Tabla de contenidos para January 29, 2026 en Cycling Weekly

We’re now safely past Blue Monday - the third Monday in January that’s often said to be the most depressing day of the year. It’s completely made up, of course, but captures the mood of many at this time of year, as we all know how hard it can be to motivate yourself through the middle of a British winter. With daylight hours stretching out imperceptibly slowly, and the weather selfishly refusing to take our riding needs into consideration, making it through January with good fitness, or just with some miles in our legs, is tough. Everyone suffers to varying degrees, with some folk battling full-on seasonal affective disorder (see our feature on page 46), but the good news is there are various ways of coping with it. No one…

We are at the point of the year where any racing cyclist who has spent the winter in the UK is starting to go a bit crazy. Too much time on the turbo, not enough vitamin D and repeated exposure to four degrees and rain start to become too much for even the most motivated rider. The solution to this is easily achieved if time and finances allow for a trip to Spain for some warmweather training. This provides welcome relief for the rider, but let me tell you that for coaches it can be as challenging as adapting plans to the British winter. After many months denied sunlight it’s commonplace that with a bit of sun on a rider’s back and some pals to train with, all rational decisions…

Cat Ferguson wins in Spain Cat Ferguson won her first race of 2026 at the first opportunity, coming out on top at the Trofeo Llucmajor one-day race in Majorca, Spain, on Sunday. The 19-year-old Movistar rider held off Lidl-Trek’s Clara Copponi to take the win. Last season, she won three times. Kasia Niewiadoma on Instagram The Polish champion needs to stock up on Vanish… 51 The number of UCI World Cups won by Mathieu van der Poel, who now holds the record outright, surpassing Belgian legend Sven Nys last weekend. Tyre adjusters bankrupt Gravaa, the Dutch company behind Visma-Lease a Bike’s tyre pressure adjustment system, KAPS, has been declared bankrupt. According to court records in the Netherlands, liquidators have been appointed to the brand. Bardet back on the bike After…

On the Tour de France Femmes: “It’s double what we rode. Now, they’re doing the big cols and everything. You’ve got to be fit, you’ve got to really, really know what you’re doing, and you’ve got to be keen.” On watching the pros race a local climb: “I expected them to come up in ones and twos. I’d never, ever ridden up Rockingham hill and made it to the top. These girls came up in a bunch. I couldn’t believe it.” On the professionalisation of women’s racing: “I would have liked a manager or a coach. There’s all sorts of things they advise [today’s riders] on: food, drink and all the rest of it. I had to do everything. It’s a different world. I envy the girls of today, but…

You changed your training this year to focus entirely on cyclo-cross – why? In 2024 I trained like a road rider, which for a lot of people works just fine. You build a strong aerobic base, go to road races, do training blocks, then do a few cross-specific training rides towards September. In theory, you arrive in October with a great threshold, in great shape, and just start banging out cross races. I did all of that, but I arrived at the cross races and immediately got my arse kicked. I just didn’t have that crossspecific level needed to be competitive. Is that because cyclo-cross makes different demands on a rider? In cyclo-cross you need such a wellrounded profile: if you’re a sprinter, you’ll produce a ton of lactic and…

John Wilkinson, a prolific reporter for Cycling Weekly as a team member of the Snowdon Sports agency, died this month at the age of 74 after a long battle with ill health. John, a native of the Isle of Man, had worked as a staff man on the sports desks of evening papers in Northamptonshire and Coventry, and freelanced for Snowdon Sports from the early 1990s. He returned to the IoM annually for the cycling week and also covered the Milk Race, the National Track Championships at Manchester Velodrome and National Series events in road racing, time trials and cyclo-cross. His media work also embraced Rugby Union, athletics and boxing. Former BC presidents Brian Cookson and Ian Emmerson were among leading figures in the sport who paid tribute to Wilkinson,…

It may be just the start of the road season, but a couple of recent events have pushed me back to thinking about rider retirements. The first was the departure of Simon Yates, who caught us all on the hop when he took a long, hard look at the demands of his 13th pro season in 2026 and decided that it wasn’t for him. The second was an interview with David Millar, where he talked about the difficulties of retirement – he said it just left riders staggering into the real world spinning and disorientated, and it’s only getting harder for them. This is the problem with being a pro rider over the age of about 32. It’s tough to know what’s harder, staying or going. Pro sport, and pro…

The European seasonopening Trofeo Marratxi-Felanitx race, part of the Challenge Mallorca Femenina, was won by Maeva Squiban (UAE Team ADQ) in a two-up sprint ahead of Marlen Reusser (Movistar). Squiban’s team-mate Silvia Persico rounded out the podium. The French rider attacked repeatedly up the final climb to give herself the platform to win. In mainland Spain, the Gran Premio Castellón was won by Michael Matthews (Jayco AlUla) in a spring ahead of Pau Miquel (Bahrain Victorious) and Lukáš Kubiš (Unibet Rose Rockets). It was the Australian’s first victory since last May. Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet Rose Rockets) started a new season with a new team in winning fashion, outsprinting Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step) and Emilien Jeannière (TotalEnergies) at the Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana. Meanwhile, Christian Scaroni (XDS Astana) overcame Diego Pescador (Movistar)…

