Innehållsförteckning för October 8, 2020 från Cycling Weekly

Writing previews for bike races might have to be reclassified as a dangerous job. OK, it’s not up there with fishermen, roofers and pilots, but the current increased stress levels in the CW office can’t be healthy at all. On the same day that we were frantically rewriting this week’s Classics preview (after several riders had crashed at the BinckBank Tour while others had performed at Liège) Geraint Thomas and Simon Yates were dropping out of contention at the Giro due to some rotten luck. Pulling together our race previews is always fun: looking through the stats and form guides, speaking to riders and those in the know to create a guide with which you can enjoy and understand the racing. Then the racing actually starts and it all goes…

One down, 20 to go – the first stage of the 2020 Giro d’Italia has been ticked off, albeit 145 days later than first intended. In true Giro fashion the race opened with one of the most hair-raising stages of my short career, getting buffeted by gale-force winds on the fast descent into Palermo and quite literally blown all across the road at some points. My aim of the day was quite clear: give it some beans on the 1km climb to start, stay safe on the descent and finish her off with no risk. I almost managed to finish the job off but came racing into the last hairpin a bit hot, the effort of what came before definitely not helping, and lost the front wheel on the tight…

Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quick Step) suffered a double dose of ignominy in last weekend’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège, which ended in a five-up sprint from a titanic breakaway group. Perhaps it was the exuberance of racing for the first time in the rainbow jersey that led him to raise his arms prematurely only to watch Primož Roglič (Jumbo-Visma) sweep by underneath to take the win. And maybe the same excuse could be proffered for the blatant switch across Sunweb’s Marc Hirschi in the approach to the line that saw ‘Ala’ relegated to fifth place, rendering his ill-timed celebration academic. Hirschi was promoted to second, with Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates) third and Matej Mohorič (Bahrain-McLaren) fourth. Few will begrudge Roglič the victory after his heartbreaking capitulation in the Tour de France, losing the yellow jersey…

Madness. A word that I have used quite a considerable amount in conversation since my race season restarted at the Vuelta a Burgos around two months ago. It can be used to describe parts of my life off the bike, but it has also been used in relation to some of the races I’ve been in and some of the races I’ve watched on TV in the 2020 season version 2.0. It feels bloody marvellous to be back racing and it seems that everyone is as excited as I am because every day of racing I have had so far has had some pretty serious action, whether it be a big crash or two, or an attempt to split the peloton in a mild crosswind (that was me and my…

Most likely to win from a small group: Jasper Philipsen (UAE-Team Emirates, Bel) One of the most eye-catching debut seasons at WorldTour level last year came from Belgian Jasper Philipsen who, despite only turning 21 last March, produced a steady stream of high placings, including a top-five stage finish at the Tour de France. The sprint specialist’s results have been more muted since the return from lockdown, but one win and seven top-10s from 18 race days isn’t a bad return. Most likely to take everyone by surprise: Owain Doull (Ineos Grenadiers, GBr) Here in Britain we’ve been excited about Olympic team pursuit gold medallist Owain Doull’s prospects on the road for years. The Welshman’s season certainly got off to a great start in the spring, with a breakaway victory…

It takes something to outshine the Queen of the Classics, but arguably the inaugural women’s edition of the race does just that. Paris-Roubaix is so unique and there are so few firsts left to be had in the rich history of cycling, that getting to experience one in 2020 of all years is a particular treat. The women’s race has a short warm-up out of Denain, before it picks up the men’s route at secteur 17, so no Forest of Arenberg for them, but with it being only 116km in length, expect it to be full gas from the get go. Meanwhile, the men face a very similar parcours to 2019. The route from the Forest of Arenberg (secteur 19), where the race really hots up, to the finish remains…

There are many different types of back pain but the headlines are ‘muscles’ and ‘discs’. Muscles suffer as a result of poor posture and a weak core, and combined with going a bit too far or hard on the bike – or even lifting something too heavy – is a recipe for a strain. A strain can cause painful spasms, your body’s way of ‘freezing’ your back to stop you doing any more damage, and can take weeks to heal. The good news, as Boyd says, is that exercise and movement can help the healing process. Discs issues, as we have seen, are extremely common – though many such cases involve no pain, and the effects are difficult to predict. The classic cause of pain is a damaged disc that…

