Innehållsförteckning för October 19, 2023 från Cycling Weekly

Nevermind the Gregorian calendar, phases of the moon, clocks going back or the official change of seasons, winter starts for me the first time I go for a ride and get numb hands. Once that happens, the various pairs of gloves I have (you can never have too many) come out of storage and litter the house for the next six months. And rarely do they stick together. “Have you seen my other glove?!” I’ll call out to anyone in the house as I try to rush out of the door. “Which one?” comes the reply. “The black one with the white logo. I can only find one.” “They’re all black with a white logo!”… I digress. The first numb hands of the season happened last Sunday, although it wasn’t…

Italian cyclist Vittoria Bussi reclaimed the women’s UCI Hour Record on Friday, becoming the first woman in history to go beyond the 50-kilometre mark. The 36-year-old managed a distance of 50.267km at altitude on the Velodromo Bicentenario in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Bussi bettered the benchmark set by former time trial world champion Ellen van Dijk last May, 49.254km, by more than a kilometre. Bussi previously held the record in 2018, when she covered 48.007km, before she was surpassed by British time trial specialist Joss Lowden in 2021. Speaking on Friday, Bussi said: “I’m thrilled to have beaten the UCI Hour Record timed by Tissot for the second time in my career, covering the distance of 50.267 kilometres on the same velodrome where I previously broke it in 2018. “I owe this…

Lancashire County Council has been criticised by a coroner over the death of a cyclist who suffered fatal head injuries after hitting a road defect earlier this year. The Lancashire area coroner, Kate Bisset, said that Harry Colledge, 84, a member of the Cleveleys Road Club, would probably not have died last January if the 87-metre-long crack on Island Lane near the village of Winmarleigh had been fixed by the council, following warnings. A council inspection missed the “trench” in the middle of the road because inspectors were “primarily focused” on making the road safe for motorists, the inquest heard. CW’s War on Potholes continues, urging national and local governments to fix road defects in order to make cycling safer in the UK (see p27 to find out how you…

I am a previous customer of Matt’s at Run and Repair in Swindon and I think It would be nice to see him get some recognition for what he does. Since the initial Covid lockdown Matt has been taking bicycle donations and passing them on to frontline workers. He has recently changed the scheme to accommodate families struggling over Christmas. He takes donations from the public, cleans them, services and repairs them and then passes them on to families in need, for free. All this for no recognition or monetary awards. Just the kindness of his own heart. As far as I can gather he is close to reaching 500 bicycles passed on to both frontline workers and families. Which to me is an unbelievable number of bikes. Ed –…

We want to get you involved in putting pressure on the authorities to deliver the quality roads we all deserve. Some of that might be by writing to your council or MP, but also just reporting the perilous state of the UK’s roads should help push the issue up the agenda. OUR THREE GOALS 1 Double the volume of potholes reported through the www.fillthathole.org.uk website to over 1,000 a month. 2 Get all political parties to put vulnerable road users at the heart of their road strategy and maintenance decisions. 3 Get all political parties to commit to reversing the decline in funding for the repair and maintenance of local roads.…

Tom Pidcock’s signed World Championship jersey and Fred Wright’s signed National Championship jersey are among a raft of items set to be auctioned for charity next month. Pidcock has donated his mountain bike world champion’s jersey signed by both him and Ineos team-mate Pauline Ferrand Prévot, while Wright’s national champions jersey was worn at this year’s Tour de France and is signed by him and the rest of the Bahrain Victorious team at the race. The auction is taking place to raise money for the Rayner Foundation which supports young British riders with funding to live and race abroad. Recipients of funding in the past have included Adam Yates, who finished on the podium of the Tour de France this year, and Tao Geoghegan Hart, who won the Giro d’Italia…

