Cyclist的July 2025目录

Could you spot the difference between an AI-generated editor’s welcome letter and one penned by my own, slightly wrinkled, entirely human hand? Just for a bit of fun, we got ChatGPT to produce a version of a Cyclist editor’s letter, which it did in a matter of seconds, and the results were pretty terrifying. It was remarkably convincing – a little on the florid side for my tastes, but it found a nice line of argument to follow, waxing poetic about how too much focus on epic Alpine landscapes and an ‘obsession with chasing gradients’ can cause us to overlook the beauty on our own doorstep. It then brought the subject neatly around to our New Forest all-road bike test (see p108) before tying it all up with a little…

It would be safe to assume that ‘aero titanium’ isn’t high on most cyclists’ list of ‘bikes I need next’. But that might change, because the Reilly Fusion is a metal bike like few others. Sculpted to slice through the air, it takes all the practical benefits of titanium and marries them with the flowing lines of a modern, wind-tunnel-optimised carbon race bike. But, as Reilly co-founder Neil FitzGerald proudly notes, you’re far less likely to see one of these propped up against the wall at your local cafe. ‘I always smile when I see it glinting in the sunshine against a sea of carbon bikes. The internal routing gives those lovely clean lines and the titanium adds to its aesthetic appeal. It rides as fast as it looks too…

Google ‘Europe’s hardest cycling climb’ and Monte Zoncolan is bound to show up within the first handful of search results. It’s quite the billing to have, and for any cyclist it’s hard to ignore the challenge of ticking off the muchheralded ‘toughest climb of the Giro d’Italia’, which is why I find myself in the town of Ovaro in Italy’s northeast, layering up under overcast skies and scanning the hillsides for any clues about what is to come. In preparation, I dug deep on the internet for testimonials from fellow cyclists. I wish I hadn’t. What I encountered were tales of pain and hardship that would rival a Dickens novel, backed up by statistics telling of sustained average gradients of over 12% for more than 10km, with some sections spiking…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best kind of bike ride is one that takes you from A to B, and if you can’t do that – typically because you need to end up back where you started – a loop is the next best thing. Doubling back on yourself is just silly, while riding up a huge hill only to immediately ride back down the same road is surely a sign that you have too much time on your hands. It’s a defensible position, but if you’re overly dogmatic about it you’ll miss out on some absolute treasures. The Göscheneralp climb is one of them. It’s a ride all the way up a valley to a dead end, and it’s perhaps the least wellknown yet most charming…

During the night of 27th April 2024 – just 15 hours before the 18th edition of the men’s Rutland-Melton CiCLE Classic – the rain began. Race founder Colin Clews watched anxiously as heavy clouds drenched his race’s route. He knew that the numerous farm tracks and unmade roads that give the CiCLE Classic its unique character would flood if the rain persisted. As Clews went to bed, he could only wonder what the next day would bring. ‘It just did not stop,’ Clews tells Cyclist nearly 12 months later. ‘It continued to rain through to the Sunday afternoon.’ Predictably, roads began to flood. ‘We had held the event during floods before,’ he adds. ‘Back in 2012 we had to divert parts of the race; conditions then were terrible but nothing…

What is the definition of an all-road bike? We can all agree that an allroad bike isn’t a gravel bike. Nor is it a traditional endurance bike. Nor just a road bike with fat tyres. Although, hang about, all-road bikes will cope with bridleways and fire-roads, they love long distances and they are light and stiff with curly handlebars. It’s all a bit confusing. To solve this conundrum, Cyclist sent three intrepid journalists for a day in the New Forest near the south coast of England, where we rode three different all-road bikes on a mixture of tarmac and gravel, then convened at a suitable cafe to eat pastries and compare notes on what makes a good all-road bike, and whether these bikes fit the definition. So, on the Enve…

