Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2017 i Cyclist

£429, xplova.com Not just a me-too product to go up against you know who, the Xplova X5 has some interesting new technology to bring to the bike computer/GPS market. The most obvious feature is an in-built high-definition (720p) wide-angle video camera with some clever actuation hardware. You can predetermine markers to start the video recording – a particular incline, heart rate or speed – at which point the camera automatically starts shooting the action. It also has 3G connectivity (via a Micro-SIM) so you can broadcast live footage to social media. The 3G connectivity also allows for a live tracking feature, which puts all members of an Xplova group on the map so you can see how far you’ve dropped your mates by (or vice versa). As a safety feature…

£799.98, madison.co.uk After much work recently on its range of carbon rims, DT Swiss has taken time out to produce a new performance aluminium wheelset, although you’d be forgiven for thinking these were carbon, such is their appearance. It’s the result of a new ‘OXiC’ technology, a ceramic-coating process that the brand claims is extremely durable and provides high-quality all-weather braking without looking like a regular (read cheap) aluminium wheelset. ‘The OXiC coating is applied in a similar way to anodisation, by submerging the rim in an electrolyte solution while applying electrical tension,’ says DT Swiss’s Alex Schmitt. ‘Where OXiC differs lies in millions of plasma discharges that occur between the electrolytes and rim, which forces high temperatures and pressure onto the oxide layer. This makes it melt, flow over…

Legwarmers can show a good bit of sock but a gap between armwarmer and jersey sleeve is a sin – nobody should have to witness an inch of bingo wing between warmer and sleeve First off, we have to address colour. Warmers should be plain: black or dark coloured. I’m not really a fan of this new trend for bright colours and patterns – it’s like putting milk in a bowl before cereal. Just wrong. If you simply must wear something flamboyant, though, you’d better have the skills to back it up. Winners can get away with this sort of thing. The second most important point to consider is gapping. Warmers must always overlap (underneath, unless you are a pro) the garment that they are extending. Legwarmers can show a…

According to anthropologists, it was about 200,000 years ago that the first modern human beings originated in Africa. Another 100,000 years later they set out to colonise the rest of the world, by all accounts starting in the Horn of Africa, in what is now Ethiopia. By 50,000 years ago humans were in Europe. It took another 49,800 years for mankind’s greatest achievement – the bicycle – to be invented (the original ‘Dandy Horse’ celebrates its 200th anniversary this year). Leap forward to January 2017 and Cyclist is packing a modern carbon bicycle into a travel case to make the journey back to where it all began: Ethiopia. The landlocked country in the northeast of Africa is not the first place you might think of when considering a cycling destination.…

As Ethiopia modernises and opens up more to tourism, so the big cities are seeing the infiltration of Western-style restaurants, with burgers and pizzas on offer. But travel to the remoter towns and villages and those options disappear. Luckily, the local Ethiopian food is truly delicious. Main meals in Tigray will almost certainly come with injera – a form of spongy flatbread, like a pancake, made from teff wheat, which is particularly suited to the dry conditions and high altitudes of Ethiopia. There’s no need for additional crockery or cutlery as the injera serves as a plate for various stews of spiced vegetables or pulses such as lentils (wat) or meat (tibs), which are eaten by tearing chunks of injera and scooping up the contents. Ethiopian tradition is to only…

It’s a celebration of suffering and a compelling insight into the psyche of a racing cyclist The Tour de Mont Aigoual features ‘a real bastard of a climb’, two windswept plateaus, three gorges and a descent that makes ‘legs go wobbly with fright’. Its figure-of-eight loop is 137km long and features 2,700m of climbing in a far-flung corner of France. It’s ‘the sweetest, toughest race of the season’. There’s just one problem – the Tour de Mont Aigoual doesn’t actually exist, except in the pages of a slim 1978 novel that has gained cult status amongst a certain type of cyclist. This detail, however, hasn’t stopped me and my riding partner for today, Gerry Patterson, from measuring out the finishing straight as described in The Rider. This involves us dodging…

Such a quintessentially Swiss event calls for a Swiss bike upon which to tackle it, so BMC’s SLR01 was a natural choice. The rigid bottom bracket junction formed by the huge down tube, chainstays and flared seat tube, coupled with a low weight, made it responsive and nimble up the event’s three main climbs, yet the handling was stable enough for it to inspire confidence on the technical descents. On the rare occasion I encountered a poor road surface, the D-profiled post and skinny seatstays dampened road shock well, such that the bike never felt disengaged from the road. The finishing kit backs up the accomplished frame – Shimano’s Ultegra Di2 was as clinically efficient as usual, while DT Swiss’s RC38C Spline wheels were great to ride on. The braking…

