Innehållsförteckning för July 7, 2022 från Cycling Weekly

Debate was raging as the Tour de France got under way in Denmark last weekend on how to prevent a mass exodus of riders due to Covid-19 over the next three weeks. With the virus circulating at near-record levels across Europe, teams, riders and organisers were nervous about it infiltrating the peloton, with five riders and one sports director being withdrawn in the days preceding the Grand Départ due to either testing positive or being deemed a high-risk contact. The cases raised the prospect of dozens of riders being forced to abandon in the coming weeks, in a similar vein to what happened at June’s Tour de Suisse. In an attempt to avoid such an eventuality, the sport’s governing body, the UCI, updated its Covid protocols ahead of the race’s…

STAGE ONE FRIDAY 1 JULY 2022 COPENHAGEN TO COPENHAGEN (ITT) Winner: Yves Lampaert (Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl) Yellow: Yves Lampaert (Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl) Green: Yves Lampaert (Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl) Polka-dot: N/A White: Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) Yves Lampaert took everyone by surprise as he stormed to opening day victory. The time trial around Copenhagen was widely expected to be a contest between Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) and Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), although Lampaert put 10 seconds into the latter to take the first yellow jersey. Hero of the day Specialized designer: whoever designed the new Specialized TT helmets (complete with face-sock) deserves a pat on the back. Not only do they allegedly make pro cyclists more aero, they also provided the rest of us with a chuckle at their expense.…

PREPARATION TWO TYPES OF STRESS This fairly contagious variant of Covid floating around the peloton is definitely adding to current stress levels in our team. Despite the symptoms being pretty mild it still could end anyone’s race. I’m actually one of the fortunate ones, catching it just before I was due to head to the Tour de Suisse. If I leave the Tour it won’t be because of Covid. I’ve tried not to rub that in too much to my team-mates, who according to the PCR we did today (Wednesday) are all negative. I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion tomorrow about the Covid testing rules for teams so who knows what’s going to happen as we get further in? Being woken by the Danish police at…

Forty riders rolled down the start ramp in Copenhagen to make their Tour de France debuts last weekend. One of them, Italian Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers), came within seconds of pulling on the yellow jersey after the first stage. A rider winning on their Tour debut isn’t that uncommon; Fernando Gaviria did it in Fontenay-le-Comte on stage one in 2018, Fabian Cancellara in Liège 2004, and David Millar in Futuroscope in 2000. Not all the debutants will taste success in their first Tour; some of them won’t make it to the finish in Paris, others might not make it to the end of the first week, while many of them will get through the race, doing their job, working for a team-mate and generally staying under the radar. At 31,…

Calm down everyone, they will still offer the mechanical 11-speed. Rog Davis At some point inflation is going to pop the ever-increasing bicycle price! And everything is going to crumble down to become affordable again, but just how high will it go before it blows? Keith Wehmeyer Can someone explain to me what electronic gears are? First I’ve heard of them. Are they totally cableless, and if so, how do they work? Bluetooth? Sam Powell A few years ago, we’d have called a rear mech like that ‘touring gears’. Stephen Brown Wonder how long they will keep the 11-speed mechanical version going. Hopefully a very long time. Steve Stringham I remember when people rode bikes with 105, and it was perfectly functional. Ultegra was for sponsored club riders and DA…

Behind the radical-looking Mythos Elix is Dimitris Katsanis, who has worked with British Cycling and Team Sky and whose additive manufactured (3D-printed) equipment has already been used to win races at the highest level. Bradley Wiggins used 3D-printed titanium custom bars made by Katsanis to break the world Hour record in 2015. The Mythos Elix is made not from titanium but from Scalmalloy, a metal alloy made with scandium, aluminium and magnesium that was developed for 3D printing by Airbus. For those worried about exactly how strong it is, especially given the high-profile failure of the Australian handlebars at the Tokyo Olympics, Mythos says: “Once the final design was approved and passed our FEA stress analysis, prototypes for each size were printed and fatigue tested using the test methods outlined…

What’s your top advice for Steve on how to go sub-20 as a time-crunched amateur? Like Steve, I’ve had major illness interruptions: I had sepsis in December, then Covid in April, and I’m often away for work for three to four weeks at a time. My numberone piece of advice would be to train in race position, minimising ‘vanity hours’. Any riding above Zone 2, including intervals, I do on my TT bike in race position. It doesn’t matter how much you spend on tech, if you’re not training in position, it’s worth s**t. How hard do you train? I’m time-limited, so all I can do is make sure everything I do counts. Over the past eight weeks, I’ve done seven or eight hours, including two or three sessions at…

Two stage wins at the Tour de France in three days would be more than enough for most teams, it might even make the whole race for them. It says a lot about Quick Step-Alpha Vinyl that there was tangible disappointment after they failed to make it three in a row on stage three of this year’s Tour de France. Yves Lampaert won the opening time trial in Copenhagen, before Fabio Jakobsen doubled up for his team the next day, winning a Tour bunch sprint at his first opportunity in Nyborg. It would not be a hat-trick, however, with a malfunctioning leadout train leaving Jakobsen alone to battle to fifth place on the Tour’s last day in Denmark. Final hurdle Outside the team bus, Lampaert was quick to criticise his…

