Innehållsförteckning för May 2022 från Cyclist

Where do you sit on the change spectrum? Some people love anything new; others hate change, like the reader who told me that featuring disc brakes meant we were in league with the Devil. Me? I’m somewhere about halfway along that spectrum. I like things that are new and improved, but only if they are genuinely an improvement. And disc brakes are an interesting case in point. Anyone who has experienced the terror of descending in the wet while using rim brakes and carbon wheels will, like me, appreciate the more assured stopping power of disc brakes. But why do they have to squeak so much? And why is it so difficult to stop them from rubbing? And don’t get me started on bleeding hydraulic systems. The old-fashioned rim brake…

The launch of Shimano’s flagship Dura-Ace R9200 groupset last year was long awaited, so didn’t come as much of a surprise. Something a good deal more unexpected was the simultaneous launch of a similarly revised Ultegra groupset tier. Ultegra R8100 shares essentially all of Dura-Ace R9200’s updates, so that means it too goes 12-speed, semi-wireless and Di2-only. Notably, for the first time Shimano has included a chainset-based power meter within the Ultegra product family, as well as a fully fledged carbon wheel range too. Apart from the odd exclusion – Ultegra doesn’t have Dura-Ace’s 54/40 chainring option, for example – the difference between the two tiers lies not in function but in weight and aesthetics. Ultegra uses premium materials more sparsely and does without some of Dura-Ace’s most advanced construction…

Sébastien Klein was working in the tech industry when he moved to London ten years ago. At the time, cycling was his after-hours hobby, a way of bringing a sense of balance and freedom to a busy working life. ‘Before then I was working in Paris, cycling on the weekends and during the week to commute. There was nothing really exciting about my job, but I could cope with it if I was cycling. I was also part of a group that started a fixed-gear movement riding at night during the week. We’d get back at two in the morning, with work the next day, but we felt happy about it.’ Upon arrival in London, Klein decided he wanted to work in the bike industry and balanced his quest with…

As the sun rose over the town of Saint-Girons on 18th July 1995, the Tour de France was preparing for one of the most difficult stages of the race. Stage 15 was a 206km six-headed monster, taking the peloton over the Portet d’Aspet, Menté, Peyresourde, Aspin and Tourmalet on its way to a summit finish at Cauterets. Miguel Indurain, heading for a fifth straight Tour title, was preparing to defend his yellow jersey on what was without question the toughest day in the Pyrenees; others were plotting plans for a stage win. But the racing would end up as a side note on a day that will forever be remembered for the terrible accident that ended a rider’s life far too soon. Italy’s Fabio Casartelli, riding for the Motorola team,…

Thomas is a man who is only slightly bigger than his handshake, which is saying something, as he is a mountain of a Greek, with broad features and a peak of snow-white hair. Together with his brother Giannis he runs The Pines restaurant, although from what I could gather from last night, that largely means Giannis runs around taking orders and Thomas sits around playing backgammon and talking to the kittens. This morning is no different. Dice fall and kittens mewl, although at 7.30am the The Pines is otherwise empty, save for Thomas’s Irish wife, Kerry, in the kitchen. Kerry was once-upon-a-time Miss Ireland, and met Thomas on an early Greek reality TV show about a cruise ship. At least I think that’s what happened. Simon is relaying such information…

This Orca is one hell of a bike, but it all starts with the components. Shimano’s new Dura-Ace 9200 groupset is as you’d expect – it looks a bit like the old one and shifting doesn’t skip a beat. Shift times have been quickened and the levers are now wireless, making my bike packing that much easier (the mechs are still wired and the charge port is integrated into the rear mech). But the best thing is the braking, which is superior in feel and modulation thanks to tech borrowed from Shimano’s mountain bike brakes. Yet it’s the wheels that impressed me most. These new Dura-Ace C50s are finally a useful inner width – 21mm (up from 17.5mm), meaning these tubeless Vittoria Corsas felt voluminous and plush, with the knock-on…

