Tabla de contenidos para Issue 46 en Cyclist Australia

It’s happening a little later than we’re used to, but as we send the 46th issue of Cyclist Australia / NZ to print, we find ourselves just one month out from the rescheduled date for the 2020 Tour de France. Assuming all goes ahead as planned, it’ll mean cycling’s biggest race has been postponed by just a couple of months – certainly not as long as, say, the Tokyo Olympics or the Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup, both of which look likely to be held next year. But given the absence of any and all pro racing in recent times, here at the Cyclist office it has felt like an absolute eternity. Luckily, the relative speed with which Australia was able to deal with the first wave of COVID-19 (and…

Campagnolo Bora WTO 60 DB $3,506 (approx., wheelset), campagnolo.com Introducing Campagnolo’s first aerodynamic Disc Brake wheel with a 60mm profile, tipping the scales at just 1,590g. Each component enables maximum aerodynamic penetration; at certain angles, the wind becomes an ally rather than an obstacle. The unidirectional unpainted carbon rim delivers optimal stiffness and lightness. The tapered design of the central area of the hub reduces the frontal area of the component, while the special design of the flanges helps reduce turbulence in the air flow, and the elliptical section of the 24 spokes reduces resistance when moving forward. The profile of the rim, with an internal width of 19mm, fits with 23, 25 and 28mm tyres. Campagnolo’s tried and tested 2-Way Fit technology guarantees complete compatibility with both clincher and…

New Team Ineos recruit Rohan Dennis may be the reigning World Time-Trial Champion, but almost any amateur cyclist – including anyone who has ridden to the shops for a bag of apples – has probably cycled more kilometres outdoors than he has over the last few months. ‘I was at home in Andorra but I left a few days before Spain closed its borders, because our dog needed surgery in Girona, so I have been living in Spain and couldn’t cycle outside,’ explains the 29-year-old Australian, via FaceTime. ‘One week I did just nine hours of indoor training. It was just maintenance work, but if I did four-hour rides on the turbo trainer I’d probably just hang the bike up and kick it. So I went for quality, not quantity.…

The Colle Fauniera is a sombre mountain. Standing high on the edge of the Cottian Alps, connecting the Valle Grana to the Valle dell’Arma, it’s a giant that has witnessed many tragedies. In 1744, French and Spanish troops were stoned to death by their Savoyard enemies on its slopes, a massacre made all the more terrible by the fact that peace had already been declared in the valley below. Skip forward some 187 years and newlyweds Romolo and Luisa Contini were illegally trekking across the mountain to find a new life in France; days later police were arresting Romolo in Acceglio as Luisa’s body was being recovered from a ravine just south of the Fauniera pass. Tragedies like these are why the Colle Fauniera is better known in some circles…

The last few months have been tumultuous for a number of reasons, and in my case one of them has been the love affair I’ve had with the Eddy Merckx 525 Disc. It has drawn admiring glances; it has propelled me along roads in a way that was surprising; it has made me smile and it has made me curse; I have crashed it. Looks can be deceiving This is not the first Eddy Merckx 525 I have tested. Way back when, I reviewed the EMX-525, which was similar in both look and name, but came equipped with rim brakes. But make no mistake, this isn’t merely the same bike with fancier paint and disc brakes. ‘The rear stays and the seat tube are based on the EMX-525, but the…

Cyclist: Where does this call find you, and how are you spending your time? Mathieu van der Poel: I’m currently at home in Belgium, where we have been able to ride outside most of the time, and with one other person. Compared to other countries such as Monaco, where the closest many riders can get to riding outdoors is a turbo on their balcony, Belgium hasn’t been so bad. Cyc: Who is that ‘other person’? MvdP: Most of the time I train with Zdeněk Štybar [Deceuninck-QuickStep] or with my brother, David, who is also my teammate on Alpecin-Fenix. David is more cyclocross-focused, though, so recently we’ve raced a little less together, but at least now we have lots of time to train together. We still don’t really know when the…

Stance width is the distance between the middle of your pedals, itself a combination of Q-factor (the distance between crank arms) and pedal spindle length. As metrics go it’s unlikely you know it, but it can be important. Cycling health and performance innovator Phil Burt likens it to going to the gym. ‘If we squat with a bar, we put our feet in different places. Yet we nearly all have our bikes set up for the exact same stance width, give or take a millimetre or two.’ So how do you know if you’ve got it wrong? ‘Chafing around what I call “the gutters” can be a sign,’ says Burt. ‘Often it’s because of too wide a saddle, but if your feet are too close it can mean your inner…

Anyone with an interest in bikes knows that Cervélo was founded in 1995 by Phil White and Gérard Vroomen. However, the duo had been working together behind the scenes for many years before that. ‘Actually, “studying” is probably a more accurate way to describe what they were doing,’ says Sean McDermott, Cervélo’s director of projects. ‘Gérard was making a carbon frame as an engineering project at McGill University in Canada. He crossed paths with Phil, a fellow student engineer who shared his interest in bikes, so he jumped into the project. They were both interested in TT bikes, but thought like engineers using data to inform design, rather than constraining themselves to what bikes were generally supposed to look like at the time.’ Evidence of this analytical approach is displayed…

Road cycling purists are tearing out the last of their hair. First we had the advent of electronic gearing and disc brakes, and now it seems the traditional 23mm tyre is about to be consigned to history. The trend has inexorably shifted towards wider tyres run at lower pressure. It seems to go against common sense. You’d imagine a harder, narrower tyre would roll faster and be more aerodynamic, but the evidence suggests otherwise. More than that, the experts that Cyclist talked to claim that the new thinking on tyres could herald the biggest improvements to road bike performance in a decade. Systematic approach Now, before you rush out to buy new rubber, there is a caveat. Wide tyres on their own won’t make you faster. This is because tyres…

