This time last year, Bob Donaldson was only just able to ride outdoors again after a crash that could have ended his budding career. 

It all happened in a flash. Descending a hill near his home on the outskirts of Manchester, the then 20-year-old was struck by a car driver, who swerved across the road in front of him towards their driveway. It took place "in plain sight," Donaldson tells Cycling Weekly, and before he could reach for his brakes, he was lying on the floor. 

"I managed to crawl to somewhere I could perch," he says. "An hour and a half later, I was taken in an ambulance to the hospital, where I had scans and stuff." 

The scans revealed that he had suffered four transverse process fractures to the vertebrae at the bottom of his spine. "I was lucky not to be more damaged," he says. His bike had split in half, and his front wheel had crumpled under the impact with the car. 

It's a memory that Donaldson will have for the rest of his life. And yet, as he stood on the podium at Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, second in the under-23 race just a year on from the crash, that day felt so distant. 

Back when Donaldson was bed-bound, racing across Roubaix's jagged cobblestones was unimaginable. The young Brit spent 10 days off the bike, waiting for his broken back to heal, and went almost two months until he could brave the roads again. The challenge, it appeared, wouldn't be regaining fitness, but rather overcoming the fear of crashing. 

"At any point, there's the peril of what a two-tonne car can do," he says. "It also spreads into racing, and only recently have I lost the little conscience in my head to be a bit safer. Throughout the season last year, I had in my head that I did not want to crash and have a major incident again. At the end of the day, it could have ended my career."

Growing up, it was always the lure of the Classics that drew Donaldson to cycling. He idolised serial Monument winners Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara, and dreamed of riding Paris-Roubaix, more so than the Tour de France. 

When he made his debut in the 'Espoirs' event on Sunday, the 22-year-old was familiar with the folklore. The Hell of the North, and its treacherous cobbles, is regarded as one of the most dangerous races on the calendar. But, as Donaldson knew, "you can't go into Roubaix with any fear". 

"You've got to go in with full confidence, and just no fucks, really. You can't be worrying about what could happen. You've just got to race at the front, and race for yourself," he says. And that's what he did. 

A year after breaking his back, Donaldson shook away the fear and rode Roubaix on the front foot. His team, under-23 British Continental outfit Trinity Racing, positioned him well into the early cobbled sectors, and inside 20km to go, he attacked to start the move that would last to the line. 

"I knew my girlfriend and dad would be at the Carrefour de L'Arbre, so I was motivated to just smash it as much as I could across there," Donaldson says. He then worked with Lidl-Trek's Tim Torn Teutenberg and Lotto Dstny's Robin Orins, the trio entering the velodrome together, where Teutenberg sprinted to victory. 

A few days later, Donaldson posted on Instagram, writing that it was "tough to be first loser". 

"There were a few things that maybe I could have done better," he now reflects. "I think, as a cyclist, if you're ever content with not winning then something's probably going wrong. I can take the positives out of coming second, it was such a strong field, and I have a lot of respect for everyone else in the race. To be so close, it just hurts in a way."

Though he did not win, Donaldson did succeed in making a statement. This year is his last in the under-23 ranks, and without a professional contract for next season, the Brit felt he needed a result to put his name in the shop window. 

"People say that the start of the season is the most important time of the year, because that's when deals are done to prepare for next year," he says. "I missed that big chunk last year, and I had no clue how my form would come out of that and how it would impact my season as a whole. 

"It's the results that do the talking at the end of the day, to help get that contract for next year, which is the ultimate goal. With that [Roubaix second place] in the bank, now I feel like I can race with a bit more freedom and confidence that my legs will do the talking."

The effects of the crash still linger in the back of Donaldson's mind. He's quick on his brakes when he sees a car pull up, he says, and he's still got his broken bike frame, which he keeps in his bedroom. Crucially, though, he doesn't let the fear affect his racing. 

"I want to be a Classics rider and have a successful career doing it," he says. "Not necessarily winning loads of races, but having an enjoyable, successful career, which I can look back on and be happy with." The 22-year-old then pauses for a moment. "Yeah, being happy, I'd say, is the number one thing."

What is sporting greatness? To some, it may be watching Lionel Messi gliding across a football pitch before scoring for Argentina, or maybe a bowler tearing through a team to win a Test match. Or perhaps it's the sight of one man - resplendent in the world champion’s rainbow jersey - entering into the Vélodrome André-Pétrieux to a wall of noise, after conquering cycling’s toughest one day race once more. 

Mathieu van der Poel did just that on Sunday after an untouchable performance across the harsh French pavé that gives Paris-Roubaix its legendary status in cycling. 

The Dutchman became the first rider since Rik Van Looy in 1962 to complete the Roubaix and Tour of Flanders double in cycling’s holy week as world champion, something not even the likes of Eddy Merckx managed to achieve. This was a feat of pure magnificence, of rippling talent and a perfect exhibition of supreme race craft. 

Van der Poel is simply on another planet right now. As he walked out of the velodrome after receiving his second Roubaix trophy, he would have no doubt seen the huge plaques adorning the walls in the corridors of the media centre as he made his way to his winner’s press conference. 

Roger de Vlaeminck, Francesco Moser, Fausto Coppi, Fabian Cancellara, and more, all line the building's corridor of greatness in what could only be described as a Classics hall of fame. 

Van der Poel’s second victory was him firmly rubber stamping his status alongside all of the riders to have triumphed here. He now stands shoulder to shoulder with cycling’s mythical figures as one of the sport’s greatest ever one day racers. 

As the son of Adrie van der Poel and the grandson of Raymond Poulidor, cycling history runs through his veins. Roubaix, and all of its legacy, is part of his DNA and he seemed destined to usurp his father’s own palmarés, all before reaching the age of 30. 

Van der Poel rightly sees his Glasgow World Championships victory as his crowning moment, his magnum opus on the bike. But dominating the Hell of the North and winning by a stunning three minute margin is a feat you would have associated with Coppi or with the cannibal, Merckx, himself. 

Feats such as this already litter cycling’s history books, but Van der Poel continues to add his own chapter of immortality. 

With just under 60 kilometres to go on Sunday, the select group of favourites surged onto the Orchies sector. Van der Poel then took flight, leaving the likes of Mads Pedersen floundering in a cloud of dust kicked up from the cobbles. 

Using his Canyon race bike like a sculptor uses a chisel on a piece of stone, he then carefully shaped the race exactly as he intended, with his three minute victory margin the end product of an afternoon of toiling in the dust. 

“It definitely isn't normal to win all these races,” he said post-race. “I could only dream of this when I was a kid. Also, the rainbow jersey makes it even more special of course. I could never have imagined all the races I win now. I just focused on cyclo-cross when I was younger. 

“It's really amazing and I really tried to enjoy the last part of the race which I couldn't do in Flanders because I was really on my limit there. Today I felt better still in the final so I really tried to enjoy it because it's a special moment and it won't last forever.”

It seems commonplace of late to question the entertainment value of performances such as this, to suggest the dominance of Van der Poel, or the likes of Tadej Pogacar, is boring. 

The beauty of sport and entertainment is its subjectivity and its ability to generate discussion. But to fall into the trap of referring to a masterpiece such as this as boring would be folly in my view. 

Instead, as Van der Poel said himself, we should try to sit back and enjoy the moment. The achievements of sporting figures such as Messi have never been tagged as boring or questioned. The Argentinian’s ability with a ball at his feet is instead likened to the work of legendary artists and craftsmen, and the Dutchman deserves similar.

For now, the only thing to do is sit back and revel in such brilliance. Figures such as the reigning world champion don’t come around often, so enjoy it while it lasts. 

Not since 2010 has the same rider won the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Back then, that rider was Fabian Cancellara. This year, Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) will head into the 'Hell of the North' as the outstanding favourite, as defending champion, and off the back of an incredible ride at Flanders.

Major illness and injury issues across Visma-Lease A Bike's men's team put in doubt the big showdown between Wout van Aert and Van der Poel that most fans expected at this year's Roubaix.

Van Aert became the most high profile victim in last Wednesday's Dwars Door Vlaanderen, abandoning the race after coming down heavily in a big crash that was seemingly caused by a gust of wind. Multiple fractures including collarbone and ribs  ruled the Belgian out of this year's 'Hell of the North'.

This could mean that on-song Dane Mads Pedersen steps in to fill the breach opened by Visma's woes, joining Van der Poel in what would surely be the favoured pair in the men's event. While Pedersen was caught up in the same crash as the above at Dwars, he might have fully recovered by Roubaix.

The women's field has fortunately been less afflicted, with – at the time of writing – favourites such as Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) and her team-mate Lorena Wiebes both fit and on form. Lidl-Trek's Lizzie Deignan will however not ride, having broken her arm at the Tour of Flanders. Her in-form team-mate Elisa Balsamo will do though.

Kopecky, Wiebes, and their strong SD Worx team will be looking to bounce back at the first opportunity after a disappointing Flanders, but Lidl-Trek have been strong all Classics season, and might have found the key to countering SD Worx on the cobbles.

Meanwhile, Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) has won pretty much everything within her power other than Roubaix, and will be looking to add to her 250 road wins next Saturday. The list of further contenders is endless, especially when one reflects on Alison Jackson (EF Education-Cannondale) and her shock win from the break at last year's race. It could be anyone.

Paris-Roubaix 2024 Key Information

Date: Saturday April 6 (women); Sunday April 7 (men)
Location: Denain to Roubaix (women); Compiègne to Roubaix (men)
2023 winners: Mathieu van der Poel (men); Alison Jacksono (women)
TV: Discovery+/Eurosport
Distance: 148.5km (women); 259.7km (men)

Paris-Roubaix 2024 route

There are no dramatic course changes to either men's or women's races this year, which begin in Compiègne and Denain respectively and finish, of course, in the iconic Roubaix velodrome.

Both men's and women's races are three kilometres longer than last year, with the men riding more pavé than they have done in the past 30 years, thanks to a pair of returning sectors that have been inserted early on in the race at Briastre (sector 26) and Le Hameau de Buat (sector 24). The total number of cobbled sectors stays at 29, across a total 55.7km.

The women's race, while also gaining three kilometres to take it up to 148.5km in total, doesn't gain any new (or indeed returning) cobbles among its 17 sectors. Instead the course has been routed around a section deemed high-risk by organiser ASO, which adds the distance.

The Carrefour de l'Arbre (translated as crossroads of the tree) is a perennially significant sector in Paris-Roubaix that comes with around 15km left to ride. With each cobbled sector ranked out of five stars, the Carrefour is one of only three five-star sectors in the men's race, and only two in the women's. 

The race is often won here, as the final selection is made and the most tired riders are found out in the face of attacks by the strongest. Along with the four-star Camphin-en-Pevèle sector that softens up the riders' legs immediately beforehand, and the two-star Gruson sector that comes straight away afterwards, the Carrefour is the equivalent of the Oude Kwaremont-Paterberg double-punch in the Tour of Flanders.

Paris-Roubaix 2024 sectors

Each cobbled sector is ranked from one to five stars, with five the hardest. The women's race hits the cobbles at sector 17, Hornaing in Wandignies.

29: Troisvilles in Inchy (km 96 - 2,2 km) ***
28: Viesly in Quiévy (km 102,5 - 1,8 km) ***
27: Quiévy in Saint-Python (km 105,1 - 3,7 km) ****
26: Viesly in Briastre (km 111,3 - 3 km) ***
25: Vertain in Saint-Martin-sur-Ecaillon (km 122,6 - 2,3 km) ***
24: Capelle in Ruesnes (km 129,3 - 1,7 km) ***
23: Artres in Quérénaing (km 138,3 – 1,3 km) **
22: Quérénaing in Maing (km 140,1 – 2,5 km) ***
21: Maing in Monchaux-sur-Ecaillon (km 143,2 - 1,6 km) ***
20: Haveluy in Wallers (km 156,2 - 2,5 km) ****
19: Trouée d'Arenberg (km 164,4 - 2,3 km) *****
18: Wallers in Hélesmes (km 170,4 - 1,6 km) ***
17: Hornaing in Wandignies (km 177,2 - 3,7 km) ****
16: Warlaing in Brillon (km 184,7 - 2,4 km) ***
15: Tilloy in Sars-et-Rosières (km 188,2 - 2,4 km) ****
14: Beuvry in Orchies (km 194,5 - 1,4 km) ***
13: Orchies (km 199,5 - 1,7 km) ***
12: Auchy in Bersée (km 205,6 - 2,7 km) ****
11: Mons-en-Pévèle (km 211,1 - 3 km) *****
10: Mérignies in Avelin (km 217,1 - 0,7 km) **
9: Pont-Thibault in Ennevelin (km 220,5 - 1,4 km) ***
8: Templeuve - L'Epinette (km 225,9 - 0,2 km) *
8: Templeuve - Moulin-de-Vertain (km 226,4 - 0,5 km) **
7: Cysoing in Bourghelles (km 232,8 - 1,3 km) ***
6: Bourghelles in Wannehain (km 235,3 - 1,1 km) ***
5: Camphin-en-Pévèle (km 239,8 - 1,8 km) ****
4: Carrefour de l'Arbre (km 242,5 - 2,1 km) *****
3: Gruson (km 244,8 - 1,1 km) **
2: Willems in Hem (km 251,5 - 1,4 km) **
1: Roubaix (km 258,3 - 0,3 km) *

Paris-Roubaix 2024 riders to watch

Mads Pedersen
Lidl-Trek
****

A fast-finishing rouleur in the shape of one former 'Mr Paris-Roubaix' Tom Boonen, Pedersen is in the form of his life, and while few eyes will stray far from Van der Poel, former world champion Pedersen, who was fourth here last year, should not be discounted from taking his first victory in the famous Roubaix velodrome.

Matteo Jorgensen
Visma-Lease A Bike
***

One of the few riders in the Dutch team who has not at this point been hit by crashes or illness in the past weeks, it so happens that Jorgensen is also on great form, having won Dwars Door Vlaanderen last week with a late solo effort. Team-mate Tiesj Benoot, also riding well, could provide useful backup and a potential plan-B.

Mathieu van der Poel
Alpecin-Deceuninck
******

Van der Poel, the champion of Flanders for a third time, is on fiery, determined form. Instigating moves or pushing them to succeed, at this point he is the rider to beat. One issue for him could lie in the fact that Pedersen is the quicker finisher, so he will want to lose him before the finish.

Pfeiffer Georgi
dsm-firmenich PostNL
***

Georgi has always been there or thereabouts in the Classics, both this season and last – active in the moves but never topping the podium in the biggest races. However, she is still just 23 and only getting stronger. The London rider represents a serious podium threat and her big-name rivals will discount her at their peril.

Lotte Kopecky
SD Worx-Protime
*****

In Gent-Wevelgem Kopecky put in an early attack, she explained, just to stave off boredom – before going on to lead out her team-mate Lorena Wiebes for the win. With wins at Strade Bianche, the UAE Tour and Danilith Nokere Koerse already this season, she can afford to have fun and be generous too. But it feels like she is biding her time for Paris-Roubaix.

Marianne Vos
Visma-Lease A Bike
****

Paris-Roubaix is one of the few major Classics Vos has yet to win. At 36, the Dutchwoman continues to vie for the top places here, though this could be one of her last solid chances to win. She took 10th place last year at the head of a chasing group of favourites behind winner Alison Jackson (EF Education-Tibco-SVB). This season she has already won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, with a creditable ninth at Strade Bianche her most recent result.

