Welcome back to another big week in cycling news. One of the greats of the sports announced his retirement at the end of this year, along with another big week in the Giro d’Italia. It’s funny that so much has happened but both Geraint Thomas is still holding the pink jersey in the Giro and Demi Vollering is still winning in Spain. Trust me though, it is still work the read.
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Mark Cavendish Announces Retirement
Mark Cavendish has been a rider that has stayed at the top level for a very long time, and 2023 is his 18th year at the highest level of cycling. It seems like he could keep going for years still, but on the final rest day of the Giro d’Italia, Cavendish has made the announcement that 2023 will be his final year of riding professionally, and will then retire. It also happened to be the day after his 38th birthday where Cavendish was quoted as saying “I’ve lived an absolute dream”, as it was 2007 when he joined the T-Mobile team full time and it was not long until he took his very first professional victory in April of that year. His career has seen him ride for six different professional teams, with 161 career victories putting him level third of all time with Mario Cipollini and only one behind second, Rik van Looy. We could easily see Cavendish move up the standings, but for now, he is not getting too far ahead of himself, saying that it is the perfect time for him to step from racing.
[Image of Mark Cavendish in 2008, With His Move To Team Columbia. Courtesy Getty Images]
Dominant Vollering Wins Again In Spain For SD Worx
Last week saw the Vuelta a Burgos Feminas take place in Spain and again it was the SD Worx team showing their strength. With both **Lorena Wiebes of SD Worx **taking out the stage 1 and stage 3, while Demi Vollering of SD Worx taking out stage 2 and stage 4 of the event. In a complete contrast to the racing in Italy at the same time, the sun was shinning in Spain across the four stages of the race. Stages comprised 112km to 121km of riding each day on undulating and mountainous terrain and with the women’s racing being mostly based in Spain for the past few weeks, the racers were not really surprised with any of the stages, and we saw similar results to what we have seen in the first few months of the year.
Demi Vollering broke away in the final stage, finishing with over one minute and thirty seconds ahead of the rest of the riders. This also gave her a two minute lead in the overall standings, handing her the title for 2023. Shirin van Anroolj of Trek-Segafredo was second overall with Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio of AG Insurance–Soudal–Quick-Step finishing third.
[Image Courtesy Getty Images]
Riding Into The Final Week Of The Giro
We are now moving into the final week of the Giro. We saw Geraint Thomas wearing the pink jersey at the end of our last update, which you can see here: https://hive.blog/hive-177745/@run.vince.run/hive-weekly-cycling-news-may-18-2023
He lost the overall lead for a few days, but we seemed to close our eyes and Thomas has the pink jersey again and seems to be in a good position to take the overall victory. There is still time for there to be more moves, but we will need to see what happens in the coming days. Keep reading to get up to date with the past week of racing in the Giro.
Stage 11 of the Giro d’Italia ended in a sprint finish, but another stage ended up with another big name casualty at the end of the stage. Stage 11 is the longest stage of the Giro with a 219km ride from Camaiore to Tortona. A crash involving the current pink jersey holder Geraint Thomas about 50km from the finish also ended up needing Tao Geoghegan Hart, who was currently third on the overall standings, needing to be taken to hospital and later pulled out of the Giro completely. Thomas was able to recover and continued to ride on. Sprinter Pascal Ackermann of UAE Team Emirates was given the win in a photo finish, edging out Jonathan Milan of Bahrain Victorious and Mark Cavendish of Astana-Qazaqstan. Even after the earlier crash, Thomas was able to keep hold of the pink leaders jersey for another day.
