Innehållsförteckning för March 29, 2018 från Cycling Weekly

The signs look ominous for those trying to beat world champion Peter Sagan (Bora-Hansgrohe) in the cobbled Monuments, starting with the Tour of Flanders on Sunday. Sagan, hot on the heels of his Ghent-Wevelgem victory, will line up Sunday in Antwerp trying to repeat his 2016 Flanders win when the race ends in Oudenaarde. “Everything is going to plan for Peter in 2018,” said Sagan’s trainer and Bora-Hansgrohe directeur sportif, Patxi Vila. “If you look at 2016, the results were similar — second in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, two seconds in Tirreno-Adriatico, second in E3 Harelbeke — and he won Ghent-Wevelgem and then the Tour of Flanders.” Those who were starting to write Sagan off after so many near-misses and podiums this season could be mistaken. He had gone two months…

Great Britain’s team of para-cyclists topped the medal table at the World Championships in Brazil over the weekend. The team will bring home 11 golds, four silvers and three bronze medals from the championships. The haul was rounded out in style with Jody Cundy celebrating his 15th world title as part of the team sprint trio alongside Louis Rolfe and Jon-Allan Butterworth. Cundy won the men’s C4 1km time trial event on the opening day in Rio de Janeiro. He has dominated the discipline, and his latest success continued a remarkable unbroken run of world titles since 2006. After that win he tweeted: “It may be my 14th jersey, but the feeling is just as good pulling this one on as the first. Thank you to everyone who helped me…

Iconic climb Box Hill goes one-way The famed Zig-Zag road of Box Hill will become a one-way street over the Easter weekend for the second year running. The climb, which featured in the 2012 Olympic road race and is the last real hurdle of the RideLondon-Surrey 100 sportive, was made one-way only over Easter last year, too. No vehicles will be allowed to descend the Zig Zag towards Old London Road from Friday March 30 until Monday April 2. Countryside manager Andrew Wright was keen to promote the message that the approach is designed to make the area more pleasant for everybody, not just to allow cyclists to ride up the hill as fast as possible. “Last year we had some riders who thought, ‘Oh great, I can go down…

“If you’re going to do a Flemish ride, you’ve got to do it in proper Flemish weather.” Former British national champion Tim Harris’s words feel a tad extreme as the Tour of Flanders probably hasn’t taken place in the ‘Beast from the East’ conditions that we were being treated to on this late February morning. But to hear Harris — a long-time resident of the area thanks in part to his links with the Dave Rayner Fund — say that he has never ridden in colder weather isn’t a surprise as weather reports suggest we braved conditions that ‘felt like’ minus 15°C. Amateur weather reporting aside, Harris is here to help unravel the route of De Ronde Van Vlaanderen or the Tour of Flanders. Its Belgian name is just as…

Cycling royalty Eddy Merckx (right) is busy animating the race on the Muur van Geraardsbergen in 1974. He had already been part of a four-man break that had subsequently been caught before he was pushed into chasing down Marc De Meye, who was coming off the back of a strong ride at Milan-San Remo, and attacked. Merckx wasn’t to be successful in his efforts, nor was fellow favourite Roger de Vlaeminck (left). Instead they were beaten to the title by Cees Bal, who launched an attack with seven kilometres left to race just as his Gan-Mercier team-mate Alain Santy, who had been dangling 20 seconds off the front of the main group of riders for 10 kilometres, was caught. As Cycling Weekly reported at the time: “The Gan men blocked…

Let’s be under no illusions: the physiological glass ceiling exists — your body’s limitations, though invisible, are real. World-class athletes need to know exactly where their limits lie: the areas where they have already reached their potential, as well as those where they can still reach for the sky. But does the same apply to Joe or Joanna Bloggs — that is, you and me — who have no claim to world-class talent? How do we know whether the type of rider we think we are, with all our perceived strengths and weaknesses, accurately reflects our true limits? I discovered bike racing via triathlon and then time trials. It came naturally to me, riding on the red line for about an hour, holding a constant effort and tolerating the slowly…

