Latest news with #GrandTours
NBC Sports
3 days ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Wellens wins Tour de France 15th stage, teammate Pogačar maintains grip on yellow jersey
CARCASSONNE, France (AP) — Tim Wellens raced clear on the descent toward Carcassonne to win the 15th stage of the Tour de France on Sunday while three-time champion Tadej Pogačar tightened his hold on the yellow jersey. 'I had the opportunity, I took it, and I had legs to finish it, but of course I trade my victory directly for a yellow with Tadej in Paris,' said Wellens, a teammate of Pogačar at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, after his first Tour stage victory. With it, the Belgian rider became the 113th rider to take stage wins in all three Grand Tours. Wellens finished 1 minute, 28 seconds ahead of Victor Campeanaerts and 1:36 ahead of Julian Alaphilippe, Wout van Aert, and Axel Laurance. 'I knew that I had to enjoy the moment,' Wellens said. 'I kept riding 'till the finish line because I wanted a big gap to fully enjoy it and maybe put my bike in the air after the finish. But I was so happy to win that I forgot to do it.' Wellens had been in a four-man leading group with Campeanaerts, Michael Storer, and Quinn Simmons as they climbed the 2.9 kilometer, 10.2% incline Pas du Sant. Carlos Rodriguez, Warren Barguil, Aleks Vlasov and Alexey Lutsenko were chasing, and Wellens waited for the trailing group to catch up before he attacked with 43.5 kilometers to go, knowing his rivals would find it hard to react with the downhill to come. Third-placed Alaphilippe celebrated after beating Van Aert and Laurance to the line, thinking he'd won the stage, only to be told that two riders had finished ahead of him. Pogačar and his closest general classification rivals, Jonas Vingegard and Florian Lipowitz, finished in a large group 6:07 behind Wellens. Pogačar maintained his overall lead of 4:13 over Vingegard and 7:53 over German rider Lipowitz. Sunday's 169-kilometer stage from Muret to the medieval city of Carcassonne got off to a chaotic start with a crash in the peloton affecting Alaphilippe, Lipowitz and many others. It appeared to be caused by a cobbled traffic island that caught one or more riders by surprise. Alaphilippe looked to have hurt his left shoulder, but all could continue racing. Pogačar, who'd raced ahead, was told over the radio to try and calm the bunch so Vingegaard and Lipowitz could resume contact. By the time the peloton got back together, it was about 40 seconds behind a 15-rider breakaway including Wellens. The race finishes next weekend in Paris. Monday offers riders the second rest day of the Tour.
BBC News
16-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
From Stourbridge school boy to Tour De France race leader
In 2011, a 12-year-old boy was looping around an outdoor velodrome in the Midlands, and now he will wear the yellow jersey that distinguishes him as race leader of The Tour De Ben Healy was a regular at the Halesowen track with his dad, Bryan. "Back then it was never about becoming a professional, it was the simple enjoyment of riding bikes, track, road and mountain," said the beaming there he moved to Solihull Cycling Club to race on roads, and that is when his journey to being the first rider to represent Ireland - due to his connection to his late grandmother - and claim the yellow jersey for 38 years began. Bryan said his son has developed a more soulful connection to his grandmother's home nation."I wish my mum was still here to see it because she'd have been so proud, it's really opened up his sense of his Irishness," he said. In 2022, Healy signed with US-based cycling team EF Education Easy Post, which secured him a place in the World Tour now the 24-year old has been carving out a specialist niche as a breakaway artist ever since. Not possessed with the power of a sprinter or the aerobic capacity of a climber, at 5ft 7in (170cm), he discovered that if he was strategic about his choice of races and stages it could net him stage wins in the sports three biggest Grand Tours. In the 2023, at Giro d'Italia he came from 60km (37 miles) out and on Thursday, in his Tour De France debut he surprised all his rivals with 43km (27 miles) to was not because of when he attacked but where as Healy used a slightly downhill fast approach, unlike the