Table of contents for March 2026 in Cyclist

It’s a little-known fact that Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity while doing high-intensity intervals on his turbo trainer. As he was digging in for a minute at 400 watts, the physicist noticed that time seemed to slow down, such that the hand on his watch passed glacially slowly from one second to the next, whereas his recovery minute seemed to be over in a flash. As the sweat splashed onto his top tube, he realised that time is not a fixed concept but flexes in accordance with the laws of the universe and 20-minute Zwift sessions. If you’re not convinced this story is entirely true, just wait until it has had time to slosh around the internet for a while, where it will be scraped by AI before…

Introduced by Sram in 2019, the universal derailleur hanger, or UDH, is both a part and a fitment standard, and on its launch it was billed as an open-licence alternative to conventional derailleur hangers, which are notoriously proprietary. Before UDH came along, hangers didn’t just differ between brands but also between bike models from the same brand and even different generations of the same model. ‘It meant thousands of incompatible hangers on the market, spotty replacement availability and frequent “bike is out of commission until we find the right part” scenarios,’ says Dan Stefiuk, road product manager at Sram, the company that invented UDH. Sram’s pitch was to tout UDH’s robust nature as well as its intercompatibility. It was presented as being both stronger than most other hangers and easier…

Historians claim Nice was named after Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, following a military triumph over the local Ligurian tribes. But sitting on my seafront terrace, watching the evening sun settle over a yachtdotted bay, a much simpler explanation suggests itself: Nice is just nice. Flanked by the celebrity stomping grounds of Cannes to the west and Monaco to the east, Nice carries a similar air of affluence from the moment you step off the plane. Where most arrivals halls are lined with coach-transfer desks and car-rental kiosks, here they appear almost outnumbered by companies offering private helicopter transfers along the Riviera. In this millionaire’s playground, my rented 2014 Renault Kangoo stands out among the Porsches and Ferraris, but my journey here isn’t important. It’s where I’m going that…

The Passo Campolongo has a charmingly musical name that sounds like it could be the title of an Italian piano sonata. But cyclists who come to this climb in the Dolomites soon learn that it is a true symphony of nature, with high-tempo ascents past twisted pinnacles of rock, rhythmic stretches through soft mountain meadows and a glorious crescendo of highaltitude vistas. Located in Alta Badia in the Dolomites of northern Italy, the Passo Campolongo has featured in 14 editions of the Giro d’Italia, with legendary riders such as Felice Gimondi, Laurent Fignon, Miguel Induráin, Vincenzo Nibali and Primož Roglič all enjoying battles over its 13 swirling switchbacks. It most recently appeared on Stage 19 of the 2023 Giro – the queen stage – which saw Santiago Buitrago claim a…

I saw a piece of graffiti once that has stuck with me. It said, ‘Make things people want, make people want things.’ I think it applies aptly to the gravel bike market and especially a brand such as Canyon that has, since the launch of the first Grizl in 2021, separated its race and adventure offerings increasingly clearly to meet the demands of different gravel riders. This means Canyon now has two gravel models: the Grail and the Grizl. The first is the company’s lightweight, aero gravel racer, while the second is its tough, practical adventurer. Grail named presumably for the holy grail of speed; Grizl for the rugged connotations that name creates, indicating that you’ll be able to ride so far off-piste that you’re in danger of becoming bear…

It’s raining stair rods and I have the choice of a lift home in a dry, warm van or cycling 20km in the company of a beaming, ruddy-faced pensioner called Electric Ron. We have just finished delivering Bikeability sessions at a rural primary school where we teach kids how to ride safely on roads. Our boss, JB, has offered me the lift because I’m riding a single-speed and live further away than Ron, who’s on an e-bike. I’d like to set the kids a good example by heading off confidently into the downpour, proving that cycling is truly an all-year-round pastime and it’s not the weather, it’s what you wear, etc. But is the sight of their instructor gritting his teeth and riding into the apocalyptic rain really likely to…

It’s quite hard to make a modern dropped-stay frame stand out these days, but the new Wilier Rave SLR ID2’s lines are undeniably striking, with a pleasing blend of soft curves and sharp edges. In fact it strongly resembles Wilier’s handsome Filante SLR ID2 road bike, only with much larger tyre clearances – up to 52mm front and rear. Wilier says the second-generation Rave SLR is all about going as fast as possible in a tarmac-free environment. Think professional gravel racing, which bears an ever-closer resemblance to road racing just with a lot more filth, better Instagram stories and more hand-wringing about tyre pressures. This is very much a go-fast gravel bike rather than a load-lugging adventurer, and as such it’s designed to blur the road-gravel divide ‘Everything has been…

Going into the final corner of the opening road stage of the 2013 Route de France, Italian rider Giorgia Bronzini was in third place. Despite a number of attempts by riders to escape, it was clear by the time the 122km stage entered its final lap that a reduced-bunch sprint would decide the podium. With 3.5km remaining, Bronzini asked her Wiggle-Honda teammates to go to work for her. Bronzini was a two-time World Champion and one of the world’s premier sprinters. Put her in a good position with 250m to go and the likelihood was that she would deliver victory. And so it was here. ‘I opened my sprint in the last 150m and I won by a bike length,’ Bronzini said afterwards. ‘I think maybe [Emma] Johansson was a…

For any cyclist, the name Fred Whitton sends a shiver down the spine. The annual Fred Whitton Challenge is among the most notorious sportives in Britain, serving its 2,000 participants with 180km of distance and 3,500m of vertical ascent that takes in the steepest and cruellest climbs the Lake District has to offer. One of those climbs, arriving 50km into ‘The Fred’, is the Honister Pass. Like many British climbs, Honister’s altitude gain is far from linear. The gradient fluctuates throughout its 2.4km ascent, flicking between shallow single-digit stretches and slopes in the upper teens. The average gradient comes out to a mean 10%, although the maximum gradient is twice that. For entrants of the Fred Whitton that means negotiating the steepest sections while weaving through dense sportive traffic and…

