Innehållsförteckning för Issue 78 från Cyclist Australia

Well, we made it. 2025’s been a big year for the team at Cyclist on and off the bike, and I’d like to offer our readers and partners a sincere thank you for all the support you’ve shown throughout these past 12 months. We’ve been all around the globe, exploring epic places to ride, putting the latest bikes to the test, and setting our alarms to interview the world’s most recognisable riders in their preferred time zone. But like a well-timed sprint, we’ve crescendoed to this edition (number 78!) which is absolutely jam-packed with podium energy. Let’s start with our cover: Cadel, Gerro, Phil. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more decorated men’s trio in Aussie cycling. With almost 150 wins between them including stages in all three Grand Tours,…

Castelli’s Espresso ensemble is designed to keep us cool even in the Australian summer. The bibs and knicks are recommended for weather ranging from 18–35°C, and the lightweight, breathable Air-O fabric will keep you as fresh as possible. The knicks and jersey each have well-placed silicone grippers that keep the kit in place all day, and both have a raw-cut, seamless ending for maximum comfort. There are heaps of colours in the range, with everyone’s tastes seemingly catered for. We were especially impressed by the Espresso vest, which Castelli recommends riders wear from 12°C. It packs down to the size of an inner tube, so it’s perfect to wear out of the house and remove mid-ride. The quality is excellent and it contains three rear pockets. Although lightweight material, our…

Suunto’s Wing 2 is about as good as it gets for open-ear headphones. They allow you to listen to music, books or podcasts and, crucially, keep your hearing available for external noises like approaching cars. This model has some unique features that stand out in a rapidly growing market. Its power bank (similar to what you get with wireless earbuds) can recharge the headphones on the go, adding up to 24 hours to the already impressive 12 hours of run time you get on full charge. When paired with the app, there’s a neck health test where you’re asked to perform a series of movements to determine your flexibility. It then recommends exercises to improve comfort and mobility. The Wing 2 also allows you to answer calls with a nod…

The morning light spills over the Geelong waterfront, and three figures roll quietly into view. Between them, they’ve worn yellow jerseys, conquered Europe’s peaks, and defined generations of Australian cycling. But today, Cadel Evans, Simon Gerrans and Phil Anderson are simply mates on a ride. They spin past the Novotel and along the bay, swapping stories that blend nostalgia with banter. If you want to understand why this corner of Victoria punches above its weight in cycling, start with a morning like this. The sea’s calm, the road gleams, and three riders who once ruled Europe’s roads are laughing like clubmates as they roll out of town. Our host locations, including Greater Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast, have long been quiet achievers in Australian cycling. History runs…

Organised chaos and hot stress. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Tour de France. Then I worry if I will have enough shirts to last over four weeks on the road covering first the three-week men’s race and then the ten-day Tour de France Femmes. For anyone who works in professional cycling, the Tour is almost certainly the most lucrative – and most stressful – job of the year. It’s also unmissable, a mobile trade fair for the riders, the sponsors, the teams, the media and everyone on the scene – right down to the VIP guest car drivers, most of whom are ex-pros. It is everything they say it is. The Tour is indeed, inimitably, the Tour. It is overblown, filthy, hot,…

Expectations have exploded since Garmin released the world’s first GPS-enabled sportswatch in 2003. Those agricultural beginnings developed into a boundless industry where we demand Amoled displays, touchscreens, weeks-long battery life, and just about every function you could imagine. The Forerunner 970 delivers these features and much more. I used this latest Garmin wearable every day for two months before writing this review. I’m a long-term Garmin user whose daily watch is a Forerunner 745 which, when released just five years ago, was arguably the best multisport watch anyone had ever seen. So please allow me to draw my comparisons with a unit from five years ago, rather than something more recent from Garmin like the Forerunner 965, released just two years ago. The first thing you notice with the 970…

Farsports has been rippling through the bike industry for several years now, so we asked its new Aussie distributor if we could take a look at the Evo C5 – a 50mm deep wheelset that comes stock with Ceramic Speed bearings. The Evo C5 hits all the high notes you need when looking at a set of wheels, including a spoke-hole free hooked rim, bladed spokes and a star ratchet engagement system (like DT Swiss). The Evo C5s are 24mm/30mm internal/external wide and are 1,270g for the pair. Like what you hear? Throw in a $2,750 price tag and it’s a package appealing to everyone – even those willing to pay twice as much! We were lucky enough to try a pair for a couple of months and only saw…

Cyclist: G’day Phil and Simon. First up, please give our readers a quick snapshot of what you’re up to now! Phil Anderson: My final year in the pro peloton was 1994, so 31 seasons ago. In the period since, I began Phil Anderson Cycling (PAC), which ran a calendar of training camps. This evolved first into the Spring Classics, then a couple of years later to the Tour de France. This expanded to the other Grand Tours as well as bespoke private cycling experiences. Running for a couple of decades, COVID killed the sector, so I took the break to wind up PAC. Since COVID, I’ve been enjoying retirement, travelled a little, and still get out on my bike five days a week. I would call it ‘living the dream’. Simon…

In January 2015, the inaugural edition of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race rolled out from the waterfront in Geelong, Victoria, conceived both as a farewell to its namesake – Cadel Evans – and a bold new chapter in Australian cycling. That first edition offered a route of 174km that wound through Geelong, ran west to the iconic surf breaks of the Surf Coast, and swung through the rolling landscapes of the Bellarine Peninsula before returning to finish in the Geelong suburbs via the Challambra Climb. Originally framed as a personal curtain-call for Cadel, the event has grown into something far more significant: a world-class one-day race for both men and women combining spectacular scenery, elite competition and local community participation. For the people of Geelong, the race is…

