Innehållsförteckning för January 15, 2026 från Cycling Weekly

Patrick Eddy overcame the might of Jayco AlUla in the men’s elite road race at the Australian National Championships in Perth last weekend, with the Continental rider outsprinting Luke Plapp. The 23-year-old spent the last two years with Picnic PostNL, but was released at the end of 2025, and now rides for Australian outfit Team Brennan. Eddy and Plapp had caught defending champion Luke Durbridge (Jayco AlUla), who had been out front alone for 40km, with one kilometre to go. Eddy managed the situation to his advantage, sprinting off Plapp’s wheel to take glory. Decathlon CMA CGM rider Oscar Chamberlain finished third. The victory was his first since turning professional. “A few months ago, I felt like most of the cycling world had given up on me. But there was…

Reigning Scottish champion Anna Flynn (Spectra Racing) powered to a comfortable victory at the Women’s National Championships at Gypsies Green on Sunday, capping a good day for Spectra Racing, with team-mate Elena Day winning the under-23 title race. Flynn, 23, and from Edinburgh, had to contend with reigning junior champion Zoe Roche (Santini Cycling) in the early stages, but a mishap for the youngster left Flynn to power on alone, relishing being able to pick her own lines and ride her own race. Five laps later she crossed the line 1.23 ahead of Xan Crees (OGT p/b USE), with Grace Inglis (Team HUP) third. “I’m still in a bit of shock with how well my ride went,” said Flynn. “I got away on the first lap, and from there once…

On first impression, the Roam 3 shares the same design as its predecessor. It’s more brick-like than much of its competition, but that’s not to say it’s ugly; instead, the Roam 3 has a reassuringly robust aesthetic. With its squared-off form and three textured buttons, it resembles the outgoing Roam, albeit slightly taller and subtly deeper. The 2.8in screen is larger than before, and the resolution is bumped from 240 x 400 to a crisper 320 x 480, and it now displays 16 million colours, up from a paltry 64. The big news, of course, is that it’s now a touchscreen. Memory has doubled from 32 GB to 64 GB (the original Roam, from 2019, had just 4 GB), providing more room for global mapping, and RAM is now 2…

Cycling is a sport with a tremendous capacity for teaching the art of compromise. For instance, many amateur riders with families find it difficult to reconcile the training they would like to do with the training that they have time to do. It is possible to resolve this sort of thing. For instance, if you think about it, you could always just do all the training you want to do and the kids could find their own damn way home from football. This way you get what you want, and the kids can learn to be grateful that that’s the only respect in which they’re living in the 1970s. Everyone wins. You may have to compromise on your bike. Top-level bikes these days are expensive – for a committed rider,…

Italian rider Sante Gaiardoni demonstrates that static trainers are not just for winter, and not just indoors, as he spins on the rollers outside on what looks to be a summery day. A former team-mate of Patrick Sercu and Rudy Altig, Gaiardoni also adopts a rather laissez-faire sartorial approach to indoor-outdoor ‘training’, with a button-down shirt, Chino shorts and flip-flops. It’s a radically different approach to the one likely to be seen in the sheds and garages of the readers (and writers) of this magazine over the next few months. Gaiardoni is missing any kind of virtual riding platform, for a start. And there’s no sign of the long sleeves, tights and even overshoes that can be required for indoor training during the Great British winter, unless you’re lucky enough…

Coastal grind Young female riders ride up a slight rise at the National Cyclo-Cross Championships in South Shields. The wind from the North Sea would have been quite an obstacle on the coast. Sunny days What appears to be the entire Soudal Quick-Step team head out for a ride during their media day at their Calpe training camp on Spain’s Costa Blanca – getting ready for life after Remco Evenepoel. Slip and slide George Craston abandons the ‘cyclo’ part of cyclocross at the National Championships. The 19-year-old failed to finish the event, but did at least appear to be having fun in the mud. Look mum, no hands! Ferre Geeraerts appears to make a wheel levitate during a photo shoot for Flanders-Baloise on the Spanish coast. The 23-year-old was promoting…

