Innehållsförteckning för January 2026 från Cycling Plus

It’s always a pleasure to oversee our Rider of the Year awards and find out more about the amazing things people in this wonderful sport of ours have been doing. This year was no exception – our nominees included professional and amateur racers, campaigners and fundraisers, record-breakers and commentators, event organisers and industry stalwarts, and all of them were worthy of huge praise. Of course, there could only be one winner in each of our three categories, so be sure to turn to p26 for the big reveal. I’d like to say a huge thank-you to you, our readers, for voting in your thousands, and also to Lezyne (and their UK distributors, Upgrade Bikes) for once again helping these awards to happen. Bring on 2026! Your experts Jack Luke BikeRadar’s…

The whole ‘save the rim brake’ thing is getting so old. Read the comments section under any lightweight modern road bike we test, and you’ll see someone pipe up about a bike they have, or had, that’s lighter and somehow therefore better than the one that’s just won the Tour at record-breaking pace. It’s like a film website posting a list of films you can still get on VHS. Bikes and wheels are now made with cutting-edge aerodynamic features, freed from the constraints that rim brakes put on design, including the need for narrow rims with a flat braking surface (affecting aerodynamics), limited tyre sizing and baggy cable routing. Moreover, the argument that, somehow, an older road bike with rim brakes, which has a low weight, is therefore better, doesn’t…

PRESENTED BY After months of nominations and voting, we flung open our doors to a throng of guests for “the unofficial cycling industry Christmas party”, as one wag put it – better known as the Cycling Plus, BikeRadar and MBUK Rider of the Year awards, presented by Lezyne. Glad to escape the soggy late-November evening, the crowd brought the event space to life with expectant chatter about who’d take home a coveted gong, and were treated to an open bar, courtesy of DMR Bikes, as well as tasty finger food from Bristol’s Nico’s Kitchen. Cycling Plus’s first award, for our readers’ Newcomer of the Year, went to Paralympic road, time-trial, kilo and pursuit rider Archie Atkinson. In a message, he said: “Sorry I can’t be there – on a training…

There aren’t many bike brands making their own tyres, let alone racing them in the Tour de France. Specialized, however, are one such business who regularly go toe to toe with companies that make tyres and nothing else. What’s more, their sponsored riders, using their tyres, frequently win. So, how do Spesh compete with the tyre giants? The S-Works Tyre Factory, in the small town of Lage, Germany, is the key to answering this question. It’s the American brand’s tyre innovation centre, delivering small batches of special tyres for special riders – sometimes in under 48 hours. Behind closed doors Drive into the quiet industrial estate and you’d be hard-pressed to pick out the building that houses the S-Works Tyre Factory. There are no flashy signs or telltale giveaways –…

Weight 10.56kg (L) with 2x bottle cages, bottles and top-tube bag Frame 300 Series Alpha aluminium Fork Carbon fibre Groupset SRAM Apex/Apex XPLR, 12-speed (40t, 11-44t) Wheels Bontrager Paradigm 23 TR Tyres Bontrager Girona Pro TR, 700x42mm Finishing kit Bontrager Elite Gravel 44cm alloy handlebar, Bontrager Elite stem, Bontrager alloy seatpost, Bontrager Verse Short Comp saddle Extras Tubeless sealant setup, 2 x bottle cages and bottles, top-tube bag (£34.99) This aluminium version of Trek’s adventurous Checkpoint gravel bike may lack some of the bells and whistles of its high-end carbon sibling, but it’s still packed with useful features that make it ready for more rugged terrain. The frameset is a triumph, boasting details I’d expect to see on a top-end carbon frame. These include a modern drivetrain with a SRAM…

01 HOW QUICKLY DOES FITNESS DISAPPEAR WHEN WE STOP? Consistent cycling forges muscles akin to granite, a visible vascular network that impresses all and a positive outlook on life. But what happens when that consistency is interrupted by injury, illness or time-sucking life events, such as moving house or having children? How quickly do your trunk-like thighs resemble twigs and your form-fitting Rapha shorts become a crime scene? Let’s talk detraining and retraining… One man who knows more than most about this is Dr Paul Laursen. The Canadian completed his first Ironman at the tender age of 19. Over 30 years later, he’s authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles about exercise physiology, was physiology manager for New Zealand’s Olympic athletes (2009 to 2017) and is the brains behind AI-powered endurance…

NEW GEAR Budget vs boutique What do you really get for spending more? Plus, training tyres and bib shorts on test IN-DEPTH FEATURES Aero vs climbing bikes Which type WorldTour riders choose – and why Maintenance mistakes The common bike-fettling foul-ups to avoid ‘We are the originals’ Rapha’s CEO wants to put the brand back on top TOP TRAINING ADVICE Make fear your friend Plus, how to fix common overuse injuries and tackle an ultra-distance event ON SALE 15 January 2026…

