The rainbow jersey has been handed out and Autumn is starting to fall softly over Europe, yet there is still distance left to run in the 2022 season. Il Lombardia, with its potential for a reprise of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard’s Tour de France duel, is the biggest landmark left on the horizon, but there are plenty of other attractions to draw the eye in the final three weeks of the elite men’s calendar.
The post-World Championships action already got underway on Tuesday with the opening stage of the CRO Race, where Bahrain Victorious’ Jonathan Milan claimed victory. Much of the attention in Croatia this week will, of course, centre on Vingegaard, back in competition for the first time since he won the Tour in July and building towards that rendezvous at Il Lombardia. Others begin a similar process this week at Thursday’s Coppa Agostoni, which kicks off an intense schedule of one-day racing in Italy.
Cyclingnews looks ahead to the last chapter of the 2022 season, which features races from Lissone to Langkawi, and narrative threads from retiring stars to Remco Evenepoel’s first outing in rainbow bands, from a last hurrah for the fast men to the remorseless hunt to avoid relegation from the WorldTour.
Coppa Agostoni (Thursday, September 29: 1.1)
The first instalment of the Trittico Lombardo is the Coppa Agostoni, which follows a familiar route by starting and finishing in Lissone. Alexey Lutsenko (Astana-Qazaqstan) won last year’s race during his remarkable late-season purple patch. The Kazakhstani is on the provisional start list here, days after he was the last man to stay with Evenepoel in Wollongong.
Lutsenko’s teammate Vincenzo Nibali is also slated to begin his farewell tour here, while Alejandro Valverde (Movistar), Simon Yates (BikeExchange-Jayco) and Matteo Trentin (UAE Team Emirates) also feature on the provisional start list. Israel Start-Up Nation and Lotto Soudal, whose hopes of retaining WorldTour status are flickering have, unsurprisingly, opted for strong line-ups here, with Jakob Fuglsang, Michael Woods and Tim Wellens among the riders on show.
Giro dell’Emilia (Saturday, October 1: 1.Pro)
One the most underrated events on the calendar, the Giro dell’Emilia provides the kind of entertainment that Flèche Wallonne wishes it could. The event is invariably decided on the evocative haul to the finish up the porticoed climb of San Luca, but that steep final kilometre rarely dissuades…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…