Innehållsförteckning för October 30, 2025 från Cycling Weekly

There may have been questions at Santiago airport when Dutch sprinter Harrie Lavreysen checked four identical Tissot watches in with his luggage. “Who is this jewellery dealer with enormous thighs?” airport officials might have wondered, “and why is he wearing a rainbow jersey?” The answers lay in Chile’s national velodrome. There, last week, Lavreysen became the first rider to win four events at a single Track World Championships. The watches were podium gifts, alongside his four gold medals and rainbow jerseys. “I dreamed of going for four,” Lavreysen told Dutch broadcaster NOS. “It was a bit of a goal last year, but I honestly didn’t expect it to be possible this year.” The 28-year-old, the most successful rider in Track Worlds history with 20 titles, won the team sprint, keirin…

It’s hard to pick a favourite part of the UK, but if I were forced to choose, I’m pretty sure it’d be the North Pennines – the rugged upland area straddling County Durham, Northumberland and Cumbria, between the Lake District to the west and the Yorkshire Dales to the south. It’s a magical place that feels untouched, wild and enticing, and it’s packed with climbs of every flavour: long and shallow, short and savage, one after another in relentless succession. There are more killer ascents concentrated here than almost anywhere else in the country – up, down, and up again – a true hill-climbing boot camp. They may not be quite as brutal as the giants of our previous two ‘Ultimate Climbs Guide’ editions, the Conwy Valley or the North…

Alpe d’Huez double-header Is there a cycling fan out there who doesn’t get excited when the words ‘Alpe d’Huez’ and ‘Tour de France route’ are used in a sentence together? The race returns to the infamous mountain in 2026, climbing both sides of it on stages 19 and 20. That’s right, there is a back route into the high-rise ski resort via the 1,999m, 12.8km Col de Sarenne. And it’s the last mountain climb of the race. The peloton hits the bottom of this rarely used climb off the descent of the Col du Galibier at the Lac du Chambon. Its long, straight, exposed sections hit 10% in places and ASO is clearly hoping for a big finale on its slopes. The last two winners at Alpe d’Huez are Tom…

1 Two weeks before launching its new deep-section race wheel, the Hadron Ultimate 680, Swiss Side received some bad news. The UCI had announced that, come January 1, 2026, the rim depth for its sanctioned road events would be limited to a maximum of 65mm. As the name suggests, the new hoops measured 68mm. Given that the Swiss aero experts had spent more than two years developing the 680, it was, as it described at the time, “a major and unexpected and extremely costly blow”. But you can’t keep a good engineer down and Swiss Side promptly launched the Hadron Ultimate 650 in response. 2 This UCI-compliant solution uses the blueprint of the third-generation of Hadron wheels that were launched early this year, featuring the same 22mm internal rim width and v-shaped…

What does it take to secure a contract with a WorldTour team? Single-digit body fat? Through-theroof endurance? Muscles chiselled from granite? All these are useful, but what about something more specific and measurable? For that, we turn to an old metric, a new term and a recent revelation. “Our experience suggests that the rider’s performance after 3,000kJ of work done is where we should be looking to identify quality juniors who could make it at WorldTour level,” says John Wakefield, director of development at the Red-Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe under-23 development team. “That’s a higher number than we expected when we started this project.” On a professional level, this development will help scouts refine data search. At recreational level, discovering the impact of kilojoules – that is, spent energy – on your performance…

The Welsh League and Western League came together to stage their first ever joint event, and at a new venue too – Chepstow Racecourse in Monmouthshire. More than 350 riders took part in the event, with a 2.1-kilometre lap boasting a good mix of surfaces and cambers – and even a sandpit to test skills. The senior race unfolded as a fourway battle between Tom Crapper (Magspeed Racing), Steven James (Hope Factory Racing), Harry Sowden (Clayton Cars BMW-Badass Bikes) and Ben Vangasse (BW Cycling). A major attack by James with three laps to go ended the stalemate, while Sowden outsprinted Vangasse at the line. The overall women’s race saw veteran Natalie Jenks (Magspeed Racing) prove quickest, while Charlotte Davies (Westside Coaching 73 Degrees) was 52 seconds behind in second and…

This 1947 Alex Singer was specially built to compete in Technical Trials – Concours de Machines – gruelling French competitions for bicycle constructeurs held intermittently throughout the 1930s and ’40s. These punishing events pitted fully loaded bikes against one another over the roughest gravel tracks of the Massif Central. The routes stretched for 460km or more. It was, however, the bikes, not the riders, that were being judged, fuelling fierce competition among the finest French constructeurs. Barra, Reyhand, Narcisse, René Herse, Jo Routens and Alex Singer defined the challenge – building the lightest bikes possible while ensuring they were durable enough to finish the course without issue. What an astonishing achievement this 78-year-old Alex Singer team bike is, weighing just 9kg including rack, pedals, dynamo, lights, metal mudguards and chunky…

Amber warning Lorena Wiebes and Lisa van Belle skid across the boards during the Track Worlds Madison, with disaster accompanying a hand-sling. The Dutch duo were leading the race, but were forced out. In the dark Riders compete in De Nacht van Woerden, a cyclo-cross race held in the dark in the Netherlands. Felipe Orts and Fem van Empel won the elite races, but here it looks like riders are going both ways. Believe it Josie Knight grabs Madelaine Leech’s head after the latter won the Madison at the Track Worlds with Katie Archibald. It was Leech’s second ever Worlds medal, after bronze in the team pursuit. Tunnel vision Ruby Isaac, national junior road champion, powers up Bank Road during the Hill-Climb Nationals. Her quads clearly did the talking, with…

