In which the WorldTour returns after four months and 17 days of interruption, the UCI tries to fit all three Grand Tours and 116 other rescheduled races into the last five months of the season, and we all try to keep up.
Prologue
As a cycling fan, but also someone who struggles to stay on top of things if there’s more than one race happening at a time, I have mixed feelings about the restart of the cycling calendar. On the one hand, I’ve missed cycling terribly over the last four months, but on the other hand… a hundred nineteen races? PLUS any races that weren’t rescheduled? Take into account the fact that that includes three whole Grand Tours and several stage races and we’re looking at a good 200 race days crammed into less than half a year. The thought of it sparks genuine fear in me.
With this apprehension in mind, I didn’t properly watch the Sibiu Tour or the Vuelta a Burgos, opting to save my own personal récommencement for the big one – Strade Bianche on Saturday and the return of the WorldTour.
August 1 – Men’s and Women’s Strade Bianche, La Route d’Occitanie (stage 1), Vuelta a Burgos (stage 5)
I wake up mainly thinking about the fact that this rescheduled season hasn’t been marketed all that well. When the Premier League returned in June to a similarly insane schedule, the ‘Project Restart’ branding was exciting enough to lure me into watching several hours of boring matches every day. I ponder on what the cycling version should be called. Le récommencement fits with the French flavour of cycling vernacular, so I start calling it that. In my head. It won’t catch on.
In a familiar scene, dad and I watch the women’s Strade Bianche on his phone. This often happens on double race days if we’re out at one race and want to watch the other, or if I’m doubling up with one race on my laptop and one on my phone, but this time we’re sitting in the front room. In front of the TV. Watching a race on a phone screen. The newly-launched GCN Race Pass has secured the UK broadcast rights to the women’s race, but currently only via a mobile app. It’s not ideal, but we make do and watch Annemiek Van Vleuten be Annemiek Van Vleuten by winning the race and looking unbeatable in the process. The men’s edition follows, this time in glorious widescreen, and I absorb all the excitement and nerves of watching bike racing. I really did miss this. Wout Van Aert wins and everything seems normal again, even if we don’t know for how long.
In the background to the WorldTour action in Italy, Bryan Coquard sprints to victory on stage 1 of the Route d’Occitanie whilst the Vuelta a Burgos wraps up with a stage win for Iván Sosa, repeating last year’s victory. Remco Evenepoel retains the overall lead to chalk up his third stage race win of the year. His calendar only consists of three stage races, he’s won them all. I’m mildly depressed that at 22 and 20, these two riders are winning prestigious races, whilst at 22 I apparently don’t have the mental capacity to pay attention to more than two races at once.
August 2 – La Route d’Occitanie (stage 2), Circuito de Getxo-Memorial Hermanos Otxoa
My brain is telling me that it should be the GP Industria & Artigianato and stage 1 of Paris-Nice today – despite it being August, the usual March schedule is pretty ingrained in my memory by now. Instead, we have a different French stage race and a Basque one-dayer.
As a 1.1 at the end of July, the Circuito de Getxo usually attracts a mainly Spanish peloton, but the need for race days before the Classics and Grand Tours means that 5 WorldTour teams line up for this year’s edition. Coming straight from the Vuelta a Burgos, Bahrain-McLaren’s Damiano Caruso takes the win, only the second of his professional career. This factoid is less surprising to me once I realise that he isn’t Damiano Cunego.
The Route d’Occitanie ends in another sprint, with Colbrelli taking the honours this time as Bryan Coquard’s 2nd place keeps him in the leader’s jersey. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didn’t watch it, but I’m happy to see the often-unlucky Coquard bank a couple of good results.
August 3 – La Route d’Occitanie (stage 3), Gran Trittico Lombardo
Am I meant to have heard of the Gran Trittico Lombardo? Is it a new race? Seriously, where did it come from? I don’t look it up for fear of embarrassing myself in case it turns out this race has been around for 100 years. I don’t watch it. Gorka Izagirre wins.
Back in France, the Route d’Occitanie offers some spice in the form of a mountain-top finish in the Pyrénées, the first test for those who will be targeting the Tour de France when it starts later this month. I resolve to actually watch this, before it turns out that it isn’t being broadcast. Foiled again. I attempt to keep up with the Twitter updates whilst working, which is a great reminder of how fun it can be trying to understand what’s going on in a race solely via sporadic tweets. My language abilities come in handy here as I read French tweets and then watch Felix Sierra’s summary video to figure out how the stage unfolded. Bernal’s victory, with teammate Sivakov in second, offers an early suggestion of a successful Tour campaign for INEOS, and with Froome coming in 5 minutes down, Bernal’s position as undisputed leader looks even more secure. Personally, I’m pleased to see Pinot doing well, as a big part of me hopes the unusual conditions of this year’s Tour de France will work in his favour.
