REVIEW OF THE YEAR
This year saw big wins for established riders and the coming of a new generation. Procycling looks back at the biggest stories of the year, from the spring classics through the grand tours
Procycling’s comprehensive and in-depth review of a brilliant 2019 season
1There were first-time winners in all of the monuments and grand tours in 2019. That’s not unusual – 2018’s champions in these races were also first-timers, though you have to go back to 2011 to find the next instance of this. But there was still the sense that everything was up for grabs this year and that former winners were not going to be granted the automatic right to add to their palmarès. Julian Alaphilippe’s victory in Milan-San Remo has been a while coming. But Alberto Bettiol barely figured in the pre-race prognostications at the Tour of Flanders, yet was both the strongest and the cleverest rider at the most important part of the race. They said that Philippe Gilbert could never win Roubaix – too light, too inexperienced – but they won’t say that again. LiègeBastogne-Liège, for so long the preserve of the puncheurs, fell to a climber, Jakob Fuglsang. And Bauke Mollema won Il Lombardia for his first monument victory.
But it was in the grand tours that the winds of change most strongly blew. Not only were there firsttime grand tour winners in all three, but the pink, yellow and red jerseys were won by riders who were also their country’s first winner in each race; Giro champion Richard Carapaz for Ecuador, Egan Bernal for Colombia and Primož Rogličc for Slovenia.
You can’t say that this is the changing of a generation – Alaphilippe has been at the top of his game for some time, Fuglsang and Mollema are in their mid-30s and Gilbert has done 17 seasons as a pro. But it’s the sense of renewed ambition that is most striking – especially in the cases of Gilbert, Fuglsang and Mollema – and also in the fact that the three grand tour winners seemed so cool and confident in their riding. It’ll give them all hope in 2020, but paradoxically, it also gives hope to their rivals.