Paris-Roubaix 2024 men's start list

Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team
GAUTHERAT Pierre
NAESEN Oliver
DE PESTEL Sander
BOASSON HAGEN Edvald
DE BONDT Dries
TOUZÉ Damien
LABROSSE Jordan

Alpecin-Deceuninck
PHILIPSEN Jasper
VAN DER POEL Mathieu
DILLIER Silvan
KIELICH Tim
PLANCKAERT Edward
RIESEBEEK Oscar
VERMEERSCH Gianni

Arkéa-B&B Hotels
SÉNÉCHAL Florian
BIERMANS Jenthe
MOZZATO Luca
GRONDIN Donavan
MCLAY Daniel
DEKKER David
SCOTSON Miles

Astana Qazaqstan
BOL Cees
MØRKØV Michael
GIDICH Yevgeniy
FEDOROV Yevgeniy
GRUZDEV Dmitriy
SELIG Rüdiger
SYRITSA Gleb

Bahrain-Victorious
WRIGHT Fred
WIŚNIOWSKI Łukasz
SCOTT Cameron
RAJOVIĆ Dušan
MIHOLJEVIĆ Fran
PASQUALON Andrea
GRADEK Kamil

BORA-Hansgrohe
MEEUS Jordi
HERZOG Emil
MACIEJUK Filip
HALLER Marco
LÜHRS Luis-Joe
MULLEN Ryan
WELSFORD Sam

Cofidis
NOPPE Christophe
RENARD Alexis
ALLEGAERT Piet
FRETIN Milan
ANIOŁKOWSKI Stanisław
DE GENDT Aimé
ROBEET Ludovic

EF Education-EasyPost
BISSEGGER Stefan
ROOTKIN-GRAY Jack
BETTIOL Alberto
DOULL Owain
RUTSCH Jonas
SWEENY Harry
VAN DER LEE Jardi Christiaan

Groupama-FDJ
KÜNG Stefan
ASKEY Lewis
BYSTRØM Sven Erik
LIENHARD Fabian
PITHIE Laurence
SARREAU Marc
RUSSO Clément

INEOS Grenadiers
TARLING Joshua
TURNER Ben
AUGUST Andrew
SWIFT Ben
SWIFT Connor
VIVIANI Elia
PIDCOCK Tom

Intermarché-Wanty
TEUNISSEN Mike
PAGE Hugo
REX Laurenz
PETIT Adrien
PLANCKAERT Baptiste
VAN HOECKE Gijs
MIHKELS Madis

Team Visma-Lease a Bike
LAPORTE Christophe
VAN BAARLE Dylan
AFFINI Edoardo
HAGENES Per Strand
VAN DIJKE Tim
VAN DIJKE Mick
VERMOTE Julien

Lidl-Trek
VACEK Mathias
PEDERSEN Mads
MILAN Jonathan
THEUNS Edward
HOOLE Daan
DECLERCQ Tim
VERGAERDE Otto

Movistar Team
LAZKANO Oier
JACOBS Johan
MORO Manlio
RANGEL Vinicius
GARCÍA CORTINA Iván
CAVAGNA Rémi
NORSGAARD Mathias

Soudal Quick-Step
ASGREEN Kasper
LAMPAERT Yves
MERLIER Tim
VAN LERBERGHE Bert
VANGHELUWE Warre
MOSCON Gianni
PEDERSEN Casper

Team dsm-firmenich PostNL
BITTNER Pavel
EEKHOFF Nils
DEGENKOLB John
EDDY Patrick
MÄRKL Niklas
NABERMAN Tim
VAN UDEN Casper

Team Jayco AlUla
REINDERS Elmar
FOLDAGER Anders
QUICK Blake
O'BRIEN Kelland
JANSEN Amund Grøndahl
WALSCHEID Max
DURBRIDGE Luke

UAE Team Emirates
WELLENS Tim
VINK Michael
POLITT Nils
MORGADO António
MOLANO Juan Sebastián
HODEG Álvaro José
BJERG Mikkel

Lotto-Dstny
BEULLENS Cedric
VAN MOER Brent
SEGAERT Alec
GRIGNARD Sébastien
GUARNIERI Jacopo
PAASSCHENS Mathijs
SLOCK Liam

Israel-Premier Tech
SHEEHAN Riley
HOFSTETTER Hugo
BOIVIN Guillaume
PICKRELL Riley
RAISBERG Nadav
VAN ASBROECK Tom
ZABEL Rick

Uno-X Mobility
WÆRENSKJOLD Søren
KRISTOFF Alexander
TILLER Rasmus
ABRAHAMSEN Jonas
FREDHEIM Stian
GUDMESTAD Tord
RESELL Erik Nordsæter

Bingoal-WB
DESAL Ceriel
DE MEESTER Luca
VAN DER BEKEN Aaron
WEEMAES Sasha
SALBY Alexander
VERMOOTE Jelle
BLOUWE Louis

Q36.5 Pro Cycling Team
CHRISTEN Fabio
LUDVIGSSON Tobias
MAŁECKI Kamil
MONK Cyrus  
ROSSKOPF Joey
STEIMLE Jannik
TOWNSEND Rory

Team Flanders-Baloise
VANHOOF Ward
HESTERS Jules
CRAPS Lars
VERCOUILLIE Victor
DEWEIRDT Siebe
VANDEVELDE Yentl
VANDENSTORME Dylan

TotalEnergies
TURGIS Anthony
DUJARDIN Sandy
VAN GESTEL Dries
BONIFACE Lucas
GACHIGNARD Thomas
JEANNIÈRE Emilien
MANZIN Lorrenzo

Paris-Roubaix 2024 women's start list

AG Insurance-Soudal Team
(LE COURT) PIENAAR Kimberley
RIJNBEEK Maud
PLUIMERS Ilse
BOOGAARD Maaike
LOUW Anya

Canyon-SRAM Racing
CHABBEY Elise
PALADIN Soraya
CROMWELL Tiffany
SKALNIAK-SÓJKA Agnieszka
BÄCKSTEDT Zoe
TOWERS Alice

Ceratizit-WNT
BERTON Nina
LACH Marta
ALONSO Sandra
DE ZOETE Mylène
FIDANZA Arianna
SCHWEINBERGER Kathrin

FDJ-SUEZ
BROWN Grace
KRAAK Amber
LE NET Marie
VERHULST-WILD Gladys
VIGILIA Alessia
WIEL Jade

Fenix-Deceuninck
CANT Sanne
TRUYEN Marthe
DE WILDE Julie
KUIJPERS Evy
COUZENS Millie
SCHWEINBERGER Christina

Human Powered Health
WOOD Alice
GROSSETÊTE Maëlle
CORDON-RAGOT Audrey
KASPER Romy
RAGUSA Katia
WILLIAMS Lily

Lidl-Trek
VAN DIJK Ellen
BALSAMO Elisa
BRAND Lucinda
SANGUINETI Ilaria
BÄCKSTEDT Elynor
HANSON Lauretta

Liv-AlUla-Jayco
PATE Amber
PATERNOSTER Letizia
CAMPBELL Teniel
HOWE Georgie
KOREVAAR Jeanne
SMULDERS Silke

Movistar Team
RUIZ PÉREZ Laura
RUIZ PÉREZ Lucía
GUTIÉRREZ Sheyla
SIERRA Arlenis
NORSGAARD Emma
BIANNIC Aude

Roland
COLES-LYSTER Maggie
COLLINELLI Sofia
EKLUND Nathalie
NGUYỄN Thị Thật
SWINKELS Sylvie
VETTORELLO Giorgia

dsm-firmenich PostNL
GEORGI Pfeiffer
KOOL Charlotte
BARBIERI Rachele
HENGEVELD Daniek
KOCH Franziska
NELSON Josie

SD Worx-Protime
MARKUS Femke
KOPECKY Lotte
WIEBES Lorena
GUARISCHI Barbara
MAJERUS Christine
CECCHINI Elena

Visma-Lease a Bike
VON BERSWORDT Sophie
NOOIJEN Lieke
VOS Marianne
VIGIE Margaux
RIEDMANN Linda
VEENHOVEN Nienke

UAE Team ADQ
CONSONNI Chiara
CARBONARI Anastasia
HOLDEN Elizabeth
KUMIEGA Karolina

Uno-X Mobility
CONFALONIERI Maria Giulia
AHTOSALO Anniina
ANDERSEN Susanne
DIDERIKSEN Amalie
KOERNER Rebecca

Cofidis Women
CASTRIQUE Alana
BERTEAU Victoire
FORTIN Valentine
ROY Sarah
TALBOT Josie
VAN HAAFTEN Kirstie

Lifeplus Wahoo
KING Eluned
LEECH Madelaine
VAN DER WOLF Babette
BURLOVÁ Kristýna
RYSZ Kaja
GONZÁLEZ Alicia

St Michel-Mavic-Auber93
AVOINE Alison
FOURNIER Roxane
POMPANON Margot
ROUSSEL Elyne
LE MOUEL Célia
FAHY Camille

EF Education-Cannondale
BORGHESI Letizia
JACKSON Alison
HENTTALA Lotta
KESSLER Nina
LABECKI Coryn
RÜEGG Noemi

Arkéa-B&B Hotels
LE DEUNFF Marie-Morgane
FAHLIN Emilia
FOUQUENET Amandine
MORICHON Anais
TRÉGOUËT Maurène
DE FRANCESCO Danielle

Team Coop-Repsol
TACEY April
RÅNES BYE Camilla
GREENWOOD Monica
KAGEVI Stina
TUISK Aidi Gerde
VAN ROOIJEN Eline

VolkerWessels Women's Pro Cycling Team
BEULING Femke
VAN HELVOIRT Lisa
POLAND Meis
VANHOVE Marith
SOUREN Scarlett
VAN ROOIJEN Sofie

Team Komugi-Grand Est
MAGRI Silvia
MILETTE Laury
PÉLOQUIN Joséphine
BURI Fabienne
KVASNIČKOVÁ Eliška

Winspace
VALENTIN Constance
AUBRY Julia
BERNARD Floraine
NERLO Aurela
TANG Xin
ZENG Luyao

Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) took a record-equalling victory at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday, joining an exclusive club of riders who have won the race three times. 

The world champion launched his winning move on the Koppenberg, the twelfth of 17 rain-soaked hellingen climbs, with 45km to go. There, as his competitors unclipped and scaled the 20% slope by foot, the Dutchman sailed clear. 

He then soloed over the Oude Kwaremont and the Paterberg, on to the line in Oudenaarde. Over a minute later, Luca Mozzato (Arkéa - B&B Hotels) pipped Michael Matthews (Jayco-AlUla) to second in a photo finish. The Australian was then relegated, with Nils Politt (UAE Team Emirates) rounding out the podium. 

Only seven men in history have won the Tour of Flanders three times, among them Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara and Johan Museeuw. 

Van der Poel's victory came in the absence of his career-long rival, Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike), who suffered “several fractures” in a crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen on Wednesday and pulled out of the Monument. 

How it happened

One of the biggest races in the calendar, attacks for the victory started from 100km to go. The first meaningful move came courtesy of Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who accelerated on the 400m-long Molenberg, agitating the bunch, and pulling away a select group of the race favourites, save for Van der Poel, who bided his time in the group behind. 

When the Dutchman zipped across the gap 10km later, Pedersen attacked again off the front. Van der Poel would not earn his third win easily, it became clear. His Alpecin-Deceuninck team-mate Gianni Vermeersch followed Pedersen to police the move. 

With 55km to go, on the second of three ascents of the Oude Kwaremont, Van der Poel caught and passed the leading duo. Would he go solo? Not just yet. The group reassembled a few kilometres later, and scaled the Paterberg as one.

Ivan García Cortina (Movistar) led onto the Koppenberg, the steepest of the hellingen in the race, but fell victim to a mechanical and stepped off onto the cobbles. 

As the Spaniard tinkered frantically with his bike, Van der Poel flew over his shoulder. One bike length, two bike lengths. The gap to his rivals behind grew on the slippery, double-figure gradients. Matteo Jorgenson (Visma-Lease a Bike) chased, while almost every other rider unclipped and walked up the cobbles. A peculiar sight,  befitting of the sportive held the day before, but telling of the difficulty of the pitch.

For the six-time cyclo-cross world champion, the Koppenberg was light work. His seven-second advantage to Jorgenson stretched out on the descent. Within moments, he was almost two minutes clear, and cruising over the famous finale pairing of the Oude Kwaremont and the Paterberg. 

With the finish line in sight, Van der Poel slowed to freewheel and soak in the moment. He then lifted his bike above his head, a Belgian-born Dutchman, triumphant in Flanders once again.

"It's one of the hardest races I've ever done," Van der Poel said afterwards. It was also one of his most spectacular victories. 

Results

Tour of Flanders 2024: Antwerp > Oudenaarde (270.8km)

1. Mathieu van der Poel (Ned) Alpecin-Deceuninck, in 6-05-17
2. Luca Mozzato (Ita) Arkéa - B&B Hotels, +1-02
3. Nils Politt (Ger) UAE Team Emirates
4. Mikkel Bjerg (Den) UAE Team Emirates
5. António Morgado (Por) UAE Team Emirates
6. Magnus Sheffield (USA) Ineos Grenadiers
7. Oliver Naesen (Bel) Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale
8. Dylan Teuns (Bel) Israel-Premier Tech
9. Alberto Bettiol (Ita) EF Education-EasyPost
10. Toms Skujiņš (Lat) Lidl-Trek, all at same time

Motor doping: pro riders enhancing not their own performance but instead adding watts directly to the back wheel – what do you reckon? Are you shrugging your shoulders, or shouting about a hidden conspiracy that cycling continues to wilfully ignore? 

One year ago, my response was somewhere in between those two extremes. I’d heard rumours, of course, but I had no firm opinion either way. I’d seen the videos that many keyboard warriors cite as ‘proof’ of motor doping – Fabian Cancellara’s 2010 Tour of Flanders win and Chris Froome’s Mont Ventoux attack at the 2013 Tour de France – but I wasn’t convinced. Then something very strange and unexpected happened. 

In 2022, I chanced upon a YouTube video that reminded me of the story of Femke Van den Driessche, a Belgian cyclo-cross rider who was caught with a concealed motor inside her spare bike at the 2016 Cyclocross World Championships U23 race. She was the first – and to date only – rider to be sanctioned for motor doping. Within minutes, I was overwhelmed by curiosity about how and why the sport had been so quick to forget such a shameless scandal. Surely the threat hadn’t simply vanished. 

Over the past 12 months my obsession with motor doping has taken me across Europe, beginning with a trip to Belgium to meet Van den Driessche. She was just 19 when the motor was discovered, and I was determined to find out what motivated her to attempt this bizarre form of cheating. This led me to bigger questions: was Van den Driessche really the only one? Can we be confident that motors haven’t infiltrated the pro peloton to a far greater extent? The result of my investigations is a six-part documentary, Ghost in the Machine, a podcast series examining motor doping in greater depth than has ever been attempted before. 

In this feature, I want to explain why I’m still preoccupied by the question of whether motor doping is the biggest threat to cycling’s integrity since the darkest days of blood doping, and whether it’s being brushed under the carpet by the sport’s authorities, fearful of the damage another cheating scandal could do. So without further ado, here are the top five reasons why I’ve been completely engrossed in this investigation – and why none of us should dismiss the threat. 

>>> Listen now to Ghost in the Machine.

1. Van den Driessche’s story doesn’t add up

For the podcast, I spoke at length with both Femke Van den Driessche and family friend Nico the man who claimed that it was his bike – the one with the motor hidden inside it. No spoiler alert necessary when I tell you that it was clear both Femke and Nico were sticking to the agreed script. But their claim doesn’t really add up. 

The UCI told me that not only was the bike Van den Driessche’s size, with her name printed on it, but also that it was painted in blue stars to represent her win at the U23 European Championships three months before she was busted. What’s more, the bike was manufactured by Wilier only a handful of months before it was found to contain a concealed motor – immediately rubbishing Nico's statement that he inherited the bike from Van den Driessche at the end of the 2014/15 cyclocross season. Not that further proof was needed, but the UCI also informed me that it had seen photographic and video evidence that Van den Driessche used that very same bike in other races. The bike was easily identified by the seatpost and – permission to snigger – the button to activate the motor tucked away under the handlebar tape. 

Both Van den Driessche and Nico were central to cycling’s most-feared crime. Still now, the thought of a rider winning races with a hidden motor is utterly enraging. Without a meaningful explanation in this case – the only motor discovered at a pro race – it is surely impossible to accurately appraise the risk of it happening again. 

2. Many within the sport admit their suspicions

What has been most striking and revealing for me is the near-universal acceptance within the sport that other riders aside from Van den Driessche were winning pro races with motors hidden in their bikes. While no one has presented any evidence – and yes, this really matters – the majority of the cycling insiders I have spoken with, from UCI presidents and Tour de France winners to staff members of national governing bodies and mechanics, have indicated to me, either explicitly or implicitly, that they believe hidden motors have been used at the top level of the sport. 

And there’s a very clear reason as to why they think this: it was so easy to get away with. Hidden motor technology has existed since the late 1990s, but no tests to detect them were introduced until 2016 – coincidentally or not, the first day of bike-scanning was the very day Van den Driessche was caught. 

In episode two of the podcast, two journalists, one Italian and one French, recount separate stories about how they came close to finding proof of motors at the top level. Maybe one day someone will cough up, or maybe they won’t. What I am confident about, though, is that most of those in-the-know inside cycling are convinced Van den Driessche wasn’t the only one. 

3. Evading detection is shockingly easy

 It should be stressed that the technology exists to easily hide a motor in a bike – modern motors are tiny, subtle, and powerful. How do I know? Because I’ve ridden a bike with a concealed motor inside it – and it blew my mind. 

Despite claiming that they test for hidden motors at every men’s and women’s WorldTour race with a trio of detection systems in place, the UCI’s testing is highly inconsistent – something I expose on the podcast. For example, the world governing body didn’t test a single bike in the 2023 Giro d’Italia’s first two time trials, and at the Vuelta España, the x-ray machine – described as their best weapon against mechanical fraud – wasn’t used until the final week. 

Moreover, very few people in the sport have faith in the magnetic iPad scanner that accounts for the vast majority of tests. Another problem is that the UCI is doing the testing itself, eerily reminiscent of its failed approach to anti-doping in the 1990s. Why isn’t an independent body in charge of scanning for illicit motors? And why does the UCI not let anyone see images of the x-ray scans? 

In a statement, the UCI said: "As for any process under the authority of UCI Commissaires, the verification of equipment is not only carried out confidentially to preserve the integrity of the process but also to prevent any disclosure of private information. In a similar manner to anti-doping tests, all bike checks under the technological fraud testing program are protocoled and relevant information kept on file, including but not limited to x-ray images, for potential use in formal or disciplinary proceedings."

Without transparency, it’s impossible to be convinced that the UCI has a grip on the threat. 

4. Governing bodies are terrified of the fallout

Another recurring suspicion during my investigation has been the idea that if a WorldTour rider was caught with a motor, the sport might choose not to confront it, for fear of the potential fallout. When I spoke to Brian Cookson, who was UCI president at the time Van den Driessche was caught, he did not downplay the threat. “This was an existential threat to the sport,” he admitted. And one former pro who rode in the biggest races told me: “If they found a motor in the bike of a big pro, they wouldn’t make it public, as it would bring the sport down.” 

I don’t share the conviction that it would be the end of the sport. OK, sponsors of teams implicated would surely withdraw their funding, but people would still watch cycling, and sponsors would return. Oakley was associated with Lance Armstrong, but it is as invested in cycling today as it was 25 years ago. The more likely outcome of a big-name rider being found with a motor would be that the sport is set back financially for several years, at a time when it is desperate for additional investment. 

The pessimistic and widely held view that motor doping could kill off cycling as we know it has led many to suspect a cover-up. Indeed, at the 2023 Tour de France several staff members of various teams shared unverified anecdotes with me of teams being caught with motors in previous years, or of suspicious activity. According to them, the truth was never outed. It’s very easy to dismiss the chatter around motors as paranoia. It’s not lost on me that cycling, given its past, attracts a great deal of cynicism and conspiracy-mongering – and Van den Driessche remains the only sanctioned motor doper. But might it be true that the sport just cannot stomach such a big scandal? 

