Innehållsförteckning för March 30, 2023 från Cycling Weekly

My heart broke a little bit when I read the open letter from the committee of the Maindy Flyers last week. This incredible club that has produced a Tour winner along with Olympic and world champions is about to be booted out of its home in Cardiff by the council. The Maindy track is a modest facility, it doesn’t hold big events, or have endless funding poured into it. What it has had over the years is an incredible group of local people volunteering there, creating a community that has led to thousands of kids getting into cycling. And it’s not just about the Geraint Thomas’s, Elinor Barkers and Owain Doulls of this world. Like Herne Hill velodrome in London, that facility has allowed people to develop into other roles…

Was that the most closely-fought, intense and exhilarating week-long stage race in recent memory? I think so. After incessantly sparring against each other on six of the seven stages, ensuring that it was only them who were allowed to play and have fun, the Volta a Catalunya has elevated the Remco versus Roglič battle to a status that has the potential to be remembered for years to come. What did we learn from Catalunya? That Roglič, probably, just has the edge when it comes to mano-a-mano sprinting. There’s a suspicion that he let Evenepoel win stage three after the Belgian led for 5km, and in Barcelona on stage seven the Slovenian sat up before the line. There’s been one common theme ever since their battle first ignited at last April’s…

Plans for an indoor velodrome in Birmingham have been questioned by a cycling consultant, who believes the local community would be better served if funds were invested elsewhere. Speaking to Cycling Weekly, Xavier Disley, who also runs aerodynamic company AeroCoach, explained that he feels the project runs the risk of limiting accessibility to opportunities in sport within the local community, rather than boosting them. “An indoor cycling facility, although flashy and fantastic, is very much catering to a small demographic of people,” Disley said. “If you want people to be involved in sport and take part in community stuff that’s accessible to everybody, an indoor cycling velodrome is absolutely not the way to do it.” The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has commissioned an independent study to examine a business…

The prohibition of glucose monitors by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) must be fought! Being a Type-1 diabetic myself, and fitted with the same device, I can tell you it enables a diabetic to be almost ‘normal’. Surely education is needed to help all diabetics manage this condition with this technology. Wake up UCI. Ed - The banning of the glucose monitors by the UCI does seem like they’ve taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Of course this ban is likely to only be enforced at the top level of racing where commissaires and cameras are ever-present, and if there isn’t already dispensation for a diabetic rider to wear them, there should be. Then there’s the rather obvious option of not having the app running during a race, which…

“There’s always the discussion here [in Belgium]: are you for Wout or for Mathieu?” says former team-mate Rob Peeters of the battle between van Aert and van der Poel. “Mathieu is naturally more friendly - the Belgians like what he does; he has a lot of fans. Some people say Wout is arrogant, that they don’t like him. But what I say to people is that if you don’t like Wout, you don’t know him.” The side that Peeters refers to has been prominent at various stages in van Aert’s life, whether it’s angrily responding to doping questions at the 2022 Tour de France, or consistently bemoaning the public attention he receives. “When Mathieu loses a race, I don’t think it affects him as hard as it does Wout,” Peeters goes…

Just in case you were thinking of rocking up to a road bike time trial with a cheeky disc wheel and tri-bar combo fitted to your road bike, CTT introduced specific criteria for the machines into its regulations at the end of last year. They are as follows: “The road bike can possess drop or straight handlebars” – thus allowing riders to use flat-bar bikes and making the barrier to accessibility as low as possible. “No tri-bars, clip-on bars or Spinacci bars are allowed” – the most obvious watt-saving feature of a lo-pro TT machine. “No disc wheels; both front and rear wheels must have at least 12 spokes each; the maximum rim depth allowed is 90mm.” This is still a deep rim; here CTT took its cue from British…

TIME TRIALS SUN, MAR 26 Merlin Cycles Classic Series 22.5 (Midhurst, West Sussex): Time trial bikes: Men: 1. Will Lowden (HUUB WattShop) 50.04 2. J. Parker (RC Ravenna) 54.53 3. P. Wright (Paceline RT) 57.19 Women: 1. Jennifer George (HUUB WattShop) 57.59 2. N. Shinkins (Bournemouth Jubilee Wh.) 1:09.33 3. K. McSeveney (a3crg) 1:09.59 Veterans: 1. Chris McNamara (Sigma Sports-Cannondale) 51.25 2. R. Sharp (ADDFORM Vive le Velo) 52.24 3. A. Rivett (VC St Raphael) 56.35 Women: Naomi Shinkins (Bournemouth Jubilee Wh) 1:09.33 Juniors: Abbey Thompson (Stonham Barns Park) 1:15.37 Paracyclists: Rik Waddon (Para-T) 1:10.08 Road Bikes: Men: 1. Simon McNamara (Sigma Sports-Cannondale) 55.23 2. C. Booth (Giant-Kendal-Sidas.uk) 56.25 3. K. Norris (360VRT) 58.24 Women: 1. Louisa Cooper (Poole Wheelers) 1:08.34 2. S. Heighton (Ferryhill Wheelers) 1:14.39 3. G. Herbertson…