mid-climb attacks he had previously used as a launch recalled how 10 days previously in Boulogne, his son had earmarked the Bastille Day stage for an attack, but as with most things in the fast moving tour, events and plans said: "Everyone knows how Ben rides, he targeted several stages, of which Monday's was one, but after winning last Thursday's stage I didn't think it was likely he'd get away or be allowed to breakaway."Discussing his son's success from a local pub in Wordsley, just outside Stourbridge, Bryan said: "He was still a bit numb, but beaming."Bryan has now started his journey to Toulouse to see his son on the evening of the rest day to savour his success, before a string of days in the Pyrenees followed by the Mount Ventoux stage next Tuesday. Asked if the 'golden fleece' would rest heavy on his young son's shoulders, Bryan said: "He'll get through tomorrow, hopefully, he'll try his best and the Hautacam on Thursday will be tricky."But, how many times has he surprised everyone just in this last week?" he added. Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Yahoo
11-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
ENVE SES 4.5 Pro Builds Lighter Carbon Road Wheels So Tadej Is Aero Even When Climbing
These ENVE SES 4.5 Pro wheels are what you get when Tadej Pogačar tells Enve that he wants to race aero wheels even on the climbing stages of the Grand Tours. The SES 4.5 was already popular as a versatile all-rounder, from one-day races to the cobbled Spring Classics, to rolling days in longer stage races. But Enve knew they could build they just as fast but even lighter for proper climbing days, too. Start with proven SES 4.5 aerodynamics, just tweak a slightly slimmer rim, a lighter carbon layup, a lighter hubset, and some flashy silver hub & spoke finishes for the full pro feel… In fact, Pogačar and his UAE Team have already been racing and racking up wins on the new SES 4.5 Pro wheels over the past two seasons. Enve says they've already 'amassed 25+ victories this season' alone. We've even had them grace the pages of Bikerumor just over a month back with our Giro climbing bikes round-up. We just didn't know it at the time. You could pick them out if you looked closely though, for example, on general classification leader Isaac Del Toro and his teammates' wheels. They all had standard SES 4.5 graphics and all-black components. But their distinct machined hubs were a giveaway to those in-the-know… which now includes us. incrementally lower rim height: -1mm, now 49mm deep at the front & 55mm deep out back slightly narrower overall rim width: -1.5mm, now 23.5mm internal now ETRTO compatible with 28mm tires! new mini-hook design keeps a wide bead for pinch-flat and impact protection, but… keeps the same tubeless-ready dimension & low rolling-resistance still measures 24.5mm wide inside where the tire bead sits higher-grade hi-mod carbon reduced wall thicknesses (and weight) throughout 50g lighter per rim all-new lightweight but stiff alloy InnerDrive Pro hubset with ceramic bearings CNC-machined straight-pull, centerlock InnerDrive Pro hubset 40T ratchet engagement with light-action, low drag ratchet spring 281g total hubset weight: 194g rear, 87g front (claimed) Enve Pro hybrid ceramic bearings, with stainless steel races, grade 5 ceramic balls, non-contact inner seals & low-contact outer seals locking alloy nipples new bead is technically hookless, so only compatible with tubeless tires US-made carbon rim, hubs & complete handmade wheel build 1295g complete wheelset weight (claimed), but including tubeless valves & tape! The new Enve SES 4.5 Pro wheels are available now, albeit for a premium price over the standard SES wheels. And they are only in limited numbers for the time being, mostly because of the high demand from Enve's pro teams who have been begging for more wheelsets as soon as they are built up. The new SES 4.5 Pro wheels sell for $3750 / 4500€, made in Ogden, UT, USA. The new Pro wheels all come built up with silver hubs, spokes & nipples, but you can pick from shiny silver water transfer logos or the all-white vinyl logo decals of the pro riders. The post ENVE SES 4.5 Pro Builds Lighter Carbon Road Wheels So Tadej Is Aero Even When Climbing appeared first on Bikerumor.
Metro
10-07-2025
- Sport
- Metro
Pogacar is unbeatable at the Tour de France. Or is he?