5. The code of silence lives on

Immediately after I asked Tadej Pogačar about motor doping, in December, four journalists from four different countries interrogated me: “Why would you ask that question?” They seemed baffled, even affronted. It was yet another indication of the hush-hush nature of the topic – the ‘say nothing’ culture we know only too well. Anything to avoid bringing the sport into further disrepute. But we ought to remember that sportspeople have always found innovative ways to cheat, and, sadly, probably always will. Honestly, I don’t know if motors are being used today, and I accept that the risks for a pro doing so would be very high – but I know it’s possible. 

Those who don’t believe that motors are even a threat argue that too many people surrounding the motor-doping rider would need to know about it, thereby making the risk of whistleblowing just too great. They may be right. This remains, for me, the strongest argument for disbelieving the existence of motors in pro cycling. However, hushing up the conversation around the threat of motor doping plays into the hands of the would-be cheats. It’s only by having meaningful debate, being transparent and accepting the ever-present potential for skulduggery, that we can guard the sport against cheating in whatever form it may take.

Co-writer's view: ‘Just another conspiracy? Maybe not…’

CW features editor David Bradford on how his involvement in the Ghost in the Machine podcast altered his view on motor doping 

When Chris first asked me to help write the script for Ghost in the Machine, while being flattered I was also slightly bemused. Up until then, I’d regarded motor doping as just another conspiracy theory – motors hidden in pros’ bikes seemed barely more credible than 5G chips hidden in Covid vaccines. There’s always a huddle of paranoid people noisily advancing wildly cynical notions. But then I began to reckon with the evidence, the weird circumstances of Femke Van den Driessche’s case, the countless suspicions about other riders – emanating not just from the usual online trolls but in many cases from people well connected at the highest level of the sport – as well as the sketchy detection protocols and the ever-developing motor tech. I haven’t exactly changed my mind, but I’m now far more open to the possibility that motor doping has played a decisive part in some of cycling’s biggest races. All credit to Chris for having the tenacity to pursue this investigation further and deeper than anyone else has dared. If motor doping really was – or is – the terrible threat that many people suspect, Ghost in the Machine has gone a long way to waking us up to what needs to be done to ensure that the ruleenforcers stay at least one step ahead of the would-be cheats

How to listen

Just search Ghost in the Machine wherever you get your podcasts, or click this link.

The full version of this article was published in the 8th February 2024 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine. Subscribe online and get the magazine delivered to your door every week.

Tomorrow morning on BBC One, it's the clash of the Antipodes/North Africa as the irresistible force of Tunisia meet the unmovable object of Australia, in a clash that's gonna go down in history as one of the many football matches that are happening this weekend. Meanwhile, there are old scores to be settled at the Al Janoub Stadium, scores like 1-0 and 2-2 that have happened in previous years.

This might be almost a complete ripoff of a Mitchell and Webb sketch from ages ago, but it is useful to show the overwhelming nature of a World Cup that is overtaking seemingly everything else right now, even cycling. Ridiculous. 

If you want to be distracted from such delights as the Netherlands vs Ecuador, or indeed Poland vs Saudi Arabia, games that will obviously be special, then Tweets of the Week is here to remind you that cycling exists.

Of course, it's the off season for road cycling, and nothing really seems to be happening apart from endless Mark Cavendish or Nairo Quintana rumours. Even the doping scandals are a bit dull. However, here are some choice social media cuts for you to enjoy. And remember, cyclo-cross and track cycling are exciting, even if they don't seem like it sometimes. Try something new!

Or watch the football, I'm not your boss.

1. Fabian Cancellara has a spare PlayStation 5 that he wants to sell to you, or something. I dunno, I haven't won that many Monuments, but I would probably just take it back to the shop. According to his Instagram, his Twitter was hacked. If I were a hacker, I would probably employ a better scam

2. If you had been waiting to get into cyclo-cross, maybe watch this video of Tom Pidcock battling through the field last weekend to almost claim victory. It really is like Mario or something

3. Or if cyclo-cross isn't your thing, maybe you should try track cycling? At the Six Days of Ghent, there's even stripping involved, for some reason

4. There are some road names that are not particularly worthy, but it does seem to make sense for Annemiek van Vleuten to have her own bike path. Who wants to go?

5. Iljo Keisse was apparently crowned Emperor of Ghent last weekend, although he does look more like someone who has just been to Burger King

6. Onto the World Cup. Geraint Thomas's podcast recording with Aaron Ramsey does not have appeared to help the Wales team, maybe they need the Ineos rider in there somewhere

7. The World Cup in Qatar has helpfully shown that everything in cycling is not that bad, after all...

8. Lotto Soudal got into the World Cup spirit, including, confusingly, Caleb Ewan. Mate, Australia are in this competition too, you know that, right?

9. Tom Dumoulin has retired from cycling and has gone full gap year, heading to Nepal to find himself. Let's hope he comes back with a new perspective on life

10. SD Worx went to California to train, and visit Specialized, and it just seems like they had the best time ever? I'm jealous

11. I don't think ice hockey is big in the Netherlands, but here are some of the top female riders in the world, mostly Dutch, watching it anyway

12. And finally, Wout van Aert appears to be targeting the Michael Bublé market with this album

Fabian Cancellara knows more than most former professionals about how to hit the ground running. During his illustrious career he’s taken eight stage victories at the Tour de France, which include five on the opening day alone.

His expertise doesn’t end there. Throughout his time racing the Tour de France, he has led the race for a total of 29 days which is the most of any rider who has not won the race overall.

Looking back on his success, Cancellara told Cycling Weekly how everything needed time to reach the highest level in the sport. However, like most others in cycling, the Swiss ex-pro has noticed the speed with which the new generation of riders are reaching the top.  

“You can see the change of cycling with the young athletes now," he tells Cycling Weekly. "Now we are seeing riders of much younger ages getting wins, performing and competing in the front. It’s so different now to when I was riding when you saw riders of much older ages winning. Today we are seeing that cycling has become a modern trend sport with all the training, the new aerodynamics, the equipment, the nutrition that has made a huge step. That’s why everyone is faster than before and we are getting more intense races.” 

AGGRESSIVE RACING ON THE ARENBERG

However, if you want to win the Tour overall this year, he believes that making the most of the modern day equipment that's available and racing aggressively on the cobblestones next week will be key. As well as his expertise in time trialling, Cancellara is the ‘King of the Cobbles’ and has won Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders three times apiece. Stage five (6 July) to Arenberg is widely predicted to be a gripping spectacle and one in which he expects to see the overall favourites at the forefront of the action. 

“I would still ride the cobbled stage the same way I have done in the years before because today you have the new equipment, you have your team and you ride as a team, you will need to be at the front and give it a go,” Cancellara said.

“For sure guys like Van Aert will challenge but you could even see a guy like Tadej Pogačar or even Roglic they also now know how to ride over those cobbles. It’s not anymore that those climber guys and favourites can’t ride over the cobbles. What’s changed is the team's equipment, they now have wider tyres, different bikes they can change and then to attack.” 

Cancellara added: “I haven’t seen in detail which cobbles they’re going to do but for sure it will be tough.  It will be a nervous day, a crazy day where we might see a lot of damage like we have already seen in the other years they’ve done this on the rainy cobbled stages or even on the dry cobbled stage that I did. It’s going to be a special day to watch and it could be more crucial than any other stage.”

Nowadays Cancellara still remains involved in the world of cycling and has recently launched a new limited edition kit in partnership with Le Col. The jersey that they’ve collaborated on is an homage to the former champion's distinguished palmarès. 

“Putting all of the jerseys I have worn in my career in a final piece is amazing. We all have different great ideas so we can put them together. It’s great to put lots of different colours from different jerseys I have worn and that it doesn’t look too much. I think the end result with the whites and the reds means everything has a place as every team has been so important for me,” he said. 

The sky was a palette of greys, the clouds concocting fierce, horizontal winds that whipped up and hammered the persistent hard rain into the windows incessantly. The thermometer registered three degrees.

Workers, parents and children all left their houses wrapped in their most protective winter coats, wondering when March would relent and offer some respite.

Inside the walls of a Belgian hotel in Kortrijk, an animated Fabian Cancellara opened the blinds, smiled. "He could not lie in his bed," his team-mate Matti Breschel laughs. "He was an energy bomb."

The Danish Saxo Bank team were staying in the Flandrian town for four weeks as part of the 2010 northern Classics races and Cancellara was tipped as one of the favourites.

In his own unassuming, shrugging-of-the-shoulders manner, he waved it all off. "He was dealing with the pressure and nervousness in his own way," Breschel remembers. "He never isolated himself and was very social. He was fun to be around."

Talk on the outside was a reflection of talk on the inside. "I think people maybe underestimated him a bit because you couldn’t really see if he was concentrated," Breschel explains. "But the more he spoke about himself, the more confidence he got. And he was speaking about himself constantly, in the third person, practising this and that. In his charming way, he was a bit of a prima donna, but with a glint in his eye. I thought, ‘OK, man, this guy is onto something special.’"

Breschel’s assumptions would prove to be correct. In the following weeks, Cancellara would go on to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, becoming just the 10th rider to do so in the same season. Months later, he would lead the Tour de France for six days, and then wrap up a season of eight wins by becoming time trial world champion for the fourth consecutive time.

The Swiss tells us: "2010 was, yeah, I’ve never thought so much about it in depth before, but it was such a crazy year. An amazing year, one of the best. It was a winning year."

Worlds regret

Entering his ninth season as a pro, with a palmarès already boasting a gold medal from the Olympics, wins at Roubaix and Milan-San Remo, 16 days as leader of the Tour de France and three rainbow bands, Cancellara was angry with himself, still seething about mistakes he had made in September 2009 at the Worlds, at not becoming a double world champion in the road race.

"I won the time trial and put myself in a position where I scared people for the road race," he reflects. "But I made mistakes and, honestly, it was hard for me to recover. Mendrisio was bad because I didn’t win [the road race]. That experience gave me another motivation. I had a good winter, went to the Canary Islands and everything went well. I felt bad, but I turned it into a positive and what happened? I won Flanders and Roubaix."

Twenty-eight at the start of the year, Cancellara began his season in the Middle East, racing the Tour of Qatar and Tour of Oman, winning the latter outright. He then returned to Europe, but failed to take wins in any of the three Italian races, Tirreno-Adriatico, Strade Bianche and Milan-San Remo, which led to some commentators questioning Saxo Bank.

But Breschel’s win at Dwars door Vlaanderen helped ease the pressure and boosted morale, and three days later, at E3 Prijs Vlaanderen, Cancellara adhered to his star billing. "Harelbeke always turns into a crazy race, it’s never like, ‘Oh, cool, I won,’" the 11-time Swiss champion says.

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"I remember the last 3km with [Tom] Boonen and this is where our battle started. I was super-fast and I beat the Belgian king, in the Belgian national jersey. We had already had many battles, but the way I won, the attack, just before the finish and before the corner, it wasn’t planned to go there. It just came to me naturally.

"This gave me a huge boost of confidence. It was like breaking glass, breaking a wall. I won for the first time a semi-Classic and a big one before the real one."

The joy of winning

Boosted by victory, the hotel in Kortrijk became the operations headquarters, with the assembled team of riders and sports directors planning not ways in which Cancellara could win Flanders and Roubaix, but how he would win.

"I was racing to win because I love to win," Cancellara says. “I always tried to do everything to get the maximum out of my body.

"With the people who were around me, I tried to maximise the possibility. There were sacrifices on the family side, on my social life with my friends. I was pushing the staff, the equipment, the training, riders. We said: ‘Let’s not just try and win; no, let’s destroy.’ Winning was not just our focus."

Team-mate Stuart O’Grady recalls: "We would be sitting around in our hotel rooms and saying, ‘Mate, everyone expects you to attack here, so let’s attack two climbs earlier. Let’s take control when they don’t expect it.’

"We were messing around because we had to come up with different ways. ‘OK, this team did this last year and the year before someone attacked here, so we will be ready for them this time.’ We came up with masterplans, we were taking control, having fun with it and we would go out and deliver and win."

"We were all very committed," Breschel says. "People were sacrificing themselves 100 per cent for each other and that was the main difference. We had a super strong team, and we were a group that had been together for up to five years. We weren’t just good team-mates, but also good friends. We were all captains.

"We were very dominant on the bike, and off the bike we had fun. We had so much confidence that we were setting the pace in the races and normally Quick-Step did that."

O’Grady feels emboldened by that swagger even now as we speak. "We didn’t have to be walking around beating our chests and calling ourselves the Wolfpack," the Australian says, in reference to the moniker that the all-conquering Belgian Quick-Step team later adopted.

"We had a plan, we didn’t tell anyone, and we had some fun, let things happen. We knew that if we dropped Fabian off at 50km to go –sometimes 80km – he would podium."

Angel delight

The day before the Ronde, the team started to use a new bike with a bigger fork, designed to make riding on the cobbles more efficient. Breschel and Cancellara had mid-race issues, with the front brakes coming loose, and both were forced into bike changes.

Television footage of Cancellara changing his bike have long since prompted accusations of mechanical doping, though Cancellara has always rebuffed such claims. "It wasn’t nice and I still have that bicycle at home," he says. "But in the end I didn’t care about it." And the racing was explosive.

On the climb of the Molenberg, signalling 44km left to race, Cancellara attacked, only joined by Boonen. "Honestly, I didn’t attack," he insists. "I did a small acceleration out of the saddle and suddenly I was in front. Everyone was like, ‘Uh, I can’t breathe.’ It took their breath away."

Thirty kilometres later, on the Muur, Cancellara distanced Boonen. "I accelerated and just continued the way I was moving and Tom couldn’t follow."

Cancellara powered to the finish line, and as he closed in on his first of what would be three Flanders victories, he draped himself in a Swiss flag from the crowd and dangled an angel to the TV cameras.

"My family gave me this angel as good luck in the morning and I wasn’t sure if I should take it or leave it," he recounts. "But I took it and with 100m to go I thought, ‘Hey, let’s show my family that I have the angel in my pocket.’ The Swiss flag was there by coincidence, and I also had the most beautiful and stylish jersey on the planet as Swiss champion with the Swiss cross.

"I’m not superstitious, but this story of taking the small, lucky angel from my family, showing it to the world and winning Flanders ahead of the champion of Belgium, my first Flanders win, it sounds too crazy. It’s like a Hollywood blockbuster!"

Party on hold

Opening his account at Flanders, though, didn’t warrant a celebration back in Kortrijk. O’Grady remembers: "Normally we would go back to the hotel and celebrate after Flanders, but we were like, ‘Nope, let’s keep this on hold for another week, let’s be completely focused and we can have a bigger party at the end of Roubaix when we have won that.’

"That was the mentality we had. Most people would celebrate until all hours and deservedly so, but that’s how we went. Looking back, it might look greedy, but he had the form of his life and he had sacrificed for months, living in a hotel for a month. Man, we weren’t doing this for fun. We were there to put on a bloody good race."

Instead, the comedian, prankster, leader and the man the entire team sacrificed themselves for, had changed his tone and approach.

"The weeks before Flanders," Breschel says, "Fabian was more calm, running around on the walls.

“But I remember pre-Roubaix he was more concentrated, very focused. He knew if he made no mistakes he could win. I remember the recon on wet pavé and we were very concentrated."

Six days of assiduous preparation led to the start in Compiègne, 259km from the velodrome that he won in four years previously.

Whereas at Flanders he had to bide his time, in Roubaix he attacked solo with 48km still to race. "I knew once I had 10 metres on the others they would be scared, so my motivation was to deliver a psychological blow," he said after the race.

That he did, extending his lead to three minutes as he pedalled over nine sectors solo, and riding into the fabled velodrome two minutes ahead of the chasers. "I just continued to ride," he says in his matter-of-fact demeanour.

"Others stopped because they thought the race was over. It was a special feeling, and I was highly emotional, proud, satisfied, many positive things. It was awesome."

Breschel’s memory is succinct and clear. "He was unbeatable that day." And afterwards? "Then we had that big party."

Tour target

The end of the Classics brought about a brief break for Cancellara, but soon he was back doing moto-pacing sessions, often with sports director Kim Andersen. "We’d be there the whole day, always building up and getting faster and faster," the Danish coach recalls. "He knew that if everything went perfectly well in training, he could win."

He raced the Tour of California as a training race, and then won the opening prologue and finished second in the final day’s time trial of his home race, the Tour de Suisse.

It was preparation for his next goal. The Tour de France, starting with a 8.9km prologue in Rotterdam, offered him the opportunity to wear yellow for a week, given the ensuing kind-looking stages.

"It was a target to win the prologue and that was the main thing: about delivering on what was expected and in time trials I was delivering," he says.

He admits that at the turn of the year he shifted focus away from racing against the clock to winning one-day races. "I had won everything in time trials, multiple times," he says. "The more you win the same thing, the more you lose the will and determination and motivation."

Regardless of his changing motivation, the peloton feared him. "It was a fast course with Tony Martin and so on, but this is what is crazy: people were expecting to be second to me. 'Cancellara is going to win,’ they said. And when you deliver, that’s special."

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After ceding the jersey on stage three, he reclaimed it the following day, finally losing it for good on stage seven. He then conserved energy and won the penultimate stage, a 51km time trial, his sixth Tour stage win.

Yellow was wrapped around him for five days as the peloton snaked its way south from the Netherlands to France, and Breschel remembers him being as buoyant as ever. "Having the yellow jersey meant that he was the one rider everyone focused on and he liked that. The more attention he got, the better he duly became."

Four in a row

From the mountains of France, Cancellara raced the Vuelta a España – his third place in stage 17’s time trial his best result, before heading to the World Championships, held in Geelong, Australia.

Down Under, he became the first elite men’s rider to win four successive time trial titles – despite his lack of focus against the clock.

"I had to find another motivation," he says. "And the motivation was to make history." Briton David Millar was second, 1.02 back: "There is no doubt that he is a phenomenon," the Scot said of Cancellara.

