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Bicycle Racing News and Opinion,

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

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Paris–Roubaix: The Inside Story

Les Woodland's book Paris-Roubaix: The Inside Story - All the bumps of cycling's cobbled classic is available in print, Kindle eBook & audiobook versions. To get your copy, just click on the Amazon link on the right.

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Coppa Bernocchi team reports

We posted the report from race winner Noa Isidore's Decathlon CMA CGM Team with the results.

Here's the report from sixth-place Dorian Godon's Team Netcompany Ineos:

Dorian Godon sprinted to sixth place at Coppa Bernocchi to continue the team's racing in Italy.

The team played an active role throughout a fast and aggressive race, with the early break of four building a gap of more than four minutes.

With 48km remaining, Narváez launched an attack on the climb in an effort to close the 1:30 gap to the breakaway. He joined a group of four, with one rider from the original break dropping back to form a group of five. Behind, Bob Jungels, Filippo Ganna and Ben Swift helped drive the chase, with the peloton eventually caught with just 7km to go.

Filippo Ganna finsihes 78th. Sirotti photo

As the race entered its closing stages, Ganna and Swift moved to the front, with Jungels also putting in a strong turn with 23km remaining. With 1km to go, Ganna led the peloton before Swift moved to the front with Godon on his wheel.

A late crash disrupted the closing moments, with Swift involved but quickly back on his bike. Godon stayed clear of the incident to sprint to sixth place at the finish.

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And here's the Coppa Bernocchi report from Team Groupama-FDJ United:

As in its recent races, the Groupama-FDJ United cycling team went for a highly aggressive strategy on Monday at the Coppa Bernocchi. With fifty kilometres remaining, Lorenzo Germani and Brieuc Rolland joined a breakaway group in the hope of beating the peloton. After spending almost an hour up the road, however, the duo’s adventure came to an end with seven kilometres to go, and the sprint then did not go Bastien Tronchon’s way (21st). The team’s next Italian challenge comes on Tuesday with the Tre Valli Varesine.

Two days after the Giro dell’Emilia and on the eve of the Tre Valli Varesine – two races that are more suited to puncheurs and climbers – Groupama-FDJ United’s Italian campaign moved on Monday to the Coppa Bernocchi, a more open race on paper. Around ten climbs were certainly spread across the day’s 180 kilometres, but the final one came more than thirty kilometres from the finish. “This race can sometimes be decided in a sprint, and sometimes from a breakaway,” explained Benoît Vaugrenard. By a breakaway, he was referring to a group of attackers formed on the Piccolo Stelvio circuit (1.6 km at 7%), which had to be covered seven times between the two flat sections from Legnano, the start and finish town.

Noa Isidore wins in Legnano. Sirotti photo

“We had Bastien for the sprint, but there were riders on the start list who were faster than him,” Benoît continued. “So the idea was to make an aggressive race on the circuit. We had riders capable of doing that, with Valentin, Rudy, Brieuc and Lorenzo, and we also know that Bastien likes difficult races.” So, when the fight began in the peloton with sixty kilometres to go, behind a four-man break, Groupama-FDJ United was very proactive. The team was initially represented by four riders in a small group that broke away from the peloton, and then willingly joined the various attacks.

When Jhonatan Narváez made his clear move with 48 kilometres remaining, Brieuc Rolland did a superb job of bridging across to the Ecuadorian alongside Neilson Powless. Lorenzo Germani then joined his teammate with Florian Stork a little further down the road. “They played it very well,” Benoît said. “We wanted an aggressive race, so having two riders in a group of five was perfect.” The counter-attack quickly gained thirty seconds on the peloton, but it also soon found itself with a real issue. “Unfortunately, Powless wasn’t pulling at all,” Benoît said. “The others were working well together, but he was definitely slowing this group down. On top of that, there were still a lot of teams riding for the sprint, and the headwind on the run into Legnano in the final did not help the breakaway either.”

After the final ascent of the Piccolo Stelvio, the chasing group was only one minute behind the early breakaway, while the peloton was thirty seconds further back. Lorenzo Germani, Brieuc Rolland and their breakaway companions then put up an excellent fight over the final thirty kilometres, even closing to within thirty seconds of the early break with ten kilometres to go. However, the alliances between the sprinters’ teams ultimately brought their efforts to an end.

With seven kilometres remaining, their adventure was over. The early breakaway surrendered shortly afterwards, and the race did conclude in a sprint. Too far back from the front of the pack with 500 metres to go, Bastien Tronchon was unable to contest the sprint, finishing 21st. “He was missing a little bit of legs for his return to racing after the Vuelta, and that affected his positioning at the decisive moment,” Benoît explained. “We rode a very good race as a team, the group’s form was excellent, but we didn’t get anything out of it in the end, and that’s what’s disappointing. We didn’t come here for 21st place. That’s inevitably the negative of the day, because we’re not here just to animate the race but to get results, and everything had been perfect right up until the sprint. It’s a shame because the group is doing well, but now we need to find that opening, starting tomorrow at the Tre Valli Varesine. I’m convinced we have what it takes. We just need to finish the job.”


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The Story of the Giro d’Italia, vol.1 Shade Vise sunglass holder Paris-Roubaix: The Inside Store

Toon Aerts patiently works towards comeback after serious knee injury

Aerts’ Team Lotto-Intermarché posted this:

The cyclocross season is just around the corner, but for now, Toon Aerts is spending his autumn with the physiotherapist. He suffered fractures to his wrist and kneecap in a heavy crash at the Tour of Denmark. Initially, Aerts thought the recovery would be relatively straightforward, but an infection in his operated knee seriously disrupted his rehabilitation. Almost ten weeks later, he is still unable to ride his bike and his first cyclocross race seems a long way off. However, Aerts is not yet ready to give up hope of making it to the World Championships in Ostend this winter. “There is still a lot of work to do, but I need a goal.”

