This week brought. us a brutal reminder of our sport’s dangers, as 19 year-old Finlay Tarling, brother of TT and track master Josh Tarling, was struck and killed by a vehicle during Stage 8 of the Volta a Portugal.
Frankly, it seems a bit silly to cover much else, but our sport rolls on — and this week, it rolled all over Europe, from Norway to Germany and the Czech Republic (and, yes, to Portugal), as well as in the U.S., where Keegan Swenson once again emerged victorious at the Leadville 100.
Here’s hoping the rest of this season gives us just the glories of bike racing, and not its sorrows.
TOP STORY
- Cycling World Mourns Finlay Tarling
RACE NEWS
- Magnier Masters Selective Hamburg Sprint at Cyclassics
- AJ August Breaks Through at the Czech Tour
- Guillermo Thomas Silva Completes South American First at Arctic Race of Norway
- The 2026 Belgian Gravel Champ Is…Not Wout van Aert
- Monaco’s Historic Grand Tour Triple Crown
- Guérin Wins a Volta a Portugal Nobody Will Remember for the Racing
- Swenson, Rollins Rule at Leadville as Roadies Suffer Behind
- Star-Studded Startlist for Lloyds Tour of Britain Women
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
- Team Canada Announced for Elite & U23 Men’s World Championship Races
- Life Time Overhauls Grand Prix Qualifying for 2027
VIDEO
- Richard Sets Up the Zwift HUB Trainer
Cycling World Mourns Finlay Tarling
It’s a truism: our beloved sport is a terribly dangerous one. All of us, from WorldTour racers to us workaday duffers, take whatever steps we can to keep as safe as possible, but ultimately are at the mercy of our surroundings and conditions, from weather to the actions of our fellow cyclists to….the cars with which we share the roads where we ride.
This week offered a stark and harsh reminder of this peril when Finlay Tarling, the 19-year-old Welsh rider known to everyone in the sport simply as “Fin,” died following a horrific incident during Stage 8 of the Volta a Portugal.
What Happened
According to Portuguese authorities and race organizers, Tarling was struck by a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction on the N306, in the parish of Arcozelo near the Lima River. The car was reportedly not connected to the race, and was traveling against the flow of the peloton. Police say the driver may have missed signals from race stewards. An investigation is underway. The stage was neutralized with roughly 20km remaining, and the planned podium ceremony in Fafe was scrapped entirely: a small but pointed gesture of respect from an organization suddenly grappling with the unthinkable.
Tarling, riding for the NSN Development Team and a product of British Cycling’s youth pipeline, was no ordinary neo-pro. He’d already worn the rainbow bands at the junior level on the track, held a national junior TT title, and was building the kind of resume that suggested a long, bright career ahead, one that would have run in parallel with that of his older brother, Josh Tarling, the Netcompany INEOS star and reigning points race world champion.
A Family’s Loss, A Sport’s Grief
NSN’s statement captured the day’s weight simply: “Rest in peace, Finlay.” The team also offered condolences to Fin’s parents Michael and Dawn, his brother Josh, and everyone who was lucky enough to call Fin a friend.
The response from the peloton was immediate and heartfelt. Tadej Pogačar shared NSN’s tribute, calling Tarling a young member of the cycling family. Michał Kwiatkowski, who knew Tarling personally, didn’t hide his anguish, writing that “life just isn’t fair,” and cursing the sport before calling Fin a great guy and his death a sad loss.
Elsewhere, the gestures spoke louder than words. At the Arctic Race of Norway, riders paused for a minute of applause. At the Czech Tour, Josh’s Netcompany INEOS teammate Andrew August pointed to the sky after winning a stage, dedicating it to Fin. And back in Portugal, riders left jerseys and water bottles at a roadside memorial before race leader Alexis Guérin crossed the final finish line in black instead of yellow: no celebration, just a hand over his heart and a finger raised toward the sky.
Fin was 19. He should have had decades of racing ahead of him. Instead, the peloton rides on carrying his name.
