Pro bike race cancelled thanks to Jeremy Clarkson-idolising farmers; Oops! Teammates take wrong turn and get tangled in police tape, but hold on for win; Camera cyclist slammed for reporting ambulance driver using phone in traffic + more on the live blog

It was all going so smoothly for Alessandro Tonelli and Manuele Tarozzi as they entered the final kilometre of this afternoon’s opening stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in Castellón.

The VF Bardiani teammates had played a blinder during the hilly, 167km-long stage, infiltrating a break which somehow managed to pull out a mammoth nine-minute gap over a dithering peloton, before blowing it to pieces with over 20km to go on the final climb of the Desert de les Palmes.

Despite some largely fruitless attacks from the big guns in the bunch, such as Matej Mohorič (who once again put his descending skills to good use) and Oier Lazkano (who managed to eke out ten or so seconds on Mohorič, Milan, Matthews and co. by the line), the unfancied duo were left alone out front with the freedom of the Valencian region, soaking in their faultless ride and forging a possible race-winning margin in the process.

Llegó la fuga en la primera etapa de la @VueltaCV… ¡pero vaya susto final! 😱

Victoria para Tonelli en Castellón tras atacar junto a su compañero Tarozzi en el puerto del Desert de les Palmes. Bonita foto para @Bardiani_CSF 👏🏼#75VCV pic.twitter.com/zFdb0rYEMK

— VOLATA (@ccvolata) January 31, 2024

Until, that is, the two teammates approached a roundabout with 900m to go and, instead of going straight on, they instead veered right – with Tonelli carrying on straight into the line of police tape stretched across the junction.

While Tarozzi was able to slam on the brakes and make a swift turn, Tonelli then had a nightmare freeing himself of the tape, which appeared to have got stuck in his handlebars.

After eventually unravelling himself, with the help of a spectator, the 31-year-old eventually caught up with Tarozzi, who had dutifully waited on his older colleague – almost certainly on team orders – to let a laughing, if slightly embarrassed, Tonelli cross the line first for the win.

A 31 de enero @Bardiani_CSF ya tiene LA FOTO para todo el año. Qué cosas tan random y a la vez bonitas nos regala a veces el ciclismo. #75VCV #VCV2024 pic.twitter.com/hzYb5aIHQP

— Adrián Monserrate (@Ad_Monserrate) January 31, 2024

The Italians’ chaotic final kilometre – which cut their lead to 1.09 – may ultimately have repercussions for what was developing into an unlikely challenge for the overall win in Valencia, but for a small Pro Team outfit like VF Bardiani, who secured their first victory of the season, and with a dominant one-two no less, I don’t think they’ll care too much.

Alessandro Tonelli’s post-race winner’s interview – only the second of his decade-long career – at the Volta Valenciana may have been a little more red-faced than his first back in 2018, after the Italian’s late race detour and encounter with some pesky tape at a roundabout, but the 31-year-old can take solace in the fact he’s joined a growing list of recent race winners who have strayed off course en route to victory.

Last March, Swiss powerhouse Marlen Reusser had a very similar, albeit solo, experience at a sodden Gent-Wevelgem, the SD Worx rider drifting off the front with 40km to go, building an unassailable lead, before missing a right turn in the final few twisting kilometres.

Reusser instead veered to her left and down a side street, towards two young and rather bemused cyclists. Despite riding for a considerable distance before turning (no tape this time I’m afraid), she had more than enough in the bank (and in the tank) to hold on for the biggest win of her career.

🗣️ “Oh, she’s gone the wrong way.” 😱

🚴‍♂️ Marlen Reusser makes an error and goes off course with 5km to go #GWwomen | @GentWevelgem pic.twitter.com/xZZq5Yh0DL

— Eurosport (@eurosport) March 26, 2023

And in October, Britain’s latest time trialling sensation Josh Tarling pulled the classic British feat of going the wrong way at a roundabout during a TT – albeit this one was the Chrono des Nations, not your local 10 – before still managing to beat world champion Remco Evenepoel by 13 seconds.

Not bad company then, Alessandro.

Another day, another round of troubling news for the bike industry, as the Accell Group, the owner of Raleigh and Lapierre, has announced that it is expecting to make 150 employees redundant as part of is plans to merge two facilities in the Netherlands and streamline its production process across Europe.

According to Bike Europe, around half of the 320 permanent employees based at Accell’s site in Heerenveen are expected to lose their jobs, as the company says it is “closely collaborating” with unions to ensure clarity for all impacted staff members.

> Raleigh confirms redundancies and Nottingham headquarters move in “very difficult decision”

This new wave of job cuts comes just three since after Raleigh confirmed its own swathe of redundancies as part of a restructuring process at the iconic bike brand’s Nottingham base, which will see the firm’s part and accessories business close and responsibility for warehousing and logistics transferred to a third party.

The redundancies were first touted in November, when Accell – whose long-term default credit rating was downgraded from B- to CCC by ratings firm Fitch, meaning the company was deemed to be a “substantial credit risk” –  launched a formal employee consultation on restructuring proposals, following a detailed review of the business which, Accell said, would “better position our operations for sustainable growth”.

On the wide, sandy, and occasional punchy roads of Saudi Arabia, worlds away from protesting French farmers and blocked rural roads, Uno-X’s Søren Wærenskjold secured his first win of the season with a powerful uphill sprint on the second stage of the AlUla Tour, taking the leader’s jersey in the process.

