Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 31 i Cyclist Australia

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: summer Down Under is an amazing time to be a cyclist. The European professionals, still thawing from their winter off-season, take a little longer to acclimatise to the heat and sweat of Adelaide’s WorldTour opener, but for homegrown riders like Simon Gerrans, the summer of cycling forms a key part of the build for the season. The two-time winner and recent BMC signing arrived at the start in January with a very different role to years gone by, riding in support of his new teammate Richie Porte, who finished in second place overall. We caught up with Gerro on page 72 to learn more about his plans. In January, instead of following the TDU caravan (we leave that to our amazing contributors),…

$319, echelonsports.com.au There aren’t many track pumps that can justify their own dedicated travel bag, but Silca’s Pista might just have the most valid claim. It’s a modern reimagining of the brand’s classic 1962 design, with improved gauge precision over the original (from +/-5% to +/-3%) and better base stability. The original’s elegant looks and legendary durability have been retained, however, making this one pump you’ll want with you wherever your riding takes you.…

for the first time ever, the Women’s Tour Down Under had two of the four Stages with a hilltop finish. Katrin Garfoot of Team UNI SA had taken the first of the two climb finishes on Stage 2. Last year’s Ochre jersey winner and Garfoot’s ex-teammate, Amanda Spratt of Michelton-Scott, knew the second hilltop finish on Stage 3 was where it needed to count. Spratt launched an attack in the final 20km leaving Garfoot behind and rode the rest of the way on the front. Only American rider Lauren Stephens of Cylance Pro Cycling was able to follow until it finally came to the impossibly steep finish on Von Doussa Road. This photograph shows the moment when Spratt dropped the hammer and Stephens with it, launching the final climb to…

GREAT REASONS TO SUBSCRIBE Save up to $46.40 Never miss an issue FREE delivery direct to your door Stay up-to-date on everything you need to know about cycling Discover opportunities to win great prizes YOURS FREE Made exclusively for us by our friends at Apres Velo, the regular fit crew neck tee features the Cyclist logo and is given a special enzyme silicon wash for added stretch and comfort. Each subscriber will also receive a Cyclist-Emalco mug. We’re traditionalists at heart and that’s why we love enamel (and print). Known for its hardy and lightweight construction, our 8cm custom mug is designed to last a lifetime of Tours de France, late nights watching our homegrown heroes over in Europe and weekends away with mates – with your choice of beverage…

Even getting out of the armchair hurts. Activating muscles I’d forgotten I had until two hours ago has every fibre of tissue in my quads screaming at me, firing urgent signals to my pain receptors. I give up and flop back into the comfort of my cushions, but with a feeling of deep satisfaction. After all, no cyclist ever improved their performance without pushing their limits, right? Sounds like a plan In my quest to turn myself from weekend rouleur to turbocharged sprinter, I have one useful weapon in my armoury, even if it’s the only one: I’m good at following orders. With that in mind, I enlist the help of Anthony Walsh at A1 Coaching – the training company responsible for David Millar’s time-trial system. The thought of a…

Tre Cime Acciaio When all around him were riding doubles, Pinarello made Giovanni Battaglin this triple chainset steed on which to tackle the Tre Cime di Lavaredo during the 1981 Giro d’Italia. Engineers machined the Campagnolo 53/44t Record chainset to fit a third 36t chainring, but without affecting the rider’s Q-factor (adding an extra inside ring would usually have forced the chainset outboard). This gave Battaglin a smallest gear of 36x24 – enough to win the stage and claim the maglia rosa, which he kept until the finish two days later. Espada Carbon Designed by Elvio Borghetto – the same man who executed Battaglin’s triple chainset and who still works at the company – this bike helped Miguel Indurain become the first rider to break 53km when he successfully attempted…

This is the 2016 Addict, but it’s virtually identical to the latest model bar the Dura-Ace components, which have been upgraded to the new 9100 groupset. In a world of beefy tubesets and aggressive aerodynamics, the Addict remains slender and elegant. It’s a bike for climbers, being both light and stiff — exactly what I needed on the endless ascent of the Nivolet (all the kammtailed NACA airfoils in the world won’t make any difference if you’re doing 10kmh after 35km of climbing). On the way back down, the Addict’s precise handling only added to the fun of carving through the mountain’s winding hairpins. Despite its light weight, the bike never felt sketchy or jittery in the corners, and the aggressive racing geometry encouraged me to get low in the…