RACE NEWS
Magnier Masters Selective Hamburg Sprint at Cyclassics
Paul Magnier doesn’t need Kooij or Milan in the mix to prove he’s one of the fastest men in the bunch. The Soudal Quick-Step speedster survived a brutal, Waseberg-shredded finale to win the ADAC Cyclassics in Hamburg on Sunday, timing his sprint to perfection to beat a reduced group that had already shed most of the peloton’s marquee fast men.
The 207km route was unchanged from last year: a long, nervy build-up followed by five trips up the short, savage Waseberg (800m at 8%), the last one landing 16km from the line. With no out-and-out sprinter to protect, Netcompany INEOS and UAE Emirates XRG lit the fuse early, blowing the race apart well before the finish. Biniam Girmay’s race ended in a crash on a descent, while Dylan Groenewegen was among those distanced on the early Waseberg trips.
The real fireworks came when UAE sent Isaac Del Toro up the road toward the final Waseberg, splintering the bunch and leaving Olav Kooij and Jonathan Milan on the wrong side of the split. Decathlon CMA CGM threw everything at closing the gap in the final 10km, but couldn’t bring it back together.
That left Magnier to navigate the run-in with Jasper Stuyven driving on the front. Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe briefly nosed ahead in the closing meters, but Magnier waited, picked his gap, and blew the field away. Mike Teunissen rounded out an eye-catching podium, taking second.
AJ August Breaks Through at the Czech Tour
Andrew “AJ” August has been the talk of the American cycling scene all season, and this week the 20-year-old Netcompany-Ineos rider added the biggest result of his young career: the overall win at the Czech Tour, his first GC title as a pro.
August, from Rochester, New York, announced himself with a statement summit victory on Stage 2 to Ještěd, sprinting clear of Italy’s Alessandro Fancellu with veteran climber Domenico Pozzovivo, more than twice his age, completing the podium. He backed it up a day later with a near-identical move on Stage 3’s brutal finish at Dlouhé Stráně, launching his sprint inside the final 400 meters to beat Fancellu again and stretch his overall lead. Two summits, two wins, one emphatic statement of intent.
The final stage flipped the script slightly. Fancellu got his revenge, out-sprinting August to the line on Sunday’s closing uphill finish despite pulling a foot from his pedal mid-effort. But it wasn’t enough to overturn the gap on GC; August crossed safely in Fancellu’s wheel to seal the overall title by seven seconds, with Pozzovivo rounding out the final podium 40 seconds back.
It capped a breakthrough campaign for August, his fifth win of the season and easily the biggest of his career so far. True to his composed, quietly confident racing all week, he credited the team’s control of the race rather than individual heroics: “We let them have the same gap for a while, and then when we really start to increase the pace the gap came down quite quick. It was all under control.”
The race carried extra weight for the Netcompany-Ineos camp. August is a teammate of Josh Tarling, whose younger brother Finlay died the same week in a tragic accident at the Volta a Portugal, a loss August and his team dedicated a stage win to before their Czech Tour campaign was through.
Guillermo Thomas Silva Completes South American First at Arctic Race of Norway
Guillermo Thomas Silva added another line to his breakout 2026 season, holding the overall lead through a nervous final stage to become the 13th different winner of the Arctic Race of Norway in 13 editions, and the first South American to add his name to the roll of honor. The Uruguayan’s win caps a season that already included victories at the Tour of Hainan, a stage and two days in the Giro d’Italia’s Maglia Rosa, plus wins at Clásica de Ordizia and Clásica Castilla y León. The result also gives XDS Astana their fourth overall title in the race’s history, following Rein Taaramäe in 2015, Sergey Chernetskiy in 2018 and Alexey Lutsenko in 2019, cementing the squad as the race’s most successful team.
Thomas Silva’s grip on the Midnight Sun jersey traced back to Stage 3’s brutal finish atop Storheia — the so-called “Norwegian Mont Ventoux.” As the gap to the breakaway fell below a minute with 10km to go, temperatures dropped below 14 degrees while the GC group turned up the heat at the base of the climb. Thomas Gachignard tried a late solo dig inside the final two kilometers, only to be swallowed by Cedrik Bakke Christophersen, who surged past the flamme rouge to steal the stage and become the tenth-ever Norwegian winner at the race.
