procycling

The first WorldTour race of the year would be decided on the iconic Old Willunga Hill during Stage 2 of the 2025 Santos Women’s Tour Down Under. 23-year-old Swiss rider Noemi Rüegg surprised everyone by winning the stage after a tactical battle played out from the very first repetition of the famous Adelaide climb.

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Let's gooo! Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!

Want to see all of the pro cycling events on a calendar? Here you go...

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On the day of the race, Reto and Christine stood waiting in central Zurich, holding their handmade cardboard signs. “Hopp Muriel.” “Go Muriel.” They began to worry when she did not pass them at the end of the course’s first lap. They contacted Swiss Cycling’s team car, but nobody could tell them any news.

Muriel never finished the World Championships. She had crashed, on a descent leading towards Kusnacht, a suburb on the shores of Lake Zurich, with 45km remaining. The area is heavily wooded, and having left the road, she disappeared from view.

It was only after the race ended that a track marshal found Muriel unconscious in the woods.

At one of the world’s biggest cycling races, just a 10-minute drive from her front door, she had been lying alone and injured for about an hour and a half.

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Double Olympic champion Remco Evenepoel says he will "come back stronger" from surgery after breaking multiple bones in a crash.

The 24-year-old Belgian sustained rib, shoulder blade and hand fractures in a crash during training in Belgium on Tuesday.

He also suffered lung contusions, dislocated his right clavicle and tore several ligaments after colliding with the open door of a postal vehicle.

"After a scary accident on training yesterday, I underwent surgery last night and everything went well," Evenepoel wrote on Instagram on Wednesday alongside a photo of him with his right arm in a sling.

"It's going to be a long journey but I'm fully focused on my recovery and I’m determined to come back stronger, step by step.

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FDJ-Suez saw a major boost to its bold plan to win the Tour de France Femmes with Demi Vollering.

The French squad confirmed this week that co-backers FDJ and Suez both extended their financing commitments through 2028.

The long-term backing will give the team all the financial flex it needs in its mission to become a bone fide “super team” led by new-signed Dutch superstar Vollering.

It’s also expected that the squad will soon confirm it will switch to Specialized bikes for 2025.

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Sorry but just stumbled on this while wasting time...

Wout van Aert has signed a contract with Visma-Lease A Bike “for eternity”. He’s not alone as Chris Froome and Michael Woods are said to have “retirement contracts” meaning they can ride for their team as long as they wish. These are just some examples among several of long term contracts and they’re becoming increasingly common.

Race Info: https://gpcqm.ca/grand-prix-montreal/
Parcours/Profile: https://gpcqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/23185505/222297-GPCMTL-PARCOURS-Mtl_2024-CMYK.png?ver=1716483304000
Startlist: https://gpcqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/14201809/GPCQM_Startlist_Etape_1-5.pdf?ver=1726337888000
Live TV map: https://gpcqm.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/31175922/carte_telediffusion_2024.jpg?ver=1725119962000

Lotte Kopecky started her 2024 road season by winning the overall at the UAE Tour, and seven months later she has ended her current run in the rainbow jersey (at least in terms of WorldTour racing) by winning the overall at Tour de Romandie – bookending her rainbow year with WorldTour GC titles that started with the 2023 Simac Ladies Tour.

The Belgian finished second in the opening stage sprint, second on the mountaintop at the end of stage 2, and third behind a breakaway of two in the final stage. The three podium finishes secured her the overall victory, six seconds ahead of teammate Demi Vollering and 46 seconds ahead of Gaia Realini of Lidl-Trek.

“I came here to see how my form was at the moment, and I’m quite happy where I am with the World Championships coming,” Kopecky said after the third stage.

Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek) won the opening sprint stage and Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease a Bike) won the final stage after a day in the breakaway.

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How good was the 2024 Vuelta a España?

Record heat, a brutally hard course, and animated racing made it interesting, but was it good?

This rough-and-tumble Vuelta had a lot going for it.

Primož Roglič won a record-tying fourth crown that seemed all but inevitable even with a banged up back and a late-race bad tummy. With the other three of the “Big 4” sitting on the sidelines, who was going to beat him anyway?

Ben O’Connor at least made it interesting after pulling a “Kuss” on the exact same stage that Sepp Kuss sprung clear last year to win. The Australian finally buckled to Roglič’s incessant tapping in stage 19, but he didn’t fully crack, and hung on for a well-deserved first career podium.

Behind those two, this Vuelta was a bit of a mixed bag.

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As if riding the 3,261 kilometres of the 2024 Vuelta a España as his last race was not enough, Spanish veteran Luis Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi) is celebrating his retirement by riding the 600 kilometres from the Vuelta finish in Madrid to his home in Marbella in the south of Spain.

Maté started his three-day return on Monday morning “without getting up too early” and will stay overnight in Puertollano, a town some 250 kilometres south of the Spanish capital.

He will then pedal on to Lucena, roughly 220 kilometres further south, before reaching his home in Marbella on the Andalusian coast after a shorter leg some time late on Wednesday afternoon.

Maté completed his twelfth and last ever Vuelta in 61st place overall, during a final season in which he also celebrated a final win, a stage in the Volta a Portugal.

“It’s partly to get used to the idea of leaving my pro career behind, but I’m going on being a bike rider, and this is like a transition, riding home from being a pro to riding a bike ‘for real’, " the 40-year-old told Cyclingnews.

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After the rest day, O'Connor still has an advantage of almost 4 minutes over his closest rival, Primoz Roglic, and he's looking good. Roglic apparently hasn't felt as strong, and hasn't struck on the typical climbs we would expect him to use to put time into O'Connor and other rivals. Joao Almeida is out of the race with COVID, and Adam Yates is now UAE's top GC man, ~ 5:30 back from O'Connor. Sepp Kuss does not seem to be in top form and will probably not defend his red jersey. Richard Carapaz, Enric Mas, and Mikel Landa are ~30 seconds away from Roglic after the first rest day.

Sepp Kuss may be a Grand Tour winner leading one of the world’s best teams as he attempts to defend his title at the Vuelta a España, but that doesn’t mean that he has forgotten who he was before he took hold of the red jersey a year ago. On Friday, he showed the world that he is still the same old Sepp Kuss who can be relied upon as one of the sport’s best teammates.

“In our team, it’s not only about winning but about performing as a team,” Wout van Aert said after Kuss helped him secure his second stage win of the 2024 Vuelta. “A part of that is that everybody dares to sacrifice himself for the others.”

Van Aert, hunting stages in his Vuelta debut, was the pre-race favorite for stage 7, which featured a punchy climb late in the day – perfect for jettisoning the less versatile sprinters from the pack and putting Van Aert in position to outkick the survivors. Everything seemed to be going according to plan for Van Aert and Visma-Lease a Bike until Marc Soler (UAE Team Emirates) soloed away from the thinned-out pack on the descent off of the climb.

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It doesn't take a wealth of big names to make a sprint compelling huh?

They seem to just not really be covering it. No highlights show that I can find tonight and the tour of Denmark and tour de l'avenir are more prominent on the website. What gives?