Innehållsförteckning för January 2017 från Cyclist

£189.99, scott-sports.com The 5,500-year-old Areni-1 shoe, discovered in an Armenian cave complex in 2008, boasted a leather upper, a series of eyelets and a leather shoelace. It’s a reminder that laces – having been ousted from cycling fashion by ratchet and Boa dial retention systems before returning to the spotlight courtesy of pro trendsetters Bradley Wiggins and Taylor Phinney – are nothing new. And Scott’s Road RC Lace shoes show how well performance and style can go together. They share similar DNA to the Scott Premium, registering nine on Scott’s stiffness index. The insole also follows the Premium with extensive customisation options – numerous inserts to increase arch support coupled with a central metatarsal button to support the foot. The laces are offset, which we speculate takes advantage of the…

A masterly understanding of the capabilities of carbon fibre prompted Stefan Schmolke to dream up these bolts just over three years ago. ‘Carbon fibre has hugely versatile potential beyond that which is currently exploited, I believe,’ says Schmolke, founder of the eponymous carbon fibre brand. ‘So I wanted to see how far we could push things. The first prototypes I tested on my personal bike, but after we had nailed down the consistent manufacture of the bolts, we saw they had promise far beyond the cycling industry.’ Their application now extends into aerospace and automotive projects, where their weight saving of 40% over aluminium bolts offers a significant advantage. Due to their composition, the bolts expand slightly when they are tightened so they achieve the same internal clamping tension with…

1 SEALSKINZ HALO ALL WEATHER GLOVES £50, sealskinz.com ‘All Weather’ is a touch misleading for a glove that would turn your hands to hams on a warm day, but the ‘Halo’ in these fully waterproof, super-snug gloves from Sealskinz is entirely warranted. On the back of each is a set of LEDs, literally on hand to make sure turn signals can be more easily seen in low light. Powered by two coin cell batteries, they’ll flash for up to 200 hours. 2 FIX IT STICKS REPLACEABLE EDITION £24.99, gonebikingmad.co.uk Since Kickstarter launched in 2009 it has seen nearly £2 billion in pledges for some 327,844 projects including Cage Match, a dating platform that matches people based on their favourite Nicolas Cage films, Fish On Wheels, a fish tank on wheels…

A Pinarello that doesn’t cost the same as a holiday home in Spain? So what’s the catch? The distinctive wavy forks and seatstays are present and correct, and the ride quality – if you’re a Pinarello fan – is as firm and fast as you get on its more expensive cousins. In fact, if anything, the frame actually felt more comfortable than anything in the Dogma range, thanks to a subtly more relaxed rider position. That doesn’t mean there have been compromises in build quality. The carbon fibre frame still felt reassuringly stiff, especially on the long descents where I felt encouraged to throw it around the sweeping bends with abandon. By the end of the ride, I felt my confidence as a descender had increased – not a bad…

It started with disc brakes. A few years ago, one or two mainstream brands unveiled road bikes fitted with discs instead of calliper brakes, and the whole industry drew a sharp intake of breath. For some, it was a form of sacrilege. The clean, traditional lines of the road bike had been sullied by something that was a common feature of – whisper it – the mountain bike. But it didn’t stop there. Next we were told that 23mm tyres were too skinny, and we should be riding 25mm. No wait, make that 28mm. Now road bike manufacturers are proudly declaring their frames have clearance for tyres up to 32mm and beyond. Thanks to the addition of disc brakes, some road bikes such as the Open UP (tested in issue…

‘I work on the principle that if you draw a line from the rear dropout to the top of the head tube, below that line is where all the pedalling stresses happen, so that can be built stiff. Then above that line I work on the comfort,’ says Sowter. ‘The bigger your down tube, the stiffer your bottom bracket section can be. The skinnier your top tube and seatstays, the more flex you can build in for comfort. ‘Companies such as Columbus are now making down tubes 44mm wide with wall thickness down to 0.35mm, which is great for stiff, light steel frames. I’d still like to see wall thicknesses get even thinner or certain tubes wider – increase a tube diameter from 10mm to 20mm and the stiffness goes…

Cervélo has aimed to future-proof the C5’s disc brake specification, opting for flat-mount disc callipers and 12mm thru-axles, both of which look set to become industry standards. It’s a big advantage for the C5, as key competitors such as the Cannondale Synapse and Giant Defy feature quick-release skewers. Should thru-axles become the standard, these models will become outdated very quickly, as they won’t have any upgrade potential. The advantage of thru-axles is evident when riding the C5, as even under heavy braking the wheel never moved off centre or generated disc rub. The thru-axles produce hardly any wheel flex under heavy efforts, and the flat-mount disc brake callipers also look understated and compact compared to the post-mount callipers still used by several brands.…