When Pfeiffer Georgi attacked with seven kilometres to go in last week’s Brugge-De Panne, her DSM sports director knew the British rider’s first WorldTour victory wasn’t far away. “First it was five seconds, then it was 18-19 seconds and I could see the way Megan [Jastrab] defended Pfeiffer’s attack, and I thought, ‘Okay, this will work,’” Albert Timmer told CW. “The work she puts in for the others is really impressive, but I think in De Panne everything came together and she actually won, I think you can say that’s her best performance. We saw the Pfeiffer we will see in the coming years.” Georgi joined the Dutch squad in 2019, and while she won the British nationals and La Choralis Fourmies, she’s mainly worked as a road captain, directing…

It’s the morning after another windswept edition of Brugge-De Panne, typically the most echelon-packed Classic on the spring calendar. It’s characterised by crosswinds, chaos and crashes. It’s a race I have a love-hate relationship with. The mention of De Moeren is enough to instil fear into any rider, with its vastly open and seemingly never-ending nature. To the public it’s perhaps just another road in Belgium, but in the cycling world it’s where war takes place. Heading towards this infamous road, there’s a huge sense of nervousness in the peloton, as everyone knows it’s where the race can be decided. This translates into an extreme fight for position and complete chaos as we turn in. The first moments are crucial as the peloton starts to split, fighting to the front…

The men’s and women’s course records were both broken at the opening round of the Merlin Cycles Classic Time Trial Series at the weekend, with Will Lowden and Jennifer George defying wet conditions to take the wins. Both riding for HUUB WattShop, the pair had to contend with heavy rain and standing water which made for a challenging day for all riders of the event near Midhurst in West Sussex on Sunday morning. Lowden, 19, covered the 22.5-mile course in 50.04 to take over two minutes off the old course record and give him victory in the time trial event by almost five minutes from Joe Parker (RC Ravenna). The women’s event was won in a time of 57.59, Jennifer George taking almost two and a half minutes from the…

UCI development fee ‘token’ Continental team managers have been left underwhelmed by the UCI’s new training compensation fee rule, saying the annual €2,000 on offer is just a token gesture. Says Tomaž Poljanec of Tadej Pogačar’s former team Ljubljana-Gusto-Santic, “I’m happy something is changing,” he said. “But honestly, €2,000 for a season, that’s not actually much. This doesn’t actually help.” 35,000 bikes auctioned The first lots in a huge 35,000 bike auction have been listed as part of the administration of major cycling distributor Moore Large. Three hundred bikes are up for auction on Nottingham-based auction house John Pye & Sons’ website. They include e-bikes, commuter bikes, mountain bikes and beginner road bikes. After going into administration Moore Large is selling off stock and assets valued at £35 million. 950…

As e-bikes flourish in the off-road and hybrid market (at least in Europe) the takeup in the more fitness-focused road scene has been a little slower. With pedal assistance cutting out at 15.5mph, a road rider is essentially penalised by the extra weight of an e-bike once they tip over this speed. The challenge for manufacturers is therefore giving riders the assistance on longer or steeper hills tackled at low speeds, without holding them back elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, this becomes a race to shed weight. Pinarello’s updated flagship machine, the E9 Nytro, has a claimed weight of just 11.4kg, making it the lightest pedalassist, mid-drive e-bike on the market. There are also E7 and E5 models. The first-generation Nytro, released in 2017, weighed around 13kg. The Nytro E range is expanding…

While all six helmets carry hefty price tags, it was encouraging to see premium-priced products that could back it up where it matters most – on the road. The Rapha + POC collaboration was the lightest helmet on test but lacked the additional MIPS protection found on four of the other helmets. These include the Specialized S-Works Prevail, which had the best ventilation. If you ride regularly in hot weather it might be the helmet for you, but in the UK it might be overkill. With that caveat, it’s hard to fault. The same is true for both the MET Trenta 3k carbon, a stylish helmet that blends ventilation and comfort with an impressively low weight, and the Lazer Vento KineticCore. Like the Trenta, it’s a helmet that’s used on…

