SEASON’S BLEATINGS
Cycling Plus writers’ dissect the year
Paul Robson Editor
The good: I love the Tour de France. It’s not just the cycling, it’s the way it provides a focal point for the French summer – a three-week Wimbledon, if it were a travelling circus that might just come past your door. And if France’s search for a home winner hasn’t quite reached the 77 years it took for Andy Murray to etch his name alongside Fred Perry, it’s gone on long enough. As such the highlight of my cycling year was Julian Alaphilippe’s improbable tilt at bringing an end to 34 barren years. His taking the jersey on a stage suited to his one-day prowess was enjoyable enough, but seeing him win the individual time trial and take the fight to the favourites in the high mountains, carrying a nation on his shoulders with good humour and a ready smile, was a joy to behold. So the Tour's stages 1-18, were my highlight of the year…
The 19 and bad: 20. Nothing … which can leads be us done to stages about bad weather, but to see Alaphilippe’s hopes fade on the climb of the Iseran, then emphatically die just as they hung in the balance with the cancellation of the descent, was to see all the air escape from the race’s wonderful balloon. A curtailed stage 20 added to the disappointment, even though Egan Bernal was a worthy winner.
“The best new things to come along in 2019 are bikes that can do more than one job – the quiver killers”
Warren Rossiter Senior technical editor
The good: Road bikes have got more complex over the past few years. We used to have race bikes and tourers, and that was it. Now it’s race, aero-road, endurance, gravel, bike packing and sub-genres of each – road-plus endurance, extreme gravel and racy endurance bikes. The list is endless. So the best things to come along in 2019 are bikes that can do more than one job – the quiver killers. Bikes that can replace two or three other options, maybe even getting close to one bike for all seasons.
Take our 2019 Bike of the Year, the brilliant Rondo HVRT – a bike that’s aero and aggressive, but switch the chip in the fork and it’s an aerooptimised bike with an endurance ride position. Switch in 650b wheels with 47mm tyres and you’ve got a very capable (and comfortable) gravel machine. We’ve also seen bikes like Specialized’s new improved Roubaix, which is aggressive enough to race, comfortable enough for all-day riding and has generous enough tyre clearance that could take you off-road.
Rounding things out, GT’s brilliant Grade, Cervelo’s speedy Aspero and Cannondale’s Topstone, all ‘gravel’ bikes but all excellent on the road too. Each of these could be the only bike you need for sportives, gravel excursions and road rides with your mates. There’s no reason you couldn’t dabble in road or cyclo-cross racing, either.
The bad: The pressure on bike prices means that finding a quality Ultegra-equipped bike for less than £2k is now a thing of the past. And with so much uncertainty thanks to the B word and pressures on the pound I feel we’re set for more price pressure unpleasantness.
As for components the biggest disappointment has been latex innertubes. After years of being told ultra-light latex tubes offer faster running and a more compliant feel, I actually found that they’re incredibly fragile, not as light as claimed, and they leak air like a sieve. They aren’t worth the extra expense for no discernible ride benefit.
Rob Ainsley Writer & columnist
The my home good: county The of UCI Yorkshire, Worlds came with to every stage ending in Harrogate. Crowded trains for that spectacular week of racing meant I couldn’t rely on taking my bike on any trains, so I had the excuse to buy myself a new folding touring bike. Result. I cycled the Spanish End to End along the amazing 800km N630, a wide main road that’s virtually traffic-free thanks to being bypassed by a new motorway. It had an amazing effect on my waistline – thanks to all those post-ride menus del día in historic squares. Fortunately, I managed to cycle it off when I got back home. infrastructure.
There was some A fine encouraging segregated new cycleway opened in Bradford, while York, my home town, gained a super new pedestrian-cycle bridge over the river directly into the railway station. So that’s an extra five minutes in bed, and still at the station in plenty of time for the cancelled train.
The bad: LNER’s new Azuma trains started service on the East Coast Main Line, offering space to store four bikes. Which, technically, it does. The only problem is, it’s too cramped to actually get normal-sized bikes in or out. Channel 5 screened a terrible poundshop-documentary called Cyclists: Scourge Of The Streets? – or, as their continuity card said, Scourage Of The Streets. Accuracy clearly wasn’t a priority; clickbait interviews with ill-informed, shouty, bike-hating people clearly was. And my leather saddle still isn’t worn in.
