Innehållsförteckning för April 6, 2023 från Cycling Weekly

Sunday’s race was marred by a series of high-speed crashes which forced several big name riders including Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies), Tim Wellens (UAE Team Emirates), Biniam Girmay (Intermarché–Circus–Wanty) and Matej Mohorič (Bahrain Victorious) to abandon. The first crash was caused by Bahrain Victorious’ Filip Maciejuk. As he attempted to move up on the outside of the main field, Maciejuk flew through a ditch filled with standing water before he lost control and careered back into the peloton causing a massive crash. Wellens and Ben Turner (Ineos Grenadiers) were left with a fractured collarbone and arm respectively as a result of the incident. UAE Team Emirates reported that Wellens underwent surgery on Sunday evening in Herentals, Belgium. After being immediately disqualified for his actions, Maciejuk took to Twitter to apologise for his…

The forecast was pretty dire for last Sunday’s Ghent-Wevelgem. Six hours and 260km in the rain was not going to be pleasant. I like to stay as positive as possible in situations like this. Despite it being one of the biggest races on the calendar, with these sorts of conditions, many guys in the peloton don’t want to be there. If you can stay as motivated as possible, that’s already a big advantage. I’d like to think my winter’s training around the Peak District was perfect preparation – Swiss hill in Alderley edge is near enough in difficulty to the Kemmelberg, maybe even harder. In the end I didn’t actually get cold; I was completely soaked through and probably aged five years by the finish but I nailed the clothing…

Two very different collapses define the life of Sonny Colbrelli. One is a picture of unbridled ecstasy, a muddy-faced man screaming, sobbing and laughing on the velodrome grass after becoming a Paris-Roubaix winner on debut. The other, six months on, lying on the floor, surrounded by medical staff. It’s profoundly cruel that the Italian champion’s career apogee and moment of truncation were so close together. But as Colbrelli knows, he is lucky to be here. He collapsed after sprinting to second place on stage one of the Volta a Catalunya in March 2022. He had suffered an unstable cardiac arrhythmia. Paramedics performed CPR and used a defibrillator to save his life. After weeks in hospital, he was fitted with a subcutaneous defibrillator (ICD), a life-saving device which corrects, if required,…

Specialized touts the Diverge as the do-it-all gravel bike – be it racing, back roads or slippery singletrack. That’s a lot for one bike to live up to but could just be the answer to all our gravelly dreams. One of the Diverge’s many headline features is its gargantuan tyre clearance, up to 47mm for 700cc tyre or 2.1in on a 650b wheel. Then there’s the front end shock absorption. The original Diverge was one of the first gravel bikes to be equipped with ‘suspension’ with its Future Shock coming across from the Roubaix road range, and is featured on the Comp E5. The build As the top tier aluminium-framed Diverge, the Comp features an E5 alloy frame with a FACT carbon fork. The highlight of the Comp though is…

If there is one man more responsible than any other for Britain’s ascendance from near-irrelevance to leading powerhouse on cycling’s world stage, that man is Stuart Blunt. From a background in cyclo-cross racing – he competed at 10 World Championships in the 1990s and early 2000s – Blunt fell almost by accident into coaching with British Cycling in 2003. He worked in the national governing body’s talent programme until, seven years ago, he was promoted to lead the junior men’s Academy Programme, coaching the nation’s best male riders aged 16 to 18. In his two decades coaching GB riders, the 49-year-old has worked with scores of talented riders, many of whom now have illustrious careers. Among the biggest stars from the Blunt stable are Tao Geoghegan Hart, Fred Wright, Tom…

There are few sights as glorious as one of those big red signs with the tantalising words, “Road closed ahead.” If you’re lucky there will be a row of traffic cones, nicely spaced to admit only the righteous and filter out all others. And beyond them, pure freedom. In this regard cyclists are totally different from drivers. No one in a car is ever happy with a road-closed sign. They take it as an insult, an affront to their liberty. They rail against the injustice and the tyranny of the small, yellow diversion sign that points straight to motorist hell. And I am glad. Their rage would be only the greater if they knew what we know, which is that at least 50% of the time the road beyond the…

