Where you at, cycling fan-friend?
Are you lost without your Tadej North Star, or relishing following races that are actually…races? (Without, of course, actually relishing Pogačar’s crash?)
This sport is lousy with crashes, injuries, accidents, incidents, but roll on we must: To a Vuelta that will always have an asterisk, but that indeed now actually holds suspense; to wondering what will happen to Pogi this season, and even beyond; to Britain, and Montreal, and…Slovenia, where the European Championships will be held.
Prediction: Tadej will emerge the morning of the Euros, rolling up to the start line unannounced, like a far smaller version of Willis Reed lumbering onto the court at Madison Square Garden. Primož will ride for him, bygones being bygones. We’ll talk about it for decades, irrespective of the result.
TOP STORY
- Primoz’ Rise and Decline (and Rise?)
RACE NEWS
- It’s Pidcock, not van der Poel, at Mountain Bike Worlds
- Aranburu Strikes Late to Win Bretagne Classic
- Philadelphia Cycling Classic Returns with Two Memorable Champions
- British Stars Set for 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Men
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
- The Ups and Downs of Wout van Aert’s Crazy 2026
VIDEO
- Richard’s View of Tadej’s Crash
Primoz’ Rise and Decline (and Rise?)
No one (I hope) is happy about Tadej Pogačar’s likely season-ending crash. Even those of us who long for more competitive races hate to see the Vuelta (and, probably, the World Championships) suddenly hold more suspense because a generationally talented rider has suffered a fractured collarbone (and much more).
Not even Primož Roglič, I’m certain, felt anything but pity upon hearing of the brutal crash. That said, his compatriot Pogačar’s crash may yield a compelling arc.
As I wrote a few weeks ago, after Pogačar seemingly dashed Roglič’s remaining realizable dream, that of winning a fifth Vuelta a España, this all started in 2020, when an ascendant Primoz was eclipsed by an even more rapidly ascending Tadej in the Tour de France’s stage 20 uphill time trial. Since then, though Roglič has enjoyed a remarkable career, he has always ridden in the shadow of his countryman. Pogačar’s decision was a crushing, final blow to Roglič’s aspirations.
“Barring incident or accident is the qualified every fan and pundit tags their prognostications with; so replete is our sport with illness and injury that irrespective of just how dominant a rider is — even if she or he makes a convincing case for G.O.A.T. status — the ultimate result always bears a degree of uncertainty.
Pogačar’s tragic departure leaves the door open to Roglič, though narrowly: He sits 1:18 behind Enric Mas, evidently the superior climber in this particularly mountainous Vuelta. But Roglič entered the race fresh off of his own crash, and may be riding into peak condition. Plus, stage 18 is a long-ish time trial, the discipline in which he won an Olympic gold medal back in 2020.
Narrow? Certainly. But the doorway to a Roglič Vuelta win is certainly wider than it was just a few days ago.
RACE NEWS
It’s Pidcock, not van der Poel, at Mountain Bike Worlds
For weeks, the road-world cognescenti whispered one name on the rare occasion when it would discuss mountain biking: Mathieu van der Poel. The Dutch superstar arrived in Italy chasing the one rainbow jersey missing from an already well-stocked collection. A strong runner-up finish at the Les Gets World Cup a week before Worlds only added fuel to the narrative: this was supposed to be the day MVDP completed the set.
Instead, it was Tom Pidcock’s day. Again.
Both riders were relegated to the fifth row of the grid, a well-intended quirk of the UCI Mountain Bike Ranking system that punished them for spending their season on the road. Both had to fight from the back. But what followed showed just how differently the two multi-disciplinarians actually ride a mountain bike.
Van der Poel’s comeback never materialized. He clawed forward lap by lap, but the deficit kept growing; he passed riders, but far too few to contend for the lead. By the finish he was down in thirtieth, a stinging result for a rider who has named a mountain bike title as his one remaining objective.
Pidcock’s race told the opposite story. He struggled early too, dropped by a Charlie Aldridge acceleration on lap three, seemingly out of matches. Then he found another gear entirely, rejoined the front group, and started dismantling it: Boichis, the pre-race favorite, cracked first; Vidaurre followed; only fellow Brit Aldridge could hang on, and even he eventually cracked. Pidcock soloed home with enough time to dismount and raise his bike over his head: his second world title in three years. An emotional — and classy — Pidcock dedicated his title to his compatriot Fin Tarling, who recently died while riding in the Volta a Portugal.
