Table of contents for August 2020 in Cyclist

Cyclist: You’ve been a pro for 18 years, predominantly as a domestique for the likes of Marcel Kittel and Alberto Contador. But does the fact you’ve never won a race make you jealous? Koen de Kort: I have never been jealous, not once. Of course it is nice to be told you have done a good job, but that doesn’t have to involve standing on the podium. It’s much more important to hear from the team leader that they couldn’t have done what they did without you. If my leader comes up to me after a win and says, ‘That was amazing, I’ll get you a beer tonight,’ that’s all it takes. That means a lot. Cyc: Which victory are you most proud of helping a teammate achieve? KdK: I’ve…

It has become a key training metric, and Strava even tries to help us by estimating our power if we don’t record it. You’d be forgiven for thinking you have to know your power output if you’re serious about training. OK, it helps, and there are good reasons to use a power meter. It measures your output in real time (unlike your heart rate, which actually lags behind) so you can gauge your effort and track progress over time. Yet while power meters are declining in cost, buying one still represents a financial outlay that not everyone can afford, so what are the alternatives? Invariably people start riding to get fitter, which could be as general as moving from a sedentary lifestyle or as specific as completing a sportive. Both…

To download this route, go to cyclist. co.uk/103romania. For the full Transalpina challenge, you could aim to ride the entirety of the DN67C between Sebeş in the north and Novaci in the south, a distance of 135km. From Sebeş the climb is actually gentle but long, with a total ascent of just over 3,000m. If you choose to go north from Novaci, the route begins with a more challenging 28km climb to the Urdele Pass and the full ride to Sebeş will accumulate around 2,850m of ascent. We didn’t do either of those things. To get all the best bits we started at Obârşia Lotrului and rode south over the Urdele Pass to the ski resort of Rânca for lunch. We then retraced our steps back over the pass and…

TRAVEL Pre-lockdown, Cyclist flew WizzAir from Luton to Bucharest Otopeni for £165 return (although our luggage went on a separate jolly to Skopje and Hannover – thanks, WizzAir). From there it’s about a 3.5-hour drive to Novaci or 4.5 hours to Sebeş, the towns at either end of the Transalpina Highway. Cheaper but less regular flights go to the pretty medieval walled city of Sibiu (one-way from £40), a 45-minute drive from Sebeş. ACCOMMODATION We stayed in the four-star Zan Hotel (zanhotel.ro) on the banks of the river Lotru in Voineasa, a 50-minute drive from the start of our ride at Obârşia Lotrului. Double rooms cost around £50 per night and the hotel was welcoming and had a gym and spa, although I’d have traded them for a bit more…

In the Foil Disc, Scott ostensibly drew up the blueprints for how a modern aero race bike should be designed, blending aerodynamic efficiency with comfort and disc brakes. While many of its competitors’ aero bikes are about midway through their life cycles, at three years old Scott’s Foil Disc is likely due for a revision soon. It will be interesting to see the direction Scott takes with the next version. Pascal Ducrot, Scott’s vice-president, suggests aero bikes may need to get more extreme to stay relevant.…

July 20th 1969 was a very important date in world history. Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon, and Eddy Merckx won the first of his five Tours de France. One of these events should have changed the world. It should have spurred a global shift in attitudes and heralded the start of a brave new era in which innovative ideas replaced increasingly unsustainable modes of transport. But Armstrong’s ‘giant leap for mankind’ turned out to be anything but. More than half a century later there may be more computer processing power in the average smartphone than there was behind the Apollo 11 mission but we still travel around in noisy, ugly, polluting metal containers rather than with energy-efficient jetpacks strapped to our backs. As Billy Bragg lamented: ‘The space race…

For the third generation of the Émonda, Trek has borrowed a little bit from its comfort-focussed Domané and a little bit from its aero Madone, but the American company is keen to reassure us the Émonda is still very much a climber’s bike. ‘Weight is such a focus for elite athletes,’ says Trek’s head of industrial design for road products, Hans Eckhom, ‘so the racers on the Trek Segafredo team want the lightest, which the Émonda is. But they felt that it was well behind on aerodynamics. We had exposed cables, less integration and the frame was not fully optimised for aero. So the big push for this bike was to keep the weight low, maintain the ride characteristics but push towards the aero gains we learned from the Madone.’…

