Innehållsförteckning för Issue 68 från Cyclist Australia

The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that the body copy is a touch different from before, while the mole-eyed (of which some of us here at Cyclist are becoming more every day) will hopefully notice that the magazine has become a little easier to read. From cover to cover, we’ve introduced new fonts, new feature formats and whole new sections. The three front-end sections from previous issues – gear, pro racing and training – have been replaced by a single section called Leadout. This will help to prevent too much similarity between issues (a little bit of reader feedback) and give us more flexibility in the kind of articles we produce and the subjects we cover. At the back of the magazine, the Bikes section has been replaced by…

Campagnolo Ekar GT $2,549, campagnolo.com Campagnolo’s first gravel-specific groupset, Ekar, was released in 2020 and is still the only one of the big three gruppo manufacturers to have a 13-speed ensemble. The Ekar GT has improved many aspects of the Ekar, added a little weight and dropped around $800 while keeping the headlines: 13-speed, mechanical, off-road-specific. From a rider’s point of view, the main improvements with Ekar GT include the increased cassette and chainring options, affording a broader gearing spread. Campagnolo is keeping the tiny nine-tooth lowest cog, and now has a cassette line-up featuring 9-36t, 9-42t, 10-44t and 10-48t. There are also five chainrings offered from 44-teeth down to the new 36-teeth. A maximum ratio of 36-48t should be enough to get gravel riders and bikepackers excited to get…

Adam Hansen was never going to sit still in retirement. The Australian former pro is best known for his record stint of 20 consecutive Grand Tours between 2011 and 2018, and for his loyal service to sprinters Mark Cavendish and André Greipel at the T-Mobile/Columbia/High Road/HTC and Lotto/Belisol/Soudal franchises. But as a gifted polymath with eclectic interests, Hansen has a uniquely energetic mind. While racing, he built his own ultra-light carbon shoes and pioneered new approaches, using narrower handlebars, adopting a vegan diet and doing cross-country skiing in winter. He has also lectured in computer programming at Queensland’s James Cook University and built his own cycling logistics software. Since retiring he has taken up Ironman, achieving an impressive 15th place at the 2021 World Triathlon Long Distance Championships. But in…

Pick a mountain, any mountain. Alpe d’Huez? Add three hairpins and two per cent to its average gradient. Ventoux? Subtract Chalet Reynard and the shop at the summit. Hardknott Pass? Add 11km of distance and 1,100m of elevation. The Galibier or Stelvio? Deduct all the motorised sightseers and overpriced fromage and gelato. What are you left with? Possibly the longest, toughest, quietest European climb you’ve never heard of – Mont Caro in Catalonia, Spain. It’s a climb so challenging and off-the-beaten-track that the Vuelta a España has never been up it. Spain’s oldest bike race, the Volta a Catalunya, has only been halfway, stopping at a point known as El Portell, ‘The Gateway’. The gateway to what exactly isn’t made clear, but beyond is a landscape too rugged and hostile…

We’re up to version four of Shimano’s S-Phyre shoes, but ever since the initial change at the top of Shimano’s road shoe range from R321 to S-Phyre RC9 in 2016, it has been a case of evolution as opposed to revolution. In this instance, there has even been a case of devolution, with the RC903’s shape said to be returning to the wider fit offered by the RC901s, as a change in the RC902s made them much narrower and more tapered at the toe box. This was not well received by fans of Shimano shoes, which are generally known to offer a fit at the wider end of the spectrum. Largely, though, the new design has taken incremental steps forward and nothing drastic has altered. For example, the general construction…

I came for a model launch, and what I got was an education. The story of the 10th generation Giant TCR is not complete without context and my thoughts around the accompanying tour of Giant Taiwan Manufacturing (GTM), the Giant factory. It’s one of nine worldwide, but the only one that produces the TCR Advanced SL. GTM is Giant’s flagship centre of manufacturing, with all its top-level carbon products coming out of it. This article is a first look at the latest TCR, but also a look at GTM, because one is not complete without the other. The more things change… you know the rest You can feel it in the welcome from the chairperson of Giant, Bonnie Tu; in the unveiling by Global Head of Product Andrew Juskaitis; as…

Usually I say the harder the better, but I’m not a huge fan of rain,’ says Michael Storer from his home near Varese, Italy, barely a day after he returned his name to the upper echelons of the WorldTour. ‘I tend to prefer nice and hot and dry weather, like we get in Perth.’ The Western Australian had just finished sixth on GC in the UAE Tour, with an impressive fourth place up the Jebel Hafeet climb on the final intense stage. There aren’t too many races on the calendar hotter and drier than the UAE Tour, but it was a terrific start to new beginnings for Storer in his first outing with Swiss outfit, Tudor Pro Cycling Team. Storer has moved on from a two-year stint at Groupama-FDJ, and…

Nestled amid rolling hills some 28km southeast of Adelaide lies the town of Hahndorf. Dating from early 1839 when 187 German Lutheran immigrants disembarked in Port Adelaide and negotiated the purchase of land in the Adelaide Hills, Hahndorf is recognised as Australia’s oldest surviving German settlement. How fitting, then, that some 169 years later it was to be the scene of German sprinter André Greipel’s first official stage win at the Tour Down Under, a race he would come to dominate. In 2008 the event was celebrating its 10th edition as well as its newly acquired UCI ProTour status (the equivalent of a WorldTour race today). Officials were hoping the benchmark and an increasingly international peloton racing alongside the stars of Australian cycling would attract more than half a million…

