Protesters call for protected bike lane to be removed… by blocking it and forcing cyclists into traffic; Is the Tour de France set to return to the UK in 2026?; Jumbo set to end all sports sponsorship; Remco’s Suisse comeback plans + more on the live blog

What do you mean? That makes perfect sense…

Anyway, that’s us for another sunny week on the live blog. Enjoy the weekend everyone, I’ll be back on Monday (depending on the FA Cup final result, of course).

The mid-season sponsor merry-go-round continue apace, as French squad Arkéa Samsic, the home of Warren Barguil, Dan McLay, and Nacer Bouhanni, today confirmed the arrival of new title sponsor, B&B Hotels, for the 2024 and 2025 seasons.

As regular readers of the blog will know, B&B Hotel’s involvement in pro cycling came to an abrupt halt at the end of last year, when their eponymous team collapsed following manager Jérôme Pineau’s prolonged and ill-fated attempt to secure more substantial backing from other sources.

Despite the budget hotel chain making it clear that it was happy to continue investing in the squad, which had provisionally added Mark Cavendish and Audrey Cordon-Ragot to its books, Pineau allegedly refused to meet with the sponsor as his unwieldy house of cards unceremoniously collapsed.

Warren Barguil climbs Monte Lussari during stage 20 of the 2023 Giro d’Italia (Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

“We are extremely proud to embark on this new sporting adventure, which is obvious to us,” B&B Hotel’s manager for western Europe Vincent Quandalle, said in a statement today.

“At the end of last year, we were saddened by the unexpected end of the cycling team we sponsored. The team did not find the additional sponsors it was hoping for to finance its ambitions, and we could not assume them alone.

“But this experience convinced us of all that cycling, a very popular sport, can bring us in terms of notoriety, image, and emotions. It was therefore obvious for us to embark on a new adventure.”

Arkéa’s general manager Emmanuel Hubert added: “The signing of our new title partner with B&B Hotels, from January 1, 2024, until the end of 2025, allows us to take an additional step with the objective of placing ourselves among the elite of professional cycling for men and women in the long term.

“Today, the best teams leave their mark on men’s and women’s cycling just as much. This is why the arrival of B&B Hotels, an already recognised partner of cycling and whose ties are Breton, will offer the opportunity to our sportsmen and women to progress with the aim of bringing them even more to the top level, which I always wanted.”

Try and beat this #LidlTrekKitDay https://t.co/56M8hCCxFT

— mads pedersen (@Mads__Pedersen) June 2, 2023

To be fair, it’s better than most cycling kit designs from the 90s… (ducks for cover) 

Bernard Rohloff, the legendary bike gearbox inventor and innovator, has sadly passed away at the age of 73.

The German pioneer, who had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease, died peacefully and unexpectedly on Friday 19 May.

Bernard and Barbara Rohloff established Rohloff GmbH in 1986, along with patenting the S-L-T 99 chain, used by Greg LeMond four years later during his third and final Tour de France win. A decade later, he invented the ground-breaking 14 speed Rohloff Speedhub 500/14 planetary gear hub, eventually released in 1998.

“I will miss Bernie, he was such a humble and pleasant person,” Lloyd Townsend, MD of Ison Distribution, Rohloff’s UK Distributor, said.

“His engineering genius produced the World’s most respected internal gear hub.  We are proud to have worked with Bernie for more than two decades and send our sincere condolences to all of the family and great folks at Rohloff who will continue Bernie’s great engineering legacy.”

World champion Remco Evenepoel will return to racing next weekend at the Tour de Suisse, less than a month after pulling out of the Giro d’Italia while wearing the pink jersey due to a positive Covid-19 test.

According to a statement released by his Soudal-Quick Step team this morning, the 23-year-old – who also won two time trial stages of the Giro before his untimely abandon – will make his comeback at the prestigious Swiss stage race, which is bookended by two Remco-favouring efforts against the clock, before defending his Belgian national time trial title three days later.

Evenepoel will also aim to add a national road race title to his growing collection, before heading to a two-week altitude camp at Val di Fassa, which will provide the base for his defence of his rainbow bands in Glasgow in August.

 Zac Williams/SWpix.com

“It has been quite the challenge to see a pathway through the rest of my season. We know that my main goal of this year was the Giro d’Italia and what happened was really unfortunate, so it was important to plan the right path with the team management. I think to begin in Suisse is the perfect start, and it allows me to revisit a race where I have good memories from my time trial win last year,” the 2022 Vuelta winner said.

“Hopefully I can take some good legs from there to the Belgian Championships, to defend my TT title and to see what I can do in the road race. And then I can spend some weeks at altitude in the beautiful area around Val di Fassa. I have really enjoyed training there before and it is a stunning place to visit, with the advantages that being at altitude give, and it’s a great place to start looking forwards to the World Championships.”

Zac Williams/SWpix.com

While Evenepoel and Soudal-Quick Step are busy finalising their plans for the next few months, one rider due a break is the Belgian’s brief Giro rival Primož Roglič, following his dramatic snatching of the pink jersey off the shoulders of Geraint Thomas last weekend.

While earlier this week the Slovenian himself was coy about his prospects of lining up in Bilbao at the start of next month’s Tour de France, ostensibly in support of 2022 winner Jonas Vingegaard, Jumbo-Visma DS Merijn Zeeman has ruled out the prospect of the Giro champion being deployed as a super domestique on the roads of France.

