16 | July 25, 2019 | Cycling Weekly
WordsP
aul^ Knott^
PhotosYuzuru
S
unadaMovistar’s three-pronged Tour de
France leadership approach didn’t
work in 2018, so when the team
unveiled Nairo Quintana, Mikel Landa
and Alejandro Valverde you would
have got short odds on what has
unfolded in the 2019 race.
While Quintana, who has been
caught out by crosswinds in the past,
survived into Albi on stage 10, Landa
did not, crashing and losing over two
minutes. However, it was the first
Pyrenean summit finish, where
Movistar should thrive, where cracks
began to show.
“Nairo was not at his best, but we
didn’t know. He didn’t say anything,”
Valverde said. Quintana would lose
over three minutes, ending any
chance of maillot jaune tilt.
The following day Quintana looked
to redeem himself in the breakaway
before Landa himself caught his
Colombian team-mate, and the two
failed to work together to bridge the
gap to stage winner Simon Yates.
“It was a pity
he couldn’t help
more than he
did. A couple of
kilometres of
work for me
would have
been welcome,”
a despondent
Landa, seventh
on GC heading
into the second
rest day, said.
With Quintana languishing in 13th
and looking set to leave for Arkea-
Samsic it may well be too late to
rekindle any team spirit. Landa is
rumoured to be leaving the Spanish
outfit as well, whereas Valverde
(eighth after 15 stages) is stuck in the
middle, both in terms of the overall
standings and in terms of being the
only remaining spike in the trident to
line up at the race next year.NEWS THREE’S A CROWDMovistar madness
once again as
Spanish team
fail to shine at Tour
Landa: despondentraces at the same time would not be feasible,”
they said.
Since its inception in 2014, La Course has
highlighted how tricky it would be to
surmount these logistical difficulties, which
include roads having to be closed earlier,
complicating spectator access. These are
more significant still away from the race.
Already the size of a small town moving daily
from place to place, the Tour would become
even larger, stretching accommodation and
media resources.
Speaking after her
victory, Vos stressed
that the immediate
focus should not
just be on expanding
the calendar of
races. “At this point,
a lot of things are
changing in women’s cycling. The calendar is
growing and getting bigger. The teams are
getting better, but don’t have bigger rosters.
So at the moment, it’s more important to look
at the calendar and to change the calendar a
bit, rather than adding more and more races.
Otherwise you don’t get the best riders and
the best teams in the all of the world’s best
races,” she told Cycling Weekly.
“Women’s cycling has been growing over
the last decade and especially in the last five
years. There are more structured teams,
better race organisations, better riders. The
level of the field is rising. There’s more depth.
It’s getting more and more professional.”There is concern, though, that the
introduction of a minimum wage from 2020
could put a brake on this growth, even while
making the women’s side of the sport more
professional. “It’s good for the teams, but I
think it will be hard for them,” world
champion Anna van der Breggen said on the
finish line in Pau.
“Of course, you want what’s best for the
girls, but if it takes out a lot of teams, it
wouldn’t be good for the sport. I think
small improvements
like this are good and
this year they’ve
worked quite well.
But, of course, the
women’s side
of the sport is
different to the
men’s because
they have a development category in
between, whereas the girls go straight
from junior to elite category. Consequently,
I don’t think the minimum salary should be
too high.”
The one concrete step that ASO did
announce on the day of La Course was that it
will provide live coverage of the last hour of
its Classics Flèche Wallonne and Liège-
Bastogne-Liège from next season in
partnership with the Belgian RTBF television
company. This guarantees their place in the
WorldTour, in which all races will be required
to have a minimum of 45 minutes of
television coverage.Anouska Koster (l) and
Lizzie Deignan put the
hammer down in Pau“The calendar is
growing and
the teams are
getting better”