Stage 12 of the 2023 Giro was a mountainous 185km ride from Bra to Rivoli and as with a lot of the other stages, saw a rainy day for the stage. An early break away formed after one of the early hill climbs with 30 riders moving away from the peloton. A majority of the break away got caught napping at the 95km mark though, all dropping back for rain jackets, where 5 riders then took their chance to ride away from the rest of the field. The riders worked together through the last hill climbs until Nico Denz of Bora-Hasgrohe was happy to lead the small group through the final few kilometres, with only Toms Skujins of Trek-Segafredo sticking with Denz, trying to slipstream past him, but Denz was ready for the attach. Denz took the stage victory ahead of Skujins with Sebastian Berwick of Israel-Premier Tech finishing third. Geraint Thomas held onto the pick jersey for another daybed his lead was only two seconds to Primoz Roglic of Jumbo-Visma
The rain has just gotten worse over the past few stages and this led to the thirteenth stage to be delayed due to torrential rain. It is the first serious mountain test of the race with the summit finishing on top of Crans Montana. The stage originally was planned to be a 207km stage, which was then shortened to a 199km ride. But due to safety concerns from the riders and teams, the course was then reduced to 74km, which took out two big climbs scheduled for the day. Due to the shortened stage, there were no real moves until the final climb of the stage where Einer Rubio of Movistar timed his sprint perfectly to race to victory ahead of Thibaut Pinot of Groupama-FDJ and Jefferson Alexander Cepeda of EF Education-EasyPost. Geraint Thomas once again held onto the pink jersey for another day with no change to his two second lead.
Stage 14 started out the same as the previous days with a cold and rainy day and Geraint Thomas leading the overall field, but would end differently with a new pink jersey holder. The stage from Sierre to Cassano Magnago, taking on a 194km, mostly flat course, with a hill climb early in the stage to potentially break the field up, and then a time for the sprinters to then move to the front again late in the day. A big group of riders were able to break away from the main group early and break up the field. They held a large lead over the peloton and Nico Denz who was the stage winner of stage 12, was able to join with a further five riders, at the front of the field. Denz was able to take the stage victory ahead of Derek Gee of Israel-Premier Tech and Alberto Bettiol of EF Education-EasyPost taking third. The big winner of the stage was Bruno Armirail of Groupama–FDJ who was up close to the leaders, which happened to be almost 20 minutes ahead of the leaders group, ended up taking over the pink jersey at the end of stage 14.
Stage 15 was a 195km ride from Seregno to Bergamo, with limited climbing over the course of the stage. A relatively dry day saw the day play out as expected with the peloton only really splitting until a small climb later in the day with three riders making a break away for a sprint finish in the final kilometres. Brandon McNulty of UAE Team Emirates, Ben Healy of EF Education-EasyPost and Marco Frigo of Israel-Premier Tech, all set out from to make their claim on the stage, with Frigo attaching 500m from the finish, but was not able to make any distance on Healy and McNulty, with Brandon McNulty taking the win in the three man sprint finish. Although Bruno Armirail did loose a little time, he was able to keep the pink jersey for another day for his team Groupama-FDJ.
Stage 16 kicked off after the second rest day of the Giro, and the rest was probably needed. The stage starts off with a good 60km off flat and fast riding, with the next 140km of hill climbing, moving into a 21km climb for the finish line on top of Monte Bondone. With 5km to go in the final climb Geraint Thomas of Ineos Grenadiers, Joao Almeida of UAE Team Emirates and Primoz Roglic of Jumbo-Visma all moved ahead of the main group finishing alone at the top of the climb. Almeida was the strongest on the day, winning the stage, and is now second on the overall standings. Geraint Thomas took back the leaders pink jersey with his second place on the stage, and Roglic is now sitting third.
[Image of Joao Almeida Winning Stage 16, Image Courtesy Getting Images]
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Cavendish... enfant terrible. I never liked the guy, but it's a great sportsman.
He really dominated all the sprints for a long time.
And Demi Vollering just keeps on winning 💪
It's so sad that the Giro lost a lot of big riders due to Covid invections. It makes the tour a lot less interesting. They do have 4 nice climbs today:
Source: www.giroditalia.it
Haha I know what you mean about Mark Cavendish, but I think he has relaxed a little as he has gotten older. I think that is what I like about the women's racing at the moment, there are no big egos. Vollering is smashing it and her team is doing a great job as well. It will be interesting to see if they can keep it going.
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Another big week in Cycling. !LUV
Thats what I was going to say