Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 22 i Cyclist Australia

Can’t say I’ve ever tackled it myself, but I know a few people who have taken on Mont Ventoux. One pal in particular regaled me in vivid detail with the story of almost every excruciating pedal stroke from the town of Bédoin at its base to the weather station at the summit. He told me how he wanted to keep a gear in reserve for when things got tough higher up, and how he cursed himself as he clicked onto his biggest sprocket with 16km still to go. Every now and then he’d slap uselessly at his shifter in a futile search for a gear that wasn’t there. Lance Armstrong once said of Ventoux: ‘It’s more like the moon than a mountain. It’s the hardest climb in the Tour bar…

EQUIPMENT: Camera: Canon 1Dx Mark II Lens: Canon 24-70mm 2.8L II. Settings: f2.8, 1/250th, ISO 400 The pure chaos just after a sprint finish when you somehow have to dodge the riders still coming across the line and push your way through the media scrum to try and get an image of the victor – that's what this shot is all about. I was particularly happy with this image as it was Peter Sagan’s third win for the Tour de France and, as a result, the pack of TV cameras, journalists and photographers was enormous – and ravenous. You can never tell if you're going to end up with something as you push the camera between the mass of bodies competing for the shot. Fortunately, on this occasion the pack…

Few sights in cycling – or bike racing, at least – are quite as hallowed as that of a red-and-white-striped mast crowning a mountain that rises high towards the heavens. Mont Ventoux inspires, delights, frightens and punishes in equal measure. It is a climb that few would disagree is one of the two top potential challenges Tour de France organisers have at their disposal when planning each year’s route. The other is Alpe d’Huez, and you can argue among yourselves as to which one is ‘better’. But while Alpe d’Huez, with its famous 21 hairpin bends (or is it 22?), provides a stern challenge in itself, it is surrounded by its Alpine siblings – some taller, some shorter. The Ventoux, by contrast, towers above the surrounding countryside. This part of…

Protein’s main role is the repair and creation of body tissue – our cells – and you can’t build cells with carbohydrate and fat Pasta, porridge, bananas, Jelly Babies – these are the foods that cyclists are known for. Packed with carbohydrates, they would seem to provide everything a rider needs to fuel long days in the saddle, and the nutrition industry has helped out by providing easy-to-consume carb supplements in the form of gels, bars and drinks. But something is happening. In recent months, those same nutrition companies have started to promote protein-based products to cyclists as the latest must-have nutritional supplement. So is this just a ploy to get us to buy more stuff, or is the accepted wisdom about what cyclists should eat undergoing a rethink? Emma…

Andrea Zamboni has just come into view though the haze of the early morning light. He is sitting patiently on his bike at the side of the road, with one leg clipped in and the other resting on a dry-stone wall. Like some permanent fixture of the landscape, he barely moves, his eyes focused on the peak ahead. I worry that he may have been sitting there for hours. Andrea asked to meet at the break of dawn in Prato-Sornico, a village part way up the climb to Lago del Naret, our ultimate objective for today. That involved me setting off alone at 5:30am from the village of Bignasco, about 10km further down the climb, and I’ve been puffing through the darkness and chilly air to get here before sunrise.…

Fluorescent kit may be bright, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you are more visible to motorists – especially if you are cycling against a bright background Flourescent clothing has long been the safety-conscious commuters’ choice, and it has enjoyed a recent surge in popularity with fashion-conscious road cyclists, too. But in spite of its obvious attention-grabbing qualities, debate rages about whether fluoro and brightly coloured attire actually makes its wearer safer than a rider who prefers more muted shades. It might seem intuitive that bright clothing is more noticeable, yet academic studies and empirical evidence suggest it may actually make little difference in the real world, or even provoke a negative reaction in some drivers. In the name of clarity, we decided to examine the evidence on both sides to…

Our propeller plane screeches down the runway of Loei airport in north-east Thailand. We walk across the tarmac, squinting to beat the heat-haze waving across the runway. We grab our luggage and begin building bikes outside the airport. ‘Did you bring a torque wrench?’ I ask Tim, photographer and Big Ride buddy, as he pulls his Specialized Diverge out of his bike bag. ‘Nope, should be right,’ Tim says confidently. ‘Yeah, neither,’ I respond nervously. I’m a serial bolt-breaker. We tighten our stem bolts using our go-go-gadget torque wrench arms. All good. No problems. Yet. Our bikes mostly assembled, I look over at Tim and see his face, ashen white. Odd, as it’s 40°C in the shade. ‘Problem,’ Tim announces, holding a semi-built bike by the top-tube as if it…

It’s raining. I’m saturated. My field of vision consists of what little I can see around the rear-wheel spray from the rider in front, which is to say ‘not much’. Racing in the wet is something you tend to get more accustomed to. And it’s all fine, at least until your shoes fill with water. It’s then misery, shortly followed by ‘what the hell am I doing this for?’ This point came and passed what seems like an eternity ago. Bike racing is fun, but right now I wasn’t having any. Yet I was invested. I’d come too far and could not possibly get any more wet, so I kept swimming upstream with the rest of the lycra-clad salmon. As a boy from Geelong, Victoria you’d be forgiven for thinking…

