With 30km to go in the World Championships Road Race, after 225km of racing around the Imola circuit in Italy, a figure in pale yellow and blue shot out of the leading group. It was Tadej Pogačar, whose reign as Tour de France champion was only in its sixth day.

‘If he does this, he could dominate everything for the next 10 years,’ read one breathless comment on social media, perfectly capturing the thrilling, intoxicating possibility of the unknown.

It was understandable. Pogačar had done the seemingly impossible seven days earlier, turning a near one-minute deficit to Primož Roglič into a near one-minute advantage over the course of a 36.2km time-trial.

Pogačar was 21 then, turning 22 the day after the Tour finished. He was the youngest winner since 1904, the first debutant winner since Laurent Fignon in 1983 and the first winner from Slovenia.

He did it without needing his team, and his strongest performance of the race – a bit like in his Grand Tour debut at the 2019 Vuelta a España– came on the penultimate day, suggesting exceptional powers of recovery.

No one could be sure where his limits might lie, which is why when Pogačar rode away from all the favourites for the world title just as the race was heating up it was tempting to see it as inevitable that he would become the first rider since Greg LeMond in 1989 to do the Tour-Worlds double.

The most intriguing thing about Pogačar’s attack in Imola was to imagine what was going on in his brain. Was it to try to set up Roglič by way of consolation for snatching the Tour from his countryman?

Perhaps, but surely Pogačar was fuelled by a wave of belief in his own ability. He didn’t know what he couldn’t do so he could do anything.

On the day, that thrilling possibility of the unknown collided with crushing reality. When Tom Dumoulin, Wout van Aert and Julian Alaphilippe began to stir, Pogačar’s challenge melted away and he was left hanging on to the reduced group. It had been a courageous, valiant effort, but he was human after all.

Making a miracle

Still the question remains, what might Pogačar be capable of? If not yet of riding away from the best riders in the world in the closing stages of the World Championships, then what?

Already, inevitably, a mythology has built up around the 22-year-old. When he was nine and eager to join his older brother at the local Rog Ljubljana cycling club, he was tested by the club coach, Miha Koncilja.

‘Koncilja didn’t look for the best numbers but the best effort,’ says Slovenian journalist Toni Gruden. Pogačar passed the test and ‘was in the system from 10 years old’, all the time riding with older boys.

When he was 11 and racing against 14-year-olds national coach Andrej Hauptman, a former pro who rode for Italian teams Lampre and Fassa Bortolo, turned up to watch one of his races.

He was concerned to see a small boy riding alone half a lap behind the peloton. He asked why the organisers didn’t ‘put him out of his misery’ and withdraw him.

‘He’s not half a lap down, he’s half a lap up,’ Hauptman was told. Within another lap or so Pogačar had lapped the bunch.

He won the Tour de l’Avenir – the ‘Tour of the Future’ – in 2018, a year after 2019 Tour de France winner Egan Bernal won it. But that wasn’t his only standout performance. In fact, arguably it was his results against older, senior riders that were more notable and a clearer indication of his potential.

In 2017, aged 18, he was fifth in the Tour of Slovenia behind Rafal Majka, Giovanni Visconti, Jack Haig and Gregor Mühlberger. A year later he was back to place fourth behind Roglič, Rigoberto Urán and Matej Mohorič.

A few months later, in November, he joined up with his new professional squad UAE-Team Emirates at a training camp where he was tested by coach and renowned physiologist Íñigo San Millán.

‘I realised this guy was at a whole different level in terms of his ability to clear lactate and recover,’ San Millán tells me on the phone from the United States, where he is a professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine.

As well as coaching the Tour de France winner, San Millán’s day job is in clinical and research work in cellular metabolism, especially in diabetes, cardiometabolic disease and cancer.

Given the time difference between Colorado and Monaco, where Pogačar lives, the first thing San Millán does each morning is check in with his rider. That usually means logging on to TrainingPeaks, the platform to which the rider uploads his rides.

San Millán has worked with cyclists off and on for three decades but says the technology available now, and the ability to gather and study data, is ‘a game changer’.

He can make small or sometimes major adjustments to prevent his riders from overtraining. According to many coaches that’s the biggest inhibitor to performance among WorldTour riders.

Pogačar made an instant impact in his first professional season, 2019, winning the Tour of the Algarve in February, finishing sixth in the Tour of the Basque Country in April, winning the Tour of California in May, then going to his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a España, and ending up on the podium in third.

The most remarkable aspect of that was that he didn’t appear to weaken over the three weeks. Indeed his best performance, and the one that got him onto the podium, came on the second-to-last day when he attacked alone on the road to Plataforma de Gredos and won at the top of the climb by over a minute and a half.

It was the same a year later at the Tour. Pogačar’s strongest performance was on the penultimate day, on the now-famous time-trial to La Planche des Belles Filles.

No signs of stopping

‘He has a very, very good recovery capacity, as we observed last year,’ says San Millán. ‘If you look at the stage races he’s done he either wins them or he’s second or third. He barely ever has a bad day.

‘We saw at the Tour of California last year that he doesn’t have the same accumulated fatigue as the others. We’re developing this platform where we look at different metabolic parameters involved in multiple cellular reactions from the lead utilisation of fatty acids, glucose, amino acids, mitochondrial function, as well as recovery capacity.

And what we saw in California was, like… whoa, this guy was at a whole different level. It was kind of what we expected, but that confirmed it.

‘So when we decided to take him to the Vuelta I knew he wasn’t going to have any problems with recovery, even though he was only 20. The only question was his head. But his head is amazing. When he attacked on that second-last day, if it wasn’t for Movistar chasing he would have won the Vuelta.’

Is that ability to recover genetic? ‘In my opinion there are three things,’ says San Millán. ‘The main one is genetics – he has that recovery capacity. The second is his mentality. Three weeks in a Grand Tour can be psychologically hard for anybody but Tadej is very calm. He doesn’t feel the pressure, the stress.

‘The third thing is that we’ve been training a lot to improve his lactate clearance capacity and increase mitochondrial function, which of course is partly genetic. And what that means is that day by day he is not as tired as the others.

‘Multiple times through these last years, after a stage I would ask him, “How was it today, Tadej?” and he would say, “Pretty easy.” And you’d talk to other riders: how was it? “Oof, it was a hard stage today.”

‘The other rider already has a “dent” from that stage, which affects his recovery for the next day. Tadej doesn’t have that dent. It’s genetics, of course, but you can improve this ability with training because everything can be improved with training.’

Staying focussed

For both coaches and riders 2020 has thrown up unexpected challenges. When Covid-19 forced racing to stop in March nobody knew when or if it would resume. When it did restart there were only weeks before the biggest race of all, the Tour de France, without the usual milestones along the way.

To some extent the truncated season represented a test of how riders and coaches could improvise and prepare without the usual reference points.

‘The thing with the lockdown is that we had no idea what we were doing, right?’ says San Millán. ‘Nobody has been in a similar situation before. Back in March, April, I didn’t want to give the riders a structured programme to follow because mentally it’s not easy to follow a programme without competition for four or five months. And we didn’t know then if racing would resume at all.

‘I decided the riders should follow unstructured training until May, when we were going to start proper training with more structure. But Tadej? No, he said, “I want some structure. I don’t want to just ride my bike.”

‘He was so focussed and in mid-May his parameters were outstanding. He was putting out similar numbers to what he was doing at the Tour. I had to tell him, “I know you like to train hard, I know you like to do a structured programme, but if we continue like this I don’t think we’re going to be in top condition for the Tour.”

‘I said, “Hey, let’s take a week off. Go with your girlfriend Urška [Žigart, a pro rider with Women’s WorldTour team Alé BTC Ljubljana] and just get lost in the mountains. Have fun for a week.” That’s what they did. And then he came back and we hit the reset button.’

Clearly it worked. Pogačar rode well before the Tour but seemed to grow into the race and save his absolute best for when it really mattered.

He didn’t stop after the Tour either. There were no lucrative criteriums or laps of the celebrity circuit in Slovenia. Having memorably described himself as ‘just a kid from Slovenia’ in his Tour winner’s press conference he raced on, first at the Worlds then managing ninth at Flèche Wallonne and third at Liège-Bastogne-Liège before citing ‘tiredness’ and calling time on his season.

Still just a kid

Life will be different for Pogačar now, his coach agrees. San Millán has spoken in the past about the ‘fear of losing and the fear of winning’. There can be negative consequences to winning, and going into next year’s Tour as the champion will throw up new challenges – just ask 2019 Tour winner Egan Bernal.

‘I think mentally Tadej is very strong and he’ll be able to deal with success,’ says San Millán. ‘But he’s still a kid and he likes to live life. That’s great, but how is his mentality going to evolve over five, six years if he wins a lot of races? Will he come to a point where he says, “That’s it, I want to play golf”?

‘I know it’s not good to compare, but I compare his mentality to Miguel Indurain’s. He was special, like Tadej – calm, not nervous, not stressed.

‘I worked with many athletes over the years at a high level and many have anxiety problems,’ San Millán adds. ‘They get nervous, they get stressed. Whenever they fail it’s not their fault.

‘They hold onto whatever they can to justify why they didn’t win today. I had a rider say once that he didn’t podium at the Tour de France because of his sports drink. Are you kidding me?’

Pogačar has the physical ability and appears to have the psychological tools. He likes to race aggressively, as we saw at the Tour and in Imola. Next year’s Tour could be more difficult for him to win, especially if his team is not reinforced. But Pogačar can win other races too.

His potential might only be limited by his own desire. In other words, and as his coach suggests, he could carry on winning as long as he wants to.

Illustration: Bill McConkey

The power behind the throne

Building a world-beater is only part of the day job for Íñigo San Millán

Tadej Pogačar’s coach Íñigo San Millán combines his work with the Tour de France winner and as director of performance for UAE-Team Emirates with his clinical and research work in diabetes and cancer as a professor at the University of Colorado.

‘It’s not easy to balance it but at the same time it helps to fund my other work,’ he says. ‘We have great resources here at the University of Colorado but we are always struggling for funds, contrary to what some people might think.

‘My work with the team and with Tadej helps because it opens doors to all kinds of athletes and sports, and it can help us get a contract with a soccer team or American football team. That money can pay for a salary but it also pays for the research.’

As well as coaching Pogačar and heading up the team’s performance department, San Millán coaches another three riders, Brandon McNulty, Diego Ullisi and former World Champion Rui Costa.

Champion, record holder, Secret Squirrel, pundit, columnist, businessman, campaigner… Chris Boardman is a man with more jobs than Mr Benn

Words: Trevor Ward Photography: Danny Bird

There would be pros and cons to being stuck in a lift with Chris Boardman. A major pro is that he’d probably be able to fix the problem using just a paper clip and a 20 pence piece, a legacy of his time as head of R&D at British Cycling. The downside would be he’d want to reference all the laws of physics and engineering that made it possible.

This is the man who, aged seven, proudly walked up and down his street wearing a set of scuba tanks his dad had made for him for his birthday from some plastic cylinders and copper wire. Yet he wouldn’t actually get to experience breathing underwater until he received a scuba lesson for his 13th birthday. (Thirty years later he would be a regular columnist for Diver magazine and during one assignment to Micronesia would include a review of the carpet in his hotel lift.)

He would go on to garner various national, international and Olympic titles as a bike rider before returning to his other love and becoming the chief ‘Secret Squirrel’ at British Cycling – or ‘Head of Stuff’ as he refers to it in his autobiography.

It is there that he would conduct 10,000 tests – mostly in wind-tunnels involving naked or paint-smeared riders – to produce the bikes, components, helmets and skinsuits that would be used by Team GB at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

At one point he and his fellow Secret Squirrels discussed the aerodynamic gains that could be achieved by breaking rider Ed Clancy’s collarbone and re-setting his shoulders in a more rounded form before the idea was unsurprisingly ‘consigned to the unethical bin’.

There’s an equally telling tale of when the final version of the Olympic skinsuit was delivered – and immediately ripped apart at the seams. His Secret Squirrels instantly began to exchange ideas about what could be done.

‘There was no looking backwards, no deciding who was to blame, they had instinctively assumed it was their problem and moved immediately to look for a solution,’ he writes. ‘I couldn’t have been any prouder of them than I was at that moment.’

By the end of the Beijing Olympics, the Team GB cyclists had won 14 medals – eight of them gold – and broken every Olympic and two World records. Yet in the aftermath, Boardman notes that ‘just two athletes took the time to thank the R&D team personally’.

… and all-round decent chap

Almost 25 years separate my only two meetings with Boardman, yet his demeanour – one of politeness and humility wrestling with world-weariness – remained unchanged.

The first was in the Pyrenean town of Pau after he’d ridden a transition stage of the Tour in the mid-1990s. I was a fan full of naive questions such as what did he think of the scenery? He indulged me, answering in his trademark deadpan style that all he’d seen for the last 10 days was the same few square metres of French road, but that ‘as tarmac went, it was very nice’.

By the time of our second meeting, Boardman had been looking at more tarmac than ever before, this time with a view to converting it into the most ambitious network of cycling and walking paths in the UK.

Becoming Greater Manchester’s Cycling and Walking Commissioner in 2017 had meant him giving up his role as pundit-in-chief on ITV’s Tour coverage, but his new-found passion as cycling advocate had helped soften the blow. And though it may sound blasphemy to the drivers of Greater Manchester who make 250 million journeys a year of less than a mile, Boardman has the best interests of everyone at heart.

‘A big chunk of those 250 million journeys is people taking their kids to school, not because they need to but because they don’t see any other option,’ he told me. ‘I have to make getting out of their cars the easiest, most attractive and safest choice for them to make. We want them to look out of their car window [at people cycling] and think, “Oh, I quite fancy that.”’

His appearance on the BBC’s Question Time last November won him a new swathe of fans. He deftly turned a question about the NHS into a compelling argument for why we should be doing more to promote cycling and other alternatives to driving.

‘If we can just change the way people move then we can reduce the burden on the NHS and make people’s lives better and hit climate change,’ he said. ‘We’ve got type 2 diabetes, obesity, all sorts of issues that are related to not moving, and we could be tackling that and ticking all the other boxes at the same time if we just did some joined-up thinking.’

In 2016, Boardman left the ITV team at the Tour suddenly after learning that his 75-year-old mother, Carol, had been killed by a driver while riding her bike. In 2019 the driver was sentenced to 30 weeks in jail after admitting causing death by careless driving.

Boardman refused to turn this personal tragedy into a tool for reform, saying on the eve of the court case, ‘I cannot get involved. I know it would consume me. I’ve just got to focus on what we can do. I don’t want to use it as a bludgeon, but I also don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen.’

We’re lucky to have Chris Boardman. He isn’t just an Olympic champion, Hour Record holder and Tour de France stage winner fighting for the rights of cyclists. He’s a husband, father and son fighting for the right of everyone to be able to enjoy a safer, healthier transport environment.

As such, he should be declared a national treasure.

What started as one man selling components out of a trailer has become a behemoth of the bike industry. Here's how

Words: Sam Challis Photography: Danny Bird

Like many successful brands, Specialized’s story is one of entrepreneurship and capitalism, but this one comes with a leftfield twist.

As a young man fresh out of university in 1973, Mike Sinyard sold his Volkswagen Camper van to raise enough money to fly to Europe and ride around on his bike. After spending some time in Italy he met Cino Cinelli, founder of the eponymous Italian bike company.

Spotting an opportunity, Sinyard bought as much of Cinelli’s product as he could afford, so that he could sell it back in the US. He would later convince the Italian to make him the sole US importer of the brand.

‘Mike sold those first few components from a trailer attached to his bicycle, riding up and down the San Francisco Bay area,’ says Mark Cote, global head of marketing and innovation at Specialized.

‘That was where our name came from – “specialistas” is an Italian term for manufacturers who would build or connect specifically tailored products with the consumer.’