THE SPEC Model Kuota Kryon Groupset Shimano Ultegra 6800 Deviations Rotor 3D30 chainset Wheels Mavic Cosmic Pro Carbon Exalith Finishing kit Deda RHM 02 bars, Deda Zero 02 stem, Kuota carbon seatpost, San Marco Racing Concor saddle Weight 7.92kg Price £3,225 Contact dhwagencies.com In Italy there are the giant brands, the tiny brands and the in-between. WorldTour sponsors such as Pinarello and Colnago are the glamorous stars of Italian cycling, while those more seasoned in the esoteric world of custom bikes will lust over the likes of Zullo (see page 114) and Pegoretti. Then there are brands such as Kuota, lesser known and less expensive but crucially still born out of a strong history of Italian bike building and racing. ‘Kuota started manufacturing carbon forks and rear triangles…

£289.99, zyrofisher.co.uk With its lace-up Empire shoe, Giro found favour with riders who liked the fit offered by laces or who just liked the look. Where it fell down was in adjustability – the Empire couldn’t easily be loosened or tightened on the fly – which is where the Techlace comes in. ‘We knew we had a winner with the fit of the Empire,’ says Giro product manager Simon Fisher. ‘We also recognised many customers still want to tweak the fit while riding, so we designed the Techlaces. They have the comfort and fit of laces and the convenience of straps.’ The shoes marry the redesigned laces with a Boa dial at the top of the closure system. According to Giro, riders typically set and forget the bottom tier of…

£149.99, extrauk.co.uk After 150 years of making saddles, Brooks has finally decided the time is right to expand into making other riding components, with helmets currently the priority. The Harrier’s classic looks will divide opinion but the technology employed in the helmet is contemporary. Brooks claims the vents are shaped for efficient aerodynamics and the Up N’ Down retention system is borrowed from Kask’s Mojito, although the Harrier’s 300g weight is slightly chunky compared to other performance helmets.…

Energy gels are something of a miracle food. They pick you up when you’re flagging, increasing blood sugar levels and helping prevent muscle damage and fatigue. But it’s not all good news: they can also cause upset stomachs, and once you’ve started taking them you might not be able to stop. Judging how to use them and when to take them is a fine, if slightly wobbly, line. So how do they actually work? In the interests of not needing an energy gel to read this, we’ll keep it simple: amylase, an enzyme in the mouth, starts breaking down the starch and the gel then moves into the small intestine where another enzyme, pancreatic amylase, finishes the job. Transporter proteins in the gut cells absorb the glucose molecules, allowing the…

On a desolate moor overlooking the Firth of Clyde just a few miles outside Glasgow, there is said to be a ‘cyclists’ cave’, where the ancient, mysterious art of the ‘drum-up’ is still practised to this day. To the uninitiated, the skill of ‘drumming up’ a pot of tea over an improvised campfire has been a tradition of Scottish cycling for almost a century. Graeme Obree was a master of the art when he was a member of the nearby Loudoun Road Club in the early 1980s. He recalls in his autobiography, The Flying Scotsman, how older members of the club would carry a ‘tinny’ strapped to their saddlebags. ‘This consisted of a smoke-blackened bean can with an old spoke that could be handled with a stick onto a carefully…

1 KNOG OI BIKE BELL £15.99, todayscyclist.co.uk Like a diamond smuggler with an upset stomach, the law never ceases to throw up gems. Did you know that cyclists, for example, can’t be fined for speeding but can be booked for ‘cycling furiously’? Or that every new bike should be fitted with a bell? What constitutes ‘furiously’ is debateable, but you can be assured this bar-mounted tinger from Knog has a ring so pleasing it will calm even the most furious cyclist. 2 SIS GO CAFFEINE SHOTS £9 for four, scienceinsport.com American Randy Gardner holds the record for the longest time spent awake without stimulants, a literally eye-watering 11 days and 24 minutes. We’re not sure if his name makes him unwelcome at his local B&Q, but we do know that…

