Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2022 i Cyclist

When, a couple of years ago, we produced our list of the Top 100 Classic Climbs (still available to view at cyclist.co.uk), the undisputed number one was the Passo dello Stelvio – or simply ‘the Stelvio’. It truly has everything. It has the location, tucked as it is amid the grandeur of the Eastern Alps on the border between Italy and Switzerland. It has the stats, measuring 24.1km in length (from its eastern side) at an average of 8% gradient and rising to 2,757m. It has the hairpins – 48 of them in all, carved like coiled spaghetti into the mountainside and held in place by magnificent stone walls. It also has the history, being the place where Fausto Coppi cemented his legend with a blistering attack on its slopes…

After 29 years as one of the UK’s leading artist-blacksmiths, Chris Yeomans’ transition to framebuilder was easier than most. His artistic and restoration metalwork can be seen across the country, including at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace, and he even built a sculpture for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. But labour takes its toll. ‘I got to the point where I was burned out physically. Stuff I could do all day previously I could only do for 20 minutes,’ Yeomans says. ‘I did a course at the Bicycle Academy with a view to phasing out blacksmithing for something more enjoyable. I went from working with objects weighing 200kg to fabricating things weighing less than two.’ It helped that he wasn’t a stranger to cycling. As a…

‘In this picture Elisa Longo Borghini hugs teammates Ellen van Dijk and Lucinda Brand after winning the second edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes on 16th April. ‘As a photographer I’m commissioned and work for Trek, so I know the Trek-Segafredo team really well and have been photographing them since the beginning. That has built up a huge amount of trust and means the team allows me amazing access to their riders, so when Elisa came over the line first at Roubaix I was right there. ‘These are incredible moments if you’re around a team as much as I am because you’ve been part of so much leading up to them. Last year Lizzie Deignan won Paris-Roubaix and Eli came third. This year it was Eli’s.’ ‘This is the finish line at…

Cyclist: Covid took away most of your Classics campaign, but how are you feeling now? Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig: I’m getting better, but it has been a rollercoaster. I had a fever with coughing and took ten days off the bike. What was frustrating was I started to build up slowly and did a couple of interval sessions, thinking I could make Flêche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. I was positive and happy, then it was right back to feeling bad again and I couldn’t get out of bed. It was a hard decision to pull the plug on the Ardennes Classics, but seeing Marta [Cavalli] win helped overcome the disappointment. Cyc: How important is it for you to have the Tour de France Femmes? CUL: Well, we’ve been fighting for this for…

‘Tomorrow is going to be hard work for you,’ shouts the head of press as he hands me my accreditation. ‘The police are closing off the through roads to the Kwaremont and Paterberg. They’re worried about the crowd sizes.’ My heart sinks. ‘Welcome to the Tour of Flanders,’ I mutter under my breath, though not softly enough, it seems. ‘Don’t blame us, blame the police – it’s out of our control!’ the gruff voice barks back at me. Through force of habit I attend the race photographers’ briefing in the centre of Antwerp, where the familiar faces of moto drivers and photographers gather in the shadows of the Hilton’s corporate entertainment suite. It seems the rules have tightened, and only a few photographers on motos can be on the legendary…

Slipping the shackles of civilisation and disappearing into the Scottish wilderness is taking longer than expected. We hadn’t anticipated the predatory pay and display machines in Callander’s riverside car park not accepting cards nor giving change. Neither did we plan on getting stuck behind a timber lorry on the high street, holding our breath in a cloud of exhaust fumes while waiting for the lights to change. Finally they do, and we are bidden to splutter off past a quaint row of boutique cafes and shop windows dressed in tartan and shortbread, then make a left down a residential street of parked cars and neatly trimmed lawns. At the end is a metal gate, on the other side a tarmacked, shared use footpath bordered by hedges and the fences of…