In a world of uncertainty at least one thing is true: bikes are, and always will be, bloody great. A bicycle is the very embodiment of social democracy: it doesn’t discriminate and exists just to ride, enveloping allcomers with its warm embrace. In this issue, we look at two of those bikes – the Canyon Ultimate CF SLX 9.0 Aero, and the Bianchi Specialissima – in all their non-discriminating glory. We could probably learn a thing or two from them.…

THE SPEC ModelBianchi Specialissima GroupsetShimano Dura-Ace DeviationsNone WheelsFulcrum Racing Zero Nite alloy clinchers Finishing kitFSA K-Force New Ergo carbon bars, OS-99 stem, K-Force seatpost, San Marco Carbon FX saddle Weight6.52kg (size 55cm) Price$7,000 (frameset) Contactbianchi.com/au There’s something rather charming about a company that’s been around so long it has forgotten what colour its bicycles are. Could these steeds be painted the same azure hue as a Queen consort’s eyes? Or coloured like a Milanese sky in mid-summer? However Celeste came about (a word that means ‘heavenly’ in Italian, so make of that what you will), one thing’s for sure: it’s a colour that has defined Bianchi bicycles for over a century – 131 years to be exact. ‘The official Pantone for Celeste is number 333,’ says Bianchi brand manager, Andrew…

Age: 28 Nationality: Australian Teams: 2008-2009: Praties 2010-2012: Genesys Wealth Advisers 2013: Huon Salmon Genesys Wealth Advisers p/b Praties 2014-2015: Team Sky 2016: Drapac Professional Cycling Honours: 2011: Tour of Wellington (3 stage wins) 2012: Tour of Borneo (2 stage wins) 2013: New Zealand Cycle Classic (1st overall, 2 stage wins);Tour of de Taiwan (1 stage win); Tour of Japan (1 stage win) A move home was not totally unexpected for Tasmanian cyclist Nathan Earle, who told Cyclist a year earlier at Le Tour de Langkawi (2.HC) he wasn’t confident of being re-signed following his program that was currently in place. At the time Earle was serving as domestique in the third unit of the biggest, most successful pro cycling team in the world – Team Sky – and getting few, if…

It’s a measure of Esteban Chaves’ understanding of being a leader – a role still in its infancy – that after he won Stage 14 of the Giro d’Italia to Corvara in the Dolomites, one of the teammates he had most praise for, Sam Bewley, crossed the finish line long after he did. The 26-year-old Colombian was in the Orica-BikeExchange team car en route to the hotel after the podium ceremony when he told the Australian team’s communications director Brian Nygaard, who was behind the wheel, how impressed he was with Bewley’s help. The 26-year-old Colombian was in the Orica-BikeExchange team car en route to the hotel after the podium ceremony when he told the Australian team’s communications director Brian Nygaard, who was behind the wheel, how impressed he was…

I’m standing on platform 22 at Osaka’s City Station and something is clearly not right. The railway guards pace the platform trying to retain an air of cool but the simple fact is the bullet train to take us to Shimano’s factory in Shimonoseki, Japan, is running 45 minutes late. Surely heads will roll. Large snowflakes are falling onto the tracks and the indicators are blaming the weather for the delays to a rail system renowned for its to-the-second timing. The combination of bad weather and late trains, it seems, is not the sole domain of Australia. But once on board, the bullet train is fast – Strava clocks it at a max of 375kmh – but it’s nearly 600km down the coast to Shimonoseki and we’re way off schedule.…

THE SPEC ModelCanyon Ultimate CF SLX 9.0 Aero GroupsetShimano Dura-Ace Di2 DeviationsShimano Di2 Remote Sprint Shifters WheelsZipp 303 Firecrest clinchers Finishing kitCanyon HII Aerocockpit CF, Canyon S13 VCLS CF seatpost, Fizik Antares R5 saddle Weight6.66kg (size M) Price$9,999 Contactcanyon.com/en-au National stereotyping and bike reviews, like love and marriage in Frank Sinatra’s famous number, seem to go together like a horse and carriage. German bikes, for instance, are routinely described as clinical, ruthless and efficient, reflecting our commonly held views of the country itself and its people. But while German brand Canyon’s creations are indeed all of those things, Canyon’s story has more in common with romantic artisans than mass-production monoliths. In the 1980s brothers Roman and Franc Arnold would tour the country, Roman pedalling his bike in races, Franc peddling…

Twenty-four hours of flying from Sydney to London is a hell of a way to start a seven-day cycling adventure, but I wasn’t going to miss this year’s epic. The Whiskey Boys Cycling Club (WBCC) started in 2010 after one member of our team lost his father to prostate cancer and decided to do something extraordinary to raise funds to support research for a cure. In that first year we set out from London, cycling to Paris, and along the way fell in love with the countries, experiences and bonds we would form, extending our trips every year. This year we would start in Montpellier, France, riding into the Pyrenees to Andorra, past Girona, and finishing at Montjuic in Barcelona five days, 800km and 10,000 metres of climbing later. Three…