Drinking beetroot juice extract prior to exercise can increase performance – so says a study published this May in the Journal Of Science And Medicine In Sport. In the study, 18 males, with an average age of 22.8 years, were given 140ml of nitraterich beetroot juice concentrate (or a placebo) 2.5 hours prior to completing four sets of half squats, each comprising eight maximal reps. The study concluded that ‘acute BJ supplementation increased mean and peak lower limb power output’ by 15-25% during certain phases of the half squat. The study’s authors are careful to point out this only ‘might have implications for enhancing sports performance in events where muscle power output is a key performance determinant’ and that further studies are needed. However, the research does seem to stack…

Stage 10 of the 2001 Tour de France and the race has arrived at the final climb to Alpe d’Huez. Lance Armstrong turns and gives Jan Ullrich ‘the look’. While the German powerhouse continues to churn up the climb like his cranks are stirring toffee, the Texan dances away from his rival, pedals whirring like a spinning top. Armstrong’s souplesse – the art of pedalling with an effortlessly smooth style – garnered a lot of interest. While his results have been expunged from the history books, his influence still remains in the ‘spin to win’ mentality, a belief that a faster cadence is more favourable for cycling performance. If you want more recent proof, look to Stage 15 of the 2013 Tour and watch Chris Froome similarly twirling his cranks…

Believe me, if the Transalpina was a climb in France you’d have heard of it. Pro riders would fight to be first over its summit, each of its numerous switchbacks would be named after a former winner, and every year thousands of amateur riders would flock to test themselves on its slopes. As it is, the Transalpina is a mountain pass in Romania, and is therefore little known to the armies of col baggers and KOM braggers. While Strava can boast 79,000 attempts on the ascent of Mont Ventoux from Bedoin, it has recorded just 500 attempts on the north side of this secluded gem. Running between the towns of Sebe? in the north and Novaci in the south, the Transalpina Highway links the regions of Transylvania and Oltenia with…

Straddling four sports – and multiple disciplines within each sport – Scott’s catalogue currently numbers 4,736 unique products. Yet it all started with one solitary ski pole. In 1958 Ed Scott, a skier and engineer from Sun Valley, Idaho, invented a ski pole made from aluminium. He found it performed better than poles made from bamboo or steel, the more conventional materials used at the time. It was stiffer and lighter. It could be said that, in a way, Scott’s ethos has remained totally unchanged to this day. ‘That is what kicked us off,’ says Scott’s chief marketing officer, Reto Aeschbacher. ‘Revolutionising ski poles like that was a real jump-start for the company. It immediately positioned us as a leader in the skiing market and helped us garner a reputation…

Scott says it has never found any indication that men and women need separate geometries, however it still offers a women’s version of its Addict SE endurance road bike in the Addict Contessa. The frame is the same but the women’s line offers different paint and component options. Saddle choice, for example, is one area where it is recognised that men and women do often require gender-specific designs. The geometry of the SE and Contessa is less aggressive than Scott’s RC range, and uses a less premium blend of carbon fibre – HMF versus HMX – in the frames, which means the bikes are heavier and can meet a lower price point.…

For 2021 there’s a new Émonda on the block that promises to be faster and better looking (see p13). But that simply means that you’ll soon be able to pick up this previous 2018 model for a snip, and it still comes with all the performance parameters you could wish for on a climbing bike. Despite being fitted with disc brakes, the whole package weighs in at just 6.65kg, which is little short of remarkable. Add in a stiff frame and it certainly couldn’t have done any more to help me up the Colle San Carlo, which meant I only had myself to blame. On the descents it proved to be reassuringly responsive, and on the flat bits in between it did its best to dampen any vibrations coming from…

Despite what they might tell you, the most important development in cycling over the last 50 years is the elasticated foam chamois. After all, can you really imagine sitting on a piece of deerskin for the entirety of the Fred Whitton? Or worse yet, a steak? Velocio claims the seatpad in its new Concept bibshorts is extra-special in that it ‘floats’ over the Lycra beneath it, such that the shorts can stretch as you pedal while the seatpad remains in place, preventing abrasion. Up top, Velocio says it has utilised body-mapped patterns and ‘three recycled high-gauge Italian knit fabrics’ to create an aero jersey that is compressive but doesn’t squeeze, all while remaining breathable. The idea is the different fabrics present different levels of compression and breathability – your back,…

