Tour of Saganders

The man who started off his career winning bike races for fun, but then had a worrying spell of only ever coming second, finally won a Monument! Fabian Cancellara came second and had to be consoled in the traditional Flemish fashion; by having his face stroked with the Mitten of What Might Have Been.

Kruijswijk goes skiing

The Giro d’Italia will live long in the memory of Steven Kruijswijk as the first Grand Tour he could (and probably should) have won. The Dutchman was looking in good shape wearing pink going into the final few days, until he was bitterly unlucky and crashed into a snowdrift on the side of the road. The resultant expensive-bike-spinning-through-air-as rider-disappears-into-snow footage was both sad and faintly humorous – making it the perfect fodder for a gif.

Tour de Farce

How to condense one of the more bizarre Tours de France of recent memory into a single gif? Froome’s run up the slopes of Mont Ventoux grabbed the headlines, but this gif of Richie Porte face-planting the moto camera (part of the same crash that left Froome bikeless) just edges it for us for sheer slapstick humour.

And here’s a bonus one of Mark ‘ray of sunshine’ Cavendish talking about his bodily functions.

Olympic party!

British track cyclists absolutely smashed the competition in most of the events they entered at this year’s Rio Olympics, showing such dominance it led to some competitors question whether the GB team was 100 per cent clean. Regardless, Great Britain topped the cycling medal table once again, and here’s Callum Skinner and Owain Doull celebrating on the beach in Rio with a well-earned beer.

The road cycling medals were more of an international affair, with Fabian Cancellara taking gold in the men’s TT, while Kristin Armstrong took the women’s equivalent. Lizzie Armitstead missed the decisive move in the road race with American, Kristin Armstrong, nabbing the top spot on the podium. Belgian Greg Van Avermaet snagged the men’s road race.

World Champs

The big winners at the World Championships in Doha were Peter Sagan, Tony Martin, Amalie Dideriksen and Amber Neben. The whole championships were a bit of a sham, with many participants suffering in the extreme heat and those that didn’t under threat from generally diabolical driving by motos, ambulances and even police cars. Anouska Koster came off worst, seeming to temporarily lose consciousness and crash during a TTT event that should never have been given the go-ahead.

Back in a jiffy!

2016 was also the year we learned that the most detail-focused team in pro cycling have no idea what drugs their riders are taking.

Or what goes in packages that they fly across continents.

We also learned that when you’re used to hunting for every possible efficiency it’s actually much easier to fly a man carrying a tiny package of decongestant to France, via Switzerland, rather than buy it over the counter in a pharmacy round the corner.

While all this was going on we’re pretty sure Oleg Tinkov was like.

And so it ends…

It’s fair to say 2016 has been a weird year, both in the world of cycling and beyond. Perhaps this gif from the recent Vuelta Ciclista a Costa Rica sums things up best.