Innehållsförteckning för June 2, 2022 från Cycling Weekly

STAGES 16, 17, 19 MAKING THE CUT Stage 16 was the queen stage for me. You look at the distance and the high metres, and also stage 20. They were super-hard. I was a little bit nervous because you need to have good legs even to finish in the grupetto, which isn’t easy. Stage 17 and 19 were days for the breakaways. But the race was very active with lots of attacks – there was always a big fight for the break. The mountain days this week were all about suffering. It’s a race within a race to make the time cut, or the grupetto. It’s hard to explain it because you’ll never see me on TV. STAGE 18 FLAT! This was the only stage I was looking forward to…

JOE LAVERICK After a few weeks at the family home in the UK, it’s time for me to head back to the Continent. While being home it has been back to the ‘good old days’ of jumping on club runs and chaingangs. The group ride I’m referring to is the Nuns Corner Chaingang, the fast group in my hometown of Grimsby. Named after the roundabout where it always used to meet, it (confusingly) changed its start place during Covid times. Now, it’s the Nuns Corner Chaingang meeting at Bradley roundabout, but I digress… Weekend club rides will always be humbling. It doesn’t matter how long I’ve been away for or which countries I’ve been racing in, coming back to the local club ride will always bring me back down to…

Next week’s National 25-mile championship will not have a full field – something that would have been unheard of even three years ago. Seventy men, along with 32 women and nine junior riders will take on time trialling’s blue riband test on the weekend of 11-12 June – well down on the usual full men’s field of 120 riders. It will be run on the S130/25 course, on the A38 between Cullhampton and Wellington in Devon, and the line-up does boast at least three recent winners in the form of reigning champion John Archibald (Wattshop), Chris Fennell (Independent Pedaler-Nopinz) and Emily Meakin (AWOL-O’Shea) The status quo for the National Championships, especially for the popular ‘10’ and ‘25’ distances is oversubscription, with organisers turning entries away. The 2019 championship for example,…

Today’s stage is set to play a key role in deciding the overall winner. While there’s no giant mountain climbs (this is still Britain after all) there is plenty of up and down on the parcours today which should see some legs come up short. Out of Tewkesbury it’s a fairly flat first 30km before the peloton hits the first slopes. Before long they climb Worrall Hill, which averages 6% but is mostly benign save for the steeper sections at the bottom. From there the road rolls down to the River Severn before nearly doubling back on itself and climbing Speech House through the Forest of Dean; here’s the last time for someone to get away or split the bunch. With 20km from the bottom of the descent to the…

Oxford city centre will form an impressive backdrop for this sixth and final stage, taking in corners of Oxfordshire hitherto unexplored by the race along the way. Starting in Chipping Norton, the county’s highest town, the first half of the stage has a distinct whiff of lumpiness about it, with QoMs coming 20km in at Butcher’s Hill, and then at Burford a further 20km down the road. Following an intermediate sprint soon afterwards at Carterton, the parcours flattens out as it dog-legs through the county’s southern reaches before turning north, bound for what should be a sprint in Oxford. The GC will probably have been decided the day before, so this will be a chance for fast finishers like Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM), who won two stages in last year’s…

Launched at the same time in 2021 as Shimano’s top-tier Dura-Ace R9200, Ultegra R8100 shares a lot of the same features. Like its more expensive brethren, the new Ultegra is 12-speed, semi-wireless (disc brake only version) and makes significant improvements in the braking department. It is also available in a rim brake configuration. Either way it means the new Ultegra is no longer offered with mechanical shifting. Shimano’s second-tier groupset has often been found on the bikes of serious amateurs and budding racers, but does this new iteration still cater for that crowd? And as the new R8100 is so closely aligned with the top-tier Dura-Ace but for two thirds of the cost, does it call into question the merits of the more expensive option? Shifters I was always a…

‘Frustrating’ sums up most of the past month – though I’d be tempted to use a stronger term! As I said in last month’s update, I was hoping to get back up to speed after contracting Covid at the end of March. Well, it’s taken much longer than I expected. Testing in early May showed I was 40 watts down on where I was pre-Covid. Worse still, during the first half of the month, every time I attempted a harder effort, I’d feel terrible and know immediately I’d have to stop. Only very recently have I felt able to begin to reintroduce some high-intensity work without feeling exhausted. With that backdrop, I resolved to race my club’s 10-mile time trial on 18 May with no expectations of a decent performance…