Sinyard officially founded Specialized in 1974, and two years later the brand released its first product, the Specialized Touring Tyre. Since then, the company has developed beyond all recognition, growing to the point where it not only follows trends in the cycling market but often dictates them.

Its catalogue boasts a huge and diverse range of products, sponsors world-class athletes in every cycling discipline and has even launched a charity that now runs independently of the bike brand. Yet Cote says its core tenets remain the same as when it began.

‘We’re still just catering for what riders want,’ says Cote. ‘It’s just now we get to do that globally instead of just up and down that bit of San Francisco Bay. Our depth and connection to the market is the secret sauce that has led the company to be as successful as it has been.’

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Thick and thin

Not that it has been plain sailing for Specialized throughout the 45 years it has been in business. On occasions, costly investments would prove to be non-starters, and according to Sinyard himself the brand came within a few hundred dollars of bankruptcy in the mid-1990s.

‘Rodney Hines, one of our graphic designers and a Specialized veteran of more than 30 years, started slapping these “Innovate or Die” stickers around our HQ in the 1990s because he thought we were getting a bit soft,’ says Cote. ‘We really took that to heart and still use that slogan to this day because it resonated – if we aren’t differentiating and driving innovation, why are we around?’

That’s especially true in an industry as competitive as cycling, where it isn’t hard for the consumer to find good products from any number of brands.

‘So we changed our approach,’ says Cote. ‘Thinking more holistically, not just about product but about the facilities and processes that support the product, too.’

As an example of this shift in mentality, Cote points to the expansion of Specialized’s ‘Body Geometry’ concept. These ‘contact point’ products have been designed with doctors, engineers and riders to improve comfort and reduce the chance of injury.

‘Body Geometry started in the late 1990s with a saddle. After that we started to realise the potential this concept had so we worked on some shoes too, but came to the conclusion that the features we designed into any Body Geometry product would only really matter if you fit on your bike properly.’

That lead to the creation of the Specialized Bicycle Components University – which now incorporates the bike-fit technology from Retül – with the aim of training individuals to conduct bike fits so Specialized’s Body Geometry products could be used correctly.

‘Consequently we now have thousands of trained fitters worldwide,’ says Cote. ‘Now riders with Specialized shoes don’t have to worry about hot feet like they used to, and women get products properly designed for their anatomy.

‘We won’t compromise on a project – we’re happy to go down a rabbit hole, investing time and resources if it means we can develop the product we need.’

Cote says Specialized demonstrates the same way of thinking when it comes to its bikes: ‘We decided to go after “speed” in 2014. So we didn’t just build the Venge ViAS, our approach let us build a system that would save you five minutes over 40km, which incorporated wheels, tyres, shoes, skinsuit and helmet.

‘Our teams work next to each other and everyone is within shouting distance – and shouting does happen sometimes – so we’re all aware of what’s going on. It means we’re naturally well aligned when it comes to developing new products.’

Thanks to the aforementioned willingness to invest, new product development now happens at a speed that belies Specialized’s monolithic size. Within the company’s Morgan Hill headquarters in California there is a new R&D facility capable of building 10,000 frames a year entirely on site, yet Specialized uses the resource entirely for development prototyping.

The initial frame moulds are now machined on site too, which means Specialized doesn’t have to involve its Asian factory (and the logistical issues of managing a long-distance partnership) until the point at which a new design is basically ready for full production.

‘We can go through so many levels of simulation in-house now that in most cases the first rideable prototypes of a new design are already better than the previous generation,’ says Cote.

‘Ten years ago the way we’d develop a Tarmac would be to set given performance and safety parameters, build that up in one design, make a prototype, send it to the factory.

‘We’d then get a pre-production sample back. We’d test it, get feedback and make a change. It would take three to four weeks for the next iteration to come back. We’d repeat that anywhere from nine to 20 times in a two-year development cycle, then put the frame into production. That was probably true up until the Tarmac SL3.’

Today, Cote explains, the process is far more complex, but also far quicker: ‘Most importantly we’ll set parameters for handling, as every bike has to handle the Specialized way, but also for ride quality, stiffness and aerodynamics. Then we codify them for every different frame size, so for the Tarmac that’s nine variations.’

Each size is a separate engineering project – the carbon layup is totally different, the aerodynamics are totally different – but Cote says that thanks to the resources Specialized has on hand now, something can be made in the morning, lab tested and ridden, and then another iteration can be fabricated immediately that can be ridden again in the afternoon.

‘What used to take a month now takes about five hours because we’ve made sure everything that dictates the riding experience is in-house within 500 metres of each other,’ says Cote.

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Changing gear

The past couple of years have seen some seismic shifts in the road market but it only takes a brief bit of research to see that Specialized is handily placed within each niche.

A case in point is the Tarmac – it has a reasonable claim to have pioneered the blueprint for a modern road race bike and many competitors have since released machines with similar features.

‘We’d been treading the same path with the Tarmac for several iterations so with the SL6 we took a step back to see what other avenues we could go down,’ says Cam Piper, Specialized’s road product manager for the Tarmac and Venge.

‘That coincided with the widespread uptake of disc brakes so we ended up creating something markedly different. Using the R&D lab and our “Win Tunnel” we could understand how features like the Tarmac’s dropped seatstays improved aerodynamics as well as comfort before other brands.’

As other brands have introduced similar concepts there has been a convergence in frame design. Piper says that means that now it is the details that matter.

‘The ingredients to do what we do exist everywhere. Most brands have access to the materials and technology we do and are bound by the same UCI limits.

‘It’s no longer at the point of “can we build it?”, it’s “what shall we build?” – little, astute selections and refinements that make the difference. With our development process we’re best placed to discover and exploit those areas, which is why the SL6 has been such a success for us.’

Chief among the updates to the design of the SL6 was aerodynamic efficiency, which is an attribute taken to a more extreme extent in Specialized’s aero road platform, the Venge. 2018 saw a slew of aero road designs released from the big brands and Piper is able to summarise the crux of the latest generation.

‘As the road market has matured, riders have become more discerning and they expect complete performance now. It’s no good for the Venge to just be the most aero bike – it needs to be lightweight, handle well and be comfortable too,’ he says.

‘The Venge has been almost 10 years in the making so I’d like to think we’ve educated riders in that time. When our Win Tunnel was built we’d test in there and people acted like it was a photoshoot or PR stunt. Now people understand the benefit of aero.’

Piper says he first saw evidence of that on Specialized’s lunchtime rides. They’re a brand institution and notoriously competitive – apparently pros have been dropped in the past because riders need a very specific type of fitness that Piper and Cote dub ‘lunch ride strength’.

‘A few years ago people started showing up on the ViAS and did so well on the ride that everyone started seeing the value in being aero. Now each lunchtime you can’t move for skinsuits and Evade helmets.

‘It has been accepted, which I think is representative of the market now too. We credit the Venge ViAS for helping to kick-start the aero trend.’

A key factor in the well-roundedness of modern race bikes has been the move to wider tyres – even the raciest of bikes now have clearances for tyres that were the preserve of endurance bikes a few years ago.

With the explosion of gravel at the other end of the spectrum, is Specialized’s venerable endurance road platform, the Roubaix, at risk of being made obsolete by the widening capabilities of the Venge and Diverge?

‘I don’t see endurance road being edged out by the combination of race and gravel,’ says Cote. ‘There’s still a definite application for the Roubaix. Geometrically and technically it has features that allow it to specialise between race and gravel – it has similar aerodynamics to the Tarmac but the Futureshock suspension unit of the Diverge, for example.

‘The widening scope of each bike just means the rider has a more adaptable machine that still performs highly. That didn’t used to be possible, and can only be a good thing for riders.’

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New horizons

Cote says that while naysayers may claim that the road scene is tapering off, Specialized believes that worldwide it is still as vibrant as ever. That said, the brand is focussed heavily on gravel and e-road too.

‘We just can’t get enough of how forward-thinking and experimental gravel riding is,’ he says. ‘The future is really open for gravel and it’s one of our biggest areas of investment.’

Specialized’s ‘biggest single investment in product development ever’, though, was in the drive system for its new Turbo Creo SL e-road bike. Unlike other e-road bikes that are designed around third-party systems, Specialized developed a proprietary drive system, which Cote says sets the e-bike apart in terms of ride feel and battery range.

‘We opened an e-bike hub in Switzerland seven years ago, which now has 40 employees,’ says Cote. ‘The Creo is my favourite bike of ours without doubt.

‘We had a taco night at our HQ for our pro teams at last year’s Tour of California. Bora-Hansgrohe’s Max Schachmann took off on a prototype Creo, disappeared up the road and came back with a huge grin on his face.

‘No matter if you are in the WorldTour or haven’t ridden a bike since you were a child, e-bikes have this ability to put a giddy smile on your face. It’s so exciting.’

Specialized says the Creo can be set up to suit gravel just as well as road. ‘People who were racing triathlon now want to go bikepacking,’ says Cote. ‘That type of crossover simply wouldn’t have happened a couple of years ago.

‘It means people are spending more time on their bikes and enjoying it more, which is ultimately all we want to facilitate. As I said, we’re still running on the same principles Mike fostered when he founded the company. The rider is still the boss.’

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Aero gets practical

‘The Venge ViAS was released in 2015 and for us this was the moment when aero was widely accepted as something tangible,’ says Cote. ‘But there were so many things that made it not your go-to bike.’

Not least was the cockpit design – it hid every cable away from the wind but was notably convoluted to adjust. The latest Venge is just as clean but uses split spacers and smart, easy-to-remove fairings to make sure the bike is easier to live with day-to-day.

Shock of the new

The second iteration of the ‘Futureshock’ suspension unit is a lot more refined than the first. That was a simple sprung system but the redesign has introduced two significant features.

First, the unit’s travel has been damped using an oil reservoir, which ensures that both the compression and rebound are more controlled and progressive. Second, the unit is adjustable now that the original top cap has been replaced by a dial that can be turned on the fly to stiffen or soften the suspension.

Thinking inside the box

With the Diverge gravel bike, Specialized has been able to try out some new concepts, one of which is the SWAT storage unit. Standing for ‘storage, water, air, tools’, SWAT is a range of solutions for carrying stuff on the bike, and this SWAT Road Kit bolts into the junction between down tube and seat tube with space for a spare inner tube, multitool, CO2 cartridge and tyre levers.

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Dropping like flies 

It seems like every endurance race bike now features dropped seatstays – something the US company was among the first to champion. ‘Dropped stays are more aero and naturally promote compliance in the seat tube,’ says Piper.

‘As the tubes are shorter they’re also lighter. Thanks to our R&D lab and wind-tunnel we could understand and optimise their inclusion in our SL6 Tarmac design quickly. We know other brands have found the same thing as it’s now hard to find a race bike without them.’

It has become a key training metric, and Strava even tries to help us by estimating our power if we don’t record it. You’d be forgiven for thinking you have to know your power output if you’re serious about training.

OK, it helps, and there are good reasons to use a power meter. It measures your output in real time (unlike your heart rate, which actually lags behind) so you can gauge your effort and track progress over time. Yet while power meters are declining in cost, buying one still represents a financial outlay that not everyone can afford, so what are the alternatives?

Invariably people start riding to get fitter, which could be as general as moving from a sedentary lifestyle or as specific as completing a sportive. Both objectives, however, are easier to reach by following a plan with a series of SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely – intermediate goals.

Progress can take two forms: endurance, which is sustaining the same effort for longer, and efficiency, which is the same effort for less energy cost. Both can be measured without power meters, as they were for decades.

As a coach I always provide clients with a personalised Rating of Perceived Effort (RPE) table, where RPE1 is the easiest spinning and RPE10 is flat-out sprinting for 10 seconds max, and encourage them to provide an RPE score for each session, even if they have power, heart rate, speed and cadence metrics.

RPE is by definition subjective because the same exercise on two different days could feel different for myriad reasons, but I’ve found riders do get better at removing the subjective elements with practice. You can then measure your progress in both endurance and efficiency.

So, if a cyclist can ride for 15 minutes at RPE4 on Day 1 of a training plan, but can subsequently ride for 30 minutes at RPE4, their endurance has improved. Similarly, if a Strava hill climb needs an RPE6 effort at the start of a training plan and later reduces to RPE5 for the same time, the cyclist is more efficient.

If progress is possible without technology, why are gadgets so favoured by coaches? Physiological metrics enable coaches to make smarter decisions regarding a rider’s training and recovery. Training can be more personalised and specific to the rider’s goals. But training isn’t all about numbers – power meters provide a lot of data, but not knowledge.

As a coach I’m often asked which is ‘best’ for training: power, heart rate or perception? A power meter helps but it’s not a silver bullet and certainly not a prerequisite for progression.

Likewise, knowing how your cardio system performs while you ride is useful, but it can’t replace knowing how you felt at the time.

In the absence of power data I recommend using a heart rate monitor because knowing your heart rate zone during exercise helps you to control your effort, but use it alongside the RPE because knowing how you perceived the effort level is invaluable.

Failing a heart rate monitor, use a stopwatch and your own perception, keep a diary – and keep training.

Good training is all about consistency week after week, layering on what has gone before, building the fitness platform higher and higher. And that, in the end, comes down to you and the bike.

The expert: Andy Tomkins is an Association of British Cycle Coaches Level 3 coach. Visit sportivecyclecoaching.co.uk for more information

When people talk about fasted rides they’re referring to riding first thing in the morning without eating breakfast and limiting food (but not fluid) intake during the ride. This is a fasted ride in its most basic sense. However, personally I refer to this as training with low glycogen rather than ‘fasted rides’. Low-glycogen training can be done at any time of the day.

First up, some science: glycogen, which comes from carbohydrate, is the body’s main source of fuel for exercise at any intensity above 70% of your maximum. Restricting it requires the body to use stored fat for fuel, which makes you more efficient. More on that later.

In terms of timing, you eat as normal but have a lower-carbohydrate meal the night before and ride in the morning after consuming some caffeine and 25-30g of protein for breakfast. This preserves muscle mass while riding with lower glycogen levels.

Another option is to eat normally the night before, have breakfast, do your high-intensity training in the morning and withhold carbs for the rest of the day by eating protein and fats. You can then ride with lower glycogen in the evening if you’re training twice a day.

In terms of what to eat to ensure your glycogen is low, a good example would be a portion of fish or meat with two or three portions of vegetables and a side salad. The general rule is that to get the most benefit from this type of training you should avoid a really high-carb lunch or dinner before trying to train fasted the following morning, as your glycogen levels will still be too high.

The key is to not overdo it on the bike. To get the most out of low-glycogen training your rides must be zone 1 or 2 (out of 5, so 60-80% of your maximum heart rate where zone 5 is a 100% sprint) and personally I wouldn’t recommend intervals or riding at above 70%.

So what’s the point? The idea is to maximise fuel utilisation at a muscular level. From a scientific perspective, this is referred to as enhancing the mitochondrial (or cellular) adaptations in our muscles, which means they become more efficient at using fats as a fuel during endurance exercise.

If you can spare carbohydrate oxidation – the process of converting carbs into energy – during low to moderate-intensity exercise you’ll have more of it when you need it towards the end of a race when the intensity ramps up. In layman’s terms we’re trying to increase the mpg of our engine.

There are two potential drawbacks: firstly, the fact that you can’t (or shouldn’t) perform high-intensity training, and secondly the fact that you may compromise immune function. That’s because carbohydrate, particularly glucose, is the main fuel for immune cells.

But think about that engine analogy again and it’s clear why the pros do it. They want to maximise fat utilisation during low and moderate-intensity exercise to preserve glycogen for when they really need it. And this is nothing new – the pros have been doing this type of training for a long time.

Professional riders do, of course, have nutritionists and doctors to analyse every facet of performance and measure out their nutrient intake, but most riders will benefit from training with low glycogen, especially in the off-season when you’re racking up the miles. Just bear in mind that everyone is different and there may be a process of trial and error before you get it right.

The more efficient your muscles become, the better your performance – and there isn’t a single endurance athlete who won’t like the sound of that.

