Innehållsförteckning för April 30, 2020 från Cycling Weekly

Despite last week’s announcement of the withdrawal of both title sponsors, women’s Continental team, Bigla-Katusha’s riders remain hopeful the squad will continue when racing resumes. In a press release, the Swiss-registered squad revealed both title sponsors had immediately withdrawn, leaving a huge hole in the team’s finances. However, Lizzy Banks, who along with Sophie Wright, is one of two Brits on the 13 woman roster, is upbeat. “I know the management have been working exceptionally hard during the unprecedented times to keep the team alive,” she told CW from her home in Sheffield. “They’ve kept riders informed wherever possible, and up to now we have received our full salaries and the team has made it very clear they want to continue to pay our salaries if possible.” While the coronavirus…

Still amazed that so many people still think that the guideline is an hour of exercise. It’s not. That was a throwaway comment by Michael Gove in a radio interview. It’s meaningless and not being enforced. So, yes to safe riding and commuting by bike. Laura Jones All countries should start initiatives to promote bicycle commuting. This will help to combat traffic, sound and air pollution. Nowadays there are also e-bikes. Vshal Nahin Trying to quantify a ride by distance is silly. A newbie might be stretched to manage 20 miles while an experienced cyclist will barely be into their stride. Also an experienced cyclist will know what nutrition, tools and spares to take along. Peter Burnham Can we just go to 100 per cent bicycles for transportation. Timothy Rush…

Barry Hoban won Tour de France stages on Woodrups, and other famous clients include Hugh Porter and Sid Barras. Maurice Woodrup started building frames in Leeds in 1949. The torch has since been passed to Maurice’s son, Steve, who has been building since the 1960s, and then Tony, his grandson. “I built this one for myself as a show bike. I’ve always been a big Star Wars fan so I’ve got the Jedi motif cut into the seat tube bilaminate lug.” Tony chose Columbus Max, what he calls “a legendary tubeset. I wanted something very stiff – I’m the best part of 16st, so I needed something that was going to be able to handle that. It’s paper thin and a very nice weight.” Frame: Woodrup Il Primo Columbus Max…

Around 50 per cent of Sussex-based Enigma’s top-end UK-made frames are bespoke and the company can also custom-build the frames it makes in the Far East. The Enigma Etape is designed for epic adventures, including wide clearances, predictable all-day handling and enough mounts to bolt on all you need to set off into the unknown. The frame is made of 3Al/2.5V titanium alloy butted tubing. Enigma offers it off the peg in 1cm increments between 50cm and 60cm or fully custom. This bike’s spec includes 12mm thru-axles front and rear, flat mount brakes and there’s a BSA threaded external bottom bracket. The front brake hose is routed internally through the left leg of the all-carbon tapered fork. The right fork leg also has an internal channel, allowing you to run…

Ferdinand Kübler (right) surges away from Frenchman Louison Bobet on his way to victory. To say the Swiss was in good form would be something of an understatement. He’d won Flèche Wallonne the day before and yet here he was, deep into the punishing course of La Doyenne doing it again. The reigning Tour de France champion would go on to become world champion later that year too, as he enjoyed his period at the top of cycling’s tree. Just to show his Ardennes dominance on display here wasn’t a fluke, he’d repeat the feat the following year. Bobet, meanwhile, was no stranger to being distanced by ‘the Cowboy’, as Kübler was known due to his penchant for stetson hats. He had been third at the Tour that Kubler won…

The suspension of racing caused by the coronavirus crisis has been described as “catastrophic” for young male riders looking to secure professional contracts. Every season, dozens of young riders across the world aged 21 and 22 – known as ‘fourth-year riders’ – race in the U23 category for the final time, more often than not, their last chance to earn a ride at a UCI-affliated team, whether WorldTour, Pro-Continental or Continental. The dearth of racing, though, is expected to deny a large proportion of these riders the chance to accomplish their dreams. “For the guys who are in their first or second years there is no need to panic, but for some of those fourth-year riders it is catastrophic if they had to ride for a contract this year,” Kurt…