At the beginning of 1983, Cycling and Ron Kitching set a new target for the time trialling community. “300 miles in 12 hours!” read an editorial. “One by one the barriers have fallen: 25 miles in under the hour, 50 miles in two hours, 100 miles in four hours. And now there is a new target: 300 miles in 12 hours.” The record at that time stood at 286.85 miles, ridden by Pete Wells back in 1979, so Cycling offered a rare ‘gold medal’ to the rider who broke the distance, while Ron Kitching put up a £250 voucher. Top testers were up for the challenge as Ian Cammish said, “Just the incentive I want,” while Dave Lloyd stated, “The distance holds no fear for me.” But it was quite…

Jai Hindley went from nearly-man to history-maker in two short kilometres on the Marmolada last weekend, putting to bed the hurt of 2020 to become the first Australian to win the Giro d’Italia on Sunday. Having worn the leader’s maglia rosa for a scant 19 minutes in 2020 before Tao Geoghegan Hart took it from him in the final day time trial, Hindley always swore he would keep trying to win the race. When Richard Carapaz (Ineos Grenadiers) cracked in what were the final two climbing kilometres of the entire race on Saturday, Hindley was able to take advantage and open up a 1-25 cushion over the Ecuadorian – a gap which, barring illness or a crash, was unlikely to disappear in Sunday’s final time trial in Verona. So it…

DSM and Lorena Wiebes dominated the new look RideLondon Classique, winning all three stages and the overall at the weekend. It was a commanding performance by the Dutch team, orchestrated out on the roads of Essex and central London by road captain Pfeiffer Georgi. The British national champion guides DSMs sprint leadout, calling the shots in the final kilometres, and got it right three times in a row. “We came with a really strong team, with the clear goal in mind to go for sprints and the GC with Lorena,” she said after the final sprint win on Victoria Embankment on Sunday. “Saturday’s stage was the hardest and most unpredictable because it was a bit hillier with lots of small narrow roads and technical parts where you’re open to attacks,…

5-12 June | France Primož Roglič will be the star performer in a Jumbo-Visma dress rehearsal for the Tour de France at this year’s Critérium du Dauphiné, which starts this weekend in the Ardèche. After a knee injury picked up in the spring kept him out of Ardennes Classics, the Slovenian, 32, has been training at the southern Spanish ski resort of Sierra Nevada with Jumbo-Visma’s top Grand Tour riders Wout van Aert, Steven Kruijswijk, Jonas Vingegaard and Sepp Kuss, plus new signings Rohan Dennis, who joined from Ineos Grenadiers over the winter, and Christophe Laporte. All but Kuss will line up at the traditional pre-Tour warm-up stage race this Sunday. “We are largely there with the Tour team, so it will be useful to see how smoothly the cooperation…

A collection of strong British names are set to line up for next week’s Women’s Tour, which starts in Colchester, Essex on Monday (6 June). British road champion Pfeiffer Georgi (Team DSM) will be joined by Katie Archibald (Ceratizit-WNT) and Anna Henderson (Jumbo-Visma). With former Hour record holder Joss Lowden (Uno-X Pro) alongside the rider who has just taken the record from her, Ellen van Dijk (Trek-Segafredo). Georgi’s Dutch team-mate Lorena Weibes, who swept up a brace of stages last year, also returns to UK shores, while overall contenders Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo) and Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon–SRAM) are also set to be there. Only two British teams will be lining up for the UK’s biggest stage race – Le Col-Wahoo and CAMS Basso Bikes both got a late call-up. There…

Day one takes riders through familiar Women’s Tour heartlands, embarking from Colchester in Essex and describing a mazy route northward to Bury St Edmunds. On the way the race will delight the roadside fans in Ipswich and Stowmarket, and also features intermediate sprints at Holbrook and Hadleigh, sandwiched by two cat-three QoMs along the way, in Brantham and Bildeston. Predictably, for a day out in this part of the country, the going is pretty flat, with riders staying well below 100m of altitude even for the QoMs. This isn’t the first time Bury St Edmunds has featured in the race, with Marianne Vos winning here the last time round back in 2014. Could she make it two in a row? Where to watch With the race finishing outside the cathedral…

Just like modern wheels and tyres, the US brand has concluded that cycling shoes must be wider if they’re to be both comfortable and efficient. The S-Works Torch is a ground-up design based on a brand new carbon sole that’s 4mm wider than the S-Works 7’s and also comes in a wide fitting that’s 3mm wider still. Despite this, the new sole is 20g lighter, with the size 42 shoe weighing a claimed 225g, the same overall as the old S-Works 7. The Torch name will already be familiar to Spesh-spotters as a range of three lower-tiered shoes. Specialized told us it wanted to create a connection between those shoes and the top-tier model so that riders who don’t want to spend £385 – the price of the new S-Works…