Defending champion Harry MacFarlane added the men’s 2025 National Hill-Climb Championship to his palmarès with a stunning performance on Bank Road in Matlock, covering the 880-yard course 5.1 seconds quicker than his nearest rival. The Rule 28-Outliers rider set the Derbyshire crowds alight with a superb time of 2-14.7 – a course record performance – which left Kieran Wynne-Cattanach (Team Lifting Gear Products) second in 2-19.8 and four-time champion Andrew Feather (Hunt Bike Wheels.com) third with a time of 2-20.4. As defending champion MacFarlane was last of the 460 riders to tackle the course, and it was worth the wait for an enthusiastic crowd as he blasted up the town centre hill visibly quicker than anyone who came before him in the Matlock CC event. Shorter defence “It’s been a…

Unless you work in corporate law for either Strava or Garmin you will never really know what power struggles, negotiations or circumstances led to this little scuffle. Whatever the issues were, it was resolved, which was always going to be the case and both players will continue to benefit from our disposable income for years to come. Adam Wingrove That was a bone-headed move on Strava’s part. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Donovan Lewis Great news. Means I will stay with Strava, which I intended to leave if they went through with it. Andrew Sayers Strava is dead to me. Jay Seb Strava’s case was absurd, but they knew it – it was never intended to actually be challenged in court. It was a matter of Garmin…

Created to meet the demands of the gravel racer, the new DEL clipless pedals blend a large-contact area with a single-sided design for better cornering clearance and low stack height; the thin pedal bodies measure just 14.7mm. Weight is 216g per pair. Designed with input from professional gravel athletes, Wolf Tooth says the new DEL delivers the high power transfer of a road pedal while being lighter, smaller and better at clearing mud. Stainless-steel axles, binding hardware and a triple-stacked bearing configuration enhance durability, while the body is made from fully machined aluminium. The DEL also features an adjustable Q-factor – achieved by re-arranging the internal bearing and spacing. It does require two tools to make the adjustment, however. In addition, there’s also a ‘Right To Repair’ warranty that covers…

Form is a pleasingly nebulous concept. At its core is the notion of a period of above-average level of performance. But it also depends who is talking about it. If one of your rivals tells you that you that you have “good form”, it’s essentially a veiled threat: one day this form will dissolve as easily as it came, and when it does you’re in for a bad time. For an athlete, good form is only detectable in retrospect. At the time you just think you’ve discovered the secret, you’ve stepped up a level, and you’ll never be beaten again. Only when you return to your average self do you realise it was just form, and you’ve no idea what you did to get it. There is also the form…

The 2026 Tour de France does not claim to be the hardest or the longest, but it could have the toughest finale of any edition to date. As riders line up at next summer’s Barcelona Grand Départ on 4 July, stages 18, 19 and 20 will be three whole weeks away, but they are sure to be firmly in the mind of anyone hoping to clinch the yellow jersey in Paris. Stage 18 to Orcières-Merlette, and then a double helping of Alpe d’Huez on stages 19 and 20, will decide the race, or that’s what the organisers hope anyway. Stage 20 is the hardest, with 5,600m of climbing on the penultimate day. The organisers have backloaded the race to build to a “crescendo” towards the end, and a Tour that…

The Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift’s route director, Marion Rousse, has an easier task than her men’s race counterpart, Christian Prudhomme, given that women’s racing no longer has a dominant rider. Also, with just nine stages, there is less need for flat sprint stages to rest tired legs. Finally, with the race still being new, for Rousse, novel iconic climbs are easy to find; after La Planche des Belles Filles, the Tourmalet, Alpe d’Huez and the Col de la Madeleine, it is the turn of Mont Ventoux. As a result, the fifth Tour de France Femmes has an exciting and dynamic route, from its punchy Swiss start, past its 21km-long individual time trial on stage four. Everything will build up to Mont Ventoux on stage seven, however, before a…

After several weeks of riding, I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Mason’s ISO 2 adventure/gravel bike. Most gravel bikes I’ve tested have been pseudo race bikes. Lightweight carbon frames, v-section carbon wheels and a dialled-in ride position similar to the road bikes I get to ride. The ISO is none of these things, and proudly so. This is a bike made for long-haul adventure. Ready to be loaded up and ridden far and wide over any terrain. An Italian-made steel frame with chunky 29” tyres, a ton of clearance and covered in mounting points - from the outset, this bike was always going to be a little bit different. CONSTRUCTION First things first, this bike is big. Really big, and its geometry is nothing like a standard…

Paul Sherwen of the La Redoute team – alongside 1983 Tour de France winner Laurent Fignon – cracks an amused grin as he shoulders his bike up the formidable Koppenberg cobbled climb in the 1984 Tour of Flanders. Narrow, brutally steep and often slippery, the famous ascent was too much for the higher-geared bikes of the era, and any bottlenecks often forced riders to get off and push. Sherwen spent most of his professional career with the French La Redoute team, finishing off with a year at the UK Raleigh-Banana team in 1987 before retiring to work as a team manager, in PR, and most famously as a TV co-commentator with Phil Liggett. Widnes-born Sherwen passed away in 2018, aged 62, leaving many in grief and shock, but the wonderful…