Highlights of 2013 – Part IV

How much time have we got? It’s always hard to compress a season into a handful of highlights so rather than pressing on with daily look back at the best parts of the year, here are some other moments of the year reunited.

Tirreno-Adriatico provided plenty of excitement, none more so that the stage which featured a finishing circuit with laps through the village of Sant’Elpidio al Mare. Al Mare means by the sea but of course many religious icons are placed on top of hills. Worse for the riders, they reached this place via a devilish climb. It had a modest average that hid some sections at 27%.

The day did have a “lowlight” element to it with riders complaining and race boss Michele Acquarone saying “it was too much. We lost the right balance“. It certainly was hard and perhaps those who could not ride up the steep section felt like they were getting perp-walked in front of the amused crowd. But the race has long featured steep climbs and it wasn’t as if this climb was a secret, the Marche region in Italy is infamous for short, sharp climbs. Hopefully RCS continue to use these types of climbs although in moderation and with advance warning.

Suspense can involve lesser riders winning and Oscar Gatto’s success in the Dwars door Vlaanderen race came at the expense of Thomas Voeckler. The Frenchman’s a divisive figure at times – love or hate him – but surely all his facial gestures are trivial compared to his permanent racing? You’ll find him in the mix in the early season races, in the classics, in the Tour de France and in Lombardia too. But if he’s not popular with some fans, a fair few riders don’t like “Signor Hollywood” either. Watch the long pulls from several riders as he’s chased down in the final.

Gent-Wevelgem was the Peter Sagan show. Watch as he races away with 4km to go when he need not have done so given he’s a fast sprinter. But when others are worried about the sprint it pays to invent a different scenario. The race didn’t just impress for Sagan’s audacity, it was lively for some time and Sagan only attacked out of a select group.

Stage 9 of the Tour de France should merit its own special mention, a Part V, but the ending was a bit of an anticlimax, it was better to experience on the day than to read about. We saw Sky fall apart and Chris Froome isolated as even Richie Porte couldn’t hack the pace at the start of the stage. But the yellow jersey was never in danger and the more the stage went on, the more the big names marked each other. Dan Martin’s win was impressive, a ice-cool sprint. As Daniel Friebe noted the other day on the Humans Invent podcast this stage could prove instructive for team hoping to dismantle Sky’s superiority in a stage race. With Froome and Porte aching from the previous day’s efforts hitting them right from the start was one way to make them hurt.

Paris-Tours had a great finish. Suspense all the way including a late attack featuring John Degenkolb Michael Mørkøv and Arnaud Démare amongst others. Their move was reeled in but they still went 1-2-3 in the bunch sprint. Paris-Tours might have lost some of its glory but the clever additions to the finish make it worth watching and a case study in how to take an old race and give it something special for the TV age.

There will always be excitement you forget, 2013 felt like great year for racing and here are some other memories: