Innehållsförteckning för June 17, 2021 från Cycling Weekly

Cycling historians may jump to correct me, but I don’t think there has ever been a stronger team going into the Tour de France than Ineos Grenadiers this year. Great teams backed Eddy Merckx when he was in his pomp in the 1970s, but Ineos’s strength-in-depth is exceptional. They will have three Grand Tour winners in their squad (and they’re not taking Egan Bernal) plus in Richie Porte, a rider who should have won one. And all of them are in top form. They have dominated stage racing this year – winning the Giro d’Italia, last week’s Tour de Suisse, the Critérium de Dauphiné (first and third), the Tour de Romandie (first and second) and the Vuelta a Catalunya (first, second and third). The result in Paris is a foregone…

Indiana Jones star swings by Actor Harrison Ford slid into Sigma Sport in London last week. Ford was picking up clothes, shoes and sunglasses so he can ride in the UK while filming the fifth Indiana Jones movie. Owner Ian Whittingham said: “We had a little chat outside before he went to have a pint of Guinness in our local.” 662,000 Euros…the amount that Wout van Aert has been ordered to pay out for breaching his contract with former team Verandas Willems-Crelan, by leaving early to join Jumbo-Visma. His former team boss Nick Nuyens says he’s relieved that “justice has been done”. The new Tom at Trinity Consistent riding in the Baby Giro saw Thomas Gloag (Trinity Racing) finish a creditable fourth overall in the preeminent U23 race. Three top sixes in hilly…

The Tour of the Lakes two-day race used to run around the area from the 1950s until the early 1970s. It attracted the cream of domestic racing for much of that time. Usually featuring a time trial and a road stage, it was a good all-round test. During the 1980s and ’90s the highest profile race in the area was the Porthole GP, a time trial around Lake Windermere organised by local Italian restaurant owner and cycling fan Gianni Berton. These days there is less road and time trialling competition in the area though there are multiple good hill-climbs in the autumn, to which the terrain lends itself well.…

Think back to the 2016 Tour, and while you may remember Chris Froome’s infamous descent off the Col de Peyresourde and his attack in the crosswinds with Peter Sagan, the truly standout moments were both outright bizarre. On stage seven, Adam Yates attacked in the closing moments in an effort to gain crucial seconds on his GC rivals, but he was crushed after a flamme rouge gantry collapsed on top of him after a spectator dislodged a pin in the inflatable. Five stages later, on the upper slopes of Mont Ventoux, one of the most iconic moments of the modern Tour happened after Richie Porte, Bauke Mollema and Froome all crashed into the back of a TV motorbike. A damaged bike meant that Froome legged it on foot up to…

Over the past few years, I’ve had great success by approaching cycling with a different mindset. It’s enabled me as an individual, and the teams I’ve been part of, to break records and win national, Continental and world championships. Off the back of this, people have often asked me: “What helmet should I buy?” or “What’s the best tyre pressure for this course?” Sometimes I’ve given a quick, simple answer, but with a nagging feeling that I was, to some extent, selling them short. What I wanted to explain in each case, but which would have taken too long, was that they needed to start at the end. As lockdown loomed last year, I finally had the time I needed: I would write a book explaining the reverse-engineering process that…

Age: 20 Height: 5ft 7in Lives: Wicklow, Ireland Rides for: Team Rupelcleaning Best results: 1st – Irish National Road Race Champs, 2020 3rd – Junior Track World Champs, individual pursuit, 2019 @LaraGillespie21 laragillespie_ Are you from a cycling family? No, not at all, but my mum was very sporty as a kid and did a lot of mountain running and orienteering. I was brought up in the mountains [in Co. Carlow], always hiking and cycling in the mountains. As a kid, I was pretty competitive in soccer and Irish dancing and ballet. Later I was very competitive as a runner and competed [as a junior] for Ireland. I was also national junior triathlon champion, and when I happened to do a cycling race, the cross-over seemed to work very well…

