The answer is 1962. Bono, Paul Hewson, of U2 fame, was but a 2 year old drawing on the walls in his house in Glasnevin in 1962. But, the Bono who made it on to the winner’s podium of the Vuelta 48 years ago was the little known Italian rider Ernesto Bono who claimed the biggest victory of his career by winning Stage 12 of that year’s race into the city of Logrono. The reason Ireland had cause to celebrate was that Seamus Elliott had retained the Vuelta race leader’s jersey. Elliott would go on to wear the jersey for a total of nine days that year only losing the jersey three stages from the end to eventual winner Rudi Altig of Germany.

Ernesto Bono, winner of a stage in the 1962 Vuelta a Espana.

In that 1962 Vuelta a Espana Seamus Elliott marked a number of milestones for Irish cycling. He won Ireland’s first ever stage of the Vuelta a Espana, he was the first Irishman to lead any of the three Grand Tours and he also finished the race in 3rd place, which meant he was the first Irishman to finish on the podium of a Grand Tour. This Irish presence at the Vuelta, established by Elliott, faded (as did the Irish presence in professional cycling in general) until Seán Kelly arrived on the scene in the late seventies.

Kelly won the race overall in 1988 taking the leader’s jersey from the Spaniard Anselmo Fuerte in the final time trial. But Kelly’s success at the Vuelta spanned much further than the year of his overall success. In total, Kelly won 16 stages of the Vuelta, the 5th highest tally of any rider, winning the points classification four times along the way, a record shared with Laurent Jalabert that still stands. Kelly is one of six riders who have won two Grand Tour points jerseys in the one year, the others are Rudi Altig (in that 1962 race), Jan Janssen, Eddy Merckx, Djamolidin Abdoujaparov and Laurent Jalabert. Kelly is also the only man to have won the points jersey four times in two of the Grand Tours, as he also won the Tour de France green jersey four times.

Kelly would have won the Vuelta in 1987 too if it weren’t for a saddle boil which forced him out of the race with three stages to go, whilst wearing the leader’s jersey. This would have led to the remarkable feat of Irish riders winning all three of cycling’s Grand Tours in 1987, as Stephen Roche went on to win the Giro and the Tour that year. Alas, it wasn’t to be, however, because the Vuelta took place in April back then, Kelly’s Vuelta victory the following year ensured Irish riders were indeed the reigning champions of all three Grand Tours.

Seán Kelly en route to taking over the leader's jersey in the 1988 Vuelta

Roche for his part, never focused on the Vuelta a Espana, usually preferring to ride the Giro d’Italia if a 2nd Grand Tour was in his race plans for the year. He only rode the Spanish Grand Tour once towards the end of his career in 1992 where he to took a top 20 placing by finishing 14th. Martin Earley finished the Vuelta twice during his career, also taking a top 20 place when he finished 19th whilst riding in support of his victorious team mate Seán Kelly in 1988.

Again, the Irish presence at the Vuelta was put on hiatus for a number of years until the current crop of Irish riders emerged. Dan Martin, Nicolas Roche and Philip Deignan have all completed the Vuelta at least once. The most successful of which has of course been Deignan who brilliantly won a stage and finished 9th in the 2009 edition. The year previous, in 2008, Roche also managed a fantastic 13th place overall in what was only his 2nd ever Grand Tour.

Roche and Deignan are currently competing at this year’s Vuelta. Deignan is recovering from an injury stricken season and is riding in support of his team leader Carlos Sastre. With the break up of team Cervelo, Deignan now finds himself without a team for next year and he will be hoping to prove his worth as a valuable team mate for the remainder of this year’s race in order to impress potential suitors. Roche on the other hand has been handed the leadership role of his AG2R team. So far, he has not shied away from the responsibility. Before the mountainous eighth stage he lies in 11th place on G.C. less than a minute behind race leader Philippe Gilbert.

While Roche is putting in a great performance he still finds himself in that G.C. purgatory of not being quite capable of pushing for a podium place, but also considered too much of a threat to be allowed up the road to battle for a stage win. Today will be a true test of his form and a gauge of his ability to challenge for the podium or even the top 10. Come this evening, if he has slipped down the G.C., I feel he should allow himself slip a little further. In two weeks time, would he prefer a 15th place on G.C. or a 45th place along with a stage win? His recent comments about his frustrations about his lack of wins in his career so far suggest he would prefer the latter, as would most Irish cycling fans I would imagine!

The recent death of Laurent Fignon has come as a blow to the whole cycling community. I have only recently finished reading his autobiography which was hugely entertaining, but scarcely revealing. The entire book is a narrative of his cycling career with barely a whisper of his personal life and relationships. From the many obituaries I have read it seems that he was indeed a thoroughly private man, but an animal of a competitor. As Jean-Marie Leblanc described him “Fignon was the precursor of the modern champions with…panache and impertinence”. He’ll be sorely missed.

There is no escaping the infamy of the eight seconds by which Fignon lost the Tour de France to Greg LeMond in 1989. But if I was to ask you, which is the smallest ever overall winning margin in any of the three Grand Tours? The answer, surprisingly is not eight seconds in the 1989 Tour de France, it is six seconds in the 1984 Vuelta a Espana, when the Frenchman Eric Caritoux beat the Spaniard Alberto Fernández by the slenderest of margins. Fernández entered the final time trial in the 1984 Vuelta with a 32 second deficit to make up on Caritoux over 33 kilometres. LeMond’s task was twice as difficult with only 25 kilometres to make up 50 seconds. The ‘real’ Bono once said ’sometimes you can’t make it on your own’. Fernández as it turned out, couldn’t. Unfortunately for Fignon, LeMond could. However, influenced by the cover of his own book, I for one will choose not to remember Fignon as the rider who lost the Tour by eight seconds, but as the rider who won the Tour twice.

Laurent Fignon and Greg LeMond during the 1989 Tour de France

Both riders will be riding for new teams, Contador will be in the unusual position of riding for the team Andy Schleck has just left, while Schleck, along with brother Frank, has moved away from Riis to start a Luxembourg based team. Incidentally, as well as Contador and Schleck, the third rider who finished on the Tour podium will also be riding for a different team next year. Denis Menchov will be making the move from Rabobank to Mauro Gianetti’s Team Geox. This will be the first time ever that all of the podium finishers in the Tour de France have changed teams for the following season.

