Table of contents for January 2019 in Cyclist

As a teenager in 1985, I stayed up until the early hours on a Sunday night to watch the final of the World Snooker Championships. It was a blinder: Steve Davis (he of the ‘Interesting’ Spitting Image puppet) had cruised to an 8-0 lead with his blend of precision and unbreakable focus. But Dennis Taylor (he of the upside down glasses) fought back to clinch an 18-17 victory after a final frame that lasted over an hour. Apparently, I was just one of 18.5 million TV viewers in the UK who lost sleep in order to witness the Northern Irishman sink that last black and break Davis’s dominance. Why were there so many of us? It’s not like we were a nation of fanatical snooker players (I certainly wasn’t) and…

£1,799.99, i-ride.com There was a time when if you suggested that a Fulcrum road wheel would one day be equipped for disc brakes and with tubeless clincher tyres, you would have been met by a hostile Italian shrug of disbelief. But here we are. As the flagship in Fulcrum’s line-up, the Racing Zero only evolved to a carbon rim in 2015, but since then has developed quickly to meet the increasing demand for the newest technology. This latest Racing Zero Carbon has a 19mm internal width and comes fitted with a tubeless tyre valve. As well as being wider than its predecessor, the rim has also been reinforced with T800 carbon and a new carbon twill weave that strengthens the spoke eyelets. That doubles up as an attractive design feature,…

£164.99, madison.co.uk Every pair of cycling glasses 100% has released so far has won either a Grand Tour stage or a Monument, courtesy of Peter Sagan. The California-based eyewear brand will be looking to continue that winning streak with its latest design, the Glendale, which Sagan will be sporting from next season. The oil, water and scratch-resistant lenses offer a wide field of vision and use a hi-tech nylon called Grilamid in the frames, which makes them shatterproof and lightweight despite their considerable size. The distinctive metal vents – designed to prevent fogging – are apparently inspired by the fronts of vintage American muscle cars, which are a passion of Sagan’s.…

Eddy Merckx  Age: 73 Nationality: Belgian Honours Tour de France 1st, 1969-1972, 1974, 34 stage wins Giro d’Italia 1st, 1968, 1970-1972, 1974, 24 stage wins Vuelta a España 1st, 1973, 6 stage wins Paris-Roubaix 1st, 1968, 1970, 1973 Tour of Flanders 1st, 1969, 1975 World Championships Road Race 1st, 1967, 1971, 1974 Merckx claimed many more major wins but we’ve run out of roo… Cyclist: What have you made of this season? Which moments stood out? Eddy Merckx: Nibali winning Milan-San Remo was a big moment [Vincenzo Nibali produced an impressive winning solo attack over the Poggio], and Peter Sagan at Paris-Roubaix was also very good. It was also nice to see Chris Froome attack like he did on the Finestre in the Giro d’Italia. Last year he won…

Cyclists who explore the Pale di San Martino – the most secluded and southern range in the Italian Dolomites – owe a debt of gratitude to the Victorian writer Amelia Edwards. A fiercely independent novelist, journalist, traveller and Egyptologist, Edwards ventured here when the mountains were still terra incognita to all but the local villagers and a few pioneering mountaineers. Travelling sidesaddle on a mule, wrapped in a long dress and lunching on hard-boiled eggs, the Englishwoman recorded her journey in Untrodden Peaks And Infrequent Valleys in 1873. Entranced by the ‘shattered walls of Dolomite, all grey and sulphur-streaked, and touched with rusty red’ and the serrated peaks like ‘sheafs of splintered arrowheads’, she declared, ‘I doubt if a more lonely, desolate and tremendous scene is to be found this…

TRAVEL We flew to Venice, which is serviced by several airlines from around the UK, and hired a car for the two-hour drive to Transacqua. Transfers and bike shuttles are available through Happy Travels (happytravelsdolomiti.it). ACCOMMODATION We stayed at the Hotel Castel Pietra (hotelcastelpietra.it/en) in Transacqua, where prices range from €50-90pn. The hotel is run by a cyclist so offers secure bike storage, hearty breakfast buffets, laundry services and a spa for post-ride recovery and massages. INFORMATION Cyclist was supported by San Martino tourism (sanmartino.com), whose website has lots of info on bike hotels that offer services such as secure storage, pressure washers, ride itineraries and toolboxes. The site also lists bike tours in the region, including details on distances, times, elevation and directions, as well as more general info…

