Retirement class of 2022 - Dumoulin, Brennauer, Gilbert, Nibali and Porte leave the peloton

Tom Dumoulin, Lisa Brennauer, Richie Porte to retire i🌜n 2022 (Image credit: Getty Images)

The end of the cycling year is always marked by a number of retirements, but few seasons ꦅin recent memory have seen quit🐭e so many high-profile riders exit the stage at the same time.

The retirements of 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Vincenzo Nibali and Alejandro Valverde heralded the end of an era, but the changing of the guard was not limited to Italy and Spain. In Belgium, 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Philippe Gilbert called time on his glittering career, while Richie Porte, 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tom Dumoulin and Lisa Brennauer were also among the grandees of 🦂the men’s and women’s pelo🥃tons who have opted to retire this winter.

The ever more onerous mental demands of top-level sport were taking a toll, however, and Dumoulin opted to take a sabbatical at the beginning of 2021, citing burnout. He 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:retur🦩ned sooner than a෴nyone anticipated and took ওsilver in the time trial at the Tokyo Olympics, prompting him to return to targeting Grand Tours in 2022. The Giro,ඣ unsurprisingly, was the chosen venue, but a nagging back injury forced him to abandon at the end of the second week.

A few days after the Giro ended, Dumoulin announced he would retire after the Wollongong World Championships, but he instead opted to 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:call time on his career in August. “For a while now, there has been a disbalance between my 100% dedication, everything I do and sacrifice for the sport, and what I su🉐bsequently get o⭕ut of it in return,” Dumoulin wrote earlier this year.

Dumoulin leaves an imposing palmarès behind him, with the stand-out victory coming at the 2017 Giro d’Italia when he became the first Dutchman to win a Grand Tour since 1980. The foundations of that win were laid in the Montefalco time trial, but the key moment came when Dumoulin responded with such poise to his 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:unexpected natural break in the shadow of the Stelvio in the final week.

He ended that season with a time trial world title, but his athletic achievements in 2018 were perhaps ev🎃en greater as he placed second overall at both the Giro and the Tour de France, singling himself out as the man most likely to break Team Sky’s long-standing dominance in July. That never quite materialised – that crash in Frascati on stage 4 of the Giro d'Italia in 2019 perhaps proved toꩵ be a sliding doors moment – but Dumoulin’s graceful style on the bike and his thoughtful interventions off it made him one of the defining stars of his era.

Dumoulin has had an offer to work with t♓he management of Intermarché-Wanty, but he is in no hurry to return to the sport for time being. He attended the Wollongong Worlds as a fan before travelling alone through Fiji and Costa Rica for six weeks. “I’m starting with a completely blank canvas, and I have no idea the direction that I'm going,” Dumoulin said. “And I'd like to leave it that way. Be⭕cause it feels good.”

Gilbert’s years of plenty came in his first tenure at Lotto. He caught fire in late 2009 with an Autumn sequence of wins that included Paris-Tours, Gran Piemonte and Il Lombardia. In 2010, he scored the first of four Amstel Gold Race wins and added another at Il Lombardia, but the annus mirabilius came in 2011, when he scored some 18 victories, including an ไArdennes hat-trick and the opening stage of the Tour de France.

From those heights, Gilbert plumbedཧ the depths for much of his opening season at BMC only to hit form right at the death, bounding up his personal fiefdom of the Cauberg to win the World Championships at Valkenburg. His year i𒁏n the rainbow jersey was largely subdued, but Gilbert still enjoyed his moments at BMC, including another Cauberg burst in 2014 and a sparkling brace of stage wins at the 2015 Giro.

At QuickStep, Gilbert returned to the hellingen with a vengeance, winning the 2017 Tour of Flanders with a remarkable 56km solo effort. The supposed individualist would go on to form an integral part of QuickStep’s self-styled ‘Wolfpack,’ helping Niki Terpstra to win the 2018 Ronde 💫before helping himself to victory at the 2019 Paris-Roubaix. Gilbert’s raw strength had carried him ဣto that startling haul in 2011, but his cunning was now making much of the difference in his late 30s.

In the final phase of his career, Gilbert returned to Lotto and attempted to complete the full set of Monuments by winning Milan-San Remo. That last heist never came off, but Gilbert remained a 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:point of reference in the peloton as one of its most vocal advocates for improved rider saf💟ety. On hanging up his wheels, he was even approached by Lotto Soudal to take over as team manager. “It’s maybe a job I could take on later on in my life when I have what’s needed for it, but I like doing things well and I don’t yet feel ready,” Gilbert said after rejecting the offer.

