The "Odd Couple"

Once in a while a cycling article will come out, and its too either sweet or too funny to forget. This is one of them.

What happens when the oldest, or most "mature", rider on a team rooms with the youngest? I wish I could say there is a punchline to that, but I can't think of any.

I mean I can turn this into a "what happens when the oldest and youngest walk into a bar" joke. Oh wait, the youngest can't drink in the USA yet...

Voigt and Jungels: RadioShack's Tour of California Odd Couple

Chris Horner's last-minute withdrawal from RadioShack Leopard's Amgen Tour of California roster may have helped create cycling's own version of the "Odd Couple", as 41-year-old Jens Voigt will now be rooming with 20-year-old neo pro Bob Jungels throughout the eight-day race.

"Together we're 31," Voigt told Cyclingnews Friday after the opening press conference. "So that's a good age for a cyclist. It's funny how he sometimes reminds me of my son, because my son is turning 18 this year. [Jungels] is only like 2 ½ years older. He's actually closer to my son than to myself, so I want to believe it keeps me young."

As far as Jungels is concerned, the two teammates may be separated by more than two decades, but Voigt's often-times playful attitude helps bring them together.

"I feel pretty comfortable with him because he's over 40 years old, but in his head he's like 25," Jungels said. "So it's pretty cool. We talk a lot together, and if I have any questions he's always there answering everything you ask him, and that's just great to have someone with you who has so much experience. It's kind of relaxing. You feel comfortable and secure, and I think it helps you for the races also. You have no stress or no pressure, and he confirms that."

Jungels comes to California for the first time after having already won his first pro race this year, the UCI 1.1 GP Nobili Rubinetterie in Italy. He also ran second during the time trial stage of the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe in France, finished sixth during the stage 6 time trial at the Tour of the Med and was seventh during stage 2 of the Criterium International.

"For the whole year I have no pressure at all," Jungels said of his position within the team. "At the beginning of the year I said, 'OK, my big goal is just to get as much experience as possible'. Now I already have one win and a second place, so I'm really happy. For the rest it's just a bonus if I can get more results."

The promising rider from Luxembourg came to the WorldTour this year from Radioshack Leopard's development program, the Continental-ranked Leopard-Trek team. As a 19-year-old development rider last season, Jungels won the Paris-Roubaix espoirs race and claimed the overall win at le Triptyque Monts et Chateau. He won the individual time trial and the overall at the 63rd Fleche du Sud, as well as the Luxembourg national time trial championship. He was also second in the time trial at the European Cycling Championships.

The power rider who excels at the race against the clock would like to collect some "bonus" results in California this week, but he's also realistic about the competition.

"I will try to follow in the mountains, and maybe in the time trial I can make a good result," he said. "We had a similar [time trial course] at the beginning of the year in France, so I know a little bit where I am standing, but I have no pressure. I just go.

"But I think there are a lot of strong riders from strong teams here," Jungels continued. "So I think first of all, we have no real leader for the team, so it's pretty open for us and we can try something. Everybody can do something. Of course, I would be really happy [to get a good result], but I'm there for the team also. For me, it's not just the victory that counts, but if I can show myself a little bit and show my skills a little bit, that would be nice for me."

Voigt, winner of multiple stages in California and one of only a handful of riders who will have competed in all eight editions of the race, is also hoping his young protege can show himself and grab some spotlight this week.

"He's a pretty good time trialer," Voigt said. "He's young and he's hungry, so I believe he's going to create some attention."

Starting Sunday, Jungels will have eight days to do just that. In the meantime, he's simply trying to relax and enjoy his first trip to the US.

"California is a different mentality," he said from the team hotel in Escondido. "It's so much more relaxed than in Europe, and now with the good weather, it's amazing. The landscapes when we went training are just awesome. We rode the first stage, and in the hills it's really beautiful. I like the lifestyle, even if it's really different than Europe."

And what is the Luxembourger's first impression of the Golden State?

"Everything is a lot bigger," he said. "If you go from the cups in McDonald's or Starbucks and until the roads. Everything is just bigger. And the people have been just so friendly and great, we're having a good time."

Wiggins Against His Team

I know I missed the beginning of this feud, but it seems as if Bradley Wiggins is against being a part of a team. He won the Tour de France last year, and his goal was to win the Giro d'Italia this year. Chris Froome was going to the Tour de France this year as the main GC contender for Team Sky. Simple, right? Nope...

A couple weeks ago, Wiggins said he was going to the Giro and then will go to the Tour with the goal of repeating his performance last year. Wiggins was not going to help Froome win and the team would be there to help Wiggins again, not Froome. Of course Team Sky comes out and says that the focus has not changed, and Froome will be the main contender. We shall see, I guess...