If I were to ask you whether you were more inclined towards fatalism or indeterminism as a philosophical life view, you might wonder whether someone has messed up in commissioning a sports column. Bear with me. The former is the belief that all of life is predestined, and the latter that events are not all causally determined, allowing for randomness and spontaneity. Sorry if I'm being patronising but I had to Google it. See, I would argue the very practice of sports fandom predisposes a need for indeterminism; the belief, nay certain knowledge, that anything and everything can happen at any given moment, turning the fate and fortune of a game or race around. Yet, so many of us behave as though we were committed fatalists as soon as the proverbial finger in the sporting air detects a breeze. Nowhere is this more obvious than at the Tour de France. Three-time Tour winner Tadej Pogacar is currently leading the race once again, on his rampaging mission to become the first rider to claim four titles since Chris Froome in 2017. Already, many observers have practically presented the Slovenian with the yellow jersey to keep. He's too strong, no one can beat him, the race is done and dusted. Now, I'm going to caveat everything I wrote above and all that you will read below by saying I believe Tadej to be the most complete, most comprehensive, most bestest rider in history. Yes, we've run out of superlatives and yes, I have heard of Eddy Merckx. He is the odds-on favourite to win this Tour having barely put a foot wrong in the last two years and having won the last two Grand Tours he started. But every year at the Tour de France, and I mean EVERY year, we shut down the general classification conversation in week one, declaring the inevitable winner and mocking those who have watched enough bike racing to know that the Tour makes fools of us all. We came into this race declaring it to be a two-horse race between the world champion Tadej, and the two-time Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard. Jonas came into last year's race having barely recovered from a horror crash that left him with two punctured lungs, multiple broken bones and a fear for his life. Finishing second overall and winning a stage was a staggering comeback. This year, we were told he was at his best ever: cue the showdown music. Except someone snuck into the DJ booth after his sub-par time-trial performance on stage five where he lost one minute and five seconds to his arch-nemesis Pogacar, turned the lights up and told us all to go home. Party's over, time to sweep up the confetti, it's all done. Well apologies to the maintenance team, but I'm not going anywhere. We only have to cast our minds back a few weeks to find a different rider in a different race who is a valid comparison. Vingegaard's team-mate, Simon Yates, was condemned to content himself with finishing third at the Giro d'Italia until he wrestled the race into submission on the Colle delle Finestre on the penultimate stage. The Englishman won the whole thing by almost four minutes, denying Tadej's team-mate Isaac del Toro victory. It is too obvious to dismiss any comparisons between Tadej and Del Toro, so I won't even begin. Tadej belongs in a stratosphere of his own. But my point is all the very best are unbeatable, until they are not. Tadej has been the best rider of this Tour so far, no doubt, but we've only had six stages. Tadej himself knows how crucial each of the 21 days of racing are, having taken his first title at the final gasp on stage 20 in 2020. More Trending The high mountains still await, loaded as they are in the second half of the race. This is not only Jonas' favoured terrain but it is where the Tour is always won and lost. During my brief research for this column, I wasn't able to find any specific motto or saying to reflect the principles of indeterminism, so allow me to gift the philosophy of one of cycling's favourite cliches. We all know cliches are such for a reason. So in indeterminism philosophy, as in bike racing, it's best to remember that anything can happen, and the chances are it most probably will. Orla is presenting coverage of this year's Tour de France for TNT Sports and Discovery MORE: I'm still mentally scarred by the darkest scene in Doctor Who history MORE: Superyacht stewardess found dead with throat slashed in boat's engine room MORE: Woman and three teenagers arrested after M&S, Co-op and Harrods cyber attacks
New York Times
05-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Primoz Roglic interview: ‘Cycling is one of the toughest sports. That's what attracted me'
As a 21-year-old, painfully aware that he would never become one of the world's best ski jumpers, Primoz Roglic switched course. He would instead develop into one of the world's best cyclists, the winner of five Grand Tours and an Olympic gold medal. But first, Roglic worked on different slopes, cleaning escalators in his local shopping centre. Advertisement In many ways, the job evokes his eventual career. Escalators rise. They fall. They disappear and return. In the interim? The mechanism — the grease, the cogs, the engine — are unseen. The hard work is taken for granted. It keeps on going. This is not to romanticise escalators, but at his best, Roglic possesses a mechanical relentlessness as he climbs. To stride up an escalator's supersized steps even mimics his trademark low cadence. And back then, the job was perfect for the young Slovenian. 'It was good money,' says Roglic. 'I enjoyed it. I would go in the middle of the night, and clean all the escalators before it opened. And that meant I had the whole of the day to ride my bike.' Speaking to The Athletic from his pre-Tour de France training camp in Tignes, Roglic softly laughs at the suggestion that he appeared to enjoy it as much as his cycling. 