Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2018 i Cyclist

£169, velobrands.co.uk You may have spotted it on the heads of Chris Froome and his Sky teammates as long ago as the 2017 Tour de France, but only now can you wear it yourself. Yes, Kask’s Valegro helmet is finally available in the UK. The Valegro is favoured by Team Sky riders on hot or mountainous days in the saddle because it’s all about ventilation and light weight… really light weight in fact – this size medium weighs just 209g. ‘We used a specially engineered mould to create extensive channels in the underside of the Valegro’s EPS foam,’ says Luca Viano, Kask’s director of product. ‘By doing so, the amount of EPS injected into the mould is much smaller. It means the helmet can be lighter, with better airflow, while…

£2,000, trekbikes.com Bontrager is still considered by some as merely the in-house brand of Trek, but that is to undersell the technical quality of its wheels. Take the new Aeolus XXX range, for instance. Each depth – you have the choice of 28mm, 47mm or 60mm – is lighter than the equivalent Zipp or Enve (these 47mm XXX 4s weigh 1,410g). Additionally, the wheels feature on-trend internal widths of 21mm, are tubeless-ready and have a laser-etched brake track for dependable braking. Yet, according to Bontrager, the real attraction is stability. The company says it spent nearly three years developing the rim shape, going through 10,000 iterations before settling on a final design. As a result, it says, the wheels cope very well with crosswinds. Key to this was real-world analysis…

If you carry your dirty bicycle into your house and set it down on your nice clean kitchen floor, the distance between the centres of the two muddy patches on the to know. It’s a sensitive dimension, which is why most road bikes fall within such a narrow band.’ A quick glance at the geometry charts for six of the most popular road bikes on the market (all size 56cm) reinforces Sturdy’s point. The variance in wheelbase is just 7mm, from 983mm to 990mm. Which begs the question: would 7mm be enough of a difference for the average rider to even notice? ‘Yes, 7mm would absolutely be noticeable,’ Sturdy says. ‘On a road bike I would expect a 5mm change to be noticeable to most riders and the more perceptive…

Visitors to the 2018 Bespoked handmade bike show in April will have had a cosy sense of familiarity. The venue at Brunel’s Old Station in Bristol was the same as most years. The hall was packed with the usual collection of exquisite frames and quirky designs. There were many recognisable names showing off their wares – Saffron, Feather, Demon, Field, Hartley and Shand to name a few. And of course there were the requisite number of beards and tattoos on display. However, this year’s show was subtly different compared to when it started eight years ago. ‘There’s a real maturity emerging from the builders in the room,’ says the show’s organiser and founder, Phil Taylor. ‘They are saying, “This is my business, it’s my job, it’s more than just a…

Tucked away in the storerooms of W Medcalf’s premises in Sussex is a shelf with hammers on it. Mr Medcalf specialises in restoring vintage Bentleys built between 1922 and 1932, so these are not just any old hammers. They’re copper hammers for knocking off big winged wheel nuts. Some of these tools are shiny and new, full of the pinkish lustre of pristine copper, with wooden handles that are light in colour and unsullied by dirt. Next to these are hammers that are identical in weight and construction but have spent a lot of time down in the workshops in the hands of the men restoring and repairing the cars. These hammers have taken on a darker hue, and look beaten and battered from years of use. In other words,…

MODEL: Passoni Top Force GROUPSET: Campagnolo Super Record EPS GEARING: 52/36t, 12-27t WHEELS: Passoni P44CC TYRES: Vittoria Corsa G+ 25mm FINISHING KIT: Cinelli Neo Morphe bars, Cinelli Neos stem, Passoni titanium seatpost, Selle Italia SLR Kit Carbonio saddle WEIGHT: 7.59kg (53cm) PRICE: £14,700 as tested, £7,520 frameset CONTACT: passoni .com THERESE’S SUMMARY I know it has nothing to do with ride performance, but the standout feature to me is how the Passoni looks. Terms like artful, classic and timeless all sound very clichéd, but this is the kind of bike that inspired those clichés. The carbon parts – fork, stem, bars and cages – are finished in a glassy dark blue that sparkles in the sun in a beautifully understated way. The smooth welds and finish of the titanium…

Ashmei’s winter bibshort has been in the works for three years and is only just edging towards release. ‘If we’re not happy with something we’re free to go back to the drawing board,’ says product manager Elliot Welland. To get objective feedback on its designs, Ashmei will even splice together products. Welland produces a jersey split down the middle, with each half made of subtly different material. This goes to a tester who’s left in the dark as to the supposed qualities of each. ‘It eliminates bias,’ he says.…