In a recent Real Peloton podcast Matt Rendell said this when discussing Frank and Andy Schleck’s move to their new Luxembourg team

these guys are at the top of their game, they’re suddenly going to a new set of structures and they’re going to have to bed in there and gel with new team mates

While the Tour de France itself is a test of physical strength, a move to a new team could prove to be an ample test of mental strength for both of the major contenders. As Joe Lindsey pointed out in a recent article, Contador has certainly proved in the past that he has the resolve to deal with the most taxing of challenges.

To summarise, the Spaniard has bounced back from a life threatening injury sustained early in his career. He was implicated in Operation Puerto and witnessed the subsequent demise of his Liberty Seguros team. But he found his feet once more, signing for Johan Bruyneel’s Discovery Channel team. Having won the Tour in 2007, he was dealt the blow that he would be prohibited from defending his crown in 2008.

Andy Schleck, Alberto Contador, and Denis Menchov will all be riding for new teams next year.

Again he regrouped and did the most impressive thing possible given the circumstances, he won the other two Grand Tours instead. In 2009, through no fault of his own, he found himself lodged in the middle of the Armstrong/Bruyneel relationship. Instead of letting underhand tactics and snide remarks from within his own team get him down, he got on with his work and won the Tour again. Finally, this year, Contador was faced with the ignominy of every one of his 2009 Tour team mates moving to Armstrong’s Radio Shack. Yet again, he coped admirably and won the Tour for a third time. Contador’s route to becoming a triple Tour winner has most certainly not been plain sailing.

Both Schleck and Contador are now faced with the prospect of trying to win the Tour while riding for a new team. Since the re-introduction of trade teams in 1962*, there have been 47 editions of the Tour. On only six of these occasions has a rider won the Tour during his first year on a new team. It does not bode well for Andy Schleck that two of these six riders are Alberto Contador and Bjarne Riis.

Contador achieved this feat in 2007 during his first year riding for Discovery Channel. Although he won the Tour that year, he was not signed to a team that expected him to challenge for the yellow jersey. When Contador joined the Bruyneel setup, Ivan Basso was the undisputed leader and a major favourite to win the Tour. When Operation Puerto eventually caught up with the Italian, leadership duties were bestowed upon the next rider in line, Levi Leipheimer. Bruyneel expected Leipheimer to challenge for the podium while setting the more modest goal for Contador of the white young rider’s jersey. This allowed Contador to rise to the top of the cycling world uninhibited by pressure and expectation, a luxury which will not be afforded Andy Schleck on his new team.

When Bjarne Riis won the Tour in 1996 he had just left the Gewiss-Ballan team to join Team Telekom. One of his main rivals for the Tour that year was Evgeni Berzin, winner of the Giro in 1994, and runner up in 1995, who was riding for Riis’s former team under the tutelage of Riis’s former team manager. The Russian took the yellow jersey on stage seven only to cede it to Riis two days later. Riis went on to wear it all the way to Paris, while Berzin faded badly to finish the Tour in 20th.

Bjarne Riis won the 1996 Tour de France beating his ex-teammate along the way.

Due to Contador’s impending transfer to Saxo Bank, Schleck will also be faced with the prospect of attempting to defeat a rider being guided by his former team manager. And in Riis, Schleck will be up against a man who knows him extremely well and who has faced, and won, this type of psychological battle before.

Although Schleck has signed up for a brand new team, there will be some elements of continuity. Kim Andersen, a directeur sportif at Saxo Bank since 2004 will be on board to aid the young Luxembourg rider. A handful of Schleck’s current Saxo Bank team mates will also be there. Along with his brother Frank, Jens Voigt, Jacob Fuglsang and Stuart O’Grady are all expected to ride for the new Luxembourg team. However, unlike Contador, Schleck has only ever ridden for one professional team under one team manager. As Matt Rendell suggested, having never gone through this process before, he is going to need time to bed in and gel with new team mates. A further fact which Andy Schleck will not want to hear is that the Tour de France has never been won by a brand new team. As I’m sure Carlos Sastre (Cervelo 2009) and Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky 2010) will attest to, it is not an easy task.

There are plenty of subplots which will be interesting to see develop as Contador and Schleck take to the road for their new teams. But most of the problems one could expect to face, Contador and Riis have overcome before, while Andy Schleck has not. The Luxembourg rider will be under pressure to finally deliver the goods, having now placed 2nd in three Grand Tours. Contador will be under pressure of his own to become the 6th rider to win four Tours de France. But Contador has far more experience dealing with the change and upheaval that will be faced by both riders next year. It’s early doors yet, but Contador will likely be far better equipped to win the 2011 Tour de France, and if he does, he will become only the 2nd rider ever, after Greg LeMond in 1989 and 1990, to win the Tour two years in a row with two different teams.

*Trade team’s participation in the Tour was put on hiatus in 1967 and 1968 when international teams competed once more, but the trade teams returned in 1969 and have been present ever since.

For a team to be successful in a team time trial they must work in complete harmony. It is the one stage of any race where no rider can ride for themselves. However, because we are in the thick of the transfer season, many team leaders have already announced that they will be leaving their current teams to ride elsewhere. Big name race favourites such as Andy Schleck, Frank Schleck, Roman Kreuziger, Carlos Sastre and Denis Menchov will all be riding for new teams next year. While we should have no reason to believe that this would compromise any rider’s professional approach toward the race, surely the fact that a team leader no longer wishes to ride for his current team will play on the minds of their domestiques.

The 2001 Giro d'Italia podium. The only Giro or Tour podium full of riders who competed in that year's Vuelta.

Andy Schleck and Denis Menchov will be taking part in the Vuelta having finished on the podium of this year’s Tour de France. Surprisingly this is only the 4th occasion on which two Tour podium finishers will ride the Vuelta in the same year. This happened in 1956 (Walkowiak and Bauvin), 1973 (Ocana and Thevenet) and most recently in 2006 (Pereiro and Sastre). The fact that Tour de France winner Alberto Contador will not be competing in his home Grand Tour continues the trend of there never having been a year where the top three finishers in the Tour all competed in the that year’s Vuelta.

