Innehållsförteckning för May 18, 2023 från Cycling Weekly

STAGE 4 THAT’S THE GIRO I think it’s fair to say that today was the first time I really felt what a Giro stage is like. We’ve had a pair of very long days already but today was another beast. Not only was it a good five hours in the saddle, the racing never stopped. We started on a series of tough climbs and it was really full gas. I can tell you it’s quite disheartening when you’re sat in the middle of the peloton taking no wind and 500 watts for five minutes allows you to just about stay in the wheels. And we had to do this twice. Our gruppetto formed on a slippery descent when someone let the wheel go and we couldn’t close it back. Actually,…

Teenager Robyn Clay took the biggest win of her young career after charging up the Michaelgate climb to win the prestigious Rapha Women’s Lincoln Grand Prix. The 19-year-old, riding for Pro-Noctis, was part of a formidable five-rider group which forced a winning margin before taking flight on the eighth and final time up the climb to win by six seconds. “I’m a bit in shock, I still don’t believe that happened,” said an emotional Clay after winning her first Women’s National Road Series event. “I’m over the moon, I dreamed of winning this. But at this time of the season I feel that I’ve got much more to come, so I wasn’t expecting that at all.” With eight ascents of Michaelgate during the 64-mile race, the women’s field was whittled…

Scribe is a relatively young brand from Northern Ireland, having started in 2019 with the aim of offering premium quality wheels at competitive prices and with a strong focus on customer support and aftercare. Its Elan Wide+ 32-D wheelset is one such example – a set of carbon hoops with a three-year warranty and crash replacement option for a little over £1,000 can certainly be described as competitively priced. Construction The Elan+ 32-D rims uses a mix of high filament Toray T700/800 carbon fibres with a ‘glass transition resin’. Combining a 21mm/30mm internal/external diameter, with a 32mm depth tips the balance slightly more in favour of low weight and stiffness, while still offering some aero gains – and Scribe says the rims were designed using wind tunnel testing. Interestingly the…

Riders climb the picturesque Passo della Cisa in the 1963 Giro d’Italia. This ninth stage took the riders 107 miles from Salsomaggiore Terme in Tuscany, over the Apennines to La Spezia on the west coast. The race was structured a little differently back then, with 120 riders in total, made up of 12 teams of 10 riders. It offered major potential for one very strong team to control the race, but that didn’t play out in the final GC, with home winner Franco Balmamion of the Carpano team accompanied in the top 10 by riders from seven different teams. This stage was won by Georgio Zancanaro, in what was the first of a hat-trick of career Giro stage wins. He was also third on GC.…

It might not have come under the circumstances he would have liked, but Geraint Thomas began this week in the pink leader’s jersey at the Giro d’Italia. The Welshman, having finished runner-up in Sunday’s individual time trial, ended the stage second in the general classification. Come dinnertime, however, and after news of Remco Evenepoel’s untimely Covid positive, Thomas found himself bumped up into the race lead. “It’s strange,” he told the press on Monday’s rest day. “I kind of thought I’d be going into the final week – well, I still could do – with minutes to make up. “I guess I’ve done plenty of years’ racing and I tend to normally be pretty consistent. In the third week, I tend to be strong as well. With the slow buildup,…

It’s been a whirlwind start to the Giro d’Italia. But without too much bias, I believe Ben Healy’s win on stage eight stands out. He attacked solo for 50 kilometres after 157 kilometres of racing, showcasing the essence of bike racing. Yes, I’m his coach but it was thrilling for anyone to watch. His win was not a stroke of luck and nothing was left to chance. Goal-setting is an important part of coaching. In October last year it felt surreal to hear Ben say, “I want to target a stage of the Giro.” Especially as at that point he wasn’t guaranteed a ride. There were no dramatic changes to the training plan. EF gave some solid advice when we first spoke before Ben’s first pro season: “Don’t change too…

The face of the sheep was impassive, but I detected behind the eyes a burning expectation. “Can I have a Coke?” I gasped at the man in the ice-cream van, before I remembered my manners through the fog of exhaustion, “Please.” It was the first sunny day in what seemed like forever, so I went all in. “And can I have one of those flake 99s too?” I enquired, gathering myself. Refreshments in hand, I met the ovine spectator’s gaze once again. I’d earned this ice cream, I’d been climbing for over an hour, and I’d be damned if I was sharing it. Local Trek-Segafredo pro Elynor Bäckstedt had warned me about these woolly would-be muggers up here. “I was eating my bar and they were hungry apparently so he…

Around the fields and valleys of South Wales, few riders’ names ring out as loud as Nicole Cooke’s. While the capital claims many of the current Welsh stars of the peloton as its own, the woman who paved their way is considered the Vale of Glamorgan’s own. “She grew up in Wick along the coast road,” recalls Elynor Bäckstedt. “I remember I must have been maybe five or six. And there was a mountain bike race in a field in Wick – they’ve now built over it – but it was kind of to celebrate her and to celebrate her achievements, such as the 2008 Olympics [where she won gold in the road race]. And I remember she was kind of the hero. Obviously there was G [Geraint Thomas] as…

The picture of an incoming Spanish force is not reflected in the women’s peloton, with 39-year-old Mavi García – the national champion in each of the past three years – one of only two Spanish riders (Ane Santesteban is the other) in the top 150 ranked female riders. That is an embarrassing figure for a nation that hosts three Women’s WorldTour races, and whose top team, Movistar, is the home of the world champion and Tour de France Femmes winner Annemiek van Vleuten. While there is celebration about the continued development of the Vuelta Femenina, which earlier this month was held as a week-long race for the first time, the collapse of the Zaaf Cycling Team raises serious concerns about the health of women’s cycling in Spain. Fran Reyes is…