DMT POGI’S SHOES £370 Yes, I awarded my first five-star review score to some other shoes recently (read on for details), but my personal-favourite pieces of kit from 2025 are the 3.5-star DMT Pogi’s. “But, you’re wearing a product you only gave 3.5 stars to,” one colleague from a rival publication remarked at a bike launch this year. Jokes aside, the insinuation was clear – if I thought they were so great as to keep wearing them, why didn’t they earn full marks? This isn’t a vanity pick, though – some kind of justification that I, too, am a bit like the great Slovenian. Nope, these just happen to be the most comfortable cycling shoes I’ve ever worn – they fit me almost perfectly. I say “almost”, because I’m not…

Your Experts Trusted content Here at Cycling Plus, we take our testing seriously, sending highly experienced cyclists onto the roads and trails to see how each and every item stands up to their scrutiny. The result is independent and honest reviews to help make your next purchases easier. Oscar Huckle Tester and sub-editor Schwalbe’s fastest gravel tyre is given a thorough off-road test by Oscar this issue Warren Rossiter Senior technical editor Woz examines how well three affordable bikes can cope with commuting and off-roading Emma Lewis Operations editor Emma heads out in the rain to see how six general-use waterproof jackets perform…

Shimano GRX ● A series of groupsets aimed at gravel and adventure riders, with optimised gearing options, ergonomics and braking for off-road conditions. SRAM XPLR ● Available at Apex, Rival, Force and Red levels, this series is designed specifically for gravel, offering wider gear ranges and lower gearing to keep you pedalling on the roughest and steepest terrain. Butted tubing ● Butted tubes have a constant outside diameter, but their wall thickness varies. On a double-butted tube, the ends of the tube are thicker (usually 0.8mm compared to 0.5mm in the middle of the tube). This is done to provide more material for weld strength while reducing weight in the centre. Dropper post ● This is a seatpost that lets you lower the saddle while riding so you can manoeuvre…

Weight 11.7kg (L) Frame 6061-T6 aluminium Fork Straight-bladed, 6061 alloy Groupset SRAM Apex/Apex Eagle, 12-speed (40t, 10-52t) Wheels WTB ST i30 Tyres Maxxis Ravager 700x50c Finishing kit Control Tech 46cm alloy handlebar, Whyte 70mm stem, Trans-X YSP38 dropper post with remote lever, Whyte saddle British brand Whyte were at the forefront of progressive gravel design back in 2011 with the Saxon Cross. The Verro is one of two new, affordable gravel bikes from them, alongside the Tourus, a more allroad-orientated option. Made from 6061-T6 aluminium, the frameset has hydroformed, multi-butted tubing to keep responsiveness high and weight down. An aluminium fork is rare on a gravel bike in 2025, but in theory leaves budget for better components to enhance the ride. The frameset features full mudguard mounts, bottle bosses aplenty,…

Weight 20.4kg Frame aluminium alloy, Future Shock 3.1 suspension Fork Aluminium alloy Motor Specialized SL 1.2 Battery Specialized SL2-520, fully integrated, 520Wh Groupset Shimano Cues 10-speed (44t, 11-48t) Wheels Double-wall alloy Tyres Specialized Hemisphere 700c x 47mm Finishing kit Alloy handlebar, Stealth stem, alloy seatpost, Bridge Sport saddle (all Specialized), mudguards, kickstand, rack, bell, chainguard This new iteration of Specialized’s ‘fast-commuting, fitness and exploration’ e-bike brings some significant changes. The brand’s latest SL 1.2 mid-drive motor ramps up the torque to 50Nm (from 35Nm) while the control system now comes with a stem-mounted full-colour screen and a handlebar remote. It’s a heavier bike than the previous Turbo Vado SL, though – by over 4kg (20.4kg, versus 16kg). That’s because of a huge increase in battery capacity, to 520Wh from a…

The modern, cutting-edge bike embraces electronics and brings an overload of data – and I love it. You can talk about the romance and purity of the humble bicycle all you want, but my decades of riding and testing bikes have taught me that we’ve never had it so good. I want the myriad metrics my bike’s sensors can transmit and my bike computer can record. You can keep your simple mechanical drivetrains and last-century tech – I’ll take slick electronic shifting, power, cadence and speed recording, altitude tracking and radars to tell me about traffic. I want to know everything my bike can tell me. So, bike engineers, bring it on. I’m hungry for more. Way back when I started getting serious about riding bikes, the cutting edge of tech…

When Archie Atkinson crashed, one lap away from a gold medal in his first Paralympic Games, and metres away from breaking his own world record, his instinct was to quit. He left with a silver medal, but it wasn’t until months later that the then-20-year-old became proud of it. “For months, I’d pick up my medal and either cry or hate [looking at] it,” he admits. “On the night I won it, I took it off and threw it!” Hugely frustratingly, the gold medal had been within Atkinson’s grasp. Racing in the C4 category (C1 is for athletes with the most severe limitations, C5 for those with the minimum impairment criteria) at the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games, he’d been leading Slovakia’s Jozef Metelka by six seconds in the men’s 4,000m…

