Tag Archives: Cycling

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The Hour – Michael Hutchinson – Book Review

A seasonal cold is keeping me pretty much off the bike this weekend so here’s another book review for you..

Racing against the clock in any form of time trial is a Race of Truth. How far? How fast? Nothing else matters. Time trialling on the track is an even purer Test. Stripped bare of all the issues of weather, terrain and surface it reduces the contest to just Man and Machine. And there is no greater test of Man and Machine than The Hour – a increasingly mythologised undertaking that pits each new challenger against the greats of the sport who have held the record through the decades. Michael Hutchinson, in his 2007 book (Yellow Jersey Press. £8.99) detailing his own own attempt at the record notes that, in this way, he able to race against Coppi, even from beyond the grave.

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Ride Report – Unfinished Business – Ride of The Falling Leaves 2013

First up, a confession: I have a bit of ‘previous’ with this ride – I had to abandon half way round last year after suffering from the ongoing effects of some poor meal choices on a trip to Cairo in the preceding days. Having just come back from a potentially equally debilitating trip to some of the more remote parts of Russia this week I was hoping that there would be no repeat of the repeating. Two DNF’s on the season’s traditional curtain-faller would be a very poor show and would leave me feeling gloomy for the whole winter. With this in mind I had steered well clear of some of the less recognisable local dishes and stuck to an old-school cyclist’s diet of steak, steak and more steak. Whatever else, the extra stone in weight I’d accumulated as a result should have helped my descending.

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One Steppe at a Time – (Not) Cycling in Moscow

I am in Moscow this week and I’m trying to remember the last occasion I was in such a cycling un-friendly city. It’s got me stumped. I have covered a fair few global miles in my time and cannot readily think of a single place – certainly not another capital city – where I would be less inclined to get my bike out and tootle off to see some sights or get in some miles. I spent 4 hours today travelling around the city by car and only saw one solitary rider. And even he was on the pavement. I visited a shopping centre in the outskirts and found a priceless piece of cycling unhelpfulness. Outside the main entrance was a sign with a large ‘P’ and a pictogram of a bike. Nothing to actually lock a bike to. Just the sign.

Moscow Bike Parking

Moscow’s traffic problems are legendary and have become the main feature of any visit to the city. The transfer from the main airport can easily take up to 3 hours to cover the 26miles by car. It’s currently 3.15pm on a Thursday afternoon and over half the total distance of Moscow’s three inner ring roads (there are 6 in total and two more are planned) are showing solid red on the Google maps traffic indicator. This is before ‘rush hour’ actually starts. Entire days have been added to my trip to allow for the traffic between three points less than 50km apart. People live in constant fear of simply being caught up in the volume of cars on the roads. And then there are the roads themselves…

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Book Review – On The Road Bike – Ned Boulting

Reading Ned Boulting’s book, On The Road Bike – The Search For a Nation’s Cycling Soul, about his exploration of the idiosyncratic world of cycling in Britain is, I would imagine, a bit like joining him for a bike ride. Initially there would be plenty of self-deprecation as he painstakingly points out all his likely shortcomings for the selected route or distance. Then there would be the lightest smattering of name-dropping during the time he proves that he is, in fact, more than capable of said route or distance. There would probably be some debate or confusion about the final destination or purpose of the ride itself before arriving at the end with that warm fuzzy feeling of time well spent in the company of an interesting and articulate friend, who has also shown you a couple of brilliant new lanes hidden away amongst a lot of familiar countryside.

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Chasing Rainbows – UCI Road World Championship preview

Now that the Tour of Britain has concluded, all eyes are fully focussed on Tuscany for the UCI World Road Race Championships this week. Racing started today with the Team Time Trial before moving onto the individual time trials in the middle of the week and then culminating with the Blue Riband road race events next weekend. Junior (Men and Women) and U23 (Men only) versions of all the events are either side of the midweek races, filling out a packed schedule of competition. We are guaranteed some gorgeous scenery as the routes traverse the beautiful Tuscan landscape around Lucca, Pistoia and Florence and there are going to be plenty of fireworks throughout the event.

The Team Time Trials – uniquely contested by trade teams rather than nations – kicked off the annual event and both the Mens and Women’s events were won by the defending champions, though in starkly contrasting fashions. Whilst Specialized-Lulu Lemon romped home in the Women’s race, besting second place Rabo Womens Cycling by over 70 seconds across the 42.7km course, the Men’s Omega Pharma QuickStep squad had a somewhat narrower margin of victory over the Orica Greenedge team. Racing an extended course of 56.8km, the Belgian outfit – who were the last team out on the road – took the title from the understandably gutted Australians by less than a single second. Their time of 1:04:16.81 was just enough to deny Orica Greenedge, who had maintained a strong run in the final kilometres to set up the nail-biting finish. Sky Procycling rounded out the podium some 22 seconds further back.

Home interest in the Team Time Trials has been impacted by the fact that cross-scheduling of this event with the last stage of the Tour of Britain meant that two of GB’s best male testers were unavailable. Whilst Chris Froome (SKY), and Steve Cummings (BMC) both took part, it was the absence of the talents of Alex Dowsett and Bradley Wiggins – both of whom illuminated the final ToB stage in some way of recompense – that was most obvious.