Time trialling courses in the UK could be getting a makeover as the sport’s governing body, Cycling Time Trials, seeks to introduce new measures to push the discipline forward. If a new proposal is voted through at the CTT annual meeting at the end of the month, all UK time trialling would fall under one of two brand-new course types – ‘Competition’ and ‘Racing’. The latter would enjoy relaxed course-design rules that would enable organisers to find and design new courses with far more ease. The proposal, which comes straight from CTT’s board of directors rather than one of its regional districts, is designed to combat a significant time trialling bugbear – course loss. Road and residential development mean that courses are constantly being lost because of infrastructure such as…

We weren’t even halfway up the mountain and it was getting difficult. Having climbed 60km of the Cordillera Central since dawn, by midday I was writhing on the bike on the last curves before reaching Murillo, a traditional Andean village with colourful facades. The village sits 3,000m above sea level on the slopes of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, and from here, on the clearest mornings, you can see the permanent layer of frost on the volcano’s upper slopes, and the occasional plume of smoke, but today we weren’t so lucky. Most of the next four hours would be spent under drizzle and fog – all the way to the summit. Ascending the Alto del Sifón, the longest paved climb in the world, begins at 350m above sea level, in…

For a dedicated cyclist, recording miles ridden in a calendar year is a time-honoured rite of passage, and this magazine first printed a mileage chart for its readers to fill in back in the 1920s. Readers would send their charts back to the magazine a year later with stories of their rides. This year’s chart was printed in the 2 January issue and is now available online as a PDF. Tech moves on, but the need to know your distance remains and many CW readers still fill in their mileage charts. A round number is an obvious mileage target, and the Cycling Weekly Big Ride Challenge has four different targets to choose from, from 500 to 5,000 miles. Not only that – everyone who signs up is given two extra…

Stop right there. Before anyone orders carbon rims the size of hula hoops, road wheels are not getting bigger. Not to 32 inches. Not now, not ever. Yes, tyre brands are messing around with prototypes. Yes, a few prototype bikes have appeared and leaked on Instagram; yes, the message boards are alive with rumours; and no doubt, someone, somewhere, has murmured “performance potential”. But the road cycling world has already looked at the idea, squinted, rolled its collective eyes, and moved on to something more useful. The physics just doesn’t work for the road. I’d argue the idea is questionable at best for a mountain bike. Making a wheel bigger weakens it, unless you widen the axle to compensate. Road bikes already use 142mm spacing to accommodate disc brakes and…

After completing a clean sweep of National Trophy Series wins, Giles Drake added the Over-40 National Cyclo-Cross Championship title to his palmarès with victory at Gypsies Green, South Shields, on Saturday. The 41-year-old from Wirral crossed the line 17 seconds clear of Adrian Lansley (Pedal On) after four laps of wintry cross action, while Sotonia CC’s Andrew Gardiner was just one second back in third spot. I learned a fair bit from my first year in the veteran category last year,” said Drake. “The races are short and the depth of the field means you don’t have the luxury of making mistakes. “Consistently hasn’t been my strength over the last couple of years so I’m really happy and proud to get it right almost every time.” Similarly, the winner of…

If you’re suffering under the misapprehension that your bike isn’t fit to tackle the untamed gravel of the Home Counties without the latest 1x13 electronic groupset, complete with dinnerplateesque 10t/46t cassette, this Viking expedition bike is the antidote. Turns out, all you need for the very worst terrain is iron-clad resolve, legs of steel and one fixed gear. This impressive expedition bike was built for Bernard Heath, an equally remarkable adventurer, who, together with Rough-Stuff Fellowship (RSF) members Dick Phillips, Raymond Bottomley and Ron Bartle, made the first unsupported two-wheeled crossing of Iceland’s interior in 1958. They cycled identical Viking steel fixies uniquely adapted for the task; the most obvious modification being the girder-like rack brace that’s brazed directly to the seat tube. “You could jump on that rack, it’s…