DARK MATTER The Dark Matter benefits from Argon 18’s new design approach. An increased understanding of tube shapes and layups helped produce a bike the company claims is at once aggressive and exceptionally robust and comfortable, thanks in part to a highly raked fork and seatstays designed to flex and dissipate shocks. ELECTRON ‘It’s important for me that Argon 18 has a presence in track and triathlon, not just road,’ says Gervais Rioux. ‘The Electron was designed for the Danish track team, which rode it in the 2016 Rio Olympics [where it garnered two bronze medals]. For the next Olympics maybe five teams will be on our track bikes.’ GALLIUM PRO Argon 18’s stripped-down flagship racer weighs just 759g (frame, claimed) and features a proprietary 3D fit system that affords…

If you’re going to include the word ‘fast’ in the name of your bike, you’d better be able to justify it. Fortunately for Ridley, the new Noah Fast Disc lives up to its title. Everything about this bike has been tuned for speed, with Ridley making good use of its own wind-tunnel to hone the tube profiles, as well as getting input from the pro riders on Belgian WorldTour team Lotto-Soudal. ‘The wind-tunnel was used a lot in terms of the development, as Ridley has the luxury of its very own, literally next door to the office,’ says Ridley’s man in the UK, Stu King. ‘That was invaluable in terms of getting the most out of the design.’ The result certainly looks sleek. The front of the bike features Ridley’s…

£225, mavic.com A helmet’s job used to be simply to protect the wearer’s head. Now riders expect helmets to be light, aero and well ventilated too, as well as exceeding safety standards. Mavic says its new Comete Ultimate ticks all those boxes. It weighs in at 215g, and Mavic claims it offers a 3-watt aerodynamic saving compared to a conventional helmet, despite the Comete having super-sized vents. The real gem in the crown is a new EPS-4D shell material, which boasts a 30% improvement in shock absorption compared to a regular EPS helmet construction.…

£769.99, madison.co.uk More than two-thirds of the trainers we sell nowadays are interactive, compared to just 10% a few years ago,’ says Elite’s Peter Lago. ‘Direct drive is far more popular too. Our customers’ buying habits have shifted considerably.’ The Direto is Elite’s most accessible trainer that caters for all the latest trends in the indoor training market. It uses either ANT+ or Bluetooth to interact with a multitude of apps and devices, while its direct-drive design uses an integrated optical torque sensor to measure power to +/-2% accuracy and plot an analysis of your pedalling action. It can also simulate gradients of up to 14% and can cope with peak power outputs of 1,400 watts. That’s an impressive feature list considering the Direto is £400 cheaper than some of…

To call Eiji Konishi a good framebuilder is a bit like saying Yo-Yo Ma knows his way around a cello. Because while gifted individuals exist in any field, few make it to the realm of virtuoso. That might sound a little overblown – we are, after all, only talking about making a bike, right? And although this bike cuts a pleasing and slightly different silhouette, like most road bikes it’s a relatively simple design. But scratch the surface and this titanium creation reveals a framebuilder who is master of his craft – so much so that he’s been nationally recognised as one of the greatest metal fabricators in his country. Monster in the machine Konishi lives in Yosana Town, in the Kyoto prefecture in Japan. He comes from artisanal stock…

Fans of Alan Partridge will remember the scene in which he pitches increasingly desperate programme ideas to the BBC, including Inner City Sumo, Cooking In Prison and Monkey Tennis. There is a meme currently doing the rounds among followers of cycling that shows Partridge in the same scene, with the words The Hammer Series. That may be a little cruel (if admittedly also quite funny), and it’s true that cycling’s newest format can seem a bit contrived and difficult to understand, but if the recent edition of the Hammer Series in Hong Kong is anything to go by the event has plenty to offer fans. Points mean prizes The Hammer Series is the brainchild of Velon, a company owned collectively by 11 WorldTour teams. ‘The original vision for Velon was…

1 MOSHUN AERO FADE SOCKS £25, moshun.london Words are fun. Toidinaerauoy is hard to pronounce, but you are an idiot if you read it backwards. ‘National Rail Timetables’ is an anagram of ‘All trains aim to be late in’. And Moshun? Well, it’s like ‘motion’ only spelled all funky for millennials. Moshun’s socks are funky too, promising aero gains with shin-hugging Lycra uppers, and available in any colour, so long as it’s white, grey, slightly darker grey and black. 2 SKS AIRCHECKER £26.99, zyrofisher.co.uk Range eggs. Not actually free, are they? The SKS Airchecker, on the other hand, does do exactly what it says on the box, reading tyre pressure up to 144psi on its backlit display. SKS clearly has the gravel scene in its sights – where precise pressure…

