Indice dei contenuti per March 2020 in Cyclist

On the great swinging pendulum of the cycling calendar, late January must surely rate as the low point of the year. Cold, wet and dark, it is unconducive to getting out on the bike, and there is a foreboding sense that there is still a long time to go until the longer, warmer, dryer days return. It’s also the time when all those good intentions of New Year start to crumble. How’s the training plan going? Are you still keeping up with the evening sessions doing turbo intervals, or have they given way to catching up with the new series of The Crown on Netflix (I’m up to episode five – don’t tell me how it ends)? There isn’t even any pro racing to get excited about. The momentary spark…

What better way for DT Swiss to mark its 25th birthday than to reveal a pair of new wheels? Enter the PRC 1100 DiCut 25 Year edition, which it says is the culmination of a quarter of a century’s wheel-creating expertise. They weigh just a sniff over 1,300g per pair, making them the lightest production disc brake tubeless carbon clinchers out there. That’s already plenty to shout about, but UK brand manager Chris Brattle suggests there’s more to them than just low weight. ‘DT has stipulated a generous 110kg rider limit,’ he says. ‘They still happily surpass all the company’s usual strength and durability test standards too. That means a pretty heavy rider [for context, the average weight of a member of the England rugby team is 105kg] could ride…

£45, paligap.cc Cynics will always cry marketing foul when it comes to bike brands overlapping with car brands, but there is no escaping the veracity of Goodyear’s foray into bike tyres, nor the results. We’ve ridden various sets of Goodyears and have always come away impressed. That said, these latest Eagle F1 tyres did leave us scratching our heads, what with them only being available as clincher, not tubeless. Still, at 190g for a 25mm these are some of the lightest tyres in class, yet promise all the other benefits of Goodyear’s tyre range – puncture protection, supple carcass and oodles of racing-car-level grip.…

In the early-morning light, a group of young women is dancing methodically around in a circle on some nearby stone steps and humming what sounds like a high-pitched sea shanty. I shoot a confused look towards my host, Louise. ‘It’s the Game Of Thrones theme,’ she says with a derisive smile. ‘It’s always Game Of Thrones.’ Many of the HBO series’ scenes were shot in the Old Town of Girona, and a fair number of the tourists who visit the city are here to see the filming locations. A fair number of the tourists who visit the city are here to see the Game Of Thrones filming locations I let out a snort of laughter as we clip in for the start of our ride, but then I wonder if…

Theoretically you get the worst part out of the way first. As you head from the large town of Susa to the small neighbouring village of Meana di Susa, the road ramps up to a gradient of 14%, a figure that it will not reach again over the remaining 18km to the summit of the Colle delle Finestre. The road accordions up the side of the mountain, packing 29 hairpins into 3km Practically, however – and I’m sorry to break this to you – the need to get out of the saddle in the second kilometre is unlikely to be the effort that you look back on as causing the most discomfort. For one, it’s entirely likely that at this early stage of the climb you will be being cajoled…

Cyclist: What is your overall goal for Israel Start-Up Nation? Sylvan Adams: We’re perceived as a warzone here in Israel. I want this team to speak to the world about Israel as a country. I want people to see that we are free, open, tolerant, diverse and, most importantly, safe. I brought Lionel Messi here for a football match, and I brought Madonna over for Eurovision. I’m doing a number of things to speak to the world about Israel. Cyc: Did you have discussions with any other teams about a merger before you found Katusha? SA: I had a deal with this fantastic WorldTour team. It was understood that we would be the dominant controlling shareholder and would continue to be an Israeli team. We had a handshake deal, but…

Giant TCR Advanced 1 Disc, £1,999, giant-bicycles.com Giant’s compact TCR Advanced Disc is aggressive enough to be a racy partner for the Dragon Ride, but not to the extent that it leaves its rider feeling bruised and battered. It’s low enough at the front to reward being driven onwards, and its semi-compact chainset is offset by a rangy 11-30t cassette, while overall comfort is boosted by tubeless-ready wheels. The unique feature on this TCR is the Conduct SL Disc system. Looking like a giant mechanical bug attached to the front of the bars, the device marries together cable shifters and hydraulic brakes. It means Giant can include an Ultegra groupset and hydraulic(ish) disc brakes on a bike for under £2k. It also leaves the levers feeling pleasingly small in the…

