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REVIEW: The Road Book 2020



You can order the book here and if you use the code 50CS10 (available until 21st of March) you get a 10% discount.

 

2020 was a unique year in the history of cycling. By this time last year, our sport was in turmoil.


Some races were being cancelled and others were uncertain whether they would go ahead and how. Teams pulled out of Paris-Nice and some riders went home early to be with their families in time for the ensuing lockdowns.


Then it all stopped.


Many of us thought the rest of the year would be a write-off and for a while it was. Until the end of July, when, with unprecedented measures (team bubbles, reduced crowds, tests etc), the sport restarted at warp speed, cramming races in an unprecedented order. What followed was a mixture of unexpected heroes, swashbuckling performances and refreshing tactics.


Every year has its unforgettable moments, but 2020 was special indeed. We had dramatic finishes at the Tour, the Giro, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Flanders, of the likes we hadn't seen in years.



The women's calendar took the brunt of the scaling down of events, the results were heavily weighted towards the established leaders rather than the younger generation, as the gaps between races were longer and experience played a big part.


For the men, suddenly there was no time to prepare for a specific race, riders just had to turn up and pedal. The younger generation of riders took advantage of this à la carte participation at the expense of the old guard, too used to the established ways of targeting specific goals.


Then there were horrific crashes that brought urgent questions about safety: Fabio Jakobsen (Deceuninck-Quick Step) in Poland was thrown, during a sprint, against poorly designed barriers by Dylan Groenewegen (Team Jumbo-Visma), later suspended for nine months; Remco Evenepoel went over a bridge that had no padding on a protruding corner while riding Il Lombardia and thus abruptly ending his season, which was skyrocketing towards glory; Chloe Dygert (USA) going over unprotected barriers, while on course to win the TT World Championships in Italy.


We had moments that flooded social media timelines and columns of the cycling press:

● Team Sunweb's jackets shenanigans;

● Tadej Pogačar's amazing TT at the Tour;

● Primož Roglič pipping a cocky Julian Alaphilippe at Liège-Bastogne-Liège;

● the amazing camera shot of Anna van der Breggen riding on a ridge during the World Championship road race, reminiscent of a James Bond movie;

● Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas' exclusions from the Tour's squad;

● Froome leaving INEOS;

● Mark Cavendish in tears when he thought he'd reached the end of his career;

sprints' disqualifications;

● the steep ascendancy of Wout Van Aert and his rivalry with Mathieu van der Poel;

● the rise of Marc Hirschi;

● the complete dominance of Filippo Ganna in time trials;

● Mariane Vos, at the Giro Rosa, blasting up a climb for a perfectly timed overtaking just before the line;

● Peter Sagan and Ganna's exploits at the Giro;

● Michał Kwiatkowski/Richard Carapaz double act at the Tour;

● Thomas' chance to salvage the season destroyed by a wayward bottle at the Giro;

● a controversial opening stage of the Tour in Nice under a deluge causing the peloton to neutralise the stage and many riders to crash out of the Tour;

● Annemiek van Vleuten tumbling from her bike on a gravel section at the Giro and still winning the stage;

● again van Vleuten coming second at the Worlds with a broken wrist.


But there was so much more and the drama was heightened by the lottery of the pandemic, causing riders and teams' retirements, thus affecting the outcome of races.



The best way to re-live all this is to open and flick through The Road Book, the annual cycling almanack par excellence. I am all for technology in the form of internet access to cycling media, but the immediacy and intimacy of a book are still unrivalled, especially when packaged in high-quality textures and paper.

Given the unique nature of 2020, The Road Book becomes not just a welcome consultative addition to any fan's bookshelves but an essential collector's item, a piece of history. Quite how they managed to get it finished and printed so quickly after the late finish to the season, is a mystery. Just the task of collating data from various races would've been challenging, given that on many days they were overlapping, even four or five at a time. And then, of course, there are the usual treats of articles, reviews, photography, added to the finished product, that would've needed chasing, writing, editing etc.



The design is superb as always, and so is the writing. The personal stories by the very protagonists of the season, like Wout Van Aert, Anna van der Breggen, Tao Geoghegan Hart, bring cycling to life, by letting us peek into the thoughts and emotions that helped shape performances into victories.

The amount of data is mind-boggling and some little details here and there bring back moments of joy, anger, elation and disappointment.

Each page is laid out and thought out with love and attention by a group of people deeply passionate about the sport we so cherish. Ned Boulting's editorial is in itself a compendium of everything that happened, in his inimitable style. And then of course there are many contributors who bring this sport alive and enrich the production with insight and knowledge.

Truly a work of art. Chapeau!




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