To download this route, go to cyclist.co.uk/82italy. From Transacqua head east on the SS347, over the Passo Cereda to Gosaldo. Turn left on the SS347 towards Villa Sant Andrea, Forcella Aurine and Agordo. Before crossing the river into Agordo, turn left at Brugnach and follow the quieter roads and bike paths along the river before joining the SR203 north at Taibon. At Listolade, turn left before the tunnel and take the safer path, before rejoining the SR203 and heading to Cencenighe Agordino. Go west on the SP346 to Falcade Alto, then north to Passo San Pellegrino. Ride back down and join the SP81 west up the Passo Valles. Continue down until the turn off to Paneveggio, then take the SS50 south over the Passo Rolle and back to Transacqua.…

Like their nation’s infamous crosswinds, Dutch team Boels-Dolmans can blow a peloton apart. They have repeatedly done just that over the last few years – in fact, the past four World Champions have won the rainbow stripes while among their number. Britain’s Lizzie Deignan was first in 2015 (she has since signed with the new Trek-Segafredo team for 2019). Then came Danish rider Amalie Dideriksen in 2016, followed by the Netherlands’ Chantal Blaak in 2017. In 2018 it was the turn of Boels-Dolmans’ Dutch superstar Anna van der Breggen to take the rainbow jersey in a powerful display that saw her put 3 minutes 42 seconds into her nearest rival. Winning is what this team is all about. So much so that it can seem their domination has taken the…

Luz Ardiden has only featured in the Tour eight times, but it has certainly had its share of drama Iban Mayo must have been wondering exactly when the black cat had crossed his path or where the ladder was that he’d walked under. Monday 21st July 2003 just wasn’t his day. His legs were strong, he was high on the GC in the Tour de France and there was a decent contingent of Basque fans on the final climb of Stage 15 to cheer him on. But there was a fly in the ointment. At every pedal stroke he was thwarted by a man wearing a yellow jersey… The last resort The climb to Luz Ardiden begins, somewhat prosaically, at a mini-roundabout, the D12 spearing off the D921 to the…

Fall asleep on your flight to most Spanish destinations and, upon waking, the view of parched, yellowing fields below will alert you to the fact that you’ve almost arrived. Not so in Catalonia. As we circle the volcanic Garrotxa region, just a stone’s throw from the Costa Brava, what strikes me most is the lush landscape that greets my bleary eyes. Tree-topped, long-dormant volcanoes – there are 40 in this national park – give a taste of the terrain that awaits on tomorrow’s 142km ride through this green and particularly pleasant land. Numerous radio masts atop leafy peaks become visible as we begin our descent to Girona. Paved roads reveal themselves, snaking between the trees. It has long been said that this part of Spain is a cyclist’s paradise. On…

£480, dlkiller.cc There aren’t many cycling shoes that cost £480, but then not many are quite so beautifully crafted as the Vitos, which bear the moniker of company co-founder Danilo ‘The Killer’ Di Luca. As you might expect, coming from a former Giro d’Italia winner (albeit one banned for life for doping), the Vito’s carbon soles are stiff, almost incongruously so given the suppleness of the uppers. Yet they are also supremely comfortable. ‘The front half of the foot has freedom of movement due to a wider supporting surface of the hull,’ says DL Killer’s other co-founder, Chris Puttnam. ‘The heel support keeps the foot in alignment, ensuring stability to help with comfort and power efficiency. Most of the time the shoes will feel comfortable straight out of the box,…

£59.95 each (clincher), £69.95 each (tubeless), cambriantyres.co.uk After years of resistance, German tyre giant Continental has finally gone tubeless with the Grand Prix 5000 TL, an update of and claimed improvement on the now-defunct GP4000, the market’s best selling all-round tyre. Also available in clincher, the Grand Prix 5000 TL includes ‘Lazer Grip’ technology that Continental claims increases road contact, while a new Black Chili compound reduces rolling resistance. Punctures should also be less likely thanks to a layer of ‘Vectran Breaker’ fibre. Could we be looking at the next best-selling tyre?…

