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Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,
Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Back to news and opinion index page for links to archived stories | Commentary

Froome to begin 2016 season at Herald Sun Tour

Here's the news from Team Sky:

Cycling's 50 Craziest Stories

Chris Froome will start his 2016 season at the Jayco Herald Sun Tour as the reigning Tour de France champion looks to make it another year to remember. The two-time winner of the world's biggest bike race will become the first Tour de France champion to compete in Australia's oldest stage race, with Team Sky also making their debut at the event.

The 63rd edition of the race will be staged from Wednesday 3rd to Sunday 7th February, as the climax to the summer of cycling. Commencing with a 2.1-kilometre prologue and finishing with a showdown on Arthurs Seat, the event will also ride through the Yarra Valley and Gippsland during the five days.

Froome will make his 2016 season debut in Victoria, using the Jayco Herald Sun Tour as the launch pad for his back-to-back yellow jersey assault at next year's Tour de France.

Chris Froome

Froome, the 2015 Tour de France champion, will begin his season in Australia

Froome said: "I'm really pleased to start my 2016 season at the Jayco Herald Sun Tour. Victoria is a beautiful part of the world and racing in the warm climate will give me a good platform for the new season. We don't often get a chance to race in front of our Aussie fans so we're all looking forward to seeing them over there as well."

2016 promises to be a huge year the 30-year-old, with the Tour de France title defence and a tilt at the Rio Olympic Games time trial and road race among the major dates in his calendar.

Froome rode in the 2008 Jayco Herald Sun Tour as a 23-year-old member of the Barloworld team, coming off a debut Tour de France where he rode strongly up Alpe d'Huez and in the final time trial.

Team Bora-Argon 18 training advice

The web site of the German team Bora-Argon 18 has a couple of good posts about nutrition and training over the winter.

Here's the link to the winter training post

Here's the post about nutrition:

With Stefanie Berchtold, a full-time nutritionist belongs to the team behind the team at BORA – ARGON 18. Being a former competitive athlete herself, Steffi has been involved in the topic "sports nutrition" for a long time. She creates the diet plans for all professionals during the season, she answers all questions around the subject of nutrition, gives tips to the team from shopping to processing the right products and she cooks the meals at the main races on site. In her first blog, Steffi tells us how the pros get through the season break in terms of nutrition.

The annual break is extremely important to recover the body after a long debilitating racing season. The slowly decreasing stress of the season and the winter weather conditions make the body susceptible to many infections. Here one can prevent a lot with the right nutrition.

Bora ARgon 18

The Bora-Argon 18 team at the 2015 Giro del Trentino

Balance is the key.
Basically, I recommend a balanced, nutritionally dense and vitamin-packed diet to provide the body optimally with all immune-enhancing vitamins, minerals and antioxidants, such as vitamins A, C, E, zinc and selenium. This can be achieved easily with a healthy variety of lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, whole grains cereals and legumes, combined with healthy fats from nuts and high-quality vegetable oils.

Next you should pay attention to an even acid-base balance, because an over-acidified body is more fragile to infections. This means: as little meat, white flour, dairy products – and especially refined sugars should be avoided.

Tip: A smoothie in the morning.
Think of starting the day with a freshly prepared smoothie made of different vegetables and fruits, such as beetroot, pomegranate, banana, ginger, oranges and leafy green vegetables. Not only the immune system is looking forward to it but also it tastes wonderful. There’s no limit to your creativity!

The annual break is time for soul food.
Our riders are very disciplined during the racing season following a pretty strict diet plan. Therefore, the off-season offers a little time for "Soul Food". Whether it's the burgers one dispensed throughout the entire year or the Christmas treats. The one or the other Gingerbread, if they consist mainly of good nuts and dried fruit, or cookies from Mama shouldn’t be doomed because it’s simply good for the soul.

Apart from that, the off-season is also the time to reload energy reserves again from scratch and to increase temporarily the body fat ratio a little. During the racing season the riders compete mostly at the lower weight limit, which drains their body reserves. But those are required to get healthy through the winter even with a stronger immune system and to support the body optimally in the build-up of muscles.

Ghent 6-Day starts today

The renowned Ghent 6-Day track race starts today. The famous Belgian track race was first held in 1922. I had the good fortune to visit it in 2011 with writer Les Woodland. My video of the Madison race from that visit is one of BikeRaceInfo's most popular videos

Tayler Wiles joins Orica-AIS

The team sent me this news about the America racer:

American Tayler Wiles will continue to build on the momentum achieved with her strongest season to date when she races for Orica-AIS in 2016. After riding with Velocio-SRAM this year, Wiles flies to Australia today to join the team for their official camp ahead of her fourth professional season.

The 26-year-old, who won the Tour of New Zealand and Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l'Ardèche in a breakout season in 2015, is looking forward to an aggressive year with her new Orica-AIS teammates.

“I am really excited about 2016 for so many reasons,” Wiles said. “I've always really loved and respected Orica-AIS’ racing style, being more aggressive and opportunistic. They have historically been a team whose tactics are hard to read and who plays to the strengths of each rider on any given day.

“I'm also just so excited to race with the group of girls that are on the team. They have already been so incredibly welcoming and I can tell they know how to have fun racing their bikes.” 

Wiles is approaching 2016 with confidence and has big goals to achieve. “I learn so much each season from my teammates, directors and also just from making mistakes and trying to learn from them,” she said. “I started taking more risks this year and trusting my instincts and I gained a lot of confidence from that.”

“I have big goals for 2016 in time trials and on the road. With it being an Olympic year you have to throw everything you have into training and recovery in an effort to perform early in the lead up to selection and I am so excited to be racing on a team that I know will support my goals 100%.”

Orica-AIS sport director Gene Bates is looking forward to seeing the rise of Wiles within their ranks, especially her climbing and time trial ability. “Tayler is really on the up and up and is carrying a lot of momentum with her,” Bates said. “She was a really big asset to Velocio-SRAM in terms of producing power and especially in the time trial.”

“I really think that is what she will bring to us - a huge amount of firepower and we probably haven’t seen exactly what she can do with that yet. She won the Tour of Ardeche and the Tour of New Zealand overall so she can certainly climb. It’s really exciting to be able to work with someone with that much talent who is really on the up and up.

“I think once she learns a bit from our more experienced riders, she is going to be a great addition, especially in the time trials and those bigger Tours that we’ll do.”

Tayler Wiles
Date of Birth: 20th July 1989 (26)
Nationality: American
Turned Pro: 2013

Palmares:
- 1st 2015 Tour Cycliste Féminin International de l'Ardèche – General Classification and stage 3
- 1st 2015 Women’s Tour of New Zealand – General Classification and stages 1(TTT) & 4
- 1st 2014 Chrono Gatineau

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