Hot on the heels of the driest spring on record, Specialized has introduced an airy alternative to its popular S-Works 7 shoes. The upper of the S-Works Vent features the same fit, Boa S3 closure system and Dyneema reinforcement layer as the S-Works 7, but introduces sections of a woven material that the brand says promotes airflow. Of the fabric, Specialized says it is a ‘single-layer, engineered mesh material that is designed to provide structure where it is needed while remaining open and breathable’. Translation: it’s got holes in it. The ‘Fact Powerline’ sole is borrowed from the brand’s featherweight S-Works Exos shoes. Compared to the slab-like plates of carbon underneath the S-Works 7 shoes it is far more sculpted, containing large cutouts that further encourage ventilation and save weight…

When I say 1989, you say eight seconds. Everyone knows about that time-trial win for Greg LeMond in Paris, but what many may not appreciate is that Laurent Fignon actually lost the yellow jersey one day earlier, in an otherwise uneventful Stage 20 to Isle d’Abeau. The Frenchman didn’t so much lose the maillot jaune as voluntarily, momentarily, relinquish it. In the absence of the usual processional jaunt into the French capital, the riders got all their zany japes out of their systems in advance during the penultimate stage. Look back at footage of the stage, and there’s one rider wobbling around exaggeratedly for the amusement of his associates; another swaps his bike for the driving seat of a motorcycle; one pedalling prankster even rides up alongside a police moto…

With so much of the 2020 season lost to Covid-19 some film projects that had been in the pipeline will struggle to see the light of day in 2021, as originally planned. One casualty is a second series of the fly-on-the-wall Movistar documentary. Series one, The Least Expected Day, was released by Netflix in late March and covered the 2019 season. The filmmakers are keen to make a second season, says Sebastián Unzué, a manager on the Movistar team, and could make it next year. There is also a rumoured project with Bradley Wiggins, a follow-up to 2012’s A Year In Yellow. And Finlay Pretsell, the Scottish director whose previous work includes Standing Start, an impressive short film about track sprinter Craig MacLean, and Time Trial, a feature-length film about…

The French chew steak, the Italians sip coffee, the Colombians munch guava and the Belgians love waffles. But if there’s ever a food synonymous with old-school British cycling, it’s the flapjack. In fact, so quintessential in Englishness is this venerable biscuit that it even gets name-checked by Shakespeare in Pericles, Prince Of Tyre, when our shipwrecked protagonist gets part coaxed, part chided by fishermen with the promise of ‘puddings and flap-jacks’ if he doesn’t give up on life. So it would seem even the Bard knew about the restorative powers of these energy-dense pieces of pocket fuel, which have been preventing the bonk since Jacobean times, albeit back then it was more like a pan-tossed cake – hence the ‘flap’, meaning ‘to flip’, and ‘jack’, used in the non-person, generic-object…

You don’t get faster on your bike – you get faster off it. Recovery is a key step in getting stronger because it allows your body to heal and better adapt to the cycling demands being asked of it. German company Reboots claims to have developed a product to help the rider maximise that recovery process: the One recovery boots. The product is more of a boot-trouser ensemble, to be exact, which the rider wears for short periods during their downtime. Each boot has four compression chambers, covering the foot, lower leg, quadriceps and hamstrings respectively. These chambers fill with air – not unlike the cuffs that measure blood pressure – in different combinations, at varying pressures and for different lengths of time, according to six preset protocols to compress…

VAMPIRE WEEKEND Poenari Castle is the former residence of 15th century ruler Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula. The castle’s remains sit on a cliff above the Transfăgărăşan Pass, about 75km to the east of the Transalpina, which is another must (see issue 92). CASTLES GALORE Bran Castle in Transylvania is commonly known as Dracula’s Castle. It certainly looks the part, with its turrets and position high on a hill, but it actually has no connections to the book. It’s still worth a visit, and the region boasts a fabulous array of fortified churches spread around six Saxon Villages of UNESCO World Heritage Site status. IN THE CITY Renowned for its gastronomy and architecture, the colourful city of Sibui is about a 45-minute drive from Sebeş…

WHAT’S ON THE MENU? For snacks along the Transalpina route, you could follow Cyclist’s lead and try out the mici (grilled meatballs) and kürtşskalács (donut-like cakes). For a proper lunch, stop at any of the sheepfolds on the Transalpina to try bulz, a traditional Romanian dish made from cooked polenta and filled with a cheesy, creamy stuffing – rocket fuel for the last push to the summit. For a fuller meal, one perhaps best enjoyed on the way down, tocan de oaie is a hearty slow-cooked lamb stew, which has apparently been produced by shepherds in this area for two millennia. ORDER THE LOCAL TIPPLE Romanian wines are gathering momentum among oenophiles of a hipster persuasion. The Oprişor Winery in Oltenia produces an award-winning intense, almost black, red wine called…

