Wouter Weylandt

All eyes in the cycling world were on this year’s Giro d’Italia, as always, but the Giro was sadly marred by the untimely passing of Team Leopard Trek cyclist, Wouter Weylandt.

 
On May 9, Weylandt clipped a wall and crashed into the road while descending the Passo del Bocco in Stage 3 of the Giro.  Racing at around 70kph, Weylandt was thrown across the road and killed instantly from internal injuries.  Despite the best efforts of the Giro doctors and a helicopter medical team, Weylandt was unable to be resuscitated and was pronounced dead around an hour later.

That night Team Leopard Trek released a short statement on their website, offering their condolences to Weylandt’s friends and family.  26-year-old Weylandt leaves behind his girlfriend, Sophie, who is pregnant with their first child.

The following day of the Giro was turned into a tribute ride, with no points or times being awarded towards the overall rankings.  Instead the teams took it in turns to lead the stage, along with Team Leopard Trek and Garmin-Cervelo’s Tyler Farrar, Weylandt’s friend and training partner.  Church bells along the route tolled in mourning, and spectators held up replicas of Weylandt’s race number, 108, which has now been retired from use in the Giro.  Leopard Trek and Farrar, arms linked, were allowed to cross the line first, and Farrar announced that evening that he would be leaving the Giro that night, followed by a similar announcement from the riders of Leopard Trek the following day.  The team lined up for the Tour of Calfornia a few days later, saying they would be riding with Wouter as their inspiration.

Photographs courtesy of Team Leopard Trek at www.leopardtrek.lu

Chaos on the Cobbles: Paris-Roubaix 2011

One of the oldest and most well-known Pro-Tour races traditionally ridden by all the world’s best riders, the ending to this year’s Paris-Roubaix was a little less expected.  This year the three favourites for the title were two-time previous winner and world time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara, world road race champion Thor Hushovd, and multiple Paris-Roubaix top-ten finisher Juan Antonio Flecha.  And predictably enough, when three riders split from the peloton to form a chase group (the poursuivants) behind the breakaway group one minute ahead, they were Cancellara, Hushovd and Flecha, along with BMC’s Alessandro Ballan.  When Cancellara made his first attack, Flecha dropped back, and Ballan was forced to chase Cancellara and Hushovd to keep up.  The three closed the gap on the leading group of around 17 riders to 20 seconds, but this soon ballooned out to 40 seconds when Cancellara stopped leading.  Both Hushovd and Ballan had riders from their teams in the lead group, and with both riders sitting on his back wheel and refusing to do a share of the work, Cancellara chose to simply stop chasing rather than help his rivals to an easy victory.

It was at 14 kilometres to go that Cancellara chose to make his move.  A group of four riders had gone off the front of the leading group, and Cancellara couldn’t wait any longer if he wanted to have a chance.  Hushovd gave chase, and Ballan and Flecha followed them down the road, blowing past the scattered remnants of the leading group.  Soon it was just Cancellara and friends chasing three riders out front, who were in turn chasing down Johan van Summeren, the fourth leading rider who had made a break of his own.  That was when Cancellara went for it again, and this time Hushovd couldn’t follow.  Cancellara caught the three riders ahead with only one kilometre to go, but even Johan van Summeren’s flat tyre at the five-k mark didn’t slow him down enough for Cancellara to catch him before he entered the Velodrome at Roubaix and secured first place.

The Media Cycle

This is an old article,  written whilst working as the Press Conference Co-ordinator in the Media Centre at the 2010 UCI World Championships in Geelong, Australia.  Bon appetit!

The Media Cycle

"I'm off to interview Matti now," the Danish journalist says to me on her way out the Media Centre door. "Shall I say hello to him from you?"

She is, of course, talking about Matti Breschel, a cyclist on the Pro-Tour team of Saxobank and one of the top cyclists on the world circuit.  I give the journalist a very enthusiastic ‘yes’ as she pushes the glass door open in front of her and heads off to her interview.

This particular journalist is only one of around 100 journalists and photographers floating around the Media Centre at Deakin University’s Waterfront Campus in Geelong.  Reporters from all over Australia and many more from countries as diverse as Luxembourg, Brazil, Italy and Japan have gathered here to watch the 2010 UCI Road World Cycling Championships, the most prestigious event in world road cycling, second only to the Tour de France itself.  Like all the rest, she has been here since Monday or Tuesday; like all the rest, she won’t be leaving until everything is over and the news has moved elsewhere, late on Sunday night.