THE SPEC Model Storck Durnario Pro Groupset Shimano Ultegra Deviations None Wheels DT Swiss RC28C Finishing kit Storck RB260 bar, Storck ST115 stem, Storck MLP 150 seatpost, Selle Italia SLS saddle Weight 7.2kg (medium) Price £4,899 Contact  storck-bicycle.cc The Durnario sits in Storck’s endurance line, meaning that it has been designed for long days in the saddle, perhaps at a sportive, where comfort is as important as speed. For many brands, the endurance tag is an excuse for introducing strangely curved tubes, slack geometry and innovative ‘dampening’ solutions, but the first impression of the Durnario is that it looks decidedly traditional. The tubes are straight and slender, morphing into one another in a beautifully seamless fashion. It certainly looks elegant among a mass of frames with boxy tube junctions, and…

£1,200, madison.co.uk Remember the old days when all turbos did was make your back wheel a bit harder to push around? Elite’s latest top-tier trainer, the Drivo, takes indoor training to another level by measuring power and replicating road feel, all the while remaining quiet, connected and interactive. It’s even got its own website. ‘We wanted to make training a more immersive experience,’ says Edoardo Menani, product developer in Elite’s R&D department. ‘The Drivo works with our own real-time video package, RealSoftware, or with third-party apps such as Zwift or TrainerRoad.’ This is not unlike its competitors, so how does the Drivo stand apart? ‘The Drivo and its little brother, the Kura, are currently the only two trainers on the market that measure power with a certified accuracy of +/-…

£400, uk.oakley.com From Andy Hampsten’s 1988 Factory Pilots to David Millar’s year 2000 ‘Over the Tops’ (proving that not only did he race through the dark, he occasionally got dressed in it), Oakley is no stranger to outlandish designs, and while the Radar Pace might not look too dissimilar to Oakley’s built-in MP3 player ‘Thump’ glasses of 2004, they do a whole lot more than just play music. ‘Essentially the Radar Pace is your own personal trainer,’ says Oakley’s wearable tech manager, Luis Diaz. ‘It will plan training sessions based on data you feed the app, then instruct you through tailored sessions via the ear booms. But the really cool thing is you can interact with it.’ Simply say something like, ‘Radar, what’s my power?’ and a reply will come…

As they say, age is of no consequence, unless you are a cheese. Or indeed a bicycle company. Orbea is one such brand that will proudly tell you it’s been around since 1830. Bianchi (established 1885) might have a few words to say about which is the older bike brand given Orbea didn’t start making bikes until the 1930s – before then it manufactured a curious mix of handguns and prams – but what isn’t up for debate are the lengths Orbea has gone to in reinvigorating its top-level Orca. A portmanteau of ‘Orbea’ and ‘carbon’ (although any triathletes out there might be interested to note Orbea currently holds the rights for Orca wetsuits, although the names are unrelated), the original Orca was a swoopy-tubed affair, latterly replaced by angular,…

Russia’s Olympic scandal, Fancy Bears, TUEs, Team Sky’s mysterious package – doping is very much back in the news. The consensus seems to be that things are not as bad as they were in the Armstrong era, but athlete surveys and the UCI’s CIRC report suggest the number of sportsmen and women doping is still likely between 14% and 39%. Yet despite the introduction of the Athlete Biological Passport in 2009, the percentage of athletes failing drug tests each year remains between 1% and 2%. Yes, there have been victories, with the blood passport credited with hugely reducing the use of EPO in the peloton. But as BBC investigative journalist Mark Daly showed in 2015, it’s easy to beat the passport by micro-dosing, even without the historic diluting agent of…

It was love at first sight – I had never seen curves so sinuous, alluring and mysterious. Unfortunately, my wife was with me, so I would have to wait until the next day for a closer look. I took the local bus and beat an elderly German hiker to a window seat. As well as enjoying the views, I listened for every change of pitch and whine in the engine. Apart from a couple of sections where it seemed the gears would start smoking under the strain, the gradients felt constant and manageable. The road surface appeared smooth and unblemished. And then a glance to my right after just 5km sealed my love: the view back down the valley showed a series of bends uncoiling towards a cluster of brightly…

This seems a little too hard. It’s like I’m cycling through treacle. The group I’ve worked myself into is drifting away, and even though I’m putting in more effort I seem to be going backwards. Normally I’d put this down to exhaustion but I feel full of energy. What’s going on? ‘La tua ruota! La tua ruota!’ shouts a rider behind me, pointing at my wheel. My rim is swaying from one side to the other, rubbing each brake pad as it goes. I have 115km and 2,000m of climbing to go, and my rear wheel has buckled. I pull over to the side of the road, with the leading groups of the Granfondo Alé Eddy Merckx dashing past me at high speed. I have to squeeze myself into a…