‘ Water! Please!’ I shout to the woman behind the bar of the rum shack. ‘Actually, two waters please!’ as I hold out my hands ready to receive the much-needed bottles. If my heaving chest and sweat-soaked cycling attire don’t convey the impression of a man in a hurry and requiring rehydration, then surely the desperation in my voice indicates the urgency of the situation. ‘Water, you say?’ the woman replies slowly. She looks at me for a moment while I drip sweat onto her floor, and then she says, ‘No problem,’ and wanders to the back of the wooden shack. As I stand there, itching to get back on my bike and rejoin the race, I see the woman stack some drinks on the back shelves before stopping…

Even if your bike doesn’t say Giant on the down tube, there’s a chance it was built at one of Giant’s enormous facilities in China and Taiwan. Giant makes huge numbers of carbon frames not only for itself but for a plethora of other big brand names. This should, in theory, give it an advantage over its rivals – when you’re the one making everyone’s bikes, you can keep all the best stuff for yourself. By that thinking, there should be a lot of good stuff in Giant’s latest aero road bike, the Propel Disc. Compared to the previous model, the new Propel includes many of the newest trends in the market: fully internal cabling, disc brakes and a totally integrated front end. Disc brakes may not seem like a…

£60, paligap.cc The first tyre Goodyear produced was a bicycle tyre, way back in 1898. Now, 120 years later, the American giant is re-entering the cycling fray with a comprehensive range of tyres for all riding disciplines. The Eagle All-Season is the design most pertinent to roadies – Goodyear is placing particular emphasis on tubeless compatibility, dubbing its technology ‘Tubeless Complete’. Goodyear claims the Eagle All-Seasons will run with or without sealant, and without the additional butyl layer that adds weight to other tubeless tyres. Could this be another death knell for the humble inner tube? (See p36 for more on that…)…

£190, specialized.com Almost every saddle brand now has a snub-nosed design in its range, but it was Specialized that pioneered the trend in 2015 with its Power saddle. The truncated nose and cut-out section aim to relieve pressure on sensitive tissues, allowing riders to adopt aggressive positions for longer. According to Specialized, the original Power saddle was considered to be supportive but a little firm, so the company has updated it by replacing the polyurethane padding with Elaston, a foam created by expanding lots of separate gel beads. Specialized says this replicates ‘the feeling of sitting on 1,000 miniature pillows’. Cushy.…

In May 1911 the third edition of the Giro d’Italia started in Rome. Bianchi riders had been present in the Giro peloton since the maiden race in 1909, but while Giovanni Rossignoli had picked up a couple of stage wins and third place overall for the outfit in that first race, the best they came away with the following year was three third-place stage finishes and fourth overall. That came courtesy of Ezio Carlaita, an independent who happened to be riding a Bianchi. With the cycling scene in Italy booming and lucrative contracts to be won, Bianchi needed to win the Giro to show their worth on a national scale, so for the 1911 season they brought in a proven winner. Carlo Galetti, a Milanese rider wonderfully nicknamed the ‘Squirrel…

o paraphrase a certain beer brand, Italy doesn’t do sportives, but if it did, the Sellaronda Bike Day would probably be the best sportive in the world. It’s only 58km long, but it takes you over four mountain passes in the heart of what many consider to be Europe’s most spectacular mountain range – the Dolomites. Taking its name from the ski trail that loops around the majestic Sella Massif, the route includes 1,700m of climbing and is closed to all other traffic. It’s not really a sportive – nor what the Italians call a gran fondo – for one simple reason: it’s completely free. You don’t even have to register in advance. Yes, you read that right – 58km of closed roads through some of the most beautiful scenery…

1 GORE C3 SOCKS £12.99, gorewear.com As the old adage goes, people with hot tin roofs shouldn’t throw cats. Unless of course little Socks is wearing socks, such as these spankerling new patterned numbers from Gore Wear, which are on-trend with their mid-length cuffs and on point with their fit and comfort. Yep, they might seem expensive, but as that other old adage goes, a sock is worth a thousand pounds. 2 PEATY’S TUBELESS SEALANT £7.99, peatys.co.uk Despite the name, tubeless sealant is not what you get when you remove the vital organs from a semi-aquatic, six-legged mammalian insectoid, but rather it’s the stuff that seals punctures in tubeless tyres, and here it’s been given a ‘nano-platelet’ (the blue glittery bits) injection to better seal larger holes, or to give…