Interest in the Vuelta by the Giro podium finishers fares little better, with the Spanish Grand Tour having only once played host to the top three finishers in the Giro. That year was 2001, when Gilberto Simoni, Abraham Olano and Unai Osa filled the Giro podium and all competed in the Vuelta that September. Obviously the Giro comes before the Tour in the racing calendar, as did the Vuelta pre-1995, which means that the Tour podium for the year was unkown before these races occurred, but we won’t let that get in the way of a nice piece of trivia!

The Vuelta a Espana was first raced in 1935. Due to the outbreak of the Spanish civil war and subsequently World War II, it was put on hiatus for a number of years. As a result, the Vuelta has taken place in the same year as a Tour de France on 66 occasions. In addition, the Vuelta has taken place in the same year as a Giro d’Italia on 67 occasions. This gives a total of 133 combinations of Vuelta/Tour and Vuelta/Giro, which in turn gives us 399 riders who finished on the podium in the Tour or Giro in the same year that there was a Vuelta a Espana. Yet, only 62 of these 399 riders decided to race the Vuelta in the same year, that’s just 15%.

The first rider to ride the Vuelta in the same

Fiorenzo Magni. The first rider to finish on the podium of either the Tour or Giro and ride the Vuelta in the same year.

year as finishing on the podium of the Giro or Tour was Fiorenzo Magni aged 35. He won the Giro d’Italia and also won three stages of the Vuelta in 1955. The first rider to finish on the podium of either the Tour or Giro and the Vuelta in the same year was Jacques Anquetil in 1963 when he won both the Vuelta and the Tour de France. In doing so he became the first of only two men to win the rarest of Grand Tour doubles, the other was Bernard Hinault in 1978.

On 18 occasions a rider has finished on the podium of the Vuelta and also on the podium of another Grand Tour in the same year. The most recent examples come from 2008 when Contador won both the Vuelta and the Giro, while Carlos Sastre finished 3rd in the Vuelta and won the Tour. The only rider who has finished on the podium of the Vuelta and also on the podium of another Grand Tour twice is Mr. 2nd Place, Raymond Poulidor. He suffered the ignominy of finishing 2nd in both the Tour and the Vuelta in 1965. But the previous year, he finished 2nd in the Tour and managed to win the Vuelta, a Grand Tour victory oft forgotten amongst his superfluity of near misses at the Tour de France.

Two more interesting Grand Tour podium facts before I call it a day… In 1973, three of the six podium finishers at the Giro and the Tour rode the Vuelta. And these three riders, Eddy Merckx (1st in the Giro), Luis Ocana (1st in the Tour) and Bernard Thevenet (3rd in the Tour) managed to fill the Vuelta a Espana podium.

Finally, that famous 8 second gap meant that 1989 was the only year that the Tour de France podium consisted of the winners of all three Grand Tours, Greg LeMond (Tour), Laurent Fignon (Giro) and Pedro Delgado (Vuelta).

1. In Utrecht, cycling is an absolute pleasure.
2. In Dublin, cycling is an absolute battle.

Prior to this week, Dublin has been the only city in which I have had the experience of cycling and having now had the pleasure of cycling in Utrecht, it is clear that Dublin is a complete disaster in comparison. While Utrecht has an infrastructure of proper two-way, unbroken cycle lanes with their own traffic light system, Dublin city council deem it sufficient to paint a red stripe on the side of roads, the refurbishment of which, apparently cost the government €800,000 last year. This is embarrassing. The cycle lanes in Dublin are just plain dangerous in plenty of places and are a result of irresponsible and uninformed planning. There is a Flickr account dedicated to documenting the appalling Irish cycle lanes, some of the photos up there are really quite disturbing.

Cycling around Utrecht, here was a photo op in front of the Dutchest scene I could find.

So having been off the radar in Utrecht for the past while (where I delivered a paper concerning Irish Traditional Music at the ISMIR conference, here’s a link to the paper if anybody is interested), I haven’t really had the chance to comment on Daniel Martin’s fine win in the Tour of Poland. It’s the biggest win of his career so far by some distance, his best result previously had been a win in the Route du Sud, a 2.1 category French stage race. But the Tour of Poland is a Pro Tour race, and is now, although hasn’t always been, far more prestigious than the Route du Sud. Former winners of the Tour of Poland include Jens Voigt, Kim Kirchen and former World Road Race Champions Alessandro Ballan, Laurent Brochard and Maurizio Fondriest.

Martin came close to winning a Pro Tour stage race last year in the Volta a Catalunya where he finished in 2nd place overall. On that occasion he was only beaten by the now suspended Alejandro Valverde. When the Spaniard’s suspension was finalised recently for his involvement in Operacion Puerto, it was decided that he would be allowed to keep all his results which were obtained before 1st January 2010, which meant sadly, that Martin remains in 2nd place in the 2009 Volta a Catalunya. His victory in the 2010 Tour of Poland is the first victory for an Irishman in a top level stage race since his uncle Stephen Roche won the 1991 Criterium International. It is also the first Irish victory in a national Tour since Seán Kelly won the 1990 Tour de Suisse.

Martin will not be racing the Vuelta a Espana which starts at the end of this month, instead his program will be focused on the remaining classic races of the season. He will be targetting the GP Ouest-France (where he finished 5th last year), and the Tour of Lombardy (where he finished 8th last year).

But fear not, for there will be an Irish presence at the third Grand Tour of the year. Nicolas Roche will be aiming to carry his great form in the Tour de France through to September. Roche last rode the Vuelta in 2008 where he narrowly missed out on a stage win, coming off second best in a two man sprint against Imanol Erviti. Roche went on to take 13th place overall in what was then only his second Grand Tour. Since then, Roche has ridden and finished two Tours de France. He is getting stronger and stronger, and if he has managed his training and form well, he could well be in contention for a stage win and another solid G.C. performance.

Roche may be joined in Spain by Philip Deignan who has made it on to Cervelo’s eleven man shortlist, from which nine riders will be picked for the race. Last year Deignan famously won Stage 18 of the Vuelta powering away from Roman Kreuziger in Avila. The 10 minutes that Deignan was allowed to gain on that stage moved him up from 18th up to 9th on the G.C., a position he would defend all the way to Madrid. This year, Deignan will be riding the Vuelta for the third time having also ridden and finished the race in 2007 when he took 71st overall. In fact, the Irish trio of Deignan, Roche and Martin have now ridden ten Grand Tours between them, and an each of those occasions they have all finished the race. Roche and Deignan, both a couple of years older than Martin, have both ridden four Grand Tours, but unusually this year’s Vuelta will be the first one that they have both ridden together.

