The 100th Tour de France has run its course, but August sees the start of the year’s third and final grand tour, the Vuelta a Espana, one of three WorldTour events this month. August also sees two stage winners from the 100th Tour celebrating birthdays. But who? Read on to find out.
The Tour of Belgium (Ronde van Belgie/Tour de Belgique) is an annual five-day stage race which this year will be run from Wednesday 23rd to Sunday 27th May.
I say annual but there have been interruptions. The race wasn’t held during both world wars, only periodically during 1982-1990 and not at all from 1991-2001. However, from 2002 it has once again been a regular fixture on the annual cycling calendar. In 2005, following the start of the UCI ProTour, it looked as if the race might be merged with the Eneco Tour, but it survived and is now a fixture on the UCI Europe Tour.
Nine riders have won the Tour of Belgium twice and only two – one of whom’s Eddy Merckx – have achieved consecutive wins. Continue reading
All of Belgium must have woken up on Monday morning with one hell of a hangover, as Tom Boonen conquered the new parcours to win the Ronde van Vlaanderen for the third time – only the fifth man in history to have done so. Jack and Kitty review the race.
The race started with a 15-man breakaway, including the likes of Pablo Lastras (Movistar), Maarten Tjallingii (Rabobank) and Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Barracuda), which went away and wasn’t completely caught until well into the latter part of the race. Continue reading