To download this route go to cyclist.co.uk/75cadiz. From El Bosque, head to the A-372 towards Grazalema. Follow this over the climb and down the other side to a T-junction where you turn right through the centre of Grazalema. Take a left towards Algodonales on the CA-9123 to a T-junction and turn left over the bridge, heading for Algodonales and Zahara on the A-2300. A little over 10km later, turn left on the CA-9104, which will lead past Zahara to the second climb of the day. Head back through Grazalema and go straight on to the A-372/A-374. After 23km go past Benaocaz to a T-junction near Ubrique. Turn right on the A-373 back to El Bosque, or take the slip road to the CA-524 after about 8.5km for a slightly more…

It’s mid-April and Port Grimaud on France’s southeast coast is still half-asleep. It’s blissful. The harbour water is like plate glass, the sky hazy blue and the air breathless. By 8am we’re spinning along an empty bike path towards St Tropez. This is the first time I’ve seen our trio of bikes collected together in full flight, and as we pass a mirroring shop window, I think even the harshest critic would be hard pressed to describe them as anything less than fantastic. These are exactly the kind of bikes about which I dream. Elegant, beautiful, finely crafted machines There was much deliberation over how to label these bikes for the sake of this test. Candidates such as ‘boutique’, ‘custom’ and ‘superbike’ were floated, but as the terracotta roofs and…

MODEL: Parlee Z-Zero Disc GROUPSET: Sram eTap Hydro GEARING: 50/34t, 11-28t WHEELS: DT Swiss ERC 1100 Dicut TYRES: Vittoria Corsa Speed tubeless 25mm FINISHING KIT: Parlee bars, stem, seatpost, Fizik Arione saddle WEIGHT: 7.27kg PRICE: £13,449 as tested, £7,779 frameset CONTACT: parlee.com PETER’S SUMMARY The main thing that stood out for me about the Z-Zero was the way in which it managed to combine rigidity with responsiveness. On the flat it felt like a cruiser, but when we hit the technical descents towards the coast it showed its true racing side. I could really feel what the tyres were doing through the frame, but without the hand-numbing road buzz or jarring sensations of some bikes, and the handling turned from stable to ultra-sharp at precisely the points where I…

The Cervélo R5 was the ideal partner for the Barbados 360. With aero tube shapes and supremely stiff construction, it’s fast on the flats, yet with an impressive frame weight of 810g it floats up steep inclines too. On top of that, it sprints excitedly while also handling very accurately through testing descents. My one alteration, with the benefit of hindsight, would be a wider set of tyres. The roads of Barbados are badly maintained, and at times I felt I’d have been better equipped with a cross bike. The 25mm tyres, along with the R5’s stiff ride, sapped some energy over the rougher terrain. Running 28mm tyres at a lower pressure would have reduced a lot of those harsh jolts. The build kit of Enve 3.4 wheels and Dura-Ace…

Orange is a brand that, for me, brings back happy childhood memories. For anyone who might not have heard of it, the company set up shop in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1988 and went on to achieve a level of success in mountain biking that it could never have anticipated at the time. In its early days, Orange imported its now iconic steel hardtail mountain bike frames from Taiwan, and they were the stuff of dreams for teenage mountain biking nuts such as myself. However, it was when the company turned its hand to building its own aluminium, full-suspension frames that the name Orange found true renown, aided in part by a timely association with a certain other Yorkshire native: Steve Peat. Anyone who had even the slightest interest in…

Cyclist: Charlie, you won pursuit gold and team pursuit silver on the track at the Commonwealth Games. How did the locals of Great Ayton in Yorkshire react? Charlie Tanfield: When we came home there were signs, posters and banners in the town. A member of the Cleveland Wheelers drew a chalk picture of us on a wall. And friends had put gold and silver plates and bunting up at our house. Lots of people stayed up to watch the race. It was a bit overwhelming. Cyc : Harry, you won time-trial silver at the Commonwealth Games and won the first stage of the Tour de Yorkshire. Which did you celebrate more? Harry Tanfield: I enjoyed it more after my win in Darlington. Dad was 300m from the finish…

Matt Appleman’s story begins with an engineering course, and an injury. ‘I ruined my knee racing a bike at college that didn’t fit properly,’ he says. ‘It happened that the college I attended did what was then one of only two composite materials engineering programmes out there – I think the other was in the UK, funnily enough – and while I didn’t go there to do the course with this complete vision in mind of building bikes one day, that’s where it started.’ Appleman jokes that his injury left him needing a bike whose saddle was ‘four inches behind any bike out there,’ which left him with a choice: buy custom or make his own. ‘I was in my dorm room sticking tubes together, and trying to break them.…

