Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) won Paris-Roubaix 2018: the triple world champion attacked from a group of favorites with 54 km to go, caught the two remnants of the early break (Silvan Dillier of AG2R la Mondiale and Jelle Wallays of Lotto Soudal). Wallays quickly dropped, but Dillier was still going strong, he started sharing the work with Sagan and they were never seen again.
Montevergine is located near Avellino, in the comune of Mercogliano, in Campania, central Italy. The mountain is a limestone massif and part of the Apennine chain. Under the peak, at some 1,270 meters, is the Sanctuary of Montevergine (see notes 1), where the climb ends.
Mount Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, Italy. With a height of currently 3,329 meters / 10,922 ft (this varies with summit eruptions), it is the highest active volcano in Europe outside the Caucasus, and also the highest peak in Italy south of the Alps. To date, the Giro d’Italia has visited the volcano four times, three times to the Rifugio Sapienza and once to Piano Bottaro lower down. The last visit was in 2017, where Jan Polanc, the Slovenian rider of UAE Team Emirates won stage 4, as the last survivor of a four-man breakaway. The fifth visit will be in the 2018 edition.
Between 1946 and 1951, the Giro d’Italia had a special jersey, “maglia nera” (English: black jersey), for the last-placed rider. There was a real competition between many riders, to win this highly-coveted jersey. The last-placed rider would ride the final victory lap with the race winner each year around the historic Vigorelli Velodrome in Milan.
Today’s historic photo of the day: a mountain pass during the 1925 Tour de France. Frenchman Roger Lacolle (Météore) is leading the group (in the left, walking). The rider going the opposite way is a native, not a competitor.
Today’s historic photo of the day: on Wednesday, July 5, Frenchman Jean Alavoine (Peugeot-Wolber) crosses over the Col d’Aspin during the Tour de France 1922, stage 6. It was a monster 326-kilometer stage from Bayonne to Luchon, which contains three major climbs: Col d’Aubisque, Col d’Aspin, and Col de Peyresourde. Alavoine won the stage in 14 hours 28 minutes and 44 seconds. The second finisher, Victor Lanaers (Automoto) came 16 minutes 43 seconds behind. The overall winner, Firmin Lambot (Peugeot) came third, at 31:05.
“Le Ride” is a cycling documentary, which follows two cyclists, Phil Keoghan (also the director of the film) and his friend Ben Cornell as they attempt to recreate the original route of the 1928 Tour de France. Averaging 240 km a day for 26 days, Phil and Ben traverse both the unforgiving mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps, on original vintage steel racing bikes with no gears and marginal brakes.
Bola del Mundo, also known as Alto de las Guarramillas is a mountain of the Guadarrama mountain range located in the Community of Madrid in Spain, near the border with the province of Segovia. Its height is 2,257 meters (some sources give it 2.265 meters). It is one of the hardest climbs ever seen in pro cycling. Despite its modest average gradient of 6.2%, the climb gets really hard in the final kilometers where the average gradient is always above 10% and at some points, it gets as steep as 19%.
Bianchi released Marco Pantani edition “Specialissima”, a special bike to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Marco Pantani’s Giro-Tour double. The bike has the iconic celeste-yellow fade paint job, the same color schema of Marco Pantani’s 1998 Bianchi. In 1998, after winning the Giro d’Italia, Pantani rode the yellow and celeste Bianchi Mega Pro XL (serial number H 314-74) in the famous July 27 Grenoble-Le Duex Alpes stage of the 1998 Tour de France. He attacked Jan Ullrich on the Galibier climb and won the stage, taking the race lead. He went on to win the Tour in Paris ahead of 2nd finisher Ullrich and 3rd Bobby Julich.
This was a feat only achieved by seven riders in history: Fausto Coppi (1949, 1952), Jacques Anquetil (1964), Eddy Merckx (1970, 1972, 1974), Bernard Hinault (1982, 1985), Stephen Roche (1987), Miguel Indurain (1992, 1993) and Marco Pantani (1998).
Stage 17 of the Giro d’Italia 2017 was won by Pierre Rolland, the French rider of Cannondale-Drapac. Rolland and his team were really needed this victory: Rolland’s last Grand Tour stage win was back in 2012 (Stage 11 of the Tour de France), and the American Squad didn’t win a single World Tour race for the last two years (actually, Andrew Talansky won Stage 5 of the Amgen Tour of California atop Mt. Baldy on Thursday, May 18, 2017 – but before that, the last two years were empty).
The moment the race was won was interesting: Rolland stopped pedaling and waited for the big chasing group – this was the decisive “move” of the race.