Table of contents for January 2018 in Cyclist

£95, dissent133.com This is not one glove, it’s 11 gloves, according to new British brand Dissent 133. What you actually get is four sets of gloves that can be layered up to create 11 different combinations depending on conditions. The ‘base layer’ is a silk liner; for warmth there’s DeFeet’s popular DuraGlove thermal layer; then comes either the ‘ShowerLite’ outer layer for wind and patchy drizzle, or the ‘OutDry’ (pictured) fully weather-proof shell for the grimmest of days. The gloves even come with a natty storage case, and hangers so they don’t go stinky.…

Paris: it’s the city of dreams, the city of lights, the host city for both the 2018 Ryder Cup and the 2024 Olympic Games. For some, it’s also the city of oh-so-predictable finales to the Tour de France. Next year’s final stage, we now know, will follow the tried-and-tested formula, namely a suburban stage start, some champagne-guzzling on the approach to the boulevards, a photo op with the classification winners lined across the road, and eventually a frenzied hour of racing climaxing with the twilight sprint on the Parisian cobblestones. Every year since 1975 the Tour peloton has wheeled to a halt on the Champs-Élysées in a frenetic ending to the three-week race. The Paris finish is now so tightly woven into the fabric of the Tour that it’s apparently…

The Bosch motor is a complex machine but works in a fairly conventional way: magnetised coils generate a rotating force that is transferred to the internal sprocket, which turns 2.5 times for every rotation of the pedals. The unit is often called mid-drive as it sits in the middle of the frame, and it’s the most common system used on road-specific e-bikes, especially commuter bikes. These motors ‘pedal-assist’, meaning it works synergistically with the inputs from the rider. Bosch’s newer units sample the rider’s movements 1,000 times per second to assist in the most effective way, incorporating gear shifts into its torque calculations to smooth the transition from one gear to another. The Bosch system can offer substantially more torque than most rival systems and, were it not limited to…

MODEL: Whyte Suffolk GROUPSET: Shimano 105 GEARING: 50/34t crankset, 11-32t cassette WHEELS: Whyte Disc Road 20mm deep TYRES: Maxxis Rouler-TR, 700x28c FINISHING KIT: Whyte Road compact wing handlebars, Whyte alloy stem, Whyte alloy seatpost, Whyte custom road saddle WEIGHT: 9.97kg (54cm) PRICE: £1,350 CONTACT: whyte.bike STU’S SUMMARY The Suffolk sits in Whyte’s RD-7 series, described as ‘Sports Road/Commute’ – in other words good all-rounders. Designer Ian Alexander believes the RD-7s represent what the average rider needs to cope in Britain in terms of both the weather and road conditions. And the Suffolk duly delivers. The alloy frame performs well and there’s ample front end height to provide a relaxed riding position without being too upright. The sensations I got from the Suffolk were solidity during hard efforts and stability at…

Epoca R50 ‘While each of the bikes has a different number, it’s not a case of higher is better – rather each bike has certain key attributes designed for certain types of riders, styles and terrains,’ says Katir. ‘This R50 is our granfondo race bike, built around the idea of absolute comfort but with modern, angular tube shapes. These tube profiles and integrated seatmast provide efficient power transfer, while the thin seatstays and carbon layup adds comfort. We do the paint here and we can do virtually any design.’ Epoca SP148 ‘Named after the road that leads to the Monte Grappa summit, the SP148 is one of our three steel bikes; we also make a stainless steel frame, the SP140 XCr, and a classic lugged frame, the S1952. It’s made…

THE SPEC Model Cervélo R5 Groupset Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 9150 Deviations None Wheels Enve SES 3.4 Finishing kit Cervélo AB06 handlebar, Cervélo stem, Cervélo Carbon SP18 seatpost, Fizik Antares R5 saddle Weight 6.65kg Price £7,199 Contact  derby-cycle.com Cervélo is no stranger to innovation. From the days when founders Gerard Vroomen and Phil White created the otherworldly Baracchi TT bike as their college graduation project, the brand has been at the cutting edge of design and performance, and the R5 has traditionally set a benchmark for what’s possible in terms of weight. But these days its competitors are matching it for lightness, so Cervélo has had to rethink its approach to its flagship. ‘Ongoing feedback means that when it’s time to update a product, we have a list of concerns we…

