Innehållsförteckning för July 4, 2024 från Cycling Weekly

Eleven British riders rolled out of Florence last weekend, the highest number to ever start the Tour de France. Among them three were making their debuts: Stevie Williams, his Israel Premier-Tech team-mate Jake Stewart and dsm–firmenich’s PostNL’s Oscar Onley. Welshman Williams has had a breakthrough season, winning the Tour Down Under and Flèche Wallonne, but said he won’t be aiming for a high general classification finish. He will instead focus on stage wins and the polka-dot jersey. Speaking to Cycling Weekly in Florence, Williams said he knew that a place in the Israel-Premier Tech Tour squad was on the cards, but it was only confirmed a few weeks before he headed to Italy for the Grand Départ. “From our December camp onwards, it was always a big goal for me…

And so, a century after Ottavio Bottecchia first returned from France with his nation’s first ever maillot jaune, Italy finally hosted a Grand Départ. It was a fabulous, historic affair, all told: the sunshine, the terracotta roof tiles of Renaissance Florence, the wooded hillsides of Emilia-Romagna, the baroque splendour of Bologna’s San Luca basilica. With so much history on display, the only thing missing was the present. Ten years after Vincenzo Nibali last won the Tour, and eight since his final Giro win, Italy’s road racing elite have drifted further into the margins with each passing year. And what we witnessed over the opening weekend of racing only served to reinforce the overbearing sense that this is a cycling culture kept alive by nostalgia; one which speaks with the voices…

Making her final preparations for the women’s Giro d’Italia, a solo masterclass saw Millie Couzens win the Ilkley Grand Prix last Friday. The 20-year-old rider for Fenix-Deceuninck showed commanding form before launching a decisive attack and finished 43 seconds clear of a reduced chasing group, which was led home by Robyn Clay in second and Isabel Darvill in third. “I thought it was going to be more aggressive and in the end I had to force it a bit,” said Couzens. The youngster will now head to the Giro d’Italia, which starts this weekend. “Each year I feel like I’m progressing and the team has been really good in supporting me and making sure that I’m developing slowly,” added Couzens. After being left without a team at the beginning of…

Fara is an Old Norse word which means ‘to journey’ or ‘to venture’. It is still used in the English words ‘Wayfaring’ and ‘Seafaring’ with the same sense of meaning. It might be asking a bit much of the Norwegian brand’s F\Road to perform on the water, but I was keen to find out how its road bike would fare on the lanes of Surrey. The F/Road’s stated aim is to be “responsive and fast without sacrificing weight in the name of aerodynamics”, “forcing you into an uncomfortable riding position” or “being too harsh” – laudable goals but not always easy to achieve together. Fara has three bikes in its current line-up: the F/Road, the F/All-Road and the F/Gravel, with the intended remit of each clear from its name. CONSTRUCTION…

Monday Strength workout & commute Gravel racing takes a greater toll on your body, so making sure you have a strong core makes a huge difference. Today was a strength workout. I do lots of stretching, some foam rolling and lots of core and leg bodyweight exercises like one-legged squats, and planks. This is a 90-minute session. In terms of riding, I commute to the office [Vaughan works at Wahoo in London] which is a 40-minute round trip. This was very much in Zone 1. Total riding: 40min Tuesday Threshold intervals This was a two-and-a-half-hour ride with four five-minute threshold efforts. In this instance, I completed them on a climb – it’s a bit easier to complete the full interval on a climb. I averaged around 410 watts for these…

This bike will be instantly recognisable to many British fans as the road-going version of the bike that Chris Boardman set the Hour record on in 1993. Riding on the Vélodrome du Lac in Bordeaux on the Tour de France rest day, Boardman set a new record of 52.270km, just six days after his rival Graeme Obree had set a new record on the Hamar track in Norway. Not only was it a brilliant ride by Boardman, one year after his Olympic gold medal-winning ride in Barcelona, it was a brilliant bit of timing. With the Tour’s press pack in town, coverage was guaranteed and Boardman duly signed a pro contract with Roger Legeay’s Gan team. It no doubt helped that he set the record on a French bike. Based…

Mark Cavendish was one of dozens of riders to suffer in the heat and humidity during what was the hardest Tour de France Grand Départ of his 18-year career. The Briton was sick on the mountainous roads of stage one from Florence to Rimini, as riders battled temperatures approaching 40°C. Though Cavendish made it to the finish, some 39 minutes behind the race’s stage winner, dsm-firmenich PostNL’s Romain Bardet, his Astana-Qazaqstan teammate Michele Gazzoli was forced to abandon with gastrointestinal problems caused by heat stroke. Temperatures remained high during the second stage, won by Kévin Vauquelin of Arkéa-B&B Hotels, but did cool off in Turin on Monday. Reflecting on a torturous first stage of his 15th and final Tour, Cavendish said: “That was so hard but we had a plan…

So it’s time for my fourth Grand Départ – the years seem to be passing pretty quick. I’ve now got plenty of experience at La Grande Boucle, but I still get the same little-kid excitement as I did the first time. Yes, there’s a bit more stress in the team because the whole world is watching, but we do get extra-special treatment from all the staff and soigneurs because it’s the most important race of the whole year. Three pampered weeks of racing flat-out coming right up. And there’s always a new piece of kit to look forward to. Sometimes it’s glasses or a different kind of skinsuit, this year it was a new helmet for the hotter days - essential for this year’s opening weekend. The team presentation was…