That’s the real story here, and it deserves more attention than it’s getting: on the road, van der Poel is simply the superior rider, and in cyclocross it isn’t close. But hand both of them a mountain bike and point them at singletrack, and Pidcock turns into a different animal, someone who converts road-honed engine and cyclocross bike-handling into pure mountain bike dominance in a way van der Poel, for all his brilliance, hasn’t managed to replicate. You watch the two of them and realize that between Pidcock’s nimbleness and van der Poel’s beasty power, it’s the lighter touch that wins out — every time.
Two mountain bike world titles now for Pidcock. Zero for van der Poel. The next question: Will MVDP shift his focus entirely to the dirt? Because this road-first approach isn’t working.
Aranburu Strikes Late to Win Bretagne Classic
Alex Aranburu (Cofidis) claimed a prestigious WorldTour victory at the Bretagne Classic on Sunday, attacking inside the final two kilometers to solo to the win in Plouay, France.
The 90th edition of the race saw its usual chaos on the rolling Breton terrain, compounded by an early blow when pre-race favorite Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step) crashed out around 50 kilometers from the finish. Attacks flew throughout the afternoon as the peloton tackled the finishing circuits, with Visma-Lease a Bike among the teams pressing hard without managing to force a decisive split.
The race’s fate was sealed on the final ascent of the Côte de Ty Marrec, where the day’s breakaway was finally absorbed by the peloton. A group of around ten riders then split clear in the closing kilometers, setting up the finale. With Cofidis holding a numerical advantage at the front, Aranburu made his move roughly 1.5 kilometers from the line, opening a gap that nobody could close.
Alexander Kamp (Uno-X Mobility) chased hardest but crossed the line four seconds back in second, while Alessandro Borgo (Bahrain Victorious) took third from the reduced group ten seconds down. Paul Lapeira and Romain Grégoire led the French contingent home in sixth and seventh.
The win capped a big weekend for Cofidis, coming just a day after Bryan Coquard’s breakthrough Grand Tour stage victory at the Vuelta a España — and it further confirms Aranburu’s reputation as one of the peloton’s sharpest finishers from reduced groups, adding to his Itzulia Basque Country win earlier this season.
Philadelphia Cycling Classic Returns with Two Memorable Champions
After a decade away, the Philadelphia Cycling Classic made a triumphant comeback on Sunday, drawing a reported crowd of more than 100,000 to the city’s storied 14.4-mile circuit for both a women’s and men’s WorldTour-caliber race.
In the women’s race, Chiara Consonni (Canyon-SRAM) took the win in a chaotic sprint finish, threading her way through a 20-rider lead group in the final straightaway as several riders crashed behind her, including Canadian champion Maggie Coles-Lyster. The decisive move came on the final ascent of the fearsome Manayunk Wall, the race’s signature 17-percent test, where EF Education-Oatly and Canyon-SRAM drove the pace and shattered the peloton from 50 riders down to 20. Alexandra Volstad took second for EF-Education Oatly, while Ella Sabo of Virginia’s Blue Ridge-TWENTY28 finished third. Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner followed in fourth.
The men’s race, run later the same day over nearly 200 kilometers, came down to a late breakaway. Tim Torn Teutenberg (Lidl-Trek) outsprinted his two companions to take the win in 4:20:55, marking the first professional victory of his career. Fittingly, the German’s aunt, Ina Yoko Teutenberg, was a five-time winner of the race in its earlier incarnation, adding a family thread to the event’s revival.
Both races unfolded on the race’s original route, tracing the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Kelly Drive, Boathouse Row, Strawberry Mansion, and Lemon Hill before tackling Manayunk. First held in 1985 and won that year by Eric Heiden, the race had been dormant since 2016 due to sponsorship troubles. Its return, backed by AmeriGas and organized by a group that includes former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter, brought 212 riders from 28 countries and 36 teams, including eight WorldTour squads, back to the city’s streets — and offered equal $75,000 prize purses for the men’s and women’s fields, a fitting symbol for the race’s new chapter.