Most of us will never ride a Grand Tour. For those that do, there is a special art to the rest day. Rest days have a special temporal abnormality all their own. Einstein may have explained the unity of space and time by way of four-dimensional spacetime, but he never had to live through a rest day. As one rider put it, “It was Sunday night. I blinked and it was Tuesday morning.” A rest day is essentially a reversal of normal life. Normal people spend all week working, and have a Sunday to go for a ride that goes by all too quickly. Pro riders get to spend all week riding their bikes, then have a day off that they fill with social media, interviews, blog updates and contract…

Zoe Bäckstedt (Acrog-Tormans) won both the road race and time trial junior national titles in North Yorkshire at the weekend. The cyclo-cross and road world champion unsurprisingly dominated the racing with a two minute win in the 17.5km race. In the road race she spent most of the race off the front with Awen Roberts (Liv CC) as the pair built up a lead of almost five minutes before Bäckstedt won the sprint. Matilda McKibben (Liv CC) won the sprint to take the bronze medal Joshua Tarling continued his run of TT wins across international and domestic competition when he took the junior TT title over a minute quicker than Ben Wiggins (Fensham Howes MAS design). Tarling (FlandersColor Galloo), who won the senior points race national title early in the…

Had some niggling sciatica for about 10 weeks, no back pain. Didn’t think much of it, assumed it was some soft tissue nerve compression. Then out of nowhere got a massive disc prolapse in my back. Not nice at all. Back on the bike now, but still got a lot of weakness in my right leg. Matthew James I had [issues] a couple of years ago. Simple in my case… too much riding and Zwifting at or close to FTP and Z4 effort. Developed sciatica in back of leg and lower back from pushing too hard for too long. I spend 80% of my time in Z2-3 these days. Jim Dennison Two months into sciatica, lots of physio and working hard on rehab and it is beginning to improve. Joe…

While the riders will face two early QoMs in the form of Pontyates Hill at 16km and Crwbin at 24km, all eyes are likely to be fixed firmly on the horizon, where a finish on Black Mountain looms large. Only the second summit finish in Women’s Tour history, this final ascent, located in the Brecon Beacons, is 7.2km long, averaging 5.3% and featuring daunting 21% ramps. The time gaps at the end of this South Wales stage could be big and decisive for the overall. Starting at Pembrey Country Park on the south coast, the route meanders north before looping east and then south towards its denouement. Where to watch There can really only be one place to watch this potentially pivotal stage play out – the mountain itself. Crowds…

“I’ve had dozens of surgeries in the last 10 years – and they’ve all come because of the amount of time I’ve spent outdoors.” Kimberley Conte had never thought much about the risk of skin cancer. “No one in my family had a history of it and I don’t burn easily, so I thought I would be immune from it. I didn’t take it seriously at all.” But then, in 2010, she was diagnosed with a very small basal cell carcinoma between her lip and her nose. At first, she had the affected area of skin frozen using a technique called cryotherapy, a proven means of destroying cancerous cells. “‘No big deal’ was my attitude,” reflects the Australian, who is a race director of the Women’s Tour Down Under, “but…

Last month was all about the Fred Whitton Challenge [8 May] for me. I’d never ridden as far as 180km nor climbed anywhere near 3,800m in a single ride, but I’m pleased to say it went really well. A big bonus was the fantastic weather, meaning I was able to ride in summer kit – I even got sunburn, which was a shock in the Lake District! Everything went to plan: I picked up fresh bottles from my parents at Whinlatter and my legs felt fine the whole way through, even up Hardknott and Wrynose in the latter stages. My official time was seven hours 59 minutes and 46 seconds – a whisker inside my goal of sub-eight hours! Incredibly the fastest man on the day, Giles Drake, finished in…

Michele Dancelli (on the right) outsprints Adriano Durante to win stage 18 at the Bolzano track in 1966, ahead of a perfectly formed Dolomites backdrop. Neither rider was able to put a significant dent in the GC lead of eventual overall victor (and Dancelli’s Molteni team-mate) Gianni Motta, who had worn the maglia rosa since winning it on the grippy roads to Brescia on stage 15, and would keep it on his shoulders all the way to the finish in Trieste. Motta sandwiched Dancelli’s stage win with two of his own and with nearly four minutes in hand at the end of stage 19, his win never looked in doubt. Molteni also rounded out the race as team winners. Motta had not started the race as a prime favourite; that…