Inside Cycling with John Wilcockson: Who’s the rider of the year?

He’s just as hard to pick today as when the VeloNews Awards began in 1988

As another year of cycling comes to a close, I’m feeling a pang of nostalgia. For the first time in almost a quarter-century I wasn’t part of the group that nominated and selected the various Riders of the Year to be announced in the VeloNews Awards issue (now Velo Awards).

Back in 1988, after our company, Inside Communications, bought the then-quarter-fold newspaper from founders Barbara and Bob George, I edited VeloNews in New York City and drove up to Brattleboro, Vermont, each month to put together the magazine’s final pages and take the pasted-up boards across town to the printer.

With no races to report in the late fall, except for a few local cyclo-cross events, I was wondering how to fill out 1988’s year-end issue. So what could be better, I thought, than a season review that featured stories on the year’s best racers at home and abroad? So the awards issue was born and I was the one-person selection committee for the inaugural winners.

My “unanimous” choice for the top award was Steve Bauer, then racing for the Weinmann-La Suisse team directed by Swiss guru Paul Köchli. Why Bauer? That’s a good question because the Canadian all-rounder didn’t dominate that season — but neither did anyone else.

Looking at that year’s grand tours, the Tour de France was won by Pedro Delgado (but only after an anti-doping technicality let the Spaniard off the hook when he tested positive for probenecid, a drug-masking agent); the Giro d’Italia went to a brilliant Andy Hampsten (whose only other successes that year were stage wins at the Coors Classic and Paris-Nice); and the Vuelta a España was taken by Sean Kelly (but the then-king of the classics won none of the monuments in ’88, only the lesser Ghent-Wevelgem).

As for the monuments, they all went to different riders: Laurent Fignon (Milan-San Remo); Eddy Planckaert (Tour of Flanders); Dirk Demol (Paris-Roubaix); Adri Van der Poel (Liège-Bastogne-Liège); and Charly Mottet (Tour of Lombardy). None of them scored any other major wins.

Even the world road championship had a surprise result. Bauer looked like winning the title after he joined breakaway riders Claude Criquielion of Belgium and Maurizio Fondriest of Italy in the last kilometer. The Canadian, a faster finisher, confidently led out the sprint, and he was clear with 75 meters left when Criquielion challenged him along the barriers. The Belgian bounced off Bauer’s right elbow, hit a barrier and fell, with his bike sliding across the road, impeding the Canadian … and the “beaten” Fondriest slipped through to win.

So why did I pick Bauer as the 1988 Rider of the Year? First, he deserved to be world champion, and he raced the worlds with no team support. Next, he scored a brilliant solo victory in stage 1 of the Tour de France (wearing the yellow jersey for five days and finishing fourth overall). And he took nine other wins, including a mountain stage at the Tour of Switzerland (placing second overall), a stage of the Dauphiné, the overall title at the Tour de l’Oise, and solo wins at Italy’s Pantalica Trophy and Canada’s Grand Prix de Montréal.

2011 candidates

In many ways, that 1988 season resembled the one we have just witnessed. In 2011, there were separate winners at the Tour (Cadel Evans), Giro (Alberto Contador) and Vuelta (Juanjo Cobo); the classic monuments were also one-offs, with Matt Goss (San Remo), Nick Nuyens (Flanders), Johan Van Summeren (Roubaix), Philippe Gilbert (Liège) and Oliver Zaugg (Lombardy); and the worlds ended in a mass-sprint victory for Mark Cavendish.

So choosing a true rider of the year is just as difficult as it was 23 years ago.

Evans has a claim thanks to his Tour victory (including a stage win over Contador), which was preceded by overall titles at Tirreno-Adriatico (with an impressive stage win) and the Tour de Romandie, and  second overall at the Critérium du Dauphiné, where he was runner-up to Bradley Wiggins.

The Australian only competed in two other stage races (finishing eighth at the Tour of Catalonia and seventh at Colorado’s USA Pro Cycling Challenge) and a couple of early-season one-day races.

Besides the Giro (including two stage wins), Contador also won two other stage races (Catalonia and the Tour of Murcia) and placed second in the Spanish national championship. Both Evans and Contador ended their seasons before the world championships — where Cavendish laid his claim to Rider of the Year by taking the rainbow jersey to go with his first Tour de France green jersey (including five stage wins), two stages of the Giro and a victory in the semi-classic Scheldeprijs.

The Spanish climber Joaquim Rodriguez also had an outstanding season, finishing fifth overall at the Dauphiné (including two mountaintop stage wins), taking the overall victory at the Tour of Burgos (including a stage win), and takingimpressive stage wins at the Vuelta and Tour of the Basque Country. But he had overall disappointments at the grand tours (fifth at the Giro and 19th at the Vuelta) and just missed out at several classics (second at the Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallonne, and third at Lombardy).

