Indholdsfortegnelse for February 20, 2025 i Cycling Weekly

I was laughed at a few days ago when I said to my family, “It’s meant to warm up at the end of next week!” The reason I was laughed at wasn’t my misplaced optimism, but because it was apparently the fifth time I’d said it that day. I do have to admit that recently I’ve been obsessively checking the weather forecast in the hope that it’s going to improve. This seemingly never-ending spell of cold weather has seen me getting ever more frustrated as my fitness levels slip away. I know we haven’t been deluged with snow, and the ground isn’t permanently covered in ice, but I can’t remember the last time I was outside and not shivering. I know February is statistically the coldest month, and I remember…

It was not a bad first couple of days for Matthew Brennan as a professional rider. The 19-year-old from Darlington was third at the Villawood Men’s Classic, the warm-up race to the Tour Down Under, before finishing second on stage one of the WorldTour race itself. However, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider – one of 12 young Brits to turn pro this year – was not overawed. “It was good but also, because I was on the other side of the world, I didn’t really associate it with being in the WorldTour peloton,” he explained to CW. “I wasn’t afraid of it, it just felt like another race. There was never any doubt of what I could do, it was just keeping up your confidence and rolling with it. “It…

I’ll stick with rim brakes, thanks. They stop me (even in the wet), they’re lighter, they look better and they’re easily serviceable. The only disadvantage is rim wear, but if you keep your best wheels for best and use less expensive wheels for commuting, the cost is minimal and probably no more than the cost of a mechanic servicing your discs. Ray Joiner Nothing wrong with new tech coming in and proliferating, as long as it doesn’t block accessibility at the entry level. Rim brakes are good enough for 95% of road bikes, cheaper and easier to maintain. Susan Powell I was a big skeptic when disc brakes first came out on the road and was a late adopter, but after my first ride with them, I was instantly converted.…

Modern bike helmets typically come with a myriad of claims. Given that many premium options are designed with bike racing in mind, these are often performance related. Helmets purport to be more aerodynamic or better ventilated, and they certainly are getting lighter, but are they any safer? It’s a fair assumption that when you buy a helmet it’s fit for purpose. All helmets sold by legitimate retailers will have passed a safety standard for the specific country in which they are sold. In the UK and Europe it’s EN 1078, but it hasn’t been updated in 25 years. “Current standards measure helmet protection during impacts against ‘rigid’ flat or non-flat anvils. Their pass/fail is based on the risk of skull fractures and as a result, current helmets provide good protection…

Jake Sargent led the way at the Severn Road Club 12-mile time trial on Sunday, leading Team Bottrill to a clean sweep of the open podium in Gloucestershire. The 25-year-old from Bristol used his local knowledge to overcome illness earlier in the week, clocking 24.40 to take victory by six seconds from teammate Rob Francis, while Team Bottrill’s new recruit Dylan Griffiths completed a one-two-three. “It couldn’t have gone much better for me and the team,” he said. “To take the win and a clean sweep of the podium with Rob and Dylan really sets a precedent for the season to come.” Josie Harcourt (FTP Fulfil the Potential RT) was fastest female, clocking 31.57 on her road bike, with Emma Bexson (Stratford CC) second. Elsewhere, Jamie Whitcher (Bournemouth Cycleworks) used…

Asharp intake of breath is plain to see on the face of Bob Maitland, as he receives attention from a Tour de France medic after crashing out of the 1955 race. Maitland first rose to prominence as an Olympian, winning a team medal in the road race in the London Games in 1948 after finishing sixth. He also had a successful career as a long-distance record breaker, battling the likes of Ken Joy over rides including Land’s End to London, London to Edinburgh and London to Liverpool. He went on to ride in the 1955 Tour de France as part of the first ever British team to compete in the race, alongside Brian Robinson. Unfortunately, stage nine from Briançon to Monaco brought Maitland’s participation to an end – Robinson (29th)…

Demi’s back In her first race as an FDJ-Suez rider, Demi Vollering attacked, dropped everyone, and soloed to victory on stage one of the Volta Femenina de la Comunitat Valenciana. The Dutchwoman went on to win the race overall. Gauntlet thrown. Southern climes The peloton at the Clásica de Almería climbs the Alto de Fuente Marbella during the one-day race last weekend. The blue skies and short-sleeved jerseys hint that spring will soon arrive in the south of Spain. Round we go The breakaway sweeps around a hairpin bend during stage one of the Tour de la Provence, which ended in a bunch sprint. You can see riders trying to jump from the peloton to the day’s big move. Down and out David Gaudu collapses to the floor after stage…

Rhian Edmunds had pinned her hopes on a top-eight result in the individual sprint at last week’s European Track Championships, so when she ended up going home with a silver medal, plus two more in the keirin and team sprint, she couldn’t quite believe it. The 21-year-old, making her elite debut at the championships, went into the event in Belgium with “no expectations”, she told Cycling Weekly. She now believes she’s “a little bit better” than she initially thought, having taken world champions and Olympic medallists to the wire. “I think it was quite unexpected,” she said. “I’ve not wrapped my head around it at all. I’ve spent most of my career so far improving by, like, half a tenth of a second, at the absolute most, in the flying…

Over the last few years, I’ve been lucky enough to race the first editions of some of the biggest races on our calendar, including the first Paris-Roubaix Femmes and Tour de France Femmes. Now in 2025, we have another very exciting addition with the arrival of a women’s Milan-San Remo. The men’s race is known for being the longest professional one-day race, nearing 300km, and as the saying goes, is the easiest race to finish but the hardest race to win. It’s notoriously not the most interesting race to watch for the first part (to put it politely), but once we’re into the final hour or so, the fireworks begin and it’s impossible to peel yourself away from the screen. Luckily nowadays we have the handy website ‘ismilansanremoexcitingyet. com’ to…

