Innehållsförteckning för October 2024 från Cyclist

Where shall we go to ride? Perhaps to northern Spain, where car-free roads wind through a wonderland of towering limestone cliffs (p42). Or to the spectacular mountain switchbacks of Switzerland (p80). Or we could bathe in the sun-soaked beauty of the Tour de France (p66). Or there’s Britain. Where else can you ride through a giant rain-filled puddle outside a Wetherspoons at the biggest cycling event in the country? In summer? RideLondon is a huge, brilliantly organised sportive that offers a unique opportunity to speed through the capital untroubled by motor vehicles or traffic lights. It’s great fun – I’ve done it, and I would encourage others to do so as well. But any cycling fans watching this year’s event from abroad must have been thinking, ‘Does it rain every…

They call this northern part of the country ‘Green Spain’, and when I look out of the window of the plane as it nears Asturias airport, I can see how it got its name. Verdant forests spread back from the coast, creating a dense strip of dark green that rises into wreaths of mist on the higher ground. In the distance I can make out the bald, white rock turrets of the Picos de Europa mountain range, and I know that hidden somewhere in this prehistoric-looking landscape are some of the most feared climbs in cycling. I imagine the organisers of the Vuelta a España, having arrived late to the Grand Tour party compared to their French and Italian counterparts, set out to make their race the toughest of the…

As the most photographed, most photogenic sporting event on Earth, the Tour de France presents a unique challenge to photographers looking to capture a new take on mountains, roads and riders that have, for the most part, been seen many times before. Australian photographer Zac Williams has been documenting the world’s most famous cycling race since 2019 but despite his growing experience, getting where he needs to be isn’t getting any easier. ‘Access and bureaucracy are a huge problem,’ Williams tells Cyclist. ‘As a photographer I’m not there to take down a rider or block a TV camera – if I do it ruins my career – so it’s a case of, “Please Monsieur Gendarme, can I just shoot this one angle?” Every year there are more rules and more…

Why did I sign up for this?’ It’s a thought that every cyclist has had, normally either on the start line or part way through a long day of suffering. Today I’m saying it loudly because it’s 5am, it’s chucking down with rain outside and I’m having to haul myself out of my warm bed to take on a ride that I’ve done before and have the opportunity to do any day of the week. Why did I sign up for this? Because it’s RideLondon. Having started life as the RideLondon-Surrey Classic, a legacy event from the London 2012 Olympics, the sportive has been one of Britain’s most popular – if not the most popular – ever since. After Covid forced the cancellation of the 2020 and 2021 events, Surrey…

Established in 1948 and with its flagship Gray’s Inn Road store in London still fully operational, Condor is something of an outlier amongst the online-only and straight-to-consumer bike-in-box brands that we’re now familiar with. But that’s not to say it’s a fusty old traditionalist – thanks in part to its work with Italian framebuilder Sarto, Condor has been able to offer top-spec carbon framesets alongside made-in-house steel and aluminium designs since 2000. ‘We source the carbon, design the tube shapes, then Sarto – after providing input on what will and won’t work – puts it together for us,’ says Ben Spurrier, Condor’s head of design. ‘It’s a relationship we’re very happy with. Being able to pick up the phone to Sarto or pop over there is a godsend.’ This chopping…

My cycling CV is pretty modest, consisting mainly of finisher’s medals from various sportives, certificates qualifying me to teach schoolkids how to ride bikes, and jobs as a bike courier and postman. However it also includes a brown envelope containing a £10 note that I was awarded after making a very small contribution to a little-known and oftoverlooked discipline of our sport. It all happened when I turned up at a soggy field on the outskirts of St Andrews in Scotland on a summer’s day in 2017. Assorted heavy objects including cabers, stones and rope were being propelled in all directions by large men in kilts as I pushed my bike to a tent in the middle of a running track. On a stage behind me, youngsters high-kicked to the…

After the Second World War, lots of writing became very grandiose, and cycling journalists in the 1950s were particularly guilty of this. Riders were mostly working class lads who liked riding their bikes, but they were turned into these magnificent figures with allusions to Prometheus and ancient Greek gods. So for Charly Gaul to get called an ‘angel of the mountains’ for his climbing ability probably played into his ego a bit, but I think it also got him caught between reality and mythology. He didn’t quite know how to handle the portrayal of himself. Charly Gaul was born in 1932 and lived in the Ardennes of northern Luxembourg. He didn’t get a bike until he was 14, but by 16 he’d become one of the best riders in Luxembourg,…