Part of the reason why gravel bikes have gained such popularity is that they’re all-singing, all-dancing. But not everyone can be Beyoncé. Having found its niche between road and mountain bikes, the gravel sector is now spawning niches within niches, with ‘race bike with added tyre clearance’ at one end of the spectrum and ‘round-the-world tourer’ at the other. So where does the Vitus Substance fit in? Up for fun The Substance began as a range of steel bikes, and while this latest version has a carbon frame, Vitus categorises it as ‘Adventure Road’. That puts it at the beefier end of the scale, with Vitus fully aware that gravel riding in the UK isn’t like the romanticised, pristine gravel roads you find in the US. The company also wanted…

The Beautiful Island p56 Lazer Genesis helmet, £209.99 freewheel.co.uk Oakley Sutro sunglasses, £140 oakley.com Santini Vega Multi jacket, £239 santinicycling.com Santini Redux Vigor jersey, £169 santinicycling.com Santini Redux Istinto bibshorts, £239 santinicycling.com Santini Classe socks, £14 santinicycling.com Sidi Sixty shoes, £360 saddleback.co.uk Northern Powerhouse p104 Kask Protone helmet, £225 velobrands.co.uk Chapeau! Club Stripe jersey, £74.99 chapeau.cc Chapeau! Club II bibshorts, £139.99 chapeau.cc Chapeau! Lightweight socks, £9.99 chapeau.cc Rapha Explore Powerweave shoes, £260 rapha.cc Kemmelberg p88 Kask Valegro helmet, £175 velobrands.co.uk 100% x Maap Glendale sunglasses, £195 maap.cc Rapha Custom Pro Team jersey, £120 rapha.cc Rapha Custom Pro Team bibshorts, £195 rapha.cc Defeet Cyclist socks, £12 shop.cyclist.co.uk Adidas The Road Cycling shoes, £130 adidas.co.uk Bikes p115 PEARSON Met Rivale Mips helmet, £140 met-helmets.com Oakley Jawbreaker sunglasses, £185 oakley.com Rapha Pro Team…

Asynapse, says Encyclopaedia Britannica, is ‘the site of transmission of electric nerve impulses’. This means there has never been a more fitting version of Cannondale’s Synapse endurance road bike, as this latest model is built with SmartSense, an interlinked lights and radar system. SmartSense is powered by a battery that sits just above the bottom bracket junction, and comprises front and rear Garmin Varia radars, Lezyne lights and Cannondale’s own wheel sensor. This tech all pairs with the Cannondale app to send alerts to your phone or bike computer. Aside from increasing visibility for the rider and other road users, both in the daylight and at night, the rear light can act as a brake light, and both lights can be set up to adjust their luminosity dependent on light…

Oakley has taken its modern Sutro Lite design and combined it with a lens shape inspired by the brand’s iconic Razor Blades to bring a touch of retro cool to the Sutro Lite Sweeps. The high-wrap, semi-rimless frame offers an uninterrupted field of view, while the holes along the top of the lens improve ventilation and prevent fogging. Oakley says its Prizm lens coating boosts contrast to make it easier to pick out details while riding fast, and the ‘O Matter’ plastic frames keep these sunnies light at just 31g.…

‘Energy gels deliver carbohydrate to the muscles via the stomach and bloodstream,’ says Richard Samuel of fitness consultancy and sports nutrition brand Torq Fitness. ‘Carbohydrate is the preferred fuel during exercise to support high-intensity performance. The trouble is, it’s held in limited supply within the human body, and when it runs out we bonk.’ Bonking – or hypoglycaemia, to give it its less titillating name – happens when glucose in the blood and glycogen levels in the liver and muscles drops too low. What energy gels aim to do is deliver large amounts of carbohydrate in fast-absorbing form to keep us riding. Yet despite this common goal, different energy gels work in different ways. ‘Solutions can be classed as hypertonic, hypotonic or isotonic,’ says Dr Emily Jevons, a nutritionist at…