The lineup for the Vuelta in general seems very strong. A large reason for this is the presence of the Schleck brothers who have announced they will be riding with the goal of overall victory for Frank. Their presence here is due to the fact that Frank crashed out of the Tour, otherwise the pair probably would not have signed up. In addition to the two Luxembourg riders, also expected on the startline on August 28th are former Grand Tour winners Carlos Sastre, who will be riding his third Grand Tour of the year, and Denis Menchov. With a former Tour winner in Sastre and the Giro and Vuelta previously won by Menchov, there will be previous winners of all three Grand Tours present in this year’s Vuelta. This has only occurred twice in the last 10 years. In 2007, Damiano Cunego (Giro 2004), Oscar Periero (Tour 2006) and Denis Menchov (Vuelta 2005) were all present, and in 2001, Marco Pantani (Tour & Giro 1998) and Roberto Heras (Vuelta 2000) were both there for the Vuelta.

There are plenty of other riders who are set to participate in this year’s race who have performed well  in the Vuelta before and will add plenty of intrigue to the fight for the overall. Egoi Martinez finished 9th in 2008 and won the King of the Mountains crown in 2006. Recent Tour stage winner Joaquim Rodriguez finished 6th in 2008 and 7th last year. Ezequiel Mosquera has finished in the top five in each of the past three years. Andrey Kashechkin will be something of unknown quantity as he returns from suspension and will ride for Lampre. He hasn’t raced since 2007 but he’s still only 30 and the last time he rode the Vuelta he won a stage on the way to finishing 3rd while helping his team mate and compatriot Alexander Vinokourov to the overall victory. There will also be the Liquigas pair of Roman Kreuziger, who has finished in the top 10 of the Tour in the past two years, and Vincenzo Nibai, podium finisher at this year’s Giro.

But it’s not all about the G.C. men. The fact that the World Road Race Circuit is considered sprinter-friendly this year means there are many speed merchants looking to hone their form at the Vuelta in the hopes of landing a rainbow jersey later on. The sprinting heavyweights Thor Hushovd, Tyler Farrar, Alessandro Petacchi, Daniele Bennati, Oscar Freire and Mark Cavendish should all be battling it out for stage wins although it remains to be seen how many will go on to complete the three weeks. Sadly, rider’s who are targetting the Worlds usually call it a day at the Vuelta before the third week. But, the fact that it is a relatively flat Worlds course, means the G.C. men should see the race out till the end. In addition, this could see the race with a distinct lack of sprinters in the final week which may leave the door open for stage hunters and some more unlikely stage winners. It’s set to be an exciting race, and fortunately for the Irish it is now the 7th Grand Tour in succession in which we’ll have a rider or two to be rooting for.

To win all three Grand Tours, a rider would have to hit a considerable peak of form on three separate and not too distant occasions. I have written before about the likes of Hushovd and Cavendish peaking for Milan San Remo, the Tour and finally for the Worlds as a distinct possibility. There is a six and a half month gap between Milan San Remo and the World Road Race Championships. In contrast, there is less than four and a half months between the start of the Giro d’Italia in May and the end of the Vuelta a Espana in September, considerably less time to hit three form peaks.

In addition to the personal challenge of hitting three separate peaks in form in such a short space of time, there is also the factor that one would be competing against riders who are aiming to peak just once in the year, as Contador did this year for the Tour de France. If Contador was to attempt to stretch out his form two months either side of July, his form for the Tour de France would suffer. It’s not as if Contador had minutes to play with this year in terms of his winning margin. A gap of 39 seconds is not sufficient to be compromising one’s form by attempting to win another two Grand Tours. To illustrate, I give you a hand drawn graph of the form of a rider aiming to peak solely for the Tour de France, versus a rider aiming to peak for each of the three Grand Tours:

The form of a rider aiming to peak solely for the Tour de France (blue), versus the form of a rider aiming to peak for all three Grand Tours (red).

A rider aiming to win all three Grand Tours will be considerably handicapped when racing against riders who are concentrating on the Tour. There will also be riders who are focused solely on the Giro or the Vuelta also.

Obviously, winning three Grand Tours in one season has never been achieved before. Although many riders, including Alberto Contador have done a double of one form or another. As a result of his Astana team being banned from the Tour de France, Contador achieved the Giro/Vuelta double in 2008. As well as Contador, a Grand Tour double, be it Giro/Tour, Giro/Vuelta or Tour/Vuelta, has been achieved by eight other riders. However, all nine of these riders didn’t take to the start line of the third Grand Tour in the year they won the other two.

Even finishing three Grand Tours in one season is a feat which has only ever been achieved by 29 riders. King among them is Marino Lejarreta, who I seem to be referring to a lot lately. He started and finished three Grand Tours in one year on four separate occasions. Remarkably, he did it three times in a row in 1989, 1990 and 1991. His best performance came in 1989 when he finished in the top 20 in all three races, 5th in the Tour de France, 10th in the Giro d’Italia and 20th in the Vuelta a Espana.

However, Lejarreta’s performance in 1989 is not the best performance from a rider to have completed all three Grand Tours in one year. That honour belongs to Gastone Nencini who won the Giro in 1957 and also finished 6th in the Tour and 9th in the Vuelta in the same year. He remains the only rider to have won one of the Grand Tours in a year when he finished the other two. He also won two stages and the mountians classification in the Tour de France that year. However, if we were to add up the final positions in the G.C. of riders who have completed all three Grand Tours in one year, the rider with the lowest score would be the Frenchman Raphael Geminiani who impressively finished 3rd, 4th and 6th in the Vuelta, Giro and Tour respectively in 1955.