Taking the road well travelled is fine but the greatest adventures on a bike often begin where the road ends and a gravel track or bridleway begins. Sometimes, though, those adventures come to an abrupt end on a private driveway or busy A-road. That’s where komoot comes in – a route-planning app that gives you a head start on adventure. ‘Experiencing new places and routes is exciting,’ says komoot founder Jonas Spengler. ‘In the past, though, doing so came with the risk that at any moment you could find out you’ve taken a wrong turn, or come across a path that isn’t rideable. That just spoils the fun.’ Online mapping tools solve some of these issues, but often simply treat cyclists as cars and assume every cycle path is cyclist-friendly.…

Dear Frank What is the Velominati’s rule on mudguards? They would seem to go against several rules concerning the look of the bike and the hardness of the ride, but I’d argue they should be obligatory for anyone riding in a group in wet weather. Callum, Surrey Dear Callum Is it winter already? Indeed, it is, and no other beacon rings as strong as the seasonal shift of concern from the convenience of saddlebags towards that of mudguards. Are mudguards ugly? Of course they are. Are they practical? Less ‘of course’, but still mostly yes. And that’s where the real trouble comes in: are they more practical than they are ugly? And, should that be the case, are they a contravention to the hardness of the ride, as you say?…

Genesis Volare 931, £2,200 for frameset, £5,350 as built, genesisbikes.co.uk The Volare 931 is an elegant, head-turning steel bike with clean lines and excellent all-weather durability. Although I was initially nervous about riding a steel bike in steep mountains, this model has been shaped by the company’s experience racing in the pro peloton so it is no ponderous cruiser. My version came with Dura-Ace components, Shimano RS700 wheels and a Pro Vibe alloy stem, seatpost and handlebars, and although the Volare isn’t in the same weight category as top-end carbon race bikes I never felt at a disadvantage on the climbs. The beefy bottom bracket and ovalised down tube add stiffness, and the slender seatstays help reduce road-rattle for a smoother ride. At the first sight of rain,…

‘In the end, it’s a recipe, like making a cake. The cake can have too much sugar, it can be too heavy, too crumbly. If you don’t have the right recipe, the right ingredients and the right chefs, it won’t work.’ As expositions on manufacturing composite bikes go, it’s a well-worn analogy. Yet there’s something in the way the owner of Argon 18 says it that makes it sound original. The thick French accent certainly helps, and indeed the name: Gervais Rioux, the surname pronounced like the Michelin-starred father and son. But beyond that, it just makes sense. You can’t determine the recipe or ingredients of a cake from eating it any more than you can determine the precise carbon fibre layup in a bike just from riding it. It’s…

Cannondale’s Synapse has comfort at its heart, which was a significant plus on this event. The Girona Gran Fondo demands a lot from a bike, from rolling hills, power-sapping climbs and some seriously fast and winding descents, as well as cobbles. The Synapse took them all in its stride. The frame is stiff enough that I didn’t feel I was leaking watts on the slopes of Rocacorba, and it equally tracked the road precisely on the descents, but the flex built into the carbon layup, and the forgiving geometry, meant I didn't feel bruised or battered after five hours in the saddle.…

There’s a certain snobbery stitched into the fabric of cycling. A perfect example came when some friends of mine excitedly asked which sparkly adventure bike I was riding this month. ‘A Ribble?’ came the disappointed response from those who were assuming the answer would be some artisan Italian brand. But the snobs are wrong, and the Ribble CGR Ti is proof that a British brand best known for making sensible, middle-of-the-road bicycles can compete with the biggest names at the top end of the business. Shine on Ribble’s CGR Ti is far from the mould of what we would have expected from the brand even as recently as five years ago. Quite literally, it’s not from a mould at all, as instead of being a mass-production carbon frame, the CGR…

If you want to spend all Saturday afternoon down at your local bike shop, poring over your next dream machine while sipping a cappuccino, look away now. If, as is the case for many, you just want the best bike you can get for your budget, you’ll no doubt have noticed the substantial savings to be had by buying a direct-to-consumer brand – something you can do while sitting in your PJs, drinking coffee on your own sofa, any time of day or night. Consumer direct brands were/are (delete as appropriate) considered the scourge of the industry for removing a key part of the usual supply chain: the local bike shop. But whether you view the growing number of such brands as villains or simply smart for seizing the initiative…