John Whitney Features editor
The good: 2019 was my late, but total, conversion to online training game Zwift. I was a very late adopter to this, but in the last year I’ve pedalled for over 130 hours, 3,000km and close to 80,000m of climbing, all while not leaving my front room. madness. Some would The same call this people sheer would call it boring and ask why I’m not out there doing the real thing. But for me it’s a different thing and I enjoy it in a completely different way. At the same time of it being different, it prepares me for my road rides perfectly. I had shoulder surgery at the start of the year and still have problems with it, so can’t train as much as I’d like. Zwifting for an hour each night gives me the legs to enjoy my bike rides.
These rides have included a whole heap of gravel. This was a more Damascene conversion than what happened with Zwift and it proved a refreshing change. The Dukes Weekender, a tough 70km enduro in the Trossachs in early September, was a fabulous end to my season.
The bad: I can only echo Rob’s comments about Channel 5’s gutter documentary, but the real fury wasn’t in watching it but seeing it played out for real. For whatever reason it feels like attitudes towards road cyclists have taken a nose dive recently – see the growing number of cyclists being pushed from their bikes by people in cars, a sinister development that has run rampant on social media. No wonder British cycling is struggling to get new people onto bikes.
“It's great to see Nick Sanders officially recognised for being a true pioneer”
Trevor Ward Freelance writer
The good: In an age when it seems everyone and their cat (check out @1bike1world on Instagram) is racing around the world on bicycles setting endurance records, it was great to see Nick Sanders officially recognised for being a true pioneer. This year he received an MBE for “services to endurance cycling and motorcycling”. His unsupported, 13,000-mile ride around the world in 79 days in 1985 inspired me to take up cycle-touring, and it was an honour to ride with Nick, now 61, for a Cycling Plus Big Ride feature near his home in mid-Wales.
The bad: 2019 was the year the UCI clamped down on sock length. Officials with expandable measuring devices pounced on riders showing too little bare leg. The newly-worded regulation stated that socks “may not rise above the height defined by half the distance between the middle of the lateral malleolus and the middle of the fibula head”.
Meanwhile, there were apparently no regulations to protect the welfare of riders taking part in the U23 TT at the road World Championships in Yorkshire in September. All risked life and limb, with several suffering spectacular crashes, on a course lashed by torrential rain and riddled with deep puddles. Ex pro-turned-TV pundit Brian Smith spoke for many when he tweeted to the UCI: “You let some of your future stars down today by not making a decision soon enough... and we wonder why we struggle as a sport!” But at least all riders were sporting the correct sock length.
Rob Moxon Art editor
The good: In July, when the sun was high and our model count low, I played stand-in on one of our Bike Test photoshoots. My riding time for the year to date had been a big fat zero, yet I’d freely maintained other pre-ride rituals like carb loading, so as far as comebacks go an e-bike shoot was a soft relaunch. We were at the Devil’s Elbow climb in the Brecon Beacons, one of the toughest I know, and I slung my leg over a Bianchi Impulso E-Road. Coasting to the bottom of the climb I adjusted the settings to full power mode (because if you’re going to cheat, cheat) and with a drop of the first pedal stroke, the motor delivered a punch of acceleration that soon had me sitting on the Impulso’s legal limit.
I clocked the segment in well under a minute, smashing my previous muscle-only effort of 2.05. The assisted times aren’t really the point, though. It was about keeping pace with the sickeningly fit models who I was riding with, rather than blowing a gasket out of the back. The Impulso completely levelled the playing field for my out-of-shape self and I struggle to remember the last time I’ve had so much fun on a bike.
The bad: Seeing on the national news the bridge in Grinton Moor, that was due to feature in the World Champs road race, destroyed shortly after we’d shot a bike test on it. We reckoned it was our monstrous power through our pedals as we tore over it but everyone else seems to have blamed floods… It had been a glorious few days of sunshine during our shoot where we saw Yorkshire at its best, so to see it hit so badly in the storm was sad to see.