Last Wednesday, Simon Philip Yates announced his retirement from professional cycling. The 33-year-old, the reigning Giro d’Italia champion, had already done his Visma-Lease a Bike promotional photoshoots for the 2026 season, but something wasn’t sitting right. There would be no 14th year at the top for the man from Bury. He is one of two British riders to win multiple Grand Tours, alongside Chris Froome. As well as the Giro, he was also the winner of the Vuelta a España in 2018 and stage victories at the Giro, Tour de France and Vuelta, and was believed to have a contract for at least 2026. He won 36 races, which also included Tirreno-Adriatico and multiple stages at Paris-Nice. In a letter posted on social media, Yates wrote: “This may come as…

1 Training through racing Make no mistake, this is a bona fide WorldTour race, with points, victories and career-changing moments on the line. A good Tour Down Under could set someone off on a great season, as we saw last year with Matthew Brennan’s impressive showing in what was his WorldTour stage race debut. The Australian tour also provides the perfect way to ease into the season. The weather is pleasingly warm, the racing’s not as hectic as it will later be in Europe, and the six stages offer an opportunity for riders to dip their toes back into the pro peloton. 2 Australian showcase Perhaps obviously, this race matters more to our Antipodean friends than to others, as it is one of a few opportunities for Europeanbased riders to show…

Cameron Mason made it four National Cyclo-Cross Championship victories in a row with his latest win at the 2026 event at South Shields, but the 25-year-old Scot was pushed hard by his rivals. Riding for Seven Racing, the rider from Linlithgow had to battle with strong winds, muddy conditions and troublesome tyre pressures to take victory by 21 seconds from Toby Barnes (Spectra Racing), while Ben Askey (CC Étupes) made a late charge to secure third spot and win the under-23 title, around two and a half minutes behind Mason. The rain, which had poured for the morning’s junior races, stopped for the elite races, but with thick mud covering what remained of the ice, conditions were challenging, with most riders slipping and sliding at some point. After hitting the…

Just watched again the stage which won him the Tour of Italy. Brilliant stage. I was so happy for him. Always feel a bit sad after watching cyclists retire having watched them perform over many years, in Simon’s case 13 years. At 82 years of age I’ve seen a few hang up their wheels. Good luck to Simon in whatever he does in the future. I hope he stays in cycling in some capacity. Keith Evans He sure has had a cracking last season. Such a shame he couldn’t have got a TdF onto his palmarès to complete the trio - he missed out on a good shot in 2021 when he crashed out and was in excellent form. Alan Heath I expect that Yates was told that Jonas would…

Fantasy sports and cycling enthusiast George Chapman, 46, created Velogames (velogames.com) back in the Nineties. It now has around 30,000 players and offers a range of fantasy competitions covering the Classics, Grand Tours and week-long stage races. Players build a virtual team of real-world riders within a fixed budget, scoring points based on how those riders perform in the race. The most popular format – where players use 100 credits to pick a nine-rider Tour team comprising two all-rounders, two climbers, one sprinter, three domestiques and a wildcard – is still going strong despite having been shut down for two years amid a trademark infringement dispute with Tour owners ASO. Chapman tells Cycling Weekly about Velogames’s origins, nipping out from weddings to update scores, and how high he can realistically…

1 Multi-purpose design While many road helmets today are built to excel in one specific area – be it aerodynamics, low weight or ventilation – which makes them better suited in certain environments, say race day or a long, hot ride in the mountains, Lazer’s new Sphere KinetiCore is designed to be multipurpose. The Belgian brand has positioned this helmet at road cyclists of all levels, aiming to balance weight, comfort and performance in a product that can be worn on both a fast-paced club run or a leisurely ride in the lanes. 2 Extra safety To deliver what it calls “everyday practicality”, Lazer has equipped the Sphere KinetiCore with a number of details, including a built-in LED port that allows the user to attach the brand’s Universal LED light, helping to…

Finlay Tarling’s sleek and slammed Factor Ostro VAM is finished in the familiar colours of the outgoing Israel-Premier Tech development team (now NSN), and sports a top set-up in the form of Shimano Dura-Ace Di2, plus FSA carbon crankset with Power2Max power meter. Wheels are Black Inc 60s, with Continental Grand Prix 5000S tyres. Tarling now rides a Scott. Want us to feature your race bike? Send a pic and information to cycling@futurenet.com…