Indholdsfortegnelse for May 23, 2019 i Cycling Weekly

Cycling Weekly is once again looking for the best cycling club in Britain. There are hundreds of clubs up and down the country (almost 2,000 come up on the British Cycling website) that ensure the UK cycling scene continues to thrive, so if you belong to one of them, be sure to get your entry in. Last year’s winners, Otley CC, set a high bar and we are looking for more of the same in 2019. Along with sponsors Le Col we want to hear from the clubs that make a difference — cycling clubs that put on great events, bring people into the sport, compete across disciplines and get their jerseys seen far and wide. It won’t necessarily be an all-conquering racing club that wins either, and a club…

People talk about being humbled by something. That electric jolt that strikes out of the blue, readjusting their perspective and providing a reminder that they are simply one among billions. A moment that changes everything. A crash mid-race is a perfect example of this. Everything feels amazing. The race is easy, the body is working effortlessly, and then suddenly it’s not. Next thing it’s a struggle to simply get out of bed in the morning. To get dressed and walk to breakfast takes a heaped tablespoon of effort. Wounds stick to bandages, clothes are ruined, countless hotel bedsheets too. But this is cycling. This is stage racing. And this is a Grand Tour. How do we deal with it? We embrace positivity. We wake up every day believing magically our…

The Giro’s opening week has underlined for James Knox what a hard sport cycling can be. The 23-year-old Deceuninck-Quick Step rider is racing his first Grand Tour, which became harder after a crash on stage four. “Unfortunately, it’s a pretty tough sport at times and I’m a bit down with it at the moment,” Knox told Cycling Weekly at the start of stage seven. “I’m hoping it’ll come around and I’ll have legs there for the final [week] but yeah, this is part of it and I just have to get on with it.” Knox’s knee was under a bandage, but he said that was just to cover superficial grazes. “The right knee is where the bruising is and that’s causing the problems. I bashed my knee and it’s still…

Former multiple national time trial champion and record holder Julia Shaw made a return to competition in the Sotonia CC 10-mile time trial in Hampshire on Saturday. Shaw is targeting a ride in the World Masters Championships later this year. But first the 53-year-old has to tackle a debilitating pollen allergy which forced her retirement two years ago, and continues to hold her back in racing. “I’ve had better races, but I’m OK with it,” said Shaw, whose time of 23:23 was 12 seconds slower than the fastest female on the day, Chris Murray (Army Cycling). Commented Shaw: “I feel like I’m starting again, and this was a good reminder of several things that I could have done better.” Prior to her retirement in 2017 Shaw had a glittering time…

Mark Cavendish started the Tour of California earlier this month, reporting that he was finally clear of the Epstein-Barr virus and that he was ready to “go and challenge for some race wins”. His patchy early season meant it would always be difficult to make good on those intentions in what was considered a particularly tough edition of the ToC — it featured multiple classified climbs on six of the seven stages, with cat-ones or higher on four of those — and a mid-pack finish was as good as it got. Nevertheless it was a solid block of racing that will stand Cavendish in good stead as he prepares for the Tour de France in July, and the mercurial 33-year-old seemed satisfied. “Good week in the legs here @Amgen TOC,”…

In the host town of Harrogate, Saranda (www.sarandabarandgrill.co.uk; 7 Station Bridge, HG1 1SS) serves up a menu of a different kind, with dishes inspired from Greece and Albania. The restaurant has been winning plaudits since it opened last summer, with succulent meat dishes starting from £12.95 and vegetarian options from £9.95 Also in Harrogate, the Tannin Level (www.tanninlevel.co.uk; 5 Raglan St, HG1 1LE) has been one of the town’s best-loved eateries for over three decades. Using seasonal ingredients and meat from local butchers, the Yorkshire lamb rump is a favourite. Don’t miss out on the cheeseboards, too. Realitea (www.riponrealitea.co.uk; 84 North St, HG4 1DP) in Ripon is a tea room (perfect for a mid or post-ride stop) that turns into a top-rated Indian bistro in the evening. Boasting a menu…

