Table of contents for July 2020 in Cyclist

Eight weeks of lockdown, and it’s safe to say that things are getting strange. I haven’t worn a pair of long trousers since March. I recently made my own cheese. I’ve started digging a pond in the garden. I don’t really know how to create a pond, or why I want one, but these are the things that happen when you are forced to stay home for long periods. Cycling is getting strange as well. I’ve been trying to abide by Government guidelines to keep my rides short and close to home. As such, I’ve earmarked half a dozen small, steep hills within a couple of miles of my house, and I’ve taken to blasting them every few days, mixing up the order just to keep it interesting. My Strava…

Saddles are the width they are to reflect the average spacing between riders’ sit bones, but why are saddles the length they are? ‘Traditionally, road saddles have always been between 26cm and 28cm in length,’ says Specialized’s saddles product manager, Garrett Getter. ‘When we developed a new saddle back in 2015 we questioned why saddles had always been so long, and through testing we found there was no disadvantage to lopping off 3-4cm from the nose.’ The result – a 24cm long saddle dubbed the ‘Power’ – came in for criticism for its looks, being deemed worryingly close to a triathlon saddle. Yet five years on, every major saddle brand now offers a short-nosed design, So what has persuaded even the biggest traditionalists to get on board? Coming up short…

On Friday 21st May 1971, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera ran a picture of the Salvarani team standing proudly on a staircase in their Brindisi hotel, after the team rode to victory on the opening stage of the Giro d’Italia the previous day. As team photos go it was typically awkward but unremarkable, yet a second look reveals something strange: instead of Salvarani’s usual baby blue jerseys, all 10 men were wearing pink. Pinker than ever Starting in Lecce and finishing 62km later in Brindisi, the first day of racing in 1971 had been a stage with a difference. Vincenzo Torriani, the director of the Giro since the late 1940s, and who would continue in the post until 1992, had hit on an innovative idea. Rather than a regular…

To download this route go to cyclist.co.uk/101asturias. Starting in San Martín, head south on the AS-228 and climb the Puerto de Ventana until you reach Asturias’s border with Castilla y León. The road then becomes the LE-481, which you follow to San Emiliano. Take a right on the CL-626 to head west. At the last of the ‘Babias’, Piedrafita de Babia, take another right onto the LE-495. You’re now over halfway through and climbing until El Puerto. There the road crosses into Asturias once again, turning into the AS-227 and an incredible descent. You won’t need to pedal again until you turn right at the third corner of the route in La Riera, but then you’ll need every pedal revolution you can muster to climb the first half of the…

ALTO DE L’ANGLIRU, 13.1KM, 9.4% The toughest climb in pro cycling – arguably – is in the next valley over. The first half of the ascent is easy, which makes the average gradient deceptive. The second half is uniformly in the high teens, with spikes of over 20%. It makes finding a rhythm (and a low enough gear) near impossible. An out-and-back route from San Martín would be around 120km – a perfect second day’s riding. ALTO DE LA FARRAPONA, 18.6KM, 5.6% This pass isn’t as well known but is still a must-do, and it actually branches off Cyclist’s route from the heart of the Somiedo park. The gradient is gentle for 13km but the final 5km are well over 10%. Your reward is a view that’s up there with…

Light and disc-equipped, the Orca was well matched to the technical Tour des Stations route – at least once I’d chucked on a slightly wider cassette. Employing a huge bottom bracket area and squared off chainstays, my feeble quads weren’t ever likely to extract any flex from either. Instead, I was more taken with the smooth ride provided by its skinny seatstays. With no bridge to join them, it will take tyres up to 30mm, leaving the specced 25mm Hutchinson Fusion models feeling a little underwhelming, although they performed well enough on a damp day in the mountains. With a reasonably generous head tube and wheelbase, the Orca isn’t as insistently aggressive as some, making it forgiving for the long haul. That said, it can still shift when it needs…