‘Two soigneurs literally had to carry Cancellara to his chair. He looked properly dead behind the eyes’ A‘circus’ raced by ‘animals’ orchestrated by ‘sadists’ and tended by ‘convicts’, Paris-Roubaix has been called everything from the Hell of the North and Queen of the Classics to ‘bullshit’ (we have Bernard Hinault to thank for that one). It’s a brutal 260km that sets out from Compiegne, 80km north of Paris, at speeds the late Wouter Weylandt described as ‘a bunch sprint in a major Tour’, traverses the rutted agricultural byways of northern France before winding up in a king-making, often heart-breaking one and half laps of the Velodrome Andre-Petrieux. If there’s a cycling equivalent to the Grand National, Paris-Roubaix is it. Each year there are busted clavicles, shattered wrists, popped kneecaps and…

‘It’s been tough getting back into training but the only thing I think about is the feeling when I won the medal’ When Britain’s world-beating track cyclists reflect on Rio 2016 it is those euphoric celebratory laps and teary-eyed medal ceremonies that light up their memories. But it is here, inside the empty cauldron of the Manchester velodrome – the headquarters of the British Cycling track squad – that the foundations for those moments of glory were laid. When Cyclist arrives at the velodrome on a foggy spring morning, the sprint squad are already hard at work, to a soundtrack of rumbling pineboards and encouraging cries of ‘hup!’ from the coaches. Callum Skinner, the Olympic team sprint champion, is grimacing through a series of leg-shredding standing starts. Katy Marchant, bronze…

THE SPEC Model Alchemy Helios Groupset Shimano Dura-Ace 9000 Deviations Rotor 2INpower chainset Wheels Enve 3.4 SES with Chris King R45 hubs Finishing kit Enve Road bar, stem and seatpost, Astute Starlite VT saddle Weight 7.30kg (56cm) Price £4,400 frameset, approx £10,800 as tested Contact saddleback.co.uk Helios is a grandiose name for a bike. Greek scholars will know that he was the Titan who would drive his sun chariot across the sky by day, returning under the ocean to the east by night. You would expect any bike named after a sun god to be pretty flashy, but the Alchemy Helios is actually rather unassuming, and I was immediately taken by its modest charms. I find something captivating about a bike with simple, classic lines – no gimmicks…

£240, c3products.com Rain jackets usually come with some sort of compromise. They may be waterproof, but they get soaked with sweat, or they flap around. Alternatively, like Castelli’s Gabba, they may fit snugly and breathe well but they don’t actually keep out driving rain. What if you could have the protection of a hardshell and breathability good enough for pro-level performance? After two years in development with its previous team Tinkoff, Sportful’s Stelvio jacket claims to offer both. ‘The Stelvio brings three new attributes,’ says UK brand manager Paul Whitfield of C3 Products. ‘First, far more stretch than we’ve seen in a hardshell, so the fit and cut can be much more tailored. Second, at around 160g it’s easily packable into the middle pocket of a jersey. Third, and most…

Dame Sarah Storey  Age: 39 Nationality: British Honours: Para-cycling 9 Paralympic gold medals, 23 World Championship gold medals Para-swimming 5 Paralympic gold medals, 5 World Championship gold medals 2016 Rio Paralympics, three cycling golds 2012 London Paralympics, four cycling golds 2008 Beijing Paralympics, two cycling golds 1996 Atlanta Paralympics, three swimming golds 1992 Barcelona Paralympics, two swimming golds Cyclist: Your three gold medals in Rio made you Britain’s most successful female Paralympian cyclist of all time, with a total of 14 golds. What does that mean to you? Sarah Storey: That’s an interesting question because it’s kind of a temporary title. At some point, as Tanni [Grey-Thompson, the former wheelchair racer with 11 gold medals] handed it on to me, I no doubt will hand it on to another…

Clive Gosling was just starting out at Cannondale when the company began sponsoring Mario Cipollini’s Saeco team in the 1990s. ‘It was a really groundbreaking time for Cannondale,’ says Gosling, now marketing manager at Cycling Sports Group, Cannondale’s UK distributor. ‘We made some big waves in the peloton. Cipo would win the first couple of stages of the Tour, be in yellow for a while, then he would bugger off and go to the beach. We were the first team to have a yellow bike ready if he took the race lead, along with matching components and kit. We even thought to put our Cannondale logos on the palms of his gloves for when he came across the line with his hands in the air. ‘We dressed Cipollini up as…

