Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2023 i Cyclist

For years it did my Scottish heart proud to think that Scotland was the only country in the world where the Coca-Cola company did not have the number one selling soft drink. True Scots were loyal to Irn-Bru. A map produced in 2017 showed Scotland as the single tiny outpost standing firm against the red tide of the ‘The Real Thing’ that covered the globe. But unfortunately, it turns out it wasn’t true. Oh, sure enough, the Scots still drink gallons more of the sugary, weird-tasting orange stuff than they do the sugary, tooth-rotting brown stuff, but it seems that there are other countries that are also devoted to their native brands, such as Inca Kola in Peru and TuKola in Cuba. Scotland isn’t so special. I only mention this…

Courtesy of its Bontrager components brand, Trek is the first big name in the bike industry to dip a toe into the pool of thermoplastic fabrication. This exciting technology has a great deal of potential to improve both wheel performance and the impact of the rims’ production on the environment. Generally, carbon composite uses thermoset resins that harden irreversibly during the curing process. By contrast, thermoplastic resins can be melted again once cured, so products such as wheel rims can be recycled as opposed to scrapped when they reach the end of their usable life. Composites made with thermoplastic resins are also said to have better damping qualities, meaning in a wheel application they should provide a smoother ride. That’s certainly what Bontrager’s data suggests of its new composite, which…

The average sales exec might zip from boardroom to boardroom via train or plane, clad in a suit and carting their overnight gear around a fancy leather holdall. But there’s nothing average about Curve co-owner, sales director and ultra-distance rider Ryan ‘Rhino’ Flinn. To his mind, when he’s peddling his adventure and bikepacking bikes, the only real way to get from meeting to meeting is by, well, pedalling his adventure and bikepacking bikes. ‘I’ve mainly been living in my tent,’ Flinn tells Cyclist as we catch up during his latest two-wheeled trans-European work trip to visit Curve dealers scattered across the continent. ‘I stay in a hostel here and there to wash my clothes and keep the bike in “showroom” condition.’ So far, Flinn’s current adventure has taken him through…

1 PEATY’S ROOST N’ GRIND COFFEE £6.99, peatys.co.uk Why does mountain bike legend Steve Peat’s bike maintenance brand Peaty’s also sell coffee? He needs to stay grounded. Hand roasted in Macclesfield, Roost N’ Grind is a single-origin coffee from Huila, Colombia, which Peaty’s says has a winey character. It’s pre-ground and will brew just in time for you to finish cleaning, lubing and polishing your bike. 2 APIDURA EXPEDITION WAIST BELT £38, apidura.com Rainbows don’t weigh much they’re pretty light. So is Apidura’s Expedition belt. With the rise of technical T-shirts, riders are relying on cargo shorts or small bags for pocketable items, so Apidura has essentially created strap-on jersey pockets. The belt is made from a stretchy, breathable fabric, sits a bit lower than traditional pockets for easy access…

Type the words ‘world’s greatest cycling climbs’ into a search engine and you will be presented with numerous articles, all of them listing the same collection of classics from the big races. There’s Mont Ventoux and Alpe d’Huez from the Tour de France; the Giro d’Italia throws up the Stelvio Pass and Monte Grappa; while the Vuelta a España comes in with its viciously steep Alto de l’Angliru. These are climbs famed for their difficulty, made legendary by the exploits of pro racers and visited each year by hordes of amateur cyclists looking to test their mettle on the same slopes as their heroes. But if the Presidential Tour of Turkey has anything to say about it, there might just be a new name to add to that list. On…

You know a climb is going to be spectacular when it features in a James Bond movie. It was the case with Switzerland’s Furka Pass (issue 134), which saw Sean Connery screeching round hairpins in his Aston Martin DB5 in 1964’s Goldfinger. And it’s the case with this climb, which is the setting for a dramatic chase sequence in 2015’s Spectre, with Daniel Craig destroying an aeroplane in an attempt to rescue his love interest from Spectre’s henchmen as they bundle her into a Land Rover and speed off down the Ötztal Glacier Road. And… action! The town of Sölden sits in the Tyrol region of Austria, near the border with Italy. It is surrounded by Alpine peaks, the largest of which is the Wildspitze at 3,768m, the second highest…

1 Specialized Tarmac SL8 p116 Lighter, faster and already a world champion – the latest Tarmac has arrived with a huge amount of hype, but what’s it like to live with? 2 Mason Bokeh 3 p122 Like the Tarmac, the British brand’s aluminium gravel bike has racing pedigree. In this case, the Bokeh can go on and on for days. 3 Pearson Forge p126 The oldest bike shop in the world launches its first in-house design, but does a bike based on more than 2,000 bike-fits offer more than just comfort?…