That set up a tight finale into Narvik, with eleven other riders within a minute of race leader Thomas Silva heading into the last day, including Lennert van Eetvelt, Alessandro Pinarello, Seb Berwick, Robbe Dhondt and Felix Engelhardt. Christophersen struck again on the final stage, taking his second win of the race, but Thomas Silva held firm on the closing climb to seal overall victory.
Earlier stage wins went to Giovanni Lonardi (Stage 1, Evenes-Myre) and home favorite Erlend Blikra, whose Stage 2 sprint win in Andenes marked Norway’s 18th victory in the race’s history.
The 2026 Belgian Gravel Champ Is…Not Wout van Aert
Wout van Aert arrived in Grobbendonk as the runaway favorite for the Belgian Gravel Championship, and for most of the day he raced like one. He didn’t leave with the jersey, though; that went to his closest friend instead.
The race split early, an enthusiastic Van Aert helping trim the front group to twelve before five riders — Stan Van Tricht, Daan Soete, Jo Pirotte, Witse Meeussen, and Jarno Bellens — rode clear. Van Aert hesitated for a moment, wary of chasing down his own training partner, then blasted across alone, dropping Tim Merlier and Niels Vandeputte in the process. With Pirotte swallowed back up, it left a five-man lead group to fight for the title on the final lap.
Twenty-two kilometers out, Van Aert attacked again, this time on a single-track section, and only Soete could follow. The two friends rode away together, content to let Van Tricht, Meeussen, and Bellens sort out the bronze medal behind. What followed was equal parts friendship and rivalry, until 2.5 kilometers from home, in the military domain, when Soete suddenly rode away from his training buddy.
Flat tire, empty tank, or a quiet gift between friends? Nobody’s quite sure. Whatever the cause, Soete flew clear and soloed to the Belgian title, with Van Aert settling for silver and Meeussen taking bronze.
It’s a fitting story for a discipline built on camaraderie as much as competition: on the day it mattered most, Van Aert’s biggest rival was also his best friend.
Monaco’s Historic Grand Tour Triple Crown
Sixty years after hosting the 1966 Giro d’Italia, Monaco is poised to complete an unprecedented trilogy in professional cycling. When the inaugural 9.4-kilometer time trial of La Vuelta 26 rolls out on 22 August, the Principality will officially become the first venue in history to host the opening stage of all three Grand Tours.
This historic Grand Départ follows the 1966 Giro—held to celebrate Monte Carlo’s centenary, where Jacques Anquetil faced off against a new generation of Italian stars—and the iconic 2009 Tour de France. The 2009 edition famously featured a young local rider, Victor Langellotti, participating in the team presentation. Fast forward to today, Langellotti is now a Monegasque professional who recently completed a mid-season transfer to XDS-Astana, wearing his national champion colors on home soil.
Setting off right in front of Monte Carlo’s legendary casino, the peloton faces an ultra-mountainous edition of La Vuelta featuring over 58,000 meters of elevation gain. The race will reach its ultimate conclusion on 13 September in front of the majestic Alhambra in Granada, contrasting Monaco’s glamorous start with nine centuries of Mediterranean history.
All eyes, however, will be on five-time Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar. Riding right past his Monaco residence during the opening time trial, the Slovenian superstar aims to capture his first Vuelta title—the very race where he made his Grand Tour debut in 2019, finishing third overall.
If Pogačar secures the red jersey in Granada, he will etch his name deeper into cycling lore, joining an elite club of just eight other riders—most recently Jonas Vingegaard—to win all three Grand Tours. With high-altitude battles ahead and history on the line, Monaco’s Grand Départ promises an extraordinary chapter in Grand Tour racing.