Is being mentally tough the answer to dealing with hard days in the saddle? ‘Mental toughness is a nice marketing phrase, which is often used as a shortcut to ignore wellbeing, and I find it tends to come from a certain type of coach or rider that doesn’t have great emotional intelligence,’ says Dr Josephine Perry, a sports psychologist who works with elite and amateur athletes. ‘When Romain Bardet crashed on Stage 13 of the 2020 Tour de France, he hit his head, got back on his bike encouraged by his team and rode another 90km when he clearly had concussion. The media coverage afterwards celebrated his “mental toughness”. But concussion is serious – it can have long-term effects on mental health and can lead to depression later in life.…

Aero kit is fastest on the flat; lightweight kit is fastest on steep climbs – we all know that. But what if you’re doing a long ride such as a gran fondo, with flat sections, climbs, descents, the full works? Is an aero, lightweight or allrounder setup faster overall? The answer isn’t obvious, so to find out we brought together three bikes and three corresponding sets of kit and tested them all on a 100km loop in the French Pyrenees, including an ascent of the mighty Col du Tourmalet. In total, the ride has 2,000m of ascent and is dominated by that famous climb, but it’s worth remembering that the Tourmalet accounts for only a fifth of the full distance, with much of the rest of the route looking like…

Desert canyons, snow-capped mountains and lonely gravel roads. They are all part of the annual Atlas Mountain Race, a fixed-route, self-supported, single-stage bicycle race that covers 1,300km from Marrakech to Essaouira, taking in 21,140m of climbing along the way. Competitors can expect a lot of single-track and old, broken colonial roads, with big distances between towns. There is very little tarmac. Temperatures can range from the high 20s in the day to sub-zero at night. There are steep gravel descents, river crossings and sections of hike-a-bike. There’s also the ‘Moroccan Stelvio’, a 1,000m climb over 12km with a large number of switchbacks. To ease the hardship, riders can also expect beauty in abundance, with trails overlooking deep valleys, dusty peaks, spectacular sunsets, plus friendly people and the occasional camel. The…

Merida could have halted the marketing campaign for its latest Silex after Matej Mohorič won the 2023 Gravel World Championships on one. By the Slovenian’s own admission – never mind his bike sponsor’s amazement – he wasn’t really supposed to win, and it might be fair to say the Merida Silex wasn’t supposed to win either. But then, that’s the thing. Merida says the Silex has been designed to be way more capable than the average gravel bike and has introduced some fairly radical features into the second generation of the model to ensure it lives up to its billing. The headlines are as follows: max tyre size 700c x 45mm (or 42mm with mudguards); dropped chainstays; 1x and 2x-compatible; multiple fork and frame luggage mounts; dropper post-compatible; option for…

Name Richard Romero Job title Bus driver at EF Education-EasyPost Nationality Spanish Seasons in the job Two Teams worked with EF Education-EasyPost In all the excitement of a Tour de France stage, the spotlight rarely falls on the team bus driver. Except in 2013, when the driver for Orica-GreenEdge, Garikoitz Atxa, endured the infamy of getting the team bus wedged beneath the finish gantry of Stage 1, with the peloton just kilometres from the finish and getting closer by the second. ‘Have you ever had bad luck like that?’ Cyclist asks EF Education-EasyPost’s bus driver, Richard Romero. ‘Thankfully not,’ the Spaniard replies. ‘It looked very stressful. Mind you, so is driving a long and heavy vehicle up and down the mountains.’ Romero is a recent recruit to the cycling bus…

It was Thursday afternoon. The weekend ahead was going to be my first weekend off in two months, and I was longing for a disconnect to revitalise my senses. I called some friends to see who would be keen to head to Victoria’s High Country to ride the route of the Peaks Challenge, starting at Falls Creek Village and descending into Mount Beauty before traversing up Tawonga Gap, up Mount Hotham and back via Omeo. The Peaks Challenge is one of the world’s toughest and most picturesque cycling challenges – comparable with the toughest stages of the Tour de France with over 4,000 metres of climbing throughout its 235km loop, and taking place annually in March. I’d never ridden it before, but I couldn’t wait to test myself out, even…

Whether by car or by bike, the Route des Grandes Alpes is one of the most spectacular journeys in Europe. Starting at Lake Geneva, it winds southwards through the Alps to Nice on the Mediterranean coast, taking in some of the most famous cols along the way. These include the mighty Col de l’Iseran at an altitude of 2,764m, the Col du Galibier at 2,645m, and the Col d’Izoard at 2,360m, then onwards to another giant that isn't as notorious as its neighbours but is still a worthy climb in its own right: the Col de Vars. At an average gradient of 5.9%, the Col de Vars may not appear very threatening, but this is a climb of nearly 20km, topping out at 2,108m, so it presents a significant challenge…

The Grail is the racier of Canyon’s two gravel bikes – the other being the burlier Grizl – and is focused on fast-paced gravel rides and races. And the first thing anyone familiar with the history of the Grail will notice is that the new bike has ditched its predecessor’s Double Decker bar. The Double Decker was a novel – and aesthetically challenging – suspension setup where a second bar ‘hovered’ over a lower bar, which allowed the top bar to flex considerably. The new Grail has gone for a much more conventional-looking bar, which Canyon claims is more aerodynamic and offers better ergonomics than the Double Decker, while undoubtedly being easier on the eye. Overall, the new Grail looks even slimmer and lighter than the previous version, with design…

The Posedla Joyseat is a fully custom 3D printed saddle, which the brand claims is currently unique to the market. According to the Joyseat’s Czech manufacturer, its purpose is to provide tailored fits for improved riding comfort. The Joyseat is available in three models – road, gravel and MTB – and involves a three-step process from purchase to product. The fitting uses a home imprint kit, which is then paired with an in-depth questionnaire on the rider and their riding style before the saddle is made. At $550 it’s eye-watering but, in context, the price isn’t that much more than some other 3D printed carbon-based saddles that don’t include customisation. So is it worth spending over $500 on any saddle? Based on my experience, if you have the cash to…