The Sky High Loop is a gateway ride. At nearly 39km and with 544 metres of elevation gain, this loop has everything needed to get you hooked on gravel and exploring the mixed surfaces of Victoria’s High Country. Starting in historic Alexandra, on Taungurung Country, just two hours from Melbourne, the ride rolls out from the visitor centre on the main street and heads along the Ultima Thule Creek and through Leckie Park – the town’s main sports ovals. The main event here is the Great Victorian Rail Trail. It’s well signposted, and crossing over Station Street is a bit of a clue. Surprisingly for a rail trail, there’s a small 1km climb at nearly 5% straight after leaving the station The town’s decommissioned but pristinely maintained train station marks…

The figure glaring back at us from my weather app reads 1.6 degrees. Outside the window of our accommodation, the world looks crisp and cold. Inside, the heater blasts away at 25 degrees. Tom and I exchange a weak sigh and mutter the words, ‘Alright mate, let’s do this.’ Despite the chill, the sky is blue and the first day of spring has delivered a near-perfect setting for this epic day of riding. The main street of Nannup is barely awake when Tom and I clip in and roll down to The Stopping Place, the go-to local cafe. First things first: coffee. An almond flat white for me, a long macchiato for Tom. With two perfectly brewed cups in hand, we break out the GPS unit and examine the route…

Do you remember your first road bike? Mine was a Norco Flyte. It was a yellow aluminium frame, with Shimano Sora and 32-spoke alloy wheels. It had a threaded headset and Panaracer wire-beaded tyres. It had a triple chainring and its top sprocket on the eight-speed cassette had 23 teeth. I was 13 and visited that bike twice a week for a month before my parents bought it for me. That bike changed my life. Eleven-year-old Will’s first road bike is a Seek 1 from Giant. It’s very different to the Norco Flyte. Giant has re-imagined its flatbar utility Seek series, replacing the sturdy model with an epic line of kids’ road/gravel bikes with components and colour schemes to make everyone jealous. A keen mountain biker, Will spent all his…

Trek has produced its first lattice saddles, with the new Aeolus-badged units suitable for road, gravel or mountain biking. Its AirLoom technology is a 3D-printed matrix, which provides tailored support to riders’ pressure points wherever they sit on the saddle. This is different to foam, which compresses unevenly, spreading pressure and creating discomfort over time. It’s also preferable to no padding, which is about as comfortable as it sounds. There are four new Aeolus saddles out, three with AirLoom technology, available in 135mm, 145mm and 155mm, with some saddles only offering a combination of those widths. The most exotic of the bunch is the Aeolus RSL AirLoom (pictured), which has carbon rails and a carbon shell, and weighs 164g. Coming in $200 cheaper, at $399, the Aeolus Pro AirLoom is…

In a world of fast media and everyone selling you something, it’s easy to look at a sponsorship announcement with a degree of cynicism. When I first read that Mapei had acquired the naming rights of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race (CEGORR) until 2028 and it meant so much to Cadel to continue his great relationship with the Italian giant, I thought it was just the usual PR stuff. Most know that Cadel was involved in the Mapei team in 2002 (hell, he wore the maglia rosa with them) and he credits the team with giving him the pro road foundation needed for future success. We’re also aware that Mapei has been the bedrock of the CEGORR and is the race’s only sponsor that has paid up since…

Troll my bike bag out into the crisp September air as I leave Hamilton Airport, bound for a long weekend of riding and exploring in New Zealand’s cycling heartland, Rotorua. The drive to Rotorua unfolds through lush, undulating farmland, a landscape so vivid and green it’s easy to see why this region famously doubled as Hobbiton in The Lord of the Rings. A relaxed roadside lunch breaks up the journey before I arrive in Rotorua ahead of an epic weekend of riding. Checking into my hotel, I quickly assemble my bike, eager for a spin around town. When I’m travelling solo with my bike, this is my favourite way to get my bearings and spin my legs after a flight. Once back, my first destination is Hell’s Gate, a geothermal…

Argonaut’s RM3 has achieved renown for that most mercurial of characteristics: ride quality. Back in 2023, Cyclist reviewer James Spender dubbed the bike the best he’d ever ridden – something he maintains is still the case today. ‘It punches, it climbs, it carves, it cruises, it could go all day most places,’ he says in his review, before going on to ask the question: how? The short answer is through a combination of constant refinement to a single road bike design for more than a decade, novel construction techniques and an attention to detail that may well be peerless. However, if ever a bike deserved to have its full story told, it’s the RM3. Rusted roots ‘I started Argonaut in 2007, building both fillet brazed and lugged steel bikes,’ says…

‘I used to be in this club called Nine to Five Racing,’ says Graham Shrive, Factor’s director of engineering. ‘As you can imagine, it was for racers who also had a normal job. With the Monza, that’s who we wanted to appeal to. ‘Up until now we’ve been solely premium. We had a lot of doors closed to us in some territories because we didn’t have anything in that meat and potatoes range. This is us growing the base of our pyramid a bit,’ he adds. The result is the Monza, a bike that overlaps significantly with the Ostro VAM, the aero bike ridden by WorldTour team Israel-Premier Tech, in terms of both its appearance and performance objectives. The differences lie not only in the number of zeros after the pound…

Faster. Lighter. Stiffer… I can hear you already. Boring. I get it. While most riders aren’t actively looking for a heavier and more flexy bike (even if some brands, I would argue, still seem to offer exactly that), this is the story behind basically every new model release. Previously, ‘aero’ wasn’t on the menu for many. But to be fair to Cervélo, aerodynamics have always been a part of their raison d’etre. Founders Gerard Vroomen and Phil White embraced it long before aero was cool. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, though even with all of the above in mind there’s undeniably some ‘same-same-ness’ around the S5 launch. Not helped by the myriad leaked photos – or downright open use by Team Jumbo – Visma – before its…