Readers of Cycling in the 1920s were set some brain teasers with which to while away the dark winter nights, and they had us scratching our heads too. Question number one this week featured two bike wheels, one sat on top of the other. The question: “How many times does the upper wheel turn on its own axis in making a complete revolution of the lower wheel?” The question setter, Henry E. Dudeney, author of Amusements in Mathematics goes on to say, “Do not rush your answer, or you are almost certain to be wrong.” Full disclosure, we did get it wrong. The answer appeared the following week. “The wheel that runs round the stationary one makes two revolutions round its own centre, not, as most people imagine, only one.”…

As only the third Tour de France winner to then add the Tour of Flanders to his palmarès, Tadej Pogačar made history on Sunday, and took another step towards achieving the aim of winning all of cycling’s five Monuments. The UAE Emirates rider now sits alongside Eddy Merckx and Louison Bobet as a Tour de France and Tour of Flanders champion. No other rider this century has won the French Grand Tour and taken four Monument wins. Looking further back, the list of names that have the Tour and at least four Monument wins on their palmarès is a who’s who of cycling greats: Fausto Coppi, Gino Bartali, Merckx, Bobet and Bernard Hinault. Pogačar has joined the list at age 24. Only three riders, however, have won all of the…

After sealing victory at the Tour of Flanders, her second in as many years, Lotte Kopecky told the press that she would afford herself just one day off the bike, before ramping up her preparations for Paris-Roubaix. “We can go to Roubaix with confidence,” the Belgian said in her winner’s press conference. “Not thinking that we will win the race for sure, I will never do that. It’s a whole new day, a whole new race, and everyone gets a new chance.” Some people’s chances, though, are better than others. In Flanders, Kopecky proved once again that she, and her team, are a level above the rest of the peloton. For a period in the race, SD Worx counted three of the four riders in the leading group, with UAE…

There’s a certain pride that comes with finishing Paris-Roubaix. For the riders, it’s a badge of honour, unlike any other, that can only be earned on the harsh cobbles of northern France. Bernard Hinault, a five-time Tour de France champion, famously described the race as “une connerie” – bullshit. But while he managed to win it in 1981, others have not been so fortunate. Be it due to crashes, punctures or just bad luck, many find themselves in a different race; a battle against the clock, ticking down towards the time cut. It’s these riders, those at the back, who often force themselves to suffer the most. Reach the velodrome before the gates swing closed, and you gain a special feather in your cap. Here are the stories of those…

The magic ingredient that makes water bead off your rain jacket is set to be outlawed. The European Chemicals Agency has just started a six-month evaluation of a proposal to restrict around 10,000 perand polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), aka ‘forever chemicals’. The substances, which in the past were also referred to as PFCs (perfluorinated chemicals), are sold by chemical companies for application to paper and textiles as water-repellent, stain-resistant and grease-proofing treatments. However, scientific research has discovered links between exposure to PFAS and health problems including cancer, increased cholesterol levels, liver damage, reduced fertility, increased risk of thyroid disease and pregnancyinduced hypertension. They are known as ‘forever chemicals’ because they are “very persistent in the environment” according to the European Chemicals Agency, which estimates that unless action is taken around 4.4…

I built this training room in the garden during the first lockdown in 2020, when I couldn’t go to the gym anymore. It had to be less than 30m² so as not to need planning permission. We put down a concrete base and erected the timber frame, boarded out and cladded with Japanese-style charred wood. The design was all about light: there are floor-to-ceiling windows along the full length, which open out onto the garden. Inside, there are 24 spotlights and the internet is hard-wired in, to avoid connection drop-outs. I have a partner and two young kids, so the room needed to be a functional space for everyone, not just my personal gym. There’s even enough floor space for kids’ birthday parties! During the daytime, it’s also my workplace…

