I started waking up before dawn when I was 17 years old. That summer, I worked on the docks down in Seattle alongside my father, who was the line manager. We processed fish in a cavernous, refrigerated space roughly the size of what I imagined a rich person’s “great room” would be. The work, unfortunately, wasn’t great. On our feet for as long as 14 hours, we started at six in the morning, which meant we caught the 4:45am bus from our house in the suburbs in order to arrive in time to don hairnets and arm gaiters before sliding into our respective spots on the processing line. 

Rick Zabel is the third generation of a proud racing dynasty, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Detlef Zabel and his dad, Erik, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest sprinters of all time. It can’t have been easy stepping out of the shadow of a man who won Milano-Sanremo four times and the points classification in the Tour de France over six consecutive years, but over the past few seasons Rick has established a reputation both as a valuable leadout man and as a sprinter in his own right, memorably beating a talented pack that included Mark Cavendish in stage two of the 2019 Tour de Yorkshire. But when he’s not competing on the World Tour, he spends a lot of his time in Mallorca, where his family have had a home since he was a kid. We caught up with him to get his take on inGamba’s newest destination and to find out more about this special Mediterranean island. 

01. Start the morning with high fives or hugs. Ideally both. But in case you’re not a hugger, know that you can still take the jersey with high fives alone. Five points for each.

Until recently, legal restrictions, a monopoly in the market, and fixed tastes abroad all conspired to keep winemakers in Portugal’s Douro Valley focused on making their famous fortified port wines. But things are changing, and Dirk Niepoort is leading the charge

Alentejo is a world apart. It covers a third of Portugal’s landmass, but is home to just five percent of its population. Mention its name to most people and it will conjure up images of gently rolling countryside and panoramic horizons, but the border with Spain is characterized by distinctive granite hills and its long, mostly uninhabited coastline boasts some of the most stunning stretches of pristine beaches in Europe, complete with around 275 days of sunshine annually.

Trish saw them first. We were ascending a gradual climb on a ridge that overlooked a sweeping valley below. Far in the distance, the Douro River carved a sinewy arc of blue into the landscape. The hillside to our right cascaded ever downward, etched with the parallel brown and green lines of the region’s famous terraced vineyards. There were farmers off in the distance somewhere between where the vineyards ended and where the Douro rolled through.