Innehållsförteckning för Issue 73 från Cyclist Australia

Let’s start with our exclusive interview with Ben O’Connor, the Aussie climbing sensation who has been making waves in the peloton. On the back of an impressive 2024 and his move to Team Jayco–AlUla in 2025, O’Connor shares his aspirations for the upcoming season and reflects on his journey to the top of the sport. We also have a chat with the ever-charismatic Julian Alaphilippe. The French superstar opens up about his goals for 2025 with Tudor Pro Cycling and how he plans to recapture the magic that made him a two-time world champion. Meanwhile, with the Spring Classics approaching, we set ourselves an audacious challenge: can a cyclist ride from London to Flanders and back in a single day, conquering the region’s most iconic climbs? Our Big Ride takes…

Maxxis High Road G3 road race tyre $89.95, kwtimports.com.au The team at Cyclist fitted a fresh set of Maxxis High Road G3 to the roadie just ahead of the summer holidays. Maxxis promises its third generation of the High Road tyre is a do-it-all product, providing lower rolling resistance and better puncture protection than the previous gen. It’s also lighter than the old model and sports a new tread pattern. The tyre is available as a tube-tyre or tubeless version in 25mm, 28mm and 30mm. We opted for the 28mm tubeless version and, after a few nervous moments wrestling with it to seat on our rims, hit the road with great success. The tyres proved fast and grippy and on their first ride came within one second of a PR on…

The Bogong High Plains Road up to Falls Creek from Mount Beauty is a cracking climb. While not the most difficult in the High Country with an average gradient of just 3.8%, the road remains hors catégorie and its 29.5km length poses a serious challenge. Spectacular views and countless alpine wildflowers reward those who make it all the way to the village. The climb starts near the base of Big Hill Mountain Bike Park, just above the bucolic township of Mount Beauty. The opening 4.5km head upwards, around Big Hill and into the Alpine National Park, at an average gradient of just under 5%. The cycling through the lower slopes is superb as glimpses of Mount Bogong, Victoria’s tallest mountain, give way to north-facing eucalypt forest at Cranky Charlie as…

These days there’s a certain image attached to titanium bikes: that they’re good for all-road and gravel. In a sense, that’s not unfair. Bikes made from titanium can deal with a bit of rough and tumble and offer a forgiving ride quality that’s appreciated away from the tarmac. However, a consequence of this perception is that when it comes to pure road riding, titanium is increasingly overlooked in favour of carbon composite bikes. Nonetheless, there are bikes such as the Moots Vamoots CRD – a fully integrated, lightweight titanium design with sharp handling – that make a good case that ti done right can and should be considered the equal of any of the near-identikit composite road race bikes it shares a market with. ‘Given where Vamoots CRD is positioned,…

With multiple Grand Tour stage wins under its belt in 2024, the lightly remodelled Canyon Aeroad CFR has hit the tarmac rolling. According to Lukas Birr, Canyon’s lead engineer, development was steered by one key group. ‘This bike was defined by pro rider feedback,’ he says. ‘The big overall theme was to be the fastest bike, which it is, so we didn’t need to change much there. And on the geometry, this was one of the points where the pros were totally content. We weren’t going to touch anything that wasn’t requested.’ This logic has led Canyon to concentrate its development efforts on the introduction of swappable aerodynamic drops that make the rider (not the bike) more aero without the need for complicated brake bleeding. This also gave Canyon the…

Back as flat as I can make it, shoulders rounded, hands together, head down, eyes on a fluctuating number on the Garmin screen. 0.226… 0.231… 0.229… The number is my CdA – effectively describing how aerodynamic I am – and as I pedal round this outdoor velodrome it’s being measured by Body Rocket, a commercially available live drag measurement system. When my first 10 laps are complete, I pull up to the stands and ask what a good number is. ‘The really fast guys, the Hour record guys, are maybe 0.15, 0.16,’ says Eric DeGolier. I won’t be challenging Filippo Ganna anytime soon, but that’s not the point. DeGolier is Body Rocket’s founder and CEO and has his sights set ‘on bringing aerodynamic testing to the outdoors for elite and…

5:07am. Even when it is cold and dark, there is something magical about riding the streets of London while most of the city sleeps. Every light is green. The only other traffic is the occasional delivery van and a handful of cabs cruising like sharks in search of scraps. I skirt round the back of King’s Cross and down a deserted side street to find the underground parking at St Pancras station. In a perfect world I would be taking my bike with me on the Eurostar so I could simply ride off at the other end in Belgium. Sadly, despite the growth in demand for sustainable travel, Eurostar only offers limited options for carrying bikes on journeys to the Continent, so I’m obliged to leave my bike in the…

Management theorist Peter Drucker is credited with the saying, ‘What gets measured gets improved.’ Which as anyone who wears a smartwatch knows is a falsehood of seismic proportions. Wading through the torrent of information and apps proclaiming to guide you to a new, healthier and happier existence would result in muscle strain (which there is almost certainly a preventative app for). Data is king, but only if that data can be easily interpreted and applied to your cycling and daily life. Which brings us to HRV or heart rate variability. Glance down at your wrist and, chances are, that life-controlling screen reflects your HRV score. It’s on Garmin, Apple Watch, Polar, Coros, Whoop. It tells you if you’re up, down or possibly middling. But what do the numbers mean? And…

