Innehållsförteckning för Issue 69 från Cyclist Australia

For the first time since the Tour started in 1903, the peloton will not make its weary way to Paris. Instead, because the French capital is hosting this year’s Olympics, the poor old Tour has been told to take a hike, so to speak, and find somewhere else to play. That means there will be no champagne sipping and mucking about on the final stage as the procession heads sedately towards the sprint finish on the Champs-Elysees safe in the knowledge of who has already won the GC. Good thing too. A Stage 21 time-trial is a much more satisfying way to conclude the Tour, leaving the door open for a last-minute upset. And a change of venue will only add an extra frisson of excitement, especially when that venue…

Cervélo has unleashed its second-generation Áspero on the fast gravel market with a swathe of relatively minor changes, proving the Canadian company’s confidence in this class-leading bike. When the first rendition Áspero launched in 2019 it was an immediate hit and signalled a diversification in Cervélo’s target market. Before the Áspero, Cervélo made bikes exclusively for use on tarmac, with its lightweight road R models, aero S models and time trial P models the bikes that would come to mind whenever you saw the famous é head tube badge. To highlight Cervélo’s popularity pre-Áspero, its P models are so successful they have long been (and remain) the triathlon bike of choice at the Hawaiian Ironman, a place where off-road adventure would scarcely be a consideration for participants. Changes small but…

‘A rider, said Anquetil, is made up of two parts, a person and a bike… and in climbing the thing is to make the bike as light as possible… So at the start of every climb, Anquetil moved his water bottle from its holder to his back pocket.’ I’ve always loved this tale from Tim Krabbe’s The Rider. I have no idea if it’s true, though I can quite imagine this happening in an era when riders stuck pins in their legs to stop cramp and only raced on tubulars that had been ‘seasoned’ – stored in a dark room for several months in the belief this hardened the treads, thereby making for faster, more puncture-resistant tyres. But I digress. The point is, Maitre Jacques was onto something. How much…

Cyclist: Let’s get right to it – can Tadej Pogačar do the Giro-Tour double? Mauro Gianetti: It’s a big challenge but we believe it’s possible, otherwise we wouldn’t try. We expect a completely new level from Tadej and we will have the answer at the end of July. What he did last year after his crash was amazing – with just one month to train he was able to finish second in the Tour de France just because he’s Tadej Pogačar. No other rider could have done that. Cyc: How important for cycling is your rivalry with Visma-Lease a Bike? MG: When our team was smaller, the challenge was to be as good as Sky. Now that’s changed it’s good for us, for the sport and for the public. There’s…

The Specialissima is Bianchi’s climbing bike, and with over 2,500m of climbing on our route I was thankful for its 7.3kg (claimed) weight. Not that lightness was its only quality. The Specialissima was a classy all-rounder, blending nimbleness on the climbs with surefootedness on the descents, and enough comfort to see me arrive at the end of a long day unbruised and remarkably fresh. Shifting was impeccable thanks to the Shimano Ultegra Di2 groupset with 11-30t cassette, and the Velomann Palladium carbon wheels (Velomann being a sub-brand of Bianchi) felt fast-rolling. They were helped by Pirelli P Zero Road tyres, which I’m a huge fan of – to my mind one of the best all-round performance tyres on the market. I really wish I could have taken this bike home…

‘The speculation underlines the exciting reach of Red Bull. It will be great to engage with a new audience’ Ralph Denk leans back in his office chair at Bora-Hansgrohe’s headquarters in south Germany. Around him is a collection of Specialized bikes once used by his team. ‘I’ve collected one of these each year since forming the road team in 2007. That’s a long time leading a squad at this level but I’m super-motivated,’ he says. ‘Cycling – it’s 24/7. I’m 50 years old now but I’m driven by pushing things forward, by winning the Tour de France with Primož Roglič and Red Bull. Well, let’s see how far we can go.’ We’re going to need a bigger budget Denk is founder and team manager of Germany’s only WorldTour team and,…

Deep in Victoria’s forests lies the route up to Lake Mountain, an underestimated climb of two distinct halves. While perhaps not as iconic as some further up the Great Dividing Range, Lake Mountain, and particularly the opening salvo, deserves respect. Rising 20.5km up and up from picturesque Marysville to the alpine resort almost directly above, this climb is much more difficult than the raw numbers suggest. The climb itself starts along Marysville-Woods Point Road at the roundabout at the bottom of town, just past the bridge over the Steavenson River and then just past the turn-off to Lady Talbot Drive, the start of many an epic gravel ride (for another day!). Signs of town disappear almost immediately as the road veers up through eucalypt forest. There are no gentle contours…