The expert: Dr Mayur Ranchordas is a reader in nutrition and exercise metabolism at Sheffield Hallam University. He is also a performance nutrition consultant who works with Premier League football players and referees, professional cyclists and triathletes

Resting heart rate tends to decrease the fitter you are because your heart becomes bigger and pumps more blood with each beat.

But it’s important to understand that resting heart rate is relative. That is, someone with a resting heart rate of 60bpm could be fitter than someone measuring 40bpm. In other words, it’s not an absolute measure of fitness.

That’s not to say it’s completely useless, so let’s first look at how you gauge it, and how rested you need to be. Resting heart rate (RHR) is best taken first thing in the morning, just after you’ve woken up.

You might have a sports watch to read it for you, but it’s easy enough to find out for yourself – count your heart rate for 15 seconds and multiply the answer by four.

The average RHR of the population is about 70bpm. In general – although this is not always the case with well-trained cyclists – people tend to lose fitness as they age, so may well find their RHR increasing.

But if you’re in your mid-twenties or thirties and very fit you may well find your RHR is less than 50bpm. I’m a big fan of racing, and racing regularly is a good way of bringing it down.

It’s not simply a case of saying your heart rate should be such-and-such a bpm because you’re 40 years old, but doctors and clinicians do have some general guidelines.

Sometimes if they look at the RHR of a racing cyclist – even a masters athlete – they can be concerned that it’s so low. But we’re all different and it’s not usually something to worry about if you’re fit.

Despite that, resting heart rate isn’t a great indicator of fitness. It can decrease for reasons other than training, including illness and, worse, overtraining, which can send it in either direction.

Your RHR can even decrease (or increase) for reasons completely unrelated to fitness or physical health, such as anxiety and mood. In some cases your heart rate may not decrease even if you’re getting fitter, as measured by either power output or VO2 max.

Like any training metric RHR can be useful for tracking changes over time, so long as you take the above into account and are sure you’re not overtraining or ill. It can be useful to look at your RHR to see if it matches with how you felt on a particular training day.

But the fact is there are better indicators of fitness. My preferred choice as a coach is a power meter because it can provide so much data about how a rider is training and recovering.

Outside of that, the best measure of cardiorespiratory fitness is your VO2 max, which is the largest amount of oxygen that your body can use during maximal aerobic exercise. It’s not perfect – no one fitness metric can tell you everything you need to know in isolation – but it is often referred to as the gold standard measure of aerobic fitness.

Illustration: Clear as Mud

Of course training is not all about numbers. Heart rate might be a ‘back to basics’ indicator in that it’s cheap and easy to measure and, by seeing how it changes, it can give a general idea of your current fitness. But even if you use a power meter I’d encourage you to stay in the moment on the bike and make sure your posture is good and your pedalling smooth.

And regardless of whether you have lots of data to download afterwards, think about how you feel and ask yourself honestly whether that was a good day or not. That’s more useful than relying on resting heart rate.

The expert Ric Stern is a road racer, sports scientist and cycling and triathlon coach. For the last two years he has qualified for the UCI Gran Fondo World Championships, and has coached elite riders, Paralympians and beginners. Visit cyclecoach.com

A great climber’s bike needs to be a lot more than simply lightweight. Cyclist’s expert testers choose their favourites

Photography: Mike Massaro

Back in the early 1900s the idea of a bike weighing less than 15kg was a pipe dream. But by the 1960s a skinny steel racer could comfortably hit 10kg, and with a little help from ‘drillium’ – the fad that saw mechanics and riders drill holes in brake levers and chainrings to shave grams – even lighter.

Eddy Merckx’s Hour Record bike of 1972, built (and drilled) by Ernesto Colnago, weighed just 5.75kg, and even De Rosa’s heart logo was a result of weight saving, with Ugo De Rosa drilling three holes into a bottom bracket shell then cutting a triangle between them to lose excess material.

Aluminium followed steel, with Italian manufacturer Alan creating the original mass-production aluminium frame, which weighed as little as 1.6kg, in 1972. A few years later titanium joined the party, among the first the 1974 Teledyne Titan whose 2kg frame was a third lighter than comparable steel.

And then carbon fibre came along and started chipping away, bike by bike, at weight targets once thought impossible to reach.

The biggest target was the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg, which might have seemed optimistically low when it was introduced in 2000 but is now embarrassingly outdated. As early as 2004 Canyon engineer Hans Christian Smolik created the experimental Projekt 3.7, a 3.7kg, 16-gear bike.

In 2006 the Germans were at it again, debuting the Projekt 6.8, a 6.8kg disc brake road bike. In fact weight seems a bit of a theme in Germany, with the record for the lightest rideable bike standing at 2.7kg – a custom project started by German Gunter Mai, then finished off by Jason Woznick of Fairwheel Bikes in Tucson, Arizona.

As for production – ie, not custom – bikes, the feathery crown rests with German brand AX Lightness, whose Vial Evo Ultra tips the scales at 4.4kg thanks in part to a frame weighing under 600g. Most recently Specialized has hit the headlines with its Aethos (see p13), a sub-6kg fully built racer that the company claims has the lightest disc-frame ever built – just 585g for a size 56cm.

It’s incredible stuff, but there is a big but. When we put together the list of our favourite lightweight bikes it soon became clear that weight wouldn’t actually be the defining factor. Otherwise a bike such as the Tifosi Mons, which stole 15 minutes of fame by dressing up in the most expensive parts and weighing a claimed 4.6kg, would be on the list.

Not that it’s a bad bike, but it is an example of how if you throw enough money at a light-ish frame (780g) you can hit crazy-light numbers – 790g AX Lightness tubular wheels anyone? That isn’t really cricket.

No, bike design has come so far that at the top end riders can and should expect a more holistic approach, such that stiffness, comfort and even aerodynamics need not be sacrificed.

Weight matters and it underpins our choices here, but there’s much more to these bikes than meets the scales.

For a guide to the best road bikes money can buy, click here 
To see Cyclist's pick of the best aero bikes, click here

Specialized Tarmac SL7

As chosen by editor-at-large Stu Bowers

Read Stu's full review of the Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL7 here

Can a bike be an icon of a sport the way an athlete can? I don’t see why not, in which case the Tarmac is that icon. It’s the Eddy Merckx of bikes – the most successful of all time – having won World Championships, Olympic titles, Spring Classics, Grand Tours… it’s hard to find a race the Tarmac hasn’t excelled in. But there is a common denominator behind much of its success: weight.

The Tarmac has always been Specialized’s lightest, an accomplished all-rounder but one that shines brightest when the road points up. It’s the bike the pros reach for when there’s a summit finish or indeed any big climb. But despite such success Specialized hasn’t always gotten things spot on.

The Tarmac family is so venerable it can trace its roots back nearly two decades, the 2002 aluminium Tarmac E5 chalking up wins under Mario Cipollini before the full-carbon models found favour with Tom Boonen.

Yet since then it has been through a number of revisions, some good, some not so good (here’s looking at you, weird-handling SL2 and annoying-proprietary-wheelset SL5) before arriving at this, the Tarmac SL7. And this time around it’s outstanding.

The key difference here is that Specialized has used the very latest computer modelling techniques and its in-house wind-tunnel to merge the aero performance of its Venge into the Tarmac’s characteristics – cue wide, deep Roval wheels, dropped seatstays and fully integrated cables, all wrapped up in a 6.8kg package (S-Works size 56cm). Its frame weighs less than 800g including paint and hardware, making it one of the first lightweight bikes slippery enough to earn the tag ‘aero-road’.

To flesh that out with some numbers, Specialized says the Tarmac SL7 is 45 seconds faster over a 40km time-trial than the previous SL6 and loses just 2.5W in drag – mere seconds – to the current Venge.

Fratricide

Under normal circumstances I’d almost certainly have had the chance to take the SL7 to the mountains to test it in its natural habitat, but as it was launched amid a global pandemic testing has been restricted to my local routes. That hasn’t stopped me from getting a true sense of this bike’s capabilities.

I’ve ridden almost every version of both the Tarmac and the Venge in the past, and while each new bike generally felt like a general improvement, the Tarmac SL7 feels like it has invented its own category.

I don’t say that lightly. This bike’s predecessor, the SL6, was a standout bike that all in the Cyclist office agreed was one of best disc bikes of 2018/19. So too the latest Venge, which is a superbly fast bike that also manages to be decently light at 7.1kg.

And yet the Tarmac SL7 eclipses them both, in the Venge’s case so much so that the manufacturer has now officially withdrawn the bike from its range (albeit it will continue to produce the frameset for the time being). A lightweight bike killing off its aero sibling? Even just six months ago that would have been unthinkable.

This is why the Tarmac SL7 makes the cut here. It is light enough to be a true climber’s bike yet it could also lay claim to being one of the best-handling bikes on the market. It delivers an electrifying sense of power transfer on climbs, which combined with its low weight means it launches into attacks and accelerates with ease, eating up the road on steep gradients.

Beyond that it is also extremely agile, with a stable and unfaltering demeanour on descents and a road-hugging stance in corners. Then there’s the speed it can hold on flat and rolling terrain – the aero credentials make themselves well known.

If there’s a chink in this bike’s armour I haven’t been able to find it. It’s not even uncomfortable. Tot these things up and this bike proves that we no longer have to accept compromises in handling, stiffness and comfort if we want to go fast uphill or down.

The race to the Holy Grail, that magical triumvirate of low weight, aerodynamics and amenable ride feel, I think is over. I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before other brands start to combine their superbikes in a similar way. 

Learn more about the Tarmac SL7 from Specialized here.

Factor O2 VAM

As chosen by tech editor Sam Challis

Read Sam's full review of the Factor O2 Vam here.

A dusting on the scales must be supported by capability on the road, which is why the O2 VAM made its mark on me. With the frameset coming in under a kilo thanks to a frame weighing a claimed 667g (54cm), a top-end build hovers around 6.6kg.

That’s a disc brake bike coming in 200g under the UCI weight limit, using components that are top-spec but ultimately conventional.

Despite the bike’s skinny silhouette, features such as the ‘wide stance’ seatstays and sculpted bottom bracket junction mean the O2 VAM is stiff enough at the rear for sprint efforts – and that’s coming from an 84kg rider.

Combined with its low weight and disc brakes, that rigidity makes for a brilliantly reactive bike that accelerates and brakes with pleasing promptness. Few bikes have allowed me to dart around the technical Dorset lanes I ride on with the same level of confidence. Firing into turns and powering out of them is consistently rewarding.

The VAM is comfortable and handles well too. The lightest carbon fibres are by definition the stiffest, so to roll around and not have my fillings shaken out, or to find the bike doesn’t hop around like popcorn kernels in a microwave when cornering, was a welcome surprise. I’ve rarely felt so planted on such a lightweight bike.

I’m of the opinion it might even be pretty aero. While Factor shares no data to prove my point, I certainly didn’t feel the bike was holding me back at high speed. Plus the VAM presents a clean, slim profile to the wind, engineers having cleverly integrated cables without increasing the frontal area of the head tube.

To do this a D-shaped steerer tube has been employed so the cables have space to run through the head tube without the need to upsize the upper headset bearing.

The knowledge

In short, the O2 VAM is a complete bike. Its combination of attributes marks it out as something special. What I like is that Rob Gitelis, industry veteran and Factor’s owner, is candid about the fact the bike required some pretty special engineering knowhow and fabrication methods to get to where it is. A superhero is only as good as its origin story and Factor doesn’t scrimp on the details.

Gitelis says this is the most expensive frameset he has ever made. When you consider he has owned factories that manufactured for Cervélo and Scott, and that Factor also boasts the extremely complex One in its range (featuring a split down tube and external fork steerer) you can start to appreciate the sentiment.

The main tubes use Nippon Graphite Pitch fibre, an incredibly stiff, incredibly costly and very difficult material to work with. Boron filaments have been added to the seat tube for both compliance and their ability to cope with the compressive forces of the rider’s weight.

Textreme, a premium spread-tow fibre often used as a top layer for visual effect, has been used as the base structure at tube junctions, chosen for its proficiency at being moulded into complex shapes.

All these unusual materials are subjected to equally unusual manufacturing methods. Latex-covered Styrofoam mandrels are used in the moulds, so it’s possible to compress the composite at a higher pressure and thus expunge more resin. Every gram counts.

Gitelis says the bike was only financially viable because he owns his own factory so can absorb costs from individual projects into the expenses of the business as a whole.

Knowing it took decades of experience, cutting-edge fabrication techniques and a flagrant disregard for production cost adds to the O2 VAM’s appeal for me. Such forthright concessions are in contrast to the ambiguous marketing information we’re fed from many other brands. They rationalise the end product and its performance really nicely.

The core tenet of the bike is that it pushes things to extremes in some areas – the top tube is so fragile under compression that the bike ships with a ‘do not sit’ sticker along the middle – to create balance in others.

By doing so Factor has been able to create something that stands out in a highly congested category, and the result on the road speaks for itself. 

Learn more about the O2 Vam from Factor here.

Canyon Ultimate CF Evo Disc

As chosen by editor-at-large Stu Bowers

Read Stu's full review of the Canyon Ultimate CF Evo Disc here

I find myself in the peculiar position of championing two bikes in this month’s ‘clash of the light ones’. Having already made the case for the Specialized Tarmac I can’t ignore that there is another bike that deserves to be in the mix, one I’ve tested in its many guises over the years and which in this latest incarnation can boast a disc brake frame weight of just 641g. No wonder it gets the name ‘Ultimate’.

When it launched in 2019 the Ultimate CF Evo Disc (the first outing of what is now the Ultimate CFR) claimed to be a record-breaking bike, the world’s first sub-6kg disc brake bike. Not wishing to split hairs, the size medium I tested (issue 93) was a smidgen over at 6.16kg, but it was still unfathomably light for a disc bike, bearing in mind even now there are very few such bikes under 7kg.

I still recall the look of sheer amazement on the face of anyone who picked it up, but there was another reason why the Ultimate immediately sprang to mind when we started discussing our favourite featherweight racers. It was a bike that was instrumental in helping me achieve something I never thought I would do: being the first home in a mountainous European sportive.

The Figure Of Hate in the Pyrenees is a sportive that boasts nearly 5,000m of ascent over a gruelling 195km-long figure of eight, yet there were times when it actually felt like I was cheating. I’ll never forget the feeling as I tackled the biggest climb of the day, the hors catégorie Col de Pailhères.

With every pedal stroke the Ultimate surged forward as if turbo-boosted, and I can honestly say I’ve never crested a 2,000m peak feeling as fresh as I did that day. I’d attribute 90% of that to the bike. So too managing to escape my rivals on that climb and never looking back.

Ups and downs

What goes up must, of course, come down so unless you’re only interested in summit finishes and getting a lift back down the mountain then a lightweight bike must do more than just defy gravity.

The Ultimate really surprised me in this regard, being equally impressive in poise and handling down the many sinuous mountain descents of the Pyrenees. Because it was so light it needed just the deftest of touches to move it around but not in a manner that made it feel flighty or unstable, as was proven by the fact I hit a personal record of 92kmh on one descent. So not only did I climb faster than ever, I descended faster too.

Furthermore there was not a jolt of harshness to the ride feel, a fact I put down in large part to the seatpost assembly.  It was Canyon that pioneered the idea of a silicone sleeve wrapped around a seatpost that’s clamped lower down inside the seat tube. The rationale is there is more seatpost length available to flex, with the silicone offering some damping and filling what would otherwise be a gap between frame and post.

In this top-spec build that seatpost is an 87g Schmolke TLO, and with lowered clamp and sleeve combined the Ultimate remains the most vertically compliant bike I’ve ever tested that doesn’t contain pivots or springs. The result is that the Ultimate is day-to-day practical, as happy back in the UK as it was in the Pyrenees.

I’ve often been asked, ‘Can a road bike ever be too light?’ The answer isn’t straightforward. I’ve tested some very light bikes whose low weight has come at the cost of many of the other desirable traits, specifically stiffness and stability.