Guérin Wins a Volta a Portugal Nobody Will Remember for the Racing
Alexis Guérin (Anicolor-Campicarn) claimed the overall title at the Volta a Portugal on Sunday in Porto, and by any normal measure it was a fine, hard-fought GC campaign. This year, though, normal measures don’t apply. The 2026 edition will be remembered not for who won, but for the day nobody wanted to talk about: Friday’s Stage 8, when 19-year-old Finlay Tarling was killed after being struck by a vehicle that entered the course.
The Racing, Such As It Was
On paper, Guérin’s win was built early and defended well. He took the leader’s jersey with a punchy, decisive solo move on the summit finish to Covilhã on Stage 4, going clear 14km from the line and soloing in by nearly two minutes. From there his Anicolor-Campicarn squad rode a controlled race, with teammate Artem Nych, last year’s overall winner, shadowing him in second overall throughout the second half. Guérin added a second stage win on Stage 9, outkicking a select trio on the climb to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Grace to put the race further out of reach. He finished safely in the bunch on the final, cobbled Porto stage to seal it, with Nych and Portugal’s Pedro Silva completing the overall podium.
The final stage itself belonged to Rui Oliveira, the Olympic Madison champion, who timed a reduced-bunch sprint to perfection on Porto’s Avenida dos Aliados for his first professional road win: a genuinely happy story that, under different circumstances, would have been the headline all week.
Racing in the Shadow of Tragedy
None of it was celebrated the way it normally would be. After Tarling’s death, organizers canceled the promotional caravan, scaled back VIP activities, and asked riders to treat the closing days as a period of mourning rather than competition. Guérin swapped his yellow leader’s jersey for black after Stage 9, saying the win was for a talented young man taken too soon. Saturday’s stage rolled through the countryside at a subdued, almost funereal pace before Sunday’s finale in Porto, which organizers allowed to be genuinely competitive and even joyful — a nod, perhaps, to the idea that racing, eventually, has to go on.
It did. But this Volta a Portugal will be filed away as the one overshadowed by grief, its jerseys and champagne a footnote to a Friday in Fafe that the sport won’t soon forget.
Swenson, Rollins Rule at Leadville as Roadies Suffer Behind
Here at PEZ, where we feature What’s cool in road cycling, we also occasionally feature off-road events — especially when roadies put their beefier tires on the start line. Hence covering some of the Life Time series, including Saturday’s Life Time Leadville Trail 100, where Quinn Simmons and others lined up against gravel specialists.
It was those specialists who came out on top: Keegan Swenson and Melisa Rollins won the men’s and women’s elite races, respectively. Simmons rolled in about nine minutes behind Swenson, in ninth place, while roadie-turned-gravelite Michael Woods finished in 14th, another six minutes back. The sprint win over Matthew Wilson win was Swenson’s sixth at Leadville.
On the women’s side, Rollins took her second Leadville title, with no one from the WorldTour peloton in contention. (Figure they’re all recovering from the Tour de France Femmes.) Lauren Stephens, who has seen her share of success on the road, finished third, behind Rollins and Cecily Decker, who suffered a heartbreaking puncture late in the race.
Star-Studded Startlist for Lloyds Tour of Britain Women
The 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Women, kicking off Wednesday in Cockermouth, has a provisional startlist packed with firepower. Reigning champion Ally Wollaston (FDJ United-SUEZ) is set to defend her title fresh off a silver medal in the Commonwealth Games team pursuit, lining up against 2024 champion Lotte Kopecky (Team SD Worx-Protime), who arrives in good form after the Tour de France Femmes.
Wollaston’s Commonwealth conquerors were led by Georgia Baker (Liv AlUla Jayco), also pencilled in for Britain after adding a scratch race gold to her haul, her fifth Commonwealth title, cementing her as one of Australia’s greatest.
Former stage winners Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) and Kim Le Court Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) round out the headline names, both arriving with fresh Tour de France Femmes stage wins. Wiebes, who also took the green points jersey in France, will be gunning for the Tour of Britain’s own green GC jersey after winning last year’s Glasgow finale. Le Court Pienaar will look to repeat her opening-stage heroics from 2025.
Race director Alice Wood said the lineup underlines the race’s growing global stature.