Cyclist: How did you get into cycling? Jenny Graham: I wasn’t into sports as a kid. I liked riding my bike and getting muddy, but I didn’t know cycling was a sport. I was in the Army Cadets, so I knew that I liked being outside, staying up all night and not knowing how the night was going to end. I had my son Lachlan when I was really young, so it wasn’t until he went to school that I did an outdoors pursuits course at Inverness College and I found mountain biking. My first rides were small and local but they would blow my mind, and I just kept cycling further. I spent a good ten years mountain biking without thinking about anything else. Then there was a road…

We’ve long heard about the efficacy of cold water on everything from mental health to sporting performance, but what about heat exposure, specifically from a sauna? In a paper entitled Effect of post-exercise sauna bathing on the endurance performance of competitive male runners, researchers compared six middle-distance runners after a three-week programme of post-training saunas versus a three-week programme of training but no sauna (control). Sauna time was an average of 31 minutes at 90°C for 13 sessions over three weeks; the athletes had a three-week washout period in between. After each programme, two 15-minute run-to-exhaustion tests were taken, and the results showed a 32% increase in time-to-exhaustion for the sauna programme relative to the control, which, concluded the study, ‘is equivalent to an enhancement of ~1.9% in an endurance…

For much of the Second World War, Kefalonia was occupied by German and Italian forces, but when the 1943 armistice was declared between Italy and the Allies, the Germans began a process of disarming Italian garrisons. On Kefalonia, that left the Italian Acqui Division with a grave decision: fight with the Germans, fight against the Germans, or surrender. General Antonio Gandin polled his men and they chose resistance, and so on 21st September 1943 a bloody battle ensued, and by 26th September, 1,315 Italians had been killed in action and 5,155 executed (soon after, a further 3,000 Italian soldiers were killed when Allied forces sank the Germans’ POW transporters). This painful moment in history forms the backdrop to Louis de Bernières’ Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and while the book sold three…

TRAVEL Bonkers as it sounds, you can drive from London to Kefalonia in around 37 hours, traversing seas with the Eurotunnel and later a ferry from Brindisi in Italy to Sami on Kefalonia. Alternatively, we flew with Easyjet in October, with prices around £110 return plus £40e/w for a bike. ACCOMMODATION We stayed with Simon Wallace of Pro Camp Cycling, which offers cycle training camps and holidays out of Skala, where Simon has a luxury villa with pool and sea views. The villa sleeps up to six in three bedrooms, and Simon offers training camps in May, September and October for groups of four to six. Prices are £795pp, which includes everything bar flights and food and drink when riding, with a discount for the group leader. See procampcycling.co.uk. THANKS…

It’s a drunken evening in late February. You and your riding compadres have assembled at the Dog & Duck to talk cycling over a few pints. After discussing your far-fetched power-to-weight ratios, the conversation turns to how you could have been a professional if only you’d been blessed with genetically favourable parents, were raised at altitude and had access to nefarious doctors. ‘You’ve missed that boat,’ slurs your companion. ‘But why not take up the next best option and start your own pro team? Just cash in your cryptocurrency, shift around some stocks and you’re away.’ ‘Tempting,’ you ponder. ‘Very tempting. But where do I start?’ Money talks When forging a professional team, your ambition is inevitably set by budget. The top table is the WorldTour, occupied by the likes…

The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire fills the air. I stop pedalling, my senses heightened by the sudden, unexpected sound of bullets. I stand motionless on the side of the road, my eyes nervously scanning the horizon for any sign of imminent danger. I knew that my route around Northumberland National Park would head through the Otterburn Ranges, but equally I had been reassured that there would be no military presence at my time of passing. After a sustained silence I deem it safe to tentatively move forward, only mildly reassured by the lack of red flags, the Ministry of Defence’s signal that military training is taking place, yet still cautious and ready to drop to the ground at any moment. Ahead is the start of the controlled zone, and from a…