While Nencini is the only rider to have won a Grand Tour on his way to completing all three in one year, three other riders have won the mountains classification of a Grand Tour having completed all three. Triple Grand Tour finisher Inaki Gaston won the mountains classification in the Giro d’Italia in 1991, Manuel Fuente did the same in 1971, his first of four mountains jerseys in a row at the Giro. Finally, Federico Bahamontes won the mountains jersey in both the Tour and the Vuelta in 1958 while also finishing 17th in the Giro d’Italia. Bahamontes is the only rider to have won a classification in two separate Grand Tours, having completed three in one year.

Achieving success in all three Grand Tours in one year is clearly a monumental task. Winning all of them is seemingly impossible. However there is another, never been done before, achievable goal which Contador could conceivably aim for, and that is completing all three Grand Tour doubles in his career. Three men, each of whom are five time winners of the Tour, have achieved two of the Grand Tour doubles. Both Bernard Hinault and Jacques Anquetil have done the Tour/Vuelta and the Tour/Giro doubles, while Eddy Merckx is the only rider to have achieved the Tour/Giro and the Giro/Vuelta double. Alberto Contador has already won the Giro and the Vuelta in the one year, he has two doubles left to go, both of which include his major goal of each season, the Tour de France. Three Grand Tours in one season is beyond any man, but a Tour/Giro or Tour/Vuelta double could be within reach of the best Grand Tour rider in the current peloton.

Nicolas Roche was one of the riders strong enough to stay with the front group when the Kazakh attacked. The 26 year old Irishman ended up in 8th place which is his best ever finish in a classic. It isn’t however the best ever placing by an Irishman in the Clásica de San Sebastián. Unsurprisingly, this was achieved by Sean Kelly in 1990 when he came third. In second place was a 21 year old Laurent Jalabert who was riding towards his best result so far in a major race. The winner that day was Miguel Indurain who soloed home almost two and a half minutes ahead of Jalabert and Kelly, completing a one day race podium full of past/future winners of Grand Tours.

Luis León Sánchez - Winner of this year's Clásica de San Sebastián

It is surprising that this classic was never won by Kelly. His calendar tended to revolve around the classics along with Spanish races like the Vuelta a Espana, Volta a Catalunya and the Tour of Pays Basque (making sure to pronounce the ’s’ at the end of ‘Pays’ like the man himself!). So one would have thought that a Spanish classic would have been right up his alley. As it happens, Kelly never even rode the race until 1989 when it became part of the inaugural UCI Road World Cup (which he won). Perhaps it is because the Clásica de San Sebastián tended to clash with two other races which Kelly was partial to, the Tour of Britain and the Tour de Limousin.

Getting back to this year’s race, the leading group of ten was shortly to become three when Sánchez attacked and only Sastre and Vinokourov could follow. Vinokourov paid for his efforts in pulling the breakaway and Sastre was never likely to win a sprint from a small group, which left Sánchez to power home for the first one-day race win of his career. Sánchez, along with his compatriot Sastre ensured a Spanish presence on the podium, a presence which has been felt since 2004.  However, Spain have also had to endure long droughts of success in their home race in the past. In the ten years between 1992 and 2001, not a single Spanish rider finished on the podium.

Even though this race is known traditionally as a race where Tour de France riders do well, there is evidence that gives hope to those who take part without having ridden the Tour. With podiums full of riders who completed the Tour, the past two editions seem to be the exceptions. Before 2009, it’s been 17 years since the Clásica de San Sebastián podium was made up entirely of riders who finished the Tour de France. In the thirty editions of this race, it has happened on only six occasions. Along with 2010, the only other year the podium was made up of riders who finished in the top 20 of the Tour was 1991 when Gianni Bugno (2nd in the Tour), Pedro Delgado (9th in the Tour), and Maurizio Fondreist (15th in the Tour) made up the top three.

Two of this year’s Tour podium finishers Alberto Contador and Denis Menchov decided to give the race a miss but runner up and white jersey winner Andy Schleck took to the startline aiming to become only the third man to finish on the podium of both the Tour and the Clásica de San Sebastián. Unfortunately, Schleck mysteriously abandoned after 120km, leaving Claudio Chiapucci who finished 2nd in both races in 1992, and the aforementioned Gianni Bugno, as the only two riders to have achieved this feat.

Marino Lejarreta - A triple winner of the Clásica de San Sebastián and the only rider to win it along with a Grand Tour in the same season.

Despite this race not going to plan, Andy Schleck has stated his intentions to ride the Vuelta in support of his brother Frank, who will be aiming to win the race overall. Plenty of the top performers in San Sebastián at the weekend are also expected to ride the third and final Grand Tour of the year. Marino Lejarreta remains the only rider to have won the Clásica de San Sebastián and the Vuelta (or indeed any Grand Tour) in the same year when he won both in 1982. Miguel Indurain managed to spread his form even further than this in 1990 when he became one of two riders to have finished on the podium in San Sebastián and managed to finish in the top 10 of both the Tour (10th) and the Vuelta (7th). In 2008, Alejandro Valverde did slightly better than Indurain when he won the Spanish classic, finished the Tour in 8th (and wore the Maillot Jaune) and took 5th place at the Vuelta.

Since 1995, when the Vuelta a Espana was moved from its traditional date in April to its current location in September, it has taken a while for riders to use the Clasicá de San Sebastián as a launch pad to extend their form over to the Vuelta. In the first ten years since the Vuelta was moved, only five of the 30 riders who finished on the podium in San Sebastián went on to race in the Tour of Spain, and only three of these riders finished. Conversely, in the subsequent five years, which brings us up to 2009, all but three riders did start the Vuelta a Espana. The best Vuelta performances by San Sebastián podium finishers in recent years have been Alejandro Valverde in 2008 (5th) and Andrey Kashechkin in 2006 (3rd).

The startlist for the Vuelta a Espana is far from clear, but Nicolas Roche confirmed today that he will definitely be riding his second Grand Tour of the season. Samuel Sánchez, Carlos Sastre, Luis León Sánchez, Joaquim Rodriguez and Robert Gesink are riders who are also very likely to partake in the Vuelta in an attempt to achieve the tricky feat of extending their form from the Tour de France and the Clásica de San sebastián over to the Vuelta.

All this and we’re still in the month of July. Whatever happened to the UCI’s rule that no transfers should be announced before the 1st September? Well, in actual fact, that date has been changed. On the 1st July this year, the UCI amended their rules so that transfers can now be negotiated and announced any time after the 1st August. Article 2.15.120 of the UCI Cycling Regulations on Road Races states:

A transfer period extends from 1 August to 20 October

A UCI ProTeam or licence applicant may only recruit riders during the transfer period.