Retirement was forced on Sonny Colbrelli after suffering an 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:unstable cardiac arrhythmia during the Volta a Catalunya in March. Other athletes in other sports are allowed to compete with subcutaneous defibrillators, but Colbrelli recently accepted that professional cycling is very different from football, forcing him to 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:announce that his career was over.

The 38-year-old Shark of Messina won all three Grand Tours during his career, often carrying the nation on his shoulders. Now Italy no longer has a Grand Tour contender, a men’s WorldTour team and there is an ever-smaller presence in the men’s peloton. The Italian women are perhaps taking over from the Dutch, but among the men there is no sign of a new Nibali who can win the biggest races and enthuse the tifosi.

The Dutchman 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:hangs up the road wheels as a winner of both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix and, is therefore, one of the top Classics riders of the 21st Century. Starting his career with Milram back in 2007, Terpstra took time to get going by the standards of modern-day stars but started making an impact in the major Classics once at QuickStep in 2012 before slℱipping clear to win Roubaix with a canny late solo move in 2014.

Terpstra's legacy is a complex one, as he developed a reputation as something of an individualist. "Whoever says that doesn't kno⛎w anything about cycling," he retorted in 2018. A mixture of Dutch directness and smirking self-confidence perhaps didn't win him so many fans in a Belgian team that featured home stars like Boonen and Gilbert, but QuickStep boss Patrick Lefevere agreed that this characterisation was "completely wrong".

Dowsett achieved a lot over the course of a 12-year career, although the perspective is perhaps skewed by an 🧔early pinnacle. At the 2013 Giro d'Italia, a 24-year-old Dowsett stunned the world with a storming victory in the 55km stage 8 time trial, beating none other than Olympic champion and Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins. Dowsett struggled to meet the expectations, which went through the roof that day. He didn't win another Grand Tour time trial, and his only other WorldTour TT scalp came at the 2016 Tour de Pologne. Still, there was plenty to write home about, not least breaking the UCI Hour Record in 2015, even if it didn't stand for long. He won the British national time trial title six times, and there were regular reminders of his class - 5th and 6th in the 2018 Giro TTs, then 5th at the World Championships in 2019.

The moment when it finally sinks in for most Spanish fans that Alejandro Valverde has retired will likely not happen this season or ev🐲en this year. Rather the penny will probably drop on the evening of January 10th, when the 2023 Vuelta a España route is published and after two decades, Valverde is no longer a potential candidate for at least a stage win and, very often, the outright victory in his home race.

Few riders have established such a close connection with a single race as Valverde and the Vuelta. Being Spanish and racing for Spanish teams, first Kelme for three years and then Movistar in its various guises for the remainder, combined with the sheer length of his career, 21 years in total, were obviously major factors in maintaining that relationship. But the results he carved out in that time in the Spanish Grand Tour, including the ov𝓰erall victory in 2009, three second places, three third places, and 12 stages combined to place him in a Vuelta le𝔉ague of his own.

But for all his identification and consistently high performances in the Vuelta – comparable to that of Raymond Poulidor in the Tour or Felice Gimondi in the Giro d’Italia – Val𝓀verde’s versatility and ambition in other races were never lacking, either. Among his 133 victories, the World Championships in 2018 and four wins in Liège-Bastogne-Liège are undoubtedly among the most famous. But his five wins in Flèche Wallonne – an all-time record – and victories in mountainous or hilly week-long stage races ranging from Vuelta al País Vasco to the Criterium du Dauphiné and Volta a Catalunya represented other major landmarks.

Spain’s obsession with the Tour de France and Grand Tours in general arguably pushed Valverde to focus too hard on July at times when the Vuelta clearly lent itself better to his talents. But for all that, Valverde still took no less than four Tour de France stages, in the Al🅰ps, the Pyrenees and on two tricky uphill finishes, and that ability to switch targets a🌌nd stay in the game was what gave Valverde an even greater edge on his rivals, time and time again.

Nobody could ever question Valverde’s 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:dedication to his sport, eking out his career all the way through to 42 and🐓 still able to do battle with the favourites in his final week of racing this autumn in the Italian Classics. “I feel like crying, but the time has come,” he told Spanish sports daily AS in his last ever interview as a pro. He is now going to stay with the Movistar team, his squad since 2005, for the foreseeabl🔥e future, but as part of the overall management, acting as a link between the riders and management level.