The win in Geelong wrapped up a season of eight individual wins, four podiums, 38 team victories and being crowned winner of the Vélo d’Or. "My season was already perfect with the spring and the Tour, and now this victory today," he beamed in Australia.

He left Saxo Bank in the winter to join Leopard-Trek, and sitting in his house in Switzerland, he remembers with fondness what happened a decade ago. "I had crazy, special, fantastic years; years where I scared people. Not scared, but surprised people. I was just riding, with passion, with a will and a want to win bike races.

"I respected people, I wasn’t arrogant, I was focused. I wouldn’t say selfish, sure, I had an ego, but I performed. I did the maximum and I am proud of what I achieved."

The year impacted on his life, too. "I loved the years with Bjarne Riis [team director] and CSC. Fantastic years, less politics, less thought, less social media except for Twitter.

"Cycling is not only about the riding: it’s about taking your life where you can get something out of it, where it can help in your life after cycling.

"Thanks to 2010 and the years after and the wins I got over the years, cycling helped me. Sport helped me."

This feature originally appeared in the print edition of Cycling Weekly, on sale in newsagents and supermarkets, priced £3.25.

Fabian Cancellara laments the cancellation of the Classics, but supports the global lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus.

Cancellara, a seven-time Monument winner, says that cycling can return once the world has dealt with the Covid-19 crisis.

The Swiss former pro said he’s thankful he’s still able to ride his bike outside in his region of Switzerland.

Speaking from his office in the de facto Swiss capital Bern last week, Cancellara told Cycling Weekly: “It’s quite intense, there’s a lot going on.

“We need to see the positives and not crack or just see the negatives.

“It’s sad we’re not seeing races at the moment, but this is the reality and we have to live with it and look to the next opportunity.”

The cycling calendar has been completely upended because of the pandemic, with the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix and the Giro d’Italia among the dozens of races suspended, while pro riders Maximilian Richeze and Fernando Gaviria (UAE Team Emirates) have both been diagnosed with Covid-19.

Richeze, who was put into quarantine at the UAE Tour with his sprinter Gaviria last month, has now tested negative and been released.

Cancellara himself has been forced to regroup because of coronavirus, after the launch of his new Gore clothing range in Belgium was cancelled, along with the Flanders edition of his unique race format Chasing Cancellara.

Fabian Cancellara is a Gore Wear ambassador. The Cancellara Collection, which unites top technologies with incredible cycling insight is available here.

He added: “Not seeing the favourites, not seeing a bike race, it’s unusual. But we have to do everything possible to lock down the system. As soon as the lockdown has worked out, then cycling restart.”

Cancellara, 39, said he can’t remember a time when the cycling calendar was disrupted this much, including the 2015 terror lockdown in Belgium and the swine flu outbreak in 2009-10 – Cancellara himself was diagnosed with swine flu during that pandemic.

>>> Fabian Cancellara’s new Gore Wear collection released 

He added: “I was positive for the swine and we had three weeks of flu in our house, but it seems this virus is much more serious than that.

“We have to follow the guidelines and then we can go back to normal.

“We need patience.”

Allegations of using a motorised bike hurt Fabian Cancellara, the former time trial Olympic champion and Classics star, but he says he always proved himself at the highest level.

Cancellara retired in 2016 and is remembered as one of the greats over the cobbles of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. Rumours circulated in 2010 that the Swiss used a motor in his bike when he won both in the same season.

>>> Wout van Aert criticises Peter Sagan after Tour of Flanders

"In one way, it felt like a complement, but on the other hand, it felt bad," Cancellara told Belgian television Canvas.

"I don't need to prove anything to nobody. I proved for 10 years that I could ride at that level and the results were the same. Then people say this or that, he had one [a motorised bike], that's not nice. First they lift you up, then they point the finger at you."

Cancellara, who rivalled Tom Boonen every spring, won the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix three times each.

In 2010, video emerged alleging that Cancellara made strange hand movements coinciding with his accelerations. It appeared Boonen was at a stand still while Cancellara flew away on the Kapelmuur or when Cancellara soloed free in Paris-Roubaix.

"I had experiences from '08 after the Olympics. They came up with the whole [EPO] CERA situation with [Stephen] Schumacher. Carlos Sastre won the Tour de France [with Cancellara's team CSC/Saxo Bank], and after I won the Olympics. They said, they are so strong, maybe they do [cheat]. But in the end, there was nothing. We got put in one pot, that's sad," he added.

"Of course, it hurt me when it came out with the whole moto stuff. I was laughing because they said my legs looked like engines, that's a compliment, but if you go into the details, that's not nice."

Cancellara retired after winning the Olympic time trial again in 2016, taking the gold medal ahead of Tom Dumoulin and Chris Froome. The medals added to the four world championship titles he'd already taken in his career.

"I didn't have that many friends. The friends I had were mostly from the outside," Cancellara added.

"With my status and wins it was hard, I'm a concurrent for many. That is why maybe I wasn't liked by them, but I never had problems with any cyclist. I was a bad boy in certain moments, yeah, because I wanted to win races, this is why I was riding my bike.

"I can imagine it's normal [they say I wasn't liked in the peloton], but I'm curious why. Inside, I'm deeply soft. It's not easy for anyone on top. You think for Trump it's easy? Or for Merkel. Or Ronaldo. Or whoever is on top. If you cannot deal with it, you will fail. A lot of people love to see when you fail."

Classics legend Fabian Cancellara says Strade Bianche cannot be compared to the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix, as it stands alone.

The retired Swiss, winner of Flanders and Roubaix, closed his career after three wins over the white gravel roads around Siena in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

"Why's it so special? The dirt roads, the panorama of the Tuscan countryside. The magic of Siena. The undulating small paths. The tradition." Cancellara told La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.

"Oh, but please, let's stop with the comparisons with Flanders and Roubaix. The white gravel roads shine in their own right."

>>> Five things to look out for at the 2019 Strade Bianche

The race covers 184 kilometres with 63 kilometres of grave roads over 11 sectors. Comparisons come easily because the hills are as tough as those in Flanders and the gravel, both uphill and downhill, requires skills like those needed to ride the Roubaix pavé.

"It is really a gruelling race which is underestimated by many riders," 2018 winner Tiesj Benoot (Lotto-Soudal) said.

"Percentage-wise there is even more gravel in the Strade Bianche than cobbles in Paris-Roubaix. Moreover, there are around 3000 altitude metres to overcome."

The race began in 2007, first in the autumn. It moved to the spring and began to gain status, attracting more star riders and a WorldTour ranking.

Thibaut Pinot (Groupama-FDJ) said, "It deserves to be the sixth Monument in cycling."

The one thing it seems to lack compared to the five Monuments is history, only starting over a decade ago.

Like the Paris-Roubaix organisers, RCS Sport has begun to name sectors after three-time winners – so far only Cancellara.

Michał Kwiatkowski ( Team Sky) counts two victories but will not race in 2019.

>>> Sun expected to shine on Strade Bianche 2019 after brutal weather last year

"Perhaps the last one [was the most special], that of 2016, because compared to the first editions the race had grown a lot," Cancellara added.

"The fact that for my three victories they put my name on a gravel sector makes me proud today. I will not be in Siena this time, but I won't miss it on television."

Cancellara named Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma), Zdenek Stybar (Deceuninck - Quick-Step) and Greg Van Avermaet (CCC Team) as favourites for Saturday.

Fabian Cancellara has issued American former pro Phil Gaimon an invite to try and beat him during one of his 2018 Chasing Cancellara events.

Cancellara's invite comes after Gaimon repeated a rumour in his book Draft Animals that the Swiss rider may have used a hidden electric motor in his bike to win the 2010 editions of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

"Hi @philgaimon, I actually don’t know you, but I kindly invite you to beat me at one of my 8 #ChasingCancellara races, by next year 2018," wrote Cancellara on Twitter.

>>> Phil Gaimon issues statement on Fabian Cancellara motor doping allegation

"You choose the @chasecancellara - date out of 5 countries. I am very curious to see how much watt [sic] you can push! Start training!"

Cancellara finished his message with the hashtag "#nomotoneeded".

Gaimon was quick to respond to the challenge, saying "Are there cookies? Bike rides should have cookies" in reference to a running Gaimon joke that he loves eating cookies. However, at time of writing he has not stated that he will or will not ride against Cancellara.

The Chasing Cancellara events were created in 2017. Members of the public can enter to try and out-ride the Classics and time trial specialist over a 10-15km route.

Since retiring at the end of 2016, Gaimon has been attempting to beat numerous Strava segment records that were previously held by riders who he considers have doped. Many of his attempts have been filmed as part of his 'Worst Retirement Ever' series posted on his YouTube channel.

Earlier this week, Cancellara's lawyers demanded that the book be removed from sale in the wake of widespread reporting of the passage in Gaimon's relating to Cancellara.

Gaimon subsequently published a statement on his website that said he "repeated a rumor that’s well-documented and many years old" in his book.

He added: "Put a gun to my head and that’s what I believe so I’d be a liar if I left it out, but I claim no revelations or proof, so I don’t see it being 'taken off the shelves' except by the folks buying it".

Cancellara's invite could show a softening of the situation between the two former riders – or perhaps it's the start of a grand battle.

Phil Gaimon has issued a statement regarding the allegation made in his book Draft Animals that retired Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara could have used a hidden electric motor in his bike during his successful 2010 Classics campaign.

Gaimon published the statement online on Tuesday. Previously, Cancellara's lawyers had demanded that the publisher of Draft Animals remove it from sale and that Gaimon should issue an apology.

American former pro rider Gaimon said that he was merely repeating a 'well-documented' rumour relating to Cancellara's victories in the 2010 editions of the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix and that it was not an 'accusation'.

Cancellara has always denied that he ever used an electric motor.

>>> Fabian Cancellara’s lawyers demand book that alleges motor doping be withdrawn from sale

The full statement published on Gaimon's website is as follows:

In “Draft Animals,” I repeated a rumor that’s well-documented and many years old, and I presented it as such. I stand by my opinion, but it’s exactly that, and anyone who actually opened the book would know that what I said was far from an “accusation.”

Put a gun to my head and that’s what I believe so I’d be a liar if I left it out, but I claim no revelations or proof, so I don’t see it being “taken off the shelves” except by the folks buying it. Ironically, that part in the book is dismissing conspiracy theories about motors today as clickbait, and it’s now been turned into clickbait.

My friendship with Tom Danielson is a big part of the story, so usually when I get hate mail, it’s calling me a hypocrite for not being enough of a “doper hater.” I didn’t expect this to be pulled out of context or turned into mudslinging, and I’m sorry for anyone who’s wasted time or energy on it. That’s not how I wanted to sell books, and it’s not worth this headache.

There were some things I had to get off my chest and some tough times to share to give a picture of the sport as I experienced it, but if a juicy tell-all is what you’re looking for, don’t bother buying it. I don’t reference any scandal you haven’t heard before, and I’ll probably show empathy towards dopers that you want me to hate. I expect that type of reader will be disappointed.

The story I want to tell is about what it means to follow a dream to the bitter end–how hard I worked, how good I had to get and what I chose to put myself through, ultimately to suck at the highest level of cycling and make peace with it. It’s my truth and it’s the best I could do and I put a lot of time and emotion into it, but my opinions aren’t always popular, which I understand will make some people angry. I hope a few of you will read past the noise and enjoy “Draft Animals” for what it is.

As always, shoutout to everyone who gets it, everyone who takes the time to read the book (instead of a sentence that someone tweeted) before they judge, and I’m going for a bike ride.

The sport’s governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), said last week that it could launch an investigation into the claim that Cancellara used a motor if there was new information, although Gaimon's statement now makes it appear as though there is no fresh evidence.

Lawyers acting on behalf of Fabian Cancellara have requested that Phil Gaimon's book Draft Animals be removed from sale due its allegation that Cancellara used an electric motor to win high-profile races.

Cancellara's manager Armin Meier stated on Monday that they also want American former pro Gaimon to issue an apology.

"Our lawyers demand from the American publishing house Penguin Random House that the sale of the book is stopped immediately and that writer Phil Gaimon apologises," Meier said, reports Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.

>>> ‘It’s impossible that a motor was hidden’: Fabian Cancellara’s former mechanic rubbishes motor doping claims

Gaimon's book charts his experience chasing a professional contract and then life as a pro rider.

Writing about YouTube footage of Cancellara's 2010 wins in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, Gaimon said in the book: "When you watch the footage, his accelerations don't look natural at all, like he's having trouble staying on the top of the pedals. That f****r probably did have a motor."

Now retired, Swiss time trial and Classics specialist Cancellara was riding for the Saxo Bank team during the 2010 season, and his mechanic at the time, Rune Kristensen, said: "Had there been a motor stored in a bike, I would have discovered it. It would not be possible to avoid it.

"Fabian’s bikes were handled like all other bikes, so it’s impossible that something could be hidden."

>>> Fabian Cancellara motor doping claims could be investigated by UCI

The sport's governing body, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), has taken Gaimon's claims seriously and has said that if there is enough evidence it will launch an investigation.

A UCI spokesperson told Cycling Weekly on Friday, November 10, that the organisation was "not ruling out the possibility of investigating, especially if new information was made available".

Gaimon has played down the allegation, saying that they have been taken out of context of the chapter in his book.

"I might as well say something before more words get put in my mouth," Gaimon wrote on Twitter. "In Draft Animals I repeated a rumor that's well-documented and many years old, and I presented it as such. I stand by my opinion, but it's exactly that."

"Put a gun to my head and that's what I believe, so I'd be a liar if I left it out of the book, but I have no revelations or proof. Ironically, the context in the book is dismissing conspiracy theories about motors today as clickbait."

A former Team Saxo Bank mechanic has dismissed claims that Fabian Cancellara used a hidden motor to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in 2010 made by retired American rider Phil Gaimon

Writing in his new book Gaimon says: "When you watch the footage, his accelerations don’t look natural at all, like he’s having trouble staying on the top of the pedals."

Cancellara has not yet responded to Gaimon's claims, but has dismissed similar allegations in the past, and has now been defended by a former team mechanic.

>>> Amateur motor doping case: 'It's pathetic. All this to win three sausages and a packet of crisps'

Rune Kristensen, who now works for Quick-Step Floors but was a mechanic at Saxo Bank when Cancellara won the Flanders/Roubaix double in 2010, says that there was no way that Cancellara could have hidden a motor in his bike during those two races.

"In 2010, I was a mechanic at the two races with Cancellara's permanent mechanic, Roger Theel, and we jointly assembled all the team's bikes for spring Classics," Kristensen told Danish website Ekstrabladet.

"Had there been a motor stored in a bike, I would have discovered it. It would not be possible to avoid it. Fabian's bikes were handled like all other bikes, so it's impossible that something could be hidden."

Watch: What's it like to ride a motorised bike?

On Friday, in a presumably unrelated move, the UCI announced the appointment of former professional Jean-Christophe Péraud as its Manager of Equipment and the Fight against technological fraud. The sport's governing body also confirmed that it was "not ruling out" investigating Gaimon's claims against Cancellara.

However Kristensen insisted that if Cancellara had been using a hidden motor, then it would have been discovered by team mechanics at the time.

"Fabian's bikes were always locked in the trucks along with the other bikes after a race," Kristensen continued. "Had there been a motor, the bike would probably have been tucked away in a hotel room.

"If there was a motor, then would a mechanic have been allowed to wash the bike after a run? We all did that. I simply do not think it's possible to cheat with an electric motor without being discovered."

>>> UCI testing could be missing hidden motors in bikes, report suggests

Although there has only been one case of a professional rider being caught using a motor in a bike (Belgian rider Femke Van den Driessche was found to have a hidden motor in her spare bike in the pits at the Under-23 cyclocross World Championships in 2016) there have been two recent cases in amateur races.

Newly-elected UCI president David Lappartient has also pledged to step up the fight against so-called mechanical doping, with the appointment of Péraud one of his first steps in this direction.

Claims that Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara could have used a hidden electric motor during his career could be investigated by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).

The allegation was made by American former pro rider Phil Gaimon in his recently published autobiographical book Draft Animals.

Gaimon wrote about Cancellara's Classics victories in the 2010 Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, saying: "When you watch the footage, his accelerations don't look natural at all, like he's having trouble staying on the top of the pedals".

>>> Former rider Jean-Christophe Péraud appointed by UCI in ‘fight against technological fraud’

A UCI spokesperson confirmed to Cycling Weekly that its newly-elected president David Lappartient has said that they are "not ruling out the possibility of investigating, especially if new information was made available".

The UCI said that it would not be commenting further.

Gaimon's claim regarding Cancellara's performance in the 2010 Classics is not new after a YouTube video was posted shortly after his victories purportedly showing Cancellara accelerating away from rivals due to 'motor doping'.

Cancellara has not commented so far on Gaimon's book passage, but said after the original allegations surfaced in 2010 that he has never used a hidden motor. “I have showed that over the last 10 years that I have an engine in my body, not in my bike," Cancellara said.

"I think three million people watched YouTube and those people think they can create a problem. I don’t want to go into the subject of where is the button, how I changed gears. Come on!"

Hidden electric motors have been found in rider's bikes at events, though not as the highest level.

>>> UCI testing could be missing hidden motors in bikes, report suggests

Belgian rider Femke Van den Driessche was found to have a hidden motor in her spare bike in the pits at the Under-23 cyclocross World Championships in 2016.

Earlier this year, an amateur rider was caught with a hidden motor at a race in France.

On Friday, the UCI announced the appointment of former professional Jean-Christophe Péraud as its Manager of Equipment and the Fight against technological fraud.

Part of Péraud's role will be to co-ordinate checks for concealed motors.

Fabian Cancellara has said that he was never motivated by money during his illustrious cycling career.

The Swiss former time trial world champion and classics king said that it is a mistake to chase money rather than focus on the events themselves.