Rohan Dennis and Stefan Küng came off best from the Digital Swiss Five with two victories apiece. The Ineos rider won both the opening time trial and the final road race of the eRacing event, both times leading home Nicholas Roche (Sunweb) in second. He was 12 seconds ahead of Roche on the last day but was even more dominant on the first, completing the 26km course 1.09 ahead of the Irishman. After that victory he said: “Time trial training was really key to winning this event. I had a chat with Neal [Henderson, Dennis’s coach] in the week before the race and worked out what kind of effort I would need to put in. “With the race being only an hour long, and the climb more or less 35…

1 The Milk Race was sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board. Which two other companies have been title sponsors of a Tour of Britain bike race? 2 What year was the inaugural Milk Race run? 3 Before MMB sponsorship began, the race was run under a variety of different titles: name one. 4 Who won the final Milk Race? 5 Name the year. 6 What ultimately, led to the MMB no longer sponsoring the race? 7 Name two twice-winners of the Milk Race. 8 After the 1984 edition, the race underwent a major rule change — what was it? 9 In 1987 the Milk Race winner also rode the Tour de France. Who was he? 10 With 218 wins, Britain is well in the lead when it comes to stage…

Geometry charts aren’t just about picking a bike that fits you – the measurements involved play a pivotal role in defining a bike’s personality. When launching a new or updated model, brands will often refer to tweaks in the geometry. But what exactly does it all mean? And how can you use the geometry charts to inform your own bike-buying decisions? Stack and reach Stack and reach are the two most consistent measurements that will help determine if the bike will put its rider into a racing position with a long reach and short stack (aggressive), or one that will be comfortable for long, all-day rides (endurance/relaxed) thanks to a short reach and high stack. Stack is the vertical distance from the centre of the bottom bracket to the mid…

“Bicycles are like mobile phones,” states Mathias Scherer of Mawis Custom Titanium Cycles. Because of their wireless electronic gears? Sleek profiles? No. It’s all about being controlled by the industry. “You get a mobile and after two years your contract is up and you need to get a new one,” he says. “It gets on your nerves because it’s not only the phone, but it’s also the camera, the processor, just about everything has moved on. With bikes it’s the same thing. If you buy a bike and then half a year later, Cannondale does a mid-season model, you feel left behind. Personally I don’t like the idea of buying something and then throwing it away when it’s perfectly serviceable. Wouldn’t it be much better to have a bike that’s…

Wouldn’t it be boring if all bikes looked the same? There was a time when that was the case but as designers have striven to tailor performance to specific needs, that homogeneous vision has splintered into a myriad of more targeted machines. In some ways, the more recent flock of race bikes has seen some of that splintering dissipate – the traditional race bike has assimilated aspects from aero machines and tyre clearance increases for added versatility: just look at the current Specialized Tarmac and its close proximity to the Venge. But designers looking to fulfil a certain need will still tailor their creation to the demands of a certain genre. So what defines an aero bike from, say, an endurance-oriented machine or even a gravel bike? AERO BIKES An…

AMBIGUOUS RULES CAN GO ONE OF TWO WAYS: THEY CAN CREATE A STRICT REGIME OR ALLOW A LIBER AL DEGREE OF FREEDOM; AND THINGS DON’T GET MUCH MORE AMBIGUOUS THAN GUIDELINES DEFINED BY ‘SPIRIT’. “Bicycles shall comply with the spirit and principle of cycling as a sport,” says the UCI’s Principle 1.3. “The spirit presupposes that cyclists will compete in competitions on an equal footing. The principle asserts the primacy of man over machine.” Over the years, the ‘spirit claxon’ has sounded on multiple occasions, creating a history book of outlawed bicycles and endless clarifications to the guidelines within the UCI Technical Regulation. The evergrowing Clarification Guide of the UCI Technical Regulation is now so expansive that much of the vagueness has been hoovered away, and we’re left with an…

HANNAH DINES Zwift, give me a hand(cycle) I escaped getting the coronavirus in March to fall prey to the Zwift bug in April. Did you know that you can ride a Tron bike up a volcano? Adding a third wheel is too outlandish though and pedalling with your arms is seemingly unthinkable. The more I fall in love with Zwift the angrier I get. The potential for integration and representation is enormous, tens of thousands of Zwifters logging in every day. I started up a discussion on the World Paracyclist forum as to why Zwift had not made all their features accessible in the four years since I last cancelled my subscription. One handcyclist said that Zwift took their aerodynamics very seriously, there were equations and physics to think about.…

