2016 Season Wrap: Nominations, Please!

After a week of catching our breath, it’s time to admit that the 2016 cycling season is over. Long Live the 2016 Cycling Season! I think we’d mostly agree it was a fascinating one. Sometimes anyway. I like caveats.

But here at the Podium Cafe we don’t just ramble on and on and on about a subject as broad as an entire season, like the last one, which was truly fascinating, at times, like when in the Tour of Flanders... Wait, where was I? Right, no, we have a well-defined approach, wherein we choose our Rider and Race Day of the Year, and celebrate the winners of our FSA Directeur Sportif competitions. In all cases we are talking men and women.

The latter bit is baked into the cake already, and we will roll out our honors next week. But for the Rider of the Year and Race Day of the Year, men and women, I need your help. Specifically, I need nominations.

Some of the people and days under consideration are obvious (coughRondecough). But I don’t want to put too big a thumb on the scale by listing off all my favorites. I want to hear from you guys. Nominate and make a case as to why they should be in. If it clears the “not definitely insane” bar we set for all submissions at the Podium Cafe, it will be included in our Get Out and Vote! post next week, once we have our final list.

Here’s what I have to start with...

Men’s Rider of the Year:

• Peter Sagan
• Chris Froome
• Vincenzo Nibali
• Matt Hayman
• Wout Poels
• Greg Van Avermaet
• Nairo Quintana
• Mark Cavendish

Women’s Rider of the Year

• Megan Guarnier
• Anna van der Breggen
• Emma Johanssen
• Lizzie Armitstead (changed to Lizzie Deignan)
• Annemiek van Vleuten
• Amelie Dideriksen
• Elisa Longo Borghini

I actually don’t want to try to roll out a number of race days of the year; I’ll ask you guys to start that process. The usual suspects are the big classics, to the extent one was maybe more memorable than usual; big days of the grand tours; Olympic and World Championships; major milestone events; and those unexpectedly great days where it just made you really excited to be a cycling fan. That’s the real metric — how much a certain race made you enjoy the sport of cycling. Whether famous people or races were involved is not the point, per se.

OK, go!