Remco Evenepoel is sitting on a stage in a Mallorcan arts studio, dressed in an unbranded blue hoodie, talking up his programme of racing for 2026. Alongside him, Primož Roglič, his new Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammate, cranes his neck and stares a little disinterestedly at the ceiling. In the twilight of his career, nothing seems to impress Roglič that much anymore. When Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe’s bigname, big-money signing is unveiled to the world’s media on a balmy winter afternoon, the Slovenian looks on the verge of stifling a yawn. ‘Been there, done that,’ Roglič’s body language says, not that his indifference is ever likely to deflect his young Belgian teammate’s burning ambition. In what was the most anticipated transfer deal yet in the WorldTour peloton, Evenepoel has been hired to topple Tadej…

There was a glorious era in the 2010s when all the big brands jumped on the aero bandwagon to bring us wonderful bikes such as the Specialized Venge ViAS, Trek Madone SLR (who could forget those ‘speed flaps’ that covered the proprietary front rim brake?), Cervélo’s first S5 and Giant’s first Propel. Ridley joined the party back then as well with its first Noah Fast. It was a bit of a monster, with an integrated seatpost that contributed to a rather harsh ride and integrated rim brakes that looked fantastic but had the minor drawback of not being overly effective in the stopping department. As the 2010s morphed into the 2020s, however, race bike design started to converge on a recipe that fundamentally wasn’t that much different to Mike Burrows’s…

In a world shaped by marginal gains and wind-tunnel testing, many modern bikes are designed by spreadsheet rather than sensibility. Those who grew up admiring the work of the Italian masters might argue that the bicycle has lost its soul, but in the mind of Gregario’s Salvatore Botrugno, artistry and science don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Botrugno describes the bicycles he revered as a youngster as ‘works of art on two wheels’, and their makers as maestros and master craftsmen. At the same time, the company he co-founded with fellow Italian engineer Paolo Baldissera focusses on technology to create completely bespoke, tailored-to-the millimetre, carbon monocoque aero road bikes. ‘We aim to do things from a different perspective compared to today’s bike businesses,’ Botrugno tells Cyclist. ‘The concept behind Gregario…

1 Zéfal Z Road Pack £24, zefal.com Why did France miss pancake day? It crêpe’d up on them. However they don’t miss a thing when riding their bikes, thanks to French brand Zéfal’s huge range of accessories, including this saddle bag. It has space to fit all the essentials for doing repairs on the road, with two internal compartments to keep an inner tube separate. 2 Knog x EF Oi Classic bell £21.99, knog.com What do you call a priest on a motorbike? Rev. What noise does a cyclist make to alert someone to their presence? An ‘oi’ or a ding, hence why Knog called its ever-popular bike bell the Oi. Now it looks as loud as it sounds thanks to a limited-edition pink colour courtesy of a partnership with…

Colombian climber Julián Arredondo was never one to do anything by halves: ‘I was mixing drugs with alcohol and women. I took a little bit of everything, but it never filled this deep emptiness I had inside me,’ he tells Cyclist. As a young rider, Arredondo won a stage of Argentina’s Tour de San Luis just two days into his pro career with Trek Factory Racing in 2014 against no less a rider than Nairo Quintana, who had finished on the Tour de France podium the year prior. But a few short years later his life had changed radically. A hip injury saw him fall out of the sport in 2017 and what followed was four years of depression and drug and alcohol misuse. Speaking about his experience publicly for…

From the black lava fields of Lanzarote to the emerald green slopes of El Hierro, GranGuanche Gravel is an adventure shaped by contrasts. Five islands, four ferries and a single continuous route stitch together desert, rainforest, volcanic plateau and the Atlantic coastline into one long, ever shifting journey. Now in its fifth year, GranGuanche Gravel is one of three GranGuanche audax events – the other two being Road and Trail – all of which share the same premise: ride self-supported across the Canary Islands in the space of a week. As such, progress is shaped as much by ferry timetables as by gradients and terrain, with the rhythm of boats connecting the islands dictating the pace of the ride. Being an audax, GranGuanche Gravel follows the familiar principles of ultra-distance…

I’ve long been a winter boot denier. My go-tos for winter riding have always been regular summer shoes (sometimes with vents taped up) plus overshoes and thermal socks. In really poor weather I’d switch to waterproof socks for an additional layer of protection. This approach has served me well but there are definite downsides. Even the best overshoes are liable to admit water around the heel and cleat openings, and extra-thick socks can make your regular shoes uncomfortably tight. Overshoes are also prone to damage from walking and crank rub, and can look tatty after a single season’s riding. This is only accelerated if you use them off-road. Proper winter boots should address these issues, but they’ve always felt like an extravagance. Northwave’s new Celsius XT Arctic GTX boots aim…

While most big brands now offer two gravel bikes, Lapierre has just the one, which means by necessity the Crosshill CF has to do a bit of everything. Exploring, racing and everyday rides are all within its remit, and in a gravel market that’s splitting into race and adventure specialities, the Crosshill CF is something of an outlier. But if you ride a range of surfaces, distances and speeds off-road, that’s no bad thing. It’s an excellent tool for pick-and-mix gravel riding and is competitively priced with it. Lapierre supplies the Picnic-PostNL WorldTour teams with the Xelius DRS race bike, and Romain Bardet has won gravel races on the top-spec Crosshill CF 8.0 on test here. The French brand also has mountain bike heritage, which is reflected in this bike’s…