Innehållsförteckning för November 7, 2024 från Cycling Weekly

The British Cycling Road Racing Task Force launched in 2023 with high ambitions to revive the UK’s domestic cycling scene. Tasked with countering declining participation, shrinking race calendars, and limited funding, the task force laid out 16 recommendations to boost visibility, attract sponsorship, and increase support for local racers after consulting with a wide range of stakeholders. However, as of now, it’s fair to ask: what has the task force truly delivered? The headline achievement has arguably been keeping the Tour of Britain afloat – though, with the participation of just one UK-based team, the event feels far removed from the grassroots scene the task force was set up to support. The partnership with Lloyds Bank has brought new funding to the National and National Series calendars but no additional…

Tomorrow, Friday 8 November, is the final day cycling fans can buy tickets for this year’s Rayner Foundation dinner in Leeds. The event, run by the charity that supports up-and-coming British racing talents abroad, will be held inside the New Dock Hall on 23 November, set to the theme of the ‘biggest club dinner ever’. Those attending will have the chance to meet and mingle with the next generation of British stars. This year, six riders supported by the Rayner Foundation have signed professional contracts, among them Bob Donaldson, who will race for Jayco-Alula in 2025, and Matthew Brennan, who is stepping up to Visma-Lease a Bike’s elite squad. The dinner will be hosted by Eurosport presenter Hannah Walker, with an auction also held on the evening. Prize lots include…

If Visma can send a full-strength team in support of Vingegaard, I’d almost say he’s my favourite over Pogačar. The first half of the Tour looks loaded with transitional and hilly stages, not good for GC, and Visma is the team to beat in this area. They could push UAE and Pogačar to their limits before the mountains even start. Kieren Barnett All depends on who gets to the start line healthy and uninjured. Simon Leach It will be a great race, however Visma are an ageing squad and they don’t have the climbing depth of UAE. Paul Cheeseman Just no more boring flat gravel routes please. Shane Maher I don’t know, but the first nine days suit Mark Cavendish! Just saying! Kevin Blackburn Suits the fans/viewers. Let’s hope they…

And that beats the hour” – five words that danced momentarily in the air on 11 June, 1939, tripping off the tongue of an astonished timekeeper as rider number 14 flashed across the line. For the first time in history, a cyclist had covered 25 miles in under 60 minutes. It marked a watershed moment for UK cycling, a feat comparable to Roger Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile 15 years later. So why is Ralph Dougherty, the rider who achieved it, not a household name? Britain is fond of its time trialling icons and their exploits. Many will have heard of the bespectacled Ray Booty and his first sub-four-hour ‘100’ in 1956; or Alf Engers and his first sub-50-minute ‘25’ in 1978 – Engers is remembered as the ostentatious bad boy of…

The Canyon Ultimate CFR platform has been around for a couple of years now, and in that time it has racked up a whole host of WorldTour success in both the men’s and women’s peloton. Outdated then, you might think? Well, like many other bikes, the Ultimate CFR has benefited from a refresh this year courtesy of the new SRAM RED AXS groupset, giving the ever-popular range a new lease of life, and in doing so making the Ultimate CFR even lighter. Our new test bike tips the scales at just 6.85kg, and has also seen a slight price reduction since it was featured in our Race Bike of the Year test. The frameset remains unchanged from when the bike was first released in September of 2022, but take a…

The first arrangement for transporting bikes was also the best. In the early 1890s, as cycling took off among high-society during the London Season, aristocratic riders were ferried to the parks for a morning of riding by carriage, while their bicycle was carried in a separate carriage, in its own monogrammed velvet bag and accompanied by its own footman. For most of the next 50 years the idea of a bike rack was almost a moot point since no one’s class situation was sufficiently conflicted for them to own both a motor car and a bicycle. The closest equivalent was probably the guard’s van on a train, where you could load your bike along with the live chickens and the grandmothers in bath chairs. By the 1950s racing team cars…