Another half-dozen riders had their most successful seasons yet.

Tony Martin had overall wins at Paris-Nice and the Tour of Beijing, he was first in the world time trial championship, and he had TT stage wins at the Tour, Vuelta, Dauphiné, Basque Country, Nice and Beijing.

Peter Sagan had his first two overall stage-race wins (Tours of Poland and Sardinia) and scored stage wins at the Vuelta (three stages) and Tours of Poland (two), Switzerland (two), Sardinia (three) and California (one).

Levi Leipheimer was “only” second (to teammate Chris Horner) in the Amgen Tour of California, but he went on to win the Tour of Switzerland, the Tour of Utah and Colorado’s USA Pro Challenge.

Wiggins scored his best-ever road successes by taking the overall victory at the Dauphiné, placing third at the Vuelta and Paris-Nice, and winning the British national road title.

Wiggins’ Sky teammate Edvald Boasson Hagen scored his first two Tour stage wins, won the Eneco Tour of Benelux, and took Hamburg’s Vattenfall Cyclassics.

And Thomas Voeckler put France back on the map by defending the Tour yellow jersey for 10 days and placing fourth overall; he won the Four Days of Dunkirk (including a dominant solo stage win) and Tour du Haut Var; he took stage wins at the Mediterranean Tour, Paris-Nice and the Giro del Trentino; and he won the GP de Cholet semi-classic.

Good arguments can be made for any of these 10 men earning a Rider of the Year accolade — especially when you consider they had better seasons than stars like Fabian Cancellara, the Schleck brothers, Ivan Basso and Vincenzo Nibali. But the consensus this year is that no one could match the winning consistency of Gilbert.

Between early February and mid-October, Gilbert competed on 74 days and won 18 times, including five WorldTour classics (Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Clasica San Sebastian and GP de Québec); three other classics (Montepaschi Strade Bianche, Flèche Brabançonne and GP de Wallonie); two stage races (Tour of Belgium and Ster ZLM Tour); the Belgian national road and time trial titles; and one stage of the Tour de France.

All of Gilbert’s one-day victories came after late uphill attacks, except when he had to use his sprint to dispose of the Schleck brothers at Liège. And the only times he went “long” were at San Sebastian (winning by 12 seconds after attacking on the final hill and riding the last 3km solo); at the Belgian nationals; and in Québec (attacking 2km out and holding off a late challenge from Robert Gesink).

Some insiders argue that Gilbert’s tactic of waiting until the last possible moment before making his winning move does not compare with the risky, yet spectacular solo breakaways that netted Cancellara his big 2010 wins at Flanders and Roubaix. But Gilbert often made (or made it into) the key breaks that put him in a position to make his hallmark accelerations — as he did at Amstel, Liège and San Sebastian.

There’s no questioning his world No. 1 ranking, but was Gilbert a worthy Rider of the Year? Convincing arguments can also be made for Cavendish or Evans.

Cavendish didn’t have a perfect season, and he does require the support of a strong, dedicated team, whether it was HTC-Highroad at the grand tours or a remarkable Great Britain national team at the world championships in Denmark. But the British sprinter showed spunk when his back was against the wall.

Perhaps the greatest examples of that were in the Cap Fréhel stage of the Tour and at the Copenhagen worlds. There was huge pressure on Cavendish to win a stage in the first week of the Tour, but he was still winless coming to stage 5, featuring a tricky uphill finish that didn’t really suit him — and yet he battled his way through the rain to out-sprint, yes, Philippe Gilbert. And Cav’s Copenhagen coup against the cream of world sprinters was even more impressive.

As for Evans, he came to the Tour as an underdog with a BMC team that experts said was too weak to support a bid for the yellow jersey. And yet Evans (and his team) raced impressively from start to finish of the three weeks. He almost matched Gilbert in the opening stage finish; stunned all with second place in the team time trial; impressively out-kicked Contador at Mûr-de-Bretagne; kept a check on the Schlecks at Luz-Ardiden and Plateau de Beille; single-handedly chased Andy Schleck (and dropped Contador) on the Galibier finish; overcame a potentially race-losing mechanical on the stage to L’Alpe d’Huez; and trounced his last rivals in the Grenoble TT.

So who is it? Who’s the true Rider of the Year? Is it Gilbert, Cavendish or Evans?

It’s a difficult choice. But I wasn’t on the selection committee. So, like you, I’ll just have to wait and see whom the editors picked when the year-end issue of Velo arrives in my mailbox next week.

FILED UNDER: News TAGS: Cadel Evans / Mark Cavendish / Philippe Gilbert