Innehållsförteckning för July 27, 2023 från Cycling Weekly

The first thing I do when starting work the day after the Tour de France finishes is to check who won our annual TdF prediction game. It’s a bit of fun that in the past has been won by a work experience teenager and someone who just used online odds from a major bookmaker, and it regularly sees our most experienced news writers who actually go to the race finish mid pack, or worse. This year we had the added excitement of Fred Wright of the Bahrain Victorious team joining in. Well, it only seemed fair – he did his work experience in the CW office when he was a teenager and wrote a diary piece for us throughout the race. Fred did very well to finish joint third –…

SEPP KUSS (JUMBO-VISMA) The man from Colorado backed up once again why he is thought of as one of the best climbing domestiques in the world. Having ridden the Giro d’Italia, helping Primož Roglič to victory, the American guided Vingegaard to his yellow jersey on the roads of France. And he managed to finish 12th on general classification too. Not bad. ADAM YATES (UAE TEAM EMIRATES) It would not be unreasonable for Adam Yates to expect to take on more of a leadership role, but the 30-year-old put his own ambitions behind those of Pogačar for much of the Tour de France. He excelled in the role of last man on the climbs for his team leader, even if their bid to take yellow didn’t quite pay off. Third on…

STAGE 17 WORST CLIMB IN THE WORLD After the first climb of the day I went back for bottles for the guys still in the peloton and rode right to the front, and to my surprise both Pello Bilbao and Jack Haig weren’t there. Turned out they’d made the break of 30 guys. I did think the bunch looked small. Once again a perfect start to the stage for us, I thought I could go easy to the finish. With the Col de la Loze, it turned out it wouldn’t be so easy. Having done it in the Tour de l’Avenir I knew what was coming, but man is that one of the worst climbs in the world. Just for the gruppetto to get up there it felt like we…

Trek Factory Racing’s Evie Richards fine-tuned her form for the fast-approaching Glasgow World Championships by claiming the national title in the British mountain bike cross-country championships in Tong, West Yorkshire, last weekend. The 2021 world champion Richards – along with Tom Pidcock – will be one of the British team’s best medal chances in the off-road events that take place at Glentress. As well as her national XC title, Richards also took the win in the short track race which made for a successful weekend for the 26-year-old. She is set to go up against World Cup leader Puck Pieterse (Ned) and France’s Pauline Ferrand-Prévot on the all-new XC circuit near Peebles on 10 August. Her success at the national championships underlined her credentials as a challenger at the Worlds,…

Regarding the editor’s letter about the Tour de France ruining his fitness (CW 20 July), I believe he is missing a trick. The best way to watch cycling is by sitting and riding with them on the turbo trainer. Today (Saturday) will be a good test, although four hours may be a bit much. On flat stages you can just use the highlights. It is surprising how good a workout it can be. Winter is even better with the cyclo-cross; three days a week, with the women much more exciting than the men (except when the big three are there), and there is less chance of falling off. This is without delving into mountain biking racing, which I only go to when Tom Pidcock or Evie Richards are racing. Sadly,…

There are a few things we can all do to ensure that no one feels compelled to hanker after unrealisable body ideals and is able to feel comfortable in their own skin. ■ Reassure club-mates and friends that there is no correct way to look ■ Wait for riders who are dropped – it won’t harm your fitness or your reputation ■ Be encouraging to newer riders still finding their feet in cycling ■ Compliment riders for their improvements, skills and attitude, not for their style or machismo ■ Don’t criticise inexpensive bikes and kit – they might be the best the rider is able to afford right now ■ Remember that body hair is a personal choice; leg shaving is an aesthetic preference, not proof of membership of the…

There is a fine story about the rider John Woodburn in the 1980s, when he made two attempts on the Land’s End to John o’ Groats record. On the first attempt he used the best scientific nutrition his advisers could pull together, and subsequently ground to a halt at a place called Blair Atholl on the edge of the Cairngorms. The following year he decided that since every other day of the year he ate three meals of breakfast, lunch and dinner, on the ride he would do the same, deciding what they’d be by whim as he rode. His helpers burst into a packed chip shop on a Saturday night demanding instant service, and had to scour Preston for chocolate cake at 6am. He broke the record. Cyclists have…

It was all a dream. Those first two weeks of the Tour de France where the battle for the maillot jaune seemed like the tightest of the century, a fortnight where at the end just 10 seconds separated Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) from Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), were an illusion. In the end, Pogačar did not have the form or the condition to even come close to beating Vingegaard, who might very well have won dominantly anyway. That lack of form and condition was clear in the stage 16 time trial, where Vingegaard put 1.38 into his big rival, on a course that seemed to suit them both. However, it was the next day on the Col de la Loze that the disparity became so blatant that Pogačar basically admitted…

STAGE 16 18 JULY PASSY > COMBLOUX ITT Winner: Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) Yellow: Jonas Vingegaard Until today, Vingegaard and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) had been butting heads at every GC opportunity, with neither of them seemingly able to make much headway. That all changed on the road to Combloux. Between the pair, the Slovenian was perhaps most widely predicted to emerge on top at Combloux, but those predictions were soon shot to dust. Even before the road pointed upwards, Pogačar had conceded a significant amount of time. By the time the pair had climbed the steep Côte de Domancy and reached the finish not long afterwards, Pogačar had lost 1.38 to winner Vingegaard, his yellow jersey ambitions having taken a crushing blow. STAGE 17 19 JULY ST GERVAIS MONT…

