1. Dressed in red, white and green these riders are ready to deliver. Why the outfit?
The Uno-X team is has Uno-X branded service stations but also operates 7-Eleven stores in Norway and Denmark. Teams can have one special jersey per year and at Liège-Bastogne-Liège they went for this retro version both evoking the 1980s 7-Eleven team and their current business. It was a clever tie-up as back then Dag Otto Lauritzen won Norway’s first ever Tour de France stage riding for 7-Eleven, and they’d win one again in the summer too.
2. Dressed in red and white, two riders make their way through the snow. Can you name them and the race?
It’s Michael Storer and Mauro Schmid on Stage 7 of Paris-Nice to Auron. The conditions forced a course change, skipping the Col St. Martin.
That Was The Season That Was
3. Who finished second on the UCI rankings for men, and for women?
Jonas Vingegaard and Lorena Wiebes. The Dane was a long way behind Tadej Pogačar but winning the Vuelta and second in the Tour obviously delivered big and allowed him to keep ahead of Isaac Del Toro, just as he parlayed his Giro ride into an end of season streak, of sorts given this began in Austria. Wiebes was close to overhauling Vollering who topped the women’s rankings.
4. Name the non-World Tour riders that won men’s and women’s World Tour races (one day races and stage races overall, daily stages excluded)
Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X) took the Omloop Nieuwsblad, Rory Townsend (Q36.5) the ADAC Cyclassics, Arnaud De Lie (Lotto) won the Renewi Tour and the Bretagne Classic, and Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor) the GP de Québec. Noemi Rüegg won the Tour Down Under (EF), Lotte Claes (Arkéa-B&B) the Omloop again, and Anne Knijnenburg (VolkerWessels) won the Tour of Chongmind Island. Slim pickings for the smaller teams? Sure but huge wins and they did better than many World Tour teams.
5. Milan-Sanremo is the longest race on the World Tour calendar at 289km, it even gets a special dispensation to exceed the regulatory distance cap of 250km and it took six hours and 22 minutes to complete. Which World Tour race this year lasted longer?
Not the worlds which was 6h21… plus it’s not World Tour. Instead Tirreno-Adriatico often has a marathon stage designed to prep riders for Milan-Sanremo. It was “only” 239km but helped by cold conditions it lasted 6h28m and was won by Andrea Vendrame.
6. Which rider was unbeaten in bunch sprints this year?
Lorena Wiebes, the last sprint she lost goes back to the Tour de France Femmes in 2024 when Charlotte Kool beat her. It’s an impressive record when you think of all that can happen in a sprint, where windows of opportunity open and close in fractions of a second. She’s aiming to expand her range in 2026.
7. Name a race that Pogačar started but didn’t win.
The GP Québec came to mind, Julian Alaphilippe won but not in his old way, this time going in a long breakaway. Obviously there’s Sanremo and Roubaix (pictured) but the point of the question is is it’s quicker to list these days than the ones he won.
8. What was the highest altitude reached in a World Tour race this season?
The Col de la Loze stage of the Tour de France was higher than the Giro’s Cima Coppi and anything the Tour de Suisse could offer, just. The actual Col de la Loze, the pass is at 2,274m… but the finish climbs above this saddle to a flat area where there’s room to put the finish infrastructure by a ski lift and that’s 2,304m.
Bike Tech
9. This year all teams in the World Tour used tubeless or clincher tires. Which was the last team to make the switch?
Cofidis. It didn’t stop them getting relegated but what if they’d ditched the old school tubular tires earlier? Maybe. It’s not the story of their relegation, there’s a lot more to it than that but still this was probably costing them. Meanwhile Uno-X changed tire supplier for 2025 after frustration with too many crashes in 2024.
10. What’s the UCI’s regulatory minimum weight for a road bike?
6.8kg, as per UCI rule 1.3.019. The bike industry was lobbying to change it and the UCI willing to accommodate this. But then the industry’s pivot to disc brakes meant bike weights went up and the 6.8kg minimum often wasn’t achievable so the marketing momentum faded. But improvements in bikes especially with lighter wheels with carbon spokes now means the limit is likely to be back on agenda. This time the debate may not be over rigidity and safety but affordability.
Business pages
11. How many sponsors feature on the Visma-Lease A Bike team jersey and shorts?
A lot. It is a super team but it needs a lot of financial backers to keep the plates spinning so there’s a side panel for Rabobank and Skil on the sleeves as well as bike sponsor Cervélo, shoe brand Nimbl, component company SRAM and fans can subscribe too to get their name on the special Tour de France kit. If Gianni Savio looks down on the peloton he might nod with approval. Another way to balance the books is to cut costs and unloading a rider to Movistar will lighten the wage bill significantly.
12. Which World Tour bike brand used to be a weapons manufacturer?
Orbea. It stopped making steel tubes for rifles to make bicycles instead, a relatively easy switch given one form of tubing for another.
History
13. There are 18 teams in the men’s World Tour for 2026. Name the oldest and youngest teams in terms of was registered for its pro cycling debut.
Movistar goes back to 1980, well ahead of Lotto in 1985. The newest team is Uno-X which went from a Conti team to Pro Conti in 2020 and is now in the World Tour. Several answers suggested Bahrain from 2017 but Uno-X was only pro-am Conti team at the time. Either way it shows how old teams are.