What the hell is water? This was the question the late American novelist David Foster Wallace posed in 2005 in a commencement speech to the graduating class of Kenyon College, Ohio. For Wallace the rhetorical purpose was not to get the students to consider water per se, but to encourage them to appreciate the extraordinary in the everyday. It’s something I find myself contemplating as I stand under a shower so powerful that it is not only blowing away the cobwebs but exfoliating more than a good few skin cells. A morning shower is something I would normally take for granted but on an island where it rains so little, this thunderous stream feels decadent to the point of indecency. Sitting at the same latitude as the Sahara Desert, Gran…

The Museum of Last Things would, fittingly, be situated on a remote mountaintop, buffeted by winds of fortune, blanketed in melancholia and accessible only by a steep, winding road that would be closed several months of the year by lingering nostalgia. Here you would find the ‘last things’ that famous riders used, wore or sacrificed at portentous moments in their careers. Every object would tell a tale of heroism or villainy, triumph or heartbreak, strength or weakness. Take that ordinary-looking bicycle chain, for example. It’s the chain that cost Andy Schleck the yellow jersey when it unshipped as Alberto Contador attacked on the Port de Bales during the 2010 Tour de France. Or that wristwatch. If defending champion Pedro Delgado had wound it up, he’d never have been almost three…

BMC has introduced a new Roadmachine that is sure to fire up anyone looking for a comfort road bike dually billed as a gravel bike. Instead of developing a new gravel bike to sit alongside its adventure-oriented URS, the third generation of the Roadmachine (fourth if you include its predecessor, the BMC Granfondo) has been designed for road and gravel rides, with tyres optimised for 32-35mm (but capable of fitting up to 40mm), mounts on the top tube for a small bag and even a downtube storage hatch on the premier 01 models. The bike can be built as either a racy gravel rig or a relatively relaxed road bike, and its lightweight frame with comparatively tall stack means it could play well in both arenas. Each BMC Roadmachine to…

‘Hell is not enough of a word to describe the conditions today.’ That was the verdict of Canyon-Sram’s Kasia Niewiadoma after the 2018 Strade Bianche. She had just finished second in Siena for the third time in a row yet still had a smile on her face, reflecting that it was perhaps her destiny to be a perennial runner-up at what was fast growing into one of the most prestigious races on the women’s calendar. ‘It was an extremely tough race,’ she told Cyclingnews, ‘and I have a huge appreciation for every rider who managed to finish today.’ Held in early March, snow had hit the white roads of Tuscany in the days leading up to the race, but it was heavy rain and near-zero temperatures that met the peloton…

Nice is a cycling city. Nestled on the southern coast of France, it has the pleasant climate and relaxed atmosphere of a Riviera beach resort, but turn away from the azure waters of the Mediterranean and your gaze is drawn upwards to the foothills of the French Alps. Is it any wonder that so many pro cyclists decide to call Nice home, or that the city is such a magnet for riders looking to escape the winter cold? It’s mid-March when Cyclist visits. The morning sun is warm, and the bike path on the Promenade des Anglais – the road along the seafront so named because it was paid for by English expats in the 1800s – is a constant flow of cyclists. An unidentifiable rider in Team TotalEnergies pro…

If you’ve spent any time immersed in the world of bikes, you’ve likely encountered the dismissive line: ‘but they’re made by Giant.’ Fifteen years deep into this passion, I’ve heard (and read) it too often. It’s never said with admiration, always as a slight, whether about a Giant or a bike they presume is made by Giant. Ask a Giant owner what they love about their bike, and they’ll likely rave about the ride quality or the weight or the value. Venture into the realm of European bike enthusiasts, and they’ll serenade you with praises of the carbon layup. The quality of hand-made construction. The workmanship. It’s like a relentless vuvuzela, impossible to ignore. The illusory truth persists to today: anything crafted in the West is synonymous with bespoke excellence,…

There are many reasons to ride a bike. It might be to get some exercise and fresh air, exorcise some competitive demons in a local crit, or simply catch up with friends on a coffee ride. But not often do we ride our bike for someone else, for something bigger than us. However, for a large bunch of cyclists – including two recently retired road cycling legends in Simon Gerrans and Richie Porte – that’s exactly what they did when they recently came together in northern Tasmania to raise money for research into motor neurone disease as part of the Pedal Cure 4 FightMND (PC4MND) charity ride. From the get-go and both on and off the bike, there’s a sense of community among the pack – more like volunteering at…

The Supernaut GR3 is a gravel bike that doesn’t like to go slow. That may sound like a corny marketing slogan, but in this case it’s actually true. The thing that most separates this bike from other gravel bikes out there is its geometry – the head tube angle is an incredibly slack 68.5°. Most gravel bikes are between 71° and 72°, so the Supernaut’s head tube figure puts it closer to cross-country mountain bike territory and it has a very pronounced effect on the way the bike handles. At slow speeds, the front end is liable to wheel flop. The shallow head tube angle means the front wheel wants to tip to one side or the other even with just minor movements at the handlebar. It can make the…

