#liège bastogne liège

[inrng]

Photo: ASO/Gaetan Flamme

[sportsallover]

Romain Bardet, Benoît Cosnefroy, Romain Grégoire, Ben Healy… this is like my dream chase group 🤩

[sportsallover]

Romain’s very tired ‘yeah yeah’ in answer is so telling

"ah it's going to be fun" tadej to romain about the giro. it will be fun for YOU!

[womensworldtour]

GRACE BROWN! 🇦🇺

We feel you, Grace, that was amazing!

[innuit59]

[pro-cycling-primers]

🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️ So, you're interested in starting watching cycling in 2025 (I hope), but have no idea where to start? 🚴‍♂️🚴‍♀️

Before the start of the road cycling season this year, I thought I'd post some information for people completely new to the sport. You might have seen some Tumblr posts going crazy about men and women in tight lycra, or watched a bit of the Tour de France on TV once, or maybe this post found you some other way! Let's get to it.

When does it happen?

Cycling doesn't have a set timetable nor are races only at weekends. It's mostly the same each year, but there have been some changes over the hundred-plus years professional cycling has been around.

The WorldTour (highest level of pro cycling, more about that in a later post) season lasts officially from January until October, with the full women's calendar for 2025 looking like this:

And the men's like this:

Don't try to watch all of them. Or do, I'm just a Tumblr blogger hoping more people get interested in this great sport 🤷

Okay then, which races should I watch?

The answers to this are many and varied; every list of 'best races to watch' will have at least one cycling fan clamouring 'But HOW could you ignore [x]!?'

In terms of basic introduction to the sport, I think this would give a solid season-wide grounding:

Five one-day races have mostly arbitrarily been declared The Monuments: Milano-Sanremo, Paris-Roubaix, de Ronde van Vlaanderen, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Il Lombardia. (A more detailed post about these will be coming later in the season). All but Lombardia have men's and women's versions, with Milano-Sanremo Donne running for the first time in 2025, though Trofeo Alfredo Binda is a more well-established women's race in a similar region at a similar time.

Each has its own quirks, history, and favour different kinds of riders. The big names (except the pure stage racers) will be there.

I'd also recommend one of the early-season one-week stage races, Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico. They run at the same time, for one week in March, and present the first opportunity for the top stage racers to stretch their legs (another post about different types of riders will come). On the women's side, Itzulia Women or Tour de Suisse.

One of the Grand Tours is in my view, essential: Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a España, or the big one, the Tour de France

If you want, you can disregard this entire section and just watch the Tour. It's the biggest race there is, the most-covered, and teams bring their best riders in their best shape. It's a massive cultural event. If you take nothing from this post other than following a little closer in July, then it has been a success in my book.

How can I watch cycling?

Cycling has a serious lack of easily accessible coverage. Every race organiser has different TV rights arrangements, varying MASSIVELY from country to country, with some having free-to-air coverage of most races on national television but some having no option other than the paid services Discovery+ and Eurosport.

For an international suggestion there is a lovely site: tiz [dash] cycling [dot] io has free (!) livestreams of every race you could feasibly ever want to watch, and a back catalogue covering most of the last decade +

5-15 minute highlight videos from YouTube channels such as Eurosport, FloBikes etc. are also available a few hours after a race finishes! The Tour de France has its own channel with decent highlights and interviews.

See you later in the season!

[racewinner]

Tadej Pogačar during the Slovenian anthem on the podium after winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024

[marcelskittels]

TADEJ POGAČAR Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024 📸 by Dirk Waem/Getty Images

[etapereine]

It is fire's nature to strive upward

Mathieu van der Poel, 2024 Paris-Roubaix (Gruber Images) | Dictionary.com | Remco Evenepoel, 2022 Liège-Bastogne-Liège (Gruber Images) | Jonas Vingegaard, 2022 Tour de France Stage 11 (Team Jumbo Visma) | "Fire and Ice" (Robert Frost) | Tadej Pogačar, 2023 Tour de France Stage 9 (Gruber Images) | Jonas Vingegaard, 2023 Tour de France Stage 17 (Gruber Images) | Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (John Vaillant) | Felix Gall, 2023 Tour de France Stage 17 (Marco Bertorello/AFP/Getty Images) | Tour de France: Unchained, Episode 4 | Mathieu van der Poel, 2023 UCI Road World Championships (Gruber Images) | "Horses" (Wendell Berry) | Dictionary.com | Marc Soler and Tadej Pogačar, 2023 Tour de France Stage 17 (Gruber Images) | "Horses" (Wendell Berry) | Giulio Ciccone, 2023 Tour de France Stage 14 (Marco Bertorello/Getty Images) | Tadej Pogačar, 2023 Tour de France Stage 9 (UAE Team Emirates) | "Tour de France races on to Carcassonne despite 40°C heatwave" (CyclingNews) | Dictionary.com | Jonas Vingegaard, 2022 Tour de France Stage 13 (Tim de Waele/Getty Images) | "Tour de France races on to Carcassonne despite 40°C heatwave" (CyclingNews) | "Soaring temperatures turn up the heat on Tour de France peloton: ‘It was a furnace’" (Velo Magazine) | "Tour de France 2022 Climate-Related Risks" (Janice Kai Chen/Washington Post) | Tom Pidcock, 2022 Tour de France Stage 14 (Gruber Images) | Romain Bardet, 2022 Tour de France Stage 17 (Gruber Images) | "Soaring temperatures turn up the heat on Tour de France peloton: ‘It was a furnace’" (Velo Magazine) | Gilberto Simoni, 2004 Tour de France Stage 17 (Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

[celuloideycarbono]

Photo finish

Marcel Kittel vs Edvald Boasson Hagen (stage 7 Tour de France 2017, Troyes-Nuits-Saint-Georges) / Mathieu van der Poel vs Wout van Aert (Ronde van Vlaanderen 2020) / Tadej Pogacar vs Julian Alaphilippe (Liège - Bastogne - Liège 2021) / Wout van Aert vs Tadej Pogacar (Olympic Race Tokyo 2021, battle for the silver) / Wout van Aert vs Tom Pidcock (Amstel Gold Race 2022) / Jonas Vingegaard vs Tadej Pogacar (stage 11, Tour de France 2024, Évaux-les-Bains - Le Lioran).

[wouteke]

baby pogi at liège–bastogne–liège 2019

[inrng]

Photo: ASO/Gaetan Flamme

[sportsallover]

I am a liiittle bit disappointed for Elisa Longo Borghini, because she kept catching up to all the attackers

[oneminutefiftysixseconds]

one thing i do appreciate about cycling is the relative simplicity with which most events are named. stage race around Portugal? Volta a Portugal, easy. one-day race from Milan to San Remo? no need to bother with a complicated name, let's call it Milano-Sanremo. one-day race that leaves Liège, goes to Bastogne and returns to Liège? you got it.

[womensworldtour]

Last year's Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes was a triple-crown victory for Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime), after she won the 2023 editions of Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne. This year she doesn't appear quite as dominant, but is still a favorite for the race. Other contenders include Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek), who has been very strong this spring, or Marianne Vos (Visma Lease-a-Bike), who has actually never won Liège-Bastogne-Liège but has been back in great form. Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) cant' be ruled out, and we can always hope that an unexpected winner will emerge—we love an exciting and unexpected race!

[algebraicvarietyshow]

spot the difference:

de akkor most pogi hungryra vagy hungaryre gondolt!??!