from Paris, Josie Knight, Anna Morris and Jess Roberts, as well as madison silver medallist Neah Evans, Meg Barker, and Sophie Lewis.

In an interview with Daniel Benson today, the five-time world champion described her call-up, less than four months after her Paris hopes were dashed, her “happiest selection”.

“When you’re young you’ve not been grafting for that long to make something happen,” she said. “I don’t think that you appreciate it that much, so my first World Championships selection was special but a bit ‘air-headed’, I suppose. This was something I really worked for but wasn’t guaranteed. It feels really good.”

The speed of Archibald’s return to fitness and competition – last week she posted that she was “thriving” on the bike – owes much to GB’s head of performance Stephen Park, who swiftly nipped in the bud the 30-year-old’s hopes of still making the Olympics so soon after her freak fall, a rather naïve ambition which possibly could have derailed her entire season and more.

(Will Palmer/SWpix.com)

“At first I didn’t actually think that it would be as big of a challenge as it has proven to be,” she told Benson. “I don’t think that I took the medical feedback as seriously as I should have at the start because I was told super quickly that I wouldn’t go to the Games but the speed with which that information came to me almost made me disbelieve it.

“I thought there was still a chance. It’s not that I was naïve but when you’ve got so much emotion tied up into an outcome you don’t assess it as rationally as you do with other things.”

She continued: “After I had the surgery I could stand on my leg in seven days. I felt like I had progressed way more than the original surgeon’s feedback so I made the mistake of amplifying that out and thinking that if I’ve gone double speed then, I can do it again and again each week.

“It was after seven days when I was making calls about the selection and I asked Sparky [Park] if I could be considered a non-travelling reserve, which would keep my options open for the Games.”

(Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)

However, Park advised Archibald to shelve any attempt to get fit for Paris, guidance the Scottish rider now says with hindsight was the “biggest kindness”, which instead afforded her the time and space to get fit for next week’s worlds.

“From that point, I could just be enthused by the progress that I did make because it wasn’t tied to the Games,” she said. “He basically let himself be the villain, so it wasn’t a particularly happy conversation but it did feel like something melted away with the pressure disappearing, because deep down I knew that I had some spaghetti in a bag for a leg and that it wasn’t going to happen.

“It feels like I’ve graduated this week in terms of tick boxes for progression. It’s a really nice feeling at the moment. I had five team pursuit sessions and then five turbo sessions that were all geared around power for Madison racing.

“Those are my two targets at worlds and so I had that final turbo session to hit those numbers that would have meant I wouldn’t have climbed off halfway through. It was quite a low bar that I’ve set myself but that’s where I am at the moment.

> SUV driver pulls out of junction and crashes into Olympic champion Katie Archibald

“I really hope that I’ve just had the worst two years of all my years. There were lessons I took from previous injuries, like the first time I went through a serious rehab experience. That taught me so much that I could apply to my normal training and the relationships with people around me.

“I’m done now. I’ve gone through too many of these. I’ve had concussions, I’ve had ligament and bone damage. I’ve had surgeries, I’ve broken my back, and I’m pretty done with new insights.”

A cyclist from Oxfordshire has warned that Thames Valley Police requires a “real change in culture” around road safety, after the police force failed to take action on multiple clips of “hugely dangerous” driving that the rider caught on camera during his rides.

Read more: > Cyclist “dismayed” by police “not interested in taking action against drivers”, as force admits “shortage in staff” and “very valid concerns”

At round three of northern Italy’s heady week-long series of one-day races, Alpecin-Deceuninck’s Stan Van Tricht bagged the first professional victory of his career, after forming part of the early breakaway and surviving several late attacks from the favourites to win from a small group sprint.

The 25-year-old, whose biggest result before today was a second place at last year’s Dwars door het Hageland, made his way into the morning break, alongside Bart Lemmen, Alessandro Pinarello, Anthony Perez, and Pierre Latour.

On the final climb of the Piccolo Stelvio, tackled seven times for the slightly downhill run-in to Legnano, Lemmen attacked alone, while Van Tricht and Pinarello managed to hang on as a group of big-name counter-attackers from the bunch – Pavel Sivakov, the in-form Roger Adrià, Alex Baudin, and Neilson Powless – bridged across.