The regulations go on to state in Article 2.15.125:

Riders and UCI ProTeams may not reveal that they are in negotiations about renewal of their contracts or transfers outside the transfer period.

So even though the gag order on rider transfers has been pushed back a full month, all the announcements that have been made regarding team rosters for next year have still been in breach of the UCI regulations and all involved parties can be subjected to a fine between 300 and 2000 Swiss Francs.

Perhaps everyone is getting quietly fined and we just don’t hear about it. But ultimately, a directeur sportif’s announcement of a new rider for next season can only help in the search for sponsors. Therefore, teams are probably unconcerned with fines of hundreds of euro, when the exposure gained from announcing a new rider signing may help them land millions of euro from potential sponsors.

I’ve expressed my concerns before about rider transfers being announced so early in the season. The Tour de France may be over but there’s a huge amount of racing left. Announcing changes to the makeup of teams affects the mentality and the loyalty of riders. Why should a domestique feel satisfied sacrificing himself for a leader who intends to jump ship in a few months? Will a rider who is moving on to a new team, find himself working (consciously or subconsciously) for his new team rather than (or as well as) his current team?

The first test of allegiance for the stars of the Tour de France will come this Saturday in the Clásica de San Sebastián, a one day race in Spain. Previous winners of the race include former Tour champions Lance Armstrong and Miguel Indurain. This race was one of only two classics won by the Texan (along with Fléche Wallonne) and it also stands out on the palmarés of Indurain as the only major one day race he ever won. San Sebastián is very close to Indurain’s home town of Villava, the Spaniard also won a time trial of the Tour de France here in 1992. With a course more Tour of Lombardy than Paris-Tours the race has also been won by hilly classics specialists Laurent Jalabert, Paolo Bettini and Alejandro Valverde.

Carlos Barredo beating Roman Kreuziger in last year's edition of the Clásica de San Sebastián

Surprisingly, Alberto Contador will be at the startline on Saturday*. Last year, having won the Tour de France he decided to take it easy for the rest of the year with his only racing appearance coming in the Clásica Cancun, a minor race which he won. It’s the first time the triple Tour winner will appear in a Pro Tour race this late in the year after one of his Tour victories. Hitherto, Contador seemed to have been following in the footsteps of his former team mate Armstrong. The American, during his Tour winning years, made a habit of cutting his season short after the Tour de France. There were exceptions, in 2002 he competed in a string of one day races in August (including the Clásica de San Sebastián), and in 2000 he raced and won, the GP Eddy Merckx and the GP des Nations to prepare for the upcoming Olympic Games.

Carlos Sastre bucked this trend completely when he became the first rider to enter the Vuelta a Espana as reigning Tour de France champion since the Spanish Grand Tour moved to its current September slot on the calendar. Sastre rode strongly to take an impressive third place, the third time in a row he had finished on the podium of a Grand Tour that he’d entered. Next month, amazingly, Sastre is due to take part in his home Tour again, having already completed the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France this year. Completing the three Grand Tours in one season is something Sastre has already achieved in 2006 where he finished 43rd, 3rd and 4th in the Giro, Tour and Vuelta respectively. He follows in the footsteps of the 1982 Vuelta a Espana winner Marino Lejarreta who rode all three Grand Tours in one year on no less than four occasions. In 1989 he finished all of them inside the top 20 overall. Not to be forgotten is the fact that back then there was less than a week between the end of the Vuelta and the start of the Giro.

Incidentally, Marino Lejaretta holds the record for the number of wins in the Clásica de San Sebastián with three in 1981, 1982 and 1987. Historically the race is won by a rider who has shown excellent form in the Tour de France. In 2008, the race was won by yellow jersey wearer and stage winner Alejandro Valverde. Laurent Jalabert won back to back editions in 2001 and 2002, the same years he won his King of the Mountains titles at the Tour. Erik Dekker, winner in 2000, had won three Tour stages that year. So perhaps surprisingly it is a rider who didn’t take part in the Tour who has been made the bookie’s favourite, classics monster Philippe Gilbert.

Other favourites for the race include Spaniards Joaquim Rodriguez, Luis Leon Sanchez, Samuel Sanchez, and last year’s winner turned front wheel ninja, Carlos Barredo. Ireland’s Nicolas Roche is also in the top 10 of the bookie’s favourites to win this classic. While others around him are racing for contracts, or are disgruntled at riding for a team they no longer harbour ambitions for, Roche is safe in the knowledge that he has just signed a new 2 year deal with his AG2R La Mondiale team, which just may give him a boost in confidence to try and capitalise on his good Tour de France form.

*Shite. Just been informed that Contador won’t be on the startline on Saturday.

Many aspects made this one of the most memorable Tours ever. The crashes and go slow on Stage 2, all the hoo-ha on the cobbles the following day, Cavendish’s ups and downs, Andy Schleck losing his chain and Contador’s subsequent attack, plenty of French stage winners and most importantly of all, the fact that the Yellow, Green and Polka Dot jerseys all came down to their last competitive day of racing.

John Wilcockson wrote an article recently suggesting that Contador could already be on the way out, I completely disagree. I think that Contador rode a perfect race. He rode a solid time trial followed by an unexpectedly excellent performance over the cobbles considering he had never ridden a cobbled race before. He managed to coax Andy Schleck into working with him on Stage Nine to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne thereby distancing all of their mutual rivals and putting Schleck into the Yellow Jersey which he would then have the responsibility of defending.

He then took the yellow jersey after stage 15 which tasked his team with defending the Maillot Jaune for only three days (not including the final time trial and the procession into Paris). Then despite the presence of a fierce headwind on a flat time trial course he put over half a minute into his closest rival to seal his third Tour victory. It seems to me that Contador’s Tour worked out perfectly, despite the fact he didn’t win a stage. When people think of Greg LeMond they think of a three time Tour winner. They’re less concerned with the fact that he ‘only’ won four Tour stages in his career and won the 1990 edition without winning a stage.