Alongside fellow Brits Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas, Ian Stannard has been an ever-present in the Sky line-up since the team’s inception in 2010. Over that time, he has made a name for himself not only as an ultra-reliable domestique in the Grand Tours but also as an indefatigable Classics contender. With his training fully focused on Paris-Roubaix and improving on his third place from 2016, ‘Yogi’ will be hoping a hard winter’s training pays off to secure a first Monument title in April. T Long ride at steady effort Today was a four-hour general ride. We went down and back up Sa Calobra riding at a steady Zone 3 effort. Some of the guys did longer but we travelled to Belgium that evening, so I was being a bit…

POWER PLAY Michael Schär (BMC) leads the peloton through the forest in Flanders during Ghent-Wevelgem on Sunday. The team had reason to be hopeful, with reigning champion Greg Van Avermaet on their team. But the Belgian, who was dominant at the early Spring Classics last year, winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, E3 Harelbeke and Ghent-Wevelgem, would end up losing his UCI number-one ranking over the weekend when he failed to win either race. Instead Chris Froome, still holding points from his Tour and Vuelta wins, now sits atop the table.…

Team Wiggins won’t be riding this year’s Tour de Yorkshire after the organiser announced the 21 teams that would be setting off from Beverly on May 3, damaging their hopes of being at the Tour of Britain. Alongside the six WorldTour teams at the Tour de Yorkshire, which includes Team Sky, are seven Pro-Continental outfits, a Great Britain Academy line-up and six domestic teams. JLT-Condor, Madison-Genesis, Canyon-Eisberg, One Pro Cycling, Holdsworth Pro Racing and Vitus Pro Cycling were the six Pro Continental teams to make the cut. Wiggins riders hit out about the decision on social media, questioning the reason for not inviting the developmental team to the race. Rider Gabriel Cullaigh said it was “utterly tragic” and “political” that the squad wasn’t picked. The exclusion leaves Wiggins in a…

▪ How to get there: Oudenaarde is a two-hour drive from Calais. Flying into Brussels gives you the option of a 50-minute direct train into Oudenaarde. ▪ Where to stay: La Cerveza B&B, where CW stayed, just outside of Oudenaarde which is located at the top of the Eikenberg ticks all the boxes. But any accommodation option around Oudenaarde will be a good choice if you want to rack up as many bergs as possible. ▪ More than a bike shop: If you head out for the race itself and want to experience the cobbles, the Tour of Flanders museum is a must visit when in the region. Not only is the Centrum Ronde Vlaanderen the perfect place to learn about a legendary race — you can also rent bikes…

When the first pictures of the Canyon Grail emerged, many people assumed it was a leaked April fool. However, the German brand is not joking. The Grail is the result of some serious out-of-the-box thinking. Bumpy surfaces are usually ridden with hands on the tops or the hoods but there’s a paradox here that Canyon has called out: as the bar tops are directly connected to the stem they are the most rigid sections of a handlebar. On the other hand, the drops, where precision at high speed is crucial, are the least rigid part of the bar. So the Grail flips all that. The all-carbon one-piece bar is connected to the steerer in the drops, while the tops are suspended above. This Hover System, as Canyon calls it, adds…

Four different British riders collected stage and race victories over the weekend in what proved to be a spectacularly successful 48 hours for British cycling. JLT-Condor kicked off proceedings on Saturday with a stage win at the Tour of Normandy for Matt Gibson — minutes later Team Sky neo-pro Chris Lawless grabbed his first maiden win at the Coppie Bartali, in northern Italy. Come Sunday it was the turn of Gibson’s team-mate Tom Stewart who held onto his general classification lead to win the Tour of Normandy overall while Gibson wrapped up the points competition. As that was going on Simon Yates was busy breaking away from the bunch at the Tour of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. Speaking to Cycling Weekly, Lawless said: “My main thing this year was to…