THE SPEC Model Bianchi Oltre XR4 Groupset Campagnolo Super Record Deviations Campagnolo Super Record Direct Mount brakes Wheels Campagnolo Bora Ultra 50 tubular Finishing kit Vision Metron 5D Aero bar/ stem combo, Bianchi Carbon Aero seatpost, Fizik Arione R3 saddle Weight 6.80kg (56cm top tube) Price £9,800 Contact  bianchi.com I remember the first rendition of the Bianchi Oltre XR well. It arrived in the Cyclist office at the end of 2012, when this magazine was still knee-high to a grasshopper, and it had it all. The Campagnolo Super Record EPS, the Fulcrum Speed XLR wheels, the outlandish graphics and random bits of writing about ‘Nano Tube Tech’, the Celeste paint… the pricetag. That Oltre cost £11,000, which you could have bought a house for back then. Soon £11,000 will barely…

The Secret Island RIDER LEFT Lazer Z1 helmet, £149.99 madison.co.uk Oakley Radarlock sunglasses, £195 uk.oakley.com Castelli dm.Chpt.III 1.61 Rocka jacket, £320 saddleback.co.uk Castelli dm.Chpt.III 1.91 armwarmers, £40 saddleback.co.uk Castelli dm.Chpt.III 1.21 jersey, £220 saddleback.co.uk Gore Power 2.0 mitts, £29.99 goreapparel.co.uk Castelli dm.Chpt.III 1.11 bibshorts, £220 saddleback.co.uk Castelli dm.Chpt.III 1.92 legwarmers, £45 saddleback.co.uk Castelli dm.Chpt.III 1.51 socks, £25 saddleback.co.uk Specialized Expert shoes, £185 specialized.com Ready For Anything RIDER1 [LEFT] Bontrager Velocis helmet, £149.99 trekbikes.com Endura FS260-Pro cap, £14.99 endurasport.com Oakley Radar EV sunglasses, £150 uk.oakley.com Endura Pro SL Shell jacket, £164.99 endurasport.com Endura Pro SL windproof gloves, £49.99 endurasport.com Endura FS260-Pro Thermal bibtights, £99.99 endurasport.com Endura Road II overshoes, £27.99 endurasport.com RIDER 2 MIDDLE$…

£1,500, madison.co.uk Spot the power meter. Shimano’s Dura-Ace R9100-P houses the pair of units so discreetly in its crank arms that they’re barely noticeable. What’s more, this long-anticipated arrival from the Japanese giant adds just 70g to the Dura-Ace 9100 crank weight, despite independent left/right leg power measurement. The benefit of Shimano having held off before jumping into the power meter market is that it has been able to assess the competition and look at criticisms before crafting its own unit accordingly. A notable benefit of the system is that it has ditched coin-cell batteries (that have a notoriously short life, especially in winter) in favour of a (claimed 300 hours) USB-rechargeable Li-ion battery in the axle. An app controls the system set-up, diagnostics and any firmware updates via Bluetooth…

£117.99, yellow-limited.co.uk Removing and installing lenses in cycling sunglasses is often a procedure trickier and more stressful than a high-stakes game of Operation, which is why Rudy Project’s new Sintryx shades might appeal. The logo on their nose bridge is a subtle button. It’s spring loaded, and when pushed releases the bottom half of the rim so the lenses can be removed without fear of either snapping the frame or smudging their carefully polished Polar 3FX HDR surface. This treatment is all new and claims to eliminate glare and emphasise contrast, so you definitely wouldn’t want grubby fingerprints on them.…

