Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2025 i Cyclist

As the 12th stage of the 1958 Vuelta a España – 169km over three classified climbs to Bilbao – drew to a close, there was much for journalists to draw on for their post-race reports. Firstly the race leader, Rik Van Looy, had been forced to abandon. ‘The Vuelta medic, Dr Salinas, stated that Van Looy, who retired today, suffered a fall a few days ago and hit his leg,’ reported the newspaper Neuve Rioja. ‘This severe pain, combined with the flu he suffered last night and the great effort he made yesterday, exhausted him to the point that, despite being the great favourite for the victory, he was forced to retire while climbing the Sollube pass.’ So, the ‘Emperor of Herentals’ was on his way back to Belgium. The…

1 Le Col x Wizard Works Teeny Houdini saddle bag £46, lecol.cc Farmers never argue – they’re in agreeculture. Much like British cycling brands Le Col and Wizard Works, which have collaborated on a series of bags. There’s a bar bag, tool roll and this 0.5-litre Teeny Houdini saddle bag, which has a magnetic buckle and will fit all you need to sort a roadside puncture. Each bag is handmade in Wizard Works’ London studio with durable fabrics and reflective details. 2 Puresport Ultra electrolytes £33 (pack of 30), puresport.co Fish and chips are the only things you can trust in newspapers these days, and even then should be taken with a pinch of salt. You should ride with a pinch of salt too, such as Puresport’s Ultra electrolytes in…

What makes for a great World Championships? The course? The performances? The backdrop? The roster? The crowds? The history-making? The list goes on, but as the starter’s pistol sounded to release the Kigali Worlds’ first rider into the packed BK Arena, it was clear this year had it all. The first Worlds to be held in Africa was ridden through a country that couldn’t be more aptly named nor contoured for cycling: Rwanda, The Land of a Thousand Hills. The scenes, from the crowds to the countryside, were breathtaking in a way even the most vocal of detractors couldn’t fail to acknowledge. Because yes, there was controversy here too. Many criticised the UCI’s decision to hold the event in a country with such a troubling human rights record, while others…

It was the best of croissants, it was the worst of croissants. Yesterday I experienced all-butter nirvana at an impromptu patisserie pitstop somewhere outside of Grenoble. Today I’m click-clacking around a French hotel breakfast buffet table at 5am among a procession of bleary-eyed cyclists, stacking a side plate high with a haphazard assortment of small, dry pastries I don’t really want to eat. In more ways than one, this is like my very own Groundhog Day, or as they’d call it here, ‘Jour de la Marmotte’. It’s the second time in two years I’ve found myself in Alpe d’Huez on this very weekend. Not to mention today is – quite literally – the day of La Marmotte. I spent the first five months of last year training and planning for…

Speaking to Nimbl’s managing director, Francesco Sergio, you could be forgiven for thinking this Italian shoemaker, based in Porto Sant’Elpidio near the finish line of Tirreno-Adriatico, carved ornate violins by candlelight or spun unicorn yarn into sacred garments. ‘We make only a handful of pairs a day and everything is handmade, so it takes a long time,’ he says. ‘If we wanted to expand and start using machines then we would lose the fairytale element of our business. Our first factory was just 60 square metres and even now we have only 20 people working for us. We want to grow organically.’ Small perhaps, but Nimbl is disproportionately influential. Just this year, three Grand Tours have been won in Nimbl shoes: Simon Yates at the Giro d’Italia, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot at…

The emergence of 3D printing has had a big influence on the bike industry, particularly in the realm of titanium bike frames, and J.Laverack has taken it further than most in its latest AM64 bike series. ‘AM64 is the use of additive manufacturing – 3D printing – to form the junctions of the frameset’s double-butted tubes,’ says Dave Clow, one of the company’s two co-founders alongside Oliver Laverack. ‘Using AM64 gives us freedom to be more structurally efficient wherever we need to be, helping to save weight and smooth the tube joins.’ It’s an optional extra that customers can add to any of Laverack’s framesets when they are going through the build process, and one of the ways riders can modernise the otherwise classic-looking J.Laverack framesets. ‘AM64 is the use…

Cyclist is the award-winning magazine for people who love cycling. So if you know someone like that, a subscription to Cyclist is the perfect Christmas gift (and if that person is you, leave this magazine open at this page somewhere a family member or friend will see it). Not only will the lucky recipient get the world’s best cycling magazine delivered to their door every four or five weeks, we’ll also send you this fantastic Bike Bundle, including a Restrap Canister bar bag worth £50, a set of Lezyne lights worth £36 and an Elite Deboyo Race thermal steel bottle worth £30. Other subscriber benefits include: • Every issue of Cyclist magazine delivered free to your door before it’s in the shops • Special subscriber-only covers • Each issue available…

A dazzle-camo steel TT bike. This distinctive offering from Alfano Frameworks sits in a niche of one. It’s so striking, in fact, that at Bespoked 2025, in a room full of Europe’s most weird and wonderful handmade bicycles, it stood out enough to win an award for best paint. ‘I loved the idea of a dazzle-camo-inspired paintjob,’ enthuses Pete Alfano. ‘Early 20th-century warships experimented with dazzle-camo to break up their lines and confuse enemy submarines. Turns out it also helps break up the shape of a 60cm bike frame… and it looks fast too.’ The colour scheme, Alfano says, is the handiwork of Cromaworks, a custom frame painter based in Nottinghamshire. ‘They did an incredible job,’ Alfano says. ‘We discussed ideas and then I left them to it. I didn’t see…

