Indholdsfortegnelse for April 14, 2022 i Cycling Weekly

The battle to avoid relegation from the men’s WorldTour ranks at the end of this season has left many teams questioning the ranking system, some in denial about their position, and others admitting that it’s having a direct influence on how riders are approaching races. For the first time ever, next year’s three-term WorldTour licences will be awarded to the teams who are in the top-18 of the UCI’s rankings based on results over the past three seasons. At the time of writing, according to the points totals collated by website Lanterne Rouge, there are eight teams involved in the battle to avoid relegation, with Israel-Premier Tech and Lotto-Soudal both currently sitting in the relegation zone and facing the prospect of having their top-tier licence revoked come 2023. The former…

Bike foragers inquire within. And if you don’t fancy that, how about ‘rickshaw pilot’? These are just two of the volunteering positions available at Ride On in Exeter – a social enterprise and registered charity that aims to get more people on more bikes. Sales of refurbished bikes are a major part of what it does, and of course those bikes have got to come from somewhere - which is where Ride On’s bike foragers come in. R ide On also owns two Rickshaws, which are used to allow those who are not able to ride a bike to enjoy the joys of cycling. Some of the project’s regular beneficiaries come from the local nursing home Greenslades as well as a number of other care homes and charities around the…

What’s the proper way to toast one of the most banzai lone rides in all the history of women’s cycling, nay all cycling? If you’ve become the first ever queen of the Queen of the Classics and endured all the punishment and mud that the cobbles of northern France can throw at you, what is the meal befitting of such a champion? Perhaps champagne and caviar. Maybe a steak of kobe beef. Such luxuries are not for 2021 Paris-Roubaix winner Lizzie Deignan. “That night we stayed in a budget Ibis, next to a service station in the UK,” she recalls. “It was about one o’clock in the morning, and the only thing that was open was a McDonald’s. So I got a couple of bags of fries and a Diet…

HJC Valeco helmet £125 Weight 245g The Valeco fits into HJC’s range as an accessible all-rounder lid. It’s cheaper than the lightweight Ibex 2.0 and more ventilated than the aero Furion 2.0, but is still a little lighter and featuring more tech than the entry-level Atara helmet. Benefiting from 12 ventilation holes, the Valeco is yet another helmet taking advantage of the Venturi effect to combine cooling air flow with aerodynamic efficiency – the air passing through gets accelerated out the back of the helmet. You can see the same principle at play when covering the end of a hose with your thumb, making the water spray out more forcefully. On the bike, the Valeco was light enough not to feel like an imposition and the straps provided ample adjustment for…

Britain didn’t have many pros riding at the top level in the 1980s, but two of them were going to the Tour de France, albeit with very different targets. Robert Millar was going under strict instructions from team manager Peter Post to win the race, while Paul Sherwen was going to make his debut as a commentator. Both were in the UK the week before the Tour started, but again with very different targets. Millar was in London to watch the preview of Granada Television’s documentary Robert Millar: The High Life while Sherwen was in Leek, riding the pro circuit race champs. Millar had been second at the Tour of Spain (that ran in springtime) and the Tour de Suisse and was heading to France as a favourite and leader…

“Sooner or later the victory will come” Former world champion Michał Kwiatkowski delivered a reminder of his class as a rider, after an 18 month-long winless streak, with the narrowest of victories at Amstel Gold Race on Sunday. It was a case of another Amstel Gold, another photo finish involving an Ineos Grenadiers rider. Last year, Tom Pidcock was narrowly judged to have been beaten by Wout van Aert on the finish line at Valkenburg, something that is still contentious. In 2022, Michał Kwiatkowski was initially told that it would be another second place for Ineos, with Benoît Cosnefroy declared the winner. However, seconds later, the decision was reversed once the finish line photos were looked at closely, with Kwiatkowski beating the Frenchman by a matter of centimetres. Meanwhile the…

Dani Martínez delivered a message to his anticipated Tour de France rivals after his Tour of the Basque Country victory that he can still improve ahead of his bid to win the yellow jersey. The Ineos Grenadier overturned a twosecond deficit to Remco Evenepoel on the final stage of the race to claim his second ever WorldTour stage race triumph. It came 20 months after his maiden one at the 2020 Critérium du Dauphiné. It was, however, the 25-year-old’s first for Ineos, the team that he is expecting to lead at July’s Tour alongside Adam Yates and Geraint Thomas. Speaking after his win in what is commonly referred to as the hardest week-long stage race in the world, Martínez said: “I feel good and for the Tour de France I…

Not many junior riders at the recent track National Championships had international photography agencies pointing their lenses at them as they took their first tentative steps in national-level competition. But not many junior riders were being walked through their individual pursuit rides by multiple Olympic and world champion Sir Bradley Wiggins. Although Ben Wiggins probably just calls him ‘dad’. “I actually f****d up walking the line,” Wiggins admits, laughing at his first failing as a track coach. “I was using my Nokia phone, and I pushed the button at the wrong time. So although it looked like I was walking the line, I was actually just making it up.” Wiggins junior clocked a four minute, 29 second ride and didn’t make it through to the next round, but at just…

Roubaix cobbles shouldn’t be included in TdF. Belgian cobbles could be. There is a huge difference between them. Jacek Kaap If you only want to race on perfect roads, try track racing. They even have heated buildings. Wayne Dalton It’s risky… Just race the whole thing on Zwift. Glen Whittington Classic UCI. Rider positions = bad. Dodgy roads = good. Stephen Bench Cobbles are part of the game, either you can take it or not. Floren Flores Versus riding down switchbacks at 100kmh with 50-foot sheer drop-offs. Terrence Martineau These cobbles are not ‘normal’ or ‘part of the game’. They are used in just one race each year, and that race is ridden mainly by specialists. It’s not about riders being able to perform on them, it’s about rider safety.…

