Felix Lowe
If predictions are a mug’s game, let Felix Lowe be the teapot
Felix looks into his crystal balls to see what 2020 has in store for the professionals
’m not much of a betting man, but the way I see it, if you’re going to gamble, you might as well gamble big. So this year there will be no ‘five quid each way on Froome to win the Tour’. Instead, I’m going to go for the very long shots of pro racing. It’s unlikely to pay off, but if this accumulator comes in, I’ll be able to buy Ineos…
January: Australia is in mourning after Richie Porte’s five-year reign on Willunga Hill comes to an end. Instead, a reborn
Kenny Elissonde takes the Tour Down
Under by storm On his Trek-segafredo debut, telling reporters afterwards that his time at Skyneos had become ‘more than a marginal pain in the ****’.
February: On his long-awaited return to cycling, bionic man Chris Froome wins the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race only to have it taken away after his own spindly frame fails the UCI’S ipad hidden motor test.
March: Ineos’s supremacy continues with Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas winning Paris-nice and Tirreno-adriatico. Philippe Gilbert completes his Monumental full house with victory in San Remo, while the ad for the rebranded E3 Binckbank Classic causes a stir with a ‘ball-breaking’ campaign using naked male models covered in mud.
April: Chaos reigns when Primož Roglič wins the Tour of Flanders and Bernal a sodden Paris-roubaix, but order is restored when Mathieu van der Poel beats Julian Alaphilippe in all three Ardennes Classics. Marcel Kittel comes out of retirement to win a sixth Scheldeprijs for CCC. DeceuninckQuickstep’s barren run continues, which prompts rivals Lotto to rebrand them the #Flockofsheep.
May: Thomas wins the Giro from former teammate Wout Poels. The Hammer Stavanger is pulled after the UCI allegedly encourages rapper MC Hammer to pursue a trademark claim against the Velon-run series event.
June: Nairo Quintana’s first win of the season comes in the Dauphiné, while the Tour de Suisse is dramatically snowed off with Bernal in the lead.
July: Bernal’s season goes stratospheric when he beats Tadej Pogačar and Warren Barguil to win the Tour, as Mark Cavendish rolls back the years with four stages and the green jersey. The #Freelanda movement gathers pace after the Spaniard is forced to ride in support of Bahrain teammate Poels. La Course is cancelled after a sit-down rider demonstration on the Champs-élysées. Christian Prudhomme finally promises a proper women’s stage race moments before Remco Evenepoel wins the men’s final stage.
August: Lachlan Morton wins the Transcontinental endurance race in a time of seven days (or so). Enrico Gasparotto’s switch to Swiss allegiance pays off when he is the surprise winner of the Olympic road race ahead of Vincenzo Nibali. Commentating on the rowing for Eurosport, Bradley Wiggins makes an ill-advised joke about the size of the Romanian cox.
September: Supported by Bernal and Thomas, Froome wins the Vuelta ahead of Tom Dumoulin. Alaphilippe is crowned World Champion in Aigle-martigny ahead of Alejandro Valverde and Carlos Betancur.
October: The Hammer, rebranded as The Anvil, returns in Hong Kong, but all eyes are on Alaphilippe who wins Il Lombardia in the rainbow stripes as the chase group rides into Lake Como after taking a wrong turn.
November: Transfer season gets underway with Carapaz and Landa rejoining Movistar, a winless Peter Sagan joining Ineos, Froome joining Porte at Cofidis, and Romain Bardet crossing the Rubicon to Groupama-fdj. Also, Lotto duo Thomas De Gendt and Tim Wellens embark on their most ambitious Final Breakaway bikepacking trip yet – all the way back from the Tour of Guangxi.
December: Following publication of his tell-all tome Shooting For The Sky, disgraced doctor and dropbox antagonist Richard Freeman is criticised for coming down too hard on Shane Sutton. Not that Sutton cares, as he is too busy masticating animal genitalia on the 2020 edition of I’m A Celebrity…
Felix is celebrating the start of 2020 by heading to William Hill to place his £1 bet