There aren’t many bike brands that can trace their ancestry back to the 19th century. Fuji is one of them, having been born in 1899. By the 1920s it was Japan’s biggest bike brand, and nearly a century later (and now Taiwanese-US-owned) it produced its first aero road bike, the Transonic. That was in 2014, and six years further on we have our hands on the new model, which promises to be faster and more versatile. Compared to the 2014 version, the update is undeniably neater – more angular and pared back. Gone are the curves and teardrop tube profiles, replaced by truncated kamm-tail tube shapes that theoretically offer structural strength advantages alongside more pure speed and better stability in crosswinds. Integration has moved to the next stage too, with…

Different Worlds p64 Met Trenta 3K Carbon helmet, £265 met-helmets.com Oakley Wind Jacket 2.0 sunglasses, £126 oakley.com Castelli Prologo VI jersey, £90 saddleback.co.uk Castelli Premio II bibshorts, £220 saddleback.co.uk Castelli Pro socks, £16 saddleback.co.uk Shimano S-Phyre shoes, £319 madison.co.uk Passo dello Stelvio p94 Specialized S-Works Prevail II helmet, £200 specialized.com Oakley Radarlock Path sunglasses, £195 oakley.com Chapeau Club Stripe jersey, £69.99 chapeau.cc Chapeau Club II bibshorts, £129.99 chapeau.cc Chapeau Tall socks, £9.99 chapeau.cc Specialized Torch 3.0 shoes, £210 specialized.com…

Let’s get one thing straight – these are not sunglasses. These are performance shields, and as such we can only imagine that Peter Sagan will have to hand his 100% sunnies in at the UCI precinct the day he retires, along with his race licence and hair. And yet he might not even miss them, because at 23g the Hypercrafts are arguably the lightest sunglasses on the market for their lens size, which like all 100% glasses is huge, and pleasantly unencumbered by frame edges and hinges. Apparently the secret here is the carbon composite frame construction, where carbon fibres are woven into the nylon. That and of course the styling, which is 100% on the money.…

1 PARK TOOL SLIDING T-HANDLE WRENCH SET £109.99, madison.co.uk They say Mr T invented fools and then, realising his folly, created pity. Whatever, we pity anyone who struggles with impoverished wrenches, which is where these T-handles come in. Available with hex or torx bits, the handles slide side-to-side to help in tight spots, the shaft has a spinning barrel (the anodised bit) for quick turning of bolts, and on the hex tools, one hex bit is twisted to help extract bolts with rounded-out heads. 2 BIOMAX BIDON £7, velopac.cc Did you know an old bra can make a handy face mask? Just be sure to use the left cup otherwise you’ll look like a right tit. And did you know these bottles from Biomax are made not from traditional oil-based…

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…

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…

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5 Sa Calobra MALLORCA, BALEARIC ISLANDS (9.4KM, 7%) Some climbs need the magic of a Grand Tour appearance to cement their greatness. Not Sa Calobra. There are no major races that grace its slopes, no grainy photographs of Fausto Coppi dropping his rivals on this Mallorcan climb. Instead, Sa Calobra’s appeal lies entirely in the beauty of its construction. Has there ever been a road that twists and curves as elegantly as this? It doesn’t zigzag up the hillside like most climbs; instead it unfurls like a great serpent or the flourish of a calligrapher’s pen. At one point it curls around and under itself in a 270° loop known at the ‘Tie Knot’. It’s little wonder that Sa Calobra has the same effect on cyclists as sweet shops have…

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…

Vitus emerged as a pioneer back in 1970, producing bonded, lugged aluminium frames from its factory in Saint-Étienne, France. Its slender, tubular constructions were considered cutting edge due to their low weight, plus they wouldn’t rust like steel. But it was its 979, released in 1979, that really put the brand on the map. Champions from around the globe – Phil Anderson, Allan Peiper, Stephen Roche and Luis Herrera, to name a few – tasted success on a 979, helping to make it an iconic frame that’s now highly sought-after by collectors. But it was the supremacy of Classics legend Sean Kelly in the 1980s that cemented the 979’s status. The Irishman formed a good rapport with Vitus early on in his career, and that relationship exists to the present…