"Money is not what makes you happy at the end of the day," the 36-year-old said in an interview with expansion.com.

"There are other things. Obviously, to make ends meet, it's clear you need it."

He continued: "If you compete solely for the money, as a professional athlete, you do not get results. In my career, when it came to signing for one team or another, I always looked first and foremost at the sporting aspects."

Cancellara retired at the end of the 2016 season, and has just finished a sports management qualification at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland. He says that he is not interested in following the path of many ex-pro cyclists, who become coaches.

"I did not want to be coach of a cycling team or coach of athletes. That's not Fabian and I do not like it," he said.

>>> Think you can beat Fabian Cancellara? Now you can prove it

"I prefer to dedicate myself to the management of sporting events, step by step and starting from scratch."

Cancellara said that it was "not easy" for him to go back to studying, but that he was glad that he did. He is already a shareholder in events companies Tristar Triathlon and Chasing Cancellara, as well as working with personal sponsors such as Gore.

Although Cancellara still keeps fit, he says that he does not miss cycling competition, although he has started training for triathlons, but not to compete at the top level.

"I do not have time to play sports," he said.

>>> Fabian Cancellara: Watching the Classics from the sidelines

During his cycling career, Cancellara was one of the foremost time triallists and classics riders. He won the time trial world title on four occasions, and Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders on three occasions each.

In addition, he won eight stages of the Tour de France, three in the Vuelta a España, Milan-San Remo, Strade Bianche and many other victories during a pro career than spanned from 2001 to 2016.

Your chance to race against me! Can you beat me?

More info on https://t.co/k7G0yPbg9X#chasingcancellara pic.twitter.com/raA562WX5E

— Fabian cancellara (@f_cancellara) May 4, 2017

Fabian Cancellara has issued a challenge to the world's amateur cyclists: "see if you can beat me".

The Swiss former professional rider has announced a series of three 'Chasing Cancellara' events in his home nation, where members of the public try and out-ride the Classics legend over a 10-15km route.

"The race of your life," says the official event website. "Race against the Champion and try to overtake and beat him! How strong is #Spartacus still after his retirement?"

Riders can register online, with the first 100 of the 333 maximum to register getting automatic entry and the remaining participants chosen at random via a draw.

>>> Fabian Cancellara’s triple Strade Bianche wins honoured with special milestone

The events take place in Andermatt (June 25), Aigle to Villar-sur-Ollon (September 10) and Lugano (September 23). All three events are run on closed roads and finish with a post-race pasta party as part of the entry fee, which start at CHF 79 (£61.73 at time of writing).

A VIP Experience package is also available, which includes a 50-100km ride with Cancellara and evening dinner with him. More information is available via the Chasing Cancellara website.

Cancellara enjoyed a highly successful 15-year career as a professional rider before retiring at the end of last season. He was time trial world champion on four occasions, won seven stages of the Tour de France, won Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders on three occasions each, and was Olympic time trial champion in 2008 and 2016. Plus many more victories.

In other words, you'd have to be pretty good to beat him.

On April 6, 2003, Fabian Cancellara took to the start line in Bruges, to compete in his first ever Monument.

He finished the Tour of Flanders that day in an anonymous 73rd place, and DNF’d at Paris-Roubaix a week later — neither result providing any indication of the glittering career to come.

Fourteen years later the newly retired ‘Spartacus’ is readying himself to watch this brace of events he cherishes so much from the sidelines, and he’s not entirely sure how he’s going to feel: “I don’t know, they still have to come. I’m looking quite relaxed on those things but emotional-wise I’m still quite touched because I have a huge history with all these races.

“It’s a strange situation because I’m not competing any more. I don’t have a problem with that — I don’t feel bad, or sad, it’s just strange. I need to work out myself how I feel.”

While ongoing affiliations with Trek mean he should officially be cheering John Degenkolb and team-mates, it’s unlikely the Swiss, now 36, would begrudge his old jousting parter Tom Boonen (Quick-Step Floors) a fifth win at what will be the Belgian’s final Paris-Roubaix.

“He can do it. It’s possible,” says Cancellara of Boonen’s swansong effort.

“But it’s a really unpredictable race and even if you’re super-strong it doesn’t mean you can do a super thing. But of course, there are chances… there are chances.”

Watch: Paris-Roubaix essential guide

He sounds slightly dubious. And the idea that world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) will replace him as Boonen’s new arch-rival doesn’t fly with him either:

“After me it’s everything different. It will be different challenges, different winners — same as after Tom there will be everything different. So you cannot compare that.

"It’s going to be a new decade in cycling and there will be other battles. I will be left out, but the next few years will be quite interesting.

"I mean, Sagan is not under pressure any more, it’s about ‘can they beat him or not?’ — that’s the question.”

Cancellara himself may be ‘left out’, as he puts it, but he will be far from idle. In fact, he is already studying for a Certificate of Advanced Studies which encompasses sports management and marketing.

“It’s something I want to taste more now because I had a lot of practical [racing, one assumes], but it’s not enough to myself because I have quite big ambitions to myself.

"I had big ambitions as a rider so my ambitions are also in normal business.

“I’m not saying everything starts from zero but you have to calculate... because if you move one step forward but you don’t have the skills, you move three steps back.

>>> Fabian Cancellara: ‘They talk about Sagan and Van Avermaet, but it’s not the same as me and Tom’

"I want to have certain skills so if necessary I can use those.”

To exactly what ends he won’t divulge — only saying, “There are a few things going on. I can’t go into details but one is cycling, one is triathlon…”

He’s a member of the Laureus World Sports Academy and says he’s working on motivational speaking.

“Definitely I’m not just sitting home doing nothing. I need to find time to cycle, that is actually the biggest thing!”

It’s obvious that he’s a driven man. Whether it’s his studies, a future career or the world’s biggest bike races, the same fierce ambition burns within. And that, as he says, is how you become a winner in the Monuments:

“It’s the will — do not give up. The race is never finished. Especially Roubaix, the race is really never finished. It finishes on the finish line. It’s not only the capacity about how good a rider you are, it’s also about how mentally you can handle it.”

Whoever proves the strongest — mentally or otherwise — in the northern Classics this spring, Fabian Cancellara will be watching.

You can’t help but feel he’ll be wishing it was him, hands in the air once more, instead of standing at the sidelines, now just another onlooker.

Triple Tour of Flanders winner Fabian Cancellara questioned why Peter Sagan was riding so close to the barrier when he crashed on the final ascent of the Oude Kwaremont climb in Sunday’s race.

The world champion and 2016 winner of De Ronde was leading the chase of solo race leader Philippe Gilbert up the race’s penultimate climb with 16 kilometres to go when he crashed, taking Ag2r’s Oliver Naesen and Greg Van Avermaet with him. While Van Avermaet was able to get back on his bike quickly, Sagan hit the ground hard and eventually crossed the line in 27^th place.

The Slovak was riding on the smooth path on the left side of the climb off the cobbles close to the metal railings, with the duo close on his wheel behind. He admitted much of the responsibility for the crash after the race, and said he believed he got caught on a spectator’s coat or flag before hitting the barrier and tumbling to the ground.

>>> Peter Sagan on Tour of Flanders crash: ‘It was partly my fault’

However, Cancellara, who retired at the end of the 2016 season, said he believed Sagan made a mistake by choosing to ride too close to the barriers.

“We saw what happened, I don’t say the word but it’s like just a mistake,” Cancellara told Cycling Weekly at the Trek-Segafredo bus after the race, where he is now working as a brand ambassador for Trek bikes since retiring. “You don’t ride so close just to be smoother, it was bad, it was wrong.”

Cancellara beat Sagan into second at the 2013 edition of Flanders, yet the result was reversed last year on the Swiss’s final appearance in the race. Despite no longer racing, the 36-year old returned to the Belgian cobbles he knows so well by riding the Flanders Sportive last Saturday – even stopping to help a rider fix a mechanical.

And while mistakes like we saw on Sunday from Sagan are rare, Cancellara suggested the pressure and expectation on him every race could be starting to take its toll. Sagan only has his victory at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne this Classics campaign so far, despite coming close multiple times, which is likely to mean he’ll be eager to make amends in Paris-Roubaix on Sunday.

>>> Five things we learned from the Tour of Flanders

“He has pressure, he has expectation from all over. Everyone is watching him because he’s the rider who has caused damage a lot in the races to win with the way he’s won. Today he made a mistake; he paid,” Cancellara continued.

“It’s not only the pressure, it’s just generally because if he continues to win like he wins always then maybe it’s uninteresting. It’s sad that these things happen the way he crashed out, but again it’s his mistake – too close to the barrier and every rider knows that you don’t go too close.

“You see last week [at E3 Harelbeke and Ghent-Wevelgem], this week, the luck is not on his side. For sure he’s not happy about that so he wants to fight back. I think he wants to fight back next weekend [at Roubaix].”

Recently retired Classics great Fabian Cancellara, says that the rivalry between Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Greg Van Avermaet (BMC Racing) is not the same as what he had with Tom Boonen in their golden years.

The Swiss stopped last year after winning Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix three times each. Often, he crossed swords with Quick Step’s Belgian Tom Boonen, who retires this April 9 after Paris-Roubaix.

>>> ‘You’d better work until three kilometres from the finish, instead of whining and waiting’

"It was me or him, it was always me and him, or you'd get a one-off, nothing against the other riders," Cancellara told Sporza.

"The Tour of Flanders from 2010 affected that status, then there were years I was in and he wasn't, or I was out and he was in. Still we rode in the peloton for years and that [duel] status came up.

"Now they talk about Peter Sagan and Greg Van Avermaet, the new duel, but it's not the same duel that Tom and I delivered to each other or the people watching at home."

Van Avermaet took some of his biggest wins against the Slovakian world champion. This year and last, the Belgian won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad ahead of Sagan.

Watch: Tour of Flanders essential guide

He attacked up the Kemmelberg in Ghent-Wevelgem on Sunday, Sagan raced to join him, and left his rival on the flats with Jens Keukeleire (Orica-Scott).

"I had many moments against Tom, but for sure [the 2010 Tour of Flanders] stands out. He was in the Belgian national jersey, I was as in the Swiss jersey.

"For sure, that day has its history, he was the favourite and the country was looking at that one day, then I was there and didn't move. For sure it was a duel, we went alone together, it turned out for me and I won."

Cancellara predicts exciting races over the next two weeks in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix because he said everyone good winters.

"Greg and Peter Sagan are maybe a level higher, but we've seen other riders at a big level," he said.

"The people at home make their comments about who's strongest, if it's Tom, if it's me, if it's Sagan or Van Avermaet. It's always different. I don't think you can say it's the best because all of us would have to be in that one race together."

The organiser of the Strade Bianche race in Italy has come good on its promise of permanently commemorating Fabian Cancellara's three wins.

Prior to the start of the 2016 edition of the race, organiser RCS Sport said that if Cancellara claimed a third edition, they would name a sector of the iconic white gravel roads used in the race after the Swiss star.

Cancellara duly delivered, adding the 2016 win to his previous victories in 2008 and 2012. It was his final outing in the race before retiring at the end of the season.

On Friday, on the eve of the 2017 race, a permanent milestone was unveiled on the Monte Sante Marie in Asciano, dedicating it to Cancellara.

"It’s a great honour and a great pleasure for me to receive this recognition because this is a very important race," said Cancellara.

"We’ve seen how fast it developed worldwide in the past few years. I’m proud to have won it three times. It’ll remain in the history of this beautiful event."

>>> Strade Bianche 2017: Latest news, start list and TV guide

With Cancellara now retired, there's a chance for another rider to add their name to the list of winners. Cancellara is picking in-form riders world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) and Olympic champion Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) to fight it out for the win.

"For tomorrow I pick Sagan and Van Avermaet who have already showed in Belgium that they are very strong but I wouldn’t disregard [Zdenek] Stybar and [Fabio] Felline either – I’ve seen them in good shape at the last races.”

In addition to the milestone, Cancellara also received a key to the nearby City of Asciano.

Previously, RCS Sport has said that any other rider that manages to win Strade Bianche on three occasions will also have a sector of gravel road named after them. Cancellara is so far the only rider to have won more than one edition since it started in 2007.

The 2017 Strade Bianche comprises both women's and men's events, taking place on Saturday, March 4.

Fabian Cancellara's last Tour of Flanders bicycle brought in €16,100 (£13,722) in an online auction on Friday. The Trek Domane SLR, still dirty from the Belgian monument, was valued at £7200.

An unnamed Belgian snapped up Cancellara's carbon Trek. He placed bids of €10,050 and €14,100 before the winning €16,100 bid on auction site Catawiki.

>>> Fabian Cancellara’s top 11 time trial tips

The Swiss retired last year after winning the time trial in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He placed second in Flanders, but holds three titles in the race.

"It's the bike I rode in Ronde van Vlaanderen, one of three special bikes: I have one, Trek has one and this one to be auctioned for a special cause," Cancellara told Belgium's Sporza TV last year during the Tour de France.

"It's a special piece, a last Ronde bike. This one was used. The one Trek has wasn't used."

The original starting number Cancellara used, 41, was still attached grey and yellow carbon frame and his Flanders's placings in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014 noted on the top tube.

On the frame, instead of Cancellara, team Trek-Segafredo mechanic Roger Theel attached Tony M.

"It's Tony Montana, Scarface, it comes from Roger the mechanic, a couple of years ago," Cancellara explained. "We always laughed about the name, the Americans grab on it.

"It's a special movie, not the best for kids, but in the American training camps it continued, and we always laughed about it.

"Roger put a small name of Tony Montana on the bike when I raced the Roubaix one year, it took off from there. I'm not really related with his philosophy, it's just a classic old Oliver Stone movie."

Cancellara rode Colnagos, Pinarellos, Specializeds and Treks in his career that spanned nearly two decades.

'Spartacus' or, as Roger would say 'Tony Montana', won three of the five monuments: Milan-San Remo in 2008, and Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix three-times each.

He dominated time trials over the years. Besides the Rio de Janeiro medal, he won gold in the 2008 Beijing Games, and four times the World Championship title.

All that remained are the bicycles and his memories of the 35-year-old Swiss from Bern.

Sky's Geraint Thomas said this summer, "He's been strong and always tough to win a Classic with him around. It will be interesting without him around, it will allow others to believe now that they can win more and create a different tactical battle."

Cancellara’s battle now is to plan the next phase in his life. He said that he could work in sports marketing, but has not decided yet.

Fabian Cancellara

Age: 35

Retired from: Trek-Segafredo

Having announced his decision to hang up his cleats in November 2015, last year was something of one long farewell tour for the great Fabian Cancellara. He even had his own documentary show on Eurosport following his fortunes over the course of the season, and reminiscing over his extraordinary career, which has included seven monument victories, four world time-trial titles and seven Tour de France stage wins.

The Swiss rider known as ‘Spartacus’ enjoyed a send-off worthy of his exceptional standards, playing a typically prominent role during the spring classics to finish second at the Tour of Flanders and Strade Bianche, and capping it off with an unexpected second Olympic gold of his career in the time-trial.

>>> Fabian Cancellara: ‘Once you’re no longer a sportsman, the kilos come very quickly’

An imperious presence whether punishing his rivals with imperceptible yet devastating accelerations, or standing up for rider safety as cycling’s self-appointed patron, his retirement leaves a substantial void in the peloton.

Ryder Hesjedal

Age: 36

Retired from: Trek-Segafredo

In 2012, the fourteenth of his eighteen season-long career, Ryder Hesjedal cemented his place in the cycling history books, triumphing at the Giro d'Italia to become the first - and to date only - Canadian to win a Grand Tour.

The Giro was the race he excelled the most at, finishing in the top five there as recently as 2015 with an entertainingly attacking ride, but he also had success in both the other Grand Tours, finishing fifth at the Tour in 2010 and claiming two stages of the Vuelta.

The gangly rider was an early signing of Jonathan Vaughters’ anti-doping committed Slipstream project in 2008 and went on to spend most of his career there, but his clean reputation was tarnished when in 2013 he admitted to doping earlier in his career.

Frank Schleck

Age: 36

Retired from: Trek-Segafredo

It wasn’t so long ago that the sight of brothers Frank and Andy Schleck attacking in tandem up the Alps and the Pyrenees was one of the most formidable in cycling, but their partnership was dismantled when Frank failed a dope test in 2012 and when injuries forced Andy to prematurely retire.

Upon returning from his ban in 2014, Frank never looked the same.

Prior to his ban, Frank made the top five of the Tour three times, his highest finishing being third overall in 2011 when he stood alongside his brother on the podium. Among his other career highlights was victory at Amstel Gold in 2006 and the Tour de Suisse in 2010.

A quiet 2016 suggests the time is right to bow out, with a stage win in the mountains at the 2015 Vuelta his last big win.

Evelyn Stevens

Age: 33

Retired from: Boels-Dolmans

Lehman Brothers and Gleacher Mezzanine’s loss was cycling’s gain, when Evelyn Stevens opted to leave the world of finance in 2009 to pursue a full-time career on the bike. She quickly became a stalwart of the peloton, picking up wins regularly, including the prestigious Fleche Wallonne in 2012.

She goes out at the very top of her game too, having proved herself an indispensable teammate at Boels-Dolmans for the likes of Lizzie Deignan, with whom she helped win the world team time trial championship, and achieving personal success too, claiming three stages at the Giro Rosa.

She leaves quite a legacy, too, retiring as the reigning women’s UCI Hour Record holder after she broke the previous record in Colorado last February.

Michael Rogers

Age: 36

Retired from: Tinkoff

With the retirement of Michael Rogers, the peloton loses one of its finest time-triallists and domestiques of recent times.

Between 2003-2005 he was the world’s leading rider against the clock, winning the rainbow jersey three years on the trot, and supplemented his time-trialing skills with impressive climbing to pull off results like overall victory at the 2008 Tour of Germany and making the top ten of the Tour in 2006.