Some light bikes are too flexy due to the use of less material, others are skittish due to their high stiffness-to-weight ratio. But that’s not the case with the Ultimate. It is without doubt the most capable climbing bike I’ve tested.

It has often been said that anyone can make a light bike, but the real challenge is to achieve weight goals without sacrificing ride quality and practicality. A six-kilo bike is all very well but do you really want to ride tubulars every day or worry about being close to the weight limit for that stem? Thus in the Ultimate I feel Canyon has created a bike that does everything a bike needs to do – excels at these things no less – yet somehow does it for a shade over 6kg. 

Learn more about the Ultimate from Canyon here.

Trek Émonda SLR

As chosen by deputy editor James Spender

For a full review of the Trek Emonda SLR9, click here.

Halfway up the climb a guy came past me, out of the saddle because… he had no saddle. Given that the seatpost was still dangerously protruding I can’t say this was done for weight-saving, but what I can say is we were still 40km from the end of the Taiwan KOM. I can also say that by the time I struggled over the line this guy was already at the top in the queue for the food.

For those unfamiliar, the Taiwan KOM Challenge is 105km and runs from sea level to 3,275m. It is also excruciatingly hard and it’s why, when I rode it in 2017 along with my seatless chum, I decided I needed every advantage I could get from my bike. Thus I plumped for what at the time was one of the lightest production bikes available, the second-generation Trek Émonda SLR 9, kerb weight 6.08kg for a size 56cm.

To hit these numbers – the frame was a staggering 640g, the lightest of its day – Trek had employed every trick in the book. The frame featured a strikingly sloped top tube in the ‘compact Giants of the 1990s’ vein, a design that uses less material than a traditional shape.

There was also an integrated seatmast, another feature to save grams as it does away with the overlapping material of a seatpost. In the Émonda’s case it enabled more compliance too, offsetting what might otherwise have been an uncomfortable ride given the very stiff carbon fibres employed and the all-carbon, zero padding Bontrager XXX saddle – one of the lightest saddles available at 68g but one that wasn’t quite to my backside’s tastes.

Were I to have taken up full-time relations with this bike the saddle would have had to go, but otherwise I was utterly hooked. Bikes had been getting heavier with the advent of ‘everything aero’ and disc brakes, but here was a purists’ race bike.

Light at all costs, and light because it had been designed holistically. Added to that saddle was a set of specifically designed Bontrager Speed Stop rim brakes, Bontrager Aeolus 3 D3 wheels, a Bontrager XXX cockpit and even Bontrager tyres – the 185g (25mm) R4 Hard-Case Lites. By using its component arm Bontrager in tandem, Trek had blazed trails with one of the first homogenously designed road bikes.

Learn more about the Emonda from Trek here.

Heavier but faster

At the Taiwan KOM I came in five hours and nine minutes after, and only 181 places down from, eventual winner Vincenzo Nibali (3 hours 19 minutes). I was two places behind Rob Gitelis riding one of his original Factor O2s and competing in the over-50s category. Perhaps his bike was even lighter, yet I look back on that experience and think I couldn’t have chosen a better ride partner.

I did ride that Factor latterly (though to note, the O2 VAM is the lightened variation) and while it is impressive, the Émonda trumped the O2 in handling and comfort. In fact it trumped everything for a long while. Weight aside is was a ‘complete’ bike, light but near impeccable in every other regard too.

In the three years since, the Émonda has undergone a further facelift followed by full-on replacement surgery. First it got disc brakes, then earlier this year it got an entire overhaul. Gone is the compact shape, with the bike now looking much more regular side-on, although closer inspection reveals aerodynamically sculpted tubes and hidden cabling. Still, the ethos remains the same, even if somewhat a product of its time.

The new Émonda frame is actually 38g heavier than the outgoing model but, says Trek, it generates 180g less drag. That’s an 18-watt power saving or the equivalent of arriving at the finish line in 59 minutes when the previous generation would take 60.

This is indicative of where lightweight bikes are headed – it’s not good enough to just be light – but it does seem strange that the 2017 SLR 9 weighed 6.08kg, whereas the new SLR 9 weighs 6.82kg. But that’s disc brakes, aero tube profiles and hidden cables for you, all wonderful things to make a bike go faster, but all elements that manufacturers are desperately trying to pare down.

If the bike is faster overall, one can’t complain. Now where do I sign up for the next Taiwan KOM?

And the winner is...

They’re all light, but which is our light fantastic?

It’s an exceedingly tough call but while we each had our personal favourite, when we totted up the second place votes (OK, totted is a bit grand, we only had three to count), there was a clear… draw. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

Stu’s favourite alternative was the Trek Émonda, while James chose the Canyon Ultimate. This left Sam to be incredibly unhelpful, having given a somewhat leftfield vote to the BMC Teammachine (although the BMC does deserve honourable mention). So it was back to socially distanced arguing up a windy hillside in the New Forest (at the time of arguing, a Tier 1 area).

Unequivocal was the fact that the Ultimate was the significantly lighter bike, yet all agreed the Émonda is truly excellent, a worthy steed and unlike the others, boasting some seriously flamboyant paintwork.

Brands often sneak gram-savings in via lack of paint, which can weigh well over 100g a frame, so it’s little surprise the other three bikes here are basically variations on black. But while the Émonda would win a catwalk we’re not that superficial. No, the defining factor came down to day-to-day usability.

The Tarmac SL7 could well be said to be a superb all-rounder but it doesn’t excel – or perhaps excite – in any one area. The Émonda by contrast does, being wonderfully stiff and punchy up climbs and out of the traps. So too the Ultimate. But when the road gets rougher the Émonda gets a touch jarring while the Ultimate continues to roll with pronounced comfort, and all told the Ultimate just handles that much more sweetly. Which is a rare thing in a truly lightweight bike, and it’s why the Canyon Ultimate CFR is our overall winner.

It will get you to the top first by a nose, but will have you at the bottom by several bike lengths and a broad smile.

Tao Geoghegan Hart’s Giro d'Italia win left a lot of fans scratching their heads, but his first Grand Tour victory was a long time in the making

Words: Jeremy Whittle Photography: Pete Goding & Offside

One week after the end of the 2020 Giro d’Italia, Tao Geoghegan Hart sits down in a cafe in London’s Soho and tucks into a breakfast fry up. The pink jersey of race winner is stuffed into his coat pocket, and while he stirs his pot of tea the kid from Hackney slides out of his Ineos Grenadiers shell jacket to reveal a retro Arsenal shirt, vintage 1995 season.

He may be a lifelong Arsenal fan, a dyed-in-the-wool Gooner, but Geoghegan Hart is not a kid anymore. Now 25, he finally came of age as a Grand Tour rider in the most spectacular of settings, under a bone-chilling sky on the towering climb of the Stelvio pass, racing Australian rival Jai Hindley through the endless hairpins against a backdrop of vast autumnal snowfields.

The trio of riders – Geoghegan Hart’s Ineos Grenadiers teammate Rohan Dennis drove the pace for much of the ascent – were dwarfed by the legendary climb, the ribbon of dark tarmac snaking across the rock and snow as the Londoner ascended unerringly to higher ground, both on the mountainside and within his sport.

Geoghegan Hart’s was a relentless, slow-burn progress towards overall success at the Giro, underpinned by consistency and durability. He was 128th in the opening time-trial but winner of the entire race three weeks later.

Confirmation of his qualities came in the form of two mountain stage wins along the way. Overall victory was secured in the cliffhanging time-trial in Milan, after both he and Hindley had started the final stage on exactly the same time.

In the aftermath his success seems less of a surprise and more a verification of a talent that has long been simmering away in races such as the Tour of California and Tour of the Alps, in which he has gone head-to-head with Vincenzo Nibali and climbed to high overall finishes alongside now-familiar names such as Egan Bernal, Sepp Kuss, George Bennett and Aleksandr Vlasov.

There have been setbacks along the way: the usual injuries and broken bones; a tendency to get bad reactions to road rash after crashing; the internal jostle for position at Ineos, fuelled by Dave Brailsford’s rapacious acquisition of the WorldTour scene’s best talents. But this former cross-Channel swimmer has proved to be resilient and patient – in the words of his mentor and former coach, Axel Merckx,  an ‘old head on young shoulders’.

In fact Geoghegan Hart’s career was founded on his time with Merckx and his Hagens Berman Axeon team, racing mainly across the Atlantic in the US.

‘He’s the real deal,’ Merckx said as the Giro ended. ‘When he rode for us he rallied the troops, he encouraged his teammates and he also told us when it wasn’t good enough – not in an angry or negative way, but in a kind and encouraging manner.

‘I knew he was good enough to be a GC rider but it’s always difficult to guarantee someone will win a Grand Tour because so much can happen. Even midway through the Giro, looking at it, you’d think, “OK, he could be a contender,” but to win is a different story.’

Unlike most ambitious riders, when Brailsford came calling, Geoghegan Hart hesitated and asked Merckx for advice. Merckx remembers the conversation.

‘I said, “Yes, this is a huge opportunity and Sky is hard to turn down, but if you ask me I think it’s one year too soon. You’re a good rider, you’ve had some good results, but you haven’t really won anything yet. You haven’t proven to yourself that you can be a true leader. If you move up to a team like that you want to go as a potential leader.”’

It was good advice and Geoghegan Hart wisely took it. Now, a few years later, he has established himself as the latest in the growing band of twentysomethings, alongside Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar, Richard Carapaz, Wout van Aert, Marc Hirschi, Max Schachmann, Dani Martinez, Sergio Higuita, Egan Bernal and Sepp Kuss, to edge to the front ranks of WorldTour racing.

But that definitely wasn’t the plan when the 2020 Giro d’Italia started.

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Best laid plans

Geoghegan Hart arrived in Sicily to ride in support of team leader Geraint Thomas, an understudy capable of maybe bagging a stage and a top 10 finish overall if things went wrong for the Welshman. But a contender for victory? As he freely acknowledges, nobody saw that coming.

‘Anyone who tells you there was a plan is being quite brazen,’ he says, ‘or maybe has rose-tinted hindsight.’

Indeed, any plan there had been went out the window after Thomas crashed hard in the rollout of the third stage to Mount Etna, a summit finish that Geoghegan Hart considers his worst performance of the three weeks.

‘In the moment I was like, “You’ve got to focus now, this is a big opportunity,” but in hindsight I was still thinking about G. We stayed with the original plan and it only changed when Swifty [Ben Swift] came on the radio and said, “Tao, ride your own race.”

‘It was a gradual process,’ he says of his transformation into team leader. ‘There wasn’t talk of anything specific.’ It was more, he says, a tacit agreement to say, ‘OK, let’s stay in the hunt.’

But there was a shift on Stage 9, to Roccaraso. In foul weather and on a brutal finish Geoghegan Hart placed sixth on the stage, well ahead of the other GC contenders. Even so, he was still lurking under the radar, outside the top 10 until a win on Stage 15 to Piancavallo vaulted him into fourth overall and accelerated what, looking back, now seems almost inevitable.

Thomas, back in Wales after his crash, admitted that he’d been unable to watch his young teammate race to victory in Milan.

‘It was still too raw,’ the 2018 Tour winner said in his column in the Daily Telegraph. ‘I wasn’t tuning in every day to watch.’

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Geoghegan Hart, who had himself crashed out of the Giro in 2019, breaking his collarbone, understood why: ‘I’d felt the same way. I’d been thinking, “Wow, this is the best I’ve ever felt in a WorldTour race,” and then I had this bad crash. After that I came home, had surgery and didn’t watch a single stage of the Giro.’

One of the first things Geoghegan Hart did when he got home to his family in Hackney was head to a London pub called The Grenadier for a quiet pint, the golden spiralling Giro winner’s trophy standing proudly on the table beside him. He posted that image on Instagram. But even with his Giro win, few people recognise him and ‘Googanga’, as the Italians have taken to calling him, is more celebrated in Piedmont and Lombardy than east London.

Geoghegan Hart drove back to England from his home in Andorra, which he shares with his partner, British pro Hannah Barnes, a few days after the Giro.

He admits he’s been a little underwhelmed by the lack of British media interest in his success but acknowledges that, with the pandemic and the logistical difficulties of quarantines, it was tricky for the media to follow his progress in Italy. Even so it rankles that only the very biggest British names in cycling seem worthy of column inches.

For now he’s hunkering down in Hackney, catching up with family after a year’s absence and getting up to speed with his beloved Arsenal. ‘When I was growing up Arsenal were so good. When I was seven, eight, nine there couldn’t have been a better time to be an Arsenal supporter.’

Of course, as for many others within professional sport 2020 has not been an easy year for him or his team. Covid’s arrival was already starting to cast its shadow over cycling, but the shocking loss of cherished Ineos sports director Nicolas Portal on 3rd March was a far more devastating blow to the team and its personnel.

Portal’s funeral seems to have been something of a catharsis for a team that still had one foot in a past dominated by Chris Froome’s presence, and the other in a future centred on young talents Geoghegan Hart, Egan Bernal, Pavel Sivakov, Ethan Hayter and Eddie Dunbar.

‘We were at Nico’s funeral the Sunday before the first lockdown,’ he recalls. ‘We were lucky that it didn’t happen a week later because none of us would have been able to go.

‘We drove over from Andorra and sat in this beautiful cathedral in Auch [France] in the freezing cold. It was really moving. Numbers don’t mean anything in that scenario, but the number of people – his family, friends – who were there when everyone was feeling so nervous about travelling… it was pretty moving.

‘There aren’t many times in the year when we all see each other and definitely not when we’re all wearing suits and away from cycling. It meant a lot because it was completely aside from sport.

‘Six days later Hannah and I did our last ride out on the road and went into lockdown in the apartment for eight weeks. We just decided to stay put in Andorra, at altitude, and not take any risks. I’m not sure if it means anything but we were based at 2,000 metres for two months.’

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Inside and out

When the 2020 season did finally resume the usual rhythms of the professional racing schedule had been turned upside down. The Tour of Lombardy was before the Giro; the Tour of Flanders after the Tour de France; the World Championships before the Vuelta a España.

‘It was weird emotionally because the hotels for the races you do are always the same ones. So you have all these triggers that are telling you it’s Lombardy, its autumn, the end of the season. It’s normally a lovely race in the falling leaves, when it’s chilly in the evenings, but instead it was boiling hot and in high summer so it was quite bizarre.’

Could it be that younger riders, with fewer years locked into those seasonal rhythms, had coped better with the new schedule? ‘I don’t think so,’ he says. ‘We still had two months on the road before we raced. We had as long on the road as we did inside, and some riders weren’t even stuck inside. If you could see some clear link between those who were confined and those who weren’t maybe you could say it was due to the lockdown, but there was no pattern.

‘Looking back at the lockdown I ticked over and was pretty patient, but I didn’t go on any of the tech training platforms or that kind of gaming. I’d one hundred per cent rather go on the road than do that. I never ride inside. If the weather’s that bad, then at least half the time I’ll postpone my training and take a day off. Hence the moment I could move out of England, I did.’

He doesn’t know yet if he will defend his Giro title. Or maybe he does, but either way he isn’t making a commitment publicly. The Italians will want him back, even if some of the staff in Soho’s Bar Italia look a bit bemused by the freckles, red hair and Giro champion’s jersey under his arm.

Certainly he won’t be under the radar in next year’s Grand Tours, and that weathered sage of Italian cycling, Vincenzo Nibali, will be keeping closer tabs on ‘Googanga’, the hipster from Hackney, from now on.

‘He’s always been good with me,’ Geoghegan Hart says of Nibali. ‘I didn’t know him at all until the Tour of the Alps last year when we went hammer and tongs for a few days.

‘Then we both didn’t do the smartest thing by racing Liège-Bastogne-Liège a day later. So we were chatting in Liège about what a mistake it was. I don’t speak Italian but with my Spanish I can understand a lot of Italian, or the gist.