Cycle paths are of variable quality, but they are outstandingly useful for several things. Their most important role is that they allow you to lower the window of your Range Rover and shout, “You should be on the ****ing cycle path,” at cyclists as you overtake them at a distance designed to ensure they don’t fail to hear you. If you’re thinking, “But what if there isn’t a suitable cycle path or lane for the cyclist to use?” you really haven’t got the hang of this. In this context a cycle path is a sort of conceptual ideal – it doesn’t matter whether it actually exists. Interestingly, you can yell the same thing at a cyclist when they are, in fact, on a cycle path. Just as long as you’re…

GERAINT THOMAS Ineos Grenadiers | 36 | GB 2021 wins - 1 Finally back to winning ways, the Welshman looks every inch the contender. Many forget his stunning 2018 win was followed up by a second place in 2019 that he took at something of a canter, while 2020 was very much his annus horribilis. We’ll never know how good his form was coming into last year’s Giro. His Romandie win in May was impressive as was his third place in Catalunya where Ineos dominated. But we haven’t seen him up against Pogačar or Roglič this year. That’s what everyone wants to see. TADEJ POGACAR UAE | 22 | Slo 2021 wins - 5 The reigning champ has seemingly been winning races for fun for the last two and a…

Somewhat ominously for his Tour de France rivals, defending champion Tadej Pogačar said he still had preparation to do before the race rolls out of Brittany, despite a dominant victory at his home race. The Slovenian comfortably sealed the win at the five-day Tour of Slovenia on Sunday. He’d taken a lead of over a minute on the uphill finish of stage two and never looked in much danger of losing it over the remaining three stages. His eventual margin over his own team-mate Diego Ulissi in second place was 1.21. Astana-Premier Tech rider Matteo Sobrero rounded out the podium in third. “My legs are getting better and better and I’m almost ready for the Tour de France,” said Pogačar, who last year became the youngest ever winner of the…

ROUTE 109KM | 2274M ELEVATION GAIN ESSENTIAL INFO WHERE TO STAY We stayed in the Calder House Hotel in Seascale. Rooms are from £75 a night and it has a decent pub menu style restaurant to fuel up at before and after a big ride. WHERE TO EAT Coniston is home to a vast array of cafes. We can recommend Herdwicks, where the cakes were generous in size, but others also pointed to Hollands and Steam Bistro, both in the town centre as good options. GETTING THERE The south-west section of the Lake District is best accessed by taking the A590 off the M6 at junction 36. From there it’s roughly an hour to Seascale. There are train stations in Barrow-in-Furness or up the coast at Millom and Whitehaven. It’s…

1 mywindsock.com and bestbikesplit.com Intuitive and powerful websites, these tools enable the user to analyse performances to see exactly how a race was executed, as well as model different scenarios or future performances. The ability to evaluate the impact of changing a variable, from weight and CdA to absolute power and power variance, is truly insightful and incredibly helpful for anyone taking on a reverse-engineering project. 2 bicyclerollingresistance.com Your one-stop resource for bicycle tyre rolling resistance data. The site is independent and open with its entire protocol and test rig. Using this tool, you can refine your tyre selection and tie it into either MyWindSock or BestBikeSplit. 3 physicalcycling.com A fantastic resource for those who want to better understand cycling and the physics that underpin it. Physicalcycling explains cycling from…

Word reaches me of a couple of cycling journalists who went on a ride together recently on a very sunny day. One of them managed to get a small snag in their shorts. As the ride progressed, it gradually got bigger and bigger. Eventually, they were forced to stop and make some sort of repair job on it – armed with a pile of safety pins they managed to preserve some dignity. Alas, they did not do it soon enough. While South Wales might have been spared the sight of a cycling hack’s hairy white arse, the hole was there for long enough for the rider to get a quite severe, weirdly located and very localised sunburn.…

Ineos Grenadiers will be looking to outnumber and out-manoeuvre Tadej Pogačar and Primož Roglič at the 2021 Tour de France as the British squad finalised its eight-man roster for the Tour, which begins in nine days’ time. Ineos will take three former Grand Tour winners to France: Geraint Thomas, Tao Geoghegan Hart and Richard Carapaz, along with Tour veteran Richie Porte. Yet lead directeur sportif Gabriel Rasch admitted that Ineos lacked the two best individual riders – defending champion Pogačar and 2020 runner-up Roglič – and instead would rely on its strength in depth in aiming to win what would be its eighth Tour in 12 years. “Our big strength is our collective strength as a group,” Rasch said. “I think our chance lies in the numbers. We have to…