The route runs Cockermouth to Clitheroe-Blackpool, then into Wales for a summit finish atop the Great Orme and a Llanidloes-to-Hay-on-Wye stage, before the GC is decided in Royal Leamington Spa on Sunday, August 23.
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
Team Canada Announced for Elite & U23 Men’s World Championship Races
Cycling Canada has unveiled its Elite and U23 Men’s rosters for the 2026 UCI Road World Championships in Montréal. With the world returning to Montréal for the first time since 1974, this year’s squad brings together seasoned WorldTour contenders, rising Canadian talents, and a team of athletes who have delivered standout performances across Europe and North America throughout the season.
ELITE MEN- 2026 UCI ROAD WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS NATIONAL TEAM
- Derek Gee‑West – Osgoode, Ontario (RR+ITT)
- Hugo Houle – Sainte-Perpétue, Quebec (RR)
- Michael Leonard – Oakville, Ontario (RR+ITT)
- Michael Woods – Ottawa, Ontario (RR) (Coming out of retirement and off of the gravel circuit for Worlds in his home nation)
- Nickolas Zukowsky – Sainte-Lucie-des-Laurentides, Quebec (RR)
- Pier‑André Côté – Saint-Henri-de-Lévis, Quebec (RR)
Canada’s elite men’s roster brings together some of the most accomplished riders in the nation’s history. Namely, Giro D’Italia star Derek Gee – West enters the championships with multiple GC top ten performances, a stage win at Criterium du Dauphine 2024, and a Gran Camino overall win.
U23 MEN- 2026 UCI ROAD WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS NATIONAL TEAM
- Adam Smith – Winnipeg, Manitoba (RR)
- Carson Mattern – Ancaster, Ontario (ITT)
- Jérôme Gauthier – Amos, Quebec (RR)
- Jonas Walton – Westminster, Maryland (RR+ITT)
- Luke Valenti – Orangeville, Ontario (RR)
Canada’s U23 roster brings together a group of riders who have shown consistency and progression across the European circuit and top North American events.
For this Elite and U23 men’s team, the 2026 UCI Road World Championships carry a significance that extends far beyond the race itself. Montréal welcomes the Road Worlds back 52 years after hosting the groundbreaking 1974 edition, marking the first time the event was ever held outside Europe, and now, a new generation of Canadians will take the start lines on those same historic roads.
Life Time Overhauls Grand Prix Qualifying for 2027
More off-road news! Life Time has unveiled a new qualification format for the 2027 Life Time Grand Prix, shifting the off-road series toward a more performance-based path into its 25-woman, 25-man fields.
Under the new system, the top 10 men and top 10 women from the final 2026 Grand Prix standings earn automatic invitations to return, joined by the top male and female finisher from the 2026 U23 program. The remaining 14 spots per field will be decided at a new Sea Otter Grand Prix Qualifier, held across two disciplines during Sea Otter Classic weekend: Thursday’s Gravel race and Saturday’s Fuego XL mountain bike race. That Gravel event will double as round one of the championship, with points banked immediately for qualifiers. Scoring and eligibility details are still to come, and any vacated spot will roll down to the next-best qualifier.
“The Grand Prix is about identifying the best all-around off-road racers, and competing across gravel and mountain bike racing reflects that,” said Kimo Seymour, Life Time’s President of Events and Media.
The change replaces the Wild Card program used since 2025 and moves selection earlier in the year, giving athletes more certainty for sponsorship and scheduling.
The 2027 calendar also expands back to seven rounds with the return of the Rad Dirt Fest in Trinidad, Colorado, alongside Sea Otter, UNBOUND, Leadville, Chequamegon, Little Sugar and Big Sugar. Riders must start at least six of the seven events, counting their best six results, with a drop score available to those who race all seven.
With Leadville just completed, the 2026 season concludes with Chequamegon, Little Sugar and Big Sugar still to come.
VIDEO: You say it’s nearly indoor training season? We say it’s always indoor training season if you’re looking to maximize your training efficiency and effectiveness! Here’s Richard’s video on setting up the Zwift HUB trainer — a product we Pezzers know and love!
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