Going into the second half of the race, Schleck led Contador by 41 seconds, the Spaniard took back 10 of those seconds on Stage 12 which meant the riders entered the Pyrenées separated by 31 seconds. On Stage 15 to Bagnéres-de-Luchon the now infamous chain incident occurred which saw Contador seize the Yellow Jersey with a lead of 8 seconds. Whether this attack was sporting or not, Contador clearly had this stage ear marked as the one where he hoped to assume the race lead. Contador countered the attack of the hapless Andy Schleck who dropped his chain shortly after his initial burst of speed. To me, the speed at which Contador zoomed past his team mate Vinokourov suggested that he would have caught and passed Schleck. There is no guarantee that Schleck would have gotten on to the back wheel of Contador. Judging by their inseparability in the subsequent mountains stages, it would seem that the best Schleck could have hoped for on that stage would have been to finish alongside Contador.

The major difference to the race that this would have made is that Schleck would still have been in yellow when it came to the stage finish atop the Col du Tourmalet. But the dynamic of the race would not have changed as Contador would probably have been content taking a 31 second deficit into the final time trial. Even if Schleck had been in yellow, the onus would still have been on him to drop Contador, which he evidently wasn’t able to do anyway. Contador on the other hand, being paced up the climb, seemed like he could have distanced Schleck if he had really applied himself. Therefore, I don’t think the chain incident would have ultimately changed the overall outcome of the race. It’s all ifs, buts and maybes, but it is wonderful that these are the type of ‘what-ifs’ that are being discussed rather than the likes of ‘what would have been the outcome if yer man who tested positive hadn’t have influenced the race?’.

I watched Stage 17 again this morning. Seán Kelly mentioned while commentating that when the Tour is over people will have forgotten the 39 seconds that Contador gained due to Schleck’s dropped chain. Remarkably, the gap between the two in the final general classement was exactly 39 seconds. Had this bizarre twist of fate not occurred, I feel Kelly would have been right. After all, how many minutes was Andy Schleck spared when the decision was made to stage a go slow on Stage 2?

As for Wilcockson’s suggestion that Contador is close to the end of his Tour de France reign; the triple Tour champion is now 27 years old and has won the last five Grand Tours that he’s entered. To put this into perspective the last seven Tour winners and the age they were when they won their first Tour are: Carlos Sastre 33, Oscar Pereiro 29, Lance Armstrong 27, Marco Pantani 28, Jan Ullrich 23, Bjarne Riis 32, Miguel Indurain 27.

Apart from the prodigious Jan Ullrich none of the recent former Tour winners were younger than Contador is now when they won their first Tour de France. He must also be commended for being competitive for the whole year before the Tour, in the week long stage races and the Ardennes classics. Perhaps this is the reason why many people reckon he wasn’t on his best form in this year’s Tour. So what will he be capable of if he returns next year back to his best? He will be very very hard to beat for a number of years to come.

In the race for the Green Jersey Mark Cavendish finished 11 points behind Alessandro Petacchi. Intermediate sprints are worth six points each but Cavendish didn’t contest any of them throughout the Tour (there were 45 in total). If he had won two of them he would have won the Green Jersey. However, we also mustn’t forget that Thor Hushovd was very hard done by on Stage 2 when the race finish was neutralised and no points were awarded when the bunch crossed the line. Hushovd had managed to stay with the main peloton which finished the stage behind Sylvain Chavanel. His main Green Jersey rivals Cavendish and Petacchi finished in groups 10 minutes and 13 minutes down respectively. Undoubtedly, Hushovd was in better form in the first week of the Tour than the last week, which means he probably would have been favourite to take the bunch sprint for 2nd place. Regardless, even if he had only finished 5th on the stage he would have landed an extra 22 points. He lost the Green Jersey by 21.

It was also a great Tour de France for Nicolas Roche who achieved his pre-Tour goal of a top 15 place. He sat in 18th place overall before the stage finish on the Tourmalet. On that foggy evening on the final climb of the race he put in the best performance of his career to take 12th place on the stage. This moved him up into 15th on G.C. capitalising on the time lost by Thomas Lofkvist, Alexander Vinokourov and Carlos Sastre. He followed up his immense performance in the mountains by also putting in his best ever time trial performance, finishing ahead of the likes of Armstrong, Kloden and Kreuziger to defend his 15th place which he carried proudly into Paris last Sunday.

The Tour de France withdrawal is now beginning to set in, but fear not, for there is plenty of other races on the calendar. In fact it’s been a good week for Irishmen all round. David McCann has just secured 5th place overall in the Tour of Qinghai Lake and Dan Martin took 3rd place in the Italian Brixia Tour. Most of the major Tour stars will be back in action this Saturday in the Pro Tour Clásica de San Sebastián. Roche will be present along with Philip Deignan who will be riding his first race since he was forced out of the Tour de Suisse due to illness. And sure it’s not that long until the Vuelta!

With the saddle sorted and the clouds creeping ever closer down the valley, myself and Barry (who rode the Étape last Sunday) set off toward my first Pyrenean climb. The climb starts off quite gently and gets progressively harder and steeper as you approach the top. About three kilometres into the nine kilometre climb, even though I knew the vicious gradients were still up the road I thought to myself, ‘this isn’t so bad, what’s all the fuss about?’. At which point Barry turned to me and said ‘if you’re riding in a group, it’s around now where you turn to they guy next to you and say ‘this isn’t so bad, what’s all the fuss about?”. So I said nothing and kept going.

With five kilometres remaining to the summit I found myself cursing all the Zaytoons and sneaky cans I’d had during the World Cup. What’s worse are the completely unforgivable Daytoons, where you can’t even use the excuse of being on a night out to drunkenly convince yourself that a massive kebab is full of healthy vegetables and essential protein. With three kilometres to go, my breathing was so heavy and my legs were so laden with lactic acid that my mind could no longer concoct intelligible reasons for me to curse myself.

When the one kilometre to go sign I was expecting actually turned out to be the two kilometres to go sign, I realised I had to stop and take a breather and eat something. I stopped for five minutes or so and once I got back up on the bike and moving (which isn’t easy on those slopes) I immediately felt an improvement. Even though the last two kilometres are the hardest, I felt better on them than I did during the previous two, and I made it to the top without the need for further rest.

And here’s all the photographs to prove it:

Setting out from the house in Sarrance with Uncle Barry in our Brim Brothers jerseys.