‘You don’t hear “Vincenzo” or “Nibali” during the race. Everyone says, “Lo Squalo– The Shark!” Nibali gets The Shark, I get Googanga,’ he says with a wry smile.

It’s time for Geoghegan Hart to leave, and so he stuffs the precious maglia rosa back into his coat pocket and heads off alone, through the darkening Soho streets to the pub, just in time for the Arsenal game.

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Winner at Hart

The heady rise of the boy from Hackney

1995: Born on 30th March in Holloway, London  
2012: Hints at his considerable potential by placing 22nd in the Junior Worlds road race  
2013: Gets on the podium with an impressive third at Junior Paris-Roubaix  
2015: Finishes second in the youth classification at the Tour of California in his first full pro season  
2016: Having already ridden for them as a stagiaire, signs for Team Sky for 2017  
2017: Enjoys a solid debut year at WorldTour level, helping Sky win the inaugural Hammer Series in Limburg  
2018: Makes his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a España, finishing the race 62nd overall  
2019: Continues to develop as a GC rider, finishing 2nd at the Tour of the Alps and 20th at the Vuelta  
2020: Wins the Giro d’Italia on the final day after one of the tightest GC races in history

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Tao on… 

His new nickname

‘“Googanga” they called me on Italian TV. That was just them trying to pronounce my surname. I started hearing it at races and Italians shouting it excitedly, with a real emphasis on the last A. Now it’s the Italian way you say my name.’

Becoming team leader

‘I didn’t have a problem showing leadership. I’m ambitious and of course I don’t want this to be the only time I cross the line first, but in this sport things change and opportunities come and go.’

The British media coverage of his Giro win

‘I’ve been surprised by the lack of coverage. There wasn’t a massive media presence at the Giro from British media, although I know there were logistical issues. But I just feel in general that cycling only gets into the mainstream media when there’s a big name that wins.’

More than 120 years separate the exploits of engineer George Pilkington Mills and maths teacher Michael Broadwith, yet they are united by the same remarkable accomplishment and a similar world of suffering.

As he neared the end of his attempt to set a new record for cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats in the early hours of a Friday morning in 1891, Mills ‘dropped off into a helpless sleep, and despite all the blandishments – some of them rather rough – of his friends, he became immovable, and slept on, and on, and still on,’ reported Bicycling News.

Mills eventually woke up, remounted his safety bicycle and completed his ride in a new record of four days, 11 hours and 17 minutes. ‘Hitherto he has had a large contempt for sleep, but he is now converted to the theory that “no sleep is a fraud”,’ reported the magazine.

Having previously set ‘End to End’ records riding a penny-farthing and tricycle, Mills would over the next two years go on to smash his own record riding, variously, a safety bicycle (three days, five hours, 49 mins), tricycle (3:16:47) and tandem (3:04:46).

‘He was the Bradley Wiggins of his day,’ says David Birchall, historian of the Anfield Bicycle Club, of which Mills was a member. ‘Earlier in 1891 he won the first Bordeaux-Paris – a distance of 560km – in 26 hours 34 minutes, riding a series of five safety bicycles provided by his employer, Humber. He was also a crack shot with a pistol and gained notoriety for shooting any dogs that got in the way of his training rides.’

Modern madness

More than a century later, the training rides of the man who would take his place as the End to End record holder were considerably more tranquil. Michael Broadwith used his 50-mile round trip commute to his job as a maths teacher at an all-boys school in Hertfordshire to build up his fitness.

In 2018 he became only the 10th man to break the record, riding the 841 miles (1,353km) in 43 hours 25 minutes and  13 seconds – an average speed of almost 32kmh. And like Mills before him – and the many riders who had attempted the record in between – Broadwith suffered his darkest moments during the final stretch.

‘My neck muscles gave up from the extreme TT position I was in,’ he said afterwards. ‘On the flat I could just about see where I was going but on the climbs I had to hold my head up so I could see where I was going – the descents were accomplished with my elbow on the tri-bar so I could support my head with my hand.’

Of course, riding from Land’s End to John O’Groats – LEJOG – needn’t be so painful. You don’t have to try to break any records. You don’t need a team of pacers taking it in turns to leapfrog ahead of you by train, like Mills in 1891.

Nor do you need a convoy of support vehicles, none of which is allowed to overtake you more than twice each hour, like Broadwith in 2018. You could, if you wanted, treat it as a holiday.

It would, admittedly, be a physically demanding holiday, but most ‘leisure’ riders complete the distance over a fortnight, averaging between 110km and 130km a day.

Depending on your route, you would cover anything from 1,353km to more than 1,600km, but the former sticks to lots of busy A-roads while the latter will add a few more metres to the amount of climbing you do (the ‘flattest’ route still packs in 9,000m of elevation gain).

Jog on

While bonkers events such as the Transcontinental or a 24-hour race may be beyond the average rider’s means or capabilities, Land’s End to John O’Groats is something we can all aspire to, a challenge we can make as difficult or manageable as the length of our holidays and indulgence our partners and families will allow.

Author and former Sky TV foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall completed LEJOG in 12 days, ostensibly for charity – he raised £2,000 for Help for Heroes and the Alzheimer’s Society – but also as research for his book about football chants, Dirty Northern Bastards.

Having previously reported from war zones and exotic destinations all over the world for a period of two decades, he was astounded by the richness and variety of culture, climate and topography he found on his doorstep.

‘Every day, wherever I was, I’d say, “Right, I’m knackered now, I’ve done 80 miles,” pull over, find a pub or B&B, go out for a curry and then start all over again the next day,’ he recalls.

‘The toughest day was the first day. I did 60 miles and it felt like riding over the Himalayas, while the coldest day, probably of my life, was Inverness in July. But it was fantastic.

‘The local accents would change every half day and I’d always eat the local food, whether Cheshire cheese or a Balti in West Bromwich. And being a huge football fan, I’d take time to visit grounds I’d never been to before, such as Gigg Lane in Bury, or Cowdenbeath – romantic places like that.’

For End to End record holder Broadwith, who recently added to his palmarès by winning silver at the World 24TT Championships with a distance of 510 miles (821km), the everyman appeal of LEJOG is what makes it so special.

‘So many people have ridden it and even more know someone who has, whether for charity, a personal challenge or a holiday; whether in five days, 10 days or three weeks,’ he says.

‘All these riders share the same roads, start and finish and the same sense of completeness. That is its true beauty – the totality of covering the whole of Great Britain in one bike ride… however long it takes you.’

One of the most infuriating responses a coach can give to an athlete in any sport is ‘it depends’. But unfortunately that is very much the situation in this case. Bear with me here.

Let’s say you’re training to participate in a sportive of 100-plus miles. Preparing for an event of this distance will require miles in the legs but if you work for a living you likely have limited time to train. Probably all of the time you have available should be spent on the bike.

If you were to ask me what other activities could potentially help you prepare better, running would not be at the top of my list.

When training for any sporting activity there are some key principles the individual should bear in mind and one of those is specificity. Not only should you replicate the activity involved in the event, you should also look to mimic the terrain, duration, effort levels and even the weather you’re likely to face.

So what other activities would be specific to cycling? I would add in mobility work every day, aiming for a weekly total amounting to 25% of the time spent on the bike.

If you ride 10 hours per week that’s 2.5 hours of mobility work. It sounds a lot but it actually amounts to about 20 minutes a day, which can be done as 10 minutes in the morning and another 10 in the evening.

Also of benefit would be some strength training – not lifting weights necessarily but certainly some targeted exercises to build strength and resilience in the core, lower back, shoulders and neck. It’s amazing how body parts that we never consider on a three-hour club ride can cause so much difficulty when we’re in the hills for eight hours.

So where do you fit in the running? To answer that you need to first ask a different question: ‘How will running enhance your preparation for the event?’

If it won’t, don’t feel under any pressure to run during this phase. If you like running then find time for a couple of easy sessions each week but save any high-intensity workouts for on the bike.

Running in the woods or trails can have tremendous mental health benefits (as long as you don’t block out the noise of the trees and the birds with music in your ears). Running off-road will also limit the post-run muscle soreness and create less fatigue.

It’s not that I’m against running. In fact I think cross training has amazing benefits for cyclists, one of which is it helps to prevent muscle imbalances through the use of different muscle groups.

I just think you need to select your moments and should probably leave thinking about alternative ways of training until your big event, or the season, is over.

After a short end-of-season break, by all means include running in your winter fitness regime. The variety will be good for the mind and body and it may even take your fitness to a new level. It will definitely give your butt a break from the saddle.

I also find running a far better proposition during the cold, wet winter months. Sessions are shorter and I never seem to get cold while out running.

During a ‘general conditioning’ phase of training it doesn’t really matter how you stay fit so long as you do, and in this way running may help your cycling. However, running at the wrong time of the year might have the opposite effect and be a hindrance to your performance on the bike.

The expert Simon Ward is an award-winning high-performance coach. He now works mostly as a health and life coach for triathletes, and his podcast The High Performance Human is published every Wednesday. Visit simonward.co.uk

There were three months between the last WorldTour race of the 2019 season and the first of the 2020 season – 91 days, to be precise. The season began at the Tour Down Under in Australia in late January with the usual sense of a sport emerging from hibernation, in shiny new kit, on sparkling new bikes.

But the off-season was dwarfed by the 143 days between Paris-Nice – the last race before Covid-19 halted sport– and Strade Bianche, the first race since the restart. What’s more, they were not ordinary off-season days but days characterised by uncertainty, anxiety and fear. Days that saw some stuck inside their homes for weeks on end.

For cyclists, who thrive on routine and competition, this period posed particular problems. It also created interesting opportunities and threw up surprising discoveries.

Take Team Sunweb, the Dutch team sponsored by a holiday company. If the nature of the sponsor’s industry, as hard hit as any by coronavirus, created uncertainty in the team’s future, you wouldn’t have known it. Sunweb extended contracts, their women’s team signed the world’s top-ranked rider, Lorena Wiebes, and launched a new kit for summer.

They’ve largely presented a positive, business-as-usual face to the outside world and have worked hard to retain a sense of normality inside the team – at least within the context of the new normal.

‘From the moment we knew they were not going to be racing again in March we started with some activities and challenges – technical challenges on the bike, but also fitness challenges,’ says Hans Timmermans, a coach for the women’s squad.

The team’s mantra is ‘Keep Challenging’. They have a Keep Challenging Centre in Limburg, a residential high-performance facility that supports the team’s young riders in particular. But the two words have meaning beyond being a hashtag on the jersey and in lockdown they assumed even greater significance.

‘We had a Keep Challenging game, with a different challenge every week,’ says Timmermans. One was a track stand competition, standing still on the bike, rolling no more than two metres back and forth. In March, when they first set this challenge, the winner was the young German rider Franziska Koch with an impressive 16 minutes.

In late June they repeated the challenge, asking the riders to film themselves doing a track stand for as long as possible.

‘My colleagues and I thought it would be difficult to motivate them to do longer than 16 minutes,’ says Timmermans. ‘Then Franziska sends us a file by WeTransfer – a movie of her doing a track stand for 34 minutes!’

It was clear, says Timmermans, that athletes who thrive on competition needed something competitive to stimulate them – even, as in this case, standing still on their bikes. He adds that every single rider improved – several others managed 20-plus minutes.

The more serious aim behind such a challenge was to improve bike handling, or rather, as Timmermans says, ‘The goal of many of the games was to help the rider be more at one with the bike.’

The skill factor

How might this translate into results in races? As Timmermans says, technical skills can be hugely important yet in a sport with such emphasis on physical fitness they tend to be neglected, especially during the season. There just isn’t time. One upside of the lockdown was the opportunity to work on technique and skills.

‘Another game we did was to take off your legwarmers on the bike,’ he adds. ‘Because, well, remember Woods…’

Timmermans is referring to the 2019 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, when Mike Woods of Education First struggled to remove his legwarmers as the race – and the weather – heated up.

Woods finished fifth in Liège with one legwarmer on and one off, and admitted afterwards that the fashion faux pas, as well as providing some comedy to an international audience, had been an unwelcome distraction at the most crucial point of the race.

Sunweb have been doing other exercises designed to make the riders better bike riders and racers. Each has a personal development plan that they discuss with their individual coach every two weeks. Some have been tasked with ‘motivating’ the rest of the team.

Others, like new signing Wiebes, have been set the challenge of studying videos of sprinting rivals to analyse their strengths, weaknesses and typical habits (where do they open their sprint? What side of the road do they prefer? Do they like to come off a teammate’s wheel or surf the wheels of others?).

‘Every Thursday we had a meeting with the whole group,’ says Timmermans. ‘We spoke about race situations and we got the riders to prepare, to go through the whole process, as if they were racing.

‘So, for example one week we would do Gent-Wevelgem, and we would do a virtual game. They were split into three groups and asked what they would do in certain situations. For an hour and a half they were in race mode. And what I’ve seen from their heart rates is that they really were in race mode. The stress was really high.

‘This is all about making quick decisions,’ he adds. ‘This is something we have had more time to work on in lockdown than we would normally have in the season, when we just go from race to race.’

Unlike some other teams, the Sunweb riders weren’t necessarily stuck indoors. Many of their squad could train outdoors throughout. But for others the training emphasis switched inside. And some found, to their surprise, that they thrived.

After seven weeks on her trainer at her home in Catalonia, Ashleigh Moolman Pasio went out and did her regular climb, Rocacorba. Her previous best (and the Queen of the Mountains time) was 34 minutes 40 seconds.

After seven weeks indoors she went up it in 31:09 – a staggering improvement. She was in no doubt that the indoor trainer had been at least as effective as training on the roads.

Inside out

Matt White, the lead sports director at Mitchelton-Scott, echoes this. ‘The big revelation is home training,’ he says of the lockdown period. ‘That’s not new but in general professionals weren’t using home trainers that often.

‘Most riders have chosen a location in Europe to live because of the weather,’ White adds. ‘They go for the weather and the roads, which is why they’re in Andorra or Spain or northern Italy.

‘In the past, as with Mat Hayman when he trained indoors for Paris-Roubaix after breaking his elbow, people have done it because of injury. But I think a lot of people have actually now seen the benefit of doing specific work on the home trainer. A couple of our guys have actually come out of this lockdown period stronger.’

Yet it is one thing to set a PB on a climb, even one as long as Rocacorba, and another to embark on a multi-day stage race after so long without racing.

One coach who had to think about how to prepare his charges for the biggest challenge, the Tour de France, is Xabier Artetxe, who looks after 2019 winner Egan Bernal. The challenge was to balance keeping his riders in condition – he looks after most of the Spanish speakers at Team Ineos– but not race-fit when there were no races.

Then, with races resuming in early August and the Tour itself coming later the same month, the question became how to get the riders race-ready without a big block of racing. After all, the first Grand Tour of the season, the Giro d’Italia, normally comes after three months of racing, not three weeks.

‘My approach at first was to hold them back,’ says Artetxe. ‘To stop, reset, then start planning again. And when we knew that races were coming, to start again with a real plan.

‘It’s really difficult to keep working hard when you don’t know when you’re going to start racing. It was important to rest for a small period and then start again slowly. It’s important that they’re fresh mentally and physically because it’s like a new season.’

Artetxe sounds ambivalent about indoor training, neither fan nor critic. ‘I have discovered a parallel cycling world,’ he jokes.

‘I tried to understand a bit more about the different platforms – Zwift, etc – to see how they work and how we could use them. That has been really useful for the future. Now, when a rider has crashed and they can’t train outside, we know more about indoor training than we did before.

‘I remember when Egan crashed in the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya two years ago, he returned four, five weeks later at the Tour de Romandie. He had trained indoors in that time and he was really impressive. You can maintain fitness effectively for two, three weeks.

‘But cycling is outside. You cannot compare. For high volume, and the feeling of a climb, of moving on the bike and feeling the pedals, you need to be on the road. The riders will always prefer to train outdoors.’