Later in his career the Aussie became a prized domestique, being both a key part in the Sky team that won the yellow jersey for Bradley Wiggins in 2012, and a trusted right-hand man to Alberto Contador at Tinkoff, in which time he also won one Tour and two Giro stages.

Heart problems prevented him from racing for much of the early seasons, and prompted his decision to retire.

Mara Abbott

Age: 31

Retired from: Wiggle-High5

Her last outing as a pro may have ended in disappointment when she narrowly missed out on a medal at the Olympics, but that ride showed off on a wider platform the kind of powerful climbing that Mara Abbott has built a very successful career out of.

She was at her best at the most difficult race in women’s cycling, the Giro Rosa, which she managed to win twice overall in 2010 and 2013, as well as finishing on the podium on two other occasions and collecting a total of six stage wins and two queen of the mountains classifications.

The American had retired before in 2011 after struggles with an eating disorder, but bounced back to return to her best the following season.

Matthew Goss

Age: 30

Retired from: One Pro Cycling

For a few years at the start of the decade, Matthew Goss one of the most impressive sprinting classics specialists around. Having taken a few years to adapt from the track (he was a world champion and Commonwealth silver medalist in the team pursuit), he excelled upon moving to HTC-Columbia as a 24-year old, winning the GP Ouest-France classic and a stage of the Giro.

He seemed destined for even greater things when he won Milan-San Remo in 2011, and followed that up with a silver medal behind Mark Cavendish at the Copenhagen Worlds and another Giro stage in 2012 following a move to GreenEdge.

But after that the results dried up, with moves to MTN-Qhubeka and One Pro Cycling failing to reignite his career, leading him to retirement despite his relative young age. He nevertheless leaves the sport with a palmares that most would be envious of.

Johan Vansummeren

Age: 35

Retired from: Ag2r La Mondiale

Throughout his 13-year career Johan Vansummeren proved a loyal and fearsome domestique, his tall, six foot six inch frame proving to be the perfect wheel to ride behind in everything from the cobbles of northern Europe to the rolling stages of the Tour de France.

But his career will be remembered for one day in particular - the second Sunday of March 2011, when he capatalised on the peloton’s failure to bring back an early break to become a surprise winner of Paris-Roubaix, a win that in the cycling world makes him immortal

Jean-Christophe Peraud

Age: 39

Retired from: Ag2r La Mondiale

The 2014 Tour de France might go down as the blossoming of a new generation of young French riders, but finishing higher than both of Thibaut Pinot and Romain Bardet was a 37-year old Jean-Christophe Peraud

Having only turned pro in 2010, Peraud was a very late starter to road cycling, but still managed to develop over time heading into that Tour ride, which over the course of just three years turned him into a decent but little known stage-racer into the nation’s darling.

Set to turn 40 this spring, age seems to have belatedly caught up with Peraud.

Anna Meares

Age: 33

Retired from: Australian track squad

One of the all-time greats on the track, Anna Meares bowed out of the sport having won bronze in the keirin to make it four medal-winning Olympic participations in a row.

During that time she earned another two golds, a silver and a bronze, as well as a huge eleven world titles - often ahead of her great rival Victoria Pendleton, with whom she shared an emotional exchange with at the Rio velodrome send-off.

Sylvester Szmyd

Age: 38

Retired from: CCC Sprandi-Polkowice

One of the most familiar sights of the 2000s was that of Sylvester Szmyd at the Giro riding tempo in the mountains. His inexhaustible pace-setting made him one of the peloton’s best climbing domestiques, and he played a key role in delivering Ivan Basso’s 2010 Giro victory for Liquigas, while also achieving personal success with a stage win up Mont Ventoux at the 2009 Dauphine.

It’s been a while since he hit those heights, however, and his retirement comes of the back of two quiet years at Polish outfit CCC Sprandi-Polkowice.

The sort-of retiring…

Much like a hard-boiled detective who keeps coming back for one last case, Bradley Wiggins can’t quite tear himself away from the sport, and could continue competing on the track in 2017 having been named in British Cycling’s Olympic Podium Programme.

Kristin Armstrong has spent years in a similar cycle, coming out of retirement for a second time in her career to land a third Olympic time-trial gold in Rio. At 43-years of age she’s unlikely to return to the road, but hasn’t officially announced her retirement yet - unlike Emma Pooley - another rider to return with the sole ambition of Rio (she finished 14th).

Emma Johansson, meanwhile, reversed her decision to retire altogether, but will likely restrict her competitive appearances to the likes of cyclocross and mountain biking, and not the road.

Alberto Contador had also said during 2016 that it was to be his last season, but has subsequently decided to carry on into 2017.

More confusingly, Joaquim Rodriguez said he would retire from Katusha, then said he'd carry on with Bahrain-Merida, and then on Friday (December 9) announced that actually, yes, he is retiring.

Fabian Cancellara, who retired after winning the Olympic time trial three months a go in Rio de Janeiro, admits that he is "getting fatter."

The 35-year-old Swiss time triallist and Classics star pulled the plug on his career after riding to a gold medal ahead of Dutchman Tom Dumoulin and Brit Chris Froome. Since, he has been busy: a farewell ride in Japan and a book launch on Thursday in Antwerp.

>>> Fabian Cancellara’s top 11 time trial tips

Tomorrow on the Ghent Kuipke velodrome, he will race Bradley Wiggins and others in an exhibition race. But Cancellara says he is already starting to feel the weight of retirement.

"I've already added more than five or six kilos since the Games in Rio," Cancellara told Het Nieuwsblad.

"It is scary when you feel that you're getting fatter. I would like to still be a bit fit. Not that I should be as sharp as Sven Nys, but I have to keep an eye on it anyway. Once you're no longer a sportsman, the kilos come very quickly."

As a sportsman, 'Spartacus' blasted his way to several big one-day wins: Milan-San Remo, and Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix three-times each. In the 2010 Paris-Roubaix, he rode solo for the last 48 kilometres.

That strength came from years dominating time trials. Besides Rio, he won gold in the 2008 Beijing Games, and four times the World Championship title.

"Since Rio, I have been busy with 1001 things. Sponsorship activities, bike shows, galas... It does not stop," he said. "I take things on as they come to me. I suspect I'll be less busy in a few weeks and then I can really make plans.

"I can already rely on my experience as a rider, but I still want to study a few subjects. Sports marketing fascinates me, I want to learn more about it. First of all, of course, I want to spend more time with my family, my friends."

Cancellara has said that he is going to have to change his rhythm. Unlike Alberto Contador, who went back and forth on retirement, he said that his decision is definitive.

1 Prepare

“It’s not only the day before the race that’s important, what’s important is the week before. You have to eat carbs and good quality food, be relaxed, be ready for what is coming, whether it’s a long race or a short one.”

2 Head and heart

“In training I have to follow the power numbers, but I also go on feeling. In training you never reach what you want to reach in a race. Even now when my coaches calculate my training plan, they put a few numbers too high because they look at what I reached in races. It’s different to what I reach in training.”

3 Build slowly

“The better my level is, the more I’m excited to do TT training. The first day on a TT bike is horrible, but the second, third, fourth, fifth day are already different because you are used to the position, used to going at another speed. The more you do things, the better you get. Of course if you can ride 55kph for a long time, that’s also nice!”

4 Have a goal

“Somehow training is a pain in the ass. Maybe that’s a bit strong, but the problem with time trialling is that you have to force yourself, and to force yourself for nothing is hard. The main thing is to work towards a main goal and that you are ambitious for something.”

5 Be confident

“When your results come from training, that’s good for your confidence, and confidence is vital. Of course as a pro athlete it’s a bit different — sometimes amateurs are more ambitious than us!”

6 Look after your equipment

“You need good kit. Wheels, bike, helmet, skinsuit… time trialling is not only about performance and power, it’s also about equipment.”

Cancellara's TT machine

7 Find your pace

“Practise for five minutes at a certain wattage or certain heart rate, then have three minutes’ recovery and then go again for five or 10 minutes. It doesn’t need to be always threshold pace, but a pace where you learn to keep it. If you cannot keep the pace, time trialling is even harder.”

8 Stick to it

“I meet a lot of people whose biggest problem is that they cannot ride the pace; they go a bit faster, a bit stronger, and then a bit less. On a hilly parcours they go fast into the climb and then slow because they are tired and then they go fast onto the downhill, and then the flat they don’t know how to go, that’s the problem.”

9 Don’t warm up too much

“I think a lot of riders do too much roller training, too much warm-up; riders are already tired before the start. That’s what I think.”

Time trialling: read more

Elite cyclist, full-time worker: finding the right balance to stay at the top

How they used to train: Jacques Anquetil’s time trial training

Why the 10 record is tumbling

10 Pin your number on right

“Lately, mostly, the bus driver or one of the soigneurs pins my number on when I’m on the rollers. The skinsuit is always a mess to get on and you can destroy the number, so I say: ‘First I put my skinsuit on and then when I have it on you can put the number on right.’”

11 Wake up

“The secret is to get awake, take a small shower. [Sometimes] you just want to lie on bed and recover and get the best out of recovery because the best recovery is just sleeping, just doing nothing. But find a bit of rice, a piece of chocolate, some sparkling water, and then the body is more switched on.”

Bradley Wiggins will race against Fabian Cancellara once more, at an event in Ghent to mark the Swiss cyclist's retirement.

Cancellara quit the sport after winning a second Olympic gold medal in Rio in August, but he will take to the famous boards at Kuipke Velodrome on November 12 for a 'Ciao Fabian' event, three days before Ghent Six.

Wiggins, who will be racing Ghent Six with Mark Cavendish after their second place at Six Day London, will be one of the riders to race four-time time trial world champion Cancellara in a 2km pursuit competition.

>>> Watch: Bradley Wiggins hints that he may continue racing into 2017

Franck Schleck, Filippo Pozzato and Sep Vanmarcke will also go head-to-head against the 35-year-old.

The special event will be one last time for Belgium fans to witness Cancellara, with Flanders fans in particular adoring the three-time Tour of Flanders winner.

All 6,200 tickets have been sold for an event that organisers say will be "a mix of goosebumps, moments in pictures, conversations, music, and a few surprises."

Wiggins shared the podium with Cancellara at both the 2011 and 2013 Worlds, when the Briton finished second behind Tony Martin in the time trial, with Cancellara third on each occasion. Wiggins' biggest success directly against the retired Trek-Segafredo rider was his Olympic time trial victory in 2012, with Cancellara only managing seventh after a crash in the road race.

Olympic time trial champion Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) will pass on the 2016 UCI Road World Championships and end his career with the Japan Cup on October 23. The Swiss national team named its Worlds line-up yesterday without Cancellara.

Silvan Dillier (BMC Racing), Martin Elmiger (IAM Cycling), Reto Hollenstein (IAM Cycling), Stefan Küng (BMC Racing), Pirmin Lang (IAM Cycling), Fabian Lienhard (BMC Racing), Gregory Rast (Trek-Segafredo) and Michael Schär (BMC Racing) will form the road race team in Doha, Qatar. Hollenstein and Küng will also race the time trial.

"Fabian's not one to change his mind," team Trek-Segafredo manager, Luca Guercilena said after Cancellara won the Olympic time trial last month ahead of Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) and Chris Froome (Sky).

Guercilena explained that Cancellara decided that 2016 would be his last and that the Olympics time trial was his goal – nothing else.

>>> Fabian Cancellara: ‘My future is with Trek, but not as a sports director’

Cancellara already won a record four time trial titles in the World Championships. For years, he tried to win the road title without luck. This Worlds course through the Qatari desert and back into Doha, should likely end in a small group sprint that favours cyclists like Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data).

Cancellara counts 92 wins, 59 from time trials with two Olympic goals and four World titles. He also ruled the classics with a Milano-San Remo victory and three wins each in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.

"I know I'm only 35, but I have to pick the right moment to stop cycling. For me, it's this," Cancellara said in Rio de Janeiro last month. "I've very proud of what I have achieved. The next race that I do will be to say thanks to everyone who supported me in these years."

Cancellara raced and won the Bavikhove criterium on September 4 in Belgium. He joined the team in the car at the Eneco Tour this week in the Netherlands.

The only official race left for him is the HC-ranked Japan Cup on October 23 in Utsunomiya. He raced and helped team-mate Bauke Mollema win in 2015.

Cancellara will be back in Belgium in the Kuipke velodrome ahead of the Ghent Six-Day on November 14. He will compete in a one-kilometre time trial on the famous track before the race starts with stars Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins the next day.

Fabian Cancellara's career as a professional cyclist is almost at a close, but the Swiss Classics legend doesn't see his time in the sport coming to an end just yet.

Like many former pros, Cancellara plans to move behind the scenes to help develop the next generation of Grand Tour and Classics winners, but not necessarily from behind the wheel of a support car.

The three-time Paris-Roubaix and Tour of Flanders winner confirmed he won't be working as a sports director with the team next year, but is confident of finding a role that suits him with Trek-Segafredo next year.

"I can now deny that I will be a sports director next year at Trek. I see more of a future for myself in the second line of the sport," said Cancellara, quoted in Sporza.

"Making decisions in a car is not for me. Of course I still love cycling and my future definitely lies with Trek. What [role] or how, we will have to see.

"I want to do something constructive. Appearing in quotes, some waving and shaking hands is great, but it should be something more. A form of youth [development] is something I see myself doing."

Cancellara could find himself working alongside former CSC ProTeam team-mate Ivan Basso at Trek next season, who is following Alberto Contador from Tinkoff to take up a technical role.

The Italian, who retired soon after successful treatment for testicular cancer diagnosed at the 2015 Tour de France, will work with Trek's young riders and development squads.

Trek-Segafredo have signed Giant-Alpecin's John Degenkolb to lead the Classics team in 2017, with Contador coming in to improve the team's chances in the Grand Tours next year.

Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) says he "put 16 years of experience on the table" to win a gold medal in the Olympic time trial, as he signed off his final season as a professional in the best possible way.

Talk before the event had focused on Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands) and Chris Froome (Great Britain), but Cancellara produced a vintage display to take the gold medal, leading Dumoulin by 47 seconds. Froome finished with bronze.

"This was the last time for me to try to win an Olympic medal. It means so much to me," the Swiss rider said. "There are just no words. To leave the sport at the end of this season with the gold medal is just a perfect way to end my career. It was a big scream on the podium. This was the last big time trial of my life."

>>> Twitter reacts to Cancellara's time trial win

Cancellara's palmarès already staked a claim to greatness.

In addition to Olympic gold in Beijing 2008, he has four World Championship wins, three wins apiece in Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders, as well as seven stages in the Tour de France.

This year he announced his retirement from professional cycling, and his Rio win was a classic showpiece of his ability to pace himself and produce his best performances when the pressure is on.

"It's everyone's own choice when they want to retire," he said. "I knew it would be a special year. I've had many highlights, with the classics, then the Tour de France in Switzerland, and then the Olympic Games.

"I am just thankful that I came here healthy, because this is what you need to have. I am super proud. To win a gold medal in your retirement year, I am super proud. This will leave me without any doubt about retiring."

Watch: Chris Hoy remembers London 2012

If much of the focus ahead of the time trial was on other riders, the 35-year-old had no doubt that he could do it.

"I came here to win a medal. That was the clear goal. When we left Switzerland, we knew that we did everything the right way.

"I knew it would be one of my last races. I didn't want to fail. I was looking at the details, the right tyres, the right wheels, the right massage. Last night, I had to get out of my room, and went down to be with other people so I didn't want to think about this race. I felt good this morning."

>>> Chris Froome salutes 'unbeatable' Cancellara

A tough course presented an enthralling all-round test of rider skills: not just pacing the effort across a succession of punchy climbs, but controlling descents down twisting, wet, slippery roads.

"It was important to make the right rhythm on the race," said Cancellara. "I didn't want to go out too hard, because a one-hour time trial is very long, so you wouldn't have anything left in the end. We paced it perfectly.

"It was two laps, and it's the second lap that counts. I just put 16 years of experience on the table. It was a perfect day to make history, and to make another book to look back at what you did."

Bronze-medal winner Chris Froome says that the margin of Fabian Cancellara's victory in the Olympic time trial was so wide that he is left with no regrets.

One of the pre-event favourites, the Tour de France winner never looked in contention from the first split, as Cancellara rolled back the years in his final Olympic appearance to claim a gold medal for Switzerland.

Tom Dumoulin came home in second place, 47 seconds behind Cancellara, with Froome a further 15 seconds back.

"Fabian was the strongest rider out on the road today," said Froome. "As Tom said, had it been a smaller time gap in front of us, maybe five or 10 seconds, then you can think about what might have gone wrong, and where you could have made up that time. But for me, I was going to be making up a minute on him.

"I gave it everything I had out there today, but Fabian was unbeatable."

Froome, who also won a bronze medal in the London 2012 time trial, admitted that his achievements in Rio were a bonus after his third Tour de France victory this summer.

"I'm chuffed to win another Olympic medal," he said. "I can't be disappointed, especially after the season I've had.

"The focus of my season this year was the Tour de France, so to come back to the Olympics, to medal for a second time, is an amazing feeling. I've got no regrets. I gave it everything today."

Watch: Chris Hoy remembers London 2012

For Dumoulin, however, there was no Grand Tour win to ease the pain. He was favourite for the event, even after fracturing his arm in the closing stages of the Tour and he admitted to feeling the pressure ahead of the time trial.

"I was so focused the past couple of weeks, that I forgot to enjoy being at the Olympics," he said. "I was focusing on this TT, with a lot of doubt and insecurity about my race.

"Maybe in a couple of decades I will tell my grandchildren about this, but now, I forgot to enjoy being at the Olympics and living my dream."

Like Froome, however, Dumoulin admitted that the best rider had won on the day.

"I had my objective at the beginning of the year, and that was the gold medal. I didn't succeed. Everyone keeps telling me how proud I should be proud of myself especially after the injury, and I know I should be, and I know I will be tomorrow.