Romain Bardet salutes the astounding ride of his young team-mate Frank van den Broek as the DSM-Firmenich PostNL pair cross the finish line in Rimini at the end of stage one. Bardet attacked on the Côte de San Leo with around 50km to go and quickly bridged to his team-mate, who was in the break. The pair worked together to ride clear from the rest of the breakaway riders and pull out a time gap that gave them a big enough cushion on the general classification group chasing behind. Despite having been in the break, 23-year-old neo-pro Van den Broek did the lion’s share of the work, the time gap to the GC group stabilising whenever he was on the front. There was never any doubt that Bardet would be…

The 1986 La Vie Claire Tour squad was the strongest team ever. They absolutely dominated the race. Even with Hinault and LeMond battling for team leadership they still managed a 1/2/4 finish! Eric Morrow La Vie Claire, no debate! Eight TdFs, a Giro, and many others. Martin Pahl It’s a strong team no doubt, but look no further than Ti Raleigh in 1980 or La Vie Claire in 1986. These two teams dominated – just look at the results. Paul Cheesman Great, but that’s a whole lot of ego to manage and keep everyone happy. Jan Puzylo There needs to be better balance across all the squads. Visma and UAE are ridiculously stacked. Kevin Rowe Having the strongest team doesn’t guarantee a win. Winning doesn’t necessarily mean you had the…

Kate Allan (Team Bottrill) bounced back from crashing out of last year’s National 50-Mile Championships by storming to victory in the 2024 title race in Dorset, while John Archibald (Huub WattShop) took the men’s title. Allan was out of action for several weeks after her crash last year and almost took a year out of the sport, but she was back with a vengeance at the Wessex Road Club event, clocking 1:51.42 to win by exactly one minute from team-mate Alex Clay while Laura Davies (Jadan Vive le Velo), was third. “After crashing out last year I have worked so hard to get back here,” said Allan. “It’s been a real driver for me to come back and put some ghosts to rest. This is my favourite event so last…

Starting in Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, the weekend paid homage to two of Italian cycling’s greatest ever riders, Gino Bartali and Marco Pantani. The former was born in the Tuscan city that set the riders on their way, while the latter died in Rimini, the finishing town on stage one. The racing was as thrilling and demanding as both Bartali and Pantani would have wanted, although riders suffered in hot and humid conditions in unrelenting sun across the weekend. Romain Bardet (dsmfirmenich PostNL) claimed the first ever yellow jersey of his career on stage one, 11 years after his debut appearance in the race. The Frenchman, however, was unable to keep the lead for more than 24 hours, with the overall favourite Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) taking…

Among the hundreds of people milling around team buses in Florence last weekend was a small collection of of men unknown to those outside of cycling’s inner circle. They were there to shake hands with the protagonists and engage in high-stakes discussions. Dressed in flat caps, rolled-up chinos and deck shoes – almost an unofficial uniform – they are the agents who represent the world’s best-paid stars. These influential men move cycling’s chess pieces around the board year on year. And the start of the Tour is a particularly important time for them, because tradition dictates that the race’s two upcoming rest days are their time to do business – two 24-hour periods during which, in quiet hotel bars and tiny cafes, contracts are negotiated and transfers finalised. These days,…

Cycling Time Trials has launched a new national competition designed to allow time triallists of all levels across the country to compete with each other on their local courses. ‘Tribes’ is the latest step in a series of steps taken by CTT to help make time trialling more accessible and arrest a sharp decline in entrants in recent years. With your local sporting event worth just as much an ultra-fast course that riders would normally circle on the calendar at the start of the season, Tribes should mean that riders of all abilities can compete without having to travel long distances to fast courses to events they might not qualify for. Other CTT moves include a new default road bike category in all time trials and shorter Best All-Rounder distances,…

Club: Thanet Road Club Location: East Kent Website: www.thanetrc.org The story of the jersey The red and yellow of the Thanet RC jersey has been a feature of the garment ever since the 1950s, interrupted only by a brief dalliance in the 80s and 90s with a jersey based on that of the PDM pro team of the time. This latest iteration was introduced in 2020 as the result of a competition run within the club to produce a new design. The winner was Peter Huckstep, and his creation is produced by Bioracer. The story of the club Thanet RC was formed in 1947 and its 200-plus members enjoy a variety of cycling pursuits, from time trialling to Audax, mountain biking and social riding. It also has a Go-Ride Youth…

Riders toil through the Alps on stage 16 of the 1930 Tour de France, which was the perfect example of Henri Desgrange’s quest to make the race as hard as humanly possible. He had ditched the idea of making many of the stages team time trials to make sure everybody was putting the requisite effort in, but continued with days like this: 331km in the mountains from Grenoble to Evian-les-Bains. It was the third 300km-plus mountain stage of the race. This was also the first year that Desgrange did away with trade teams, switching instead to national squads – all on Tour-regulation yellow bikes. It’s just a shame that old images such as this one aren’t able to show such detail. Winner on this day was French fan favourite André…