Hands up who hates front mechs? I do. And hands up who can explain planetary gears? I can’t. I’ve looked it up, and it has something to do with planet gears revolving around a sun gear turning inside a thing. It’s the basis of Classified’s Powershift system, and I’ve tried imagining it happening every time I click the Powershift’s little satellite button with my left hand, which changes my theoretical front gear from 1:1 to 1:0.686. The message is communicated via Bluetooth; the transmitter is integrated into a special bar plug à la the previous generation of Di2; the receiver is integrated into a rear thru-axle lever, which acts like solenoid to actuate a shift inside the hub’s planetary gears. I don’t really get that either. But what I do…

The Allez name has a fine heritage. It has long been the moniker of Specialized’s entry-level race bike, introducing riders to the brand and the joys of cycling more generally. Yet back in 1981, the Allez held a much loftier position as Specialized’s performance race bike. A lot has changed in three decades – for one thing, Allez bikes are aluminium, not steel – but whether it’s a Tarmac, Venge or Roubaix, every dropbar Specialized since owes a debt to that original Allez. No wonder the rejuvenated Allez Sprint has become an iconic design all over again. ‘Since we introduced it in 2015, the Sprint has become part of crit racing culture thanks to its aero properties, stiffness and aggressive geometry,’ says the company’s road product manager Cam Piper. Specialized…

Bryton’s Rider S500 is the latest challenger to enter the hotly contested £250 bike computer bracket. In terms of hardware, battery life is impressive at a claimed 24 hours (continuous GPS recording time); the screen is a generous-for-its-size 2.4-inch colour touchscreen with ambient light sensor; and the whole thing weighs just 87g. Functionality highlights include turn-by-turn mapping, online search-by-voice capabilities (when paired to a smartphone) to make finding mid-ride cafes that much easier, plus a neat ‘Climb Challenge’, where upcoming climbs are displayed in profile with height, length, ascent and gradients in colour-coded segments.…

While overcoming aerodynamic drag costs around 70% of a rider’s watts, rolling resistance – energy lost to tyres deflecting and deforming – accounts for 20% (the remainder is frictional losses through bearings and drivetrain). That’s significant, and it’s why Michelin is touting its Power Cup tyres as its ‘fastest ever’ – allegedly demonstrating lower rolling resistance than Continental’s GP5000s, Vittoria’s Corsa 2.0s and Schwalbe’s Pro Ones in independent tests performed by Wheel Energy, all while being lighter too. Crucially, that claim concerns the 25mm clincher version (claimed 200g, £42.99), but tubeless (255g, £62.99) and tubular (265g for 23mm; from £99.99) should be similarly fast.…

I’m roused by the shrill blast of my alarm, purposefully set to a maddening tone to ensure that I wake promptly at 3:45am. An overwhelming urge to roll over and pull the duvet over my head permeates my body. Still full of sleep, my eyes sting, although nowhere near as much as my legs will once the day is through. ‘Come on, there’s a mountain to be climbed.’ The little voice whispering inside my head is right, there is a mountain to be climbed, only it’s not just any old mountain. It’s the legendary Passo dello Stelvio. And that’s a serious undertaking as it is, but for today’s Big Ride, she’ll prove a beast thrice over. I’m struggling to remember why, given the early hour, but I’ve decided to climb…

There’s nothing quite like it. The Hell of the North, the Queen of the Classics, the toughest, most gruelling day a professional can have on a bike, and the one race you have to watch roadside before you can truly call yourself a cycling fan. Paris-Roubaix is the greatest single day of pro racing on the calendar, the ultimate high-wire act at the WorldTour circus. But if you do decide to go, how do you tell your Camphin-en-Pévèles from your Carrefour de l’Arbres? How will you know where to stand without being blocked off by a race moto? Which side streets should you take to avoid road closures? And crucially, where do you keep your beer so it stays cold and doesn’t get stolen? Fear not, dear reader, because we…

