Indholdsfortegnelse for April 27, 2023 i Cycling Weekly

With bike racing, it’s often the case that what keeps us coming back for more is what we haven’t seen, rather than what we have seen. This was the case with Liège at the weekend, as we were denied the chance to see Remco and Pog slugging it out over the final kilometres following an uncharacteristic crash from the Slovenian. His ability to avoid crashes is almost as incredible as his ability to win any bike race he wants. Having followed racing since 1989 I’m confident in saying that these are the two most talented riders I’ve ever seen, and for the first time since the late 1970s they’re worthy of the title ‘the Next Merckx’. Something I never thought I’d say. There’s no doubt that Pogačar could have followed…

Tadej Pogačar underwent successful surgery in Belgium on Monday after he fractured his wrist at Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and was expected to be out for four to six weeks while he recovers. In a statement, his UAE Emirates team said he had fractured his left scaphoid bone. The team’s medical director, Dr Adrian Rotunno, said: “The surgery on Tadej’s scaphoid was successful and he will travel home tomorrow for recovery and rehabilitation. “In addition to the two fractures, Tadej has many wounds on his hands, which first have to heal completely, after which he can carefully start training indoors.”…

BC launches travel club British Cycling has joined forces with travel company Sportive Breaks to launch the British Cycling Travel Club. BC says members will get access to “unrivalled member-only rates, incentives and competitions” for sportives across Europe, and there will also be opportunities for members to travel to BC-endorsed training camps, as well as spectator experiences at races including the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia. Pantano returns Convicted doper Jarlinson Pantano has returned to cycling, joining amateur level club EPM in his native Colombia, after his ban from cycling expired. The 34-year-old won stages of the Tour de France, Tour de Suisse and Volta a Catalunya during his WorldTour career with IAM Cycling and Trek-Segafredo, before testing positive for EPO in 2019. Decathlon at the WorldTour Sports hypermarket…

ONE UP Ribble Endurance 725 Sport £1,699 Spending another £300 will get you another gear, in the shape of Shimano’s ever-reliable 11-speed 105 groupset. Unlike the Base, it’s a complete set too. Other than that, it’s like-for-like, which means the same Mavic Aksium 19 wheelset, Conti Ultra Sport tyres and Level 1 finishing kit. Again, Ribble’s BikeBuilder does give you the option to tweak this line-up. ONE DOWN Ribble Endurance 725 frameset £1,099 The only cheaper option to the 725 Base is to buy the frameset. However, at a little over £1,000 it goes to illustrate just how good value the complete-build options are. That said, if you’ve a garage full of spare parts then the Endurance 725 frameset makes for an appealing starting point for a winter, training or…

I very nearly didn’t bother with a bike-fit. The only discomfort I thought I was suffering from was the uncomfortable truth that poor fitness was to blame for my lack of performance. I was wrong. First, having a fit has cured the mental anguish that’s plagued me for decades around sizing. At 6ft 3in, I’ve always been placed on seemingly jumbo-sized frames (anywhere between 58 and 62cm, depending on the brand). Should I be riding something smaller, with faster response and lighter weight? No. Thanks to MyVeloFit and Grant Bayton, I now know my 60in De Rosa is the best size for me. In hindsight, I should have invested in a fit before spending a lot of money on a new bike. Obvious really. My saddle was too high. MyVeloFit…

Writing the main column this week reminded me of the day one of my friends recorded his one and only TT victory, at an event on the A1 near Catterick (it was a while ago). After wiping several minutes off his personal best and beating a lot of riders who were by any measure better than him, he complained to me. “There was an army convoy – at least a dozen low-loaders with tanks on them. They were only doing about 35mph, and it took them ages to get past me. I was stuck with them for about 10 miles. They really held me up.” Yup. They held him up. At 35mph. Into a headwind. Unlike those who understand the influence of traffic, I think he actually believed this. He…

Demi Vollering overcame nerves and expectation on Sunday as she claimed her third win of the week at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. That, combined with victory at Amstel Gold the previous weekend and La Flèche Wallonne midweek, made her the first woman since Anna van der Breggen (now Vollering’s SD Worx sports director) in 2017 to claim all three Ardennes race titles in a single year. The race had split up on La Redoute as Vollering’s team-mate Marlen Reusser went clear. Then, on the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, Elisa Longo Borghini bridged to the leader before Vollering rode the rest of the chasers off her wheel to join the pair up front. Reusser, paying for her earlier efforts, left the other two to contest the win and finished third. Longo Borghini opened up…

Some have claimed that Uttrup Ludwig’s media persona is an act, a theatrical performance turned on for the cameras, but everyone CW spoke to for this piece assured us that such an idea was nonsense. “Ludicrous,” says her father Tommy. “She’s always been that way.” Here are a few of her greatest interview lines. After finishing fourth at the 2018 La Course: “A month ago, I was really riding like s**t. I had an infection in my wisdom tooth and we pulled it out. Ever since my wisdom tooth was pulled out, it got better day by day. If you ever have problems with bad legs, pull your wisdom tooth out!” Post-race at the 2019 Tour of Flanders: “I was a dead fish at the end.” On how her team would celebrate…

MORE UCI TEAMS There are only three Africanregistered UCI cycling teams in the men’s and women’s pelotons, and the demise of both the Qhubeka-NextHash and ProTouch teams has severely hampered opportunities for African riders. Doug Ryder comments: “We both had a guaranteed entry into the Tour – but that stopped because of funding. It’s a concern as Africa isn’t helping itself to stay afloat.” MORE BIG RACES Only having two UCI 2.1 races – the third tier of racing – is not enough. Bigger races will increase standards and open up opportunities. MORE TARGETED FUNDING Israel-PremierTech are investing in Rwanda through their Racing for Change campaign that has seen four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome race the country’s national race. More similar schemes are needed. MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN…