British Stars Set for 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Men
Thinking it’s time to move on to the next stage race? Maybe the Lloyds Tour of Britain is your answer, with the men following the women’s recent version, kicking off Wednesday, September 2, with five stages testing riders’ technical range, from the steep Michaelgate climb in Lincoln to the North Yorkshire Dales. British readers, you can look forward to following several of your compatriots riding on home roads.
Commonwealth Games champions Ethan Vernon (NSN Cycling Team) and Matt Bostock (Great Britain Cycling Team) headline the home talent. Vernon, a top-tier sprinter, has finished runner-up seven times without a stage win and says a home victory is his season’s big target. He’s joined on the GBCT roster by Olympic silver medalist Ollie Wood and four rising under-23 riders: national time-trial champion Ben Wiggins, Tour de l’Avenir stage winner Elliot Rowe, national criterium silver medalist Jacob Bush, and Tour of South Bohemia winner William Smith. Bush, racing near his Lincolnshire home, singled out the Wolds section of stage two as one to watch.
Netcompany–INEOS brings former national champions Ben Swift and Connor Swift, with Connor hoping to match Ben’s 2009 stage win. Mark Donovan (Pinarello Q36.5) and Mark Stewart (Modern Adventure) round out the notable startlist, both chasing better results than in previous editions — Stewart especially motivated by the race finishing in his native Scotland.
The route runs Lincoln to Skegness, then into Yorkshire (Hull–Beverley, Helmsley–Leyburn), before wrapping in Earlston in the Scottish Borders. A free Family Cycling Festival runs alongside stage three in Hull.
TEAM, RIDER AND CYCLING NEWS
The Ups and Downs of Wout van Aert’s Crazy 2026
I wrote this post prior to Pogačar’s crash; it was to be this EuroTrash’s Top Story. It carries less weight now, but I felt that Wout’s arc was still worth featuring.
As I watched Wout van Aert vie for the stage win in the Vuelta’s mid-mountains Stage 7 Friday, it struck me: This guy has had a hell of a year.
Ups and downs, starting in January, I even imagined a graph showing those peaks and valleys — so I created that graph.
Consider how 2026 started: For a moment, all of two days into 2026, he appeared to be giving his perennial rival Mathieu van der Poel a run on the cyclocross, appearing more confident and technically sharp on the course at Mol.
Minutes later, he was down, having fractured his ankle.
Season over, right? Except that after successful surgery, he was back on the trainer just days later, then on the bike.
Soon he was putting in many kilometers (including in California).
His training progressed so quickly that less than three months after the crash, he was able to recover from yet another tumble, rally through the pack, and very nearly chase down Tom Pidcock and none other than Tadej Pogačar at Milan-Sanremo.
I certainly didn’t expect that result.
The high point of the year — and of van Aert’s career, at least so far — landed three weeks later, when Wout outsprinted Pogačar in the velodrome in Roubaix. I haven’t spoken with a cycling fan for whom this wasn’t the zenith of the entire year (even after watching MVDP on the Champs Elysées).
As high as that high was, however, the low was brutal: van Aert crashed during his runup to the Tour and suffered what appeared to be a minor wound on his elbow. But that wound became swollen, and then infected; that infection rapidly worsened, forcing him to abandon the Dauphiné and head back to Belgium for emergency medical treatment. According to team officials and medical staff, the infection was severe enough that it put him at high risk of developing sepsis.
Yet here he was just last Friday, at it again. Strong as ever. Very nearly the Wout we’ve seen win on Mt. Ventoux, initiating the break and nearly holding on to the lead in a very tough Vuelta stage, all on the heels of delivering teammate Matthew Brennan to two “armchair” sprint wins. He now wears the Green Jersey — and may even be able to keep it, the Vuelta’s skewed points structure notwithstanding.
Where to from here? I risked jinxing our favorite rider by placing that faded dot at the end of the graph, representing a dream of a denouement to his arrhythmic 2026: a Worlds win. Likely the course contains too much vert for even the strongest of the strongmen like van Aert, van der Poel, or Mads Pedersen, though with Pogačar likely out, the puncheurs will face a far more open race.
But this is a classic-like course, twelve times up a 1.6k climb. So don’t count Wout out; he could be in with a shout.
VIDEO: Richard’s View of Tadej’s Crash
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