Today, Wiggins and Team Sky proved yet again that there is only room on the team for one GC contender. This morning started with three Sky riders in the Top 8: 2. Uran +17", 6. Wiggins +34", and 8. Henao, +37". With 6 kilometers left to race, Wiggins went down on the wet road, and Uran and Henao were told to wait for their team leader. All three of them came across the finish line over 2 and a half minutes down: Wiggins +2'31", Henao +2'40", and Uran +2'43". If Uran had been allowed to go off on his own, he would have finished in the Pink Jersey, but because of having to wait for Wiggins, the new GC leader is Intxausti, from Movistar.

Now Uran is 22nd, +1'27" down, while Wiggins is 23rd at +1'32" and Henao is 25th at +1'44". Once again Team Sky proves that only one GC contender can be on the team.

And while I don't cheer on anyone when they crash, no matter the rider, I do kind of hope that this is the margin that Team Sky finishes the Giro. Maybe that will make them see that there is more than one rider on the team.

Wiggins slides down the pecking order at Giro d’Italia

Control was the byword for Bradley Wiggins at the Tour de France last year but on the evidence of stage 7 to Pescara, it seems that the Giro d’Italia will not bend as readily to the will of the Englishman and his Sky team.

After the heavens opened in the closing kilometres, Wiggins crashed on the rain-soaked descent of San Silvestro with 6km to race and conceded 1:24 to his principal rivals for final overall victory and dropped to 23rd overall, 1:32 off the maglia rosa of Benat Intxausti (Movistar).

The breathless finale in Abruzzo was eons removed from the methodical calm with which Sky stage-managed affairs at the Tour last July, with no one team able to control the race and with attacks flying in all directions.

Already sluggish in reacting to the first major move on the penultimate climb of Santa Maria de Criptis, Wiggins was unable to follow Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) when he zipped clear on a sharp descent before the final ascent, the San Silvestro. On the 14 per cent slopes of the climb itself, Wiggins was even distanced from the pink jersey group as it strained to shut down Nibali’s move.

Worse was to follow as Wiggins tried to fight back on the descent. In conditions reminiscent of the famously slippery plunge off the Zovo into Schio at the 1998 Giro, Wiggins seemed to channel Alex Zülle’s performance from that day, sliding off his bike with 6 kilometres from the finish and then proceeding at a snail’s pace the rest of the way down, before being shepherded by teammates Rigoberto Uran and Sergio Henao towards Pescara.

On crossing the finish line, Wiggins rode impassively towards his team bus and clambered up the steps eager to put a disappointing afternoon behind him. After a lengthy conference on board, it was yet again Sky manager Dave Brailsford, rather than Wiggins, who eventually emerged to share Sky’s thoughts on the day with the reporters waiting outside.

“It was very, very slippery and once you fall, it takes you a bit of time to regain your composure,” Brailsford said of Wiggins’ decision to soft-pedal the remainder of the descent after his crash. “It was a setback but not disastrous I don’t think. It could have been a lot worse. There’s a lot of racing still to come and you’ve got to take your good days and your bad days and add it all up at the end and see where you’re at. It’s a long way from being over.”

Brailsford confirmed that Wiggins had not sustained any injuries in the crash, beyond the cut to his right elbow and he said that his leader was looking to keep his disappointment in perspective. “He didn’t say too much to be honest, but I think he’s fine. He recognises that you get your ups and downs in cycling and we’ll see where we are after tomorrow’s stage,” Brailsford said. “Physically he’s strong, very, very strong but having crashed he had to limit his losses and regain his composure, which I think he did.”

Although Wiggins’ difficulties in following the moves even before his crash must be a cause for concern, Brailsford insisted, too, that his rider was “in better shape than he was last year at the Tour. Obviously it’s been a bit sketchy in some areas but we’ll deal with that and welcome the time trial tomorrow and as soon as the road goes uphill we’ll welcome that too.”

Time trial

The frenetic finale on the approach to Pescara has torn up the “script” of this Giro d’Italia, in which Wiggins was expected by many to hold a commanding lead after Saturday’s 55 kilometre time trial from Gabicce Mare to Saltara. Instead, Wiggins begins the test 1:27 behind Nibali, 1:24 behind Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Sharp) and 1:16 behind Cadel Evans (BMC).

Brailsford was coy about the prospects of his leader overhauling all of his rivals in one fell swoop in the Marche on Saturday afternoon. “I think it will be difficult, given that it’s a minute and half, but there’s more than tomorrow’s time trial,” Brailsford said. “There’s a whole race left but obviously there are some brilliant riders in there and it will be difficult to claw that time back.”