Out of season The elite men tackle the cobbles of the Koppenberg at the X20 Trofee Koppenbergcross. Lars van der Haar went on to win while Fem van Empel won the women’s race. Reflective climb Eli Iserbyt and Michael Vanthourenhout during a course recce at the European Championships. They took place in Pontevedra, Galicia, in the north-west of Spain, in dry conditions. Knight’s move Sir Mark Cavendish grapples with a student at Saitama University ahead of the Saitama Criterium last weekend. The ‘cultural exchange’ is part of ASO’s lucrative end-of-season trip to Japan. Arch rivals Riders, including Primož Roglič in the middle, pass through a road tunnel during the Saitama Criterium. The race around the outskirts of Tokyo passed beneath Saitama Shinkansen station.…

Following directly on from the men’s Tour de France, the fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is the longest, and also the hardest yet, as it traces a diagonal route from northwest to south-east France, via Brittany, the Massif Central, and the Alps. Like the men’s race, there are ample opportunities for British fans to visit, whether it’s a quick trip across the Channel or a weekend in the Alps. • Stage one: Vannes > Plumelec (79km) 26/07/25 The opening day of the 2025 Tour is the first of a triptych of Breton stages, all easily accessible for UK-based fans through Saint-Malo, which is on the other side of the peninsular, but has direct ferries to the south coast of England. It’s well over a 100km…

Not long before he left for university in the early 1980s, Andy Dougherty received a special gift from his recordbreaking grandfather: the very bike, a BSA, on which he had ridden the first ever UK sub-hour 25-mile time trial. The bottom bracket shell, threads stripped out through decades of wear, needed replacing, but beyond that it was in working order. Andy modernised his new steed, changing the wheels and tyres and shoehorning a derailleur into the frame in place of the original fixed wheel, as well as giving it a new red finish. Andy, now 62, held on to the frame, and after recently making contact with his grandfather’s old club, was inspired to have it properly restored. With the help of Tim Gunn of The Repair Shop, he had…

Mechanics at Tadworth Camp in Surrey during the First World War attend to bicycles at their tent. The British army used cycles extensively during the conflict, for everything from patrolling to despatch riding, and there were around 20,000 men employed in cycle regiments and battalions by the end of the war. The Brits were not alone, either. According to the BSA Museum blog, it is estimated that at least 150,000 French and Belgians used cycles during the conflict. The US forces, too, upon joining the war in 1917, brought more than 20,000 bikes with them. Many of the bikes used were civilian roadster-type machines, although the main manufacturers all produced militarised versions of their standard machines, with wider tyres and stripped of accoutrements such as pump holders and chainguards.…

In the world of lightweight steel bikes, Hetchins stands alone. Instantly recognisable thanks to their curly stays and ornate lugs, both with an elegance that’s hard to match, they remain among the most collectable of classic bikes. This Magnum Opus track bike eschews the curly stays, but makes up for it with the lugwork. First introduced in 1950, by then Hetchins had already been producing frames for over 15 years, after Hyman ‘Harry’ Hetchin and frame builder Jack Denny teamed up at their premises in Tottenham, North London. After Harry’s death in 1961, his son Alf took over the business, moving it to Southend-on-Sea. Denny eventually retired and Alf sold up in the mid-80s. The Hetchins name lives on, now based in Preston, and the Magnum Opus is still in…

We already knew the 2025 Tour de France would start in Lille, just an hour on the Eurostar from London. However, last week’s route announcement revealed that it is not just the opening stage that will be in reach of British fans, with the first eight stages all in the Hauts-de-France, Normandy, Brittany, and the Pays-de-la-Loire. As a result, next year’s men’s Tour will be one of the easiest for Brits to visit in years, possibly the best since the Grand Départ in Normandy in 2016, when Mark Cavendish won the first stage, and with it the first yellow jersey of his career. July 2025 might seem a long way in the distance, but in reality it is just eight months away, and will be with you quicker than you…