Bikes are a lot like the universe. In the beginning there was just Karl von Drais and his self-propelled laufmaschine dream, surrounded by a sea of infinite darkness. Time ticked past until one day, boom!, race bikes, sportive bikes, aero bikes, disc bikes, gravel bikes, all the bikes exploded onto the scene. What happens next is as unknown to us as the universe’s progress is to science. The Storck Durnario believes the endurance sector will continue to expand, while the Cervélo C5 hopes the industry contracts to the point where one bike does it all. As for the steel Cinelli Nemo, it doesn’t care for such hypotheses because all bikes are made by one big Italian framebuilder in the sky.…

THE SPEC Model Cinelli Nemo Tig Groupset Campagnolo Potenza Deviations None Wheels Miche Altur Finishing kit Cinelli Vai bars and stem, Cinelli Pillar seatpost, Selle Italia X1 Flow saddle Weight 8.92kg (size 56cm) Price £2,700 (frameset £1,850) Contact  chickencyclekit.co.uk By the time you finish reading these next two sentences, 1,667 Big Macs will have been eaten, 77,160 hours of video will have been watched on Netflix (of which 23% will concern Kevin Spacey), 250 babies will have been born and 37 litres of blood will have been pumped around your body. There will also have been at least two award ceremonies entitled Bike of the Year 2016, and it’s a good bet that at one of them, the award for best paintjob will have been given to the Cinelli Nemo.…

Hidden seat clamps are all the rage right now, and for good reason. Beyond looking super-neat they perform an important additional role in improving comfort. They allow more of the seatpost’s length to flex and absorb bumps that would otherwise transmit to your backside, and in Storck’s case I would say it works. Despite its 31.6mm seatpost diameter – which is chunky by modern standards, as many brands have reverted to 27.2mm or even narrower in search of better shock absorption – the ride feel was in no way harsh. The bolt is accessed from the underside, which means there are no unsightly rubber bolt plugs or hole covers to ruin the elegance of the frame.…

€1,500 (approx £1,300, formigli.com ‘Alloy is still in the game,’ says the Uriel’s maker, Renzo Formigli. A veteran of the Italian framebuilding fraternity, Formigli has been crafting frames in Florence, Italy, for the past 26 years, and the fully custom Uriel for the last 16. ‘The Uriel is the longest-running frame in my line-up. The only thing that’s changed is the quality of the aluminium, as I’m sourcing higher grades to keep the frame competitive.’ The Uriel is made from 7003-T6 aluminium alloy. For those into metallurgy, the ‘7’ refers to the principal alloying element, zinc, the ‘0’ denotes no modification to the original alloy, the ‘03’ is an arbitrary number to identify the alloy, and the ‘T6’ indicates the tubes were heat treated and artificially aged. For those interested…

£132 each, extrauk.co.uk Developed to provide its sponsored pros with an alternative to the almost ubiquitous FMB tyres at races such as Paris-Roubaix, Maxxis’s 28c Velocita tubulars are a high-volume, puncture-resistant option from the Asian tyre manufacturer. They claim to blend a tubular’s low rolling resistance with the puncture protection of a tough clincher set-up – the 120tpi nylon casing is reinforced with Kevlar under the tread. It’s just as well, because at more than £130 each, this isn’t a tyre you’d want to be replacing often.…

£389.99, silverfish-uk.com After a seven-year absence from the crankset market, Easton is back with a new ultralight one-by system. The EC90 SL crankset (with a 44-tooth chainring) weighs just 460g, which it claims is 33% less than its nearest competitor. Easton has made sure the EC90 SL can still keep up in the performance stakes, though. The hollow carbon arms are as stiff as you’ll need and the chainring features a narrow-wide tooth pattern to bolster chain retention. It seems those seven years were well spent.…

As Cyclist goes to press, Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish have just claimed victory against the world’s best track cyclists at the Ghent Six Day event. That Wiggins was there was a bit of a blow to the London Six Day track event, held in October, which had promoted itself as being the venue for Wiggins’ last race before retiring. When Sir Brad decided to add Ghent to his calendar, London had to adapt its statement to say that it would be Wiggins’ last race ‘in the UK’. Of course, Wiggins being Wiggins, he has now hinted that perhaps he won’t retire after all, giving the London Six Day fresh hope that he might draw the crowds again next year, and offering an opportunity for the organisers to wheel out…