There are many routes into framebuilding. Some people quit jobs in the City and set up in their shed. Others come at it from engineering courses, fine-art degrees or circuitous routes via aeroplane maintenance. Some just do it in their spare time and it turns out they’re rather good at it. Aaron Barcheck is none of these. ‘I got into framebuilding straight out of high school,’ says the Colorado-based builder. ‘I went to the United Bicycle Institute [UBI], built my first frame, got a job at Dean Titanium Bicycles in Boulder straight after, worked there for seven years then started Mosaic in 2009. I think that kind of experience is key in framebuilding. I started at the bottom, doing facing, chasing and reaming, sticking decals on frames, and I worked…

1 SUPACAZ FLY CAGE £59.99 each, cookecomponents.co.uk There’s a reason why carbon bottle cages are so expensive. It’s because the moulds used to make them are more intricate than that annoying metal puzzle you get in your Christmas cracker every year. At £120 a pair, the Fly Cages push the limits of this explanation but, since they come in a range of popping colours and weigh just 28g each, we’ll forgive them. 2 FABRIC LUMARAY LIGHT £27.99, fabric.cc Many hands make light work, which is why you need at least two people to change a lightbulb. The Lumaray, however, is a much more streamlined operation – a 30-lumen, USB-charging front light that clips into any quarter-turn computer mount, but has its own quarter-turn mount on top, onto which said computer…

1903 Invented by a French newspaper to boost flagging circulation, it was inevitable that the Tour de France would want to finish in the nation’s capital city. The inaugural Tour’s final stage, from Nantes to Paris, was a gruelling 471km long and, with Maurice Garin already almost three hours ahead of his nearest rival, was hardly a cliffhanger. But then, genuine suspense has always been rare in Paris. 1968 Dutchman Jan Janssen – who hadn’t even worn yellow – overhauled Belgian Herman Van Springel’s 16-second lead in the final day’s 55.2km time-trial to take a surprise win by 38 seconds. Janssen had already hinted at his lone racing capabilities, winning a road stage of the 1963 Tour having somehow arrived at the start 15 minutes after the peloton left, and…

Rather than helping to turn the pedals, hub motors help to turn a bike’s wheels using electro-magnet power to spin the outer shell of the hub. Copper wires are wound into coils inside the hub, around which an outer magnet within the hub shell rotates. It is precisely how a conventional electric motor functions. If the motor is based in the rear wheel, gears may also be contained in the rear hub, which requires several cogs to separately engage with the magnetic outer hub shell. Most top-end hub motors can easily generate the legal maximum of 250 watts of assistance. Hub motors can be cheaper, lighter and more reliable than a crank-drive system, but they can detract from the feeling of riding by adding an unbalanced power drive and weight…

‘This bike is everything the UCI doesn’t want you to do,’ says its creator, Robert Egger. Which explains the name: Eff You See Eye (fUCI). It’s not yet available – this one is a conceptt bike made from plastic and fibreglass – but Egger is convinced it will broaden the appeal of cycling. ‘This isn’t for someone who’s already interested in riding. This is for someone who maybe enjoys watching F1, loves to watch supercross – someone who likes fast things. They want to get on a bike and go as fast as Alberto Contador and on this bike they can do that. ‘Everything is run from your phone,’ he adds. ‘The rear wheel acts as a flywheel. The engine gets it up to speed and then the rider takes…

MODEL: Ribble CGR GROUPSET: Shimano Ultegra GEARING: 50/34t crankset, 11-25t cassette WHEELS: Fulcrum Racing Sport DB TYRES: Vittoria Corsa G+, 700x25c FINISHING KIT: Deda RHM 02 handlebars, Deda Zero 2 stem, CSN Carbon SE seatpost, Fabric Scoop Elite saddle WEIGHT: 9.92kg (56cm) PRICE: £1,550 CONTACT: ribblecycles.co.uk NEIL’S SUMMARY The Ribble CGR was immediately easy to get on with. The fit and geometry were ideal for my riding style and it felt comfortable and stable on bumpy descents. The handling was well balanced with no nasty surprises, so I was able to carry speed confidently through corners, especially on the Vittoria Corsa G+ tyres, which are some of the grippiest I’ve ever used. The frame wasn’t so stiff that it rattled my fillings, but it was plenty stiff enough to…