When Specialized revealed its partnership with the F1 McLaren team in 2011 and took its top-of-the-range race bike to another level, it not only created the impressively fast and lightweight Specialized McLaren S-Works Venge, it redefined the term ‘superbike’. Collaborations are nothing new, but bringing in engineering expertise from the world of F1 raised the bar and started an arms race to build the best bike regardless of cost. Now new brake and gear systems are enhancing bikes further still. These machines aren’t just the preserve of the pro peloton — anyone with deep enough pockets can purchase the two-wheeled equivalent of haute couture. Current trends As with the automotive equivalent, the term ‘super’ doesn’t just refer to out-and-out speed. A superbike can be all denominations of road bike, from…

Its many successes under Team Sky, including a Grand Tour treble with Chris Froome, have made the Pinarello Dogma a household name. Singling out one superbike from the luxury Italian brand is no easy task, but the Dogma F10 equipped with Campagnolo Super Record absolutely oozes style. Rather surprisingly since Campagnolo is a fellow legendary Italian brand, it’s also one of the rarest partnerships on the market, making this bike the very height of exclusivity. Inheriting design cues from the Pinarello Bolide, the bike that rocketed Sir Bradley Wiggins to the Hour record and Vasil Kiryienka to claim the time trial rainbow bands, the F10’s down tube directly borrows from the TT bike, saving 12 per cent in drag over previous Dogma models. Despite its superbike credentials, the F10 has…

WHAT A hot-weather base layer sits directly next to the skin, forming a barrier between body and jersey, and is made from a stretchy wicking material that channels heat and moisture away, preventing the jersey from becoming overly clammy. Traditionally cycling base layers looked like string vests. Modern base layers still apply the string vest principle: most have perforations or holes through which heat escapes but they are made from very lightweight synthetic fabrics, adding less than 100g to your all-up weight. Brands usually offer base layers in T-shirt format or sleeveless. We’ve got both types in this review — sleeveless can be cooler but with sleeves you don’t have a hem around your underarm, just a seam, which can be more comfortable. White is the usual colour for a…

As you can see, I’m not a natural hill-climber! My background is rugby: I turned pro in 1997 and played for Ebbw Vale for three years, then Swansea (which became the Ospreys), then Worcester Warriors, and I finished my pro career in 2008 with the Exeter Chiefs. I was a prop forward — one of the fatties! My playing weight was 117kg, and my genetics predispose me to fast-twitch fibres and muscle-building. Even though I haven’t been to the gym for three years, I still look like a bodybuilder. The only strength work I do is at home with a pair of Jane Fonda 10kg dumbbells three times a week — I don’t want to sacrifice my upper body strength completely. After retiring from rugby, I continued to keep relatively…

Jonathan Parker raised money for Cyclists Fighting Cancer, a charity that provides bikes and trikes to children being treated for cancer, in memory of his parents, both of whom died of the disease, but also because he knows what it’s like to go through life-changing rehab. “I’ve been through my own mobility issues: in 2002 I fell three floors onto concrete, breaking both my legs. I lost several pints of blood, and it was critical at first — I was in a pretty bad way. Afterwards I was in a wheelchair for a while. But it was part of what got me into cycling in the first place. The consultant told me not to do any sports ever again. Getting into cycling was just to prove him wrong.” You can…

I had one of those magical rides last week. The weather was just so — 19 degrees, sunny, windless. The roads were strangely smooth. The verges were a super-saturated green and the sky was an impossibly deep blue. Best of all, my legs were sensational. They were the legs I dream of, the legs I deserve. The whole ride was effortless. I planned to do a couple of hours — in the end I did nearly four because I was so engrossed in my own brilliance. I could have ridden all day — there was clearly no danger of fatigue or hunger knock. It was just wonderful. I hate days like this. I resent the fact that they exist. It’s the unpredictability that I can’t stand — where do they…