"On the other hand, 47 seconds is a lot. Too much for me today. Fabian was absolutely flying. He was much better than Chris or me. It's not like you miss a corner – he was just a lot better than the two of us."

Hayley Simmonds, who arguably should have been racing in Rio, was very pleased about Fabian Cancellara's victory

Former teammate Jens Voigt congratulated the Swiss on finishing his career with such a big result

Orica-BikeExchange's communications director joined the chorus of congratulations

Bauke Mollema firstly acknowledged his compatriot's ride for silver but then gave deserved praise to the gold medallist

Cafe Roubaix summed up Spartacus's incredible palmarès

Kristin Armstrong (USA) took her third consecutive gold in the women's event earlier in the day and praise flowed in for her, too.

Silver medallist Olga Zabelinskaya (Russia) finished an 18-month doping ban in September 2015 which was in plenty of time for her to appear at Rio 2016.

That recent infringement had not been forgotten by those commenting on the final result

Taylor Phinney did not perform as well as he would have wanted - finishing 22nd at 5-10, but he was still pleased for his fellow American

Dan Craven (Namibia), who only decided to ride the men's event after his Twitter fans overwhelmingly voted for him to do so, kept up his theme of loving rusk biscuits

USA Cycling highlighted a small problem Armstrong will be pleased to have

Armstrong shared the victory with her young son

Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) obliterated his rivals in the men's individual time trial at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to claim a second career gold in the discipline.

Cancellara defied the pre-race predictions that he would not be able to match the pace of Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands) and Chris Froome (Great Britain) by beating both by a significant margin over the hilly 54.56km course.

Dumoulin placed 47 seconds behind Cancellara to take the silver medal, with three-time Tour de France champion Froome claiming Britain's first cycling medal of the 2016 Games with bronze at 1-02. Froome matched his bronze from the London 2012 Games in the same discipline.

In Cancellara's last season before retirement, it is a fitting end to a stellar career that he should repeat his success from the 2008 Games and take gold in the time trial.

It didn't all appear to be plain sailing for Cancellara, as the official results from the second time check at 19.7km had Cancellara down as fourth fastest behind Rohan Dennis (Australia).

However, Cancellara managed to overhaul that deficit - and some - by the next checkpoint to move into the leading position. Dennis, meanwhile, suffered a broken aero bar and had to have a bike change. The Australian ended up in fifth place.

Geraint Thomas (Great Britain) posted a solid time to place ninth in the race, a considerable result given that he was only allocated a last-minute place in the race after the weekend, with no specific training.

None of the riders had a particularly easy time rain, cool temperatures and wind greeted the riders after days of sunshine. Brent Bookwalter (USA) had a torrid start to his race, crashing on the first corner and ripping his skinsuit. He quickly re-mounted and finished 23rd, one place behind team-mate Taylor Phinney.

Earlier in the day, Kristin Armstrong (USA) had won the women's time trial ahead of Olga Zabelinskaya (Russia) and Anna van der Breggen (Netherlands).

The men's time trial concludes the four road events, as attention now turns to the velodrome for the start of the tracking events on Thursday.

>>> Rio 2016 Olympic Games: Latest news, reports and info

Result

Rio 2016 Olympic Games men's individual time trial, 54.56km

1. Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) in 1-12-15

2. Tom Dumoulin (Netherlands) at 47 secs

3. Chris Froome (Great Britain) at 1-02

4. Jonathan Castroviejo (Spain) at 1-06

5. Rohan Dennis (Australia) at 1-10

6. Maciej Bodnar (Poland) at 1-50

7. Nelson Oliveira (Portugal) at 2-00

8. Jon Izaguirre (Spain) at 2-06

9. Geraint Thomas (Great Britain) at 2-37

10. Primoz Roglic (Slovenia) at 2-40

After being described as 'the man who wouldn't quit' on Wednesday, Bora-Argon 18's Shane Archbold was forced to leave the Tour de France on Thursday with a broken pelvis.

The Kiwi crashed hard on stage 17 to Finhaut-Emosson but soldiered on to the finish, bandaged up by the medical car and finishing 39 minutes down on stage winner Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha).

Pictures were taken of Archbold's bike, broken in two on the road, but Bora-Argon 18 'reassured' fans that the bike survived the impact, but was broken when Cofidis rider Borut Bozic hit it at high speed moments later.

Bozic didn't continue after the crash, having hit the ground at a reported 74kph on the descent of the Col des Mosses - his second crash of the day.

Medical inspections after the stage showed a fracture in Archbold's pelvis and the man with the best mullet in cycling was forced to wave goodbye to the Tour.

Fabian Cancellara also departed the Tour on Wednesday night, waiting until after the final stage in his homeland, Switzerland, before calling it a day to focus on the Olympic Games.

Cancellara was riding his final Tour de France, having announced his decision to retire at the end of the season. He holds the record for wearing the yellow jersey for the most number of days without winning the general classification, which stands at 29.

Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) paid tribute to Fabian Cancellara after the finish to the stage 16 of the Tour de France, saying "Fabian is a legend in cycling."

Sagan won his third stage of the 2016 Tour on the 16th day which finished in Cancellara's home town of Bern, Switzerland.

>>> Pro cycling remembers Fabian Cancellara’s greatest moments

There had been a lot of build up to the stage for Cancellara, who was looking to take a fairytale stage win in his home town during the final Tour de France of his career.

But the three-time Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix winner was unable to take victory from a sprint finish, having hoped to make a move on the final cobbled climb 2km from the line.

Green jersey Sagan able to take a photo finish ahead of Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) as Cancellara took fifth place.

Sagan was keen to pay tribute to the man who's many career achievements he'll look to emulate, having beaten him back on stage one in the 2012 Tour from a breakaway to take his maiden stage win.

"Fabian is a big name in cycling he is a legend in cycling," said Sagan. For sure when I won first stage in Tour de France and I was young and I wanted to win.

"He’d won the prologue and had yellow jersey and at that time I was a young rider in the peloton and then we went in the breakaway together and I was like ‘I want to beat you because I want to win stage in Tour de France’. Maybe he was angry at the time with me because I was young, but now I am the [same] level of a rider."

>>> Five talking points from stage 16 of the Tour de France

The world champion also said that today could have panned out differently for Cancellara on the 209km stage if he'd been able to attack on the final climb, however the pace was so high that much of the peloton split and no-one was able to make a move.

The final group was made up of mostly Classics specialists and GC contenders, with bigger sprinters like Marcel Kittel and André Greipel unable to hold the pace and dropped out the back.

"For sure today would be very different if we can come to finish in the breakaway with Fabian," Sagan added.

"I think he wanted to make something good [happen] when he’s coming home. But with the sprint in the final I think it’s very difficult for anyone to be in the front and fighting for position and everything like that.

"You can tell for sure that he wanted to try, but I can not tell if it was a finish for him.

"For sure he was working very hard in the stage before for the team. In Mont Ventoux, Trek made the crosswind and they were pulling all day and then the time trial…day by day its tiring. I’m very happy for today but I’m also tired."

Swiss classics and time trial champion Fabian Cancellara, who rides with the Tour de France into his hometown of Bern on stage 16, retires this season and leaves many cycling insiders impressed by his "raw power."

Cancellara's career includes three wins each in the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, one in Milan-San Remo, and four time trial world titles.

In the Tour he's worn the yellow jersey for 29 days, including the day he crashed in 2015 on the way to Huy, in Belgium.

"He's an icon of cycling," former French professional Cédric Vasseur told Cycling Weekly. "In addition to being a good sportsman, he's a phenomenon. He has a personality, he's friendly to the journalists and fans, and he can race.

"The most impressive win was his victory in Compiègne, I was racing in my last Tour in 2007. We were going full-gas into the city, I was at 180bpm, almost dropped, and I heard in the radio that Fabian Cancellara was attacking. I thought, 'How is this possible?' That gave everyone a real idea of his capacities."

Kim Andersen worked with Cancellara as a sports director at Saxo Bank, Leopard and now, Trek-Segafredo. He too recalled the 2007 stage to Compiègne, which hosts the start of Paris-Roubaix each year.

"We won the prologue in London, the jersey, but then in Compiègne, we nearly lost it because a group was in front and we didn't think we could catch him. It went from: we are going to lose this jersey to winning the stage and taking time. We hadn't planned it at all."

"That win in Compiègne was a big show," added BMC Racing’s Valerio Piva, who started with Cancellara as a sports director in Mapei.

"He was still not the big Cancellara star that we know today. He didn't have to win, he has already had the prologue win in London and the yellow jersey. But with the attack and win, he showed his potential. He basically said, 'I'm the king.'"

Etixx-Quick Step General Manager Patrick Lefevere has spent years trying to beat Cancellara in the classics with Tom Boonen and his other riders, but he helped him start his professional career when in team Mapei.

"When we signed him, I was there with Alvaro Crespi, creating a young team in our team with riders like [Bernie] Eisel, Cancellara, [Filippo] Pozzato, [Cadel] Evans... All those guys," Lefevere said.

"He came with his father in a small car with his bike. They drove over two first category passes to arrive in Lugano and sign the contract. We spoke in Italian because his dad is from the south of Italy – and just like Fabian, he likes talking."

Geraint Thomas often went up against Cancellara as he tried to become a classics rider and win with Team Sky.

"In the E3 Harelbeke three or four years ago, he accelerated from Boonen in the last two kilometres," Thomas said. "He was in the saddle and Boonen was sprinting behind trying to catch him, but just couldn't get on Cancellara's wheel. It's just that raw power.

"He's been strong and always tough to win a classic with him around. It will be interesting without him around, it will allow others to believe now that they can win more and create a different tactical battle."

Watch: Fabian Cancellara's latest bike

"In the Tour of Qatar when I was still racing, with around two or three kilometres to race in a cross-tail wind, he attacked free and impressed me," Team Sky's classics sports director, Servais Knaven explained.

"Everyone chased, but he held off the group to the finish. He's one of the only guys to have done that.

“I was there with Tom Boonen, helping him, trying to close, but we couldn't do it. That was impressive. He was one of the only guys who could do that: high watts of 700 to 800 for a few minutes."

Swiss teammate Gregory Rast trains regularly with Cancellara and raced with him on national teams in world championships. He's never seen anyone like Cancellara before.

"His focus is like none other," Rast said. "The training he did for the classics, what he did, the efforts... It was impressive. One day, hew flew with a jet to Calpe, Spain, because there was bad weather in Switzerland. He flew there on a Wednesday, trained for six hours and came back. This was in the lead up to Flanders.

"Maybe others would've just done rollers and three hours on the road, but he wanted to do a proper road training. He went there with [team manager] Luca Guercilena and trained behind the motorbike."

Watches, cheese, chocolate and cuckoo clocks may be Switzerland's biggest exports, but none of them have won Paris-Roubaix three times. Fabian Cancellara, affectionately known as Spartacus, is a rider who needs little introduction.

Of course Cancellara's prowess is not just limited to the cobbles, and the Swiss rider has picked up seven Tour de France stage wins and enjoyed 29 days in the yellow jersey. It's only right then that he is given a special bike to ride as he takes on his eleventh and final Grand Boucle.

Cancellara is no stranger to custom-painted bikes, with his Trek Speed Concept time trial bike being covered in gladiator helmets in reference to his Spartacus nickname. Although you get the same gladiator helmets here as well as Spartacus replacing 'Trek' on the down tube, this Trek Madone is more of an homage to Cancellara's illustrious career than just his nickname.

On top of the pearl white base paint (which is peppered with flecks of gold that illuminate when seen in the right light) are rainbows of colour that work their along the down tube, top tube, fork, and seatstays. These might seem random, but the colours are actually in reference to the various teams that Cancellara has ridden for since 2000, starting with the multi-coloured Mapei jersey, working through the blue and white of Fassa Bortolo and the white and red of CSC, all the way to the black pin stripes of his current Trek-Segafredo jersey.

Other details on the frame are there to remind Cancellara of the many successes of his sixteen year career. Along the top tube is his nickname and a reminder of the 100+ podiums that he has stood on, while the chainstays and seatstays are filled with some of his many victories, ranging from the junior time trial World Championships in 1998 to the numerous Classics victories that he has picked up.

We're not ones to throw stones in glass houses, but it seems that someone at Trek has been a bit sloppy with their fact checking, with the decals proclaiming Cancellara's two Paris-Roubaix victories (he's actually won three) and eight Tour de France stage wins (at the time of writing he's only on seven, although maybe the team were just feeling confident ahead of this year's race).

Beyond the paintjob, this bike has the same set up as the bike that Cancellara has been riding for the rest of the year, with a mechanical Shimano Dura-Ace groupset, Bontrager Aeolus wheels and Veloflex tyres.

Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) says he's trying to remain as relaxed as possible ahead of what would be an emotional final victory at the Tour de France to Bern on Monday's stage 16.

The 209km stage looks hand picked for the Swiss rider, featuring a cobbled climb of 6.5% up the finishing straight, almost ideal for a man who's won three Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix titles.

Cancellara's last victory in the Tour de France came in 2012, and after a disappointing season since winning Strade Bianche in March, in which he missed out on adding any Monuments to his already glittering palmarès, the 35-year-old will be hoping for one last win in the stage to his home town before he retires.

"Of course I’m quite looking forward to Monday, especially arriving in my home town, it’s pretty special," Cancellara said.

"It’ll be a lifetime experience because I live 4km from the finish line...but I try to be as relaxed as possible.

"I think [Monday] will be more emotional because there’s kind of my own expectation but there’s also for sure somehow some expectation from others, but I think that’s normal.

"I’m riding on all home grounds and roads, I know all the last kilometres blind. It’s not just a criterium race that finishes in the city it’s the Tour, so it’s going to be a big race for sure.

"If it’s a one-day race then it’s different, after a day like today [stage 15] which we’re gonna have, tomorrow the whole thing will be a totally different scenario. It’s going to be a tough one because it’s tricky, it’s cobbles and it’s not a secret that I’m living in this town."

The rises towards the finish look to be enough to put the pure sprinters in difficulty, though the likes of Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) have already said the stage could come down to a sprint.

Trek will have to play some risk to get Cancellara to the line though, with protecting Bauke Mollema top of the priority list with the Dutchman still fighting for a podium place in GC. However, they're hoping some of Cancellara's local knowledge will come in useful.

"We did almost the same finish in the Tour de Suisse two years ago and so I know it a little bit," said Cancellara's teammate Gregory Rast. "It’s clear the real sprinters are going to have trouble there; it’s going to be for guys like Fabian, Greg Van Avermaet and Peter Sagan of course.

"It’s going to be a bit of a gamble [with Bauke], because of the breakaway maybe, and maybe if it’s not a breakaway then it’s clear that Fabian knows he needs to be on the front and that's maybe an advantage because we can stay with him and Bauke can then stay with us.

"It’s clear For the GC guys they can’t be sitting in the back riding into the finish they need to fight tomorrow."

Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) won stage one of the Tour de Suisse with a typically masterful time trial performance.

Riding in front of home fans, the Swiss rider enjoyed plenty of support from the roadside, and duly delivered with his fifth win of the season.

>>> Tour de Suisse 2016 live TV guide

He posted a time just one second quicker than Jurgen Roelandts (Lotto-Soudal), who was for a while the surprise rider in the hot-seat ahead of more recognised prologue specialists. Orica GreenEdge’s Luke Durbridge was third.

Geraint Thomas (Sky) had been a pre-race favourite, but didn’t have one of his best days and finished outside of the top ten in 14th, 12 seconds down.

He joins several other riders with aspirations of winning the overall GC who also finished outside the top ten, including Tejay van Garderen (BMC), Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida), Robert Gesink (LottoNL-Jumbo) and defending champion Simon Spilak (Katusha).

The 6.4km course through Baar was technical with plenty of sharp turns. Alex Dowsett (Movistar) crashed on one particularly tight corner, ending his hopes for a high placing after being one of the quickest through the intermediate time check. The British time-trial champion crossed the line way down in the standings in 172nd place, battered and bruised with several rips in his skin suit.

The course would have been more treacherous had the dark clouds that gathered produced more rainfall, but conditions generally remained dry and only the last few riders had to ride through some light drizzle.

There was some panic when the one kilometre to go inflatable banner collapsed, but no rider appeared to be affected.

Sunday's second stage sees the riders take on a route from Baar to Baar over 187.6km.

Result

Tour de Suisse 2016, stage one, Baar - Baar, 6.4km (and overall standings)

1 Fabian Cancellara (Swi) Trek-Segafredo in 7-38

2 Jürgen Roelandts (Bel) Lotto Soudal at 1s

3 Luke Durbridge (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge at 2s

4 Martin Elmiger (Swi) IAM Cycling at 6s

5 Jon Izagirre Insausti (Esp) Movistar Team at s.t

6 Tim Wellens (Bel) Lotto Soudal at 7s

7 Johan Le Bon (Fra) FDJ at 9s

8 Silvan Dillier (Swi) BMC Racing Team at s.t

9 Gorka Izagirre Insausti (Spa) Movistar Team at 10s

10 Wilco Kelderman (Ned) Team LottoNl-Jumbo at s.t.

Others

14. Geraint Thomas (GBr) Team Sky, at 12s

Fabian Cancellara's Trek Speed Concept is the time trial bike that the multiple time trial world champion will be relying upon to deliver him towards one final season of glory against the clock.

This is actually the very same Trek Speed Concept that Cancellara was using at last year's Tour de France, with the evidence of this being in the fact that the Trek-Segafredo logos are just stickers that have been place over the old Trek Factory Racing logos from 2015.

The good news is that this means that the bike retains the amazing Spartacus paintjob that could only be pulled off by a man with four rainbow jerseys to his name. Spartacus is written down the top tube, there is a Greek Hoplite helmet on the head tube that will infuriate history buffs, and also a Swiss flag on a shield also on the top tube.