■ Race for fun, not prizes: If I take it too seriously I might stop enjoying it, which could be detrimental to my motivation. ■ Set targets: I set myself a weekly mileage target and break it down into daily distances. ■ Segment test: Strava is a great tool for testing progress; getting faster on a bike isn’t just about fitness. ■ Be sociable: Arranging to meet people is good for motivation. Even on Zwift, I commit to rides because I am meeting people at an agreed time.…

When time trials were allowed to run again, one club decided to make things simpler and safer by operating their races on an honesty system. You would time yourself and add it to Facebook. Honesty. From the discipline which has invented more far-fetched excuses than any other branch of cycling. Almost every rider deducted the time they swore they’d lost from being baulked on roundabouts, swerving to avoid potholes, getting stuck behind tractors and forgetting to pump their tyres up to race pressure. The last straw came when one rider deducted 65 seconds from his time because that was what he’d have saved if he’d bought a new skinsuit, which he had tried to do, but been unable to find in his size. The club switched to Strava.…

There was the whiff of a chance the Giro was going to the form book last weekend, with Geraint Thomas sitting in the prime spot towards the top of the overall contenders. But the Giro is notoriously unpredictable, and the very next day a stray bidon unceremoniously dumped him onto the tarmac at high speed and out of the GC race. For ever riders have been throwing bottles and often they’ll bounce off something and bounce back into the bunch. They can cause havoc. It’s remarkable there aren’t more crashes from them. It’s not clear exactly whether that’s what happened with Thomas in a fan’s video; it looks like a bottle bounced free by a bump in the road. Thomas clearly isn’t to blame for this crash but he does…

Ineos: no excuse for bonking Bonking has become a thing of the past for Ineos Grenadiers, who have announced they will be using the new Supersapiens blood glucose monitoring app, which will be paired with a tracker to give real-time readings on the fly. Supersapiens boasts that this sort of technology could be game-changing, although for Ineos it’s likely that it will only be telling them what they already know – that they’ve got their nutrition nailed. 91 years since a rider younger than Britain’s Ben Tulett has finished Liège-Bastogne-Liège While Julian Alaphilippe was grabbing the headlines in his customary way at LBL, Alpecin-Fenix rider Ben Tulett was quietly becoming the youngest rider to finish La Doyenne in nearly a century. Belgian Leopold Gérard, who was 15th in the race in…

Brooks, the finest saddle in the world, (CW From the Archives, 24 Sept) a proud boast but undoubtedly true. Nevertheless, despite this the first thing any self respecting ‘leaguer’ would do was to ‘improve’ the already perfect item. First the saddle’s leather would be treated with something like dubbin to soften it. The nose and back would have the leather trimmed back to the metal of the frame, saddle bag eyes sawn off flush, and finally the rivets replaced with 5/8in diameter copper ones. Then and only then did you have the ‘finest saddle in the world’. Incidentally it was only a few years ago that I gave mine to a collector, still as good as the day I ‘butchered’ it 65 years ago. Chris McGrath, Maidenhead…

GHENT-WEVELGEM Date: 11 October, 2020 Distance: 142km (women), 232km (men) Start: 9:00 (men); 12:45 (women) Finish: 15:00 (men); 16:45 (women) Like its older sibling the Tour of Flanders, Ghent-Wevelgem features post-lockdown concessions, with altered timings to allow fans to see the end of that day’s Giro d’Italia stage to Roccaraso. The men’s course is also shortened by around 20km, with the usual foray into France left out. On the bright side, organisers have added a third ascent of the notorious Kemmelberg, which could spice things up. SCHELDEPRIJS Date: 14 October, 2020 Distance: 183km Start: 12:00 Finish: 16:25 Shorter than usual this year by around 20km, Scheldeprijs will offer a useful midweek warm-up ahead of the Tour of Flanders. It’s a gentler route spanning Belgium and the Netherlands, and gives the…

Michelle Arthurs-Brennan, Tech editor If I were to spec this bike for myself, I’d swap the 50/61mm Roval Rapide CLX wheels for the shallower Alpinist pair day-to-day (keeping the deep pair for race day, of course), and though I like the flat top of the aero bars when climbing, I’d prefer a rounder bar with a bit more bar tape just to dampen out some of the buzz and clatter at the front end. I might lose a few watts there, but I reckon I’d get them back in opting for a narrower 36cm bar. With those changes, for me the Tarmac SL7 would be just about a perfect 10.…

