Indholdsfortegnelse for February 22, 2024 i Cycling Weekly

As I climb slowly out of bed my thoughts immediately turn to my shoes. Are they dry? The previous evening, the first thing I did after checking into our hotel in Langholm, tired, wet and dirty, was get in the shower and thoroughly wash my once-pristine white shoes. Covered in grime and soaked through, I got them sparkling clean before I turned the soap on myself. I’d smuggled some thick paper hand towels out of a cafe earlier in the day, knowing I’d need to stuff them in my shoes overnight. I can’t start a ride with wet shoes. I just can’t. So in that cafe, even before I was halfway through day one, my thoughts had leapt forward to the start of day two. The towels and heated towel…

First up, we have the Scott Speedster 10, boasting a F clean aesthetic with its cables tucked neatly inside of its head tube. Together with its colour-matched sidewalls and saddle, I think it’s actually the smartest looking of the bikes on test – though if you’re a stickler for invisible welds, the Emonda ALR 5 or Canyon Endurace 7 would come out in front. Starting with the frameset, the first thing I’ll mention is the fit. At 177cm, I’m supposed to be in the middle of the overlap between the size large and medium – but there is no way I’d have been able to ride the large and even the medium feels big. With a stack height of 572mm, it’s the tallest bike on test – although not by…

From the frameset to the wheel/tyre combo and Starting with the aesthetics of the frameset, the welds are (largely) as invisible as the Trek Emonda ALR 5’s, although the cables are exposed around the cockpit, which does detract from the clean lines. You should also be aware that the bottom bracket is a press-fit – but with the ‘thread fit’ Token bottom bracket specced, you just need two bottom bracket tools to unscrew it. It’s no coincidence that this bike has both ‘endu-’ and ‘-race’ in its name. Although I wouldn’t pick it out for a crit as I would the Trek Emonda ALR 5, the Endurace 7 feels sportier than the Scott Speedster 10 and the Specialized Allez Sport. Given that the 32mm Schwalbe tyres plump up fatter than…

Classics supremo Roger de Vlaeminck outsprints world champion Eddy Merckx to win the Championship of Zurich, one of the longest-running and most prestigious one-day races on the calendar. In its prime it was held in as high regard as the five Monuments of the sport. The final edition was held in 2006. The race was dominated by Swiss riders from its first edition in 1914 up to 1956, but Belgian riders won every edition between ’69 and ’76 although never by Merckx. This is one of the few major races that he never won. De Vlaeminck, who was an out and out Classics rider, regularly got the better of Merckx in one-day events – indeed he did so again at 1975’s Paris-Roubaix. The two riders’ careers overlapped between 1969 and…

Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) wrapped up overall victory at the Volta ao Algarve last weekend as Wout van Aert (Visma-Lease a Bike) also opened his account for the season. Evenepoel’s impressive stage-four time trial win, his first as time trial world champion, proved to be enough to secure his third overall title at the Portuguese stage race. However, he was made to work for it on the final stage, which finished atop the punishing Alto do Malhão climb. Van Aert launched a huge breakaway attack which momentarily appeared to place Evenepoel’s overall lead in jeopardy. Matters were made worse for Evenepoel when an issue with his bike forced him to ride the final climb in his big chainring. Nevertheless, van Aert was eventually caught and Evenepoel took second on the…

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad heralds the start of the European cobbled Classics season, part one of two in the blockbuster double-header that is Belgium’s Opening Weekend, alongside Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. Taking place this Saturday, the 79th edition of Omloop will see strong line-ups for both the men’s and women’s races, including Lotte Kopecky, Tom Pidcock and Wout van Aert. “Van Aert is the outright favourite” The race takes place in the heart of the region on many of the same hills and bergs made famous by the area’s biggest race, the Tour of Flanders. Visma-Lease a Bike’s van Aert cut back his cyclo-cross campaign this winter in order to be in top shape for the cobbled Classics that he still hasn’t won. “The first part of my season is about building up to…

Manchester, 23-25 February Scratch race world champion Will Tidball will be among a raft of top British talent competing at the National Track Championships this weekend. The three-day event returns this Friday to Manchester, the home of British Cycling, for the first time since 2020, after the velodrome underwent refurbishment works. Ahead of the Championships, Tidball told Cycling Weekly of the difficulty of being marked as a star rider. “It’s like having a shadow,” the 23-year-old said. “That’s the hardest thing about Nationals, to be honest. It’s quite easy to let a move go and be on the back foot, and then suddenly have a load of people sitting on your wheel not wanting to give you a turn. But it’s a good challenge, and it’s good practice for when…

How will “world class performances” get people on their bikes for sensible utilitarian purposes? If anything, the UK viewing cycling as a sport rather than a mode of transport damages efforts to increase cycling. Ian Bower People will always ride bikes (it’s regularly voted as mankind’s greatest invention after all), what will change is how they go about riding them, where and with whom. Len Townsend Unfortunately the UK’s roads are not set up to support cyclists and this causes animosity from motorists. I stick to club group rides where I feel safer, and Zwift. Faris Sadiq As a committee member of a historic club, yes we notice numbers dropping. The model is slowly changing, but most of us will survive and adapt. A good portion of the hip groups…

TOTAL DISTANCE 246 MILES CLIMBING 12,025FT DAY 1: STRANRAER-LOCKERBIE 119M I LE S | 4,90 0 F T DAY 2: LOCKERBIE-EYEMOUTH 127M I LE S | 7,125F T WH ERE TO STAY One our first night we stayed at the three-star North West Castle Hotel overlooking the bay at Stranraer. Spacious and quiet, it’s also the only hotel where we’ve eaten overlooking a curling rink. Sadly, the breakfast coffee left a lot to be desired. Our halfway point was the three-star Eskdale Hotel in Langholm. A small city centre hotel, it was cosy and comfortable with a good restaurant. But still no coffee machine at breakfast. After reaching Eyemouth we opted to drive to Berwick-upon-Tweed ahead of the train journey home early the next morning. We stayed at The King’s…