German brand Tune specialises in making the lightest bike components possible, but in the case of its Wasserträger 2.0 cage it actually added some extra weight. ‘Initially we had a cage that was even lighter, around four grams,’ says Harry Czech, international sales manager at the Black Forest company. ‘It basically looked like a figure of eight, just two bands of carbon and aramid polymer crossed over. ‘Every cage was more or less unique because each was hand-laminated, but the bolt hole drillings were really bad and, to be honest, it was just so ugly,’ he adds. ‘Also if you spilt isotonic drink on it when you put your bidon back in, curiously it somehow reacted with the cage and glued the bottle in it.’ Tune decided to go back…

The name says it all – the Endurace is an endurance bike with a bit a raciness thrown in. Or it could be a race bike with added endurance. Either way, it manages to blend the two elements pretty well. The geometry is fairly relaxed and it does a decent job a cancelling out the bumps, so is perfect for long days in the saddle where comfort is the priority. But the ride never felt sluggish or sloppy. The frame is stiff enough to be responsive when kicked into action, and it even has aero pretentions. At a smidgen over 8kg (size XL), it’s not a lightweight by today’s standards, but you’d be hard pushed to find something of better quality for under £1,500. DT Swiss’s R24 Spline wheels are…

Like everything to do with Rapha, the company’s headquarters in north London are in keeping with the brand aesthetic. The simple brick building is unassuming yet stylish, nestled in the increasingly trendy King’s Cross area. A ramp leads from the street down to glass doors that slide open automatically, so it’s possible to cycle straight into the bike racking area that takes up part of the ground floor. Inside, the Rapha office has its own cafe with barista, and beneath the exposed rafters and whitewashed walls are lines of sleek desks adorned with iMacs. As a working environment, it blends the functional with the fashionable, the classic with the modern – a bit like the clothing that has turned Rapha into one of the biggest brands in cycling. At the…

Italian heritage carries a high premium in the Far East, and Zullo boasts a wealth of it In an understated limestone workshop a few kilometres from Lake Garda, among walls plastered with cycling memorabilia and tabletops littered with steel filings, you will find Tiziano Zullo hard at work. Zullo is one of Italy’s classic steel brands, and Tiziano one of a dwindling band of master framebuilders whose numbers were once in the hundreds. As technology progressed, some adapted their skills to help create big companies using mass production techniques in the Far East. Some produced artisan frames for niche markets, while others simply disappeared. Zullo, though, has done something rather different. Rather than sourcing frames from the Far East, Zullo produces bespoke steel frames in Italy and sells them to…

I watch rider after rider drift back past me, cowed, having gone too hard too early into a headwind Switzerland is truly blessed. The geography is stunning, the roads are well maintained, the trains all run on time, the cheese is delicious, and a bar of Toblerone still has the proper number of peaks. Even the Swiss love Swiss brands, which must be why I see so many BMC bikes and pairs of Assos bibshorts on the backsides of the riders around me as we await the starting gun of the Gruyère Cycling Tour. Given the name of the event, we don’t start exactly where you might imagine. The town of Gruyères, famed for its cheese, is very attractive with a wealth of medieval history, but its solitary, steep, cobbled…

THE SPEC Model Colnago Concept Groupset Sram eTap Deviations FSA K-Force Light chainset, Colnago B1-r direct mount brakes Wheels Vision Metron 55 clincher Finishing kit Vision Metron 4D bars, Vision Metron stem, Colnago Concept aero seatpost, Prologo Kappo Evo Pro T 2.0 saddle Weight 7.48kg (56cm) Price £3,500 frameset only, £7,499 as tested Contact windwave.co.uk I was once told that Ernesto Colnago lives over the road from his facility in Cambiago so that if an idea comes to him at 3am he need only don a dressing gown and run a short way before he’s sitting at his draftsman’s desk. True or not, I choose to believe it, as the idea of Ernie hot-footing it through the Italian night clutching his night-cap fits exactly with the maverick inventor…

THE SPEC Sram groupset weights Red eTap HRD components 960g Red HRD components 958g Red eTap (rim brake) 675g Price (Sram Red eTap HRD) £2,387 Contact sram.com Sram’s eTap shifting simply had to be impeccable. Sram was in the crosshairs of every sceptic who wished to shoot down the wireless shifting concept, waiting to pounce on any tiny glitch. But the glitches didn’t come. No one’s gears started going haywire as they rode near a mobile phone mast. No one had their gears hacked. Shifting was solid and reliable, even in pouring rain, covered in muck and filth on a winter ride. Sram had delivered a superb product. I’ve used eTap for months now and can hardly fault its performance, which is why I was keen to find out…