Innehållsförteckning för March 16, 2023 från Cycling Weekly

This June’s British National Championships will be run on a course with a testing hilly finale in Redcar and Cleveland, in North-East England, British Cycling has unveiled. Competition will begin with the time trials on 21 June, where Ethan Hayter will be looking to land his third successive title in the elite men’s category. In the absence of Joss Lowden, a new champion will be crowned in the elite women’s race. Lowden will miss the event as she is expecting her first child. Similarly to last year when Mark Cavendish grabbed the headlines, the championships will then conclude with the road races, which will start and finish in the coastal town of Saltburn on Sunday 25 June. After travelling along the coastline of the region, the route will then wind…

Great to see this article (CW 9 March). Attached is a photo of the British team. A point of interest, Shirley Clarke went on to marry Bill Holmes, and Barbara Harris married Albert Hitchin. Barbara Harris was the best British finisher, taking fourth place in the bunch sprint behind Elsy Jacobs. Ed – Lovely to see that photo, especially in colour. Interesting to note that the results we found have Joan Poole listed in fifth place and Barbara Harris in seventh place.…

Shimano is replacing its entire mid range, in both road and mountain groupsets, with a single ecosystem called Cues that includes nine, 10 and 11-speed interchangeable components. For road users this means the end of Tiagra, Sora and Claris, with the Japanese brand saving just Dura-Ace, Ultegra and 105 as it makes way for Cues. Shimano has decided that mid-range groupsets should no longer beg for the scraps of Dura-Ace’s high-end racing technology once it has become obsolete. So instead of waiting decades for out-of-date racing technology to be trickled down to groupsets that will never be raced, Cues will be nourished by its own tech. Shimano says the focus will be on durability and smoothness thanks to technology called Linkglide. This features a tooth profile design with higher and…

There’s a lot to unpack from this week’s issue covering the road and track World Championships in Norway. Before we get to the young cover star with rage in his eyes, we’ll turn first to pages 6-7 and a double-page spread on newly crowned pursuit world champion Graeme Obree. The previous week Obree was the cover star after he and Old Faithful stole the show at the Hamar track. Cycling Weekly had 12 pages of coverage from the event where the Scot broke the world record and took his first title ahead of Chris Boardman and Philippe Ermenault of France. This week, writer David Taylor listed the many ways the Scot’s life was changing, from the Italian journalists taking him for lunch after his pursuit win and suggesting a meeting…

It’s often said that the whole cycling season does not revolve around the Tour de France, but for the two riders who are the favourites to pull on the yellow jersey at the end of its three weeks, it might as well do. Therefore, as special as it is in its own right, for the main Tour contenders, Paris-Nice becomes just a stepping stone on the way to the biggest goal of them all. Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), the man who was vanquished by Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) at last year’s Tour, repaid the favour over eight days in France last week, winning three stages and convincingly wrapping up the overall. “We know that Jonas is not in his Tour shape” One swallow does not make a spring, as both…

The town of Tortosa has hosted the Volta a Catalunya 68 times during the race’s 112-year history, mostly during the 1940s and 50s when it was still reeling from some of the fiercest fighting of the Spanish Civil War. Author Ernest Hemingway reported from the town after it had suffered intense bombing by Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces. Hemingway, a cycling fan who had previously included an encounter with the Tour of the Basque Country in his breakthrough novel, The Sun Also Rises, described the circling aircraft as having “the mechanical monotony of movement of a quiet afternoon at a six-day bike race.” A controversial reminder of those times looks down upon us as we pedal sedately across the Pont de l’Estat that spans the River Ebro. It’s a modern sculpture…

Adidas has expanded its range of cycling shoes to include this gravel specific offering. The Gravel Shoe sticks to the same script as the other models, featuring a clean profile and the brand’s iconic three stripes prominently displayed. “IT FEATURES A CLEAN PROFILE AND THE ICONIC THREE STRIPES” To make it applicable to the rigours of off-road riding, Adidas has equipped the shoe with an outsole that features a recessed fitting for two-bolt SPD cleats and what it describes as TPU walking pods, designed to make those hike-a-bike sections of a gravel ride more bearable while also adding some protection to both the toe and heel. There’s also a reinforced synthetic upper and an internal sock, which is there to stop trail debris entering the shoe and should help provide…

Getting started as a collector is relatively simple. Just don’t throw anything out. After a while this will get hard to distinguish from hoarding. This is when the second phase of your collecting campaign kicks in. Assuming your pile of stuff has acquired some sort of a theme, like ‘bikes’ or ‘arm-warmers’, you need to create a detailed catalogue. If this sounds like hard work, don’t worry, you can just pretend, because I can absolutely assure you no one will ever ask to see it. Especially if it is, indeed, arm-warmers. After that, you need to discover (or invent) an interesting fact about each item. “This is an arm-warmer Mark Cavendish was wearing when he rode to the signing-on of the final stage of the Tour of Britain in 2016,…