1 Onguard RockSolid lock £199.99, extrauk.co.uk You have to take your hat off to barbers. And you have to take your hat off to Onguard, as its new RockSolid lock claims to be the world’s lightest angle grinder-resistant D lock. It’s made from what Onguard says is ultra-high-strength diamond-ceramic materials, with several extra layers of defence and a locking bolt that secures the crossbar in four places. It’s Sold Secure Diamond rated and weighs a claimed 1.4kg. 2 King of Sports: Cycle Road Racing £15, pendle-press.com King of Sports, first written in 1967, was Peter Ward’s guide to everything cycling. It includes yoga exercises, race tactics and much more in between, with graphs and diagrams to demonstrate. It has been described as the ‘encyclopaedia of cycling’ and this is the…

What makes a great climb? There’s no one recipe, but a heady cocktail of sheer scale, pitch-perfect infrastructure and views to die for earns Switzerland’s Grimsel Pass the accolade. The Grimsel connects the cantons of Bern and Valais, topping out at 2,165m above sea level. We’re taking on the climb from the south, starting in the village of Oberwald, a ride of just over 12km and almost 800m of ascent. If you wanted to make a day of it, you could start further back in the town of Brig and add another 41km and 835m of climbing, but as most of it is a grind along a main road it doesn't add much in terms of aesthetics. As you climb, the landscape grows starker. These routes spend a good portion…

Fulcrum’s new Sharq all-road wheels are packed with features, but at the risk of stating the obvious, the standout is their contoured, wave-shaped rim that varies in depth from 42mm to 47mm. The technical term for this shape is sinusoidal, and it can now be seen on the wheel rims of a few different brands. Princeton CarbonWorks uses it, and you may also remember the lawsuits Sram/Zipp brought up with Princeton in relation to its own NSW Sawtooth design. There’s a reason for all this fuss: if the science is to be believed, the sinusoidal design offers the dual advantages of improved aerodynamic performance and stability in windy conditions. In this case, the Sharqs should provide the aerodynamics of a 47mm rim with the stability of a 42mm rim. According…

Campagnolo’s new Ekar GT is the Italian brand’s second foray into gravel-specific groupsets. It’s a more affordable yet in some ways improved accompaniment to the original Ekar groupset, which was released in 2020. The headlines are promising. Ekar GT takes the important parts of Ekar – 13-speed gravel-friendly gearing, dedicated 1x-only design, positive mechanical shifting – but refines some key details, while bringing the price down by around £400. The economies haven’t hit too hard however, with the most obvious difference being a new aluminium crankset (Ekar’s is carbon) and a more generous 10-48t cassette option (Ekar maxed out with a 10-44t). Total weight has increased from a claimed 2,385g to 2,700g for the lightest setup. The GT stands for ‘Gran Turismo’, by the way, which Campag says ‘stands for…

At 4.38pm on 28th July 1984, 110 trumpeters and 20 drummers struck up the opening bars of composer John Williams’ ‘Fanfare Olympique’. Watching on were 92,000 spectators who had crammed into the Memorial Coliseum stadium in Los Angeles for the opening ceremony of what was officially called the Games of the 23rd Olympiad. ‘As soon as the notes of the Olympic theme faded, five skywriting airplanes began forming 2,000-foot letters and spelled out the word “welcome”,’ stated the organising committee’s official report. ‘Flower girls then passed out flowers with multi-language greetings of welcome written on the attached ribbons, and a man with “welcome” written on his back and powered by a rocket belt flew into the stadium and landed on the field.’ Among those being welcomed to the Olympic Games…

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At 14km long and with over 1,000m of ascent, the Lagos de Covadonga has been a feature of the Vuelta a España since its debut in 1983, when Basque rider Marino Lejarreta was first to the top. So successful was its inclusion that the race came back the next year, and the next, and the next. It has now featured a total of 22 times in the men’s race – an average of once every two editions since that first appearance – and famous winners include Robert Millar, Pedro Delgado, Lucho Herrera and Laurent Jalabert. The most recent riders to win at the Covadonga’s summit have been Nairo Quintana (2016), Thibaut Pinot (2018) and Primož Roglič (2021) and the climb will return again in the men’s race this September on…

I’ve been riding bikes ever since I could ride a bike, but my first proper bike, with curly bars and skinny tyres, was a Wilier. A Wilier Montegrappa to be precise, circa 2012. Its alloy frame had an elegantly arched top tube and a carbon fork with a 3K weave top layer visible through a lacquered finish. It had a nine-speed Shimano Sora groupset and, poetically, I used the fee from one of my first writing gigs to upgrade the stock wheels to Fulcrum’s Racing Quattros. The Quattros’ 35mm deep rims were aluminium, so they weighed a ton, but getting to complement my frameset’s classy looks with the cachet of mid-depth wheels for 250 quid? I couldn’t afford not to buy them. I’m not sure I’ve had a bike I’ve…