Words JAMES SPENDER t’s probably not news to you, but it was to me: the fastest bird in the world –nay, animal on the planet, is the peregrine falcon, top speed 389kmh. By contrast, a Condor flies at an almost stately 88kmh. Nowhere near the fastest animal, then. Yet surprisingly, when it comes to bikes and one specific descent, there is nothing I have tested thus far that has gone as fast as the Condor Super Acciaio Disc. More than just steel I say ‘surprisingly’ because, while I have high hopes for any Condor bike, I do not usually associate steel with top-end speed. And steel is exactly what the Super Acciaio is made from, albeit a fairly special kind, says Condor’s Claire Beaumont. ‘We work closely with Columbus to…

£TBC, specialized.com Specialized was the first brand to launch a snub-nosed road saddle back in 2015 with its Power design, which aimed to reduce pressure in sensitive areas and promote better blood flow. Now the brand is looking to move the concept forward once again by incorporating 3D-printed cushioning on top of the Power’s base and rails. Foam padding is so 2019. The structure is a polymer lattice that incorporates ‘14,000 struts and 7,799 nodes’, each of which Specialized says can be tuned individually to provide anatomy-specific comfort and support. The idea is that it allows Specialized to adjust the density of the material in a way that isn’t possible with foam. The saddle is not available to the public yet but has been spotted propping up many Specialized-sponsored pros,…

£79.99 scott-sports.com American brand Scott might be best known for its bikes, but back in the early 1970s it made its mark producing motocross and ski goggles. Sunglasses followed soon after, and half a century later Scott is still making cutting-edge eyewear. Its latest Shield cycling sunglasses offer a massive, uninterrupted field of vision thanks to a minimal frame design, and they come in a wide enough range of lens tints and frame colours to suit all sartorial tastes.…

Cyclist: You had a whirlwind Vuelta a España last year, fighting for the top 10 on GC before eventually finishing 11th after a crash on Stage 19. How do you reflect on it all? James Knox: I’m extremely proud of that result. It was only my second Grand Tour and the first one I finished. Even at the time, when I dropped out of the top 10on the penultimate day, Iwasn’t disappointed. The whole time it seemed surreal, the way I kept jumping up the GC, day after day. It was a special race, especially considering my only goal was to reach the finish. And I must say, just the feeling of reaching Madrid was almost as good as the 11th place. Just seeing the finish line after three…

In 1986, my girlfriend and I stumbled across the Tour while riding our pannier-laden bikes around France. A stage had just finished in Nantes and it was easy to weave through the parked-up team cars – there were no team buses or security cordons in those days – until we recognised the sweat-streaked and hollow-eyed form of Robert Millar sitting topless under the raised door of a Panasonic-liveried hatchback. Two things stuck us: how skeletal and tiny he seemed, and how beautiful and covetable his bright red, Coca-Cola-branded water bottles were. Millar (who has since gender-transitioned to Philippa York) was gracious enough to talk to us. In an age before convoys of motorhomes lined the roadside flying corporate Team Ineos flags, acouple of British cycle tourists turning up in T-shirts,…

To download this route, visit cyclist.co.uk/97girona. From Girona’s Old Town head south on Carrer de la Rutlla, heading for Fornells. After 5km, turn left onto the GIP-6631 and ride 13km to Caldes de Malavella. Turn left onto the GI-674 to Llagostera. Ride through the town then navigate onto the GIP-6821 towards the coast. Reaching the coast, head north along the coastal road for 66km until the tiny town of Sa Riera, after which the road begins to head inland on the GIV-6502. Follow the road through Pals, Ullastret, Monells and Madremanya, before ascending the east side of Els Angels, which then descends back into Girona.…

“Lefevere pushed me until it reached the point where I said, ‘I can’t wait any longer. I’m opening the door to other teams’” April 2019, and with 49km to go in Paris-Roubaix, Deceuninck-QuickStep’s Philippe Gilbert bridges the gap between the main bunch and abreakaway that includes Nils Politt, Yves Lampaert, Wout van Aert, Sep Vanmarcke and defending champion Peter Sagan. After repeated attacks and counterattacks, eventually Katusha’s Politt manages to break free of the group, and only Gilbert has the strength to follow him. The pair enters the velodrome together, and despite the 25-year-old German’s best efforts, he is no match in the sprint for the veteran Belgian, and Gilbert takes the win easily to record his first victory at Paris-Roubaix. The win means that, at the age of 37,…

