Innehållsförteckning för March 13, 2025 från Cycling Weekly

Reading through Andy Turner’s brilliant fitness feature this week put a wry smile on my face. Andy is an experienced coach, and former pro rider to boot, and in his piece he lists nine training/riding mistakes not to make. Turn to page 46 to read it. The advice is excellent. Partly because it’s so simple and straightforward. There are no clever hacks that you’ll have never thought of. No revealing of pro secrets that require a team of backroom staff to achieve, just good, simple advice that is always worth reminding yourself of. My wry smile came about as I made every single one of these mistakes when I was racing. All except the one about overdoing it on Zwift - it hadn’t been invented back then. And I still…

1 Fully integrated cables Unlike the outgoing bike, the Topstone’s thirdgeneration model features fully integrated cables throughout the frame. It uses the brand’s Conseal stem to complete this new, clean look. The alloy stem is specced for all 10 of the different build options, while the handlebar specification varies between the four model choices. The range-topping Ltd uses Easton’s EC90 AX carbon bar, while the entry-level 3 relies on Cannondale’s own alloy bar with a 16° flare. 2 The Lefty lives on! While the majority of the models use a rigid carbon fork, there is still a build option that uses the iconic Lefty Oliver fork. You now get 40mm of travel in a gravelspecific design that adds some suspension at the front end to combine with the KingPin system…

Spring is just around the corner, and you probably have a target in sight, whether it’s achieving a time trial PB, completing an epic summer event, or just meting out some punishment on the group ride. The common thread is the desire to get the best out of yourself. While intending to train hard, many of us hinder our progress by making mistakes. As a coach, I’ve worked with cyclists who found their fitness plateauing or even declining, despite putting in consistent effort. A closer look at their training often reveals a few common errors that are easy to make but also easy to correct. If your performance isn’t where you’d like it to be, take a step back and see if you’re falling into any of these avoidable training…

Jacob Vaughan sprinted to a second consecutive victory in the Jock Wadley Memorial Road Race in Essex on Sunday, leading VC Londres to a one-two with junior ace Dylan Belton-Owen taking second. The popular early-season race proved to be one of the quickest and most aggressive for many years. Once the decisive break formed mid-race Vaughan bided his time as his rivals tried and failed to go clear. As the finish approached 17-year-old Belton-Owen attacked first, but Vaughan had the legs to go round his team-mate and take the win. Elsewhere the inaugural North Lincolnshire Women’s Classic was won by Bexy Dew (Smurfit Westrock) who edged out late breakaway rival Melissa Denman (Stolen Goat RT) in the final few kilometres. In time trialling, Team Bottrill duo Jake Sargent and Max…

Gravel express The peloton, bound for Siena, rides alongside a train headed for the same destination during Strade Bianche last weekend. At the midway point, you can see how attritional the race is by the size of the group. Coronation moment Tadej Pogačar celebrates 50 metres from the line in Siena’s Piazza del Campo, safe in the knowledge that his third victory at Strade Bianche is complete. The crowds are rammed in to greet the Slovenian. You’ve been framed Jesús Herrada of Cofidis passes by the Birreria Saloon in Laigueglia during its Trofeo last week. It is unlikely that the Spanish rider stopped at the bar mid-race, but Google rates it 4.7 stars. Sharing is caring Winner Demi Vollering hands her Strade Bianche trophy over to her FDJ-Suez team-mate Marie…

Demi Vollering ended a four-year streak for SD Worx-Protime at Strade Bianche last weekend, outsprinting her former coach, Anna van der Breggen, to earn her first WorldTour win as an FDJ-Suez rider. The 28-year-old, who previously won the Italian Classic in SD Worx colours in 2023, attacked Van der Breggen with 400m to go on the final climb of the Via Santa Caterina. Afterwards, she hugged her team boss, Stephen Delcourt, smiling as she shouted, “We f****** did it!” into the Tuscan air. The two Dutchwomen shot away from the rest of the pack on the final gravel sector, within 20km of the line. Steely-faced, the duo swapped through turns, coming to a final showdown on the race’s closing ramp. Having taken pole position at the foot of the climb,…

Born in 1934, Jacques Anquetil was the best cyclist of his generation. He was the first rider to win the Tour de France five times, in 1957 and from 1961 to 1964 – and he is still third on the all-time Grand Tour winners’ list. Anquetil’s eight wins place him behind Bernard Hinault, with 10, and Eddy Merckx in the top spot with 11. But victories were not what motivated Jacques Anquetil. The Frenchman was in cycling to make money, and winning was how he did it. His first wife Janine knew Anquetil better than anyone else, and he depended on her throughout his racing career. Janine said her husband ran Jacques Anquetil the cyclist as a director would run a limited company, plotting which victories would give him the…

Hamish Armitt is matterof-fact about the dangers he faces. “If it got really low, I’d probably go into a coma,” he says, referring to hypoglycaemia, when blood sugar falls too low, and the medical emergency that can result. It’s something few professional cyclists will ever have to worry about. But 22-year-old Armitt has type 1 diabetes, diagnosed when he was 15, and has to pay strict attention to his blood glucose. “If it goes high, that’s not good either,” he says, “but going low is the big thing you want to avoid.” Over the past seven years, Armitt has come to terms with the reality of life with diabetes. Among the 370,000 type 1 diabetics in the UK, there are few professional athletes, but Armitt – upon signing for US…

