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Ten moments from the 2016 UCI WorldTour

The season in a nutshell

October 2, 2016
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The 2016 WorldTour ended Saturday with Esteban Chaves’s history-making victory in Il Lombardia, the first Monument with a Colombian champion. Peter Sagan took the individual WorldTour honours, while Movistar and Spain prevailed in the team and country categories respectively.

Here’s an overview of the 2016 WorldTour with ten notable moments.

January: Michael Woods lays it down at Tour Down Under. Woods, in Cannondale colours for the first time, tussles with riders like Rohan Dennis, Sergio Henao, Richie Porte and Simon Gerrans to place 5th on GC. His most triumphant moment of the season–until coming runner-up to Angel Lopez in Milano-Torino–is on Stage 5 when he comes third on Willunga Hill. The cycling world sits up and takes notice.

March: Canadian Antoine Duchesne of Direct Energie wins Paris-Nice climber’s jersey. Tony the Tiger starts his bid for the dots by getting in the Stage 5 breakaway to Salon-de-Provence, which has five categorized climbs where he grabs 24 points. He adds 32 points the next day when Geraint Thomas seizes the race lead. Finally, Duchesne cements his lead with 24 points on Stage 8 into Nice.


March: Already with the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad on his 2016 palmares, Greg Van Avermaet’s incredible season picks up momentum with the GC victory in Tirreno-Adriatico. With the mountain stage cancelled because of extreme weather, Vincenzo Nibali can’t make up time and finishes 6th. BMC’s opening team time trial win gives Van Avermaet the edge, and his Stage 6 triumph bolsters his lead. Van Avermaet would go on to wear the yellow jersey after a stage win in the Tour de France, take Olympic Games road gold and triumph in the GP Cyclist de Montreal.

March: Antoine Demoitié dies at Gent-Wevelgem when a race motorcycle hits the rider lying on the road after a downhill crash. The Wanty-Groupe Gobert rider’s tragic death comes in the middle of several incidents involving motos and riders. Later in May, Belgian cyclist Stig Broeckx (Lotto-Soudal) is in a coma after a crash involving two race motorbikes and 19-riders during the Tour of Belgium. Calls came from all sides of cycling demanding changes to ensure the safety of riders. Eneco Tour officials detour motos around the riders in September.

April: Orica-BikeExchange would take two of the five Monuments of 2016, with Australian Matthew Hayman winning Paris-Roubaix by outsprinting four-time champion Tom Boonen, Ian Stannard and Sep Vanmarcke after the quartet enters the vaunted Roubaix velodrome together. Incredibly, it was only the 37-year old’s second career victory.


April: In a four-week stretch in the spring Peter Sagan wins or comes runner-up in four WorldTour races, including second to Van Avermaet in the Tirreno-Adriatico. He has seemingly won everything, but the last of those four results is his first Monument victory at the Tour of Flanders. A strong move alongside Michal Kwiatkowski with 30-km to go ends with Sagan’s most famous foe, Fabian Cancellara, in mad but futile pursuit as the World Champion wins solo.

May: Nibali’s incredible comeback. One of the gutsiest and most lethal efforts to win a Grand Tour late, Vincenzo Nibali’s aggression on the final two GC stages of the Giro d’Italia sees him vault from 4th place, 4:43 down on pink jersey Steven Kruijswijk, to leader with a 52-second buffer on second place Esteban Chaves. Winning Stage 19 to Risoul and then chewing up his rivals on Stage 20’s Sant’Anna di Vinadio is Nibali’s masterpiece.


July: Froome runs up Ventoux. This year at the Tour de France one had to balance the tedium of Sky’s suffocating control of the peloton with the variety of techniques Chris Froome used on his way to a third yellow jersey. There was the downhill attack to win Stage 8, the late attack alongside Peter Sagan on Stage 11, and, of course, the running-man on the shortened climb of Ventoux. Froome, his machine broken after a crash involving Richie Porte, Bauke Mollema and a moto about a kilometre from the finish line, ran on, somewhat awkwardly in the road shoes, until he could get a new bike.


September: The Stage 15 Raid at the Vuelta a España. Truly one of the great moves in Vuelta history. Nairo Quintana only leads Chris Froome by 54-seconds with several days to go before the individual time trial. Quintana has pried out those seconds on two early mountain stages but can’t budge Froome on Stages 11 and 14. On September 4’s short mountain stage Gianluca Brambilla launches the early move that Contador follows and Quintana makes famous. Froome missed the dash up the road, was isolated in the chase and lost over 2:30 to the Colombian.

September: Ryder Hesjedal at the Laurentian Classics. Ryder Hesjedal hit the high water mark for Canadian professional cycling in winning the 2012 Giro d’Italia. After a season with Trek-Segafredo, he decided to hang up the helmet, but not before contesting the Tour of Alberta and the two WorldTour single day races in Quebec. Merci et bonne chance, Ryder.