🏆🇧🇪Stan Van Tricht (Alpecin-Deceuninck) gana la Coppa Bernocchi 2024 🇮🇹 #CoppaBernocchi #Noticiclismo #Ciclismo pic.twitter.com/vzIKSNzu2m

— NotiCiclismo 🇮🇹 #CoppaBernocchi (@Noticiclismo1) October 7, 2024

After a superb solo effort, Lemmen was eventually caught with just over a kilometre to go by the well-drilled chasers, before Sivakov, then Powless launched late digs. Powless’ move ultimately acted as an impromptu long-range lead-out for Van Tricht, who surged past the American’s wheel before holding off Baudin and Adrià for a breakthrough win.

Behind, Remco Evenepoel – dirt cleared from his eye – enjoyed a relatively quiet day on Italian roads, after attacking with 80km to go, only to be chased down by Primož Roglič’s Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe. Both Evenepoel and Roglič eventually crossed the line 1.27 down on the victorious Van Tricht, ready to do it all again tomorrow at Tre Valli Varesine… when they’ll be up against a certain Tadej Pogačar.

Get ready for a lot of Zone 2, fellas.

Snake Pass Trespass is back for a third time!

Ever wanted to cycle the longest climb in the Peak District without traffic?

Join us on 19th October 11am, Norfolk Square, Glossop pic.twitter.com/syJIzl1EVg

— Harry Gray (@H_H_Gray) October 6, 2024

Well, it was only going to be a matter of time, wasn’t it?

> Council says “we’d rather cyclists did not ride up” Snake Pass “construction site”, but people on bikes “welcome” to use one side of infamous road during landslip works (before turning around at the top)

Though, having just polished off three slices of cake before typing this, I’m not sure I’d want to know what my Strava ‘Athlete Intelligence’ would tell me if I attempted to ride up Snake Pass on the 19th…

On Saturday, in a shocking turn of events (not), Tadej Pogačar became the first man since Tom Boonen almost 19 years ago to win his debut race in the rainbow bands – and only the fifth man in history to achieve this feat, after Boonen, Abraham Olano, Francesco Moser, and Freddy Maertens – as the newly crowned world champion delivered another long-range solo masterclass to win the Giro dell’Emilia for the first time in his career.

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

On a grimly wet day in Bologna, Pogačar tore off the front on the first of five ascents of the iconic San Luca climb with 37km to go – and was never seen again (though the shocking weather may have attributed to that, despite his new rainbow stylings), finishing almost two minutes ahead of second-place Tom Pidcock.

While Pidcock and the rest smartly hung back when the world champion launched his latest long-range assault, one brave soul, Visma-Lease a Bike’s Matteo Jorgenson, briefly tried to hold Pogačar’s wheel on the steep slopes of San Luca, before eventually seeing sense and pulling the pin 100 metres or so later.

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

Visma-Lease a Bike rider Jorgenson, who has a habit of trying to follow world champions at their best before fading (he did the same with Van der Poel at Flanders earlier this year), was ultimately forced to settle for 17th, and duly responded to Pogi’s overwhelming superiority with this slightly snarky Strava post:

In case anyone hasn’t been keeping up, Jorgenson’s “Just Zone 2” caption refers to Pogačar’s recent claim on a podcast that his Zone 2 training – the low intensity, endurance type of training that focuses on long, steady rides designed to build or maintain base fitness – usually consists of an average of 320-340 watts and a heart rate of 150-155bpm.

> “I would always shit my pants after races”: Tadej Pogačar says nutrition key to improvement, claims Shimano power meters “are not so reliable”, and reckons trying to win Milan-Sanremo will “send me to the grave”

(Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

So, yeah, the Giro dell’Emilia probably was just a spot of Zone 2 training for Pog, then – one in which he averages 40kph on a tough, hilly 209km circuit and blows away the best riders in the world, that is.

No wonder Jorgenson was getting a bit sarky on Strava.