At the time of writing, the defending Tour de France champion Egan Bernal has just abandoned the race with back pain. I may be twice his age, and barely champion of my own bike shed, but I know how he feels… sort of. Whether it’s a dull ache that sets in towards the end of a ride, the odd twinge getting in and out of the chair at the coffee stop, or a raging sciatica that prevents cycling altogether, many of us have experienced some form of back issue. And the sad truth is, these problems often seem to be brought on – or at least exacerbated – by riding a bike. You might be frustrated; you might be in pain; but one thing you certainly won’t be is alone.…

One rider who knows all about the frustrations of a disc injury is Team GB trackie Kian Emadi. Originally a sprinter, Emadi was lifting weights in the gym when the injury came on in 2014. “It was a herniated disc, which I got from deadlifting in the gym,” says the 28-year-old from Stoke. He was able to get back into training after a couple of months, but: “I just kept having recurring issues related to that.” By late 2015, Emadi realised that being selected for the sprint events at Rio the following August was going to be a big ask. “I decided I couldn’t really couldn’t really continue training hard enough to hope to make the Olympics, so I decided to give endurance a go.” Moving away from the heavy…

Marius Midtskogen is a founding member and administrator of Zwift-based group The Herd “Humans are social creatures. We crave connection. The Zwift platform was created as a social app, and is so large it can feel overwhelming and lonely. That is where groups like The Herd come in. We are super-social. We made it our mission to be inclusive. We have become an international family, representing members from 100 countries from all over the world. We celebrate each other’s successes like weight loss, beating cancer and recovering from injuries. With almost 8,000 members, we truly believe we’ve managed to create an environment that helps others with an ethos filled with love and respect.”…

I can’t help wondering if Tadej Pogačar was as surprised by the final time trial of the Tour de France as I was. Maybe he spent an entire race lurking behind Primož Roglič, entirely confident in his ability to stick a couple of minutes into him in a 36 km TT. I find I doubt it, though. Does he, even now, know how he did it? Probably not. There is, of course, the accompanying question of whether Roglič can explain what went wrong, but for the moment my sympathy is more with Pogačar. When your performance is bafflingly bad, your only long-term problem is hoping such a thing doesn’t happen again, and it probably won’t. On the other hand, if for a single afternoon you turn into Superman, your problem…

Sporting his cap sideways to keep the sun out of his eyes, Vic Sutton climbs his way up the Tour de Suisse GC, on stage two. The climb had extinguished any other British rider’s hopes of being in contention, but here Sutton showed himself to be a true climber and finished fourth on the day. The Yorkshireman would go on to ride in the Tour de France less than a month later alongside Tom Simpson and Brian Robinson in the Great Britain team. But he didn’t make it to the finish, only completing 17 stages. The stage you’re looking at here was won by Swiss rider Alfred Rüegg. He would go on to take the overall win as well. It would be the only major international win of his career,…

EF fined £3,700 The team’s new eye-catching kit at the Giro d’Italia has netted a fine of 4,500 Swiss Francs, or £3,700. The new strip, a collaboration between Rapha and skate brand Palace, wasn’t registered with the UCI in time, resulting in all eight of their riders as well as a sports director being fined 500CHF each at the team presentation. Team boss Jonathan Vaughters tweeted: “Hope David Lappartient [UCI president] enjoys his dinner – on us! Salud!” Lopéz nearly ruptures artery Miguel Angel Lopéz suffered a wound very close to one of his arteries from his horrible crash in the Giro’s opening time trial. Team doctor Serge Niamke said: “The X-ray has shown no fractures, he suffered a deep wound very close to the iliac artery, which he had…

Crashes disrupted the National 50-Mile Championships on Sunday, with a host of the pre-race favourites failing to finish and the eventual men’s winner also hitting the deck. Kyle Gordon (RT 23) took his maiden national title in Northumberland after crashing at the halfway point. A deluge of rain the previous day made for treacherous road conditions in the event near Cramlington in Northumberland. The previous week’s National 25 champion and event favourite John Archibald (Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling) hit the floor in the men’s event inside the opening mile of the course. Sliding out on a greasy turn, Archibald’s Di2 went into ‘crash mode’ leading to the end of his challenge for the title. Gordon, 32 and from Alness in northern Scotland, crashed after a car pulled out on him…

