EDWARD PICKERING

EDITOR

Putting together this, our season preview edition, is always one of the most fun jobs of the year. With the season, and its infinite possibilities, stretching before us, we can anticipate the clashes to come, along with a comforting mix of the familiar and the new. And at this point of the year, none of my overconfident predictions have been proven wrong (yet).

Of course, 2020 was a season like no other, and 2021 won’t see anything like business as usual for racing cyclists, teams and fans. So everything we are hoping to see this year, whether that’s something as fundamental and basic as just some racing, or a more specific hope, like your favourite rider winning the Tour de France, has to be viewed through that prism. If a race is postponed or cancelled for the year, well, we learn never to take it for granted, and give it our full support for a return in 2022. And in the same vein, every race that goes ahead will be cause for celebration.

It seems almost trivial, under these circumstances, to speculate about the racing and the riders and wondering who’s going to win this or that race in 2021. But at the same time, cycling is such a big part of all of our lives that many of us have held it close through the darker moments of the pandemic, because it represents a little normality and it’s always been our escape. I really missed the racing between April and August last year and I was energised when it came back.

I feel exactly the same way now, as we anticipate a few early-season races, even if it’s nothing like the usual packed spring.

So let’s celebrate the fact that though there will doubtless be headwinds along the way and bumps in the road, the same as any bike ride, there will be a calendar of exciting and compelling races which will inspire us through the season and bring some bright colour into 2021.