When Shimano released its 105 Di2 12-speed groupset in 2022, the feeling was that here, at last, was electronic shifting for the masses. Historically, 105 has been Shimano’s mid-level groupset, straddling the gap between its top-tier and budget offerings, and this fully electronic version came in well over $1,000 cheaper than its big brother, Ultegra Di2. However, at a price of $2,700-plus it’s still by no means cheap, so has the groupset of the people gone too fancy? In my opinion, absolutely not. Moving to electronic (although a mechanical version still exists) and gaining a sprocket in the process, it’s clear that Shimano has given 105 a fully fledged makeover. Not only is it functionally different but it takes on the sleeker aesthetic of its flashier siblings with a glossy…

Pirelli P Zero Race TLR RS road racing tyre $144.99, fesports.com.au Pirelli’s latest tyre has all the claims you’d want to improve your speed. Before the P Zero Race TLR RS was even launched, Pirelli could boast it was ridden to 30 victories and 70 podiums at WorldTour level underneath the Lidl-Trek men’s and women’s teams. The brand burst with pride during this year’s Giro, finally able to say the Race TLR RS is the official tyre of Lidl-Trek. Pirelli has borrowed compound technologies from its motorsport arm to create the SmartEvo2 rubber, which improves grip (and speed) in wet and dry conditions. It has also refined the SpeedCore casing to make it lighter than the predecessor while maintaining the same level of puncture protection. This tyre is more about…

‘When I tell people at home I’m involved in cycling, they say, “Ah, keirin?” I’m like, “No, road cycling.” And they look perplexed.’ Takuya Sakamoto has been a soigneur – the great multi-taskers of any cycling team – for American WorldTour team EF Education-EasyPost since 2021 and has worked in cycling since 2015, a career path that he admits is unusual for a young man from Japan. ‘I never thought I’d leave Japan and work in Europe,’ he says. ‘Certainly not in cycling.’ In Japan, track-based keirin racing is big business thanks to the fact that it’s one of only four sports in Japan that the public can legally gamble on, but road racing has struggled to gain traction. ‘It might seem odd that road cycling’s not more popular when…

The Tarmac SL7 has since been superseded by the SL8, but that simply means that you can bag yourself a bargain if you’re not worried about having the latest version. This bike was more than $2,000 dearer previously, but nonetheless still represents a sweet spot in the Tarmac range between accessibility of price and quality of spec. Like all Tarmacs, the SL7 blends the lightness, aerodynamics and handling of a race bike with enough comfort to see you through a long day in the saddle. And while it’s almost $12k cheaper than the top-spec S-Works SL8, it doesn’t skimp on components, coming with a Shimano Ultegra groupset, integrated bar-stem and a set of nifty Roval C38 carbon wheels.…

The Kask Elemento is the Italian brand’s range-topping helmet, swooping in to sit above its already-premium Protone Icon and Utopia Y. Developed alongside WorldTour team Ineos Grenadiers, the Elemento is noteworthy not least because of its pricetag but also because it features two new technologies, which Kask dubs Fluid Carbon 12 and Multipod. A size medium weighs a claimed 260g and costs $650. In terms of weight that puts the Elemento mid-pack, but its asking price makes it the most expensive road cycling helmet on the market. Keeping a cool head Fluid Carbon 12 is a carbon composite that comprises a series of interlinked panels on the Elemento’s shell, which effectively form a roll-cage. Similar designs have been used by competitors but Kask is the first to extend the use…

It’s rare for a sunglasses brand to be able to claim that it has brought something new to the table, but that is exactly what Poc says it has done with its Propel glasses. They have been designed using computational fluid dynamics to enhance their aerodynamic performance. That’s right: aero sunglasses. What’s more, in the context of the latest trend for helmets overlapping ears being pioneered by Kask and Poc itself, it seems the Propels were just step one in the process of extending the slipstream potential from helmet to the rest of the head. Aero edges Poc says the Propel’s gains come from a trailing edge at the sides of the lens, which is shaped to direct airflow away from the ears and towards the shoulders, not unlike its…

The ‘trickle down’ concept is common in cycling. Clever design features begin life on top-tier kit before making their way down the price range, and it only takes a glance at Specialized’s new Torch 3.0 shoes to see evidence of it. They now have the sleek looks and asymmetric closure system of the S-Works Torch shoes that sit above them in the lineup, yet in this case there is also a rare example of ‘trickle up’. ‘Despite a host of changes, there has been no change in fit for the Torch 3.0s,’ says Richard Salaman, product manage at Specialized. ‘We actually brought the S-Works Torch shoes in line with them, rather than the other way around.’ That means the Torch 3.0’s shape is still derived from Specialized’s Body Geometry data,…