MADS PEDERSEN Trek-Segafredo (24) Best result: 2nd Tour of Flanders 2019 Just because Mads Pedersen’s victory at the World Championships last year was a surprise, does not mean it was a fluke. The young Dane had previously shown what he could do the year before when he finished second at the Tour of Flanders which, combined with that ride in Yorkshire, suggests he has a penchant for the very toughest races. Pedersen recently bookended the Tour de France with second places in Nice and Paris, and will take form and confidence from that. Together with team-mate Jasper Stuyven (who won Het Nieuwsblad in the spring), he forms a formidable double-pronged attack for Trek-Segafredo. YVES LAMPAERT Deceuninck-Quick Step (28) Best result: 2nd Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2020 In many squads, finishing third…

‘De Ronde’ may have undergone a fairly radical date change, but it remains in a familiar slot a week ahead of Paris-Roubaix, setting up a mouth-watering Classics season finale. To make sure bike racing fans get their fill, organiser Flanders Classics has even changed the start times of both men’s and women’s races to ensure neither clash with the mountainous finish of stage 15 of the Giro d’Italia, held the same day. Both men’s and women’s races have been shortened from their usual considerable distances, to 241km and 135km respectively, with the 30km detour that takes in the iconic Muur Van Geraardsbergen having been removed. However, the decisive Oude Kwaremont/Paterberg one-two, 13km out from the finish, remains in place for both races. The Oude Kwaremont is more than 2km long…

The latest smartwatches are giving traditional cycle computers a real run for their money. The top-of-the-range Garmin Fenix 6 Solar can do everything Garmin’s best bike-specific head units can, plus a lot more that they can’t. Wearables are becoming increasingly sophisticated, offering a whole raft of additional performance metrics such Garmin’s Body Battery, which uses heart rate variability, sleep, stress and other data to track your condition – things that a computer, bolted to your bars rather than busily gathering data 24/7 via your wrist – is powerless to do. Talking of power, the Fenix 6 Solar gets its from the sun. All the functionality that includes GPS tracking and navigation, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, optical heart rate measurement and pulse oximetry (measuring the oxygen level in your blood) can…

ONE UP Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL7 Sagan Collection £11,000 The Sagan Collection bike has the same spec but this is what Spesh says about the paintjob: “The rainbow has been deconstructed – broken down to its core components to celebrate a rider defined by much more than rainbow stripes… stunning, shimmering colours and graphics that are as beautiful and mercurial as the masterpieces Peter paints on the road.” ONE DOWN Specialized Tarmac SL7 SRAM Force eTap AXS 1x £6,500 It’s quite a big drop in price down to the next model, which gets a 1x set-up with SRAM’s second-string electronic groupset. It gets Roval CL wheels rather than the CLXs, and rolls on slightly less supple Turbo rubber (120tpi compared to 320tpi of the Turbo Cottons), but we reckon this…

Glute/hamstring hold: Using a back extension machine, this is an exercise Emadi says “really switches on my lower back”. Side plank: Emadi also recommends this slightly trickier sibling of the standard face-down plank, which works key muscles in keeping the back strong and pain free. Thoracic extension: Working to avoid the typical ‘rounded shoulders’ posture is important says Boyd. A supple thoracic spine can take the pressure off the low back. Using a foam roller to work the thoracic (mid-back) area can help. Strength to weight: “Your quads, hamstrings and glutes need to be strong enough to cope with the pressures put through them,” says Boyd. Bodyweight squats and a simple glutes/hamstring bridge are a good place to start. *If you are already suffering with a back issue, seek advice…

“I used to ride and race in London in the late Eighties,” says Michael Harrison. “I lived in Putney in the days Holdsworth’s Cycles was still about, but after a 20-year hiatus I was so far out of shape, I couldn’t face going out with a club.” Harrison had relocated to north-east Scotland in 1998, and it wasn’t only club riding he couldn’t face but also the weather outside. “I got to a certain age and realised I had to look after myself better,” recalls the 48-year-old. “One day I was looking around the local bike shop and they had a bike set up on Zwift for demonstrations, so I gave it a go.” It was an impulse purchase; Harrison bought his own set-up and dived right in. The effects…

I refer not to the sort of bike-change that consists of putting your current bike on Ebay, adding the loot from that to the children’s inheritance and blowing the lot on something Chris Froome would feel a bit embarrassed to be issued with by his new team. No, I refer to the bit where your bike breaks, punctures or in some other way becomes unpleasing to you mid-race. Put your arm in the air to summon your faithful DS in the team car, or use your radio: “I say, old chap, could you bring me a fresh cycle?” or words to that effect. When the car arrives, dismount, throw your machine as far as possible into the nearest field, and occupy yourself in dark thoughts about mechanics while your spanner-wielder…