Giovanni Battaglin 1981 The Italian helped kick off Pinarello’s professional success with his Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España double 39 years ago. Pedro Delgado 1988 The Spaniard lost out to Irishman Stephen Roche by just 40 seconds at the 1987 Tour, but triumphed a year later, winning the first of Pinarello’s 15 Tours de France. Miguel Indurain 1992-1995 Big Mig won four Tours from 1992-1995 with Pinarello (1991 was won on a Raseza bike), along with two Giros (1992, 1993), the Hour record (1992) and the World Time-Trial Championships (1995). Jan Ullrich 1997-2001 The powerhaus won the Tour with Team Telekom in 1997, the Vuelta in 1999, two World Time-Trial titles in 1999 and 2001, and the Olympics Road Race in 2000. He was found guilty of doping in…

Making lightweight race bikes is part of Scott’s DNA, according to chief marketing officer Reto Aeschbacher, and the Addict RC is the brand’s latest flagship design. It blends all the features you’d expect of a modern race bike into a competitively light package. In contrast to the Foil, which helped set the current trend for bikes in its sector, the Addict RC arrived somewhat later than its competitors in its segment. Aeschbacher contends that this wasn’t to learn from rivals’ designs, though. ‘We have faith in our internal development process and have clear, constant goals from the start of a project, which aren’t influenced by the twists and turns of the market,’ he says.…

The Addict Gravel has enjoyed consistent success over the course of its tenure as Scott’s gravel bike option, once again displaying the core tenets of Scott’s performance bikes: high stiffness and light weight. Having been on the market since the dawn of the gravel trend and despite suggesting the bike is still accomplished enough to hold its own, Ducrot admits Scott has the capacity to improve the design. He says there is an update currently in the works that may revise the geometry and readdress cable integration. However don’t expect major handling tweaks inspired by Scott’s MTB products – Ducrot says Scott views gravel as a very close relative to road.…

TRAVEL Cyclist flew with EasyJet, which has flights from London to Geneva or Lyon from around £60 return (pre-lockdown prices). Bike carriage starts at £90 return when booked in advance. It’s about a three-hour drive from Geneva to Val d’Isère. Our support vehicle for the ride was provided by SnowDrone (snow-drone.com), which also offers private airport transfers. ACCOMMODATION We stayed at the three-star Hotel La Tovière in Val d’Isère (hotel-latoviere.fr). The hotel is cycle-friendly, with storage rooms for bikes, a sauna and steam room to aid your recovery, and an excellent restaurant. Rooms cost from €59 (not including breakfast). THANKS We were guided by the excellent Edouard Rolland from On Gravity, which is based in Tignes, a short hop from Val d’Isère. Guided tours cost from €100pp per day and…

The King’s Road p60 Bell Formula helmet, £74.99 zyrofisher.co.uk Tifosi Amok sunglasses, £69.99 zyrofisher.co.uk Le Col Pro Air Acute jersey, £120 lecol.cc Le Col Hors Categorie bibshorts, £180 lecol.cc Le Col Cycling socks, £14 lecol.cc dhb Troika shoes, £70 wiggle.co.uk Bikes p125 GIANT TCR Kask Protone helmet, £195 velobrands.co.uk 100% Racetrap sunglasses, £139 freewheel.co.uk dhb Aeron Lab jersey, £90 wiggle.co.uk dhb Aeron Lab Ultralight bibshorts, £130 wiggle.co.uk Mavic Graphic Stripes socks, £14 mavic.com Northwave Extreme GT2 shoes, £195 i-ride.co.uk FESTKA SPECTRE Abus Airbreaker helmet, £229.99 extrauk.co.uk Oakley Radar Path sunglasses, £197 oakley.com dhb Aeron Lab Raceline 2.0 jersey, £110 wiggle.co.uk dhb Aeron Speed bibshorts, £85 wiggle.co.uk M20 Stripe Crew Plus Socks, £11.99 extrauk.co.uk Fizik R1 Infinito Knit shoes, £359.99 extrauk.co.uk 3T EXPLORO RACEMAX Kask Protone helmet, £195 velobrands.co.uk 100% Racetrap…