💥 Relive the last kilometer with an aggressive @p_latour and a sprint among punchers#AlUlaTour pic.twitter.com/IE8VPufy3K

— AlUla Tour (@thealulatour) January 31, 2024

With the bunch whittled down by the long drag to the Sharaan Nature Reserve, Carlton Kirby’s favourite buccaneering Frenchman Pierre Latour attacked with 1.5km to go, only being caught by a small group withing touching distance of the line, as pre-stage favourite Wærenskjold powered past, ahead of Astana’s Eritrean Henok Mulubrhan and Nils Eekhoff of DSM-Firmenich PostNL.

And while there’s a lot of talk about the lack of atmosphere at these sparsely attended early season Middle East races, today’s AlUla Tour stage did at least feature its very own sand twister:

You don’t see that everyday in pro cycling! A sand twister >> #AlUlaTour pic.twitter.com/gxQy4LeHQD

— MarkContadorCX (@MontVentoux23) January 31, 2024

Now you don’t get them at the Ruta del Sol very often…

Legendary South London bike shop Brixton Cycles has launched a fundraising campaign after a three week-long power outage at the end of last year cost the shop around £30,000, off the back of what was already the business’ worst financial year for two decades.

Founded in 1983, Brixton Cycles is the oldest and most durable of the workers-owned co-operative bike shops that popped up all over the UK in the 1980s, winning London Cycling Campaign’s Best Small Bike Retailer award in 2014.

After its former residence next to Stockwell Skatepark was earmarked to be demolished to make way for flats in 2015, the enterprise launched a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign to enable it to move to its current location of 296-298 Brixton Road.

> Brixton Cycles campaign: 10-year old beard gets the chop if new fundraising goal achieved

And now, almost a decade on, Brixton Cycles has once again turned to the crowdfunding method to ensure its survival, after an electrical fault left them fixing bikes by torch for almost a month.

“It’s no surprise to anyone that times have been tough in the bicycle industry since the cost of living crisis,” Brixton Cycles said on their new GoFundMe page, which was set up with the aim of recovering the £30,000 lost due to the outage. “While we have strived to provide the best service to all our customers and kept our crew on a sustainable wage, our business has been suffering this year (2023 was our worst financial year for 20 years).

“Towards the end of 2023, the lights went out, literally. A three-week external electrical fault brought us to our knees. Our insurance has covered some of the loss of earnings and the damaged equipment but not all of it. We kept our doors open and did our best to repair bikes with the aid of head torches, but we are, in all honesty, struggling to bounce back.

“Now we are asking humbly for some help. Our target amount is 30k. This corresponds with about 3-4 weeks of loss of earnings from our power outage. This amount would help us to get through and bounce back.

“We have served the community for 40 years and would love to continue to do so and be at the heart of Brixton’s independent shopping experience.”

You can donate to Brixton Cycles’ fundraising campaign at the shop’s GoFundMe page.

Did you spend the build-up to Christmas wishing for your own life-size Remco Evenepoel doll, only to be let down when you discovered it doesn’t exist (actually, on second thought, don’t answer that).

Well, like an aero gain-hunting Father Christmas, Belgian Cycling has delivered on that front, by announcing this week that it’s creating full-scale dummies of its two star male riders, Evenepoel and Wout van Aert, which will be used as non-thinking, docile stand-ins (no elite cyclist personality jokes, thank you very much) when the riders themselves are racing the Tour and the Giro.

The dummies, which will cost the Belgian governing body tens of thousands of euros, according to DeMorgen, will ‘take part’ in extensive wind tunnel tests as kit supplier Bioracer aims to create the fastest skinsuit possible ahead of the men’s Olympic time trial in Paris, which Belgium will enter with sky-high medal hopes courtesy of world champion Evenepoel and double world silver medallist Van Aert.

The dolls will be based on 4D scans of Wout and Remco, taken during a test on the track at Zolder while wearing the nation’s current TT kit.

(Thomas Maheux/SWpix.com)

“You can also do the test with the rider, but that requires a lot of time and energy, especially with repeated tests spread over months, as in this file,” a Remco ‘insider’ told DeMorgen.

“In addition, a comparison test with a doll is more accurate. A doll is static, while the rider constantly adopts a different position while pedalling on his bicycle. In the latter case you measure the difference between the positions instead of the difference between the time trial suits.”

While Van Aert’s doll is already in production, Evenepoel Jnr (now, there’s a frightening prospect) will have to wait until March for his wind tunnel debut. Of course, this isn’t the first time Van Aert has been subject to the life size doll treatment.

Back in 2021, Jumbo-Visma, working with the Technical University Eindhoven, also created their own WVA and Primož Roglič, with horror movie-like consequences (at least for their rivals)…

Yikes.

Some have claimed that the Wout doll is a better interviewee than the real thing, but we’ll not go into that today…

Cycling could help men reduce their risk of prostate cancer by more than a third, a new study has suggested.

That is the finding of new research out of the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences in Stockholm, and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which reports that improving cardiovascular fitness by three per cent in a year was linked to a reduced risk (as much as 35 per cent) of developing prostate cancer, suggesting that activities such as cycling, swimming, or running can reduce a man’s risk of developing the disease.

Read more: > Cycling can help reduce risk of prostate cancer, new study suggests