Whether you’re hurtling down an Alpine col, negotiating rush hour traffic jams or weaving through a peloton, an unencumbered and expansive field of vision is always an advantage. It goes without saying that you should look up to the minute, too, so the new crop of oversize sunglasses fulfil both practical and aesthetic objectives. The technology for these lenses has filtered through to cycling from sports such as skiing. The design not only ensures vision isn’t obscured by frame edges, but the larger glasses also block more wind and let less sunlight sneak around the frames, despite being barely any heavier. So if you want to up your eyewear game this summer, it will pay to go big.…

The Cannondale SuperSix Evo Hi-Mod Disc Team has possibly the longest name of any bike I have ever ridden. But as you would expect from a bike that has ‘Team’ in its name, no expense has been spared on the build, with carbon FSA K-Force components, Mavic Cosmic Pro Carbon SL wheels and Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 9170 dripping from the frame. This might sound odd, but the best way to describe the experience of pedalling the CSSEHMDT is that it’s a very friendly bike. It’s not so stiff as to fight you, but stiff enough to feel like it’s helping you up the climbs. In particular it’s an absolute joy to descend on. Some of this will be down to the disc brakes and the confidence they bring, but it…

MODEL: Festka Scalatore GROUPSET: Sram eTap GEARING: 52/36t, 11-28t WHEELS: Lightweight Gipfelsturm tubular TYRES: Tufo Elite Ride tubular 23mm FINISHING KIT: 3T Superleggera Team Stealth bars, 3T Arx LTD stem, Festka seat topper, Selle Italia C59 saddle WEIGHT: 5.67kg (56cm) PRICE: Approx £12,100 as tested, approx £5,600 frameset CONTACT: festka.com JAMES’S SUMMARY The Scalatore’s lightness influenced every aspect of the ride feel. To begin with, it came through as a bit skittish, and I wasn’t sure if maybe Festka had gone too light with this build – the frame is around 740g, the wheels 1,015g. But it seemed to sprint powerfully enough, and as I adapted to its quick handling and lively ways I became endeared. An ultra-light bike with ultra-stiff wheels will flatter any rider in the same…

If you’ve watched the GB Cycling Team in action, you can’t help but have noticed their super-sleek shoes. These minimalist moccasins were another of Burt’s innovations. Seemingly without buckles, a Boa locking system is hidden from the wind on the underside of the sole to minimise drag. Moulded from carbon, the shoes are incredibly stiff for efficient power transfer, and incredibly light to minimise the impact of a rotating mass. Burt claims the shoes helped the team significantly increase peak power and reduce drag, and who’s going to argue with the 12 medals won at the Rio Olympics? Available through simmons-racing.com, you can even have a pair custom-made for yourself if you’ve got a spare £1,000 knocking around, although Burt says he is working on a version that’s a bit…

Founded in 2014, FiftyOne is a relative newcomer to the custom carbon world, but it has already built up some impressive credentials. Founder Aidan Duff is an ex-pro who counts Tommy Voeckler amongst his former teammates. If you travel to Dublin, where the brand handbuilds its frames, you’ll get fitted for the bike by Stephen Roche’s bikefitter, Aidan Hammond, while head framebuilder Aaron Marsh was schooled by Mauro Sannino, who made custom bikes for pros including Duff and went on to make custom frames for German giant Corratec. Given all this cumulative experience, it may seen odd that FiftyOne makes just one bike. But every one of them is unique. Special measures This bike was built specifically for me. I was measured up by Hammond and had various consultations with…

RIDER 1 Specialized Prevail II helmet, £175 specialized.com Oakley Latch Square sunglasses, £110 uk.oakley.com Café du Cycliste Micheline jersey, £122 cafeducycliste.com Café du Cycliste Mathilde bibshorts, £235 cafeducycliste.com Café du Cycliste Colour socks, £17 cafeducycliste.com Suplest Edge/3 Pro shoes, £299 suplest.com RIDER 2 HJC Furion helmet, £150 extrauk.co.uk BBB BSG-53 sunglasses, £65 windwave.co.uk Assos Uma GT jersey, £85 assos.com Assos T.Laalalaishorts_s7 bibshorts, £160 assos.com Assos Assosoires GT socks, £12 assos.com Fizik R4B shoes, £189.99 extrauk.co.uk RIDER 3 Met Trenta 3K Carbon helmet, £260 met-helmets.com Poc Crave sunglasses, £220 2pure.co.uk Brillibrilliant/Unicorn Blueberry Haze jersey, £139.48 bbuc.co Brillibrilliant/Unicorn Dance bibshorts, £148.20 bbuc.co Brillibrilliant/Unicorn Disco socks, £15.69 bbuc.co Specialized S-Works 7 shoes, £325 specialized.com Lazer Z1…