This first taste of the French mountains makes me all the more excited for the Tour, and the pessimist in me says a little prayer that it won’t be cancelled. Please, Covid-19, spare me this one thing.
August 4 – La Route d’Occitanie (stage 4)
Reading on Twitter than Benoît Cosnefroy won the final stage of Occitanie is the extent of my engagement with cycling today. I spare a thought for the actual cycling journalists who actually have to properly keep up with the deluge of racing the next few months brings. For once I am glad to be unaccomplished and unemployed.
August 5 – Le Tour de Savoie Mont Blanc (stage 1), Milano-Torino, Tour de Pologne (stage 1)
The Tour de Savoie Mont Blanc is one of those lower-level French races that aren’t particularly significant in the cycling calendar, so of course I love it. I may not know what’s going on in the World Tour, but you can always trust me to have an opinion on any race taking place in France. Joab Schneiter wins, and the fact that you’ve never heard of him underlines where this race lies in the hierarchy of this week’s racing. In an emerging pattern, I work through Milano-Torino, an almost pan-flat edition that is set to end in a sprint, take your pick who wins. Démare takes it, I don’t regret not watching.
I decide I actually will tune into the final few kilometres of the opening stage of the Tour of Poland. I soon wish I hadn’t. In a crash that doesn’t need describing, several riders go down heavily and at speed, most notably Fabio Jakobsen. Almost immediately my Twitter timeline is flooded with images of the crash. Photos, videos, slow-motion shots, different angles. It is a stream of horror, made scarier by the fact that there is no news on the condition of the riders worst affected. The stream of videos turns to a stream of speculation and blame, pleas to stop sharing the images, hastily translated rumours coming from the race, none of them clear or confirmed. It’s too much and too horrible to take in. I close Twitter, shut my laptop and leave my phone on my desk.
I try to distract myself, but in truth it doesn’t work. I can only think of Fabio and hope so, so much that he will be okay. Fabio is a rider I really like. He’s not much older than me, and I feel like I’ve watched so much of his journey, from being U23 national champion, to a stage win at the Tour de l’Avenir, to those fantastic wins at Scheldeprijs. He’s a smiley, talkative rider, one of those athletes you feel that you like as a person, even though you don’t know them. This shouldn’t be – and isn’t – a reason to care any more that a rider is hurt, but when faced with the words ‘life-threatening’, people turn to happy memories and love for that person for some sense of comfort. And it just so happens that there is a lot of good to share about Fabio Jakobsen.
Like many of us, I was – and still am – worrying about the worst possible outcome. A scary and painful thought. But it isn’t scary because it’s unknown, it’s precisely the fact that the cycling community has gone through this before that makes the possibility so acutely frightening. I remember their names, I remember what happened, I remember how it felt. I remember the evenings spent waiting for news, and then the strange sensation of a shared grief for someone you didn’t know but somehow felt like you did. Having experienced it before only makes it harder, even if those feelings are often left unsaid.
As I publish this, we understand that Fabio Jakobsen is in a serious but stable condition. Marc Sarreau and Edouard Prades both suffered fractures, and a race official was treated for a head injury. My heart hurts for Fabio, and also for Dylan Groenewegen, who came away less physically injured but carrying responsibility for the crash, though the downhill finish and the barriers that broke apart on impact almost certainly made things worse.
The events of yesterday and last night stopped me in my tracks, filled me with fear. It is almost incomprehensible to me that stage two of the Tour of Poland is going ahead today, I thought the same when the race continued after Bjorg Lambrecht’s death in 2019. Conversation has turned to asking what went wrong, who is at fault, what can be done – all before we even know whether Fabio has woken up. After 4 months away, the last 24 hours has been a stark reminder of how brutal the sport can be – both in what happens, and how quickly things carry on. Maybe I’m feeling things more strongly than I should, maybe it’s to do with the year we’re having, but I’m not ready to just move on from this feeling and think about anything other than how Fabio is. If there’s anything I hope this pandemic has taught us, it’s that sometimes we should stop and take a moment to reflect. To put riders’ safety and health above all else. Perhaps the show mustn’t always go on.
Words by Tilda 
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