We hear word of a rider on a club run recently. He had recently changed his handlebar stem, and it was his first ride with the new set-up. And, inevitably, the first time he had to brake at a junction he got that judder that meant the headset wasn’t quite tight enough. Rather than stop and do the job the usual way, he fished around for his multitool, selected the 4mm Allen key, stuck it in the bolt in the steerer cap, and gave it a twist. He had failed to anticipate that applying a sudden torque to the steerer without compensating for it with the other hand on the bars was going to result in an instant crash. None of the four people who he took down with him…

Club Cycliste de Villeneuve Saint Germain Soissons Aisne, Soissons, France What’s your background? I played rugby until I was 15 and then gave cycling a go as my dad raced when he was my age. I fell in love with it. Why move to France? I raced here as a junior a few times and the races were incomparable to ones back home. My team-mate Sam Walsham and I won the junior Duo Normand last October. That led to us both getting called up to this team. How are you finding it? I enjoy the responsibility of living on my own. I’ve become an experimental cook: for breakfast I scramble eggs into my oats, and add cinnamon, chopped apple and raisins. How’s the season been? I’ve been at the required…

If you had to give a score to how happy you felt every day, and then you took an average of that score for the year, would that tell you how happy you were that year? If you gave a score for how happy you felt every day, and watched how the score changed over time, could you trust that your perception of seven out of 10 happiness had stayed the same? What would be a more important average: the mean, the median, the mode? I wonder this often. Especially on someone’s birthday. I wonder which year in their life has been the happiest so far and whether they’ll ever experience a year happier than that. I used to ask people what they believed their average out-of-10 happiness was. Something…

Anna van der Breggen (Boels-Dolmans) rode superbly to stave off repeated attacks and ensure she emerged victorious in the Tour of California. The Dutchwoman gained most of her lead on the race’s opening lumpy stage where she broke clear and won solo. As if her authority was ever in doubt, she then attacked on the race’s queen stage, stage two, alongside team-mate Katie Hall and the pair rode to the finish, with Hall taking the stage win. But come the race’s third and final stage she found herself under pressure. Such was the ferocity of the racing, the world champion lost three of her team-mates to the pace and was forced to do much of the chasing herself, before eventually finishing in the leading bunch. She said: “It was fast…

It’s rare that the World Championships comes to our doorstep in the UK so it’s time to make the most of it. “There are usually 50 club members who go to Majorca in September but we’re all staying home to watch the rces and go riding all week,” Jill Birch of Otley CC reveals. We think you should do the same so we’ve collected all the expert knowledge on the best places to ride and designed four routes for you to ride and then pull up and watch the action. Some of the routes are a bit challenging — this is Yorkshire and there are few flat roads around — so feel free to do them on alternative days if you prefer so you aren’t in danger of bonking and…

There is a shortage of places left to stay in Yorkshire during the Worlds, so book quickly to guarantee accommodation. Ripon and the Bedale area have the most options, giving riders quick access to the Dales and Harrogate, while the North York Moors aren’t too far away, too. We have listed a few accommodations that we would recommend. Dragon House Guest House (www.dragonhousehotel.com/index.htm; 6 Dragon Parade, Harrogate, HG1 5DA; from £30pp) is one of just a few places still available in Harrogate. Centrally located with bike storage. The 18th-century Old Coach House (www.oldcoachhouse.info; North Stainley, Ripon, HG4 3HT; from £85 a night) is a luxury five-star bed and breakfast that has secure bike storage. Mallard Grange Farmhouse B&B (www.mallardgrange.co.uk; Aldfield, Ripon, HG4 3BE; from £75) is ideally located, near to…

I got my first road bike for my 21st birthday. I didn’t really do any sport before that and was a total novice. Indeed, I chose my bike because it had three chainrings instead of two — I thought more meant better. My first road bike soon became a triathlon race bike, and I carried on competing in triathlon until running injuries got the better of me. Several years of time trialling followed before the track session at Herne Hill Velodrome taught me the skills to hold my own in a bunch, giving me the confidence for crit racing. My first season of crit racing was in 2016, when I gained my cat-two licence, and in 2017 I did my first road race. The intense nature of road racing gave…