Perched at the neck of the Valtellina valley in Lombardy, and flanked on all sides by brooding mountains, lies the medieval Alpine town of Bormio. It is the gateway to some of the world’s finest and hardest cycling climbs, with the Passo dello Stelvio to the north and, to the south, a pair of passes that have become legendary thanks to their association with the Giro d’Italia: the Mortirolo and Gavia. These climbs have featured in Italy’s Grand Tour on numerous occasions, and have garnered notoriety in the pro peloton, having seen their share of heartbreak and heroics. Today, Cyclist is planning to climb them both. What goes down As we roll out of town it’s a glorious summer morning with a freshness in the air. My ride companion for…

Calling a bike fast without independent data to back it up is suspect. But you don’t need data to tell you when a bike feels fast and when its riding manners favour aggressive riding. Bikes may be inanimate objects but some give the distinct impression they want to be ridden quickly, whether by virtue of ride position, styling or the sensation of pedalling. This second-generation Factor Ostro VAM is one such bike, and that sense of speed makes itself felt via a combination of all three. It looks fast standing still, it feels fast when you’re standing on the pedals and it feels faster still in an aero tuck with your hands draped over the bars. Factor fresh According to Factor’s founder, Rob Gitelis, the overriding design aim for the…

Wahoo is a name synonymous with pushing tech boundaries to improve data availability and user experience. Its latest computer, the Elemnt Ace, continues these themes in a reworked and supersized chassis, and with a brand new metric to boot. The Ace joins the Elemnt Bolt and Elemnt Roam in Wahoo’s computer catalogue as its new flagship. It has done away with the brand’s trademark lights around the border of the unit, preferring to bulk up the display, which now sits at an imperious 3.8 inches (9.7cm). For context, the screen of an iPhone 4 was 3.5 inches and an iPhone 16 is 6.1 inches. The Ace is 20% larger than the Garmin 1050, which appears to be the computer Wahoo considers its sole competition. It’s big. When first opening the…

Strava stats, watts per kilo, ultra-high modulus carbon… in the performance-obsessed world of modern road cycling, the simple joy of getting around on two wheels is easily overlooked. That glorious feeling of cruising along under your own steam can get forgotten when there’s a KoM up for grabs. But Tore Juncher Jørgensen of Starfish Bicycles is on a mission to change that. From the Starfish workshop in Vester Skerninge, Denmark, Jørgensen crafts what they term ‘soft bikes for soft people’. These aren’t performance machines built for crushing PBs; they’re designed for fun with an emphasis on comfort, and what they sacrifice in speed they compensate for in character. ‘I’ve always been riding bikes,’ says Jørgensen. ‘To begin with it was just a means of transportation, but then around 2017 my…

‘I’m no Tadej, Van der Poel or Van Aert, so I think with the capacities I have, I’ve probably achieved the most I can’ Search on YouTube and you’ll find a 10-minute video of Victor Campenaerts preparing for the 2024 Tour de France. The now 33-year-old Belgian is nestled down on his aero bars, shoulders squeezed in, training mask strapped to his mouth, perspiration streaming down his clean-shaven head, riding at a cadence that would leave mere mortals’ hips displaced. He follows with a cold shower and indoor rowing to strengthen a back broken in 2023, before an outdoor effort in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We learn that Campenaerts rides with laces in his shoes rather than dials for aerodynamic, weight and comfort benefits. It’s a regime of military precision…

Salzburg is a city of grand heritage, resplendent in baroque architecture and famed as the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It’s a must-visit for lovers of art and music. Better still, once you’ve had your fill of culture, the Austrian city can now add gravel cycling to its list of attractions. The Salzburgerland region has created two multi-day gravel routes that start and finish in central Salzburg and head deep into the surrounding mountains. The ‘soft’ route clocks up a total of 460km and 4,700m of elevation gain and can be completed in a week depending on how energetic you’re feeling. The ‘hard’ route is 660km over 10 days and packs in a total elevation of 12,200m, including ascents of monsters such as the Grossglockner. Just for a taster, Cyclist…

Although it only launched officially at the Tour de France, the new Pinarello Dogma F had been raced on by Ineos Grenadiers for the whole 2024 season, meaning the bike is already a decent chunk through its lifespan. The Dogma F-series is revised on a frequent basis – it generally has a two-year cycle versus competitors’ three or four years – so it’s understandable that the changes aren’t huge compared to the previous model, but their incremental nature feels appropriate considering Pinarello is the technical partner of the racing team that introduced the ‘marginal gains’ philosophy to road cycling. The big news is the inclusion of a new type of carbon fibre that Pinarello says allows for a lighter frameset as well as a ‘0.2% reduction in the bike’s drag…

It’s a massive statement, but perhaps the biggest advancement in road bikes in the past five years is the refinement and reliability of tubeless tyres. They let us run lower pressures that are more comfortable, less prone to punctures, and even more aerodynamic. However, despite how far they’ve come in terms of usability, tubeless tyres can still be a pain in the neck to change without compressed air. I’d say every road bike rider needs to try tubeless tyres and, therefore, every road bike rider needs some form of compressed air to seal and seat their tyres. Yes, some track pumps will do the job and Co2 canisters also provide the desired inflation, but an air compressor will get those tyres on faster, cleaner and with less swearing than other…