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Brandon McNulty is the first American to lead a WorldTour stage race since Tejay van Garderen in the 2019 Tour of California. Photo: David Ramos/Getty Images
23-year-old American Brandon McNulty announced himself to the world on Stage 4 of the 2021 Itzulia Basque Country. Avid cycling fans would have already known the McNulty name thanks to a number of WorldTour podiums and contract with one of the top teams in pro cycling. But his lead-grabbing coup on stage 4 revealed the true depth of his talent and determination.
Stage 1 – 13.9km individual time trial
Stage 1 was but a preview of what was to come. In the 13.9 km ITT around Bilbao, riders flogged themselves up the opening climb at 500w, before bombing down the false flat descent, and back into town for a 13 percent climb to the finish. Time trials have always been one of McNulty’s specialties, but on this day, he reached another level.
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Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images
Just busting through the offseason doldrums, wondering when racing is going to. oh wait, there’s racing right now? Kinda maybe? Something in New Zealand? Well, hope springs anew and the GP La Marseillaise hasn’t said no yet. Also the Volta Valenciana is insisting on carrying on. So it won’t be the offseason much longer.
This means little time is left for us to put out a raft of offseason capsules, the in-depth team-by-team reviews we have done in the past, but I thought it’d be fun to do a shortened version of this, covering all the World Tour teams. Rather than serving as a complete update on a team, this format’s intent is to give a flavour of which teams shifted up or down the pecking order, on paper at least, in relative terms. I tried this for one of SBNation’s basketball sites and so why not give it a whirl here?