It would be foolish to draw conclusions before seeing the nature of Wiggins’ response on the road to Saltara on Saturday afternoon, but the Sky machine could now find itself in the unusual position of looking to recoup ground rather than constricting the race.

“It’s opened it up for the rivals. I also think that in order to win stage races you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth and it’s all about how much balls he’s got really,” Brailsford said. “We’ve got to take it on, haven’t we? Claw it back and take it on – let’s race. Let’s chase some other people down for a change rather than have them chasing us.”

My favorite picture of Team Sky showing that it only rides for one rider is this Mark Cavendish, the World Champion. In the photo, Cavendish has taken on the role of Domestique and is in charge of going to get water bottles for his team mates.

Now I do understand that Cavendish went to the Tour de France last year knowing that he was going to have to help Wiggins and Team Sky win. However, it's not everyday that you see the Rainbow Jersey acting as a Domestique.

Wouter Weylandt - 108

I know I haven't written in quite a long time, but I feel I need to today. It's been a very solemn day as I, along with cyclists and fans alike, remember one of the riders who we miss everyday.

Today is the 2 year anniversary of Wouter Weylandt's death. He crashed in the 2011 Edition of the Giro d'Italia and died immediately from a head injury. He never got to meet his daughter, who was born in September of 2011.

Today, the peloton honored his memory. Mark Cavendish, who won the stage, held up the race number 108 as he came onto the podium. Although Weylandt wasn't a teammate of Cavendish's, every rider felt the pain of losing a peer.

I remember when Tyler Farrar won Stage 3 of the 2011 Tour de France and held his hands in a W to honor his friend.

Everyone is missing a friend today. #WW108

Cavendish remembers Weylandt on Giro d'Italia podium

When Mark Cavendish held up the race number 108 on the winner's podium on Thursday, nobody needed reminding what it signified: the number worn by Wouter Weylandt in the 2011 Giro d'Italia, exactly two years ago when he died in a tragic downhill crash.

A former Quick Step rider himself - and who had won in the Giro three years before on the same day, too - Cavendish put it simply and movingly when asked about what Weylandt represented. "It's a very hard day for us, he's always in our thoughts," he said.

The Giro goes on, though, and that means almost by default Cavendish goes on racking up the victories: 99 now in total in his career, 9 in 2013, 38 in Grand Tour stage wins and 12 in the Giro d'Italia. "There have been two bunch sprint wins and I've won both," Cavendish said. "It couldn't be going better."

The two 2013 Giro victories could not have been more different, though: in the first, at Naples, Cavendish had to fend for himself in the final 500 metres after his teammate Geert Steegmans had a mechanical and a split second decision saw him dart across the right-hand side of the road as the lead group veered left and take a narrow, but convincing, victory. This time, Steegmans ‘dropped Cavendish off' with 200 metres to go in faultless style and the Manxman blasted away up the centre of the road in a single, straight line, towards victory.

As if Cavendish's superiority was not clear enough, he then gave his rivals even more reason to lose morale by pointing out that, "I'm not in top form yet. If I was then I'd have got over that climb yesterday [Wednesday]." - the final ascent into Matera, where Cavendish was dropped.

Although the questions about whether Alessandro Petacchi, who was reported to be in negotiations with Omega Pharma to join the team in the week before the Giro and act as a support rider, might have made a difference had he been racing still occasionally crop up, they are noticeably dwindling under the weight of evidence that Omega Pharma-QuickStep are 100 percent on top of their game in the Giro. And Cavendish insisted that he had no complaints whatsoever about how his team was performing in the 2013 Giro.

"I'm happy, the team did a brilliant job today, right from the beginning. [Jack] Bobridge and [Cameron] Wurf were two strong guys to have away, but we had [Serge] Pauwels and [Gianluca] Brambrilla working hard there early on to pull them back. Then in the last kilometres Julien Vermote, who's a young guy, got dropped but came back up again to help support. They were all riding until they couldn't do any more, they rode brilliantly."

"And that was before the lead-out began. Geert Steegmans, when he's at his best, is one of the best lead-out men ever."
Cavendish said that although there had been talk in the peloton of whether they should continue racing or ease back when Bradley Wiggins (Sky) was caught behind in the big crash with 30 kilometres to go, they opted to wait.

"I'm going to stick my neck out for all the teams, and say everybody decided to wait. Nobody went full gas. We didn't speed up, we slowed down," he said.

"If I had crashed, they might not have waited, that's what happened in 2009, I lost the maglia [of race leader] for that reason, when I crashed. But that's not what happened today. We waited."