1 Trek Émonda SLR 9 Project One p118 We redesigned the magazine for this issue, and Trek has revamped its ultralight race rocket too – so, the perfect time for Cyclist to try it out, no? 2 Eddy Merckx 525 Disc p122 The brand founded by the racing legend has waned in recent years – now this totally new bike is an attempt to make up lost ground. 3 Specialized S-Works Turbo Creo SL p126 We don’t often review e-bikes here at Cyclist, but we were intrigued by the Creo and just had to give it a whirl.…

Come on, I’m going to show you the bike that’s going to save the world,’ said Specialized’s creative director, Robert Egger, when I visited Specialized HQ in the US a few years ago. What he showed me looked like a Specialized Venge but with a vast bottom bracket that housed a motor. ‘This isn’t for someone who is riding already or is already interested in riding,’ he said. ‘This is for someone who maybe enjoys watching F1, loves to watch supercross, likes fast things.’ It made sense – a bike that screamed high performance without demanding the rider be super-fit. But now that Specialized has launched its S-Works Turbo Creo SL e-road bike, the message has taken a U-turn: now it says the bike is intended for those who cycle…

Fizik says its Vento Powerstrap R2 Aeroweaves are a racer’s best friend, but with coronavirus having put all racing on hold for several months, perhaps the Italian company would have been better promoting the shoes as being ideal for hot summer weather. The move would be logical, because they’re the lightest shoes in Fizik’s range, with a claimed weight of just over 200g per shoe, as well as the company’s most breathable design. Playing its part in this is the clever Powerstrap Velcro closure, which is lightweight but shaped to wrap the foot and close the shoe securely. Yet it’s the Aeroweave upper that has allowed most of the bulk to be shed over traditional shoes. It’s made by interlacing nylon fibres with filaments of thermoplastic polymer to create a…

Back near the start of iso, with the 2020 Paris-Roubaix postponed, I instead decided to take to Twitter and up popped the famous finish line photo of that Mapei 1-2-3 victory in 1996. It occurred to me that I had never actually watched that race, so I quickly fired up YouTube to fill my vacant Sunday with a trawl through some of the great editions of the past, starting with that Mapei triple. ‘Thank you for joining us,’ says David Duffield on Eurosport almost a quarter of a century ago. ‘If you’re going to stay right till the end, well done – go get yourself a six-pack or a large pot of tea. It’s a hard old day ahead of us here and if you are going out’ – no…

A few weeks into the lockdown in Spain, Ashleigh Moolman Pasio was on her indoor trainer at her home near Banyoles when she got a rude shock. She was accused of cheating. That is, accused of cheating on Zwift, the virtual training platform. The South African champion, who rides for CCC-Liv, turned to Twitter: ‘Can you please help me? I’ve just been flagged for superhuman numbers while doing my V02 max intervals in Watopia. I promise it’s the real deal.’ ‘Over three weeks I’ve started to see some significant improvements in my power numbers, which I’m finding very motivating’ She wasn’t the only one. Thomas De Gendt suffered a similar fate: the Belgian breakaway specialist was kicked out of an online race for his ‘suspicious’ performance. He too complained on…

After four years pushing limits and punishing legs in the Snowy Mountains, L’Étape Australia has moved to the NSW South Coast and Southern Highlands, starting and finishing in Kiama. Meaning ‘the stage’ in French, its mission is to recreate the ‘Tour de France legend’ – and it does so in 15 events worldwide. Any sportive from L’Étape is bound to be a big day on the bike, so when preparing for this ride I knew it would throw up plenty of challenges. Spence and I travelled to Kiama about five months before 6,000 riders are set to test themselves on the demanding new course for the official race, which is scheduled for 28 November 2020. We had each ridden previous editions of the event and were keen to see how…

Perhaps it’s something in the water. Perhaps it’s the training roads that soar up high among the clouds. For decades the world has been mystified by how the escarabajos – the beetles – of Colombia can be so adept at scaling the most challenging climbs on the world stage, leaving their European competitors in their wake. And in Colombia itself, the legendary exploits of cyclists from Martín ‘Cochise’ Rodriguez more than half a century ago to historic Tour winner Egan Bernal last July have built a passion for the bicycle among its people that can easily rival that of their counterparts along the cobbles of Belgium or the switchbacks of the Alps and Dolomites. Driving up the winding road in the mountains above Bogotá, the nation’s capital, the sounds of…

‘As a precaution against the influenza, keep out of the crowds; ride a bicycle to and from your work. Just look at the ruddy-cheeked delivery boys riding to and fro. They demonstrate what a bicycle will do for you. Every man who lives a sedentary life needs a bicycle. One will give you fresh air, new blood, a lease of life. We’ve a model that will please you…’ This advert by the Roanoke Cycle Company of Virginia was posted during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920 One hundred years later and COVID-19 has created a new set of instructions for cyclists everywhere. The modern advert might read: ‘As a precaution against the coronavirus, keep out of the crowds; clamp your road bike to the smart trainer you’re so glad you…

Remember that Daft Punk song released in the early 2000s, ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’? For a long while, I’ve thought those masked French DJs were secretly product managers in the bike industry, because no matter what bike, wheel, tyre or other component is launched, what follows is what I call the Daft Punk theory of innovation: everything is stiffer, lighter and more compliant. The Émonda was first launched in 2014 as Trek’s ultralight race rocket, a promise on which it delivered with an aggressive fit and 690g frame weight. Two years later, Trek launched the SLR disc version, which dropped a few dozen grams from the frame weight, but looked and felt almost identical. For 2021, the Émonda has undergone a complete revamp, with new geometry, aero design elements, a…