Though a rarity, it’s not impossible for an elite rider to get lost during a race. Ferdi Kubler, winner of the Tour de France in 1950, ended up going the wrong way after stopping at a bar during the 1955 edition, and finished the day announcing his retirement from racing. In his defence, he’d just suffered a nightmare stage over the Ventoux, crashing three times during the descent, and told journalists, ‘Ferdi is too old… Ferdi hurts too much… Ferdi has killed himself on the Ventoux.’ More recently, Chris Froome recounts in his autobiography the tale of a young rider in his Kenyan team who dismounted with exhaustion during the 2006 Tour of Egypt and was left behind by the race convoy, including the broom wagon. Alone in the desert…

To download this route, go to cyclist.co.uk/56lagomera. Leave San Sebastián on the GM-2 in the direction of Playa Santiago. After 13km or so you will pass the turn off for Playa, but keep on the GM-2 in the direction of Valle Gran Rey. After approximately 34km, you will come to a roundabout where the GM-2 meets the GM-1. Turn right on the GM-1 to Vallehermoso. Follow the GM-1 in the direction of Agulo. You will pass through two tunnels and climb for approximately 8km. At the settlement of Las Rosas (soon after the second tunnel) look out for a right hand turn signposted Centro de Visitantes, Juego de Bolas. This is the start of a 14km climb that eventually rejoins the GM-2. At the junction, turn left and retrace the…

Strength and power-based training are far more important to the ageing athlete for maintaining performance Nothing invites a cliche quite like getting older. Age is just a number; it’s all in the mind; you’re only as old as you feel… the list goes on. But while we’d be foolish not to acknowledge that our physiology will alter as the years tick past, the good news is the extent and rate of the decline is much more in our control than we might think. The even better news is that cycling is a great choice for an ageing body. Let’s start with some encouragement. Next time you feel like using your passing years as an excuse, here are some examples of sporting achievements by individuals who might be considered well past…

Rohan Dubash is described by many in the industry as the ‘mechanic’s mechanic’. His knowledge of bicycles is fathomless, and following his mechanical exploits on Facebook is fascinating. If you have 10 minutes to spare, it’s worth a look to see how he resurrects bikes from the dead, stripping them to their constituent parts and then inspecting, washing, replacing, relacquering and polishing them to within an inch of their lives because, as Dubash says, ‘Rust never sleeps.’ Alongside his work, he’s also proud owner of a collection of immaculate bicycles, as well as a garage-load of parts from Campagnolo. ‘I’m not really sure why I’ve got all this stuff,’ Dubash says. ‘Maybe it’s just a memorial of 35 years’ worth of cycling. I think I’ve met too many people who…

Aside from the disintegration of the rear wheel, the Cipollini Bond, and its Campagnolo furnishings, did a great job. The frame offered a stiff and very predictable ride, while the Super Record groupset, Hyperon wheels and quality finishing kit combined to be agreeably stiff and light. The Bond frame is much like the man himself – flamboyant, aggressive but thoroughly effective. Out of the saddle, whether climbing or sprinting, it delivered power with minimal losses and always had the feeling of a classic racer, with very little in the way of flex. The perfect companion for an Italian epic.…

THE SPEC Model  Cervélo C5 Dura-Ace Disc Groupset  Shimano Dura-Ace 9000 Deviations  Shimano BR-RS805 hydraulic disc brakes, Shimano ST-R685 shifters, Rotor 3D+ BBright chainset Wheels  HED Ardennes LT Plus Disc wheels Finishing kit  FSA K-Force handlebar and stem, FSA K-Force seatpost, Fizik Antares VS saddle Weight 7.55kg (56cm) Price £6,199 Contact derby-cycle.com It was almost a year ago when the Cervélo C5 broke cover, and it proved to be a bit of a shock. The Canadian brand with a historical laser focus on performance and aerodynamic speed teetered away from road and into the nebulous region of a slack endurance ride with off-road persuasions. This is far more than another addition to the new genre of ‘gravel’ bicycles, however. This, in fact, is Cervélo’s attempt to rethink how…

Custom-drawing steel tubes is not unusual, but it is uncommon. During this month’s visit to Saffron (see p88 ), Matthew Sowter explained that while any builder can get a custom tube drawn, they have to stump up half the costs for tooling the machines to create the tubes. Thus truly custom steel tubesets are the preserve of big brands, builders who charge a premium for it, or a company well connected to a tube manufacturer, such as Cinelli. But why all the fuss about types of steel? In simple terms, a more expensive tubeset tends to use stronger steel so less material is needed to achieve the same stiffness. Tube profiles and shapes also play a big part, so a more expensive tubeset will often have non-round profiles in…