It was in 1984 that the first aluminium Allez hit The cable routing on the Allez Sport stands proud of the head tube and you’ll notice that – unlike the Canyon and Trek, though similar to the Scott – the welding is very much of the visible ilk. It’s interesting to understand just why Specialized and Scott have this divergence from Canyon and Trek – and the answer is nestled in the broader context of their respective ranges. In the case of the Trek Emonda and Canyon Endurace, their entry-level models stand at £1,850 and £1,449, respectively. If you’re interested in either of these platforms, that’s the bare minimum you’ll have to pay. The Allez Sport and Speedster 10, in contrast, are offered in builds going all the way down…

All of the bikes on test were great fun to ride and the level A of components you get for the prices is generally great. The old adage that you should invest in the frame and upgrade your spec over time has somewhat lost its strength – when the frames are as good as this and it’s possible to get a solid spec from the start, why not take advantage of that? In most cases, even investing in deep-section carbon wheels wouldn’t even be out of place – with the resultant build likely to be both faster and cheaper than the carbon equivalent. But of the specifics, there are two quite clear stratifications: the bikes which can be built down to the £1,000 price point, and those which can’t. Specialized…

When he was racing, Eddy Merckx primarily had a reputation for winning, but he was also famously – or notoriously, if you asked his mechanic – fanatical about his equipment and set-up, making adjustments mid-race if he wasn’t happy. There’s a memorable scene in A Sunday in Hell, the iconic documentary about the 1976 edition of Paris-Roubaix, where the race is held up by protesters and Merckx uses this as an opportunity to tinker with his saddle setback, cheekily borrowing a spanner from the Brooklyn service car of his rival Roger de Vlaeminck. So when he started his own brand in 1980, two years after his retirement from pro racing, there was a very good chance that these would be high-quality bikes. Merckx brought in Ugo De Rosa – who…

As much as I enjoy watching riders at the top of their game winning bike races, I fear the SD Worx team might end up stifling the 2024 season with their total dominance. It seems strange to say that while the dominance of Annemiek van Vleuten is still a recent memory, but I don’t think swapping one dominance for another is good for the sport. As much as we want to see women’s teams grow in size, budget and professionalism, if all that is funnelled into one team it could end up being to the detriment of the sport. Should the UCI address this and bring in regulations that see the talent spread around a bit more evenly? Please don’t think this is a criticism of SD Worx. They’re there…

It was 1998 and under Marco Pantani that an aluminium I bike (the Bianchi Mega Pro XL) last won the Tour de France. Since then, carbonfibre has ruled the roost. But now, after a quarter of a century, we are seeing something of an epochal shift. Several factors have coalesced and the result has been the crystallisation of a new paradigm. First, and most nebulous, there has been a growing appreciation of the cold ring of metal – it has a certain je ne sais quoi that the plastic sandwich of carbon simply lacks. More pressingly, you might not want to associate yourself with the carbon waste that comes with a carbon frame; aluminium, in stark contrast, has been claimed to be the most costeffective material to recycle. But perhaps…

The Trek Emonda ALR 5 is quite a step change from the T other three bikes on test. Whereas the other brands keep their racing geometry models locked on the painful side of £2,000, Trek offers its top-tier road racing geometry – ‘H1.5 geometry’, in the marque’s parlance – at a significantly more accessible price point. A bike’s geometry has by far the greatest impact on what sort of riding it is suitable for – pegging a premium on ‘performance’ geometry makes bike racing even more exclusive than it already is. Even so, despite the kudos for hitting this price point with that geometry, the Trek Emonda ALR 5 is still the second most expensive bike on test at £1,850. But you can see exactly where your money is going.…

Rim brakes. That old tech. Haven’t they run out of road – like leather helmets, down-tube shifters and toe clips and straps before them? It would seem perhaps not. While it’s true that the Canyon Endurace range only goes down to £1,449, the Canyon Endurace RB goes down to £1,299. And, of course, that RB stands for rim brake. Why the excitement? Well, the Endurace RB comes equipped with full 11-speed Shimano 105 including the calipers. If your only experience of rim brakes is from groupsets knocking on 20 years old or low-end equipment on the very most entry-level of bikes, it’s well worth giving these a try. In the dry and on aluminium rims, the performance is really very close to that of disc brakes – both in terms…

Zwift racing: some love it, some hate it. While it may not exactly replicate the feeling out on the road when you’re holding on to that wheel for dear life or trying desperately to close the gap, there’s no doubt that in virtual racing you’re still inclined to dig deeper than you do when you’re doing a workout in ERG mode. Zwift racing has various levels of competition, from a short and snappy time trial to a talent pathway to professional cycling. One thing we can all agree on is that Zwift racing is hard – but, the question is, if you just race on Zwift, instead of following workouts, just how fit will you get? Before we dive into some of the differences between Zwift racing and structured workouts,…

If you ever see a video on social media of a cycling incident or accident, remember it is your sacred duty to comment on it. If the world didn’t want your opinion, the world would not have provided a box for you to put it in. The less you know about the incident, the more vigorous should be your editorial observations. Don’t make the mistake of watching the video more than once – a skilled commenter can make incisive interventions based on nothing other than the opening still and the previous, much too tolerant, comments. If the incident is a collision, explain how you would have avoided it by a detailed analysis of factors like the stupidity of absolutely everyone involved, other than the person who is actually stupid. For…