Sagan snow vid; Bernal on back injury; Great vid showing difference LTNs make; TdF/Olympic double “impossible”; Virgil van Dijk back on bike; Geoghegan Hart on University Challenge; Downing bros on lockdown boost to coaching business + more on live blog

Three-time world champion Peter Sagan has been taking on the snow today, posting a video to Instagram from a training ride near Monaco.

“Hey there,” the Bora-Hansgrohe rider said.

“I never saw this in my life in Monaco. It’s a beautiful day. We did today five hours, and we cannot get home because of a lot of snow.

“Just the last two kilometres to Monaco (ha, ha). It’s OK.”

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Peter Sagan (@petosagan)

Clearly he handles a bike about 100 times better than even the best of us here at road.cc, but may we just point him towards our perennial piece giving tips on how to ride on ice and snow ... ?

We've seen a lot of kickback on cycle lanes in the past few years, and on low traffic areas (LTNs) in the past few months ... but this video from London shows very clearly the difference they make to helping people get around by bike.

Let's ride this low traffic route from Tottenham Court Road to the London Fields LTN in 2 minutes 20 seconds.

GO! pic.twitter.com/cD3QZeQoHK

— filter more streets (@iambrianjones) December 29, 2020

It will be impossible for the world’s top male road cyclists to attempt a Tour de France-Olympic Games double due to quarantine conditions in Tokyo, the doctor to Belgium’s national Olympic committee has warned.

The two-week quarantine that will be required for riders after entry to Japan also means that leading female riders face a stark choice between going for gold in Tokyo, or racing the Giro Rosa beforehand.

Dr Johan Bellemans, quoted in Sporza, said: “Two weeks ago we received the latest version of the rules from the organisation in Tokyo. It states that they will stick to the 14 days quarantine after their arrival in Japan.

“Logistically, this quarantine period is not easy for athletes in terms of training accommodation and training modalities. But there will also be overlap with other competitions. Just think of the Tour de France, Wimbledon and the NBA.

“If it depends on the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the quarantine period would be much shorter. It is mainly the Japanese authorities who are sticking to the two weeks’ quarantine.”

Asked why Japan was standing its ground on imposing the quarantine period, he said: “The Japanese authorities have recommendations for their citizens and for foreigners entering their country. In addition, the Covid figures in Japan have been on the rise in recent weeks. I do not suspect they will relax those regulations.”

With more than seven months to go, however, Dr Bellemans is hopeful that the situation may change.

“We are now in winter, I expect that the situation will be under control in a few months,” he said.

“Moreover, the vaccines are coming. Although the Japanese do not believe that vaccines will stop the transmission of the coronavirus.

“I expect and hope that that quarantine period and other Covid measures will gradually be tempered.”

He added: “The IOC is putting pressure on the Japanese authorities to quickly reduce the quarantine period from 14 to 5 days. That would create a lot more opportunities for cyclists, for example.”

Liverpool FC star Virgil van Dijk is back pedalling a Wattbike as part of his rehabilitation from the anterior cruciate ligament injury he sustained when he was tackled by Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford at the Merseyside derby back in October.

The Dutch centre-back, who underwent surgery for his injury at the end of October, is expected to be out of action for between six and 12 months, but yesterday posted this picture of him on the stationary bike, used by top-flight athletes across a range of sports as part of their conditioning, at the club's AXA Training Centre in Kirkby.

🚴 pic.twitter.com/IjY9sFGyK0

— Virgil van Dijk (@VirgilvDijk) December 29, 2020

Dean and Russ Downing have explained how they managed to turn lockdown to their advantage by moving their coaching business to a virtual model with the help of online platforms such as Zwift.

The ex-pro cyclist brothers from Rotherham, launched Downing Cycling as their racing days came to an end.

Dean, the older of the two, told The Yorkshire Post: “We’d both been doing little different bits within the industry, both had our own little companies, but it was Russ’s idea to put our ideas together and have a brand.

“That happened in summer 2017. We didn’t really do much that first year until I was looking to have my own coaching brand.”

He had initially moved into team management as sports director of the Holdsworth Bikes team, but said: “The No 1 thing I’ve learned from a lot of great people down the years is just how hard work that job really is.

“Jon Herety was a massive help for both of us, but I saw how hard he had to work to keep British teams on the road and then experienced it first hand with Holdsworth – it’s a massive juggling act.

“You never felt like you were in control, because the person with the money is. If you want to do something radical it needs approval from above. If something goes wrong, it’s your fault.”

That experience helped him decide that coaching was where his future lay, but as races were cancelled in March this year as lockdown began, he became anxious about the future.

“Don’t get me wrong, I was panicking in February when races were getting cancelled. Would I lose clients due to races being cancelled?” he told the newspaper.

“Do I stick my head in the sand and worry about it, or do I put my name out there to get more clients? That extra time of not being away at races, probably eight weeks, I used wisely and took on more riders.

“They started coming on board in April because people need to be training and needed help.

“It’s a full-time job, coaching every day, taking phone calls, setting bespoke training programmes. This year has been tough, but generally the client base has grown, whether they’re young or old, male or female, pro or amateur. That’s the enjoyment for me, the mix.”

Online platforms such as Zwift – the pair were ambassadors for the brand at last year’s UCI Road World Championships – have helped the business maintain its momentum, as Russ explained.

“I was one of the first guys to have a go with Zwift and I even remember getting a bit of ribbing about it”, the 2005 British road race champion recalls.

“A guy asked me to give it a bit of a nudge, this is back in 2014.

“And then lockdown came. Nobody was meeting up, your chain gang meets were no more than six people.

“So I came up with the idea to get together online. We were doing Saturday mornings as a coaching initiative under the Downing coaching arm, and from that Doncaster Chain Gang was formed. That’s been a big part of my involvement. We have people from all over the world coming online on Tuesday and Thursday nights, everyone knows it’s 
Russ, and we broadcast it on YouTube.”

“It’s been a crazy 2020 but this has provided a lot of good for a lot of people,” he added.