Porte, in imperfect fashion, brings the curtain down on a career that made him one of the top 🅰week-long stage race specialists. He won Paris-Nice and the Tour Down Under twice, along with titles at the Critérium du Dauphin&𝔍eacute;, Tour de Romandie, Tour de Suisse, Volta a Catalunya, and Volta ao Algarve. His success raised expectations for the Grand Tours, but for years he never seemed to be able to stretch that form over three weeks.

At Sky, he was one of the world's top mountain domestiques, helping the team win three Tour de France titles between 2012-2015. He left for BMC Racing and sole leadership in 2016 but his Tour hopes were🦩 ended by heavy crashes in 2017 and 2018. Moving to Trek-Segafredo in 2019, he set the record straight and put his demons to bed by finishing on the podium of the Tour in 2020, a result he and his nation celebrated like a victory.

While retirees Vincenzo Nibali (Astana-Qazaqstan) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) were soaking up the limelight for one last time this autumn at Il Lombardia, reputed climber Mikel Nieve (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) quietly exited from the sport in the same Italian Monument. And unlike Nibali and Valverde, the rider once voted 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:World’s Best Domestique by Cyclingnews reade♈rs never saw the finish of his final race, either.

For a rider whose role for years consisted essentially of guiding his leaders as far as possible in the mountains and then making it to the finish with as little fuss as possible, that kind of low-key departure and unsentimental approach to his l🧸ast race was, in some ways, appropriate. After all, Nieve was a rider both widely praised for his dedication and spirit of self-sacrifice in the sport, with a steadfast ꧅refusal to grab the limelight.

Yet crashing out of Il Lombardia on a day he’d have been fully justified in racing for him🎀self also highlighted the injustice of a sport where the winner grabs nine-tenths of the attent𒅌ion despite having to rely on his teammates for laying so many of the foundations of his or her success. It was telling that Chris Froome, who depended heavily on Nieve in the 2016 and 2017 Tours de France as well as when he took the 2017 Vuelta, was quick to thank Nieve after he announced his retirement from the sport, calling him on Twitter his “best teammate ever”. But there were plenty of other team leaders who could have done the same.

A pro since 2008, Nieve’s earliest years in Euskaltel-Euskadi saw him briefly flirt with the possibility of a bigg🍬er GC role. Even before the Basque team had folded in spectacular style mid-way through the 2013 Vuelta, over the summer, Nieve had already been snapped up by Sky for the following season, where his role as a top domestique would be all but set in stone. He remained with the British team until 2017 before moving on to a similar role at Mitchelton-Scott, where he worked principally for the Yates brothers and Esteban Chaves.

Nieve did at times emerge from the shadows. His two stage victories in the Giro d’Italia, as well as the king of the Mountains title in 2016, were both memorable ones, most notably in 2011 when he won a seven-hour mountain stage with 6,300 metres of vertical climbing with an ad𒐪vantage of nearly two minutes ove🔯r three Giro winners – Stefano Garzelli, Alberto Contador and Michele Scarponi.

He had no regrets; he told Cyclingnews a few years back about choosing to head for a more specialist role: “Okay, I won a stage or two in a Grand Tour. But the big objectives in the teams are the Monuments and the Grand Tour GCs, or podiums at least, and I don’t have the talent toꦑ do that. My timဣe trialling isn’t good enough, and I can’t beat the top guys on the climbs. But as my strong point is in the mountains, that’s where I’ve ended up being a specialist.”

Patrick is a freelance sports writer and editor. He’s an NCTJ-accredited journalist with a bach♈elor’s degree in modern languages (French and Spanish). Patrick worked full-time at Cyclingnews for eight years between 2015 and 2023, latterly as Deputy Editor.

168澳洲5最新开奖结果

Retirement class of 2022 - Dumoulin, Brennauer, Gilbert, Nibali and Porte leave the peloton

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tom Dumoulin

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Lisa Brennauer

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Philippe Gilbert

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Sonny Colbrelli

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Vincenzo Nibali

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Leah Kirchmann

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Niki Terpstra

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Alex Dowsett

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Alejandro Valverde

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tanja Erath

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Richie Porte

168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Mikel Nieve