My attention has been drawn to a rider who, in order to improve his race performance, nicks a couple of puffs of his teenage son’s Beclomethasone asthma inhaler before racing. He is, as you would expect, very secretive about it, on the basis that it’s doping. The first irony is that it’s not. Beclomethasone by inhaler isn’t actually banned, but he’s never bothered to check. The second irony is that if it’s working, it’s only doing so because of the placebo effect. The third irony is that even if he works all this out, well, I’m sure we’d agree he’s still sort of a cheat anyway. It’s quite a tangle. But the upshot of it simple: his son, also a bike racer, has his dad over a barrel. And now…

There have been six WorldTour races so far in 2026, and three of them have been won by British riders. The saying goes ‘make hay while the sun shines’, and that’s certainly what the Brits did at the Tour Down Under last week. In blazing sunshine and heat so extreme that the route was changed, Sam Watson (Ineos Grenadiers), Ethan Vernon (NSN Cycling) and Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) ensured there was a bit more red, white and blue than usual being waved in South Australia. The British assault started right from the gun; on the opening evening’s prologue, Watson was the 11th rider to start the Tour Down Under. The 3.6kmlong course was well suited for a rider like Watson, who won the prologue at the Tour de Romandie…

How do you fill the void left behind by a rider who just finished fourth at the Tour de France, and whose UCI points singlehandedly kept your team in the UCI WorldTour? That’s the dilemma facing Picnic PostNL’s men’s team as they look down the barrel of 2026 after their most prominent rider, Oscar Onley, made a mid-contract transfer to Ineos Grenadiers this winter. Step forward Max Poole, who, a couple of years ago, many would have judged on a par with the departed Onley. The 22-year-old from Scunthorpe has had a difficult past 24 months, hampered by injury and illness. After overcoming glandular fever in the second half of 2025, he says that he and his team are ready to take on the new season minus Onley. Although no…

British rider Owain Doull was recruited by Visma-Lease a Bike this winter to help his compatriot Matthew Brennan become one of the most prolific winners in the peloton. Following four years with EF Education-EasyPost, which came off the back of five seasons with Ineos Grenadiers, 32-year-old Doull has joined his third top-level team as he prepares for his 10th season in the WorldTour. It’s that experience at the highest tier that prompted Visma to recruit the Welshman on a two-year contract, with the Dutch team believing that Doull can be key in 20-year-old Brennan’s progression. “Matty is this big rising star, and the team highlighted that they wanted more support around him,” Doull recently told CW at his new team’s media day in La Nucia, Spain. “They felt that Matty…

The recent news that the regulations relating to the design of time trial courses are to be eased to offset the problems of traffic lights reminded me of my first ever time trial in 1962, the Century Road Club Novices ‘25’. It was run on the F3, a course starting just north of Hertford and running through the villages of Stapleford and Watton-at-Stone to Stevenage, where it crossed a set of traffic lights. The start sheet made it clear that if they were not obeyed, the rider would be disqualified. Back then it was common to have traffic lights controlled by a rubber pad across the road, and the trick was to make sure a friend or relative was at the crossroads ready to jump up and down on the…

Shirley Hockridge picks me up from Kettering station in a Toyota SUV with no middle seat. She’s removed it, she says, so she can roll her bike in easily after rides with “the Thursday Club”. Yesterday, they went on a 25km coffee ride. When we get to Hockridge’s home – a neat, pretty bungalow with a drawing of Lizzie Deignan in the hallway and a shed in the garden for her bikes – there is a silver envelope sticking out of the letterbox. It’s a birthday card, she tells me. She’s turning 91. Cycling regularly into her 90s is just one remarkable thing about Hockridge. Another is her racing career: in 1957, Shirley clinched both the national road championships and a podium place in a pioneering race few remember today,…

The Clean Machine, from Belgian brand Dynamic Bike Care, boasts of being the ultimate mobile pressure washer, designed to clean your bike wherever you want. Unlike most conventional pressure washers, which need mains power and a water supply, this one is designed to be taken with you, and features a 20L water tank, which can be pre-filled before heading out to a race or an event. The self-contained machine is fairly bulky but is portable and will fit in the boot of your car, and is powered by a 4000mAh lithium battery, and a 400W brushless motor, so should have enough clout for all but the gloopiest cyclo-cross races. They say it’s safe for use on bearings too. For those using it at home, and especially if you live in…