Innehållsförteckning för October 2, 2025 från Cycling Weekly

As soon as we head into autumn, and the nights start drawing in and we face the ongoing dilemma of whether or not it’s too early to turn on the central heating, my thoughts turn to riding in sunnier climes. It’s only natural. I don’t mind getting kitted up and riding through the winter, but in the main I do it for a reason. There was once a time when the reason for my winter ‘training’ was geared towards racing in spring and summer. Now my ‘riding’ is geared towards getting me in shape so I can enjoy riding when it warms up and the evenings start drawing out. But for those with the budget, the freedom and the penchant for longdistance travel, there is no need to wait until…

Tom Pidcock was GB’s best finisher in the elite men’s road race, finishing 10th, and at points was one of the key protagonists in the chase behind Tadej Pogačar. However, the Yorkshireman was unable to stay in the key chase group, which contained Remco Evenepoel and Ben Healy, and ended up 9:05 behind Pogačar. He had come into the race fresh from finishing third at the Vuelta a España, his best ever Grand Tour finish, but the Kigali race proved too much. “It was so hard,” he said in a post-race interview. “To be honest I didn’t feel so good in the start and then I was coming round and into the race and I just completely blew. It was survival until the finish, it was absolutely brutal. “At one…

For sprint cyclists, the track might be where world records are set, but the gym is where they’re built. After I broke the flying 200m benchmark in Konya, Turkey, in August, I’ve been back in the weights room, pushing new limits and preparing to carry that strength into the World Championships. I recently posted a 400kg single leg press on Instagram, which matched my personal best at the time. Since then, I’ve pushed it even further, hitting 450kg for a new all-time PB – that’s about the weight of a grand piano. The crazy thing is some sprint cyclists get so strong that our muscles actually outgrow the capacity of our bones. With that much weight going through one leg, it honestly felt like my shin was about to snap.…

New helmet rules Helmet brands are seeking more information after the UCI ruled to ban the use of certain lids in bunch road race events. From January, there will be “minimum ventilation requirements, a ban on shells or accessories covering or obstructing the riders’ ears, and a ban on integrated or detachable visors”. Alison Jackson on Instagram “It’s so cool to see how people use their bicycles here [Rwanda]!! The balance, the strength, the skill!” 84 The UCI has retired the number 84 for all future UCI Road World Championship junior women’s road races as a mark of respect towards Muriel Furrer, who passed away during last year’s event. The Swiss junior rider suffered a fatal head injury after crashing in Zurich. Ayuso joins Lidl-Trek Juan Ayuso will ride for…

1 Releasing panels RLS stands for Release Layer System and is designed to make helmets safer by reducing concussion risk. It’s described as having three stages that occur during an accident: react, roll and release. The patented technology uses panels on the helmet’s exterior that roll and release during an impact, thus dissipating the rotational forces that are proven to cause brain injuries. The panels are connected to a polycarbonate bearing layer that’s designed to react and activate when they detect a “significant impact force”. The creators say this happens “in a matter of milliseconds”, with the bearings able to roll in any direction, which allows the panel to release, thus dissipating the rotational energy to protect the wearer against concussion better. 2 Rotation protection Traditionally, bike helmets have been designed to…

There were likely no race previews, not even in her native Canada, that tipped Magdeleine Vallieres to win the elite women’s road race at the UCI Road World Championships last Saturday. But with just one prior pro win to her name, the 24-year-old pulled off an astonishing and careerdefining victory in Kigali. The bookmakers offered odds of as long as 400/1 on Vallieres to take the rainbow jersey. Ranked 149th in the world before the race, few would have even dared to place their money on her finishing in the top 10. In the end, she raced the smartest. Having followed a move with around 30km remaining, Vallieres attacked with 2.4km to go, at the foot of the final cobbled climb, and won by 23 seconds ahead of Niamh…

Away from the high-profile races at the UCI Road World Championships in Rwanda there were multiple other victories. In the under-23 men’s time trial, Jakob Söderqvist lived up to the pressure of being the favourite to win by 1:04 over Nate Pringle of New Zealand in second, with Maxime Decomble of France narrowly in third. The Dutch dominated the women’s and men’s junior time trials, with Megan Arens winning the former, and Michiel Mouris the latter. Arens beat Spain’s Paula Ostiz and Norway’s Oda Aune Gissinger by 35 and 37 seconds respectively. Mouris had a closer race, beating Ashlin Barry of the US by six seconds and Seff van Kerckhove of Belgium by eight. The mixed relay team time trial saw Australia defend their crown, winning by a handful of…

“Is it safe?” and “What was it like going up Alto de Letras?” Those are the two questions I’m asked whenever I mention that I spent a chunk of this February cycling in Colombia. The first question comes from non-cyclists, the second from riders who know their climbs – usually with a glint in their eye. They know that Letras is the stuff of legend: 80km uphill, rising from steaming valleys to the thin air of a 3,680m pass. It was lined up for day three of our 10-day tour across the Andes – but I knew there was going to be so much more to this amazing country than one massive climb. The seed for the trip was planted during a tour in the Alps last summer, when our…

RLS takes an idea championed by MIPS and goes a step further, literally by placing their technology on the outside of the helmet. RLS shared test data with us, which showed significant improvements in rotational forces, even compared to helmets fitted with MIPS technology. We can’t verify those results independently, of course, but in this data and the independent tests conducted to meet the safety standards, there’s clear evidence of significant potential. Where MIPS’s ability to slide is based on a slipping release layer, RLS is using bearings. The reduction in friction seems to offer an improved response. This advantage was evident in the tests we observed. MIPS also has a relatively more minor range of movement. While RLS might argue its system offers a superior level of protection to…

