Innehållsförteckning för December 12, 2024 från Cycling Weekly

Our ‘Let’s Talk About’ series continues this week with a look into eating disorders. These are more common in everyday life than many people realise, and when it comes to endurance sport they can be hidden or worse still, normalised. After all, we wear ultr-atight fitting clothing, and lionise those who look slim, ripped or are ‘in great shape’. Thankfully some riders are willing to speak openly about their experiences, so with luck we can prevent others from suffering. Reading their accounts makes me think back to my racing days when, even at an amateur, weekend-warrior level, there was pressure to be uber-slim. I was lucky not to be adversely affected - although there were definitely times when I simply wasn’t eating enough - but I had friends who were.…

Katie Archibald sealed her third overall victory in four editions of the UCI Track Champions League last weekend. A win in the scratch race during Saturday’s final round in London was enough to seal the Scot’s latest title early, with her name inscribed on the trophy as the evening’s action carried on. Archibald held the leader’s jersey from the opening round in Paris last month, picking up five wins from 10 races over the series. “I’ve had the consistency,” she told CW but added that she was “really struggling” coming into the competition. “The build-up to the Worlds felt so clean and so clear, and I was so, so motivated, and then this, the pressure seemed more,” she said. “Once I got going I relaxed a bit.” Archibald missed the…

Blinded by the lights Modern bike lights, though technologically brilliant, I find are counter-productive. When driving my car along poorly or unlit roads, I have cyclists riding towards me with lights shining directly (so it feels) into my eyes. The result is I have to avert my view from the oncoming cyclist and look down to the small portion of kerb that is left for me to see. This makes them dangerous for all, mainly the cyclist. Modern light technology is amazing but impractical in the real world. I appreciate cyclists need to be seen, but if they’re blinding car drivers, the reverse is happening. I am a motorcycle rider and have discussed the issue of blinding oncoming car drivers with riders who adjust their headlights to show more of…

“If Lance Armstrong, after defeating cancer and winning the Tour de France, had stood up and said openly that his comeback from the brink of death was made possible by EPO, then EPO would have been the hottest-selling product of the early 2000s,” Aron D’Souza tells me, a statement that perfectly illustrates his iconoclastic outlook. “Every middle-aged guy would be on EPO if it were available under safe, clinically approved FDA [the USA’s food and drug administration] regulations,” he adds. This is quite the way to start an interview – and there’s more bullishness to come. “It’s a classic misconception to say that performance-enhancing drugs are unsafe. It’s hysteria,” he states. In case you hadn’t guessed, D’Souza is a man on a quest to change sport. Or, as he puts…

Jan Tratnik had been cycling for only three years when Quick-Step signed him to his first WorldTour contract in 2011. He was young, naive, inexperienced and keen to please those around him. “We did some tests [in training] and when we saw my watts per kilo, someone suggested that if I lost another two kilograms I could be really, really good on the climbs,” he says. “So I listened to them.” What Tratnik, then 20, didn’t know was that, at 65kg, he had no spare kilos to lose. “The truth was, I didn’t have much fat so it was really hard to lose this weight,” he recalls. “That’s how it started, because I didn’t know what to do.” The ‘it’ he refers to was an eating disorder. “I reduced my…

Saturday, 7 December • National Trophy Series round four (Clanfield University, Bedfordshire): Over-40 Male Veterans: 1. Paul Lloyd (Banjo Cycles Raceware) 39.32; 2. A. Lansley (PedalOn.co.uk) +0.24; 3. L. Craven (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) +0.28; 4. A. Gardiner (Sotonia Cycling Club) +0.30; 5. P. Oldham (Hope Tech Factory Racing) +0.50; 6. L. Hobbs (UF Rowe & King) +1.23; 7. R. Jebb (Hope Tech Factory Racing) +1.25; 8. G. Drake (Wheelbase CabTech Castelli) +2.08; 9. N. Blight (Nopinz Race Team) +2.35; 10. J. Allaway (PedalOn.co.uk) +3.25. Over-40 Female Veterans: 1. Kate Eedy (Team Empella) 47.25; 2. C. Styler (ROTOR Race Team) +2.52; 3. J. Andrews (Cycle Club Ashwell CCA) +4.37; 4. R. Duffield (Cwmcarn Paragon Cycling Club) +5.35; 5. G. Felstead (Team Empella) +6.33; 6. R. Clay (GS Vecchi) +8.31; 7. E.…