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The Mavericks – Adam Hansen – Seventh Heaven for Grand Tour Glutton

Lotto Bellisol’s Adam Hansen has just completed his seventh straight Grand Tour. Since late 2011 he has ridden the Giro and the Tour twice each and La Vuelta three times – all without a break. He has covered almost 24,000 Grand Tour kilometres in those 2 years and raced an incredible total of 16,059km over 106 days last year alone. In an era of ever increased targeting of races Hansen is a throwback to the classic years of cycling when even the top contenders rode vast seasons covering all events. In a sport renowned as being one of the toughest on the planet,  his insatiable appetite for racing the biggest tests over and over again is earning him numerous fans and a reputation of being the hardest of the hard? The Jersey Pocket looked into what makes Hansen tick and found enough surprises to warrant him a place in ‘The Mavericks’.

Hansen has often been marked out as being a bit different. The fact that 32 year old Australian chooses to live in the Czech Republic rather than in one of the usual pro peloton hangouts like Girona or Nice is often used to highlight a non-conformist nature. Never shy in terms of doing things his way Hansen’s unique personality has been enlivening the peloton since 2007. Following spells at T-Mobile, HTC and Omega Pharma Lotto, ‘Croc-man’ (as he is known to his team mates) joined Lotto-Bellisol for the 2012 season, just after embarking on his Grand Tour Odyssey. He seems to be very settled with the Belgian squad and this contentment is showing in both the relaxed nature of his interviews and the increasingly successful nature of his racing. Whilst his commitment and focus at the sharp end of a race should not be questioned that doesn’t stop Hansen from occaisionally reminding us that he enjoys his job too.

hansen L'Angliru

Adam Hansen – Doing things his way at La Vuelta. Alto de L’Angliru 2013

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Grand Old Men of the Grand Tours – AKA The Chris Horner problem

“Chris Horner’s recent victory at La Vuelta has made him the oldest winner of a Grand Tour stage ever. At 41 years and 307 days he eclipsed the previous record by some margin to win Stage 3. Horner is one of a few Grand Old Men still riding hard in the hardest of races at what should be long past the dusk of their careers.”

I wrote these words a couple of weeks ago on holiday thinking that I could return home and finish it off to create a piece about the wonderful remarkableness of a couple of older guys winning the odd stage in Grand Tours. The trouble is Horner has kept winning and at this moment – the morning of the last real racing day of La Vuelta – he leads by 3 seconds having distanced his younger rivals on a number of occasions to claw back the time he lost in the Individual Time Trial. Eyebrows are being raised so far they are falling off the back of some correspondents heads, and tongues are wagging so furiously that they are danger of giving their owners whiplash. Whatever the truth is about how Horner is managing such a performance, the cycling community seems desperate to avoid looking naive again.

“This years Tour de France”, I wrote “was illuminated on multiple occasions by Jens Voigt attacking from the get-go and then attacking the break again in an age-defying attempt to solo to a victory. One month older than Horner he fell just short of a win in France although he did manage a solo victory in the Tour of California earlier in the year. So what are Horner and Voigt doing still riding off the front at the wrong side of 40? What on earth keeps them going? And at what cost?”

Each day that has passed has made the implied assumption that Horner would fade and fall down the GC as the race progressed more ridiculous. But what else would have been a reasonable assumption to have made? I wrote elsewhere that Horner’s “few days in red” at the beginning of the race might even complicate his team leader Cancellara’s plans.. I did not contemplate for a second that we would still be writing about him now.

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The Jersey Pocket Podiums – #2 – Classic Cycling Jerseys

First Place. Peugeot

An all time classic. From Tommy Simpson to Robert Millar, riders wearing the iconic chequered flag jersey have looked the business. It was the first kit I wanted as a kid and I still wear one most weeks. Best matched with plain black shorts and a Peugeot cycling cap – with the peak turned upwards, of course.

peugeot jersey

Second Place. Bic

Love the sparseness here. Bold colour, simple logo. Job done. Not quite so well known as some other teams of the era but Luis Ocana won the 1970 Vuelta and 1973 Tour in the orange of Bic. Best paired with jet black hair and an epic tan.

bic jersey

Third Place. Renault /Renault Elf / Systeme U

The hint of the Hacienda’s famous black and yellow warning stripes helps this one into third spot. The design morphed subtly into the Renault Elf jersey and then more radically into the Systeme U jersey, both of which are great in their own right. Best paired with a matching headband a la Fignon.

renault gitane jersey

Honourable Mention – La Vie Claire

Hinault. Lemond. ’86. Enough Said.

la vie claire jersey

 

Jersey Illustrations courtesy of: www.davidsparshott.com

 

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None More Black – the shifting spectrum of the pro peloton

“It’s like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black.”

Nigel Tufnell. Spinal Tap.

The recent news that Cannondale’s new 2014 kit design will be a mainly black affair has been greeted by cycling’s fashion watchers with barely more than a raised eyebrow. ‘Copying Sky’ is the main criticism that most can muster and, given that nearly all pro teams are seeking to reproduce the British team’s training programmes or marginal gains techniques in some shape or form, that in itself is hardly a withering accusation. But, after years of what has often amounted to an arms race of garishness, is there more to this latest rejection of what has been termed elsewhere as ‘Euro Gaud’ than simply aping the most successful team around?


Colour Me Bad.

On one level Cannondale’s rejection of bright colour is an obvious way of turning their back on the team’s most recent incarnation as Liquigas. Constrained by the corporate colours of the Italian energy company, the team’s lime green kit was up there with the lurid pink of Lampre and the Day-glo yellow of ViniFantini for eye-watering loudness. Indeed, some lesser Italian races – when the finishes were often contested between multiple members of these three teams – were such a visceral assault on the eyes that they should really have carried some kind of warning for viewers of a sensitive disposition.

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