And as a coach, Artetxe prefers being on the road with his riders. ‘I haven’t had the opportunity to train with or follow the riders, apart from Castro [Jonathan Castroviejo, a fellow Basque on Team Ineos], and I have missed that.

‘When you are face to face with a rider and you can follow them in training you have another feeling. It’s not just about analysing the training file with power and heart rate and all the other data.

'When you follow them, you see how they feel, their cadence, how they are when they finish an effort – that’s a lot of important information.

‘Some riders send you pictures of their Garmin with all the info and data, and that’s helpful. For some riders communication is more difficult. But compared with other sports we are very lucky with all the information we can get – power data, heart rate, VAM [speed of elevation gain].

'A lot of really accurate data that we can analyse to have a precise picture of how they are doing and their condition.’

Proper preparation

Bernal posts most of his rides to Strava so it’s possible for anybody with access to a computer to see the bare bones of what he’s been doing.

‘He loves to ride the bike and he loves these long rides,’ says Artetxe, and it was clear that Bernal had been doing a lot of what he loves most when Colombia eased lockdown restrictions.

In the first week of June Bernal rode 34 hours, covering 1,161km. He maintained 32-hour training weeks for the whole month. By way of comparison, the opening week of the Tour covers 1,257km. In essence, Bernal has been riding almost the equivalent of the Tour every week, but alone, more slowly of course and with a lot more climbing.

‘The most important thing for Egan is to prepare for racing by doing the volume on the bike, to build his aerobic base again,’ says his coach.

By early July most of the riders were planning, or already on, training camps. Ineos were heading for familiar roads on Tenerife, although Bernal arrived in Europe too late to join the rest of the Tour group. Still, they were inching towards business as usual but with face masks in public, even more care around washing hands and no cafe stops.

Like everyone, the teams are concerned about the threat of Covid-19 but are markedly less so about the fitness of their riders or their ability to race after such a long break. As Artetxe says, ‘Our priority was to make sure our riders were supported to train as normal.

‘We didn’t want them to lose any training days because they didn’t have the resources or the kit. It has not been easy to send equipment, nutrition or the other things they need, sometimes to the other side of the world.

'It has been complicated, but we made a big effort to provide riders with the best support.’

Richard Moore is a cycling journalist and author, former racer and co-founder of The Cycling Podcast

In sickness and in health

Keeping riders and team staff safe from Covid-19 has created an extra challenge beyond the usual dangers of racing

It’s not just the riders who had a major adjustment to make as racing resumed. Team staff arguably faced an even bigger challenge as they prepared to do their jobs in addition to being responsible for a lot of new health and safety protocols.

One WorldTour team doctor said that he and other team doctors, who form a medical group, were worried that a lot of the UCI guidelines were too vague and open to interpretation.

As a result they were looking at introducing their own measures: ‘Doing our laundry at 60°C (although some of our kit can’t be washed at 60°C), and bringing more water bottles, because we probably can’t reuse them.’

And one of the main concerns for doctors was dealing with the kind of ailments that are common on stage races: ‘The management of upper respiratory illnesses, which are very common, will be tricky. And given the implications of a suspected Covid-19 case, we’re worried about under-reporting of illnesses too.’

Stage racing poses particular challenges with teams going from hotel to hotel: ‘There are a lot of things we can’t control, such as the hotel staff or where they’ve been,’ says the doctor. ‘But perhaps the biggest danger is the peloton itself.’

Sleep influences everything we are and everything we do – from mood and resilience to decision-making and focus – so rest and recovery are key to performing on and off the bike.

Sleep deprivation and poor-quality sleep have a huge impact on mental and physical performance, and they also increase levels of the stress hormone cortisol so you may find it harder to stay calm in challenging situations.

Worrying about sleep is the key disruptor and it can lead people down the wrong path. We may consider a new mattress or pillow, supplements or sleeping tablets, caffeine or alcohol, changing our diet or using a sleep tracker or app.

The list of variables is endless. But used randomly and in isolation these interventions can have counterproductive side effects and even promote insomnia.

A far more effective and proven approach is to improve our understanding of sleep. During my time as an advisor to British Cycling and Team Sky from 2008 through to 2012 the focus was on practical and achievable routine changes to help unlock greater performance.

So what about you? Let’s start with your circadian rhythm. This 24-hour cycle is part of your body’s internal clock that regulates its functions, and it’s sensitive to light – daylight makes us more alert, while sunset initiates the production of melatonin, a hormone that promotes sleep. A properly aligned circadian rhythm helps us sleep.

Then identify your personal chronotype. Are you an owl (a night person) or a lark (a morning person)? Knowing this will stop you adopting routines counterproductive to your natural human characteristic. You can ignore or override it but it’s far better to work with it.

The brain goes through 90-minute cycles of light sleep and deep sleep, known as REM and non-REM, which is when physical and mental recovery takes place.

Your ideal amount of sleep is five 90-minute cycles totalling 7.5 hours in any 24-hour period. It’s more natural for humans to be active or to sleep in a polyphasic manner – for a shorter amount of time but more often – rather than just one nocturnal block.

The key is consistency, so you need to wake up at the same time every day. This helps keep your circadian rhythm aligned.

What you do during the day also matters. Focus on the first 90 minutes after you wake up and try not to rush as darkness becomes daylight, but do expose yourself to light to trigger your natural hormones – another boost for your circadian rhythm.

Take plenty of short breaks to empty your brain and grab a 20 or 30-minute ‘controlled recovery period’ at around midday or late afternoon. This is commonly known as a nap, and the rest will do you good.

Wherever you sleep should be free from stimulus – uncluttered, quiet and cool. Try to make it reflective of the natural world. There should be no ambient lights, which keep the brain in alert mode.

Oh, and there is some bad news. We’re not actually designed to sleep with other humans so the ideal size for two adults is a superking – basically two single bed-sized sleeping areas.

The ideal sleeping position is foetal on the opposite side to your dominant side. Lying on your front or back can lead to a dry mouth, heavy breathing, snorting and snoring, and that doesn’t help anyone sleep.

The expert: Nick Littlehales has been a sport sleep coach since 1998 and has worked with a huge number of sports clubs and organisations including British Cycling and Team Sky. He is also the author of SLEEP. More info at sportsleepcoach.com.

Christmas is beyond us and everything is pointing towards those summer months but where are you in your training programme? There’s a fair chance that, even if you didn’t balloon over the festive period, you’re trying to lose a few pounds while laying the groundwork for the rest of the year ahead.

There’s one way of doing it that’s become a big buzzword (buzzphrase?) in recent times: ‘fasted training’. But there’s also an extension of that which edges towards the extremes of what many coaches believe is feasible.

It’s guaranteed to help you lose weight and maintain a healthy weight, but it also requires you to ditch the carbohydrate that most of us use for fuel. It’s called ‘fat-adapted training’.

It starts with fasted training, so that’s where we’ll begin. Quite simply, this is when you ride on an empty stomach.

‘The easiest way of doing it is to eat your usual evening meal and train before breakfast,’ says coach Ric Stern of RST Sport.

‘Complete a steady ride of between 45 minutes and two hours, then eat breakfast when you get home. You can even do your normal training later in the day when you’ve refuelled. 'Being able to utilise carbohydrates is important for high-intensity efforts.’

Or is it? That’s where fat-adapted training comes in.

The case against carbs

Will Newton is a coach who has held various roles at British Cycling, and he has strong views on the drawbacks of over-consuming carbs.

‘As a species we’re the most sedentary we’ve ever been,’ he says. ‘Humans survived eons without a ready source of carbs, and now we have them we’re lazy.

'We suffer from a sugar/carb addiction that makes us want to eat all the time. You don’t need to eat, but how often do you find yourself staring in the fridge?

'We don’t have a constant need for food. Your body will figure out how to use fat for fuel.

‘This is advantageous in evolutionary terms,’ he adds. ‘If we hadn’t used fat for fuel we wouldn’t have survived. If you’re starving, it’s mid-winter and you need to chase an animal, I can guarantee you’ll approach your maximum ability as an athlete.

'So the argument for carbs is specious. Carbs weren’t around when we were chasing woolly mammoths.’

He is therefore an advocate of fat-adapted training. ‘It means burning stored fat during the day and relying on fat, more than carbohydrate, to fuel exercise.

'It’s achieved by eating a lower-carb, higher-fat diet and training in a fasted state. And it’s pretty damned horrible until you get used to it.’

That’s not selling it to us, it has to be said. So why do it?

‘Firstly, there are health reasons,’ says Newton. ‘There’s evidence that Type 2 diabetes can be controlled, even reversed, without medication, on a low-carb high-fat [LCHF] diet. You can also lose significant amounts of weight, and GPs are starting to recommend it for this.

‘As an athlete, it removes the need for constant fuelling, and means you suffer less gastric distress. And you’ll have better weight control, because it’s much harder to gain body fat eating this way.

'The idea that fat makes you fat is nonsense. It’s the overconsumption of carbs and sedentary lifestyles that make people fat.

‘LCHF appears to be anti-inflammatory, and athletes eating LCHF have reported faster recovery. From personal experience I don’t lose fitness as quickly after time off.’

How to do it

Calories matter less than with other eating plans, and you certainly don’t have to count them. ‘Calories take care of themselves because it’s very hard to eat that many,’ says Newton. But there are some guidelines.

‘Carb intake has to be less than 50g per day,’ he says. ‘Eat moderate protein – around 1g-1.2g per kilo of lean body mass. Then you need to eat high-fat foods: eggs, avocado, olive oil but not processed oils like sunflower, nuts like almonds and macadamias, moderate amounts of dairy and meat. You can also have green leafy veg and colourful veg, but not starchy root veg.’

Not everyone is sold. ‘The evidence on being fat adapted is equivocal,’ says Stern. ‘There’s some evidence that it can help with weight maintenance or loss, but little to suggest that it actually helps with performance – increased power output.

'Fat-adapted and fasted rides are different things, and I’ve never suggested anyone should become a fat-adapted athlete.’

‘Even if you teach your body to become better at fat utilisation, most people are still likely to ride at levels where glycogen from carbs is the primary source of fuel, especially in a race,’ says coach Paul Butler.

‘If you’re well practised at fuelling yourself – if you always fuel your training rides – you’re more likely to achieve your potential on those key days in the saddle.’

Newton disagrees: ‘One groundbreaking piece of research was called the FASTER study, which tested elite endurance runners on both high-fat and high-carb diets.

'One blogged that at 89% of his maximum heart rate he was burning mainly fat. I’ve experienced something similar, riding at or above my threshold for over an hour. There is evidence that it is possible to perform at a high level.’

‘Tour de France cyclists eat huge breakfasts, huge evening meals and eat and drink regularly throughout every stage,’ counters Butler.

‘They train for months and eat and sleep well and they start the Tour with low body fat and end it with even lower body fat, and the last I heard they can ride a bike very fast for very long periods. Don’t overcomplicate this.’

‘The pros do consume carbs, but they’re outliers,’ says Newton. ‘Most 45-year-old men are slightly over-fat, have some insulin resistance and aren’t great at metabolising carbs while exercising.

'Most amateurs would perform better fat-adapted, if for no other reason than they’d be 5% lighter.

‘It’s rumoured Chris Froome is fat-adapted – he’s Tweeted photos of his breakfast and there’s no toast or oats in sight. Romain Bardet has taken this approach and he’s taken the step below Chris on the Tour de France podium.

'Pros are very secretive, but with the level of training they do they’ll be fat-adapted to a degree, because you can’t consume enough carbs to fuel that sort of training volume.’

‘Some research has shown that people on a LCHF diet perform better when fed high carbohydrate during intense exercise,’ says Stern.

‘However, I’m not certain what would happen if you did this regularly. I doubt you’d stay fat adapted. Other than for weight loss I’m not sure I’d recommend it – and there’s plenty of research that shows a moderate to high-carbohydrate intake and low-fat diet can also be excellent for weight loss.’

‘In the early stages it’s hard, and it takes a while for the effects to kick in – three to four weeks to make the initial step to not feeing horrible, and to be able to train at your previous intensity,’ says Newton.

‘You’ll need to scale training back in that time, but I’d say it takes one to two years for your body to make all the enzyme changes it needs to for your body to be fully fat adapted.

‘I’ve been doing this three and a half years and my weight has stayed the same, between 77.5kg and 78kg. I’m leaner and I’ve put on muscle from just two 45-minute lifting sessions per week.

'I have a 365-day six pack, and I don’t try. I’m not genetically gifted, but I don’t struggle to maintain it.

‘Use carbs when you’re racing if it makes you feel better,’ Newton adds. ‘If it works for you, great. I’m not saying they’re evil.

'You don’t have to avoid carbs, but 10-15g per hour of hard exercise should be fine. You have a choice – you can try it and it may work or it may not. But give it a real chance.’

The bicycle is a vehicle with two wheels of equal diameter. The front is steerable, the rear is driven through a system comprising pedals and a chain. So sayeth Article 1, Sub-section 3.007 of the Union Cycliste Internationale’s technical regulations.

At this point, most of us are on the same page. It’s the other 55 pages of its bicycle design bible that sometimes cause disagreement.

The problems started towards the end of the last millennium. Until then bikes had been built from metal and there wasn’t much bike builders could do to create radical new designs.

But in the 1990s, advances in composite materials and aerodynamics led to a golden age of weird and wonderful bicycles that handed their riders a winning advantage – remember that Pinarello Espada bike ridden to time-trial glory by Miguel Indurain, or that Lotus bike propelling Chris Boardman to Olympic gold?

In 2000 the UCI stamped down on this flowering by decreeing that henceforth a bike should look like a bike – that its frame should be ‘of a traditional pattern’.

Its reasoning was that bike races should be won by human endeavour, not by hi-tech equipment, and so restrictions were placed on design aspects such as minimum weight, aspect ratio and rider position.

At a stroke, all wilder unibody designs, along with unconventional rider positions and aerodynamic fairings, were binned.

At the time, the UCI said, ‘If we forget that technology is subordinate to the project itself, we cross the line beyond which it takes hold of the system and imposes its own logic.

‘The bicycle is losing its user-friendliness and distancing itself from a reality which can be grasped and understood. The performance achieved now risks depending more on the form of the man-machine ensemble than the physical qualities of the rider.’

From a sporting point of view, this seems fair enough. But bikes aren’t just for racing. Some of us are happy to compete against ourselves or just to see how quickly we can go.

Yet with the UCI rules rendering bikes used in competition recognisable to any cyclist stumbling in from the 1880s, it begs the question: where might we be if they were ripped up?

Turning off the trickle

One man who knows all about radical design is British bike builder Mike Burrows. He created Boardman’s Lotus and was the brains behind Giant’s TCR compact frame, as seen on virtually every road bike now, in the period after the rules were laid down.

‘There were plans to ban the compact bicycle,’ he says. ‘The only reason it wasn’t banned was because the head of Giant Europe, Jan Derksen, was a famous Dutch speed skater and could ring up Hein Verbruggen at the UCI.

‘He had a quick word and said, “Hein, this compact geometry thing, it makes bikes a little lighter and a little cheaper. And wouldn’t that be a good thing?” That was the only reason.’

Burrows remains emphatic that the UCI’s prime aim should be to help sell bikes and encourage development, and he believes the rules are stifling that. Even more, he suggests the rules are harming pro racing by making sponsorship less attractive to bike companies.

‘In road racing you need variety to justify the claim that your bike is better,’ he says. ‘Many of the early bike races were put on to promote bike makers. But as the bicycles ceased to evolve, the bicycle makers ceased to be the main sponsors.

‘Working at Giant I saw the power of trickle-down. What wins the Tour will be noticed on the streets. And if monocoque bikes were winning the Tour, people would have been doing their shopping on them soon enough.’

So does Burrows believe that, without the rules, pro bikes would be significantly different? ‘Actually, I think broadly speaking what we have now with the double diamond frame is correct, although they should have better profiles.’