Like supermodels in the 1990s, bikes are getting taller and thinner. Even mid-market racers now seem to come with aerofoil tube profiles, integrated cockpits and deep-section wheels. Where once aerodynamics were the preserve of a peculiar breed of time-triallist, resplendent in their pointy helmets and go-faster socks, the science has since found its way into the mainstream. But do we really need it? Absolutely, according to Nathan Barry, an engineer responsible for making Cannondale’s bikes as slippery as possible. He believes the move to a practical approach to aerodynamics is possibly the biggest step-change in bike design we’ll ever see, ‘yet because it’s invisible, it’s hard to get riders to pick up on it’. As an example, Barry cites Vincenzo Nibali’s win at the 2018 Milan-San Remo. Escaping on the…

Can cycling explain evolutionary biology? Are the patterns found in pelotons reflected in the flocking of birds and the schooling of fish? And can we truly understand the factors that determine the shape and flow of a peloton as it moves along the courseof a bicycle race? These are the questions thrown up by an academic paper that appeared in our inbox recently, entitled Information Flow and the Distinction Between Self-Organised and Top-Down Dynamics in Bicycle Pelotons. Now, we’re not scientists here at Cyclist, so we can’t claim to have fully understood every nuance of the concepts presented in the paper. But we are cycling nerds and are keen to learn more about the scientific theories behind our sport – we just need someone to explain them to us. So…

TRAVEL The nearest train station is Port Talbot, which is within a couple of miles of the event HQ. The station is also connected to the nearest airport in Cardiff. For riders arriving by car via the M4, there’s free car parking available at Margam Country Park. ACCOMMODATION We stayed in the nearby Best Western hotel in Port Talbot (aberavonbeach.com). With a pool, restaurant, bar and bike-friendly staff, it offers good value with rooms from £49 per night. It’s also within riding distance of the start line. BIKES The well-stocked Welsh Coast Cycles in Port Talbot (welshcoastcycles. co.uk) is your best bet for last-minute spares or repairs. THANKS Much appreciation is due to Phil at sportivebreaks.com for putting us up and driving our photographer. An expert on the event, he organises…

£249.99, madison.co.uk Owing to the complex torsional forces that act on a stem, it’s often the case that an aluminium stem can have a better stiffness-to-weight ratio than a carbon one, but Pro aims to tip the scales back in the favour of carbon with its latest Vibe. It looks pretty bulky, but Pro says the shape is necessary to make it super-stiff while keeping the walls very thin to save weight – a 110mm stem weighs 125g. Aerodynamic claims are also made, chiefly because of its slimline ‘puzzle’ clamp system. This has been updated from previous iterations and is now reversible, so that the stem’s 8° angle can be run in either a positive or negative orientation.…

£399.99, madison.co.uk With the festive season firmly in the rearview mirror, Pearl Izumi has hit the ground running in 2020 with the release of its newest top-tier shoes. Only available in pristine white and made from an airy knitted fabric, the Pro V5s sit firmly in summer Sunday best territory so it may be some time before they are appropriate to use in the UK. That’s probably just as well, because their £400 pricetag is likely to take some time to save up for. That money, says Pearl Izumi, buys you a blend of stiffness and light weight with sock-like comfort. The carbon sole alone was a two-year project to create, and is 22% lighter than the previous plate. There are hefty cutouts to promote airflow, and Pearl Izumi says…

Television, penicillin, the toaster, the refrigerator… the list of Scottish inventions is vast. Ever taken a colour photograph? Yep, the first one was made by Scotsman James Clerk Maxwell –a picture of a tartan ribbon. Ever mixed agin and tonic? The idea of ingesting quinine, which gave rise to the mixer, can be traced back to Scottish doctor George Cleghorn. Ever cloned an animal? Probably not, although the world’s first, Dolly the Sheep, was born at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. And bikes? Well, two-wheelers as we know them started in Scotland too, and more than 150 years on there’s at least one brand still at the cutting edge of Scottish bike building: Shand Cycles. Innovators and punkers The first pedal-powered bicycle was made by Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan…