Specialized may be best known as a bike brand, but it has been in the footwear game for so long now that it’s a bona fide mover and shaker in that category as well. Its models compete with specialist shoe brands at all levels of the market, and its core range is so solid it can even afford to offer designs for more niche roles. Take 2019’s S-Works Exos, an extremely pared-back shoe designed to be as light as possible (a claimed 300g a pair). Or more recently the Ares, a bulkier counterpart to the S-Works Torch. Although it was never explicitly marketed as such, the Ares was a shoe for sprinters: a sock liner with sturdy exoskeletal straps that wrapped the foot and held it fast against an ultra-stiff…

As guerilla marketing goes, Cannondale could hardly have asked for better when EF Education-EasyPost’s Lachlan Morton used the new, as-yet-unreleased Synapse to ride the circumference of Australia in October 2024. He covered 14,200km in a little over 30 days, smashing the fastest known time for the ride by more than a week. With the Synapse’s reputation built around its ability to help riders cover big distances in comfort, Morton’s average of 450km a day did that no harm whatsoever. While this superhuman feat was rightly the headline, Morton’s choice of bike set internet forums buzzing. What people were arguing about was not whether the bike was a new Synapse – that much was evident – but whether the bike included the SmartSense system of lights and radar its predecessor debuted,…

'Who are the French guys who can win the Tour this year? It’s a subject that’s served at the table every July,’ says Romain Bardet, whose second place in 2016 is the closest a Frenchman has come to breaking his country’s 40-year Tour de France hoodoo. Not since Bernard Hinault held off fierce rival and teammate Greg LeMond in 1985 has the home nation won the greatest prize in cycling. But why? ‘French riders not winning the Tour? Yes, it applies a degree of pressure. But it’s the same in tennis at Roland Garros. It’s something we have to put up with,’ Bardet continues. Roland Garros is the Parisian home to the French Open tennis tournament. Mary Pierce was the last French woman to win there in 2000. You’d have…

Introduced in 2016, the Women’s CiCLE Classic includes multiple Olympic gold medallist and World Champion Katie Archibald among its winners (2017). Since 2022, Dame Laura Kenny has been its ‘champion’, with a trophy bearing her name awarded to the winner. ‘I think we are the only organisation in the country that actually runs an elite men’s race at international level and a women’s and junior race at national level. I am very proud of that fact,’ says race founder Colin Clews. The idea for a women’s race formed in 2015 when Peter Stanton, a long-term supporter of women’s racing, offered to sponsor the event. Clews agreed and the Women’s CiCLE Classic was born. ‘We ran like that [with Stanton individually funding] for six years,’ Clews says. ‘You can imagine the…

You’ll be forgiven for not having come across Guava before. It only launched in 2023 and the Spot is its first production bike, made in China before being custom painted and built to spec at the brand’s base in Barcelona. Guava is the brainchild of David Alvarez, a bike distribution and marketing specialist with decades of experience at brands such as Ridley and Cateye, and Nacho Suárez, an industrial engineer and former bike mechanic who hails from Barcelona. ‘What we love about gravel cycling is how much freedom and excitement it opens up, so we wanted to reflect that in a bike design,’ says Alvarez. The Spot is Guava’s own design and includes many of the elements you would expect to find on a modern gravel bike: dropped seatstays; dropped…

More and more brands are getting into helmets. Last year it was Canyon, and now Italian brand Fizik, better known for its shoes and saddles, has launched a fourmodel range. The Kudo is the company’s all-round road option, sitting alongside the Kudo Aero (a closed-off version of the Kudo), the Kassis for mountain biking and the Kunee for time-trials. Despite being its first stab at head protection, Fizik decided to oversee most of the designs itself. ‘We’ve invested in our own in-house helmet R&D team to develop the range,’ says Alex Locatelli, Fizik’s product manager. ‘Where we have worked with third-party specialists, it has been for fine-tuning aerodynamics via wind-tunnel testing.’ With the Kudo pitched at riders of gravel and cyclocross too, it has passed the most important test –…