THE SPEC Model Cannondale SuperX Force 1 SE Groupset SRAM Force 1x Deivations Cannondale HollowGram Si crankset Finishing kit Cannondale C2 Compact handlebar, Cannondale C2 7050 Alloy stem, Fabric Scoop Shallow Elite saddle, Cannondale SAVE Carbon seatpost, Cannondale Grip Bar Tape w/Gel Weight 8.53kg (54cm) Price $5,299 Contact cannondale.com/en/Australia Synesthesia is a rare condition where one sensory experience is involuntarily accompanied by another sense. For example, a person might see a certain colour when they hear a certain word, or taste a specific flavour when they touch a type of texture. If I was handed an unpainted Cannondale SuperX and asked to describe the colour I felt after a quick bash on the dirt, there’s no doubt I’d pick the playful, vibrant and exciting sunburnt orange it has been appropriately…

Price TBA, met-helmets.com How do you make any item of cycling kit better? Simple, add some carbon. Met clearly took this on board when designing its new Trenta helmet because those white outer ribs you can see are linked by a 3K tow carbon cage. The company says the attributes of this cage allowed it to reduce the density of the EPS shell without compromising its ability to absorb hits, while also reducing weight (a medium is 223g) and shrinking the helmet’s frontal area. The new lid celebrates the Italian firm’s 30th anniversary, and it has made some bold performance claims for the Trenta: ‘It’s been proven to save 7% in drag when riding in a group at 45kmh,’ says Met’s Ulysse Daessle. With Met sponsoring UAE Team Emirates this…

As sports go, cycling can take an unusually large physical toll on your body. So looking after your body properly, allowing it to not just survive but to adapt and progress, should be a top priority. The issue of whether you can fulfil your nutritional requirements through your regular diet alone is a contentious one, and has fuelled the rise of the sports supplement. A quick internet search on supplements throws up pages upon pages of information: what they are, how to use them and which ones are best for you. However, as the supplement industry isn’t as heavily regulated as the drug and pharmaceutical industries, it can be hard to tell the fact from the fiction in determining whether you stand to gain any benefit at all, or are…

Surely it’s no coincidence that what are widely considered the two best Tours de France in living memory – the 1986 and 1989 editions – both featured the climb of Superbagnères. And if it is a coincidence? Well, then the climb can be considered a good luck charm for the organisers, and including it again might really spice things up. As we head rapidly towards 30 years since the Pyrenean climb last featured on the route of the world’s biggest bike race, it’s surely high time that the Tour considered going back. What’s the hold-up? Weak road bridges on the climb’s lower slopes mean that the Tour isn’t prepared to risk catastrophe to get the race’s heavy infrastructure to the top. One solution would be to station the weighty team…

There are few better places on Earth to be a cat than Mani. It’s unlikely the felines care much for the local myths or the views, but on this late summer evening in Kardamili, a footnote of a town on Greece’s southernmost appendage, the cats lounge nonchalantly on cafe steps and vacant chairs, picking at scraps left by a table of men gambling over cards and cups of wine. It’s not a bad place to be a cyclist either. Yesterday I went on a brief recce, and within a few clicks from my guesthouse the glistening shoreline had given way to vast limestone cliffs interwoven with a fading tarmac ribbon that traced its way into the mountains. In 14km I’d gone from sea level to over 700m, and but for…

Search the internet using the term ‘stiffness’ and you won’t get far before seeing adverts peddling pharmaceutical solutions for gentlemen’s issues. Bicycles and bedrooms, it seems, share an unswerving paranoia about limp performance, which explains why the marketing bumph that accompanies every new bike is invariably peppered with claims about how the frame is now super-stiff, as well as being lighter and more comfortable. But, in theory at least, the three qualities are in conflict, and bike designers are continually trying to find the sweetspot between them by tinkering with tube dimensions and material science. Pedal to the carbon When engineers talk about frame stiffness, they’re really addressing two different areas of a bike’s performance. The first relates to having sufficient lateral stiffness to allow a rider’s pedalling input to…

In December 2016 news broke that Pinarello had sold a majority stake in the company to a private equity fund part-owned by the LVMH group, a conglomerate made up of Louis Vuitton, Moët & Chandon and Hennessy. So what does this mean for Pinarello? ‘I’ve done a deal and I’m in the minority, but I still own the company, I put my money in my company because I trust my company,’ says Fausto Pinarello. ‘Our new partners are good at marketing and distribution, and it sends a message, a profitable message. No, there will never be a Louis Vuitton Pinarello bike! It would be easier to have a Pinarello Louis Vuitton handbag. So not much will change. In 2018 there will be a new aero frame and a new all-round…