Dr Jamie Pringle, an associate professor in exercise physiology at Birmingham University, breaks down the physical impact of detraining. First 3-7 days: Blood plasma volume falls by 5-12%, raising heart rate and lowering stroke volume. VO2max can dip slightly, though endurance is largely maintained. ● 7-14 days: Key aerobic enzymes and mitochondrial efficiency begin to decline measurably. ● 2-4 weeks: VO2max can drop by 4-10%. Endurance capacity and fatigue resistance decline. Lactate shifts downward. Muscle mass and strength decline after three weeks. Strength then drops by roughly 1-3% per week after this. ● 4-8 weeks: Significant reductions in aerobic fitness are evident. ● 2-3 months: Structural adaptations such as muscle cross-sectional area, connective tissue strength, and cardiac muscle reduce, though these are slower to deteriorate and quicker to rebuild compared…

Leicestershire CX League Round 1 Where: Leicester When: Sunday 12 October Promoted by Leicester Forest CC and supported by Leicester City Council, this is the opening round of the Leicestershire Cyclo-Cross League for this season. It takes place at Western Park in Leicester itself, with races from under-nines to masters. Birdy Brow Hill Climb Where: Clitheroe, Lancashire When: Saturday 18 October Organised by 360cycling, this hill-climb on the edge of the Forest of Bowland promises to be tricky. It’s 9.5% over 1.9km, with the steepest 100m coming in at 15.3%. Not the worst climb, but not nice for an all-out effort either. Entry is £12.…

There was an Everesting World Championships a couple of weeks ago. I know you know what Everesting is, but someone somewhere still won’t, so let me explain that it is riding up and down a hill until the uphill bits have accumulated a total altitude gain equivalent to the height of Everest. It’s 8,848.86 metres, if you fancy it. The event was won by Canadian rider Jack Burke in the men’s category, and by Britain’s Illi Gardner in the women’s, with times of seven and a half and eight and a half hours respectively. With every apology to Burke and Gardner, this does seem like a peak example of the Venn crossover of “very impressive” and “deeply pointless”. Rarely has so much effort been put into achieving something so odd,…

At the end of the men’s elite road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Kigali, Rwanda, just 30 riders finished the 267.5km event, which featured well over 5,000m of elevation. With 164 on the start line, it was an attrition rate of 82%. The top 10 riders were separated by nine minutes, the top three by over two minutes, and the crucial point of the race happened with 104km to go. There are no prizes for guessing who caused this mayhem, though the route designers should take some credit, or blame. It was Tadej Pogačar of Slovenia who attacked over the top of Mont Kigali with hours left of racing, initially with Mexico’s Isaac del Toro and Spain’s Juan Ayuso – his trade team-mates – but with 66km…

“Stupid”, “weird” and “passive” were some of the words used by the pre-race favourites to describe their group’s tactics in the elite women’s road race. A lack of cooperation between them meant that, by the time they clocked the danger of the winning move, it was already too late. “Nobody wanted to take the initiative, no one wanted to spend more energy,” said Poland’s Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, who finished 10th. “It was really, really weird and I just feel super-sad about how it worked out, disappointed that we all let a situation like this happen again by just looking at each other and riding against each other.” Niewiadoma crossed the line more than a minute and a half after Vallieres, in a group with Kim Le Court Pienaar (Mauritius, 8th) and…

Harry Hudson seemingly came from nowhere to take victory in the junior men’s road race at the World Championships last week. But the 18-year-old has won multiple races this year, including the junior Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The win in Rwanda meant the Harrogate-Nova CC rider became the first-ever British junior man to win a road race world title, aping Zoe Bäckstedt, Cat Ferguson, Lucy van der Haar and Nicole Cooke in the women’s equivalent. Hudson joined Harrogate Nova from Matlock CC to broaden his opportunities to compete in UCI events. Next year, he will step up, moving to Lidl-Trek Future Racing, following in the wheeltracks of Sebastian Grindley, who won silver in the same event in 2024. Hudson’s win didn’t come easily, as he attacked and rode solo from 36km out. It…

I wasn’t in Kigali, but I watched the World Championships on TV just like most. I applaud the UCI for taking the Worlds to Africa but the course, although clearly tough, looked extremely boring for the viewer, and did nothing to show the diverse and glorious continent in a good light. I think it’s because the course was rather short, without many landmarks, so when the racing was ‘quiet’, there was little to look at. Norman Saunders Ed - While the circuit in Kigali was excellent for bike racing (all the races split up, and played out slightly differently), it did get a bit repetitive by the end of the week’s racing. We’d have loved to have seen a bit more of Rwanda, but there’s no way one city in…

My livelihood is riding bikes. I earn my keep documenting my rides for the purpose of films, photography and guidebooks. That’s just to say, I have had the privilege of exploring a very wide variety of places all across the world, having cycled well over 100,000km (62,000 miles) – the equivalent of more than twice round the globe. My longest trip? A 34,000km singlespeed mountain bike journey that took me through 26 countries in just over 10 and a half months. Born in Germany but happily rooted in Edinburgh for the past 16 years, I want to start by pointing out that Scotland is a cycling destination hard to beat (stay tuned for my Cairngorms feature later this month). Blessedly located though I am, the rest of the world still…

Word reaches me of a rider who went on holiday, and made the classic mistake of forgetting an appropriate tool for putting his pedals back on his cranks. After a couple of bike-free days, a mate at home who he’d messaged suggested that if he just screwed the pedals in by hand, then rode gently for a few kilometres, the precession effect of the pedals and cranks rotating would gradually tighten them. He did exactly this. He was delighted to discover that after a careful morning’s ride the pedals were too tight to undo, so happily assumed they were fine to ride. And they were. He enjoyed this useful physical effect right up to the point where he had to take the pedals off again so his bike would fit…