In three editions so far of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, no rider has won the race twice. First, there was Annemiek van Vleuten, then Demi Vollering, and this year, Kasia Niewiadoma, who clung to the yellow jersey by a thread on Alpe d’Huez. Should Niewiadoma defend her title next summer, she’ll make history as the first woman to do so since the race’s reboot. It’s her “big goal”, she said, and after Tuesday’s route announcement, one for which she is now particularly excited. “It’s a goal to bring the yellow jersey home again,” said Niewiadoma. “My big goal is to become the woman who wins the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift twice in a row, and I’m in the best position right now to make that…

Zoe Bäckstedt has had an odd 2024. The 20-year-old won the under-23 Cyclo-Cross World Championships in February, finished second in the Antwerp Port Epic in May, and then won her first Women’s WorldTour event in October. However, she also spent months off the bike due to illness and injury. “When I was racing this year, I’d say it was pretty good,” the Canyon-SRAM rider explains. “I didn’t do loads of races, but the races I did do, I had some decent results, at Roubaix, at the Vuelta, second at Antwerp. Then to finish it off with a stage win and a GC podium [at the Simac Ladies Tour] - you don’t expect it at the end of the year, that almost makes it more special.” The Welshwoman will head into…

As a general rule, I don’t stop for cake. I’ve nothing against it, but I don’t drink coffee and I don’t have time for leisurely cafe rides – if my family found out I was sitting around chatting and scoffing cake on a Sunday morning, there would be hell to pay. OK, it’s the guilt, too: I’m 51, and I’m worried about all that sugar and fat going straight to my hips. For this ride, though, I would be stopping for cake – because this ride was all about cake. My plan was to link together six places famous for their cakes, stopping at each to try their eponymous specialities, forming a 215km route from Bakewell to Chorley and back. It was not an adventure I was prepared to take…

This weekend, the British hill-climb season came to a climax at the 2024 National Championships. Harry MacFarlane of TAAP Kalas was victorious, beating three-time national champion Andrew Feather by just 2.3 seconds. As you might expect, he didn’t win the race on a standard bike. Free from any UCI regulations, MacFarlane’s bike is about as custom as they come. It’s built around a 2008 Cervélo RS frameset, stripped back to a raw carbon-fibre finish. Given the year of production, it’s a rim-brake model, a common sight at hill-climb races as they prove to be a far more wallet-friendly option for ultralight builds. The groupset is almost as antiquated. Shifting duties are handled by first-generation SRAM Red eTap from 2015, but here it’s set up as a 1x system, using a…

Thirty plants a week has all the makings of a popular health trend: it’s a challenge, a round number, and promises better health. But this idea didn’t spring from out of nowhere. It stems from the American Gut Project, a groundbreaking 2018 study that analysed the diversity of the human microbiome using stool samples from over 10,000 volunteers across the US, UK and Australia. By pairing these samples with detailed lifestyle and diet data, researchers uncovered fascinating links between the microbiome and diet, sleep and disease, offering fresh insights into how what we eat shapes our health. Though the study had a broad remit, the finding that made headlines was that individuals consuming more than 30 types of plant per week had significantly more diverse gut microbiomes, with fewer antibiotic-resistant…

James Swadling made it two wins from two rides in the Notts and Derby Cyclo-Cross League near Matlock on Saturday, powering to a solo victory by more than 3-30. Riding for Pedal Power Loughborough, Nottingham-based Swadling left league leader Stefan Partridge (Bolsover and District CC) to settle for second place in the event at Middlehills Farm in the Derbyshire town. This was round four of the league, and also enjoying victory was junior Ingrid Gascoigne (Team Empella) in the women’s race, who has placed second in both the last two rounds. She was 28 seconds ahead of FTP Racing’s Harriet Evans, while newly crowned national hill-climb champion Maia Howell (Matlock CC) showed how versatile she is with third spot here. The London and South East League moved on to round…