A tweaked version of Schwalbe’s Addix 4-Season rubber compound means the new One 365 promises better ride feel and durability compared to the commuter’s favourite Durano tyre it replaces. The rubber is specifically formulated for low temperatures, meaning you shouldn’t have to worry about grip on cold winter mornings. You shouldn’t have to worry about punctures either – Schwalbe says the carcass has been beefed up slightly to provide better sidewall protection. Weight is a casualty of this, with a size 28mm tyre weighing 320g, and the One 365 isn’t tubeless either, but it does have a nifty sidewall strip that is reflective in headlights but unnoticeable otherwise.…

Streamlines says its Forma sensor helps riders maintain their most efficient riding position. Once that position has been programmed in, the stem mounted box measures head and chest position to within 2mm and, when paired to a Garmin, displays in real time how close the rider is to their desired position. ‘Factors such as fatigue cause positional changes that affect the drag a rider creates,’ says Bob Simpson, Streamlines’ project and production manager. ‘The Forma sensor provides a visual cue to help the rider minimise this.’ While we all love shiny aero upgrades, the rider creates around 80% of total drag, so an optimal position is a far more effective way to get faster.…

The weather may be dreary but, thankfully, gone are the days where the only option to stay dry in the rain was the cycling equivalent of a black polyethylene bag. Now we have variety. When the heavens open, visibility generally decreases, and the Castelli Emergency 2 jacket and Altura Airstream jacket provide neon yellow offerings to help keep you safe and seen. For those who wish to chase down KoM/QoMs in all conditions, there are aero fits available in the forms of the Assos Equipe RS Alleycat shell or Santini’s Guard Nimbus cover (OK, we’ll admit the Assos jacket has a touch of the binbag about the top half, but we forgive it due to its performance promises). If you wish to stay firmly in the realm of pleasing aesthetics,…

‘This is before Stage 6, from Tours to Chateauroux. I’d been planning this shot all week, waiting patiently for that perfect moment. Getting just the right angle to showcase something intriguing in the reflection in Mark’s glasses was the name of the game, and his pensive pose was the cherry on top. Here was the Manx Missile, cool as a cucumber in his green points leader’s jersey, eyes locked onto yet another stage victory, the starting podium gleaming in his shades. ‘Mark had already won Stage 3, then went on to win this stage, Stage 10 and Stage 13, equalling the legendary Eddy Merckx’s record of 34 Tour stage wins. This was the comeback of comebacks, and it’s still bubbling away.’ ‘Mark Cavendish, Geraint Thomas and Ed Clancy, shot when…

‘For seven years our July number has featured a lengthy preview of the Tour de France, often with a detailed study of the “stage” and the stars of the world’s greatest road race,’ runs the first line of the editor’s introduction to the July 1963 edition of Sporting Cyclist. ‘It may at first seem odd that we have chosen the 50th Tour to depart from this custom. Don’t blame me for that – it is all Tom Simpson’s fault. I had planned six pages or so for the Bordeaux-Paris race but following Tom’s sensational win four extra pages had to be found, and it was the Tour which suffered. I am sure readers will understand.’ The man who penned those words, Jock Wadley, had enjoyed a close-up view of Simpson’s…

‘In my experience, if I told an athlete that eating bird poo would help them recover quicker, they would do it.’ Such is the desperation for quick recovery methods, according to Dr Jessica Hill, a recovery specialist and an associate professor in Applied Sport and Exercise Physiology at St Mary’s University Twickenham. And who wouldn’t try it for a quick fix from the dreaded DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), dehydration and fatigue that can come after a long hard day in the saddle? But with the hunger for easy solutions comes plenty of debate and myth. Is it true that the man who coined the RICE acronym doesn’t actually believe in it anymore? Will a post-ride pint really undo all your good work? Jennifer Aniston was spotted in compression boots,…

How much better are pro riders than the rest of us? It’s an age-old question, and there’s one event that offers the opportunity to lay out the harsh reality. Each year, the Étape du Tour lets amateurs ride a complete mountain stage of the Tour de France a few days before the professionals, providing a unique chance to compare times and power data to assess the gulf between the best and the rest. Earlier this year, Cyclist sent me to the Alps to ride the 2023 event – 157km (145km of it officially timed) from Annemasse to Morzine with 4,100m of climbing – and turn myself inside out in the name of science before submitting to the ritual humiliation of comparison to the world’s top riders. Helping me to analyse…

