Innehållsförteckning för August 15, 2024 från Cycling Weekly

The women’s team sprint record was one of five world records that fell inside the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines velodrome last week, where a wide track and the heat made for “the perfect storm”. On the first day of competition, the benchmark in the women’s team sprint was bettered five times, three of which by the British trio, who now hold the bragging rights with 45.186 seconds. The Dutch men then beat their own world record twice in the event, before Australia set a new best time in the men’s team pursuit. There were also two recordbreaking moments apiece in the men’s and women’s flying 200m laps, Dutchman Harrie Lavreysen and Germany’s Lea Sophie Friedrich going the fastest against the clock. “This velodrome is a quick velodrome,” said Mehdi Kordi, head sprint coach…

Team GB’s cycling squad have had an “absolutely incredible” Paris Olympics, in the face of “a number of pieces of adversity” that impacted the gold medal tally, its head of performance concluded. The team collected 11 medals across all disciplines at the Games – one more than its original target – with two golds, five silvers and four bronzes. The biggest successes came in Tom Pidcock’s mountain bike title defence, and the victory of the women’s team sprint trio, who earned gold on the track on the squad’s return to the Olympics after a 12-year absence. “If you can hit above 50% of your realistic medal chances at any Games, then you’re batting above average,” said the team’s performance director Stephen Park following the events inside the velodrome. “You’ve got…

The sprinters of the pro peloton could be forgiven for feeling a little aggrieved about the end-of-season races this year. The race directors of the major events have clearly opted not to design parcours suited to them. The Olympic road race was too hilly for any pure fastman to take any of the limited starting places for their nations, and the World Championship route in Zurich is equally unfavourable. So what of the Vuelta? A race that so often serves up some long, flat, relaxed stages for the sprinters to unleash their speed at the end. Not so this year. With eight classified mountain stages, five medium mountain stages, five hilly stages (some of which have uphill finishes) and two time trials, what’s left is just one flat stage. Never…

Most of us have never competed at the Olympics. But there are still ways to attach your name to the Games in a way that will hopefully, a year or two further through the mists of time, leave people vaguely connecting you with it. “Well, of course, I didn’t quite make the selection. It’s very political, obviously, and British Cycling is so strong that good riders end up being left behind.” Loose translation: “I won a local crit when the three guys in front of me, one of whose brothers once beat Dan Bigham at darts, crashed into each other.” Or you can stick closer to the truth. “I was at university with Sir Chris Hoy.” This is a claim that can be true for tens of thousands of people,…

In 1994 Miguel Indurain became the last man to win the Tour de France on a steel-framed bike. His 59cm Pinarello weighed in at almost nine kilograms and, like many others, was reputedly built by legendary Italian frame-builder Dario Pegoretti. The frame is rumoured to have had the top tube lowered to create a smaller front triangle and increase stiffness. Italian Oria tubing was then TIG welded to create the Pinarello-badged machine, rather than using the more traditional and often heavier lugged construction method. This 1994 Pinarello Banesto Team replica, photographed at Golden Age Cycles, is superficially similar to Big Mig’s rig incorporating, as it does, Oria tubing (ML25 double-butted tubing in this case) and a 60cm seat tube. However this replica clearly uses a lugged construction, with a ‘P’…

Keirin chaos Jack Carlin of Great Britain crashes as Shinji Nakano (Japan) and Muhammad Shah Firdaus Sahrom (Malaysia) come down in front. The incident in the keirin final saw the three miss out on the podium. Harrie’s hat-trick Harrie Lavreysen of the Netherlands poses with the three gold medals he won at the Olympics: the team sprint, individual sprint, and keirin. The 27-year-old now has five golds and a bronze from two Games. Track rings Eventual omnium winner Jennifer Valente of the USA, Denmark’s Amalie Dideriksen and the Netherlands’s Maike van der Duin ride over the Olympic rings during the event’s points race. Welsh wonder Elinor Barker made history in Paris as the first Welsh woman to win four Olympic medals when she earned silver in the women’s Madison alongside…

It was a tale of two team pursuits in Paris, where GB’s men claimed a bittersweet silver medal, and the women left with a proud bronze. The men’s quartet of Ethan Hayter, Dan Bigham, Charlie Tanfield and Ethan Vernon faced Australia in their final, just 24 hours after their opponents shattered the world record in the event by 1.3 seconds. GB trailed by a tyre’s width coming into the final lap, when Hayter slipped off his saddle, triggering a loud gasp inside the velodrome. The 25-year-old completed the lap sitting on his bike’s top tube, and GB lost out by two seconds. “We genuinely thought we could pull it back,” said Bigham, who swapped in for Ollie Wood in the final. “It feels like we lost gold rather than won…

Please don’t make me buy a disc-brake bike; I don’t ride in the wet, and I don’t intend to get any carbon wheels. I’ll have to keep nursing my rim-brake bike as long as possible. Oliver Neilson I’ve just purchased a Reynolds 58 wheelset and use Yellowstuff brake pads from SwisStop, and the brakes are awesome. The disc brakes are for my off-roader and will stay that way. Jonboy Birkin Rim brakes never slowed me down. Adam Giddins I’ve been using disc brakes for about 18 months now. I wish I’d stayed on rim brakes. Simpler and cheaper to service and they don’t drive you to distraction with their intermittent rubbing. Pete Lloyd I hope they do continue to make decent rim-brake framesets that can accommodate 28mm tyres on all…