The peloton for the 1961 Paris-Nice parades around Fontenaysous-Bois, an eastern suburb of Paris. The date on this photograph is 10 March, the day the race started, suggesting this presentation took place on the morning of the stage, on what looks like a cold spring day. All the riders are well turned out in their logo-free team tracksuits and almost every rider is wearing a cap or casquette – the one place where their sponsor’s logo could be seen by the spectators. It’s clearly a relaxed affair as the wheels of the leading riders are turning so slowly you can almost make out the individual spokes. Others chat, arms on team-mates’ shoulders, and look around at each other or the crowd, while no race vehicles are present. In 1961 Paris-Nice…

With a hat-trick of stage wins to his name, Jumbo-Visma’s Primož Roglič clinched the overall at last week’s Tirreno-Adriatico, shining in his first race of the season. The Slovenian, who raced the first half of the week with unshaven legs, enjoyed imperious form throughout the Italian stage race, taking the leader’s jersey on the fifth day. UAE Team Emirates’s João Almeida finished the race’s runner-up at 18 seconds, while 2020 Giro d’Italia winner Tao Geoghegan Hart rounded out the podium, 23 seconds down. A surprise last-minute entry for Tirreno-Adriatico, Roglič had initially opted for a longer winter break to recover from bone graft surgery on his shoulder. “It’s just nice to come back to racing this way,” he said after Sunday’s final stage in San Benedetto del Tronto. “I really…

My Classics season has started less with a bang and more with a crack, specifically to my ribs. Last week I raced in Belgium for the first time this year. After 15km at La Samyn I was moving my team-mate Susanne through the bunch when we were both taken out on a corner. Sandwiched between riders and bikes, I managed to get away without losing much skin at all. But that small win was overshadowed by the contusion in my chest that left me feeling winded and unable to take a full breath. I jumped on my spare bike and tried to chase back to the bunch, but my lungs wouldn’t let my legs touch over 100 watts. I watched the race disappear from my view before I’d even had…

Reigning Milan-San Remo champion Matej Mohorič has said that the prospect of being heavily marked on his return to La Primavera is not something that intimidates him. After winning last year’s edition of the race thanks to a daredevil descent down the Poggio, aided in part by his use of a dropper post, Mohorič believes it’s inevitable that all eyes will be on him. However, the Bahrain Victorious rider told Cycling Weekly that this will change nothing for him. “I think it’s a fact that I’m going to be more marked,” Mohorič said. “Although I don’t think it necessarily changes anything in my approach to the race. I will still try to do the same thing, but I think there’s going to be some more people who will try to…

I would be more interested in the opinions of riders currently in the pro peloton who have had a chance to ride a few of the current top bikes. I would suspect that even a rider who has been on the same brand for several years has still had an opportunity to try out other bikes when not under the watchful eye of the media. Would really love to know if Cavendish feels that his current ride is a step down from the S-Works, but he’s not going to say anything against his current sponsor and neither will any other rider. Perhaps Tom knows a thing or two, however, about the opinions of those still at the top of their game; things they wouldn’t say publicly. Brian Phillips It’s really…

The newly reopened Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp seems like an odd place for a season launch for a women’s cycling team, a neo-classical hulk of a building that seems like it belongs to another age. Fittingly, though, the Belgian gallery was the setting for the grandest of Women’s WorldTour teams, the squad of such luminaries as Demi Vollering, Lotte Kopecky and Lorena Wiebes, the Dutch-speaking world’s hope of future domination all in one line-up. The superteam, the number-one ranked outfit on the Women’s WorldTour for four of the last five years, is also home to 21-year-old Anna Shackley, who is entering her third season with the Dutch squad, and is ready to push on. After two years of learning the ropes, having jumped to the best team…

Sunglasses not only protect you from the sun’s glare when you’re out riding but also act as a windshield too, keeping dust, debris and insects away from your eyes. This combination makes them an almost essential item and one that will likely see plenty of use, even when it’s overcast. However, variable weather conditions can prove tricky to navigate with a single pair of glasses – and this is where photochromic lenses come into their own. Instead of having two or three pairs of shades each with a lens suited to a specific level of light – or indeed having interchangeable lenses that require you to swap them out – photochromic lenses adjust automatically. When the light changes, so does the lens. The obvious advantage here is that on an…

TIME TRIALS SUNDAY, MARCH 12 East Sussex CA 15 (Bodle St Green, East Sussex): Men: 1. Nathan Russell (trainSharp) 38.40 2. R. Cartland (HuntBikeWheels.Com) 39.31 3. O. Vidler (Hastings & St. Leonards CC) 41.07 4. S. Benge (trainSharp) 41.24 5. A.Rogers (Eastbourne Rovers CC) 41.50 6. D. Pachev (Hastings & St. Leonards CC) 43.36 Women: 1. Sally Turner (HUUB WattShop) 42.03 2. Olivia Webb (Eastbourne Rovers CC) 46.29 3. Kate Thomas (Lewes Wanderers CC) 46.43 4. Iona Mitchell (Hastings & St. Leonards CC) 47.32 Penzance Wheelers 10 (Grugwith, Cornwall): Men: 1. James Grogan (Giant Helston) 22.31 2. K. Dawson (Penzance Wheelers) 23.25 3. P. Bache (Tri Logic Cornwall) 23.33 4. O. Baylin (Giant Helston) 23.42 5. A. Green (Penzance Wheelers) 23.45 6. J. Hadfield (Giant Helston) 24.15 Women: 1. Eve…