This particular award is always hotly contested. This year we have an interesting list – big name retirees, a couple of cycling legends, a super domestique and a race itself. To be honest, they all deserve this award …
Voting ends on 14 December 2019 at 11.59PM, GMT. If you think there’s someone who should be on the list, there’s a write-in option on the poll at the bottom of the post!
Shake rattle and roll! The GC was all shook up on this sunny, testing stage, the first in the mountains. Greg Van Avermaet, last man standing from a nine-man break, won from a daring solo attack a good five minutes ahead of the much reduced peloton. Slowly but surely, the GC has started to take shape, as a Romain Bardet-initiated attack in the final kilometres served to further distance Alberto Contador while Vincenzo Nibali had been shelled with Peter Sagan by Movistar earlier in the stage on the Pas de Peyrol. This, however, was merely the first salvo.
A = Alpe d’Huez. The legendary Alpine climb with its 21 hairpin turns will be climbed twice in one day for the first time in Tour history this year. (It has appeared twice in the same Tour once before, in 1979.) It last appeared in 2011, when Europcar’s Pierre Rolland won the stage. Continue reading