I really enjoy my weekly read of Cycling Weekly so thank you for putting together a great magazine. While reading the results this week – a friend of mine is D Parkin, third in the Manchester TT – I noticed that the Manchester results had the women’s section first. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision but I sincerely hope it was done as a way of promoting women’s cycling. Call me old-fashioned but I would always have a ladies-first attitude, and I certainly think that this should be adopted when posting all results. Thanks again for your work on a great mag. Craig, email Ed - Glad you’re enjoying reading the magazine, Craig. When we brought the results page back to the magazine a few weeks ago…

HONISTER 92 The racing club was founded, as the name suggests, in 1992 by three friends. It rides much of the roads of the west side of the Lake District and has a hand in organising some local races too. Members are regular riders of the famous Fred Whitton and until the pandemic the club organised regular trips abroad too. BARROW CENTRAL WHEELERS Based out of Barrow-in-Furness the club can trace its roots back to 1933. Back then club runs started at Barrow Central train station, where the club takes its name from. It’s mostly a time trialling club with over 20 club events most years. It also promotes around five hill-climbs each autumn and winter. It also has links to the cyclo-cross scene where it runs events as part…

Every time we sit down to watch a stage of the Tour de France, we have a rough idea, based on convention and norms, what will happen. Sometimes, however, a surprise winner rips up the rulebook, and on other occasions the weather decides to disrupt normal protocol. Then there are those memorable years when the Tour just gets plain ol’ weird. The early decades of the race saw plenty of alcohol and drug misuse within the peloton that has passed into folklore, but this millennium has also had its fair share of bizarre events. With Tour fever in the air, we decided to take a look at the Tour de Weird. 1 DODGY DRINKS What would you do, as favourite, if a surprising newcomer rocked up, won two stages, appeared…

1 Team KGF 2017 British Track Nationals This was the original reverse-engineering project: four weeks, four guys, one goal – to win the British National Championship 4km team pursuit. We calculated what it would take to win, broke that down into power, CdA and turn lengths for each rider, then worked to increase power and reduce CdA through an intense track training block and aerodynamic equipment development. Our winning margin, when converted into average power for the event, was two watts. 2 Canyon-SRAM Racing 2018 TTT World Championships Team principal Ronny Lauke approached me in early 2018 with a single pure goal: win the UCI World Championships team time trial for Canyon-SRAM Racing. Course modelling gave us the power and CdA values required. A TTT is much like a long…

I’m going to make a confession, and you’re all going to be tolerant and understanding. It is this: I can’t get used to Geraint Thomas as a Grand Tour contender, let alone as a winner of the Tour de France or as the leader of probably the strongest team in this year’s race. This is nothing against Thomas. He’s very talented, hard-working, and deserves his success. It’s just that it makes no actual sense to me. The problem is, I think, that he’s changed as a rider through his career. And while all of us passionately believe in our own ability to develop and improve, and to set and achieve new targets, it’s much harder to get the hang of the stars doing the same. I find that I regard…

Stage 1 // Saturday, June 26 Brest > Landerneau // 198km // Rolling Setting out from Brest for the fourth time in the Tour’s history, the riders will tackle a horseshoe-shaped route that initially heads south, its opening quarter never far from the sea, which may make the wind a factor. From Quimper, at the bottom of the horseshoe, the riders will turn north again, the route winding incessantly to first pass and then turn back towards Landerneau, coming into the town from the north. What to expect With the yellow jersey at stake, it’s hard to imagine the breakaway going the distance, although there are sure to be a handful of teams that will gamble and instruct their riders to try to get into it. The key to success…

The sprints could be some of the most hotly contested in years, and with Peter Sagan not being the force he used to be the green jersey is once again up for grabs. More wins are expected from last year’s maillot vert, Sam Bennett. The Irishman is now winning consistently, much like Australia’s Caleb Ewan, who took two wins at the Giro d’Italia before pulling out to prepare for the Tour. French hopes will rest on the shoulders of a rejuvenated Arnaud Démare, even though he’s had a relatively quiet start to 2021. Others to look out for in the final kilometre hustle and bustle include Cees Bol, Mads Pedersen and Tim Merlier.…