1 Open Min.D California p128 Design legend Gerard Vroomen has taken the original Open Min.D and slashed the frame weight. But does that make it worth the £16k pricetag? 2 3T Exploro Ultra p134 It’s a Vroomen double bill this issue, and once again he’s raising eyebrows – this time with an extreme take on the original aero gravel bike. 3 Classified Powershift p140 The Belgian brand aims to ship out the front mech for a planetary hub gearshift that’s both super-quick and incredibly sturdy. And it works.…

It’s hard to innovate in the world of bike helmets, but Lazer has done its utmost with its latest flagship aero lid, the Vento. It’s claimed to be more aerodynamic and better vented than the Lazer Bullet 2.0 it replaces, and it weighs 90g less at a claimed 290g for a size medium and uses 24% less plastic. However, arguably the Vento’s biggest stride forward is its proprietary safety technology, KinetiCore, which aims to decrease the rotational forces acting on a rider’s cranium in the event of a crash. In this, KinetiCore is similar to Mips, but the way it works is quite different. Unlike Mips’ slip-plane liner, KinetiCore uses a series of EPS blocks that line the underside of the helmet shell. These blocks are designed to deform, allowing…

1 RESTRAP CANISTER BAR BAG £44.99, restrap.com Why wouldn’t 4 ask 5 out? He was 22. Happily, the Restrap Canister bag has no such worries when it comes to going out, with you or anyone else, anywhere. That’s because it’s made from waterproof textured nylon and features elasticated side pockets, universal fit straps and a front light loop. And like all Restrap gear, it’s made in Yorkshire. 2 SEEP LARGE ECO SPONGES £6.50 (2pk), theseepcompany.com How do you make gold soup? Simple, one potato, one onion, 24 carats. And how do you make an eco-friendly sponge? You treat raw wood material with a cooking liquor comprised of NaOH and Na2S to create cellulose wood pulp sponges, which are fully compostable. OK, not so simple. So how about you just buy…

RED-S: relative energy deficiency in sport. In other words, not eating enough to support your body. The brain, for example, accounts for just 2% of your bodyweight but requires 20% of the body’s calories – it takes around 320kcals per day just to think. Then you need calories to sustain organs and muscles, and it’s this that concerns cyclists: a non-athlete uses around 20% of their energy to support muscles but a trained athlete needs more. Eat too little – say, to lose weight – and it has been posited that the body goes into compensation mode, feeding muscles and restricting calories elsewhere. And the effects can be significant. One recent study examined 50 riders, who had their energy availability (EA) assessed by questionnaire and underwent bone mineral density (BMD),…

‘Every gram of carbon saved represents at least one headache in developing this frame,’ says Open’s co-founder, Gerard Vroomen, of the Open Min.D California. So how many paracetamols is that in total? The standard Open Min.D (identical moulds, different carbon layup) weighs a claimed 870g, whereas this model weighs 775g (size large). That’s a huge reduction, but it comes at an organ-reducing price: £7,500 for the frameset, up from £3,199 for the standard Min.D. But that’s fine, because this bike comes from the same facility that Vroomen used when he and fellow Cervélo founder Phil White produced the ‘world’s lightest’ frames, the R5Ca (2010, 675g) and RCa (2013, 667g). So at least with the Min.D California you’ll be getting the world’s lightest disc frame then? Nope, that award still sits…

The Exploro Ultra is technically the third iteration of 3T’s popular but controversial aero gravel bike, but rather than being an update of the second bike, it is more like the yin to the second bike’s yang. While both bikes have a maximum tyre clearance of 61mm x 650b, 3T says that where the Exploro Racemax (the second bike) has a frameset aerodynamically optimised around 35mm-42mm 700c tyres, the Ultra has been shaped to work best with 650b tyres at the upper end of its clearance range, around 55mm-61mm. The bikes will sit alongside each other in 3T’s range, each aiming to cater for specific but partially overlapping niches. Earth, wind and ire The Exploro platform has never gained universal approval, with some questioning the efficacy of focussing on aerodynamics…