Just as football is a game of two halves (copyright Jimmy Greaves, 1980s), the Tour de France is a race of three thirds. And that fact has never been more apparent to me than as a journalist parachuting into week three and finding the race swiftly all but wrapped up. Having only previously covered the first seven to 10 days of the race, the final third was always going to be different. But the first stage I covered was the time trial, which was a case of “they think it’s all over…” “It is now” came the very next day to Morzine, when Tadej Pogačar lost over five minutes. The fizzing week-one energy that I’d hitherto been used to, full of vim, vigour and promise, was on the wane, with…

Kopecky to skip Madison world title defence Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky will scale down her World Championships ambitions in Glasgow, removing the Madison from her plans after her event partner – Shari Bossuyt – tested positive for the banned substance Letrozole in March. According to a report from Cyclingnews, the Belgian will focus her attention on the elimination, points and omnium races before turning her focus to the elite women’s road race. Historic Polti brand to return to pro cycling in 2024 Italian steam ironing and cleaning equipment brand Polti will make a return to pro cycling next year, replacing Eolo Kometa as the headline sponsor of the ProTeam managed by Alberto Contador and Ivan Basso. Richard Virenque, Ivan Gotti and Mirko Celestino rode for the previous Polti team. Full details…

A person’s self-image can have a serious impact on their mental health, at worst developing into an all-consuming problem. There are cases of cyclists suffering with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), which may arise when a person feels abnormally concerned about how they look. BDD typically forces a rider to change their eating habits, leading to disordered eating, underfuelling and possibly chronic health problems. Jason Nagata is a paediatrician at the University of California. Referring to a study on US college students, he highlights how sportsmen are adversely affected in comparison to the general population. “Boys [with BDD] who underfuel their training often suffer from lower testosterone levels and lower libido levels,” he says. “I think one of the big challenges is that many of these boys and young men are…

Beneath the surface of the 2023 Tour, which saw the same two riders end the race on the top steps of the podium for the third year running (something unprecedented in 120 years), there was an unexpected and rather uplifting narrative. And it ran counter to the perceived direction of travel. Much of the attention over the last few years has been about youth. As we watched the invigoratingly unconventional Tadej Pogačar animate the moribund formality of the final stage by his repeated attacks, we were also seeing him in the white jersey for the final time. Next year, on his fifth Tour, he will finally no longer qualify for the Classement des Jeunes. Remco Evenepoel (along with riders like Juan Ayuso and Lenny Martinez) will instead be the standard…

“We loved each other, we hated each other at the same time,” says Schleck. “It was like a marriage, you know, which are sometimes up and down. There’s no other rider you respect more than your closest rival, there’s no other rider you fear more and there’s no other rider you want to beat down more. This is the motivation which gets you up in the morning and it influences the decision whether you go out or you don’t go out training when it’s minus five and s**t weather. If you are lucky enough to have a common opponent, as Jonas has with Tadej or the other way around, it’s an even bigger motivation.” How did he cope with the intensity of the battle we ask? “I was beaten down…

When Jacob Ward took up cycling during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020, inspired by watching the Tour de France, he was instantly hooked. “I was so impressed by their feats of endurance that I wanted to be like them,” he remembers. But there was one hitch: as a former rugby player and keen bodybuilder since his teenage years, Ward was bulkier than the average road cyclist. “My physique was abnormal for a cyclist and I had quite a lot of pushback, negative comments, people assuming I wasn’t good enough for cycling because of how I looked.” A social media influencer with over half a million followers across Instagram and TikTok, 23-year-old Ward was initially hesitant to post cycling content. And when he did, some of the comments were unkind. “Look…

TIME TRIALS SUN, JULY 23 National 24-Hour Championships (Prees, Shropshire): Men: 1. Robbie Mitchell (Auchencrow Thistle CC) 519.26 miles 2. M. Turnbull (TORQ Performance) 511.01 3. T. Welsh (Cambridge CC) 501.43 4. M. Hutchinson (Arctic Aircon RT) 486.53 5. C. Geldard (North Hampshire RC) 478.58 6. C. Murray (Army Cycling) 465.27 Women: 1. Christina Murray (Army Cycling) 465.27 2. J. Cebrat (360 cycling) 419.12 3. A. Hudson (Velo Bavarian) 381.52 4. H. Labunsky (Port Talbot Wheelers) 365.16 5. C. Chambers (North Argyll CC) 295.69 6. C. O’Connor (Audax UK) 293.77 Team: Arctic Aircon RT (Michael Hutchinson, Joe Gorman, Neil Lauder) 1,386.80 miles Swindon Wheelers/Swindon RC 50 (Minety, Wiltshire): Men: 1. Robert Francis (Pronto Bikes) 1:54.09 2. T. Chapman (Frome and Dist Wheelers) 1:55.51 3. D. Griffiths (Univ of Bath CC)…

An account reaches us of a rider who suffered a tyre blow-out on a sportive. After several fruitless attempts to effect a repair to the big cut in the tyre, eventually he threw himself on the mercy of the ride’s mechanical support. The mechanic, however, was puzzled. Why were the tyre and most of the wheel covered in sticky energy gel? It had twigs and leaves stuck to it and was proving a day out for the local wasps. Why would someone squirt energy gel over a cut in a tyre? “Well,” said the rider, “my mate had a tyre blow-out and said he’d fixed it with an energy gel.” The mechanic thought about this for a moment. “Is it at all possible that he said ‘a gel wrapper’, rather…