GoPro says that thanks to the GoPro Hero 10 Black’s ‘revolutionary’ new GP2 processor, capturing those epic gravel trails, sinuous road descents and even the occasional spill has never been easier to do in such good quality. According to GoPro, the new processor lets the camera shoot at higher frame rates for that all-important slo-mo action, provides better ‘hypersmooth’ image stabilisation and can automatically upload videos while on charge. It is capable of capturing video at 5.3K definition and can take 23-megapixel pictures, so no mid-ride trials or tribulations are likely to go unrecorded.…

1 MUC-OFF RAINPROOF ESSENTIALS CASE £19.99, muc-off.com Freezing yourself at -273.15°C should be pretty awful, but it’s actually 0K. And going cycling in the rain should be pretty tiresome, but it’s actually… no it’s actually pretty tiresome. But at least you can cross one less embuggerance off the list with this waterproof case for phones, cards and keys or tubes, levers and tools. 2 PRO STEALTH TEAM SADDLE £179.99, freewheel.co.uk If Jesus had a car it would be a Chrysler, although he’s known to have a Honda, but he does not speak of his own Accord. And if Jesus had a bike saddle, it probably wouldn’t be the Pro Stealth Team, because Jesus was humble and the Stealth Team is Pro’s very best saddle, weighing just 161g and featuring carbon…

When the UCI announced its ambitions for an all-new Women’s WorldTour at the World Championships in Innsbruck in 2018 there was quite a bit of scepticism. It seemed wildly optimistic to imagine that by the start of the 2022 season 15 teams would have signed up to be part of a club that brings guarantees about gaining entry to certain races, but which also requires its members to make financial commitments that, just a few years ago, would have been considered beyond the pale. In particular, the UCI’s declaration that by 2023 minimum salaries on WorldTour teams would be €30,000 struck many as a fanciful aspiration. At the time, a lot of women’s teams were professional in name alone. Two years earlier, Jessie Walker, a 22-year-old British rider, had left…

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Total distance 149km Total elevation 2,629m Mapping powered by To download this route go to cyclist.co.uk/125kefalonia or scan the QR code. Take the coast road from Skala north to Poros, skirt the port and follow the blue signs for Argostoli (make sure you research the Greek spelling too). Climb up through the village of Tzanata, then at the main junction turn right, signed Pirgi. Ride on through Agios Nikolaos and Digaleto, then just after kilometre 30 take the sharp left signed Ainos. Follow the road up past the old Nato base to the top of Mount Ainos (around 9km later) and then return the way you came. Follow signs to Sami, stopping in at Contessina restaurant if you fancy good food and a sea view. Hug the coast, heading north,…

For fans of the modern gravel bike, it’s all here: asymmetric dropped chainstays; lowered seatstays; clearance for 700c x 45mm tyres; front and rear rack and guard mounts; multiple bottle bosses. Yet, says Pearson’s co-owner, Will Pearson, there is a specific spin to the brief of its latest gravel bike. ‘Although it’s designed to be a capable off-roader with plenty of clearance for dirt, there is an emphasis on making it look and feel fast. We’ve found that the demand for adventure bikes that perform well on the tarmac is growing into a requirement in the UK market.’ At face value, the bike does indeed look the rapido part. Tubes are truncated, the tessellating fork crown and head tube borrow design cues from Pearson’s aero road bikes, the flared bars…

That this is the third generation of the Auriga Disc says something about quite how far Tifosi has come in recent years. The British brand has been around more than two decades but for much of that time produced steel and aluminium workhorses. They were great for slogging through the worst of the British winter but were invariably relegated to the garage when summer rolled around and the fancy bikes came out to play. The Auriga Disc is proof that Tifosi is now more than capable of producing those fancy bikes too. The main point of difference compared to the previous model is how the new Auriga Disc takes things up in the aero stakes: ‘The feedback we got from our sponsored riders was that we’d pegged the aerodynamic styling…