The Specialized Tarmac SL8 launched at the 2023 World Championships, bagging a gold in the women’s road race under Belgium’s Lotte Kopecky, and accompanied by a raft of claimed performance advantages over the popular SL7. Among these claims is a reduction in weight, with the SL8 frameset coming in around 120g less than an equivalent SL7, plus it is said to be comfier and stiffer too. The biggest claim, however, is that the Tarmac SL8 is finally more aero than the Venge the last Tarmac supplanted, with the new bike being 16.6 seconds faster over 40km at 45kmh than the old version. On the face of it, this appears to be big news, and it was rather exuberantly reported on by various media outlets (Cyclist included; revisit the first-look feature…

At this point, saying ‘save the rim brake’ is in itself a tired cliché, conjuring images either of puritanical road cyclists bouncing about on their skinny 23mm tyres or die-hard single-speeders bouncing about on their skinny 23mm tyres. Stickers adorn tatty commuter bikes or city lampposts, and many of us shake our heads and sigh. ‘Are they so unenlightened?’ we ask ourselves, as the contaminated pads of our hydraulic callipers squeeze onto misaligned disc rotors, bringing us noisily (but quickly) to a halt. ‘Are they still so mulish, so unrelentingly contrary?’ But, as with the dawn of the new cashless society, there is still much to be said for the old ways. As Shimano does away with rim brakes on its latest 105 groupsets, there are many rightly lamenting…

Cyclist: What did you do before cycling? Ricarda Bauernfeind: I tried almost every sport with friends; I was a very active child. I played soccer, I did ballet and a lot of running. I learned two instruments and started learning to ride a horse. Then my brother Gabriel, who’s five years older, got a road bike and so I also wanted one. My parents weren’t happy about it – they thought it would be too dangerous – but changed their mind. Cyc: You started racing while studying. How did you balance the demands? RB: After school, in 2018, I continued racing for a women’s elite team in Germany. We did all these national races and I recognised, ‘OK, I’m not that good anymore,’ so it didn’t make sense to focus…

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It’s 1839. A man swings one leg over a saddle on a long wooden frame; one extremely large wheel is behind him and a smaller wheel straight ahead. He pushes off the ground with his feet and then places them in front of him on two wooden pedals either side of the frame, pushing them back and forth, driving the machine forward. The man is Kirkpatrick Macmillan and he has just taken the first ever ride on his new invention: the pedal bicycle. Born in the Dumfriesshire village of Kier on 2nd September 1812, Macmillan was the son of a blacksmith and followed his father’s footsteps into the trade. At the time, foot propelled vehicles called hobby-horses or swiftwalkers, powered by the rider’s feet pushing off the ground, had been…

Girona doesn’t need to be sold to cyclists anymore. Thanks to all the pros who call it home, the city in northeast Spain has become one of Europe’s premier cycling hubs, and one the biggest beneficiaries of Girona’s booming cycling culture is The Service Course. Set up in 2016 by former pro and recent Cyclist Magazine Podcast guest Christian Meier and his wife Amber (though now run by another former pro, Simon Gerrans), the custom-bikeshop-cum-bike-rental-service-cum-travelcompany-cum-community-hub is supported by a plethora of talent including Kasia Niewiadoma, Michael Woods, Esteban Chaves, George Bennett, Tiffany Cromwell and more. From the Girona store – alongside locations in Nice, Abu Dhabi, Mexico City and Wilmslow – The Service Course hosts a large number of ‘casual’ rides, but last year it launched an annual weekend of…

Brighton-based Mason has been around since 2014, and in the past few years has made a name for itself in the world of endurance events. This is in part thanks to sponsorship of riders such as Angus Young, winner of the 600km Dales Divide and 2,000km Pan Celtic Race, and Josh Ibbett, who has won the 4,240km Transcontinental Race and 1,900km GBDuro. Mason says these rider relationships form part of a feedback loop in its development process, with bikes changing to suit the events. To that end, the Bokeh, launched in 2016, is touted as an ‘adventure sport’ bike that treads a fine line between fast gravel and endurance riding. ‘Originally, the idea was that the Bokeh was fast and comfortable when there was a great deal of variable surface…

The Pearson Forge is a bike that wants to fit in. It’s the first machine exclusively designed by south London bike shop Pearson, which has previously relied on working with open-mould suppliers to deliver its range. It forms half of a pair of new models intended for the road bike market, with the Forge embracing the general side of things, and the soon-to-be-released Shift aimed more at racers. Both new bikes are informed by data collected by the company through its customer fittings, which Pearson claims means the frame geometry matches a broader proportion of the population than most manufacturers. ‘The Forge has been designed as the product our staff wished existed when conducting our bike-fits,’ says owner Will Pearson. ‘Looking at over 13 years’ worth of data and 2,000-plus…