“We married in ‘62, but I’d taken a break from riding – my wife didn’t know me as a cyclist.” Martin Harvey is telling me about his late wife Jackie, who died in 2010, two years short of their golden wedding anniversary. It was a good job he had stopped riding, I joke, else it might have put her off. Harvey lets out a big laugh. “You’re right, it doesn’t mix with family life. I was busy with other things, keeping fit by digging the garden.” Harvey is speaking to me by video call from his home in the West Midlands, and I’ve asked him to start at the beginning. He explains how his interest in cycling dates back to starting work as a 16-year-old in 1952. “It was 10…

For many seasons the men’s Amstel Gold Race had the reputation of being a bit dull. Then, from 2019 till 2022, it was quite interesting. There was Mathieu van der Poel’s astonishing win in 2019. Then in both 2021 and 2022 there were photo-finish brouhahas that gave us something to bitch about for weeks. In 2023, the race looked like it was returning to its old form as Tadej Pogačar stormed off for a win that was as impressive as it was utterly predictable. All looked lost from an interest point of view. But in a snap return to Amstel’s new image of ho-hum racing combined with excruciating officiating, the driver of the lead car positioned themselves right in front of Pogačar as he was trying to make the attack…

Even suffering a crash on the final gravel section of a chaotic Rutland-Melton CiCLE Classic couldn’t stop Luke Lamperti returning to the front and claiming sprint victory with a throw of his bike. The two-time American criterium champion showed his turn of speed at the end of 183 gruelling kilometres to win a bunch sprint by less than a tyre’s width from Belgian Tijl De Decker in second and James McKay (Cycling Sheffield) in third. Rain on the morning of the event made the farm track sectors around the Rutland countryside treacherous and contributed to the bunch eventually being whittled down to 26 riders. “It was carnage, hectic all day, we tried to race from the front but a lot was happening,” said Lamperti. “So much was going on that…

The GB track team took home six medals from the latest round of the Nations Cup, half of which were gold. Katie Archibald stormed to the omnium title in Milton, Canada, on Sunday, dominating the scratch, tempo and elimination races. The Scot was also part of a victorious women’s team pursuit team, alongside Megan Barker, Neah Evans, Josie Knight and Jess Roberts. GB’s men’s team pursuit team likewise claimed gold in Canada, with world champs Ollie Wood and Dan Bigham alongside Michael Gill and Josh Charlton, toppling the Italians. Archibald and Evans took silver in the women’s Madison, while there were bronze medals for Katy Marchant in the women’s keirin and the men’s team sprint trio of Harry Ledingham-Horn, Ed Lowe and Hayden Norris. In Italy, GB took six gold…

I subscribe to Cycling Weekly and enjoyed reading about the guide to Glasgow as I’m from there, now living in Linlithgow, 16 miles west of Edinburgh – always good reading about your local area. I was very surprised, and more than a little dismayed, with your advice about staying at Edinburgh Haymarket for the start of the road race and then driving to the finish in Glasgow. There is a 52-minute train connection (every 30 minutes) between the two city centres that lands you straight in George Square. Edinburgh is the least car-friendly city in Scotland, as you will find when trying to park. As cyclists we should not be promoting a stressful dash in the car anywhere when there is a suitable train alternative. Ed – Donald, you are…

Asked what Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig’s French is like, her FDJ-Suez team-mate Marie Le Net lets out a giggle. “She’s a very good student,” Le Net says. “But we’re teaching her words that, let’s say, aren’t the most useful. “Swear words were the first she learnt, I think. She retains them much better than others. We taught her a few at Strade [Bianche] and she started using them with the team directors. Their faces dropped when she said them out loud, and they turned to me like, ‘Why did you teach her that?!’ and I went, ‘She asked me to!’ “But she tells everyone that I force her to learn these words.” “She’s made a New Year’s resolution to learn a new word each day. I’ve tried to teach her helpful…

Thanks to its long-term sponsorship of the now-defunct WorldTour team, Qhubeka is a world-renowned charity that has provided well over 100,000 bikes to locals across South Africa, in particular school children. “The pro cycling team had a massive influence on the brand’s global awareness, and the impact that had on the ground is truly amazing,” says Doug Ryder. The bikes are distributed from February to October and Tour de France organiser ASO is a key financial backer. “Qhubeka provides bikes to school kids,” Ryder adds. “They are built in South Africa by locals, and given to kids who do something positive such as improving their grades, growing trees or cleaning up trash. That’s why they appreciate the bikes and look after them.”…

After decades of promise but little credible achievement, artificial intelligence has got very clever very quickly, catching the world off-guard. No longer the preserve of sci-fi movies, AI is here to stay, if not here to take over. Powerful, liberating, accurate and, well, intelligent, it impresses and intimidates in equal measure. In the world of cycling, it promises to calculate our optimum set-up at the click of a button. In fact, AI bike-fitting has been available since 2021 in the shape of MyVeloFit.com, an online service that promises a virtual fit for less than the cost of a pack of premium bar tape. It’s so inexpensive that I thought it must be worth a gamble. Not too daring a gamble, admittedly, as I also booked a fit at my local…

Martin Harvey rode the record-breaking end-to-end with his two daughters Michaela Casey and Julie Grigg, both in their 50s. Casey told us how much it meant to support their dad while riding in memory of their late mum “My dad became very healthconscious when his own father died aged just 63 – we noticed as young children, suddenly everything got really healthy, from fresh orange juice to brown bread to low-fat spreads, all of that. It’s cycling, though, that has really kept him going. “When I decided to do LEJOG with him, I was starting from scratch, following a 20-week training programme from zero to 300 miles a week. Dad came out with me for most of my longer rides and got me up to speed, slowing down so that…