London’s SW14 postcode may not be the centre of the gravel-riding universe, but Pearsons have been around since 1860 and so know a thing or two about bikes. Their in-house knowledge, gleaned largely from decades of customer bike fitting, has seen them move away from selling big-brand bikes to selling their own. For the gravel bikes (adventure bikes is their preferred nomenclature) that’s a five-bike range utilising four materials: carbon, titanium, aluminium and steel. The On and On is the carbon frame in the range and while it has the word ‘aero’ in its description, it isn’t just built for the fledgling gravel racing scene. Frame Pearsons work with a carbon factory in China, and while the On and On is an open-mould frame (due to costs) it’s their design…

Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate (often abbreviated to bicarb), has been investigated for its potential to improve exercise performance since 1930. The early pioneering work at Harvard University observed improved exercise tolerance when ingested orally. In the 1980s, research focused on cycling performance, leading to bicarb’s widespread use in road and track racing. Given that the performance benefits have been widely known for decades, why is there renewed research and media interest in this supplement? “It could be useful for long bouts of exercise” This may well be due to the Swedish nutrition company Maurten releasing its new “bicarb system” earlier this year. Elite riders and teams such as Jumbo-Visma, Intermarché-Circus-Wanty and Team SD Worx have been using the product, prompting speculation that bicarb could be the not-sosecret ingredient accounting…

The all-white, steel Argos lo-pro was an iconic image of late-Nineties and early Noughties time trialling for one very good reason: Stuart Dangerfield. The Midlander won six National 25 titles between 1997 and 2004, making the ‘blue riband event’ his own. The sight of Dangerfield in full flight – low at the front, forearms wide apart, cotton cap above an agonised grimace – was unforgettable. Even though he stuck with steel despite the advent of carbon, to regard Dangerfield as a retro-grouch is wrong. He was a notorious perfectionist, meticulous about every single element of his bikes. For example, after he won his first National 25 he told CW that he had his Argos frame especially built for the famously useless and already outdated Modolo Kronos brakes simply because they…

Marlen Reusser told her SD Worx team-mate Demi Vollering she will “never forget” her selflessness, after the Dutchwoman ceded her Itzulia Women’s lead, and made way for Reusser to attack to win the final GC. Having started the day almost a minute down on Vollering, the Swiss rider went on to win the overall by two minutes and 38 seconds. “I know that you offered this to me,” Reusser said as she kissed her team-mate on the cheek after the finish line. “I will never forget.” Prior to Sunday’s final stage, Vollering had won the first two stages in the three-day Spanish race, and this after enjoying a clean sweep at last year’s edition. On Sunday in Donostia, however, she passed the baton on to Reusser, setting her up to…

Saint Piran sent an ominous warning to their domestic rivals after forcing the winning breakaway and riding clear to take a one-two-three at the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix last weekend. After 104 miles of frantic racing it was Alexandar Richardson who led the Saint Piran procession, claiming his second commemorative cobblestone in five years. It was a proud moment for the 33-yearold, as team-mate Zeb Kyffin came second and Jack Rootkin-Gray completed the podium clean sweep. “It was a really nice race and the important thing was that we did the process very well as a team,” said Richardson. “I’m a huge advocate of carrying out the process and enjoying it. It was great to exercise that and the guys were phenomenal. “What a feeling… it will be great to…

Cycling Time Trials will give “serious consideration” to a brand new competition record category for road bikes, following the recent beating of Colin Sturgess’s 35-year-old 10-mile mark by Midlands rider George Fox. Fox took seven seconds off Sturgess’s 1988 competition record time with his 18.41, set in the VTTA London & Home Counties event on the F11/10 course near Tring on 7 May. The 29-year-old’s ride could hardly have been more timely, for it comes hot on the heels of the CTT launching a new standalone road bike category in an attempt to attract new blood to the sport. The governing body has not yet gone as far as to establish a separate comp record category for road bikes, so as things stand Fox’s new time will not be recognised…

Awesome ride, well done. People can have a go all they want, but you are abiding by all of the rules of the category and that is all that matters. Any serious racer will take advantage of any opportunities they have to go faster. If all the aero existed in Colin Sturgess’s day you can guarantee he would also have been taking advantage of it. Edd Hunt Impressive, but compared to the bike used in 1988 – steel, heavy, less quality components, and no aero wheels, with the maybe best 1988 tyres, no skinsuit or aero helmet? Not going to be a hater though! Good job! Mace Cobra It begs the question; what would Colin [Sturgess] had done with today’s technology and exactly the same set-up? Fox would be nowhere…

Once a mere trend, road bikes with wider tyre clearances are now approaching industry standard. In large part this has happened due to the confluence of disc brakes and tubeless technology, with supporting data that wide tyres can be just as fast while delivering greater comfort, the icing on the cake. In creating the Venon EVO, Vitus has taken this accepted wisdom and run with it. It’s billed the all-road offering as a machine “built to blur the line between gravel and road”. Available in a range of road (RS) and gravel (GR) builds, it utilises the same carbon frameset and then gets creative, aided in part by the generous 45mm tyre clearance. If the Venon name sounds familiar, that’s because it featured as part of the Vitus line-up until…

British national cyclo-cross champion Cameron Mason, 22, turns his talents to four different disciplines across each season. He isn’t afraid to try new approaches, and last autumn took a long break from racing before opening his cyclo-cross account in mid-winter. It seemed to pay off in spectacular fashion. We asked Mason how he decides how to train. “At a macro level, I am datadriven, but at the micro level, I’m more ‘go with the flow’. I think it’s important to be disciplined, with a good plan, but the day to day needs to be flexible to allow for real-life demands. “I like to know which days I am riding and for how long, and then me and my coach [James McCallum] go into the specific efforts where needed. When we…