These were for the lugs,’ says Paolo Erzegovesi, blowing dust off a box full of small metal squares adorned with brand names and logos, written in reverse. ‘Back then Cinelli used to make lugs, bottom bracket shells and dropouts for other bike companies and builders as well as ourselves, and we used these stamps to brand the parts. Such components would be one of the few ways to distinguish a bike back then, as they were all made from the same tubesets – mostly Columbus ones!’ Today, Erzegovesi is showing Cyclist around the Cinelli factory, which sits on a Milanese industrial estate next to its stepsister, Columbus tubing. Together the two companies make up Gruppo Srl, and as managing director with a career spanning 40 years, Erzegovesi is as knowledgeable…

Back near the start of the lockdown, I remember reading that it was going to rain on Easter Sunday. At the time, that seemed particularly cruel given that was when Paris-Roubaix was scheduled. In the event, the day was gloriously hot – or so it looked through my window – and I breathed a sigh of relief. It would have been another dusty one, after all. Would have. With the 2020 Paris-Roubaix postponed, I took to Twitter instead 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 decided to fire up YouTube and fill my vacant Sunday with a trawl through some of the great editions of the past, starting…

‘Yes I know that ascent. It’s a pretty meaty one,’ says David, my ride partner for today, as we talk about the day’s route over breakfast. I think it ironic he has used that adjective, considering there’s very little meat on David himself. That’s hardly a surprise. David is a guide for tour company Marmot Tours, which operates cycling holidays throughout Europe. Consequently he is the archetypal continental cyclist: lean-limbed and tanned. He just looks light. Even his breakfast is light. Having ordered bacon and eggs on toast, I watch with increasing shame as instead of pouring milk on his muesli, like most normal people, he splashes orange juice over it, then tops his toast with olive oil (extra virgin, naturally) and chopped tomatoes in place of butter and jam.…

I first rode the Asola Disc back in the summer of 2018 and found it to be one of the first disc brake bikes that didn’t incur a penalty in weight or ride quality over rim brake designs. Many mainstream competitors have achieved similar feats since then, as disc brakes have become standard on road bikes, but the Asola Disc still manages to be special. The bike’s tube-to-tube carbon construction produces a wonderfully smooth ride quality that is augmented by Pirelli’s 28mm Cinturato tubeless tyres. On the 20km descent from El Puerto I found plenty of grip on the technical section near the top, and then found that the bike handled unflappably on the high-speed lower slopes. The bike’s 6.99kg weight, which even today is uncommonly light, was an advantage…

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…

As I try to scrub off speed on the shining road surface I skid headlong into the unknown I’m only just over the first climb when the road disappears from view. Having got a little over-excited to find myself on a descent in the high mountains of Switzerland, rather than the much more vertically challenged Essex, I decided to release the brakes and let rip. But now, when I risk looking back up the mountain as my speed increases rapidly, the road has gone. In its place is a blank expanse, white as an unmarked sheet of paper. The perfect medium on which to write a cautionary tale. Earlier this morning I’d woken in the town of Crans-Montana to find the previous day’s views from my balcony of the Matterhorn…

Bikes are great. I love their simplicity, their democracy, their freedom. However, sometimes I’m less than enamoured with their longevity. If you bought a £10,000 car and the accelerator started squeaking, the gears slipping and it developed play in the steering wheel after just three months, you’d be rightly annoyed. And yet in bikes it happens far more often than it should, and in part I think the problem lies with manufacturers making overly complex designs. I don’t mention this to level criticism at the Ridley Helium, but rather as context for praise. Because the frustrations of being on a rattling, mal-tuned bike only serve to highlight just how wonderful it feels when everything is working in harmony. Which is where the Helium comes in. The Gorilla, GVA and TDG…