THE SPEC Model Specialized S-Works Roubaix eTap Groupset Sram eTap Deviations None Wheels Roval CLX 32 Disc Finishing kit S-Works Hover Carbon handlebar (15mm rise), S-Works SL alloy stem, S-Works CG-R seatpost, Body Geometry S-Works Phenom GT saddle Weight7.30kg (56cm) Price $13,500 complete bike, S-Works frameset $4,500 Contactspecialized.com/au First launched in 2003, the Specialized Roubaix paved the way for a new genre of race-ready road bikes that offered greater comfort and stability with a more relaxed fit. Since then, it’s been victorious over the hallowed cobblestones of its namesake event an impressive five times, and now Specialized has given the Roubaix its most significant update in over a decade. Immediately noticeable is the absence of the signature Zertz elastomer inserts – the rubbery bits on the fork legs and seatstays…

$1,950 (incl. chainrings), $1,650 (cranks only), shimano.com.au 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…

$195, au.oakley.com If Oakley’s original Eyeshades were placed in a breeding program with its Jawbreakers, the offspring would look a lot like the new Wind Jacket 2.0. Technically Oakley classes these as snow goggles, but remove the detachable foam brow strip et voilà, you get perfectly serviceable road sunglasses. The massive Prizm lens promises an unhindered field of vision and appreciable wind protection. Plus, as a bonus, you’ll get to look like a modern-day Greg LeMond.…

The backdrop was familiar. Our views out across the horizon filled with skyward-reaching mountains covered in hardened tussock, the odd smattering of white sitting atop these towering beasts. Our previous visits to the land of the long white cloud had us looking up, wondrously dreaming of visiting the top, our 25mm tyres preventing us from venturing too far off-piste. In classic Cyclist pursuit, this time with a twist, we find ourselves looking down into the valley, marvelling at the wilderness at our feet. A couple of years ago, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a mountain bike mentioned – let alone featured – in a publication like Cyclist. Now, we find ourselves spending a significant part of the year aboard these wide-rubbered, suspension-laden machines busily preparing for multi-day adventures like…

Parlee made a name for itself building bespoke carbon fibre frames in the US when few other brands had even heard of the black stuff. Those bikes still exist today as the cream of Parlee’s crop, but in recent years it has branched into stock models, subcontracted to the Far East, to meet the demand for higher numbers and lower prices. Slightly lower prices, because at $7,000 for the frameset this is still an organ-sellingly expensive bike. You do, however, get a lot for your money. Even though this bike is stock, Parlee is all about fit, so the Altum’s stack height can be adjusted in tiny increments by way of the Flex Fit spacer cap, ostensibly an elongated headset cap that comes in three different heights: 8mm, 15mm or…

It was an imposing scene. A day before the UCI World Tour began for another year in Adelaide, two of the best Australian cyclists sat shoulder to shoulder. They had long been rivals, but Simon Gerrans and Richie Porte were now clad in identical team kit. The latest BMC Racing Team partnership that the duo were dutifully announcing was momentarily forgotten as they stared down at the assembled press. Porte wore his typical look, thoughtful and slightly reserved. Gerrans was more at ease, smiling as a BMC staff member told the gathered audience about yet another sponsorship for one of the wealthier teams on the WorldTour. It may have been unintended, but this pre-Tour Down Under image was powerful: two mainstays of the Australian peloton over the past decade, together…

There’s a good chance you’ve seen the Colle del Nivolet before, but not because you’ve been watching the Giro d’Italia. The climb in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy has never been graced by the country’s Grand Tour, mainly because it goes nowhere except to a dam that holds the water supply for Turin. The top isn’t expansive enough to accommodate the crowds and infrastructure that might allow it to be a summit finish, so instead it remains blissfully undiscovered by the hordes of col-bagging cyclists. The only traffic heading up its slopes are hikers venturing into the Gran Paradiso National Park, motorcyclists on a day out to see the views, and maintenance crews for the dam. So where have you seen the Colle del Nivolet before? The answer is…

Some rides are about pushing your average speed to the absolute limit, while others enforce a slower pace dictated by the surface beneath your wheels. While primarily sealed-surface ventures, both of this issue’s Big Rides contained just a lick of gravel. That may not sound like enough to warrant adding a dedicated off-piste machine, but our two review bikes may change your mind. You could dip your toes in the water with the Specialized S-Works Roubaix eTap (p126), or you could jump right in with the Cannondale SuperX (p122). We’ll let you decide.…

It’s not everyday you stand on the start line with Vincenzo Nibali, Cadel Evans and Emma Pooley, especially in Taiwan. Usually, you’d get a glimpse of these superstars during the Giro d’talia, Tour de France or World Championships, but with a prize pool worth over $40,000 – equal for men and women – it was clear the Taiwan KOM Challenge was going to be taken a little more seriously than the average gran fondo. While many of the competitors were racing for keeps, I was just hoping to get to the finish line. The opportunity to roll out with the professionals of the peloton provided a little more incentive. It was the chance of a lifetime I wasn’t about to pass up. Taiwan is a tiny island 180km east of…