Marchant crashes into London crowd Olympic champion Katy Marchant suffered a broken arm at the UCI Track Champions League on Saturday when she collided with Germany’s Alessa-Catriona Pröpster, vaulted over the barrier and crashed into the crowd. Marchant, Pröpster and four spectators received medical assistance. Anna Morris on Instagram “When you get to sneak a picture with the last British individual pursuit world champion before you. Thanks Joanna Rowsell. 1 The number of European qualifiers next year for Unbound, the gravel calendar’s flagship race held in Kansas, USA. Anyone hoping to gain entry can qualify through Heathland Gravel in Belgium on 8-10 August. Specialized expand in women’s WorldTour There stand to be three teams racing on S-Works bikes in the women’s WorldTour next season after Specialized announced a partnership with Demi…

Michael McNamee is a professor of applied ethics at Swansea University, specialising in sports ethics. “Let’s start with the positives: the idea that traditional sport doesn’t take care of its principal stakeholders, the athletes, is a fair claim. That’s a good starting point, an attractive one. But I wonder what concept of sport Aron [D’Souza] has: is it about athletic excellence or about spectacle? Is what he is promoting actually a 21st-century circus with big freaks in sporting clothing, because that’s what it looks like. “If you’re going to say you’re athlete-centred, then you have to recognise athlete health as well. It looks like the Enhanced Games will be a libertarian games, where people can take whatever risks they want to take. What would medically supervised doping actually look like?…

Steve Shrubsall, features writer and subeditor GOAL: 400 WATTS FOR 20 MINUTES The challenge for me is a simple one. By the middle of March, I want to be able to ride a 20-minute time trial at 400 watts or above. That’s more or less WorldTour power, provided we’re talking absolute figures – no one mention watts per kilo, OK? To be able to ride toe-to-toe with the pros, I’d need to lose a fifth of my body weight, half of my age and undergo an extensive course of gene replacement therapy. That ship hasn’t sailed; no, it’s gathering barnacles on the seabed, having capsized many years ago just outside the dock. So why am I doing this? Let’s not dress it up in health and fitness clothing. I’m doing…

While we’ll probably never get to the bottom of the Cummings/Pidcock drama. It’s fairly obvious removing them both from the team has its advantages in drawing a line under the situation. Lee Wood Ineos should start afresh, look at everything and everyone on the team and see what needs changing. The staff and riders need to feel like valued and important parts of the team and have their focus on not regaining what Sky had but reinventing the team. Chris Smith This move makes some sense. Scott make some very different bikes, and this gives them the opportunity to buy into the Grand Tours. They can gain sales by signing one rider! It’s not about the team name, this could be about the sponsors. John Young Hilarious career move. That…

While 2024 has been a good year for record setting, some of the most popular time trialling distances, those under 100 miles, have proved stubbornly difficult to break. None of those senior records have fallen in the last five years. Conversely, five of the six ultra-endurance events have been revised in the 2020s. So, what’s the next one to fall? Time trial enthusiast Xavier Disley, head of equipment brand Aerocoach – responsible for a raft of wind-cheating kit used at the sport’s top level – says: “There have been improvements in aerodynamics which have been helping speeds increase, along with slightly smaller physiological improvements. However, those improvements in aerodynamics have also been attenuated, in terms of performance overall, by the decline in courses that are available.” Disley is alluding to…

The Cycling Weekly tech team has the enviable task of reviewing hundreds of new products every year, from inexpensive tubeless valves to extravagant superbikes. Each will receive a score based on form, function, performance and value but this rarely shows how we feel about them on a personal level. We rate them with you, the reader, in mind. CW’s Gear of the Year feature gives us a chance to reveal which products we’ve really connected with, those items we’d buy again in a heartbeat if they were lost or stolen. Some choices are predictable, others may surprise you. Read on for our 2024 top tech picks. SealSkinz Upwell heated gloves It might sound dramatic for anyone who doesn’t suffer with Raynaud’s, but if you do, you’ll know how painful and…

It is probably time to admit that, in online racing at least, I’m a dick. I act in bad faith, I make trouble. I can always be confident that when the chat in a race stops being cheery and starts to fill with innuendo and implied threats of virtual vengeance, they’re talking about me. I’m not cheating. My profile does not claim I weigh 25kg and stand one metre tall. I’m just annoying. With all respect to people who ride online races with pure motives of achieving victory, I can’t quite achieve that level of buy-in. I take an online race mainly as a workout, and the main purpose of a workout is to work. To that end, I throw in wild attacks at stupid moments. I go to the…