>>> Pro Bike: Tom Dumoulin's Giant Trinity TT bike (video)

Beneath the paintjob, this is the same Trek Speed Concept frame that you or I could go and pick up at any Trek dealer, and comes with everything you'd expect from a World Tour time trial bike. That means front brakes that are hidden away within the fork, rear brakes that are positioned out of the wind at the bottom bracket, and aerofoil tubes that push right at the limit of the UCI's 3:1 rules on tube shapes.

Fabian Cancellara's Trek Speed Concept time trial bike sees the Swiss rider move away from the mechanical gears that he uses on his road bike, embracing the benefits of electronic shifting to put shift buttons in multiple positions on his bars. Naturally there are buttons to allow him to shift on the aero bar extensions, but also by the brake levers, so Cancellara can change gear when coming into, or accelerating out of corners, and when climbing out of the saddle.

As you would expect, Cancellara's largest chainring is a bit of a whopper with its 56 teeth (although not quite at the level of the 58 tooth chainring that other time triallists have been known to deploy. This is combined with an 11-25t cassette, with the junction box for the electronic groupset hidden away behind the handlebars. Attached to the chainset is an SRM power meter, the data from which should make the DuoTrap speed and cadence sensor that is built into the chainstay redundant, with the head unit attached to the bars using a custom mount.

>>> Pro Bike: Fabian Cancellara's Trek Madone (video)

Each of the wheels on Fabian Cancellara's Trek Speed Concept time trial bike come from a different source, although you wouldn't know that from the decals. The front wheel is a Bontrager Aeolus 9 wheel, but the rear disc wheel is actually made by Zipp, with Bontrager stickers added to please the sponsors. Each wheel is topped with a 23mm Veloflex Criterium tubular tyre.

The bars, however, are from Bontrager, with Cancellara opting for the rather smart-looking Bontrager Speed Concept Mono Bar extentions, while the saddle is a time trial-specific perch, the snappily-named Prologo T Gale TT CPC saddle.

Fabian Cancellara's Giro d'Italia time trial hopes faded on Sunday in Chianti with stomach flu recovery taking longer than he would have liked. He finished fourth behind stage winner Primož Roglič (Etixx-QuickStep) and left the race after the stage to focus on the remainder of the season.

Cancellara fell sick two days before the opening time trial in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. He was unable to fight for the stage win and pink jersey on day one as hoped and has paid since.

"A few days have gone now," said the 35-year-old Swiss, who retires this year. "I'm getting better, but I'm definitely not how I want to be. The first few days of the Giro were hard and with my stomach flu. I was definitely sick.

>>> Giro d'Italia 2016: Latest news, reports and info

The four-time time trial world champion managed 52-13 minutes today in the 40.5-kilometre time trial through Chianti, which was only enough a fourth place.

"It was a tough one, a hard one, and not maybe the nicest one for my style of racing," Cancellara said after the stage.

"In the end, I paid a bit for trying to gain on the rider I saw in front of me. I went a bit over the edge and then I paid the price, but in the end, I could manage in the downhill to recover a bit. That's how it is. I knew it was my last [stage], so I did it all-in."

Watch: how will the GC contenders fare in the Giro's time trial

Cancellara only raced the Giro d'Italia twice before in his 16-year career. He hoped this year to add a stage win or a pink jersey to his long list of wins that includes stages and the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, monuments and time trial titles.

"What I like is that it is high-level racing, but really well organised. I have nothing to complain about, about the roads, or the transfers, bad days – there's nothing. In my 16 years, that hasn't happened a lot," Cancellara explained.

"Compared to the years I did it the last time, the Giro has made a nice step-up to a high level. This is how it has to be, a good level but not crazy high with the crowds like the Tour de France."

Fabian Cancellara's goal went from racing for the time trial and pink jersey on day one of the 2016 Giro d'Italia today to simply making it to day four, when the race leaves the Netherlands for its homeland in Italy.

In his last season, the Swiss of team Trek-Segafredo had hoped to add the famous pink jersey to his treasure chest that already includes stage wins and the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, monuments, and four titles in the time trial world championship.

Cancellara, however, fell sick on Wednesday night with a fever and stomach flu and passed all day yesterday in bed. He was not able to compete for the victory in the 9.8-kilometre time trial today around Apeldoorn, but pushed himself all the same to finish eighth at 14 seconds behind Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin).

>>> Tom Dumoulin wins Giro d’Italia 2016 stage one time trial

"I did the most I could because I didn't just want to come to Apeldoorn for an easy stroll," Cancellara said. "I didn't want to return home. I hope I can recover over the next days, but two days in bed really zaps you. I hope to stay and to make it to Italy.

"There are other goals in this Giro, but I first need to take it easy. It's just important to get to Italy, even if I have to sit up and lose time."

The cyclists face two sprint stages over the next two days through the Gelderland province of the Netherlands. If Cancellara does arrive in Italy, he could potentially aim for the Chianti time trial on day nine or another stage victory. Simply arriving there, however, would be important for the team's new sponsor Segafredo. The coffee giant joined the team this winter as a second title sponsor.

>>> Giro d'Italia 2016: Latest news, reports and info

Cancellara is determined to push on. Today, he said he tried as much as possible even if he had been sick.

"I did what I could do, but my legs didn't have any strength," he added. "I spoke with [general manager] Luca Guercilena this morning. I had a lot of stress on me and we worked a lot to be ready for today. I was on the right path to be ready, but I fell sick. I lacked the strength and lacked that something needed to win."

He must race 190 kilometres on Saturday to Nijmegen and another 190 kilometres to Arnhem on Sunday before the race transfers to Italy and enjoys its first of three rest days. It restarts on Tuesday with a 200-kilometre stage in Calabria, in the toe of Italy's boot.

It's too early to write off Fabian Cancellara's chances of winning the Giro d'Italia's opening stage on Friday, with the prolific Swiss rider having been successful before when feeling under the weather.

The Trek-Segafredo rider planned to spend all day in bed on Thursday to try and overcome a fever he's been struck down with ahead of the 9.8km time trial in Apeldoorn, and didn't train with his team.

>>> Fabian Cancellara’s hopes of wearing pink at the Giro d’Italia suffer a setback

On Wednesday, Cancellara sat down with Cycling Weekly after his training ride - after which he complained of feeling aches and pains - and explained he doesn't always have to be on top form to win time trials.

He remembered back to riding the Tour of California for CSC-Saxo Bank in 2009, where the team was welcoming representatives of its new sponsor, Specialized.

Fifteen minutes before the 3.8km prologue in Sacramento, Cancellara was fast asleep on the team bus, struggling with a fever.

"I remember Bobby Julich came to me and woke me up 15 minutes before the start, because I was sleeping on the bus," he recalled. "They said ‘Fabian, you are our only chance, to save our ass.’

"I tell you, I went out on the rollers, just grumpy, just bad. But I took five minutes to get ready. I don’t know how I did it, but I shocked [my body] somehow, and I went out and bang, boom and I won it."

Watch: Who are the favourites for the Giro d'Italia 2016

Waking up the body when you're not feeling 100 per cent is Cancellara's top tip for getting the best performance - he won the prologue at the Vuelta a España in 2009 with just 15 minutes' warm-up after feeling bad all day.

It was also at the Vuelta where the four-time world time trial champion found another source of power, although it's not one you would normally associate with an elite athlete before a race.

"Two years ago, at the Vuelta in Jerez la Frontera, I was also really bad, almost sick, empty, I had no power," he said.

"Then I think on the day before the TT I felt good but had no power, and I said 'I need something, I need power, I need energy'.

"So I went down to McDonalds. Boom, and then I felt like, ah now I’m ready."

He may be in bed today, but come Friday afternoon Spartacus will be ready for battle - one way or another.

Read an exclusive interview with Fabian Cancellara in the May 19 issue of Cycling Weekly

Fabian Cancellara may not be in contention for the win on Friday's 9.8km time trial to start the Giro d'Italia, with the Swiss rider revealing he's been struck down with a fever just one day before the race.

Wearing the maglia rosa was one of Cancellara's main goals in his final season, but the the seven-time monument winner will reportedly spend all of Thursday in bed trying to shake his illness ahead of Friday's first stage.

Trek-Segafredo manager Luca Guercilena confirmed to Cycling Weekly that the 35-year-old, who will retire at the end of the season, felt achey after yesterday's training ride and it has developed into a full-blown fever.

>>> Fabian Cancellara exclusive: I’ve won time trials before when I’ve felt bad

"The only thing we can do right now is to let him rest, see how he is today and then tomorrow," he said. "Sometimes when you completely clean the body with gastroenteritis then you get better, you feel really strong because from completely empty you start to fill up the tank with energy.

"That can be useful on a medium term view, but on a short prologue of 9km when you need the power, you need the speed, it’s more complicated."

>>> Five bold predictions for the 2016 Giro d’Italia

He added: "It’s not the ideal situation, we came here just to win the prologue and he wanted that pink jersey, and now the motivation is not so good, for everybody, because we worked hard to make him good for the TT."

Cancellara has never won a stage at the Giro d'Italia and was targeting the opening time trial for his first pink jersey. Should he recover fully from his fever, he will surely be one of the favourites for the long, technical time trial on stage nine.

Fabian Cancellara won't wear the pink jersey

It's a controversial one, because I think we all want to see him achieve his goals in his final season, but there's part of me that thinks Fabian Cancellara won't win the Giro d'Italia's opening time trial on Friday.

He's favourite to win the 9.8km time trial, ahead of Tom Dumoulin, and has been working hard to achieve his dream of wearing the maglia rosa since the end of the cobbled Classics.

Cancellara missed out on the Tour de France's yellow jersey on the short time trial in Utrecht last July, but won the maillot jaune on the following day's stage.

On paper, the two sprints in the Netherlands look pretty innocuous, so Cancellara could have difficulty getting the bonus seconds to split him from the pack.

Watch out for Dumoulin, or, like at the Tour, an outsider to take the first pink of the race...maybe LottoNL-Jumbo's Jos van Emden. Now that's a bold prediction.

Marcel Kittel will win the two sprint stages in the Netherlands

The sprint classification at this year's Giro is absolutely stacked, with only three or four of the peloton's best fastmen not involved.

This time last year we wouldn't have backed Marcel Kittel to win a Grand Tour stage ever again, but after a strong start to the season the German is very much the man to beat in the flat stages.

Stages two and three between Arnhem and Niejmegen (and back the following day) are pretty much as flat as they come, so Kittel will have his sights set on two quick victories to double his Giro tally.

Andre Greipel, Arnaud Démare, Caleb Ewan and Elia Viviani will all be in the hunt, but I just can't look past Kittel for the wins.

Valverde will wear the pink jersey but not win the GC

Alejandro Valverde may be among the best climbers in this year's Giro, but I don't think he'll come away with the title in his first attempt.

Even if he's in with a shout of the title, Valverde will probably be eyeing up some stages where he can do well including on the first summit finish on stage six.

If he can limit his losses on the time trial - and few of his main rivals are that good against the clock - there are a few stages in the second week that will also pique the Spaniard's fancy. Maybe stage 14, with the uphill finish after a series of high mountains.

Cannondale will win the one of the major classifications

Cannondale have stacked their lineup with young climbers, some of who could walk away with a stage win or two this year. They have a genuine shot at the overall title with Rigoberto Uran, but it's a reasonably long shot for him to win given the competition.

The jerseys they are most likely to win, though, are the young rider's classification or the mountains classification.

Having won a stage at last year's race, Davide Formolo comes back to the Giro with the knowledge of what it takes to be successful over three weeks.

Formolo came second in the youth ranks last year to Fabio Aru, but was remarkably consistent over the course of the race, finishing inside the top 35 in 11 of the 21 stages, and never outside the top 100.

Elsewhere, Uran could challenge for the mountains classification, especially if his GC chances are dealt an early blow. Getting in a couple of breaks in the final week and a few high finishes in the mountain stages could see the Colombian don the jersey.

Giacomo Nizzolo will retain his sprint title

While Kittel and Greipel may be the strongest sprinters in the race, the chance of them making the final stage in Turin are quite slim, with aspirations for the Tour de France still in their minds.

Giacomo Nizzolo (Trek-Segafredo), though, will have designs on reaching the final finish line on May 29 in the red jersey for the leading sprinter.

In the end last year Nizzolo eased to the win in this classification, despite the fact that Viviani wore it for most of the majority of the race.

Some strong performances in the final week when the other fast guys are struggling to recover from the mountains will hold Nizzolo in good stead for a repeat of his 2015 feat.

Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) will go head-to-head with Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), Mikel Landa (Team Sky), Rafal Majka (Tinkoff) and Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) in his quest to win a second Giro d'Italia title.

The Astana leader is one of the big names on the provisionals start list released by Giro organiser RCS Sport, which also includes Marcel Kittel (Etixx-Quick Step), Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) and Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo).

The general classification battle promises to be fascinating, with Landa looking to improve on his third-place finish last year, while Valverde rides his first ever Giro.

Majka will be further hoping to prove his leadership credentials after finishing third overall at the Vuelta a España last year, while Domenico Pozzovivo (Ag2r La Mondiale) will be looking to bounce back from an early crash that left him with severe facial injuries in last year's race.

The route for the 2016 Giro d'Italia

Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) could be up there in the general classification conversations after his heroics at the Vuelta, but the Dutchman will be looking for results on the prologue and long time trial through the Chianti region.

Dumoulin won't have it his own way, though, with Cancellara looking to add a pink jersey to his extensive palmares on the prologue and Bob Jungels (Etixx-Quck Step) will also want to impress.

The sprint competition also looks to be fierce, with Kittel and Greipel set to face off with Arnaud Démare (FDJ), Elia Viviani (Team Sky), Sacha Modolo (Lampre-Merida) and Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEdge).

The race starts in the Apeldoorn, Netherlands, on May 6 with three stages in the country before returning to Italy. The winner will be crowned on May 29 on the final stage in Turin.

Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo) looked around the velodrome after finishing 40th at 7-35 minutes behind in Paris-Roubaix on Sunday and said, "I'm just happy it's over."

The 35-year-old Swiss hoped to win a fourth title in northern France to end his last Classics campaign with a bang, instead he fell three times during the 255.5-kilometre race and closed well behind winner Mathew Hayman (Orica-GreenEdge).

"Somehow yes and somehow no," Cancellara said when asked if it was difficult to leave the velodrome where he claimed the 2006, 2010 and 2013 titles.

"Last week was harder [in the Tour of Flanders]. Today, I'm just happy that it's over. I'm just happy. I'm not happy about the race, but I'm happy in general. I don't have that much pain in my legs, not from the crashes either, but that's Paris-Roubaix."

Cancellara will ride out the remainder of the 2016 season, targeting the Giro d'Italia's pink jersey and the Tour de France, but this was his last cobbled classic. Besides Roubaix's three titles, he counts three in the Tour of Flanders. Last week, he chased, but could not close to solo winner Peter Sagan (Tinkoff) and placed second.

Team Sky's Servais Knaven talks about Ian Stannard's podium finish at Paris-Roubaix

He and Sagan were caught behind a split that happened on the Quérénaing sector today when Alexander Porsev (Katusha) crashed with 115 kilometres to race. At that point, he sent his team-mates to work, but could not close the gap to the group in front which had Sky's Ian Stannard and Luke Rowe. The final blow came when he slipped on some mud and fell again on the Mons-en-Pévèle sector.

"There was a crash, I jumped into the field and came back, the second one was a bit unlucky, and the third one was just ice-skating. There it was over and I couldn't do anything. Roubaix was gone. The damage was too big and Roubaix was over," he added.

He also fell after the race when he went to greet his fans on the velodrome. It was not the perfect ending to his classics campaigns.

"I didn't have the luck that was needed," he added. "Roubaix started in 2003 bad in a way, if it's going to finish bad too, I don't know. I know that it's a particular race.

"That crash on the mud was when I was ahead at the front, too, but Roubaix is like that, the roads are like that and it happens. I have to look ahead. It's not that my legs that are hurting, I had the legs, but if the race is hard like that, you can't do anything."

Fabian Cancellara would have wanted to say goodbye to Paris-Roubaix by crossing the line first and sealing his fourth victory. Instead he finished on his backside after taking a tumble on his lap of honour.

The Swiss saw his chances of winning destroyed by a crash on the five-star Mons-en-Pévèle sector and he rolled in over three minutes down on winner Mathew Hayman.

But as he waved goodbye to his fans in the Roubaix velodrome he grabbed a huge Swiss flag on a stick to take with him on his lap.

Team Sky's Servais Knaven talks about Ian Stannard's podium finish at Paris-Roubaix

It backfired somewhat, with Cancellara losing some grip on his back wheel, skidding and finally crashing to the track and sliding down the boards into a puddle.

To be fair to the man, he styled it out somewhat - as much as you can when you're on your backside in a puddle, anyway.

It brought to an end Cancellara's storied cobbled Classics career, in which he won three Tours of Flanders and three Paris-Roubaix titles.

Peter Sagan kept his chances of winning Paris-Roubaix intact by bunny-hopping over a crashing Fabian Cancellara on the Mons-en-Pévèle cobbled sector.

Already 40 seconds down on the lead group, Cancellara and Sagan were pushing hard to connect back up with the group up the road, which formed nearly 100km earlier.

Cancellara, sitting third wheel in his group, slipped on a muddy part of the sector and went down hard, but Sagan, on the Swiss's wheel, somehow managed to avoid going down and continued his pursuit.

>>> Chaos, crashes and flat tyres: Tom Boonen recaps a ‘standard’ Paris-Roubaix

But with 40km to go his small group was 1-10 down on the front group, which contained Tom Boonen, Ian Stannard, Sep Vanmarcke and Edvald Boasson Hagen.

Cancellara managed to get back on his bike, but by then was nearly three minutes down on the front group and his race was over.

Both Sagan and Cancellara were stranded behind the Boonen group after a crash on one of the earlier cobbled sectors split the peloton.