Continental has just dropped the Grand Prix TR, a fresh addition to its endurance tyre line-up, promising a balance of performance, durability and affordability. Essentially, it’s a slightly tougher, more punctureresistant sibling to the GP5000 – but at a much friendlier £54.95 instead of the GP5000S TR’s £84.95 price tag. The big draw here is the four-ply construction, designed to keep weight down while adding extra protection against flats. It also packs Continental’s BlackChili compound, the same grippy, high-performance rubber used in the GP5000, so you won’t be missing out on responsiveness or speed. Continental’s Hannah Ferle says the aim was to bring tubeless tech and top-tier performance to a wider audience. And with sizes ranging from 25mm to 32mm, it caters to endurance riders, commuters and weekend warriors alike.…

Jacques Anquetil powers on in the 1954 edition of the Grand Prix des Nations time trial. It was the second of nine wins in the race for Anquetil, which he racked up between 1953 and 1966. Few images could better showcase the ways in which top-level time trialling has changed in the past 70 years, the lack of a specialist bike and indeed any kind of aerodynamic niceties being the obvious ones. Were it not for the iconic Citroën H van trailing the Frenchman with his name emblazoned across the front, you could easily assume this is an attack in a road race. The GP des Nations ran from 1932 to 2004 and was always a longer race, even in its latter days. The final edition, won by Michael Rich,…

Tadej Pogačar’s triumph at Strade Bianche last weekend was magisterial, with the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider bouncing back from a hard crash to storm to victory alone. The Slovenian caught up with breakaway companion Tom Pidcock (Q36.5) after sliding out on a corner into a field with 50km to go, before attacking on his own with less than 20km left to race. He arrived in Siena’s Piazza del Campo alone, bloodied and bruised. It may have been less dominant than his victory last year – a solo attack from 81km out – but it was all the more impressive due to his heavy fall and how he rallied to still win. A sector of gravel will now be named in his honour – the reward for collecting three victories, and…

British Cycling has been urged to withdraw from September’s UCI Road World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda, as unrest on the country’s border with the Democratic Republic of Congo continues. Mohamed Keita, the Africa Director at the Human Rights Foundation, told Cycling Weekly that he believes the governing body should immediately pull out of September’s World Championships in the region. It is alleged that the M23 rebel group involved in the violence in the DRC is backed by the Rwandan government. Concerning situation Speaking on Monday, British Cycling CEO Jon Dutton said: “We are concerned about the situation, and I think that concern is shared by some of the bigger European nations too. We will take advice on safety from the UK government, and we’ll do the right thing for the…

Utopian roads are a touch thin on the ground nowadays. Despite my own decades of experience, I couldn’t imagine encouraging/accompanying anyone inexperienced, never mind my own child, to venture out on a bike. Alan Ferriday My nine-year-old daughter is tall and rides a small women’s bike, we ride on the road but I wouldn’t dream of letting her out on her own. I always sit behind her in a primary position – too many lunatics on the road. Jake Underhill The way cycle safety is – because of the unbelievable attitude of car drivers towards cyclists in the UK – means the last thing I’d want to do is put my daughter on Britain’s roads. Jon Stafford Step back and look at the bigger picture - it is 100% logical…

Cycling shoes are a crucial part of one of a rider’s three contact points with their bike. Whether you’re chasing podiums, doing sprint efforts, or cruising along your local roads, the perfect pair of shoes can improve your ride. But finding the ultimate pair of kicks can be tricky, so our testers have ridden hundreds of kilometres in these test pairs, allowing us to highlight potential pitfalls and standout features. But what makes a cycling shoe exceptional and justify such a high price tag? First and foremost, power transfer. A stiff sole - the following shoes all have carbon-fibre soles - ensures that every ounce of your energy goes straight into the pedals, giving you maximum efficiency with every stroke. FORM AND FUNCTION But that would be of no use…

The long ride is a staple for many cyclists – a club run, a solo training effort, a sophisticated lie they tell on Strava with the help of a paid impersonator. The first long ride happened way back in 1868. It was a time when most cyclists rode round gymnasiums, more for the sake of mastering the astonishing trick of balancing on two wheels than for anything grander. Those who rode outdoors did little more than trundle around the nice smooth paths of a park. No one wanted to ride a wooden-wheeled, irontyred boneshaker any distance. Except for a man called John Mayall, who bought Britain’s fourth-ever bicycle (or thereabouts), and decided that he’d take a jaunt from London to Brighton, over the old coaching road, in a rainy November.…

Frederick Henry Grubb’s legacy is the result of his time as both a cyclist and framebuilder. As the former, he set many distance records and won two silver medals at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. His career as the latter began in 1914 after he opened his first shop in Brixton. He resumed building frames after the end of World War One and continued to do so in various locations in South London and its surrounding suburbs until his death in 1949. By this time the name of ‘F.H. Grubb’ was held in sufficiently high regard that it would continue to grace handbuilt frames well into the 1970s. From the early 1950s these were the work of the Holdsworth brand, which had bought the Grubb marque and began to make…