While this year’s Vuelta field may be missing the very best in the world (even if Primož Roglič turns up he is unlikely to be on his best form due to crash injuries sustained at the Tour de France), what it doesn't lack is strength in depth. Competition for top-10 placings and stage wins will be fierce, with a phalanx of riders who know how to get results at the highest level. Young Italian rider Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) for example, has had his best season yet. The 23-year-old won the youth classifications at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of the Alps and was fifth overall in the latter. He could challenge for the Vuelta podium. Veteran Spaniard Jésus Herrada (Cofidis) always does well at the Vuelta, with stage…

After being denied by three seconds in the National 25-mile Championships last weekend, Emily Martin (Team Bottrill) turned around her fortunes to win the women’s National Closed Circuit Championships. Martin’s prolific team-mate Kate Allan had to settle for runner-up on this occasion five seconds back and Izzy Sharp (Lidl-Trek) was third (21.09). Meanwhile, having traded some power for an aerodynamic advantage during the winter, Piotr Zulawski clinched his maiden national time trial title at the same event. The 31-year-old, riding for Cambridge CC, has won eight of his nine events this season and now has a national jersey to his name. “I’ve done a lot of winter work around aerodynamics, I’m about 20 watts down on what I was doing last season but I’m faster. Zulawski finished in 19.06 for…

Matthew Larkins calls his matt black 2016 Canyon Ultimate CF SL “one big mod”. In search of the ‘ultimate’ lightweight machine for fast rides in the hills he has swapped out nearly everything, including replacing most of the original Shimano Ultegra components with SRAM Red. He has also fitted a carbon finishing kit and added Selcof 35 wheels, which he says were the best value-for-money swap at just £199. Want us to feature your race bike? Send a pic and information to cycling@futurenet.com…

“WTF is my life,” wrote Emma Finucane on Instagram, minutes after winning bronze in the individual sprint, her third medal in as many events at her debut Olympics. The 21-year-old became in Paris the first British woman in 60 years to win three medals at a single Games, an honour previously held by Mary Rand, a track and field athlete. Finucane’s haul included a record-breaking gold in the women’s team sprint, alongside Sophie Capewell and Katy Marchant, bronze in the keirin, and bronze in the sprint, the event in which she is world champion. The Brit won her ride-off with the Netherlands’ Hetty van de Wouw 2-0 in a best of three. “Honestly, it feels like a dream,” the Welshwoman said afterwards. “Obviously I would have loved to win that…

As the saying goes: If you want to travel fast, go alone. If you want to travel far, go together. Whether you’re Emma Finucane riding a flying 200m in 10.067 seconds or Remco Evenepoel winning the road race after a six-hour slog, the Olympics is a long journey. A long journey with as many different beginnings as endings. One constant at the start of any journey – whether the Olympic champion was a talenttransfer athlete in adulthood (like Canada’s Kelsey Mitchell), or took her first pedal strokes on a bike wearing her dad’s armwarmers as leg-warmers (as did our own Laura Kenny) – is that there is someone in every Olympian’s past who gave them a shot. Someone who was just being nice. They didn’t think they were knocking over…

1 Saturday 17 AugustLISBON > OEIRAS | 12KM | INDIVIDUAL TIME TRIAL Foreign starts at the Vuelta a España have become more familiar in the 27 years since Lisbon, Portugal, became the first in 1997, with Netherlands and France among thecountries visited in that time. This year the race returns to the Portuguese capital. Whereas in 1997 the stage and first leader’s jersey of the race was decided by a bunch sprint, in which Lars Michaelsen came out on top ahead of Claudio Chiappucci and Laurent Jalabert, the first leader of the 2024 edition will be determined by a time trial. This 12km route misses out Lisbon’s seven hills and their famous tram system, opting instead to follow the mouth of the Tagus river westwards until arriving at the finish…

Location: Glasgow Website: torvelo.co.uk/race-team The story of the jersey The jersey was inspired by the classic St Raphael-Geminiani strip of the 1950s, the club’s Liam White tells us. There are also design cues from the team’s ‘home’ shop, Torvelo Bike Repair. The jersey designer was given a Jacques Anquetil-era St Raphael jersey and an explanation of the team’s name, White says – Tor (a hill in old Scots) and Velo (bicycle). “The designer nailed the brief,” says White. The story of the club The club was set up by the Torvelo shop in 2019. White says it’s “an alternative pathway for bike racers who came to the sport late or found the more conventional pathways inaccessible.” He adds: “Our focus is on keeping hard-working and talented bike racers from across…

Home rider Hans Königshofter stoically jogs his bike over the line in the 1971 Tour of Austria, having crashed just before the finish. It was the first time a winner of the race, which was first run in 1949, had worn the leader’s yellow jersey from start to finish. The jersey that Königshofer is wearing in the image could almost be that colour, but unfortunately for him, he wasn’t that start-to-finish leader. He did finish fifth on GC though – in the first of what would be three consecutive fifth-place finishes. Crashing near the finish line is sadly not uncommon, with riders often falling in the chaos of a bunch sprint. It’s not clear what happened to Königshofer, but he is clearly the focus of plenty of (undoubtedly unwanted) attention.…