When 80-year-old Geoff Cooke left hospital late last summer, the doctors told him he’d need to do a bit of exercise to bounce back from his treatment. “It was quite funny really,” he begins to chuckle. “I think they were talking about walking. I said, ‘Listen, you can’t imagine what I actually do. I do 200 miles a week on the bike. I’m an Olympian. I’m a Commonwealth Games gold medallist. I’ve been doing it for years. I was national coach for 10 years. Cycling’s been my life’,” he pauses. “I don’t think they quite believed me.” Every word Cooke spoke was, of course, true. He represented Great Britain as a track sprinter at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Fifty-two years later, he had been admitted to hospital for a gallbladder…

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted in the early season races one of the Vision-sponsored pro teams using Metron SL wheels with bright silver decals. And now these Team versions of the carbon wheelset are available to the rest of us. Used and co-developed by the likes of Bahrain Victorious, EF Pro Cycling and XDS Astana, the Silver Edition SLs are tubeless-ready clinchers. Offered in 45mm and 60mm rim depths, both have 21mm internal rim widths developed to integrate with 28-30mm tubeless tyres. The hand-built wheels use a new hub that features Vision’s PRS (Power Ratchet System) system; it uses a 72t coupling which the brand says helps make engagement 24% faster than the previous hubs. Other details include the use of aero-bladed spokes, with 21 at the front…

Features about pro training are a mainstay of all performance cycling magazines, websites and podcasts. And humble amateurs and middle-aged dreamers such as ourselves can learn much from the best in the business. We can learn, for example, that these bastards have literally nothing more pressing to do than to doodle around on their bikes for hours. In the daytime. In the middle of the week. We can learn how much more talented than us they are. They can hit power numbers that any of the rest of us, were we to see them popping up on our computer, would assume was someone sending us a two-factor authentication code. We can learn that most of them live somewhere warmer than us. That’s why they always look so damned happy. We…

Flag-waving Brits enjoyed dominance in the individual pursuit at last week’s European Track Champs, as Anna Morris and Josh Charlton put their stamp on the 4,000m event, earning a pair of gold medals. Not once, but twice Morris broke the world record on her way to victory in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium. She won her final by a staggering eight seconds, while Charlton controlled a closer fought contest, crossing the line 0.749 seconds ahead of his Portuguese opponent. The duo were the only two Brits to earn themselves new titles at the championships, where Great Britain placed third on the medal table with a tally of 11: two golds, five silvers, and four bronzes. New benchmark After two days of competition, Charlton won his nation’s first gold medal on Friday night, building…

The Lancaster Grand Prix will return in 2026, despite it being cancelled this season, the chair of its organising committee said last week. British Cycling announced that the race will not be held in July, with several issues cited as reasons behind the decision to cancel it, including logistical difficulties and problems with funding and sponsorship. Speaking to CW, the race’s organiser, former British Cycling and UCI president Brian Cookson, explained that nobody was to blame for the decision and emphasised the organising committee’s commitment to get it back on the calendar with the support of British Cycling. “We’re not at all giving up the ghost, we’re not throwing our hands up and blaming other people, we’ve just hit something of a temporary hiatus,” he said. “We are stuck between…

Cycling is unique in the access it grants fans to the stars of the sport. For those who attend big races, the world’s best are within touching distance as they whizz past. At race start and finish areas, fans are able to mingle with riders and staff or seek autographs around team buses. Since it hit the mainstream in around 2010, social media has extended that access, providing a further point of connection between fans, riders and teams. Among the various platforms, Instagram offers arguably the best insight into the lives of the riders, but with limited scope for interaction. By contrast, on the platform formerly known as Twitter a cycling community has flourished. The rise of ‘Cycling Twitter’ saw the blossoming of the collective viewing experience, with split-second reactions…

Choosing a road helmet is no longer quite as straightforward as it once was. While finding the right fit remains a priority, you’re now faced with a slew of features and manufacturer’s claims. Do you look for additional safety measures, such as a MIPS liner? Are you better off with a lighter, vented helmet or one that’d designed to be as aerodynamic as possible? And then there’s the matter of cost, with today’s lids running the full gamut, from under £50 to over £300. It can leave you scratching your head, as it were. QUALITY For this grouptest, four members of Cycling Weekly’s tech team reviewed six helmets between them, swapping notes and deliberating over every detail before awarding one helmet Best on Test. We’ve included those at both ends…

Alex Whitmore’s teamissue Raleigh Militis is fitted with a SRAM Red 11-speed groupset and TRP rim brakes. Whitmore runs 22mm Continental Podium TT tubs on the DT Swiss rims – though he swaps them for something wider for road races and time trials. “It’s a great bike,” he says. “It rides brilliantly – with the right legs!” Want us to feature your race bike? Send a pic and information to cycling@futurenet.com…

Arider of Vittorio Adorni’s class deserves a signature bike to match. But his tribute range, which came into existence a few years after his retirement in 1970, lacked some of the quality and refinement that had been the hallmark of his 11 years as a professional. While the rider from Parma won the Giro d’Italia in 1965, the World Championships in 1968 plus 11 stages of his native Grand Tour along with top-10 finishes in both the Tour de France and Vuelta a España, the mid-range bikes that bore his name came equipped with Weinmann brakes, an Ofmega chainset and Campagnolo’s entry-level Valentino gearing. Fortunately this restoration has sought to address the balance somewhat. The frameset is made from one of Columbus’s slightly heavier offerings, Aelle tubing, which it introduced…