He suggests a lower top tube would leave more space to improve aerodynamics around the seatpost, ‘and an enclosed chaincase could be worth an extra mile an hour on top speed, because aerodynamically the drivetrain is a disaster area.’

These days, Burrows concentrates mainly on recumbent and utility bikes, where radical design is unaffected by the rules of any governing body, but he believes that the UCI still has a duty to consider the everyday rider as well as the pro racer.

‘The bicycle is the only piece of sporting equipment that’s more useful away from the arena than in it,’ he says. ‘It can change the world, so it deserves to be promoted as the future and not the past.’ 

Seeking approval

Not that significant innovation is impossible. Having come to a similar conclusion about drivetrain drag as Burrows, California-based Felt Bicycles had a radical solution.

When designing the US national team’s track bikes for the 2016 Rio Olympics, it swapped the drivetrain to the left-hand side. This improved the bike’s aerodynamics and centre of balance, and there was nothing in the rules to stop them.

Of course, not every bike can manage such a radical trick. ‘The rules have just become an integrated part of how we construct a frame,’ says Alexander Soria, Felt’s director of product development. ‘At this point they’re neither good nor bad, just part of the process.’

A UCI logo on a bike now means it has been approved for racing. Introduced in 2011, this accreditation process has increased interaction between manufacturers and cycling’s governing body.

Restricting racers from competing on prototypes, it means brands no longer find designs banned after they’ve sunk time and money into their production.

‘Since the rules and regulations became more stringent we’ve had to interact with the UCI much more. We have to pay, and we have to send them our designs and samples so they can check they are correct,’ says Soria.

This rule-tightening has had some positive effects for athletes. Take the stipulation that ‘equipment shall be of a type that’s sold for use by anyone’.

‘Over the past few years we’ve seen bending of the rules around athletes riding commercially available bicycles,’ says Soria.

‘Making the TA FRD Olympic track bike commercially available was a huge undertaking. We could have just stuck a button on the website saying click here to buy, then taken six months to build you one and charged $50,000.’

Although he’s too polite to say, this could well be termed ‘the Team GB method’. In the end, Felt’s bikes went on sale for $25,999 – expensive, but with nothing stopping another team buying up a fleet, not as expensive as running your own Olympic-level R&D and production.

Flagging breaches of the commercial availability rule is one area Soria says bike makers now have more influence with the UCI. Yet, with regards to the rules themselves, the relationship remains more a ‘Moses and the tablets’ type arrangement.

Employed as Felt’s engineering manager, Jeremiah Smith is less enthusiastic about any form of regulation: ‘I’m not such a fan, because they restrict what I can do,’ he says.

‘I can appreciate the intent, but the statement about seeking to preserve the traditional look of a bike? I’d question its logic.’

Working across the brand’s non-regulated triathlon bikes and its UCI-certified models, Jamie Seymour also often finds himself butting up against the rules regarding aero profiles.

‘You have maximum depths for the head and down tube, but these don’t necessarily coincide with the best airfoil shape for those areas,’ he says.

Yet just because the crazy designs of the 1990s have disappeared doesn’t mean that advances aren’t happening.

‘That same level of innovation is still happening today,’ says Soria. ‘With material technology, the period between 2005 to 2015 saw an increase in performance that’s easily worth the same consideration as the 90s.’

Strict machines

While bemoaning the restrictions, Smith does admit that the current regime may actually have led to the development of better bicycles.

Given cycling’s obsession with weight, the 6.8kg minimum has steered our bikes in a healthier direction than they might otherwise have taken, allowing engineers to focus on things with greater real-world benefit such as aerodynamics and comfort. The machines we ride are all a product of this regulation.

‘If the industry hadn’t embraced disc brakes I think lowering the weight limit would have been reasonable, but it’s about right for where we are now,’ Smith says.

Soria adds, ‘When designing a frame, there’s a sweet spot that balances frame weight against the performance metrics we want. It’s pretty easy to make a light frame. It’s harder to make one that’s also stiff and handles the way you want it to.’

At the moment, the bikes most companies want to make tend to weigh in at around the UCI’s limit, and if they dip under, a couple of added accessories easily solves that. And, as with weight, so the pursuit of the most aerodynamic bike is not necessarily a sensible course.

‘Even within the rules we could make a more aero bike,’ says Soria. ‘But would there be compromises in other areas? Maybe the compliance, weight or stiffness wouldn’t end up where you’d want it to be.’

Smith points out that designing inside the box (literally, see below) comes with frustrations.

‘Designing our AR aero bike there were shapes that fell outside the permitted boundary boxes, or once I’d got them in the boxes, some aesthetic element would fall outside again.’ Yet he’s not sure scrapping the rules would have resulted in the bike being any faster, perhaps only better looking.

A world without limits

Turns out, when you ask designers what they’d do if freed from all rules, the answer isn’t build some fantastical freak-bike.

In reality they might tweak tube shapes, drop the seatstays, maybe adjust rider position. Right now a lot of innovation comes down to materials, with software also emerging as a potential battleground.

It’s hard then to see the rules as hugely stifling design. Bikes improve year on year to the extent your next one might make you a few seconds faster than the previous model.

However, in an imaginary 25-mile race where World Champion Rohan Dennis rides his Pinarello and I turn up on a fully faired recumbent, I’d be into my second slice of cake before he crossed the finish line. Clearly, some regulation is needed to keep things fair.

The truth is, if you want to see a fundamental re-evaluation of the bicycle, sport isn’t really the place to look for it. While brands may grumble about the rules, few are looking to radically redesign the road bike, and no one is agitating for a recumbent Tour de France.

Much as the anarchist in us hates to admit it, in sport there have to be rules. Given the enjoyment provided by the bikes these rules have shaped, they seem to work OK.

Rules is rules

Just a few of the UCI decrees regulating race bike design

• The weight of the bicycle cannot be less than 6.8kg
• A bicycle shall not measure more than 185cm (length) by 50cm (width)
• Wheels of the bicycle may vary in diameter between 70cm maximum and 55cm minimum, including the tyre... Wheels shall have at least 12 spokes; spokes can be round, flattened or oval, as far as no dimension of their sections exceeds 10mm
• For road competitions other than time-trials and for cyclocross, the frame shall be of a traditional pattern, ie built around a main triangle
• Tube dimensions: the maximum height of the elements shall be 8cm and the minimum thickness 2.5cm. The minimum thickness shall be reduced to 1cm for the chainstays and the seatstays. The minimum thickness of the elements of the front fork shall be 1cm; these may be straight or curved.

For a full list of rules visit uci.org

Inside the box

The rules governing frame shape and tube dimensions

Triangular shape

The frame and forks must be able to fit entirely within the template formed by seven rectangular boxes of 8cm width, as shown by the diagram right.

Sloping top tube

The top tube may slope provided that this element fits within a horizontal template defined by a maximum height of 16cm and a minimum thickness of 2.5cm.

Illustration: Rob Milton

There isn’t one source of ‘pain’ – although in this case we mean ‘suffering’, not injury – and the sources are interlinked. There’s muscular fatigue; the build-up of lactate; oxygen debt and the signals it sends out, such as high heart rate and breathlessness; and there’s mental fatigue.

These act in concert with the central nervous system (CNS) to tell the body we should stop by making us feel pain. It’s not that we’re ‘running out of fuel’, it’s that the function of the CNS here is to protect the body from injury. It limits your output and, in extreme cases, makes you stop.

Pain has a large perceptual element. The good news is that it’s possible to control those perceptions to a degree, so think here of Jens Voigt’s ‘Shut up legs’. How well you do it depends on practice and your mental make-up. Some people just do it better than others.

Psychology starts the moment you climb on the bike. Warming up is important to get muscles up to working temperature and increase blood flow to those muscles, but it can help with the mental process too.

There is lots of evidence that warming up makes subsequent intense efforts easier, and mind and body are linked so both will benefit from a good warm-up. Having a mental routine to run through during your warm-up will also make a positive difference, much like downhill skiers visualising their runs. Visualisation is a powerful and underutilised tool.

One other very effective mental trick is to focus on your technique, for example staying as steady on the bike and pedalling as smoothly as possible. Your form is more liable to collapse at the sort of intensity that elicits pain, so if you can hold your form together you can ride more efficiently and shut out the pain.

Focussing on what you’re doing is a type of association, and you can alternate it with disassociation – where you think of something else that’s nothing to do with cycling or clear your brain of all thought – to shut out the suffering.

The brain works in mysterious ways. For example, there has long been a theory that an energy gel gets working the moment you put it in your mouth because your brain knows the energy is on its way.

In fact there are a number of studies that show swilling carbohydrate around the mouth improves performance, and it seems to work better the more depleted you are. This would appear to be a trick that fools the CNS into lowering the perception of effort.

But banishing pain isn’t all trickery, and there’s a lot of power in positive thinking. Here, some kind of mantra can help: ‘This too will pass,’ or similar. Your heart isn’t going to explode in your chest. Your physiological systems aren’t being pushed to the limit, and there are very few people who can push themselves to the point of passing out.

Even then the CNS has protective mechanisms in place to make you stop when necessary. We usually see this in competition with high-level athletes, and the vast majority won’t do themselves any lasting harm.

In the future, the biggest performance gains will actually come from the mind. The only other area in which we’ll see big improvements is technology, and those will be available to anybody.

The best athlete will beat the best-resourced athlete, and the best athlete will also be the one who can either accept or shut out the pain. And all of these tools can help you too.

The expert

Will Newton is a former Ironman triathlete who is now a cycling, triathlon and endurance coach. He spent eight years as British Cycling’s regional director for the southwest of England. For more info visit limitlessfitness.com

Perched on the outskirts of Athens, Mount Parnitha is a 1,000m climb into nature and mythology. Cyclist sets out on a Greek odyssey

Words Peter Stuart Photography David Wren

Climbing into the foothills of Mount Parnitha, Myrto educates me about the local history. She relates the legend of the Greek god Pan, who frequented the forests here to play his flute and dance on his cloven hooves among the deer.

I nod silently as she talks, seemingly absorbed in her tales, but the truth is I am incapable of speech. It’s taking all of my energy simply to turn the pedals and mask my increasingly laboured breathing. Myrto is very fast.

When she’s not cooking at her family’s restaurant on the island of Evia, Myrto is a successful racer, having finished fourth in the recent National Cross-Country Mountain Bike Championships.

Her prowess has been honed on these very roads in the region north of Athens, and this climb to Parnitha is one she has done many times.

That could explain why the 6% slopes seem to have no effect on her ability to make conversation, and why I find myself struggling to keep pace. Having dispensed with the lessons in mythology she moves on to teaching me some useful Greek swear words.

At this rate it won’t be long before I’m using them too. There is a still a lot more of this climb to go and it doesn’t look like getting easier anytime soon. Certainly the ascent of Mount Parnitha is proving a lot more challenging than I was expecting when we set out this morning…

Over land and sea

Our day begins on Evia, which sits about 50km north of Athens. It’s the second-largest island in Greece and is about the same size as Mallorca, but with a smaller population, slightly warmer average temperature and higher mountain peaks.

It’s a wonder this part of the world isn’t better known to cyclists. It certainly has a wealth of great riding on offer, which is why my host in Greece, Steven Frost, decided to give up his job in London and come out here to set up his tour company, Greek Cycling Holidays.

Being based on an island means the first part of our ride today involves catching a ferry from the port at Eretria and taking the 20-minute journey over to the mainland. The ride from the Greek Cycling Holidays villa to the port is only 2km, but a slightly too casual approach to breakfast means we find ourselves sprinting to catch the ferry. Well, I’m sprinting. Myrto just seems to be spinning her legs.

We make it aboard and after 20 minutes of standing awkwardly in my Lycra amid the morning commuters and holidaymakers we arrive on the Greek mainland at the port of Skala Oropou. From here we cruise along the coast for a while, taking in the views of blue-green water and white, rocky beaches, punctuated occasionally by the bronze, leathery skin of sunbathers catching the morning rays. Then we point our bikes southwards and start the journey inland.

Over the next 7km we drift upwards to a height of around 300m, but it’s not really what could be described as a climb. It’s more like a long false flat, a perfect leg freshener as we slip along a wide road bordered by dry Mediterranean shrubs and olive trees.

Nothing about the topography gives any impression that today’s ride will deviate far from this sort of thing. There isn’t anything to suggest that a climb with more than 1,000m of ascent is lurking in wait somewhere beyond the foliage.

For the moment I’m happy to tap out a rhythm with no real sense of urgency, simply drinking in the sights and smells of the Greek countryside.

To the mountain

Every big city seems to have its nearby cycling retreat. New York has Bear Mountain and the Catskills; Hong Kong has the New Territories; London has, er… Richmond Park.

Athens has Parnitha, which is similar to Richmond Park in that it is home to herds of deer. That’s about where the similarities end, however, as Richmond Park can’t really compete with the impressive gorges and 1,300m peaks of the Parnitha mountain range.

Approaching from the north we begin with a climb over one of Parnitha’s smaller hills on a narrow mountain road through pine forest. It takes us up onto a ridge that offers the occasional distant glimpse of Athens through gaps between the trees.

At 8km long and with 400m of ascent, it’s a fairly significant climb in its own right, but today it’s merely the warm-up act to the main event.

Once on the descent Myrto appears to have activated her internal warp drive. I have to go at full tilt just to keep her within sight, so much so that I barely notice when we skirt beside the Tatoi Royal Palace, which was once the residence of the Greek royal family. Twenty former royals still reside there, albeit within the grand marble cemetery.

Our speed creeps up beyond 70kmh on the steep descents, but I can trust in Myrto’s knowledge of these roads and simply let her lead the way.

By the time the road levels out we are in the Athenian suburb of Varimpompi, a white stone town that sits at the base of Mount Parnitha and which offers a last chance to load up on espressos and baked goods before we tackle the climb. 

Scorched earth

Back in 2007, Parnitha was the site of a devastating fire that burned 3,600 hectares of national forest. The scars of that fire are still evident on the mountain face today, etched in bare, scorched tree trunks.

Against the stone road constructions and limestone rock formations it creates an oddly picturesque grey-brown tone to the mountain. Thankfully, Parnitha is recovering, with more tham 15% of the land now reforested.

On the lower slopes of the climb you wouldn’t think the landscape here has ever suffered a hint of misfortune.

We ride through a dozen hairpins that carve through a corridor of pine trees, making it feel like we are deep in an Alpine wilderness despite being only a few miles from the outskirts of a major city.

Unsurprisingly this hairpin section is a magnet for Athenian cyclists, and the 6% average segment has seen several thousand Strava attempts – the quickest of which was done at a rather impressive average of 26kmh.

Despite its popularity, however, I can’t help wondering why this region, and Greece as a nation, has attracted so little attention in the world of cycling. No WorldTour races come close to Athens, few cyclists consider Greece as a cycling holiday venue and aside from the fine services of Greek Cycling Holidays there are very few cycle tour companies operating here.

It’s odd because with the considerable mountains, stunning landscapes and smooth roads Greece could easily warrant a place among the foremost cycling destinations.

Had history played out differently and a major race been staged here these slopes may well have had the same sense of romance and history as a climb like Mont Ventoux.

The upside to this lack of interest from the wider cycling world is that Myrto and I have the mountain to ourselves. The rich and rocky forest of the lower slopes now begins to open out to reveal a more bare mountainside around us.

The north of Athens is spread out below us like a model city, behind which the 1,100m Mount Pentelicus looms large. If I had more time in Greece that mountain would be high on the list of other areas I’d like to explore by bike.

After 10km we’ve been climbing for a little over 40 minutes at a pace somewhere between cruising and challenging. We have 5km to go before we reach a 1km flat section, from which it is a further 3km to go to the summit.

At 6% average and without any savage spikes the whole climb could be knocked off by a strong rider in a little over 50 minutes. Pushing ourselves to the limit is not on our agenda today though, and we settle into a rhythm that allows us to tick off height at a reasonable rate while still being able to enjoy the views.