A lot of teams have become established franchises and for all the vocal complaints of some team managers, several are now outlasting their founders, the latest is Marc Madiot who is stepping back from Groupama-FDJ soon. But there’s a blog post due to look at this, things are brittle and cracks are appearing.
14. A 19 year old French neo-pro impressed, especially in late season races. “Is he serious” asks the headline in L’Equipe above. As the faded paper suggests this is not about Paul Seixas but from 1953. Can you name the rider?
Jacques Anquetil. The full headline was “Jacques Anquetil is he serious”, where serious in French means someone who is hard-working and conscientious, rather than severe or stern. The article, by Albert Baker d’Isy who founded the GP des Nations TT that Anquetil had won three months before, says Anquetil drives his car too fast. You can trace a line between the expectations then and today for promising 19 year olds, whether it’s Anquetil or Seixas. The bigger difference between a neo-pro then and now is Anquetil announcing he will take Christmas off and planned to resume training on 10 January.
15. Michele Dancelli died this month. In 1970 he ended the 17 year drought of home winners in Milan-Sanremo. A long wait for home fans but what is the record streak in a Monument classic without a home winner?
Paris-Roubaix for the men and no French winner since Fred Guésdon in 1997. His triumph came in the first year of the Française de Jeux team which is now outgrowing its founder Marc Madiot who lives for the race he won before too.
Celebs
16. Name a cyclist, active or retired, whose wife, husband or partner is more famous than they are. Take your pick, it be could Lidl-Trek rider Jacopo Mosca where Elisa Longo Borghini who is more famous than him; cyclist Tiffany Cromwell isn’t as well-known as F1’s Valtteri Bottas.
The hipster pick is ex-pro Nacer Bouhanni as his partner is Hafsia Herzi, and she won the “best actress” at the César awards and she directed a film that was nominated for the Palme d’Or in Cannes, all in the space of a few months this year. If Nacer rode under plenty of red kites, she’s now walking on a lot of red carpets these days.
17. Name a rider who appears in a TV ad campaign for a company that is not a team sponsor.
Remco Evenepoel does ads for Pizza Hut. There are other picks but the whole “household name fronts ad campaign” is drying up as a concept but you can count on it still being a valuable proposition in cycling-mad Belgium.
Chief commissaire
18. What changed with the rules about sprinting this year?
At the start of the year, the UCI banned riders sitting up to celebrate their team mate’s sprint win (rule 2.12.007.5.2), the killjoys… but riders still sprinting for other places to get valuable rankings points found the celebrants were getting in the way so it made sense for safety and sport. Then mid-season the word obstruction was added to the rules, the idea is riders who peel off from a leadout are not meant to interfere in the sprint.
19. Who was the first person to get a red card from UCI commissaires this year?
Oscar Riesebeek was the first but before him in the Vuelta Feminina the moto rider Joseba Etxaburu Gandiaga got two yellow cards and so was the first. It threatened to be a big issue this season but fortunately no controversy either. But is it working as a deterrent? Hard to know or prove.
20. Can a rider get a gel from a team car of another team?
Yes, it’s not against the rules, except in a team time trial (rule 2.5.019) but that would be unlikely. It happens from time to time that riders get food and drink from rival teams, but don’t ask for more like a spare bike or a wheel change.
Nicknames
21. Biniam Girmay is sometimes called “Bini” but who used this name, in a friendly way, long before him?
Tour de France directeur Jacques Goddet used the pen name L’Ami Bini for his articles in L’Equipe.
22. What have Arnaud De Lie and Isaac del Toro got in common?
Bovine nicknames and branding.
New jobs
23. This hotel belongs to a recently retired star of the sport, which one?
Look at the green lawn… yes, it’s Peter Sagan. Apparently his brother Juraj handles the day-to-day management of the SP Hotel and Spa on the outskirts of Žilina in Slovakia.
24. Marc Chavet’s voice booms out over the Tour de France as the official speaker during July and he is an MC at the October presentation and recently did Decathlon CMA CGM’s presentation. What other sport does he commentate on?
MMA cage fights was this blog’s answer and the idea was that the half underground combats could be hard to google but readers answered archery which hits the target too.
25. After forced retirement following a positive doping test that found he’d laced himself with a banned hormone, what business has Miguel Angel Lopez gone into now?
Miguel Angel Lopez, perhaps not the first person you’d call for a healthy cut of untainted meat.
When they were young
26. A school classroom where two boys pose with shades and machine guns. But who is this making an entrance?
It’s Tadej Pogačar playing James Bond at school. You can see the video sliding and riding at 1h19m in the Vélo d’Or awards on Youtube.
27. He shot to fame this year but who is this from his youth?
Florian Lipowitz in biathlon. Red Bull have assembled the best winter sports team of all the cycling squads with Toni Palzer from ski-mo and trail running, Emil Herzog was a top junior XC skier too and Primož Roglič who was a ski jumper… but also cross-country skier having competed in Nordic combined events too. But success in July is what counts now.
Picture round
28. Name the rider from the pictures above
Roman Greg Wire = Romain Grégoire.
29. Name the rider from the pictures above
Paul Magnier + Paul Magnier = Giro stage winner Paul Double.
30. Name the rider from the pictures above
SIM 1 Conso Knee. We’ll end the competition with Tour de France lanterne rouge Simone Consonni.