The Alps and Pyrenees tear their way out of the landscape, tortured into existence by the collision of African and Eurasian tectonic plates 25 million years ago. They surge upwards, increasing in steepness as they break above the treeline in a jumble of pointed rock. By comparison, the Vosges aren’t even real mountains. Created by a downward slip between parallel fault lines, their landscape of valleys and escarpments has been softened and their rough edges smoothed by millennia of glacial erosion. As a result, despite rising to a height of 1,424m, the ballons of the Vosges swell softly from the land in a decidedly unmountainlike way. Consequently, the roads that cross them tend to taper upwards gradually before reaching a crux that’s seldom too challenging. Rarely higher than the treeline…

At a time when many brands are aiming for ‘all-road versatility’, it’s good to know that some bikes are still made for old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants, hair-on-fire speed. The three bikes on test this issue are top models from big names that know a thing or two about winning races. The focus for each is on acceleration, handling and ripping the legs off other riders. If you love to race, or just want to go really, really fast, then these are the bikes for you.…

£239.99, zyrofisher.co.uk The look of Giro’s new Vanquish aero road helmet is far more refined and elegant than that of its bowling ball-esque predecessor, the Air Attack. So it’s surprising to learn that Giro’s design team were only allowed a hand in its development once the helmet was already 80% finished. The manufacturer says it wanted to hit certain aerodynamic standards before considering aesthetics, and claims it spent a previously unmatched amount of time in its Californian R&D facility, The Dome, developing some unique new features. Most noticeably this includes a ‘cliff’ moulded into the exterior of the helmet shell that Giro dubs its ‘TransformAir’ design. This cliff is a step down in shell height that runs along the top of the helmet perpendicular to airflow, which the company claims…

It’s the unloved mongrel in the corner, like the faded T-shirt with the unfashionable band name or the brick-sized Nokia at the back of your cupboard. The winter bike is hardly the prettiest in the collection. Compared to your ‘best’ bike, its bulky appendages, clunky components and chunky tyres are more Jonathan Ross than Jimmy Kimmel. But sometimes reliability and robustness come before slickness and style. The winter bike is a metaphor for life – older, heavier and slower doesn’t necessarily mean obsolete. Dressing sensibly rather than stylishly doesn’t make you dull. That gleaming electronic groupset might look fancy but let’s see how it stands up to a British winter. That blade of carbon fibre might as well be a wafer of parmesan for all the good it will do…

The exotic islands of the Azores have until recently been no more than a distant, pulsing blip on the radar of intrepid cyclists, a seductive siren call to uncharted adventures away from the more celebrated cycling terrain of continental Europe. Marooned 1,360km west of the Portuguese coast and 1,925km southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, the archipelago shelters a world of lush subtropical gorges, dazzling crater lakes and towering volcanic ridges, adrift in the crashing waves of the North Atlantic Ocean. Tales of pirate attacks and mythical princesses are interwoven in the folklore of the islands, but the stories of visiting cyclists are only just beginning to be written. Revered as ‘the Hawaii of the Atlantic’ for its lavish beauty, the Azores is a cluster of nine volcanic islands that exists as…

‘One day, every bike will be electrically powered. We may not like it as classic riders, but if we want to grow the bike industry we have to embrace it,’ says Robert Egger, creative director of Specialized. It’s a sentiment he’s been repeating for years, but it seems that more and more brands are starting to agree with him. It’s not a new idea, however. The first patent for an e-bike was granted to Ogden Bolton Jr in 1895. A few years later, in 1904, there was already talk that the electronic version of the bike would kill off its manual forebear, but the human-powered bicycle survived and e-bikes never really caught on. Over the past 15 years, though, e-bikes have seen a global surge in popularity, with more than…