“The first thing I thought was: just get back up, so at least they can see on television back home that everything is okay.” And that is exactly what Toon Aerts did when he crashed in the finale of stage five of the Tour of Denmark in Rødovre in early August. Aerts got back on his bike, rolled across the finish line together with Lionel Taminiaux and even managed to ride over the kerb on his way to the team bus. “It was only when I got onto the bus that I realised the pain wasn’t superficial, but was coming from inside.” The diagnosis was significant: examinations revealed a fractured scaphoid in his wrist and damage to his kneecap. A broken-off fragment and several cracks in the kneecap could be repaired with two screws. “It was still surgery, of course, but all of that was manageable. The real problem only came two weeks later, when I suddenly developed an infection in my knee.”

Toon Aerts wins the 2018 Koppenberg Cyclocross

What initially appeared to be a superficial infection of the surgical wound quickly proved to be much more serious. “Ten days after that first operation, I had to go back for a check-up to have the stitches removed from my knee. The day before, I already wasn’t feeling great. Things would improve for a few days and then suddenly get worse again. I felt that something wasn’t right, and that was confirmed when I developed a fever some time later. In the space of one night, I went from having a knee that barely hurt anymore to one that was as swollen as a bowling ball. I ended up back in hospital through the emergency department.”

Another operation followed, and the progress Aerts had made in the first days after his crash was undone. “Mentally, that isn’t easy. You make progress and then suddenly you have a major setback. But a rider without a functioning knee isn’t much of a rider. My knee has remained stiffer than expected after the different operations. There is still a lot of work to do before I can get back to turning the pedals properly.”

Almost ten weeks after the crash in Denmark, Aerts’ bike is still necessarily on the sidelines. Six days a week, he works on his recovery with the physiotherapist and in the swimming pool. “Sunday is the only day I get to rest (laughs). Three times a week I have two sessions with the physiotherapist, and recently we also started doing exercises in the pool. I’m constantly working on mobility, stretching and flexibility. Some sessions last two to three hours, which can make the progress feel painfully slow. When you spend so many hours on it every day, you sometimes feel as though things aren’t moving forward quickly enough. Fortunately, when I look at the videos we regularly make here, I can see that there really is progress. I’ve also lost a lot of muscle mass. I felt like my body fat percentage was going through the roof, but when I stepped on the scales, it turned out I had lost four kilograms. Pure muscle, of course. Everything has to be built back up again.”

And so, for now, Toon Aerts is having to put his cyclocross autumn and winter on hold. Last weekend, he attended the team presentation of Charles Liégeois Roastery CX, the cyclocross team he races for during the winter. But getting back into the mud himself is not yet an option. “After my first full WorldTour season on the road, I had already decided to reduce my cyclocross programme a little. Last season I did 27 cyclocross races, whereas this winter I had 17 planned. Back when I was a full-time cyclocross rider, I even did 40. The idea was mainly to race the World Cups and the big, tough cyclocross races, while still leaving enough time to get the training hours in for the road. I wanted to find a different balance and shift my focus back to the road earlier. Obviously, the crash has now partly disrupted that plan.”

Aerts therefore does not want to put a specific date on his cyclocross comeback. “I probably won’t get back to 110 percent of my ability this winter. My first priority now is to recover completely. Once I’m fit again, we can see what is left of the winter. At the same time, I need a goal. I don’t want to give up hope of racing the Cyclocross World Championships in Ostend just yet. I already won World Championship bronze on that same course in 2021, although because of the Covid restrictions it was a championship without spectators. A World Championships in my own country, on a course where I’ve already won a medal: I would really love to be there again. If I have to miss it, that would be a real shame. If it doesn’t work out, then so be it, and we’ll work towards a good spring on the road instead. But I have to keep believing that I can still race some nice cyclocross events this winter and hopefully earn a spot on the World Championships team.”

While waiting to see what the cyclocross winter might still bring, Aerts can in any case look back on an impressive road season. In his first year at WorldTour level, he exceeded his own expectations, with his second place on stage twelve of the Giro d’Italia standing out in particular. “Without Alec Segaert, I would simply have won a stage in my first Grand Tour (laughs). It’s the highlight of everything I’ve done on the road so far. Before the season, I thought I would mainly be riding in support of the team and occasionally get the chance to go for a result myself. But I was given my own opportunities several times and managed to make the most of them. Finishing in the top ten in Catalonia and then taking second in a Giro stage: I didn’t expect that beforehand. And then there was my first Tour of Flanders, my first Paris-Roubaix… I enjoyed those races enormously. That’s something I can draw strength from during my rehabilitation as well, because all of that will come around again.”


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Visma | Lease a Bike riders headed to the European Time Trial Championships

The team posted this schedule:

The European Time Trial Championships in Slovenia are just around the corner. Several Team Visma | Lease a Bike riders will compete for their national teams in the mixed relay and individual time trial. Check our overview below to see who is racing and when.   

Bruno Armirail racing in the 2025 World Time Trial Championships. Sirotti photo

Mixed relay elite men (October 6)
Bruno Armirail (France)

Individual time trial elite women (October 7)
Lieke Nooijen (The Netherlands)

Individual time trial elite men (October 7)
Bruno Armirail (France)

Individual time trial U23 women (October 7)
Viktória Chladoňová (Slovakia)

Individual time trial U23 men (October 7)
Aldo Taillieu (Belgium)
Matisse Van Kerckhove (Belgium)
Jonas Høydahl (Norway)