'You don't necessarily have to be what you're supposed to be, to be this, or that, but you can choose what you want to master,' he asserts later. 'The ultimate thing at the end is to be free and happy, no matter what I do and how I do it.' But interspersed with this sentiment is the inherent difficulties of his chosen life. Despite his honours — the four Vuelta titles, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, three stages of the Tour, as a potted summary — Roglic's disappointments are public and visceral. There have been crashes, the ignominy of being dropped. The life of a professional cyclist, to the majority at least, is to be left bloody, pale and downcast. 'Cycling is something that brings me a lot of challenges in my life,' he says, somewhat understatedly. But Roglic is not using this as a negative description. He uses it to try to explain why he prefers cycling to cleaning escalators. His most recent challenge came in May. Roglic was favourite for the Giro d'Italia, and wore the pink jersey for two days in the first week of the race. Then, struggling with illness, he began to crash — four times in total, before Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe withdrew him on stage 16. Advertisement 'I was struggling with my health a bit,' he explains. 'We discovered I had bacteria which needed antibiotics, and I was not at my best. And then the crashes really did not allow me to improve. But I'll take the way it was. For sure, there was a lot of suffering. It was a hard one.' The Giro, after all, was not this season's main goal. Roglic will return to the Tour de France this week, a race with which he maintains a tempestuous relationship. In 2017, as a 27-year-debutant, he soloed to a stage win over the Col du Galibier, holding off two-time race winner Alberto Contador. His memories of that day? 'I put everything behind me very fast, whether they're good or bad. I don't know if that's lucky or unlucky.' Roglic was at the Tour to stay. He won another stage one year later, finishing fourth in the general classification and proving himself as a rider with Grand Tour-winning potential. His first of four Vuelta a Espana titles followed in 2019. The 2020 Tour de France appeared set to be his moment. Delayed until late August because of Covid-19, Roglic held the yellow jersey for 11 dominant days. Heading into the penultimate stage, a time trial up La Planche des Belles Filles, Roglic had a 57-second advantage over his young compatriot Tadej Pogacar. The next hour would morph into Pogacar's coronation. Roglic, having lost almost two minutes, and the race, rolled across the line looking broken, his helmet askew, but immediately sought out his conqueror. For many in Slovenia, thrilled by the nation's first Tour success, but equally enraptured by Roglic's late-developer story, it brought complicated emotions. Even Pogacar's mother was once quoted saying that she would have preferred Roglic to have won that edition. In the five years since, Roglic has never threatened the Tour's podium. His record? Three starts. Three DNFs. Roglic's record makes him a modern great. He could carry on targeting overall victory in the Giro and the Vuelta. As he remarks himself at one stage: 'My palmares are OK, let's say… they will not completely turn around with one Grand Tour.' With each withdrawal, the psychological and physical toll of the Tour becomes ever more evident. Advertisement The question I have been waiting to ask Roglic is why he keeps coming back. 'Yeah,' he begins, before pausing. 'I mean it's a bit of unfinished business, in this case, that attracts me. Of course, you can call it unlucky, this, that, but on the other hand, you cannot take away that it's the biggest race in cycling. 'I have to be there. I want to be there. I want to come to Paris, cross the line after all these years, and say, 'Oh, well, long time no see, hey?'' Is it more than winning, then, that represents closure? Roglic is not considered amongst the top tier of favourites this year, with a duel expected between Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, with a chance of Remco Evenepoel becoming involved. Some even think he may be outperformed by young German teammate Florian Lipowitz, though Roglic's team manager, Rolf Aldag, told Cyclingnews this week that Red Bull were encouraged by their leader's numbers. 'I wouldn't say I need the Tour to be myself,' Roglic replies, nodding. 'I will be the same athlete whether I win it, whether I don't win it. I'm in the phase of my career where I can do things for myself and nothing more. We all know how fast the guys go each day: Jonas, Remco, Tadej. You really don't necessarily have that much influence. 'It's easy to look over a list of results and to say, 'I was first here, second there, didn't finish then'. But on the other other hand, if you look at it, think about it, and if you really put everything in, that is really the only victory you can get, a victory for yourself. That's the goal for the Tour de France.' Speaking to Patrick Lefevere in the weeks before the Tour, the legendary former principal of Evenepoel's Soudal-Quickstep team, the Belgian brings up Roglic unprompted. 'Roglic, he is one of the diehards,' Lefevere says. 'He never gives up. You hit him, he goes down, he gets back up. He's like a really good boxer.' Advertisement Roglic smiles as Lefevere's quotes are read back to him, before his brow crinkles as he considers how to answer the question of where that attitude came from. The conversation turns to his upbringing, in the Slovenian mining village of Kisovec. His father used to work in the pits. In the evenings, he would take his son to the famous Planica ski jumping hill nearby. 