The feverish roar built as I came into the corner and, for the only time in my limited racing ‘career’, I felt like an actual cycling hero, with a 200-strong crowd screaming me on, pots and pans smashing around my oxygen-deprived, dazed coconut. Bigger cheers were reserved for my colleagues, and real athletes, Joe and Reuben. This was back in 2018 during the only UK National Hill Climb Championship I’ve ridden. I’ll never forget that day – not least because I was so devastatingly overgeared on my idiotic fixie that I think I had an out-of-body experience at the summit. BikeRadar had gained modest notoriety that year through the first season of our Hill Climb Diaries video series, and the commentator called out my appalling gearing choice. But even that…

The G-One RS Pro is Schwalbe’s fastest off-road tyre. It sits in their top-of-the-line gravel-race range, alongside the G-One R Pro all-rounder and the G-One RX Pro, which is essentially a souped-up version with the most aggressive tread pattern of the three. That leaves a hole for a hardpack tyre, and this is where the RS Pro fits in. It features a striking tread pattern, with a semi-slick design in the middle. The side knobs, meanwhile, alternate between large teardrop shapes and three smaller ones in between, the middle of which is positioned slightly closer to the tyre edge. Schwalbe’s new Race Pro construction is used for the 67tpi (threads per inch) casing, which is said to offer lower rolling resistance, improved comfort and better puncture protection than the Super…

Weight 14.99kg (L) Frame Alpha aluminium Fork SR Suntour NCX32, 75mm travel Groupset Shimano GRX/SLX with Prowheel cranks, 12-speed (42t, 10-51t) Wheels Bontrager Kovee Tyres Schwalbe Nobby Nic 27.5x2.4in Finishing kit Bontrager Elite Gravel 44cm alloy handlebar, Bontrager Elite 90mm stem, Bontrager alloy seatpost, Brooks Cambium C17 Bold saddle Extras Racktime Viewit rack Founded in 1885, Diamant’s bikes are rarely seen outside of mainland Europe, but the German brand (acquired by Trek in 2002) have a range of affordable yet rugged urban steeds. The tough 140 launched on their 140th birthday. The frame is made from Trek’s Alpha aluminium and has mounts for racks, mudguards and a top-tube bag, plus four sets of bottle bosses. Should you want to convert the 140 to a belt-drive system the driveside seatstay splits.…

All three of the bikes here have their charms, so your choice may depend on what you’re looking for from your ride. The retro-modern looks of the Diamant 140 are backed up with a very comfortable and capable off-road ride, thanks in part to its mountain bike wheels and tyres. Its excess weight holds it back from being a great all-rounder, but it’s fun to ride. Whyte’s Verro is an exceptional companion on challenging off-road tracks and trails. It has a brilliant specification for pushing your limits, but it’s very much focused on off-road rather than all-round performance. The Verro’s tough-terrain ability is definitely what’ll sell this bike, but its practicality and affordability do make it a smart choice for a ride-to-work bike too. “The epitome of a great gravel…

Your Experts Simon von Bromley Senior technical writer Simon thinks the UCI’s new helmet regulations could be too vague to improve safety John Whitney Senior editor John looks into whether taking on electrolytes while training is really necessary Will Soffe Workshop manager If your bike’s making unwanted noises, Will can help you get to the root of the problem James Witts Freelance writer This month, James writes about the effects of taking time off training, and more…

A quiet bike is a fast bike, or so the old adage goes. Whether you use the peace to focus fully on technical challenges, put out maximum pedalling effort or simply enjoy the tranquillity of the countryside, silencing a slapping chain, gritty bearings or flapping cables can pay dividends. 1) Trim cables and hoses If brake hoses or gear cables are left too long, it increases the chance that they’ll flap about, banging off the frame tubes or each other and making a racket. When you get a new set of brakes, cut the hoses down to the correct length. The same goes for fitting a new gear cable or cables. The best way to do this is to find the maximum steering lock you’ll need and cut the cable/hose…

The UCI have revealed their updated road and time-trial (TT) helmet regulations for 2026, and have all but confirmed that TT-style helmets such as the POC Procen Air will be banned from mass-start road races next season. However, the new rules from the sport’s international governing body appear to leave plenty of room for creative interpretation by teams and manufacturers. Using TT helmets in road racing has been one of this year’s most notable pro tech trends, alongside huge chainrings, enormous helmets for use in time trials, and narrow handlebars. The UCI first announced their intention to distinguish between ‘road’ and ‘time trial’ helmets in mid-June, as part of a wider set of revisions designed to improve rider safety by slowing down the peloton. At that time, however, details of…