Riders sorry over racist gesture Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert riders Madis Mihkels and Gerben Thijssen have apologised over the racist gesture that saw them both sent home from the Tour of Guangxi last week. They were withdrawn after a picture of Mihkels making the gesture appeared on Thijssens’s Instagram page. Thijssen issued the apology the next day. “We feel really sorry for what happened yesterday morning, we realise that our publication was offensive and wrong,” he wrote on X. Shimano faces Hollowtech lawsuit Shimano is facing a class action lawsuit in the USA following the recall of three-quarters of a million Hollowtech II chainsets. The action is being brought by a group of consumers who claim to have been impacted by the issues with the manufacturer’s bonded Ultegra and Dura-Ace items. They allege…

I’ve made a lot of good, but also a lot of bad decisions in 2023. Lying on the ground of a country lane just north of Heathrow Airport, my idea to ride a lap of London in as fast a time as possible quickly moved from being a very good to a very bad decision. How fast can you ride a lap of London on a bicycle? It’s a very simple question, and there’s one very easy way of finding the answer. Looking to the end of the season, I wanted some sort of challenge to round out my year. I wanted it to be on the TT bike, and I wanted it to be unique. The London Loop was born. It’s a slightly stupid, Top Gear style idea –…

All of us grow old, but what exactly is ageing – what’s going on in the body to make our hair go grey, our skin wrinkle and our bodily functions become slowly but surely less dependable? It’s tempting to assume that there is something like a clock encrypted in our DNA counting down the time we have left. But that’s an unhelpful analogy, according to Professor Richard Faragher. “Organisms don’t contain self-destruct hardware,” he says. “They are more like cars – they run until something breaks.” The body is, of course, much more complex than a car, with many more parts and processes that can go wrong. There are seven main, interlinked biological processes implicated in ageing: cellular senescence, the accumulation of jaded cells; telomere shortening, changes in the DNA…

CYCLO-CROSS SATURDAY, 14 OCTOBER National Trophy Series round two (Thornton Hall Country Park, Skipton, North Yorkshire): Elite Men: 1. Jente Michels (Alpecin-Deceuninck) 1:03.11; 2. T. Mein (Hope Factory Racing) +1.07; 3. D. Barnes (Team Spectra Cannondale) +3.37; 4. J. Beckingsale (Montezuma’s Race Team) +3.49; 5. O. Akers (Ribble-Verge Sport) +4.12; 6. T. Couzens (Montezuma’s Race Team) +4.18. Elite Women: 1. Anna Kay (Cyclocross Reds) 53.06; 2. E. Day (Team Spectra Cannondale) +0.28; 3. A. Baker (Team Empella) +2.20; 4. H. Inglis (unattached) +2.40; 5. R. James (Hope Factory Racing) +2.44; 6. F. Gilbert (unattached) +2.49. Under-23 Men: 1. Jente Michels (Alpecin-Deceuninck) 1:03.11; 2. D. Barnes (Team Spectra Cannondale) +3.37; 3. O. Akers (Ribble-Verge Sport) +4.12. Under-23 Women: 1. Elena Day (Team Spectra Cannondale) 53.34; 2. H. inglis (unattached) +2.12; 3.…

A hill-climb event in the 2000s. A friend, still a junior back then, was riding his first hill-climb. Attempting to lighten his bike, he removed anything unnecessary. This included the brake blocks – he reasoned he wouldn’t need them on a 25% hill. He had reckoned without the ride from the car park at the top of the hill to the start at the bottom. He ended up having to put both feet down in an attempt to avoid hitting terminal velocity and blasting past the junction at the bottom of the hill. And it’s hard to persuade the timekeeper you’ve got a road-legal bike when he’s just seen you clatter past with both feet on the floor and shards of plastic flying off your cleats. Especially when you were…

There will be significantly less climbing at next year’s Giro d’Italia, but that will not halt the firework displays, according to recent pink jersey winners and the race director. The route for the event’s 107th edition was unveiled in Trento on 13 October, detailing a number of tough ascents, the earliest coming on just the second day. Still, despite six summit finishes and the return of the iconic Passo dello Stelvio, the peloton will tackle short of 43,000m of elevation over the three weeks, over 8,000m fewer than this year. According to race director Mauro Vegni, this “was the intention” of the organiser, RCS. “In the past, we saw having such a difficult final week wasn’t allowing the riders to express themselves fully during the first two weeks,” Vegni said.…