'Of course, you come from your father and mother,' he replies. 'But you're always a little bit different from them. And then I'm also an only child. It meant I had to stand up pretty fast on my own legs, to really learn things for myself. I went away from home early so that I could ski jump in high school, to practice in a different city. I had the right coaches in that period who really taught me a lot. All these small, small, small points make me the way I am now.' The Tour was peripheral back then. His fixation with the race does not come because he grew up watching it like the cycling-obsessed Pogacar, from a town just 50km away. His childhood memories of the Tour are half-formed; he remembers Lance Armstrong, but it was mainly blurs of colour on the television during long, hot summer days. '(My relationship) with the race is completely different now,' he says. 'I was dreaming for my whole life to have the longest flight on skis, you know?' His eyes flit to the corner of the room. 'I mean, I'm still dreaming of that a bit.' In 2007, Roglic crashed, horribly, in the pursuit of that ski-jumping dream. He was knocked unconscious, and airlifted to hospital. Though his injuries were far less serious than they could have been, it was still a long return, and when he was back, further improvement came far more slowly than he had hoped. 'I had problems with injuries,' he explains. 'And I had to be honest with myself. I had a bunch of victories, I was good, but I thought maybe I wasn't the most talented, I was just a really hard worker. Maybe I was not born to be a ski jumper, I did not have Olympic medals, world records, or anything like that. This was the reality.' From his training, Roglic knew he had endurance ability. Studying at university while working on the escalators, he had his VO2 max tested, benchmarking his aerobic ability. The results were comparable with some of the best riders in the peloton. Remembering his glimpses of racing on television, Roglic sold his motorbike, a KTM 125, and bought a bicycle. Advertisement 'When I took it to the guy, he told me, 'There aren't that many people that trade a motorbike for a bicycle. It's usually the opposite way around.' But now I'm stuck with bikes.' Despite his success, Roglic never replaced his KTM. But to his initial training partners in the Slovenian amateur cycling team, it might have appeared he was still riding one, burning up the Balkan nation's sharp climbs. But though he could climb uphill, Roglic still had a long way to go. 'I still have all these old emails on my Gmail from 2012,' he says. 'I came from winter sports, I didn't know anyone. So I emailed Slovenian teams — Perutnina, Radenska and Adria Mobil — asking them for advice. I was 23 years old. If you want to turn professional you cannot just take a bike and ride it. 'I mean, it sounds really easy. But getting used to real cycling? The sort you see on television? It's a completely different story to going on a ride with the local guys behind your house. I'd never been on a TT bike, I had no clue about 99 per cent of racing's aspects. 'I was successful, but I never really had the feeling that I skipped any steps. It did not come too fast. I really had to fight. There were periods where I asked myself, 'Do I really need to do this? Do I really want to suffer so hard, to fight for survival day after day?' I was still at university. I could have just done something normal. 'But on the other hand, I knew that wouldn't really fit me. I couldn't do something easy. Look at the calorie consumption you need in cycling, or the impact on your health of a Grand Tour. It's huge. It's one of the toughest sports. That's what attracted me, that's what got my attention.' And so ultimately, this is why Primoz Roglic keeps coming back. He goes to the Tour because he has the ability to do so, and fight; to pay off the debt to the young man who did not know what to do, who fixed escalators and sold his motorbike. Roglic rides with a desperation in his eyes; he is one of the only riders who gazes up when the gradient steepens, rather than down. Primoz Roglic dislocated his shoulder and had to use a spectator's chair to find the right position to put it back in!#TDF2022 #ITVCycling — ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) July 6, 2022 At the 2022 Tour de France, he popped his own dislocated shoulder back in after crashing into a hay bale, rather than quit the race. He would need surgery three months later. A strange expression crosses Roglic's face when he is reminded of the moment. There is pride, but also a tinge of embarrassment at its innate absurdity. Advertisement 'You know, it's these sort of things that help me,' he says. 'It's because of the way I am. I'm ready to die out there. 'It's probably why I won so many races, but on the other hand, it has cost me so many times. I've made things a lot harder than they should be. 'You can look back at things, but when you're out there, of course you can say it's just a race, but for us riders, it's more than that. You prepare yourself, you put so much in. It's a fight, you know.' Does that resilience, his ability to recover from disappointment apply to all aspects of his life? Or is it just cycling? 'But everybody has that fight in their lives,' Roglic replies instantly. 'It doesn't really matter what kind of job you do. I just try to inspire people, to teach them something good. That's my goal. That's what I want to do.'
