#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

[joutsummer]

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).

[algebraicvarietyshow]

spot the difference:

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

[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!

[pro-cycling-primers]

📊The Monuments📊

As promised in my introductory post, it's time to get Monumental...

What are they?

A mostly arbitrary classification of five of the oldest, longest, most prestigious and most difficult one-day races. It doesn't really mean anything beyond a higher UCI point earning but it's a handy starting point for the Classics (one-day races).

Milano-San Remo 🇮🇹 (mid-March)

The longest single race on the men's calendar, this gruelling ~300km outing regularly yields some of the most exciting racing of the season.

But only at the very end. It's an endurance test finishing with the final two climbs, the Cipressa and the Poggio, where the race-winning moves are often made.

Don't bother tuning in to MSR until they're at least on the Cipressa – about 20km from the finish. Outside of a favourite crashing, almost nothing that happens in the first six hours will matter toward the final result.

Expect: To be bored if you start watching early on, but fifteen minutes of absolutely electrifying racing after a long day out. Oftentimes an unexpected winner.

Ronde van Vlaanderen 🇧🇪 (late March/early April)

Spring is well and truly underway; it's time to head to Flanders!

The culmination of Belgian cycling's Holy Week, the Ronde combines cobbles with short, sharp climbs in the Flemish Ardennes for a brutal Sunday's racing. Every climb has a name and a history: the Oude Kwaremont, Paterberg, Koppenberg are some of the most iconic and decisive.

Expect: So many Vlaamse Leeuw flags the roadside looks like a daffodil field, aggressive and tactical racing, riders potentially having to dismount on the steepest of cobbled sections.

Paris-Roubaix 🇫🇷 (early April)

The only French Monument, Roubaix is affectionately known as l'Enfer du Nord/the Hell of the North. That's fitting for the conditions riders face: it's pancake-flat but the challenge lies in the bone-shaking cobbled secteurs (rated 1 to 5, 5 being the worst), usually totalling ~50km

The weather often comes into play, with wind and rain rendering the cobbles slippery and dangerous, shown on the 5-star Trouée d'Arenberg in 2021 (left). Finishing in the Velodrome André-Pétrieux (right), the winner even gets one of the cobbles as a trophy!

Expect: Pavé-induced punctures and other mechanicals, commentators debating the pros and cons of a wet Roubaix. A winner usually on the larger side of pro cyclists, as size = absolute power and more stability on the cobbles.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège 🇧🇪 (late April)

Rounding out the Ardennes end of the spring classics, LBL is the most climber-friendly of the Monuments, with enough hills to put many of the larger riders out of contention. First held in 1892, earning the race its nickname of La Doyenne, it continues to entertain to this day.

Don't let the lack of cobbles or inordinate length of the first three, LBL is still a brutal race of ~260km with 4,400m of climbing!

Expect: Hills. Hard, and plenty of them. Often better weather than the other three.

Il Lombardia 🇮🇹 (mid October)

Usually regarded as marking the end of the road cycling season proper, Lombardia favours punchy climbers as it meanders through Lombardy – another region steeped in cycling history.

It's a beautiful race, often taking in the shores of Lake Como while chasing up and down the foothills of the Alps. Autumnal conditions can affect the race with potential for slippery roads and chilly descents.

Expect: Assuming past performance predicts future results, Tadej Pogačar to win his fifth consecutive title, equalling Fausto Coppi's record. Beautiful helicopter shots of the landscape; it's not nicknamed the Race of the Falling Leaves for nothing.

See you in March for the last fifteen minutes of San Remo!