Double triathlon world champion Helen Jenkins, 39, describes her steep learning curve en route to mastering fuelling. “The bonk is something that every professional cyclist and triathlete experiences at least once. It can catch you out when you’re least expecting it. For me, it happened on my first training camp when I didn’t appreciate just how important it was to fuel properly. I had upped my mileage that week and was doing a bigger workload than I was used to, so I was completely unprepared. “I saw my power output getting lower and lower, and suddenly I could barely turn the pedals. I was completely out of energy and felt hollowed out. Fortunately, I managed to make it to a convenience store where I bought a flapjack and Coke. Nothing…

I went to hear Sir Bradley Wiggins at an event last week. One of the things he said was that he didn’t like cycling, he never really had. It had been a sport, a job, a career. He’d gained a lot from it, but it wasn’t something he fundamentally liked. It’s not the first time I’ve heard him say it. I’ve heard the same from other pros and ex-pros. If you ask an Olympic gold medallist about the emotion that accompanies winning, nearly all of them say it’s “relief”. That all the years of work, all the money invested, all the pressure hasn’t been wasted. It’s a serious matter. To be fair about this, relief isn’t the worst thing. If I was promised that the rest of my life would…

Long ago, in the 1970s and 80s, the mark of a top-quality race bike was a ‘close clearance’ set-up. This meant the gap between the rear tyre and the back of the seat tube was as small as possible. No one can remember why this supposedly made your bike faster, but it was firmly believed by all that this was so. A friend who rode in that era recently told me about a bespoke bike he’d had made with ultra-close clearance, paired with an 18mm tyre. “If I inflated the tyre to my usual 140 psi [pressures were higher back then], the tyre jammed on the tube. I had to let it down to about 30 psi before it would go round. So I spent four years racing on a…

Irishman Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) took his first WorldTour win at the 1.Pro GP Industria & Artigianato in Tuscany at the weekend. He did it in style too, with a solo victory, crossing the finish line 27 seconds ahead of Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier (Trek-Segafredo), with GB’s Mark Stewart (Bolton Equities-Black Spoke) sprinting in at the head of the first big group, 20 seconds further back. In what was a fruitful weekend for Irish bike riders, Rory Townsend (Bolton Equities-Black Spoke) was the winner of the UCI 1.1 Roue Tourangelle Centre Val de Loire in France. Townsend outsprinted the field at the end the lumpy 202km race, which featured seven côtes. James Shaw (EF Education) was a close runner-up to GC winner Mauro Schmid (Soudal-Quick Step) at the five-stage Settimana Internazionale Coppi…

In March 2014, van Aert featured on the front cover of the Thomas More University student magazine, Amore. we pick out some of our favourite Q&A responses. Q Do you have time to actively participate in student life? A That’s not on the cards for me. I’ve never been to a party. I’m also not a member of a student union. For me, what matters most is the degree – the rest is secondary. Q What advice would you give to students in your situation? A Every day counts 24 hours. The time you don’t devote to sports is better spent in a useful way. In my case, that’s with studying. Q Do you see any opportunity to combine your degree and your passion? A I’m moving in a direction that is…

Techalogic HC-1 camera £149.95 The water resistant HC-1 comes with comprehensive fittings that allow you to fit a webbing strap, 3M adhesive patch or a non-vented helmet strap. We used the webbing mount, which we fitted to the mid/front section of a vented helmet, initially choosing to mount the camera upside down to keep the weight and inertia lower and closer to the helmet. We also mounted the camera the ‘correct’ way up using a handlebar mount. The camera is able to be removed from the backplate to allow it to be fitted into one of four positions so the controls remain on the top. We found that riding with the HC-1 on the helmet was an improvement of the brand’s DC-1 we’d tested previously, with the HC-1 barely detectable…

The week: 30 January - 5 February 2023 Location: Birmingham Training for: UCI eSports World Champs (18 February) Zoë Langham took up cycling just four years ago, getting into Zwift racing while studying medicine at university. She has made extraordinary progress since then. At her first big race, the 2022 eSports Worlds, she took the bronze medal. In her debut season on the road, last year, she finished fifth at the Ryedale GP, and was sitting third on GC at the Rás until an unlucky crash on the final stage forced her to abandon with a broken collarbone. Returning to the eSports Worlds last month, the 24-year-old bettered her 2022 performance and took silver. CW spoke to Langham two days after she finished second overall at The Peaks 2 Day.…