“We have other plans,” Zeeman told Dutch talkshow OP1. “But in the end, one thing in cycling is very important to know: he has been on the road with the team for four months non-stop, with a few days at home now and then.

“That is the basis for a top performance, but you also need the same period [of preparation] for the Tour. It is very tempting to think that he can now also be the same in the Tour, but the level at the top of the sport is very hard. This is the result of a very long process, but you also need such a process for a good Tour or Vuelta.”

It’s been a rough year for the struggling British domestic racing scene, with teams folding, big events such as the Women’s Tour forced into postponements, and GB’s much-vaunted U23 programme now subject to substantial cuts.

> How do we save UK bike racing? SweetSpot's PR Director on Women's Tour cancellation and staying positive for the future

However, despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the sport at the moment, reports are beginning to emerge that the biggest race of them all could be set for a return to the UK in the next few years.

According to Radio Cycling, the new podcast hosted by Jeremy Whittle, Chris Marshall-Bell, and Peter Cossins, the team behind the UK’s bid – which was formally launched back in early 2022 – is “confident” that the 2026 Tour de France will get underway in Britain, in what would be the country’s third Grand Départ in two decades.

In October 2021, we reported that then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak set aside £30 million to support plans to stage the start of cycling’s biggest race, though it’s all gone fairly quiet on the bid front since then.

The Yorkshire crowds were out in force for the 2014 race

The proposed 2026 Tour de France visit to the UK would include stages in England, Scotland, and Wales, and feature an Edinburgh Grand Départ and, Radio Cycling says, a “showstopping, blockbuster” stage in Wales, which ASO chief Christian Prudhomme has reportedly visited.

The podcast also reports that, while there were initial concerns over the logistics of focusing the stages away from the southeast of England, Prudhomme has apparently been convinced that a return to France from Cardiff would be suitable, following the similar distances travelled after last year’s Grand Départ in Denmark.

Radio Cycling also claimed that there have been “very positive” discussions between ASO and the UK bid, with Prudhomme continuing to herald the 2014 start in Yorkshire as a “benchmark” for Tour opening weekends.

Vincenzo Nibali wins stage two of the 2014 Tour in Sheffield 

As we reported last year, a cross-border bid from Ireland, following Belfast’s hosting of the Giro back in 2014, is also hoping to stage the race either in 2026 or 2027, though apparently the Irish and Northern Irish team says that it “wouldn’t see ourselves competing directly with them [the UK bid] at all”.

That cross-border bid to host the Tour in Ireland, however, has been criticised by groups such as Cycling UK, who called the attempt to stage the race as “baffling” when everyday road safety policy in Northern Ireland is still putting cyclists “at risk” and omits recent Highway Code changes.

> Cycling UK slams Northern Ireland's "baffling" Tour de France bid when active travel strategy puts cyclists "at risk"

Similarly, Transport for London (TfL) pulled the plug at the last minute on its bid to host the start of the 2017 edition of the race, following the success of London in 2007 and Yorkshire in 2014, on the orders of then Mayor Boris Johnson, who said the £35 million cost would be better spent on cycling infrastructure in the capital.

Nevertheless, it seems that the UK team is confident that the 2026 Tour de France will grace British shores, though we’ll have to wait until early next year before we can start searching in the roof space for that yellow bunting…

Just days after Lidl announced that it will be taking over as title sponsor of Trek-Segafredo in time for next month’s Tour de France, one of its main competitors, Jumbo, has confirmed that it is ending its involvement in sport, in the midst of an investigation into money laundering and fraud at the Dutch supermarket chain.

The decision means that the company’s sponsorship of the Jumbo-Visma men’s and women’s cycling teams, fresh from Primož Roglič’s Giro d’Italia triumph at the weekend, as well as its skating squad, will not be renewed beyond the end of its current contract, which runs until the end of 2024.

However, according to AD, Jumbo has indicated that they will be happy to step aside a year earlier than planned if a new title sponsor can be found in time for next season.

Zac Williams/SWpix.com

Jumbo’s decade-long partnership with double F1 world champion Max Verstappen will also come to an end this year, as part of new CEO Ton van Veen’s aim to withdraw from sports sponsorship altogether, as a criminal investigation into the company’s role in motorsport continues.

Last September, we reported that the house of Jumbo’s CEO, Frits van Eerd, was raided by Dutch police and the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service (FIOD) as part of an investigation into money laundering and fraud, revolving around, among other things, sponsorship contracts in motorsport.

Van Eerd, whose father Karel van Eerd – Jumbo’s founder – died in December, stepped down from his role as CEO soon after his arrest and remains under investigation.

Zac Williams/SWpix.com

In March, Jumbo – whose famous yellow and black colours have graced the peloton since 2014, when the chain stepped into sponsor the disgraced team formerly known as Rabobank – confirmed that it had launched a review into its investment into sport.

In his first interview since his appointment, new CEO Van Veen told AD today: “We want nothing to do with motorsport and the allegations. With Max Verstappen and Jumbo-Visma we are stopping for a completely different reason. That sponsorship has brought us a lot of brand awareness, but we have now won everything there is to win.”