The UCI, or l’Union Cycliste Internationale (International Cycling Union in English), is the official governing body of world cycling, both track and road.  Its most well-known role is as the administrator of the Road World Championships, the annual contest of the best riders in world cycling competing for cycling’s second most coveted prize, the Rainbow Jersey.  Though the UCI was founded in April 1900, making its headquarters in Aigle, Switzerland, the Road World Championships were first held in 1927, with the individual time-trial championships being added in 1994.  Since then there have only been 11 winners of the time trial - Jan Ullrich took out two titles in 1999 and 2001, but this year all eyes were on the only two riders who are three-time World Time-Trial Champions: Australia’s own Michael Rogers, for the first time riding the Championships on home soil, and Switzerland’s defending champion Fabian Cancellara, each hoping to secure an unprecedented fourth title for his country.

Rogers certainly didn’t disappoint the home crowd, whipping around to finish his two laps of the course in one hour and 34 seconds and take the leader’s position from Spain’s Luis-Léon Sanchez.  The excitement built a second time as Australia’s final rider, Richie Porte, left the start line two minutes before Fabian Cancellara, but the Swiss proved too fast for the two Aussie boys and showed the world once again why he is the Time-Trial Champion.  Finishing in just over 58 minutes, Cancellara entered the history books as the first rider ever to win four world titles in the time-trial, as well as the first rider to win two world titles back-to-back – twice (2006/2007, 2009/2010).

History is another major aspect of the race for the media.  As the results came through for the under-23 men’s road race, the television commentators became rather confused.  Though the gold medal had undoubtedly gone to Australia’s Michael Matthews, and no-one disputed that Germany had won silver, the bronze medal was a lot less clear.  “We’ll have to wait for the official announcement, but it looks like they have the same time on our screens,” the distinctive voice of Phil Liggett intoned on the live broadcast.  Media directors sent volunteers scrambling for the books as journalists began clamouring to know the last time in world cycling history that a dead heat had been called for a podium position.  Such an event is so rare that even the official Media Guide, a publication distributed to journalists with profiles of the riders and details of the course as well as tables and statistics for all previous years and winners, didn’t have a listing for it.  The USA’s Taylor Phinney and Canada’s Guillaume Boivin made history in under-23 men’s cycling with their identical time.  The following day, the Media Centre had copies of the photo finish available for distribution to the journalists, showing the wheels of the two bikes both nudging the line.

By Sunday morning, the day of the biggest and final climactic race – the Elite Men’s Road Race – the desks in the Media Centre were littered with similar sheets of paper, proclaiming the winners of all the previous races, detailing the histories of the winners, and advising the media of progress in the doping investigations.  Even as the world’s best competed for gold in Geelong, four Spanish cyclists, including current Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, were implicated in illegal drug use, with three riders being suspended and Contador under investigation.  For the journalists who have followed cycling for several years, it was shades of 2006, where the winner, America’s Floyd Landis, eventually admitted to doping in the Tour and was stripped of his yellow jersey, which was instead handed to the runner-up, Oscar Freire Gomez of Spain.  At a press conference the previous day, the president of the UCI, Pat McQuaid, refused to answer questions about Contador’s case.

“There’s an ongoing result management process happening that I can’t comment on; let’s just wait for the result,” he replied to the insistent questions of the media.

Should Contador be found guilty of doping and stripped of his title, the honour of the yellow jersey would fall to Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck, the winner of the white jersey competition for the past three years and one of the favourites for the Tour de France title, along with the 2009 World Champion, Australia’s Cadel Evans.  Winning last year’s World Championships in Mendrisio, Switzerland, barely five minutes down the road from his European home, this year Cadel is back to defend his rainbow jersey, just 20 minutes down the road from his Australian home in Barwon Heads.  Though losing his chance at Tour de France glory this year from a fractured elbow in a crash, his form has otherwise been very good, and for the home crowd excited to see the World Championships on Australian turf, there is but one question on everyone’s lips: can Cadel do it again?

The morning after our first meeting, the Danish journalist passes the Media Centre reception desk again.  “How’d your interview with Matti go?  Was he nice?”  I ask.

“Oh, it went OK,” the journalist replies.  “He was really cool about it.  Matti has a great sense of humour.”  She grins at me, knowing my particular interest in the Danish rider.  “You should have come along!”

I smile.  “Oh, if only I could have.”