If you want to ride an e-bike in the UK there are thankfully zero restrictions to doing so aside from a minimum age of 14 and the normal rules of the Highway Code that apply to cycling. The bikes are speed restricted depending on what country you are in (see below), and while that may sound like taking away all the fun, we should count ourselves lucky that we can ride e-bikes at all. In Hong Kong, riding an e-bike anywhere, at any speed, on any public road is a criminal offence, punishable by up to three months in prison. Despite that, there remains a community of Hong Kong cyclists who ride e-bikes in defiance of official laws. Bizarrely it’s also technically illegal to ride an e-bike in New York…

It’s worthwhile investing in reliable components that will serve you well after innumerable coatings of grit and grime The view probably hasn’t altered much since Edmund Hillary looked up at it while tying his boots outside the Pen-y-Gwryd hotel over half a century ago. Nestled in the lee of Mount Snowdon, this is where he and Tenzing Norgay made their final preparations before attempting to become the first men to summit Everest, a feat they duly achieved on 29th May 1953. Our mission may be less grand than Hillary’s but our reason for being in Snowdonia is principally the same. Hillary chose to train here prior to the Everest expedition because the terrain – with its sheer rock faces and scree slopes – is among the most challenging in Britain,…

MODEL: Genesis Equilibrium Disc 20 GROUPSET: Shimano 105 5800 RS505 GEARING: 52/36t chainset, 11-28t cassette WHEELS: Fulcrum Racing Sport DB TYRES: Clement Strada LGG, 700x28c FINISHING KIT: Genesis AL-194 bars, Genesis Code 7 stem, Genesis Alloy seatpost, Genesis Road Comfort saddle WEIGHT: 10.16kg PRICE: £2,000 CONTACT: genesisbikes.co.uk SAM’S SUMMARY After seeing the Equilibrium tip the scales at more than 10kg I was initially reticent to swing a leg over it and tackle the climbs around Snowdonia, but the more I rode it the more I grew to like the bike. It’s true that the Equilibrium’s weight can be sorely felt when going uphill or accelerating hard out of the saddle, but there was range enough in the gearing to tackle most ascents if I took things steady. I found…

‘There was no electricity so they used light from the fire, which they’d braze in’ ‘Eddy used to drive down here in his Audi, a special racing version with a 500 horsepower engine and paddle-shifters. He used to say he never worried about speeding because he had Belgian plates, and this was Italy. We’d talk about frames, then have some beers – he used to kill me drinking! I remember he had this spot around the side of the workshop where he’d go for a piss. He never liked driving back much, though. He used to make me take him to the airport.’ Whether a hangover was responsible for the preference to fly, Valentino Stocchero can’t, or maybe won’t, say. But what he is only too happy to discuss is…

As a proportion of budget relative to income, Ridley supports more teams than any other bike maker. Despite being touted as an endurance platform, given its manufacturer’s racing pedigree it’s unsurprising that the longstanding Fenix is no slouchy comfort bike. In truth its low and tight geometry would look aggressive stacked up against most brands’ conventional race bikes. The recent addition of disc brakes has done nothing to dampen this race-focused attitude. Part of Campagnolo’s new Potenza groupset, the discs provide fantastic stopping and superb modulation. Given the amount of descending involved they got me out of trouble on multiple occasions. A world away from the cushioned ride of some endurance bikes, the Fenix just softens the road’s rougher edges, while still leaving plenty of feel. Its low and stretched…

THE SPEC Model Cannondale Synapse Hi-Mod Disc 2018 Groupset Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 Deviations Cannondale HollowGram SiSL2 chainset Wheels Cannondale HollowGram SL Finishing kit Enve carbon road compact handlebar, Enve carbon road stem, Cannondale Save carbon seatpost, Fabric Scoop Shallow Pro carbon saddle Weight 6.80kg (56cm) Price £7,800 Contact  cyclingsportsgroup.co.uk Thanks to Google constantly spying on our every mouse click, we know that the Cannondale Synapse is one of the most searched for bikes on the internet. The reason is fairly obvious: it’s a very good bike. Look through past reviews, including my own, and you will struggle to find anything but high praise for Cannondale’s endurance bike. As such, it would be tempting for Cannondale to avoid making any big changes to the Synapse, but this 2018 edition represents the…