The view from the front door with eerie clouds creeping down the mountains.

The signpost at the foot of the climb which kindly lets you know what you're letting yourself in for.

Just passing the three kilometres to go sign. I thought since there was so much fog about it seemed appropriate to try climbing on the drops like Marco Pantani, maybe it would make me climb better?

It didn't

But refuelled and re-energised I was on the way again with just less than 2km to go.

I seem to have gone blind here as I approach the summit.

Success! I made it. I remember being much happier at this point, but I don't seem to have been able to express that happiness using my face muscles, it would have taken far too much energy.

Frank Schleck had the misfortune of crashing out on the cobbled Stage 3 of this year’s Tour and has recently released a picture of his devastated shoulder. One of Kim Kirchen’s major goals for the year was to be the Tour de France, but he was unable to take part for a very sobering reason. He suffered a heart attack on the 18th June and as a result was placed in an induced coma. He was released from hospital last week and it is not clear when or if Kirchen will return to professional cycling. This leaves Andy Schleck as the sole representative of Luxembourg in this year’s Tour de France which he is hoping to win. He is currently the leader of the race and should he wear the yellow jersey all the way to Paris he will become the 4th Luxembourg rider to do so after François Faber (1909), Nicolas Frantz (1927,1928) and most recently Charly Gaul (1958). It is a very rich Tour history for such a small nation.

As a small country on the outskirts of the cycling stronghold of mainland Europe, Ireland can be equally as proud of its own history in the Tour de France. Only eight Irish riders have ridden the Tour in the past, but half of whom have won a stage in the race. Ireland’s first ever Tour competitor was Séamus Elliott in 1956, a race which he did not finish. However he was to return again in 1958 when he took 48th overall bagging five top 10 stage placings along the way, including a 2nd place finish behind the Dutch rider Gerrit Voorting. Elliott went on to take part in six Tours de France altogether, finishing three of them. His career defining moment came in the 1963 Tour when he won the 3rd Stage which finished in Roubaix. By winning the stage he also took over the race leader’s yellow jersey, becoming only the second rider outside of mainland Europe to do so, after the British Tom Simpson had achieved the feat the year before. Elliott went on that year to help his team mate Jacques Anquetil win his 4th Tour de France.

After Seamus Elliott rode his last Tour in 1964 there was a gap of 14 years before another Irishman entered the race. This was the formidable Sean Kelly who burst on to the scene in 1978 by winning a stage in his first Tour de France. Kelly was best known for his classics victories but he also had an immense record in the Tour. He finished the race in 7th place in 1983, 5th in 1984 and 4th in 1985. He also won five stages of the Tour, surprisingly his last came as far back as 1982.

But five stage wins doesn’t adequately illustrate the prominence with which Kelly presented himself at the Tour. He finished in the top 10 of a Tour stage on more than 100 occasions. In 1985 he finished 2nd on an agonising five stages, and finished 3rd on a further four. In 1984 he racked up a remarkable 16 top 10 placings and yet unbelievably he was pipped for the Green Jersey competition on the final day by the Belgian Frank Hoste.

However he did win the Green Jersey as the winner of the points classification four times, which was a Tour record until Erik Zabel went one better in 2000. He also won the intermediate sprints competition on a record three occasions. A record which is likely to stand forever as this contest was rendered defunct after 1989. In 1983 he wore the yellow jersey for one day. A day which he claims to be one of the proudest of his career despite the fact he suffered terribly over the Pyreneean climbs of the Aubisque, Tourmalet, Aspin and Peyresourde.

Sean Kelly sparked off a golden era for Irish cycling. For the ten years between 1983 and 1992, Ireland had at least two riders competing in every Tour de France. One of the riders present in all but one of these years was of course Stephen Roche. The man from Dublin won the Tour in 1987 beating off the challenge of Pedro Delgado and Jean-François Bernard. He also finished on the podium in 1985 only four and a half minutes behind the winner Bernard Hinault and less than three minutes behind second placed Greg LeMond. He won four individual stages over the years, along with a team time trial win in his triumphant Tour in 1987. His last stage win, and Ireland’s last, came 18 years ago in 1992. Roche also finished in 9th place overall that year.

Throughout these wonderful years for Kelly and Roche, three other Irishmen also rode in the Tour de France. The most successful was undoubtedly the bespectacled Martin Earley who, whilst riding for Sean Kelly’s PDM team in 1989 became the fourth man from Ireland to win a stage in the Tour. The pair of them also helped PDM win the team classification that year. In total Earley rode eight Tours de France, finishing five of them. Paul Kimmage, now a famous journalist rode the Tour in 1986, 1987 and 1989. He finished the race at his first attempt taking two top 10 stage placings along the way.

In 1991, Stephen Roche started the Tour with his brother Lawrence in his team alongside him. Kelly and Earley also started the Tour that year. Of the four, Lawrence Roche was the only one of them to make it to Paris. After Stephen Roche rode his last Tour de France in 1993 there was another lull in terms of an Irish presence in the race. It wasn’t until 2003 that national interest returned when former Junior World Champion Mark Scanlon took to the startline for the French AG2R team. He finished in a creditable 89th place.

Then last year the third Roche to ride the Tour, Nicolas, revived the Irish presence in the race once again. He rode strongly throughout, defending the yellow jersey of his team mate Rinaldo Nocentini for over a week and he even took 2nd place on the stage to Besançon. Despite not riding specifically for the G.C. he finished his first Tour de France in an impressive 23rd position. This year however, Roche has expressed his desire to put in a strong G.C. performance. Until the race reached the high mountains, Roche had maneuvered himself into 8th place overall. A couple of tough days in the Alps saw him drop to 17th place, but a cheeky breakaway toward the end of Stage 10 allowed him to claw back over a minute and he moved up again in the G.C.

It would have been marvelous to have had Roche, Deignan and Martin all competing in the Tour this July. But Roche, like Andy Schleck, is doing a fine job of flying the flag solo for a country which has had a vast influence on this grandest of Grand Tours. He currently sits in 13th place overall, the same position his father finished in his last Tour 17 years ago. If he was to stay in 13th until Paris he will have achieved his goal of a top 15 place and he will have written another line in the proud history of Irish riders in the Tour de France.