You might imagine that the cyclist-phobic media meltdown is in some way a new thing. It is, of course, nothing of the sort. It’s just that you can get it piped directly to your phone now. The anti-cyclist rant is so deeply rooted that it actually pre-dates the bicycle. When the bicycle’s forerunner, the velocipede (think of a balance bike for an adult, made from wood) came along, it was immediately banned from substantial parts of London, Paris, New York and Bombay. In Baltimore in the US, the local paper referred to velocipedes as, “A device propelled by jackasses instead of horses.” Absolutely no one liked the idea of a man wheeling himself painfully along, balanced on a wheeled plank. By the 1930s, things had, if anything, got worse. One…

The announcement that this year’s Women’s Tour would not take place due to a lack of income could have a huge impact on the development of young British riders, claim the managers of two of Britain’s women’s Continental Teams. In one move, the UK has gone from eight days of WorldTour racing to just the three of the Ford Ride London Classique, stifling exposure to top-level stage racing. Simon Howes, manager of British women’s team DAS-Handling, told Cycling Weekly: “We’re lucky we’ve had the budget where we could travel and race in Europe and we have done similar races, but we wouldn’t get into a [WorldTour] level race anywhere else in the world.” Riders from both DAS-Handsling and AWOL O’Shea have gained vital experience at the Women’s Tour in recent…

Problem is, all the top teams have amazing riders already. Jason Burrows Everything seems to revolve around Remco who is the flavour of the year. Kmichael Michealm He needs to get out and find a manager who can help him rediscover his love of racing. Lefevere is not a manager who has ever developed riders or built teams – but he’s got a good record of assembling teams out of known quantities. He’s old school in the Peter Post style – much better at shouting than helping. There’s more left in his legs but Lefevere is not going to get it out by publicly belittling him. Huw Watkins He should join Groupama next season as Thibaut Pinot is going to be hanging up his wheels at the end of this…

TIME TRIALS SUNDAY, APRIL 2 North Lancashire RC hilly 50 (Circuit of the Dales, Ingleton, N Yorks): Men: 1. Patrick Casey (Team Lifting Gear Products) 1:56.17 2. R. Bideau (Pendle Forest CC) 2:02.45 3. R. Nesfield (Giant-Kendal-Sidas.Uk) 2:04.14 4. M. Morris (Wigan Wheelers) 2:05.40 5. J. Taylor (Team PB Performance) 2:05.50 6. T. Pulling (360cycling) 2:07.11 Women: 1. Christina Wiejak (Saint Piran) 2:19.20 2. M. Savill (Albarosa CC) 2:29.35 3. J. Cebrat (360cycling) 2:33.06 4. S. Cheetham (North Lancashire RC) 2:46.55 5. R. Maxwell (Border City Wheelers) 3:07.40 6. R. Crowther (Otley CC) 3:19.26 Hemel Hempstead CC 22 (Great Gaddesden, Herts): Men: 1. Rob Walker (WardPerformanceUK.com) 49.30 2. J. Crow-Stewart (05/03) 51.29 3. L. Atkins (Welwyn Wheelers) 53.16 4. H. Farrell (Full Gas Racing Team) 54.48 5. M. Wight (Verulam…

The peloton heads off from Madeira Drive on Brighton seafront for stage 1a to Basingstoke. It was only a short stage at 111km, but a long day with a 47km city-centre race in Basingstoke later that day. Vladimir Kaminski (USSR) was in the leader’s jersey as the riders left the south coast after winning the threekilometre prologue the night before. The prologue top 10 was dominated by Eastern Bloc riders with three Soviet riders, four Poles and two Czechs. Britain’s Joe Waugh was the only non-Eastern Bloc rider to infiltrate the top 10, with a third place. It was a pattern that continued throughout the race with Alguirdas Motskus, also of the USSR, winning in Basingstoke at the end of this stage, and with a Soviet rider standing on top…