Over the past three decades the number of sprockets on a bicycle cassette has grown from six, to seven, to eight, nine, 10, and 11. But the trend for more sprockets shows no sign of stopping, with SRAM releasing its 12-speed Eagle groupset for mountain bikes in 2017, and Campagnolo now preparing to launch its first 12-speed groupset for road bikes, according to a patent filed in the United States. More cogs in a cassette means less front shifting (or none at all) and smaller jumps between gears to ensure smooth pedalling. But there are compromises to be made. Pros and cons Despite manufacturers reducing the physical width of the sprockets on the cassette, the gaps between them and the width of the chain, the width of the cassette has…

Glorious Glasgow STAR LETTER We mostly read about the negative side of cycling in relation to sharing the roads with car drivers. I have recently come back from having a few days cycling out of Glasgow. The weather was kind to me but the roads have seen a tough winter. The Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome taster lesson was a top-quality experience and his coaching was excellent. But I want to sit back and thank the car and lorry drivers of Scotland in the city of Glasgow and out through the suburbs into the farmland areas. I’ve ridden a bike on the roads for 35 years and the three days up there were a really positive experience. The drivers gave the right amount of space when passing and all waited for…

The Doctor from Doctor Who is now a women, Idris Elba is still talked-up as a likely James Bond, could the next Spartacus be Irish? Trek-Segafredo general manager Luca Guercilena seems to think so, that’s why he signed Ryan Mullen from Cannondale-Drapac over the winter, according to team staff. Guercilena coached Classics ace Fabian Cancellara as the Swiss national coach and directed him at Mapei and later Trek. It’s clear talking to Mullen that his new boss thinks he has a similar level of potential. “This team ticked all the right boxes for me,” Mullen says. “I was in negotiation with Quick Step, but had I joined that team I would not have had a chance to even ride in the Classics. I wanted to go somewhere where I could…

What Aero wheels use deep-section carbon-fibre rims to smooth the airflow and cut wind drag. They are designed to be faster than a standard box-section rim at all angles of yaw and not just when the wind is coming from head on (zero degrees of yaw). In the real world, this means a rider can go faster for the same effort, or maintain the same speed for less effort. If you look at the pro peloton you’ll notice that most of the riders ride deep-section rims most of the time, even on mountain stages. Generally speaking, the deeper the rim, the more aerodynamically efficient it is. For example, a 95mm rim could save as much as 35 watts at 40kph. However, the deeper the rim, the more difficult it is…

doctorhutch_cycling@timeinc.com I was out for a ride with my friend Bernard last week. There haven’t been as many of these of late, partly because it’s been cold, and partly because I’m trying to train for a marathon. Last time I ran a marathon I developed a theory (admittedly without much evidence) that you could train for running by going cycling. It turned out that you couldn’t. So this year I’ve backed off the biking a bit and done more running. This means that I can’t physically lord it over Bernard in the way we both enjoy. I have to provide distractions, to prevent him noticing this. “Sorry,” I said, “I’m exhausted — I was up all night celebrating.” “Not like you,” he said. “Celebrating what?” “You didn’t hear? Campag has…

Tullio Campagnolo is remembered (not always accurately) as a truly gifted engineer and inventor who gave us some of the most important breakthroughs in cycling technology; the quick release, the parallelogram derailleur, the very idea of a groupset of integrated components, for example. The company that bears his name inherited a reputation for innovation and engineering excellence which, if we’re being ruthlessly honest, it has struggled to live up to in recent years. But if any Campagnolo fans (or, for that matter, Campagnolo executives) were tempted to drown their sorrows at the thought of playing catch-up with the competition, they could at least reach for one of Tullio’s greatest achievements, the Cavatappi, less formally known as the Big Corkscrew. The clue’s in the name. It’s a corkscrew. And it’s big.…