ROAD RACING SUNDAY, MAY 19 Barnsley Road Club Road Race (Hade Edge, West yorkshire, 55 miles): 3, 4: 1. Tom Townsend (High Wycombe CC); 2. J. Coates (Cycle Team OnForm); 3. J. Spivey (Cliff Pratt Racing); 4. J. Williams (Clwb Beicio Egni); 5. M. Bray (Geared Up Cycles); 6. J. Dooley (Congleton CC); 7. G. Henry (Univ of Warwicks CC); 8. S. O’Shea (Chorlton Velo); 9. T. Harmer (PMRR); 10. T. Kaye (Army Cycling). East Lancs RC Spring Road Race (Edisford, Lancs): 2, 3, 4: 1. Sam Fairhurst (Bill Nickson Cycles); 2. D. Hudson (Liverpool Century RC); 3. J. Womersley (Crimson Orientation Marketing); 4. T. Potter (All Terrain Cycles); 5. D. Price (Chorlton Velo); 6. N. Cooper (ActiveEdge RT); 7. C. Blake (Prologue RT); 8. R. Bott (Team Aspire); 9.…

VERN PITT News editor Have we learned nothing from Giros of the past? That’s what I thought this weekend when I’ve seen people writing off Simon Yates’s chance of Giro victory. Sure, the time losses he suffered last week have left him with a mountain to climb [there’s 30 climbs left actually – Ed] but this is the Giro. Have we all forgotten the sight of a Lotto-Jumbo rider with a seemingly unassailable lead somersaulting into a snow bank in 2016 or Chris Froome’s long-range attack in 2018? Those are just the two most recent examples of how this race regularly turns on its head and we’re not even into week two yet. “YATES COULD STILL PULL OFF A SURPRISE” And who is better equipped to do that than Simon…

Hammer Stavanger (May 24-26) The opening race of the 2019 Hammer series, the Climb stage takes place on Friday. Saturday sees the Sprint, and then Sunday is the all-action Chase. Team Ineos, inaugural winners in 2017, have Geraint Thomas and Wout Poels in their team. Tour de l’Ain (May 24-26) Three WorldTour teams are among the teams racing in eastern France, with both Harry Tanfield and Alex Dowsett competing for Katusha-Alpecin. Stage one will be for the sprinters, but stage two finishes atop the Col de la Faucille, and stage three at the Col du Grand Colombier. Thüringen Rundfahrt der Frauen (May 28-June 2) In 2017, Hayley Simmonds came close to becoming the first Briton to win the prestigious German race since Nicole Cooke in 2006. She eventually finished third…

Classics dropped from Women’s WorldTour Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Flèche Wallonne, both run by ASO, will not be part of the women’s WorldTour for 2020 after the Tour de France organiser decided against providing the now required 45 minutes of live television coverage. World champion Anna van der Breggen criticised the situation after this year’s Flèche Wallonne: “I think we deserve to have live coverage and that people can follow us because many people would like to.” 25,000 pounds has so far been raised in memory of the 50-year-old man who died on the recent Velo Birmingham and Midlands ride. More than 1,500 people have donated to the fund, which will go to Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland Air Ambulance. The as yet unnamed rider was believed to have come off his bike 23…

The ‘Icons of cycling’ (CW May 2) that piqued my interest was looking back at the Renault team of the Seventies and Eighties. I can just about recall the exploits of the mighty 'Badger’, Bernard Hinault and the ‘Professor’ Laurent Fignon. If we were to change a few little details here and there the piece could easily have been about a much more modern era. Imagine we change the dates to, let’s say, 2010-2019 and the rider details to Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, the piece probably wouldn’t have looked that much different. What really struck me about Renault though was the lack of animosity there appeared to be at the time about their dominance — so unlike that surrounding Team Sky over the last few years. Funny…