A Warwickshire cycling club has mobilised its members to use their bikes to deliver medication to members of the community during the Coronavirus crisis. Members of Royal Leamington Spa Cycling Club (RLSCC) had cycled over 600 miles, at the time of writing, delivering medication to people in need – and the volunteers show no signs of slowing down. The club is liaising with a local medical centre to provide the service for clients who are self-isolating, with around 50 runs completed by 19 different volunteers. Club rider turned volunteer courier, Roger Pateman told Cycling Weekly: “Today’s deliveries took me to some real back roads. Lovely feedback from our clients. One road was tricky as there were no house numbers, just house names, which was quite challenging! All worked out OK,…

■ Although I do like solo rides and my turbo, the current crisis has taught me that I really miss club rides and cafe stops with my friends in Sitwell CC. Jason Hughes ■ I’ve learnt 1. There are a lot of people who have discovered they have a bike. 2. There a lot of very old bikes being used! 3. I have become very sad and started counting the number of riders out and about. 4. How much I miss cafes/coffee shops. 5. Short rides on quiet roads in my local area with stunning scenery are THE BEST antidote to the current crisis. Mark Inch ■ I have found that the CW5000 Facebook family have been great in showing support for riders of all levels – offering encouragement when…

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With our riding shorter than usual and no chance to drive out to an undiscovered area to try new climbs, roads and routes, it’s easy to slip in to old habits and simply head out from your front door to cover the routes you’ve been riding for years. But with a bit of advanced route planning on komoot there is no reason you can’t find new roads, routes, climbs and inspiration while also staying safe. Komoot’s route planning features are the most detailed on the market with on and off-road routes updated by users. They even have the ability to overlay detailed weather information on to your route, and if you tell it your estimated start time it will tell you if you’ll need lights, and how long for. So…

Not only does steel have a reputation for being ‘real’, but it is also a perfect material for small-scale manufacturing. It’s relatively cheap to get set up with oxy-acetylene and it’s not hazardous. Most custom frame-building is done by brazing, which is the long-established way of doing it. Pre-drawn, treated and butted tubes come from Reynolds, Columbus, Deda, KVA and other brands. They can be brazed together using lugs – pre-cast and available as a lugset – or fillet brazed, which involves very accurately mitring the tubes so that they fit exactly together on a frame-builder’s jig, then drawing the filler into the small gaps between the two tubes and around them. Currently the new generation of steel builders rub shoulders with the established, storied names and it’s often impossible…

Titanium is close to perfect as a material for bicycle frames. It is light, strong and highly resistant to corrosion. It is about half the weight of steel, but also is half as stiff, so tube diameters and wall thicknesses are increased in order to beef up Ti frames. Even so, titanium frames still end up lighter than comparable steel ones. For frame tubing, titanium is alloyed with aluminium and vanadium – the most common type is 3Al/2.5V, the numbers referring to the percentages of aluminium and vanadium respectively. Titanium is a less forgiving material to work with than steel. Clean conditions are vitally important, while too much heat will cause the metal to react with oxygen in the atmosphere, weakening it. Plus, you can’t cold set the metal like…

The path of bike design innovation is neither linear nor smooth. Most standout innovations of their time seem laughable 20 years later as technology, materials and understanding moves on. Here we look at some of the bikes that may be considered the worst of the 80s and 90s, but without the pioneering spirit of the people behind them it’s likely the market wouldn’t be where it is now. Put any of the following machines up against a current £2,000 bike from any of the big manufacturers and it would be out-performed on every level, but without them the market wouldn’t move on and our bikes wouldn’t be the things of beauty they are now. So laugh all you want, but remember we owe a debt of gratitude to the trailblazers…

In the 80s and 90s, bike designers went all-in in their quest for more speed. Here are just a few of the bikes that raised eyebrows when they were unveiled. ■ First bike to be banned – by the UCI was Francis Faure’s (designed by Charles Mochet) 1934 recumbent. ■ Battaglin Piranha – this was meant for Roberto Visentini to race on in the prologue of the 1985 Giro d’Italia, but the UCI took one look at the front wheel and said ‘no way’, stating an unfair advantage, meaning it was never raced. ■ Moser’s 1988 hour record bike – with a rear wheel over one metre in diameter acting as a huge flywheel, Francesco Moser failed to beat his outright record by 500m (it beat the indoor record) and…