Round two of the National Trophy Series cyclo-cross in North Yorkshire was the perfect test for riders preparing to challenge on the Continent. Anna Kay took her fourth win of the season on British soil ahead of a season racing in Europe. Kay, 24, opened her European season last weekend when she finished ninth on a hot and dusty Bergen course in Belgium, and Yorkshire provided a stark contrast with mud and cold temperatures. Riding for the Cyclocross Reds team, Kay said that the course had a Belgium feel like a “mini Overijse”. However, Kay didn’t have everything her own way and was kept at arm’s length by teenager Elena Day who finished 28 seconds behind. Alderney Baker completed the top three, beating 18-year-old Hope Inglis for the final podium…

Asingle second separated winner Andy Nichols from his team-mate Kieran Wynne-Cattanach as they battled for honours on The Rake climb in Ramsbottom, Lancashire, on Sunday. The Team Lifting Gear Products pair will both be in medal contention heading into the National Hill-Climb Championship later this month and there was little between them on the 875-metre climb. Nichols flew up the climb, which ramps up in stages though the streets of Ramsbottom and has a maximum gradient of 22%, in a time of two minutes and 24 seconds. The 33-year-old added his name to an illustrious list of winners including the likes of Malcolm Elliott, Chris Boardman and Graeme Obree. Wynne-Cattanach was narrowly behind in second and Jude Taylor (Team PB Performance) took third a further six seconds back (2:31). “It’s…

In 2014, the team was made up of 13 riders, five of whom shared most of the victories. Throughout their careers, these five riders have collected an astonishing 31 World Championship titles between them. Ferrand-Prévot has earned the most with 12, split mostly across mountain bike disciplines. Vos, an eight-time cyclo-cross world champion, is a close second with 11.…

ONE UP Trek Checkpoint SLR 7 AXS £8,875 For a lighter Checkpoint, move up the range to the SLR models. Here, the frameset is made from Trek’s higher-grade 700 Series OCLV carbon. Equipped with the same Bontrager Aeolus Pro 3V wheelset as the SL 7 on test, the SLR 7 is about 450 grams lighter – and this is with a SRAM Force AXS groupset that features the XPLR rear mech and larger 10-44t cassette. ONE DOWN Trek Checkpoint SL6 AXS £4,450 For gravel riding, many prefer the simplicity of a 1x drivetrain, and the SL6 provides this option, using a 40t chainring as part of its SRAM Rival XPLR AXS groupset. It’s also cheaper than our test bike, by nearly £2k. Naturally it’s heavier due to the Rival rather…

Bryan Johnson tests all manner of biomarkers in his quest to defeat ageing, but none of them is an infallible yardstick for exactly how quickly he is ageing or, in other words, precisely what will kill him and when. Ironically, the more reliable tell-tale signs of how fast someone is ageing might be far simpler. A recent systematic review of studies confirmed that people judged as looking older do indeed have a greater risk of dying compared to those who look younger. Looking older was found to correlate to health problems such as heart issues, memory function, bone strength, and lung disease. “Skin has a variety of functions,” says Richard Faragher, “one of which is to signal our health to other humans. When you observe older-looking skin, you’re picking up…

There is a theory in sports training that you should ‘train hard to race easy’ – that is to say if you make life hard enough in your training, when race day comes you’ll be breezing along on the tops while the world’s best bike riders drop off your wheel with cries of surrender and supplication. Part of this theory specifies that you should seek out difficult conditions in training, conditions that replicate the genuine stresses of racing. So you should train at altitude, if you’ll ever have to race up a proper mountain. Or you should train in the heat, or in high humidity. I was chatting about this with a coach a couple of weeks ago. “You need to train in different places,” he said. “And find places…