1 THE PROTEIN BALL CO £17.99 (10 packets), theproteinballco.com Marketing balls as food is a tough sell. There are difficulties preserving product shape, the headache of transport tessellation and that’s before you’ve tried to navigate the innuendos. But The Protein Ball Co has said bollocks to all that and gone ahead to create protein-packed, all-natural, super-tasty ball-shaped balls. 2 CASTELLI PERFETTO ROS GLOVES £60, saddleback.co.uk Sadly, no, that isn’t a button on the palm labelled CO2that means you can put your finger on your valve and pump up your tyre. Instead it’s part of the ‘Castelli Damping System’, which again sadly isn’t an Italian way to stop bathroom mould, but a pressure pad to keep hands comfy. And comfy they’ll be, as the gloves use a weather-repellent Gore-Tex…

2004 Takes his first pro win at the Tour Down Under and rides his first ever Grand Tour at the Giro later in the year. 2006 Registers a first Classics win at Omloop Het Volk, but his form for the rest of the year is steady rather than spectacular. 2008 After alacklustre 2007, rides strongly in the spring in his final season with FdJ, including asecond Omloop success. 2009 Now with Silence-Lotto, Gilbert scores his first Grand Tour stage win at the Giro and ends the year with a win at the Giro di Lombardia. 2010 Two stage wins at the Vuelta and a repeat success at Lombardia marks Gilbert’s strongest season yet. 2011 Records four straight Classics wins in April then wins the Tour of Belgium to end the…

As the bus rolls through the streets of east Jerusalem towards the Mount of Olives, the passengers lean over to point their phones out of the window. But these aren’t the usual busload of snap-happy tourists. These are the professional riders of new WorldTour team Israel Start-Up Nation. They’re here for a pre-season training camp – a chance to meet new teammates, ride together and begin to forge the bonds any cycling team needs to be successful. But right now they have another job: to help present the best elements of the city to the outside world – a Jerusalem that is modern, liberal, diverse and peaceful. The goal is to win races, yes, but there’s a much larger project that underpins Israel Start-Up Nation. The team aims to promote…

The Welsh Valleys don’t lack for natural resources. From the coal-rich hills to the water that pours down the rivers between them, it’s a landscape that is by turns bucolic and industrial. The region also has the highest average rainfall in the UK, along with enough wind to power an army of turbines, so it’s no surprise that this part of the world breeds tough bike riders – as proved by native son Geraint Thomas. The climbs where Thomas sharpened his skills may be dwarfed by the peaks of the Alps or Pyrenees, but when they are stacked one after the other, like the scales of a dragon’s back, they’re no less ferocious. And it’s by linking up no fewer than eight of them, including Bwlchy-Clawdd, Rhigos, the Devil’s Elbow,…

of you’ve never come across the term VAM, it stands for velocità ascensionale media – Italian for ‘average ascent speed’. For pro cyclists it’s a key measure of climbing capability. Manage a VAM of more than 1,700Vm/h (vertical metres per hour) and you could probably win a Grand Tour. Factor’s O2 VAM, then, is pitching itself as aclimber’s dream, and it may well actually be one. The VAM is an evolution of Factor’s previous lightweight racer, the O2. The bike cuts a very similar silhouette to the O2 Disc, but while the changes are subtle, they are definitely there. ‘We’ve expanded the tyre clearance to comfortably fit 30mm,’ says Factor co-founder and chief engineer Rob Gitelis. ‘We got the frame weight down to 700g for a size 54 disc version.…

For decades, Minnesota-based Salsa Cycles has been producing a wide range of mountain bikes, fat bikes, all-road bikes, adventure bikes, bikepacking bikes – call them what you will –in all manner of frame materials. Its Warbird can even lay claim to being the first dedicated production gravel race bike, released back in 2011 long before anyone decided to give this segment of the market a name, let alone a hashtag. The fact that performance road bikes have not historically been in its remit perhaps explains why this is the first time we’ve seen a Salsa grace the pages ofCyclist, but the company’s latest creation, the Warroad, does more than just dip its toe into tarmac territory. Rough and the smooth Salsa’s lead engineer, Pete Hall, sums up the Warroad as…