The inaugural mixed relay team time trial on Sunday, September 22 consists of three male and three female riders from one country. Pick a spot on Parliament Street or Otley Road in the centre of Harrogate to watch the two laps unfold. The same circuit will also be tackled twice in both the junior men’s and women’s time trial on Monday, September 23. Tight bends near Valley Gardens will ensure you get a chance to catch sight of the racers several times. On Thursday, September 26 the junior men’s road race takes place, starting in Richmond. The climb of Kidstones Bank comes just before the picture-postcard village of Kettlewell, a great place to watch the action. Bolton Abbey will provide an idyllic setting, before the finish on Parliament Street in…

The Cervélo R3 doesn’t come with the same high-end specification, the same racing credentials or the same premium price tag as the Cervélo R5, which is one of the bikes used by Sunweb, but that doesn’t mean it’s just an entry-level ‘endurance’ version of the brand’s race bike. Cervélo has always argued that there’s a nuanced difference between the two. For starters, both bikes were launched at exactly the same time: it was simultaneous launches for bikes of equal merit. Aesthetically, the two bikes are almost identical but underneath there’s a difference in the carbon layup which, according to Cervélo, makes the R3 more comfortable than the R5 without sacrificing stiffness. I’ve tested both the R5 and the R3, and there is indeed a nuanced difference between both bikes in…

Before I got into cycling, I used to run a lot. I’ve done five marathons and was a decent club runner with PBs of sub-three hours for the marathon and under 80 minutes for half-marathon. I started racing bikes about two years ago, but last year had a pretty bad crash, ending up with 36 stitches in my leg. Since then I’ve been trying to make up for lost time. The crash happened in a cat two/three race at Preston Park [in Brighton]. Someone swerved out and took out the front of the bunch; I was following someone’s wheel and ploughed into them at 30mph. I hit my head, my helmet exploded, and then I somehow managed to land on someone’s chainring, which went through my leg like a bread…

Three years ago TV daredevil Guy Martin set a new record for cycling the world’s longest desert highway. He clicked off the 340 miles across the Taklamakan Desert in north-western China — AKA the ‘Desert of Death’ — in 28 hours 17 minutes. Sitting at home watching, barrister Jonathan Parker thought to himself, “I’d like to have a crack at that.” Just one month earlier, Parker had ridden from London to Paris in a world record time of 12 hours 31 minutes (including the five-hour ferry crossing). “Breaking that record was a means to an end of raising money for Cyclists Fighting Cancer,” he tells me over the phone from his home in Qatar, “and it was the same this time: I knew that if I wanted to raise a…

Four Days of Dunkirk (May 14-19) Dylan Groenewegen (Jumbo-Visma) was the dominant sprinter in northern France, winning the first three stages. Despite having a 15-second advantage in the GC, though, the Dutchman ceded his lead to compatriot and team-mate Mike Teunissen, who won the final two stages. GP Criquielion (May 19) Holdsworth-Zappi rider Reece Wood finished eighth in the one-day race in Belgium, named in honour of 80s pro Claude Criquielion. The race was won by Belgian Arne Marit. Wood, 20, who raced for Team Wiggins last year, recently won the Tour of the North stage race in Ireland. Tour de la Manche (May 16-19) British rider Charley Calvert (GSC Blagnac Velosport 31), 19, scored two good results in the French stage race, finishing fourth on stage two and following…

Once upon a time aerodynamics was for time triallists only. Now everyone appreciates the benefits it can bring. To improve your road set-up, there are a number of basic measures you can take. Swap your normal helmet for an aero version. Change your jersey for a tighter one with a more aero fit and make sure you do the zip up all the way. You can help even more by changing your position. Put your hands on the brake hoods, and bend your elbows at 90 degrees. This will lower your front end. You can emphasise this by trying to tuck your head into your shoulders, a bit like a turtle, which will keep it out of the air flow. Squeeze your shoulders in a bit. The net effect of…