Crashes will happen, riders will abandon and dreams will be shattered, but avoiding the negative consequences of an inevitably stressful opening week of the Tour de France is as much about canny riding and preparation as it is luck. The age-old adage goes that you can’t win yellow in the first week, but you can certainly lose it. This year’s race is fraught with a succession of dangers before the first proper rest day in Morzine this coming Monday. There was a slippery time trial course and tight roads to contend with in Denmark, followed by cobbles and nervous sprint stages during the week. How do you survive? A fundamental part of avoiding pitfalls is anticipating them, and while you can never eliminate the risk, you can reduce the possibility…

At the beginning of June, I started working with nutritionist Charlie Mitten (qualifiednutrition.com), and his advice has been a massive eye-opener. Tracking my energy intake against my expenditure has revealed big calorie deficits. When I started cycling, I carried on eating just as I had as a professional footballer, and it wasn’t enough, which explains the inconsistency I’ve been experiencing: flying on certain days, lifeless on others. I now fill in a spreadsheet for Charlie every day, allowing him to track my weight, my eating and my sleep. We’ve set a base target of calories, and we have certain protein, carb, fat and fibre goals that I have to hit – using MyFitnessPal app to help keep track. Each Monday, Charlie looks at my schedule on TrainingPeaks and gives me…

This week’s issue illustrates the time trialling focus the magazine had in the Seventies, with the cover featuring Dave Lloyd’s beating of the RR A 50-mile straight-out competition record in 1.35.45, as well as Joe Waugh’s win in the National Championship hill-climb. As manufacturers often used to do, Raleigh was keen to point out that Lloyd’s record was set using one of its bikes, running a full-page advert on page seven. That week also saw the last in a three-part training series on ‘The Engers Method’. Alf Engers was a time trialling star who had held numerous competition records and won his fourth National ‘25’ Championship that summer. He had some juicy tips to impart – some of which we could still relate to, others less so. “Try to cultivate…

Team Bahrain Victorious were subjected to searches by Danish police before the start of the Tour de France last week. In a continuation of the investigation that started in Pau at last year’s race and continued more recently with searches of the houses of riders and staff, the Danish police entered Bahrain’s hotel at 5.30am the day before the opening time trial at the request of French prosecutors. In a strongly worded but brief statement, Bahrain Victorious said that nothing was taken from them in the search of the hotel and the team’s vehicles, confirming that both riders and staff were subject to the investigation. “Following the police search into some staff and riders’ homes on Monday, the Team Bahrain Victorious hotel was searched by Danish police at the request…

Race to remount Stage 2, Saturday 2 July Yellow jersey holder Yves Lampaert rushes to get back on his bike after he was brought down in a crash of half a dozen nervous riders upon entry to the Great Belt Fixed Link bridge. The peloton was nervous of crosswinds but they didn’t materialise. That helped Lampaert, along with Quick Step team-mate Michael Mørkøv, to chase back on. EF Education-EasyPost rider Ruben Guerreiro was not so lucky – he finished 11 minutes down, alongside Alberto Dainese (DSM) seen in the front of this shot on the floor. Remarkably as the Tour reached its transfer day on Monday no rider had yet had to leave the race due to injury or illness.…

The latest Madone SLR has addressed how to make a bicycle lighter and more aerodynamic with some singular solutions. The result is a bike that’s been both tweaked and overhauled in a quite extraordinary way. When it first surfaced at the Critérium du Dauphiné, the new Madone made headlines largely due to the radical seat tube design. Gone was the IsoSpeed decoupler that had been introduced to help make the bike more comfortable. In its place was, well, a hole. This technology is called IsoFlow. It’s at the heart of the Madone redesign and provided part of the solution to the demands made by pro riders. By removing the adjustable Isospeed system, the bike became both simpler and lighter. “The frame is said to be almost 20 watts faster” Combined…

At the time of writing, I’m just back from my mother country, Sweden, having taken part in Vätternrundan, a 315km (196-mile) sportive around Lake Vättern. It went really well, despite being greeted by wind and rain when we arrived at the start at 5am. I rode with my partner Del and for the first 100km we tagged on to a group that was riding at 35kph – faster than we had planned but it was better than taking on the headwind alone! Once the sun came up, the rain stopped and we turned north, it got a little easier and we decided to ride at our own pace. We finished in 11 hours, having averaged 28kph (17.4mph), and I felt surprisingly fine at the end – maybe I could have…

We’re talking here about mid-race feeding, usually at a designated feed zone. Ensure you have made-up musettes. The riders will usually be pretty clear about what they want in their musettes – you should ignore this totally. This goes double if what the riders want sounds like an ideal team-car driving snack. Be sure to stand a bit further into the road than the previous soigneur in the line. This will make sure that, as each successive helper stands further out than the one before, the road funnels down to half its width. This position will also give you a good view of the entertaining look of terror on the faces of the riders as they hurtle towards the ever-narrowing gap. Hold the musette at more or less the full…

The sun-baked road glares back at Spain’s Fédérico Ezquerra through the thin mountain air, as he cranks over the final metres of the Col du Galibier in the 1936 Tour. Ezquerra led the race over the legendary Alpine col, which even then was well trodden by the Tour, having been included 22 times since it was first featured in 1911. But the 212km outing from Evian to Aix-les-Bains was ultimately won by Belgium’s Éloi Meulenberg, with his countryman Sylvère Maes taking the first of two overall victories in Paris two weeks later.…