Cannondale is setting out to “redefine the limits of adventure” with its completely refreshed Topstone platform. Gravel racing, bikepacking and even a little bit of singletrack shredding along trails cut for cross-country mountain bikes are all on the cards. To facilitate this, Cannondale has given the Topstone’s Kingpin rear suspension a revamp and made a few tweaks to the geometry. Naturally the Lefty Oliver suspension fork makes an appearance, as does the polarising SmartSense system of integrated lights and rear-facing radar. But if that’s not your bag, there are still models available without those features. Backing up a second to the outgoing model, we’ve had quite a few of the different spec options in on review – all great fun to ride – but there were still a handful of…

We’ve all been there. Whether it’s being dropped on the club ride by the notorious local hitter, being caught by your minute man in a time trial, or being left to watch as an ultra-lean climber vanishes over the horizon at your favourite sportive, we’ve all wondered what it would take to reach that level. After a slightly disappointing 2021 season (see panel), I found myself questioning what was next for my own riding. After two years of committed training and with some lofty targets on my calendar, I came away from last year feeling no closer to the rewards I had been pursuing, and possibly even further away than I had been in 2020. During an extended off-season, I reflected on the exploits of a number of relatable, real-life…

How did you first get into cycling? I was always an outdoorsy kid, and I had various injuries. Aged about 14, I fractured both ankles playing football and started cycling as a non-impact activity to maintain fitness as I recovered. I had a £200 Trek mountain bike and went riding with my dad on the trails around Paisley [in Renfrewshire, Scotland] where I grew up. I then joined a Go Ride club, Glasgow Riders, and it went from there. When did you realise you had a talent for sprinting? Probably when I realised my road career was over! [Laughs] No, I’ve always been able to empty myself completely, to the point of throwing up, when doing very short efforts. I was winning youth races on the track by hanging on to…

FRED WRIGHT The Flanders experience is like no other I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired at the end of a bike race. After six and a half hours on some of the most iconic roads in cycling at the Tour of Flanders, the last 10km back to Oudenaarde took an age. I was too tired to even notice the guy who jumped the barriers protesting against the climate crisis. It was only when the sugar of a post-race Fanta kicked in that I could fully process what I’d just been a part of. The crowds all over the course were insane; in the early stages it was hard to find somewhere to stop for a wee. Riders say that the crowds on the climbs in Flanders give you…

Great picture from the archive last week. I was 20 around the time! Studying the build and hair style, and checking on other photos of Bill Bradley’s team-mate looking to the left, I am pretty sure this is Albert Hitchen (one of my heroes!) who later of course went on to manage the team. Dr Kevin Watson I like the archive picture in last week’s issue. The rider you can’t identify is Albert Hitchen who actually won London-Holyhead in1961. Theother rider unidentified between Denton and Hoban is, I think, Michael Wright, riding for Wiel. I stand to be corrected about Michael Wright because having ridden with him, I wouldn’t have picked him out facially, but the picture isn’t that clear. He rode for Wiel in 1965 and they wouldn’t have…

MEN It was on, then it was off, then it was on again, and we’re hoping it’s still on. Wout van Aert vs Mathieu van der Poel has been shaping up to be the most iconic Classics rivalry since Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen. The back issues caused by van der Poel’s crash at the Tokyo Games in August had appeared to have resolved themselves towards the end of the road season, with third place at Paris-Roubaix and a solid eighth place at the Worlds in Leuven. But a patchy cross season in mid-February saw the Dutchman’s Alpecin team talking about how he was still testing out his back and undergoing rehabilitation. Would he ever be the same again? Thankfully for Classics fans, and VDP himself of course, the answer…

agnus Sheffield’s 20th birthday is set to be a pretty special one this year. Falling on 19 April, it comes just in time for him to give himself the gift of his first ever Paris-Roubaix finish. Sheffield, who signed for Ineos Grenadiers this season just a year out of the junior ranks, will be the youngest starter in the men’s elite race when he lines up in Compiègne on Sunday (17 April), and the occasion won’t be lost on him. “It’s one of the historic ones; I’m especially looking forward to it,” Sheffield tells Cycling Weekly. “It will be a good birthday present to be able to finish up there.” It will also be a step on the ladder towards attaining one of his major career goals – he lists…

Sponsoring a team is easy. You find a team, and you give them a lot of money. In exchange you make some demands. You make them put whatever you want on their kit – the name of your company, your own name, the name of your country, city, whatever. It can be literally anything – one UK pro team in recent years had a name that meant nothing at all, but it was clearly doing something for the chap with the chequebook. You can make them do other things as well. Want them to come training with you? No problem. Want to sit in the team car issuing orders over the radio? No problem. Want to give inspiring pre-race tactical pep-talks underpinned by nothing beyond having watched the last kilometre…

Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle leads Johan Museeuw as the riders race across the cobbles at the Hell of the North in 1994. Duclos had popularised the use of suspension forks on road bikes at the most punishing of races when he won in 1992 and again in 1993. Come this picture Bianchi, the bike sponsor of Johan Museeuw’s Mapei team, had gone even further with a dramatically sloping top tube and a brace to the seat-tube which looked closer to a mountain bike than a road machine. It didn’t work out as well for them as it had done for Duclos two years earlier though as Museeuw’s frame snapped with around 24km left to race, ending his chase of eventual winner Andrei Tichmil. Duclos’s place in French cycling legend was assured by…