Nicola Rutzou
The European professional cycling season has all but wrapped up for this year and hasn’t it been good for Aussie riders and others?
At BA, our biggest highlights for this year are the cracker seasons enjoyed by Australian riders Grace Brown and Ben O’Connor.
In Brown’s final season as a professional cyclist, she won the ITT at the Paris Olympic Games and the ITT at the UCI World Championships, as well as the one-day race Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes earlier in the year.
O’Connor had an outstanding season, finishing second in the Vuelta a Españaand wearing the leader’s jersey for 13 days. He also finished second in the Olympic road race.
But we’ve also enjoyed watching the exploits of the unstoppable Slovenian Tadej Pogačar who won the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, the UCI World Championships road race, and many more races. The performance of Belgian Remco Evenepoel who won both the road race and ITT at the Paris Olympic Games and the ITT at the UCI World Championships was also impressive.
Other highlights include Mark Cavendish breaking the all-time stage win record set by Eddy Merckx by securing his 35th stage victory at the Tour de France this year. He didn’t have his former Aussie lead-out man Mark Renshaw on the bike in front of him, but he did have him in the team car calling the shots and planning the strategic moves.
Share your favourite moments of the 2024 professional road cycling season.