April 19th 2006, and the last kilometre of the ninth edition of La Flèche Wallonne Féminine is approaching. The riders are starting the race’s final climb, the short but brutal Mur de Huy with its sections of over 20%. Every kilometre of the 105km ridden so far has been leading to this point, the climb where the race will be decided. First one to the top wins. As the climb gets underway, Oenone Wood, leader of the German Nürnberger team who have been working hard to set up this very attack, makes her move. Wood pulls away and the group of 27 riders around her starts to disintegrate. In second and chasing hard is Britain’s Nicole Cooke, leader of the Univega team. The climb steepens. The famous hairpins and that…

1 Freewheeling: Essays on Cycling £10.99, dauntbookspublishing.co.uk Research shows the effect of alcohol on walking is staggering. And the effect of cycling on the world is joy – that’s what Freewheeling is all about. It features 11 emotive essays from acclaimed writers, including comedian and vintage bike collector David O’Doherty, which span the breadth of cycling’s possibilities, from late night Lime bike adventures to bikepacking tours to India. 2 Elite Custom Race X bottle cages £14.99, freewheel.co.uk Never follow unsolicited advice. Do follow recommendations from pros, like Elite’s Custom Race bottle cage, which has been the most used cage in the pro peloton for over two decades. The X takes that design a step further, improving ergonomics and reducing weight by 35% to just 28.5g. It also has lower sides…

‘Compared to the men’s racing, where there are a few riders – especially one – who win most of the time, in the women’s races it’s much more open.’ So says pro racing photographer Francesco Rachello, and it’s hard to disagree. Over the course of the spring Classics season, while Tadej Pogačar was winning the men’s races seemingly at will, the women’s races were hard-fought and saw multiple different victors. Omloop Het Nieuwsblad went to Lotte Claes, Strade Bianche to Demi Vollering, Trofeo Alfredo Binda to Elisa Balsamo, Milan-San Remo to Lorena Wiebes, Tour of Flanders to Lotte Kopecky, Paris-Roubaix to Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, Amstel Gold to Mischa Bredewold, Flèche Wallonne to Puck Pieterse, Liège-Bastogne-Liège to Kim Le Court… The script was torn up time and again, making for exciting, unpredictable…

Held on 27th April 2025, the 20th edition of the CiCLE Classic was won by Britain’s Ben Granger riding for Italian team MG.K Vis-Colors for Peace. Granger broke away from the leading group in the final 8km to finish 23 seconds ahead of second-placed Mathis Avondts (Parkhotel Valkenburg), with Dylan Hicks (Raptor Factory Racing) completing the podium. ‘I’ve won at national level before, but this is my first UCI-level win,’ Granger tells Cyclist. ‘It’s really nice to see that now on my stats pages.’ With roadworks making the traditional finish in Melton Mowbray impossible, for the first time in the race’s history the market town of Oakham hosted both the start and finish. The 177km route featured six classified climbs and 11 unpaved sections, including three passes of the five-star…

When the concept of endurance bikes first emerged, manufacturers reasoned that this was the kind of road bike that the majority of their customers should be riding: comfortable and forgiving. Persuading people to buy one, however, proved more difficult. They still wanted the race bikes that they saw their heroes in the pro peloton riding. Since then, endurance bikes have evolved to combine practical elements (relaxed geometry, larger tyre clearance, more comfort) with integrated cockpits, sleeker looks and aero tube shapes – all the things that make race bikes so enticing. They have morphed into a potent mixture of the bike you need and the bike you want. In a further attempt to boost the category, many brands now prefer the upbeat term ‘all-road’ to the more lumpen ‘endurance’, although…

Polish brand Rondo claims the original Ruut was the world’s first gravel bike with adjustable geometry. Flipping the insert at the end of the TwinTip fork changed the fork offset and trail to offer either racier or more stable handling depending on preference. It’s a feature that has since been adopted by a number of other brands. ‘We wanted to make the Ruut suitable for different riding experiences,’ says product manager Marcin Skiba. ‘We all ride different terrain and surfaces.’ That original feature is perhaps the only thing left over from the first-generation bike. Even the phrase ‘complete overhaul’ would be a mild way of putting Rondo’s update of the Ruut versus the one Cyclist reviewed back in 2019. It has changed beyond recognition into something radical. ‘Primarily this was…