Not many successful breakaways involve almost 5,000m of climbing over 324km, but that’s exactly what Napoleon Bonaparte pulled off in just six days in the spring of 1815. After escaping from exile on the island of Elba, he went on the attack in France, drafting behind his team of loyal soldiers and surging northwards from the Côte d’Azur on what is now known as the Route Napoléon tourist trail. Eventually he ended up in the medieval citadel of Sisteron, which also happens to be the starting point for today’s ride. There are three things that Sisteron is well known for. One is as a stopping off point for Napoleon on his last hurrah. Another is its status as the ‘Gateway to Provence’ thanks to its position in a gap between…

Context is everything. A statement such as ‘the most dangerous animal in the country’ gets a different reaction depending on whether you’re talking about the UK, where it’s likely to be a cow, or Australia, where the great white shark barely scrapes into the top ten. As Australia is to unsuitable pets, so Andorra is to brutal climbs. The tiny principality, nestled between France and Spain in the Pyrenees, is practically a shrine to the steep. Therefore, when you learn that the Coll de la Gallina is reputed to be Andorra’s hardest climb, you take notice. Frankly, it doesn’t much matter which side of the climb is being discussed; both are tortuous and debating their relative fierceness is like arguing whether it’s better to be mauled to death by a…

The Ultra-Grit takes over from the Gravel SL as Ribble’s top-end carbon gravel bike. Cyclist reviewed the Gravel SL back in issue 137, and that bike leant towards the more aggressive side of the gravel category. The Ultra-Grit has taken things even further. Ribble’s aims were to create a faster, lighter bike for racers, with more generous tyre clearance than before. For those who value comfort over speed, the equally new Allgrit range sits below the Ultra-Grit bikes and caters for the more utilitarian side of gravel, although it’s all metal, with aluminium and titanium builds available (unless you opt for the carbon e-bike version). ‘Ribble is now heavily involved in gravel racing – we have our own team, so wanted to supply modern machines for them to compete on.…

As aero bikes go, the Ridley Noah is often overshadowed by models from bigger companies with larger marketing budgets, but its design has had just as big an impact on the category as any Trek Madone or Cervélo S5. The Noah has been around in various guises for almost 20 years, and in that time has made a name for itself as a pioneer of integration. It was one of the first aero bikes to make use of an integrated seatpost, integrated rim brakes and integrated cables, and its innovation bore fruit with successes in the WorldTour under the likes of Robbie McEwen, André Greipel and Caleb Ewan. The Noah Fast 3.0 was released earlier this year and continues that theme of innovation, becoming one of the first in a…

Cyclist: What has been your highlight of a successful 2025 season? Matthew Brennan: There are two: my first pro win at the GP Denain, more of a Classics-style race; then going on to the Volta a Catalunya and winning my first WorldTour race [Stage 1]. Not just the win, but doing it by managing the gap almost perfectly. Even now I watch it back and think, ‘How did I do that?’ Cyc: You kicked on from there, with your win count for the season ending well into double figures. What did that dramatic Catalan win on a rainy run-in do for your confidence? MB: It gives a lot of belief in yourself and what is possible. I don’t sit here believing I’m the strongest rider in the peloton, but this is what’s…

Bealach Fèith nan Laogh is perhaps the most far-flung destination in our UK Climbs series. Just getting to it is a test in itself. Tucked away on the banks of Loch Sunart in the west of Scotland, it requires a ferry ride to the Ardnamurchan peninsula, north of the better-known Isle of Mull, followed by a drive to the remote village of Strontian. While its population is less than 500, Strontian is a pub quiz staple. Get your pen and paper out because it is the only place in the UK to have a chemical element named after it – the mineral strontium was discovered here by Scottish chemists Adair Crawford and William Cruickshank in the 18th century. In the middle of the village, a stone bridge crosses the Strontian…

Sitting on a throne making the Churchill ‘V’ in London. Calling Sue Barker ‘Susan’ at the Sports Personality of the Year awards. Sticking his tongue out during the national anthem in Rio. Getting off his bike to run up The Struggle at the Tour of Britain. Beginning his speech on the Champs-Élysées with the words, ‘Right, we’re just going to draw the raffle numbers.’ Playing guitar on stage with Paul Weller. Calling the future king ‘Charlie’. Wearing sharp suits and hanging out with rock stars and getting papped smoking cigarettes and making sideburns cool. The immortal words, ‘Kids from council flats in Kilburn don’t win the Tour,’ and yet this kid did, inspiring a generation. Sparking a national fever, Wiggomania. There are few cyclists – few athletes – who can…

Cycling fans will know Abus as the helmet worn by Mathieu van der Poel – the Dutch superstar of a Belgian team sporting a German brand. What few of those fans will realise, however, is that the helmets Van der Poel wears are actually made in a facility tucked away in a small town near Treviso in Italy. Indeed, more people will probably know Abus as a maker of bike locks, and it was with padlocks that the company, whose name comes from August Bremicker und Söhne, began in 1924 in a village in the Rhineland. It later produced bike locks in 1931 and moved into helmets in 1994. Abus acquired Italian helmet manufacturer Maxi Studio in 2021, having worked together on pro racing helmets since 2016. And a year…

Hot on the heels of Factor’s everyman aero race bike, the Monza, comes the Aluto gravel bike. Factor says the Aluto represents the next step in the journey started by the Monza to cater for more than just the stratospheric end of our sport in terms of price, and is built around a design that is simpler in form and doesn’t use highly exotic materials. The Aluto builds from the foundation of Factor’s original gravel bike, the LS. In its time, that model was considered a light and stiff gravel racer, but Factor has the more aggressive Ostro Gravel to fill that role these days. With a semi-secret new model nearing release that will cater for the adventure end of things, Factor’s engineering director, Graham Shrive, was free to position…