As we roll up above 900m of altitude my heart starts to thump harder and my bars become slippery with sweat. We’ve been climbing for nearly an hour but a satellite tower that I know is at the mountain’s summit has just crept into sight, assuring me the end is close.

The contrasting views ahead and behind could be from different continents: the terrain above me is barren limestone while below and behind the green forest gives way to a sprawling cityscape.

The high reaches of Parnitha are home to a multitude of fortresses from the days when the Athenians had to defend their fertile lands and growing population from other powerful city-states. Today the only people we can see appear to be more concerned with protecting their picnic spots.

As the road levels out we roll alongside an abandoned sanatorium, which was mainly used to treat tuberculosis patients. Opposite sits the ‘Park of Souls’, a set of wooden sculptures put in place to commemorate those patients who died in the hospital.

The twisted wooden figures have limbs that have seemingly been singed into short stubs, which makes for an interesting spectacle here in bright Greek sunlight but would be the stuff of nightmares if you stumbled across them at night.

Looking at the sculptures gives us an excuse for a breather, and we watch the mountain’s deer grazing on the surrounding shrubbery for a while, before clipping back in to tackle the final 3km stretch of climbing.

Refuge and return

The summit proves to be a bit of an anti-climax, as the road tops out at a series of communications towers that aren’t particularly picturesque and manage to obscure the view out towards Athens. However Myrto assures me that we are in for a treat soon enough.

A few clicks back down the mountain she turns off down a short gravel track that leads to the Parnitha Mountain Refuge, a hotel-restaurant that’s surprisingly well-equipped considering how remote it is.

We treat ourselves to a leisurely lunch, extended further by us drinking in the incredible view of the valley below. Surrounded by conifer trees, and with the mountains sprawling out ahead of us, we could for all the world be in the Colorado Rockies.

After all the climbing I felt justified in helping myself to large quantities of pasta as a reward, although I begin to regret this self-indulgence once we remount and begin the homeward half of our journey.

There’s no option but to retreat the way we have come so our route back to Evia will retrace the exact same course as we have just done. We have about 55km ahead of us to get to the ferry port at Skala Oropou, although thankfully most of it is downhill so my pasta acts as ballast that helps keep me in sight of Myrto’s back wheel during the descent.

By now the afternoon is fading and a warm evening light drenches the landscape. Every rock and stone wall seems to glow as if lit for exhibition in a gallery.

The setting sun heightens the autumnal reds and oranges of the mountain’s flora, making the descent as beautiful as it is fun to ride. The wide, gently curving road allows me to stay off the brakes as I watch my speed climb, while a few narrow bends serve to keep the adrenaline high as I try to stay close behind Myrto.

It seems as though we’ve spent a long time in the saddle today already, and there is still a long way to go before we are back at the villa and flipping the top off a cold beer, but with the road tipping downwards for the majority of our journey home, the kilometres tick by quickly enough. Besides, Athens is only just beginning to reveal her secrets as a cycling destination, so there’s no reason to hurry.

Mapping powered by komoot

Cyclist began the ride from our base in Eretria on the island of Evia, approximately 50km north of Athens, but the climb to Mount Parnitha could just as easily be tackled from Athens itself by heading north to Acharnes and following the Parnithos road to Parnitha.

For those looking to repeat the full Cyclist experience, start by riding to the ferry port in Eretria and make the 20-minute crossing to Skala Oropou. Ride south on the 79 to the town of Malakasa before passing under the E75 highway and continuing on the 79 past the Tatoi Royal Palace to Varimpompi.

Head west to the Parnithos road, which will take you up the climb for over 1,000m to the communication towers at the summit. Once there, turn 180° and make the journey back via the exact same route.

Approximately 4km beneath the summit, look out for a left turning onto an unmarked gravel road to the Parnitha Mountain Refuge for a good lunch stop with great views. 

The rider’s ride

Ribble Endurance SL R Series Disc, £6,519, ribblecycles.co.uk

This bike was the perfect partner on the long ascent of Mount Parnitha. At 7.6kg the Endurance SL R is appreciably light, which coupled with a rigid rear end meant every vertical metre of ascent was made as easy as possible.

When it came to the descents and flatter sections the integrated cabling and wing-like one-piece cockpit played two roles. They improved the aerodynamics of the front end to increase speed but also afforded a nice balance of rigidity and comfort so the bike handled immaculately but was still smooth over rougher surfaces.

And as for the Sram Red eTap AXS groupset, wireless shifting is a dream when it comes to travelling and packing a bike bag. Once you’ve had the joy of removing a rear mech and swaddling it in bubble wrap hassle-free, it’s hard to imagine going back to cables.

The overall pricetag is pretty hefty, but you’re still looking at a saving of a couple of grand over other big-name brands with similar spec and performance levels.

For more on the Ribble Endurance SL R Series Disc, visit Ribble's online store here

How we did it

Travel

Athens International airport is served by a wide range of airlines and prices start at around £40 for Ryanair (although you’ll have to re-mortgage your house if you want to take a bike). The journey to Eretria by car and ferry takes about 80 minutes, and Greek Cycle Holidays can arrange a transfer if required.

Accommodation

We stayed with Greek Cycle Holidays (greekcycleholidays.com) at its villa in Eretria on the island of Evia. The villa comprises four twin rooms that can sleep eight people in total, and boasts an outdoor jacuzzi for some fine apres-cycle. Steven Frost, a professional chef in the off-season, cooks all meals. There’s also a free bar with a trusting self-serve policy at the villa. Packages start from £550 per person per week, with guided tours and all food and drink included.

Thanks

Many thanks to Steven and Peter Frost for our accommodation, and to Steven for acting as our support on the day of the ride. Thanks also to Myrto Teskou, who joined us for the ride. Not only is she an incredibly strong rider, she makes a mean prawn linguine in her restaurant Teskos in Nea Artaki on Evia.

Bikepacking is like backpacking but with a bike rather than a pair of hiking boots. Because you’re on two wheels rather than two feet you can go further, and with the right bike you can get off the road and onto gravel paths, bridleways and dirt tracks to really explore the countryside.

You can go on your own, but it’s also ideal with mates, as a couple or even with the whole family.

In recent years, the advent of lighter built-for-purpose bikes and gear means bikepacking has become much more accessible. Also, while it has a reputation for being tough, there’s really no need to worry about fitness. Just because some riders choose to cycle 100km a day, there’s no reason you shouldn’t elect to simply ride a few hours between stopping points.

If you plan your routes to suit your abilities, you’ll end up enjoying a fun trek, not grinding away on a never-ending slog.

While heading off to Iceland, or getting yourself lost in the Highlands are both wonderful options, it’s also possible to find adventure closer to home.

Micro-adventures, where you head-off for one or two nights provide a great escape from the 9-5 grind, and can easily be squeezed into the average weekend.

Pick a campsite or hostel not too far from home, stay the night, then pedal home the next morning. A mini-adventure is a superb, low-cost way to get the most from your weekend.

Styles of bikepacking

Bikepacking is a broad church. At one end of the scale, you get fully supported tours, which involve cycling a pre-arranged route, usually with a guide and perhaps even an accompanying vehicle bringing your luggage to the next overnight stop.

The scaled-down version of this is called lightweight touring – or credit-card touring – when you take a minimum of kit, buy what you need on the way round and stay overnight in B&Bs or hostels.

Then there’s fully loaded touring, or self-supported bikepacking, which is when you carry everything you need, including food, spare clothes and a sleeping bag.

This gets called expedition touring if your route happens to take you through remote areas or developing countries.

Finally, there’s mixed-terrain bikepacking – aka rough riding – which combines self-sufficiency on the bike with a go-anywhere attitude that’ll lead you to bits of the map where you’re unlikely to run into anyone you know. Or indeed anyone at all.

What sort of bike can I use?

Just about any bike can be fitted with racks or more modern strap-on style bikepacking bags. But the type of bike you use can end up limiting where your travels take you.

A road bike, for example, isn’t going to serve you too well if you want to go off the beaten track. Mountain bikes will fare better off-road but can be heavy and slow.

A better option is a purpose-built touring bike, which will be lighter but also designed to be comfortable over long distances and on all types of road. For off-road riding, a dedicated gravel or bikepacking bike is a perfect choice.

What should I take with me?

It depends on how self-sufficient you want to be, but if you’re planning on sleeping out overnight, you should pack everything you’d need for a regular backpacking camping trip, plus extras for your bike – such as spare parts, tools and tubes.

However, you want to avoid carrying that weight on your back if possible, instead distributing as much clothing and equipment as you can around the bike itself using any number of purpose-built bike bags.

What gear do I need?

Well, that depends on what kit you already own, and what kind of riding you’re interested in doing. Obviously the more epic your planned adventure the more gear you’re going to need.

While panniers will usually swallow up a campsite’s worth of equipment, smaller bikepacking bags require you to be more selective.

Basically, you’ll likely struggle to carry a cheap tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag because of their increased size. Lighter and more compact camping gear is therefore something of a prerequisite.

Luckily, much of it has recently come down in price, meaning you can get yourself all three items for £200-300 if you shop smart.

Where can I go?

If you’ve got the right bike and the right gear then you can go literally anywhere. That’s the beauty of it, it’s entirely up to you – it’s your adventure.

There are plenty of great bikepacking destinations in Britain, as well as some spectacular easy-to-reach locations abroad (assuming British-only passport holders will still be able to cross borders from next year).

If you’re not sure what type of bikepacking or touring would suit you, ask yourself the following: Where would you like to go? How many miles do you want to cycle in a day? How much gear are you prepared to carry? How long do you want to go for? How far do you want to cycle in total? How much are you prepared to spend?

Scribble down your answers to these questions on a bit of paper and then use them to start planning your next great escape.

A second thing to consider is wild camping. While many people consider this a vital part of bikepacking, it’s not actually legal in most parts of the UK without the landowners’ permission.

Scotland is the exception to this, where greater rights mean you’ve far more options of place to pitch up without paying for the privilege. Just make sure you don’t damage the environment or annoy any locals.

When the challenges get a little crazy, Cyclist sends Marcus Leach.

In the latest edition of the Cyclist Magazine Podcast, James and Joe chat to Marcus about his recent 12-day JOGLE adventure via the scenic route, which is being covered day by day in Cyclist and saw him riding through some of the UK's toughest yet most beautiful terrain, all self-supported during a global pandemic.

We also talk about being stalked by giant ants in a Taiwanese jungle and riding all three Grand Tour in one year. It's a real eye-opener!

James opens up about cleaning chains and how much he hates it (thankfully, editor-at-large Stu Bowers is a chain cleaning king and even made a video on how to clean that chain like a pro here).

Then Joe shares his thoughts after re-watching the 2004 Paris-Roubaix on YouTube recently. That can be found here. 

If you like the episode remember to leave us a review and share with your cycling friends.

To listen to the Podcast on Apple, please click here.

In association with Castelli.

For more on the Cyclist Magazine Podcast, see here.
For more from the team at Cyclist and to follow Marcus' JOGLE adventure, subscribe to Cyclist Magazine here.

The first day of the year is a special one in the world of professional cycling. It’s the day all fans wait with bated breath to see all those riders who have changed team reveal themselves in their new kits.

It’s a monumental occasion every year but this year, in particular, seemed to produce a real vintage as some of the peloton’s best known riders shifted team for the 2021 season.

Among those were some of the biggest names in the sport who have long become stalwarts of their teams after years of loyal service. Chris Froome, Romain Bardet, Annemiek van Vleuten, among those having a change of scenery. The worn cliche of ‘New Year, new me’ could never ring truer.

And we know how confusing it can be in those first few months. Adjusting the mind and the eyes to these riders on new bikes in different colours, so below have compiled the 10 transfers that will take the most getting used to in 2021.

Chris Froome - Israel Start-Up Nation

Let’s start with a shock to the eyes. Chris Froome no longer riding for Ineos Grenadiers/Team Ineos/Team Sky.

No Kask helmet, no Oakley sunglasses, no Pinarello bike. Instead, an HJC helmet, Scicon sunglasses, a Factor bike. If it wasn’t for the ungainly, spider-like frame draped over that bike I’d even be tempted to call this a deep fake conspiracy.

It really does feel like a fantasy. The transfer felt fictional for so long as the concept of Froome leaving ‘The Empire’ after 10 years and seven Grand Tour wins felt absurd.

But here we are, Froome in his new Israel Start-Up Nation colours looking forward to potentially the biggest season of his career. Can he return to the Froome of before that 2019 horror crash? Can he win another Grand Tour? Can he function away from the boundaries of Ineos?

Mark Cavendish - Deceuninck-QuickStep

Nature is healing, Mark Cavendish is back in the blues of Deceuninck-QuickStep.

It almost didn’t happen. The Manx sprinter made no secret of his desire to return to the Belgian team yet manager Patrick Lefevere was fairly forthright in telling us it simply would not work with his tight budget. With his contract up at Bahrain-McLaren, it looked as if retirement would be Cavendish's only option.

But after a phone call here and an email there, Cavendish proved his weight in the cycling world, negotiating for a mystery sponsor to come on-board to fit his wage bill.

For Cavendish, it offers a lifeline, a chance for a career Indian Summer. For Lefevere, this a win-win situation. A former World Champion, 30-time Tour de France stage winner, the greatest sprinter of all time, riding on your team for free. The exposure he offers for sponsors alone is enough. But imagine if he rolls back the clock and takes one final, big win.

Adam Yates - Ineos Grenadiers

Another one that will have you adjusting your screen. The concept of the Yates twins riding on opposing teams seemed as unthinkable as one of the Geordie presenting miracles Ant or Dec going solo.

PJ would never leave Duncan but it seems Adam is happy to leave Simon, especially if its for the Ineos Grenadiers, the team with the biggest budget in professional cycling. He joins as part of a bumper quintet on signings alongside Richie Porte, Laurens De Plus, Dani Martinez and Tom Pidcock, a real flexing of muscles from Dave Brailsford.

In theory, the Yates move makes perfect sense. The ageing of Geraint Thomas and departure of Froome leave Ineos with just the one British Grand Tour specialist, Tao Geoghegan Hart. Adam has the ability to fill the Froome/Thomas void and at Ineos will have the resources and teammates to help unlock any Grand Tour-conquering potential.

But in reality, there’s the fact that Grand Tour leadership will be a duty Yates will have to fight Thomas, Geoghegan Hart, Egan Bernal, Richard Carapaz and Pavel Sivakov for – some register of riders.

At least this move crushes all those salacious rumours that the Yates twins are not twins, in fact prototyped clones that are intermittently swapped during races in an attempt to win bike races.

Romain Bardet - Team DSM

It’s rare to see a top French rider plying his trade beyond a French team – Julian Alaphilippe being the obvious exception to this rule. It is even rarer that a leading French rider leaves the warm nest of a home team during his career. For some reason, homesickness is something that seems to plague the Gallic rider.

That’s what makes Romain Bardet’s decision to leave AG2R after nine years of service so fascinating. It never seemed likely that Bardet would ride any colours that were not brown or light blue. Bardet was AG2R and AG2R was Bardet for so long.

But with a new sponsor in Citreon and apparent change of lane towards the Spring Classics – indicated with the signing of Greg van Avermaet – Bardet finds himself flocking into a new, Dutch nest – Team DSM.

DSM, you ask? You will know them by their former guise, Team Sunweb. The travel agent had a tough 2020 and therefore was replaced as title sponsor by this Dutch company that is brand new to cycling.

As for what DSM is, we are not sure. It calls itself a ‘global, purpose-led, science-based company active in Nutrition, Health and Sustainable Living’. Yep, not a clue either.

Marianne Vos - Jumbo-Visma

The adjustment for the eyes in regards to women’s cycling legend Marianne Vos will not be the fact that she is in new colours for 2021 so much as what those colours will bee.

As a pledge for parity in the sport of cycling, Dutch men’s superteam Jumbo-Visma is now part of the women’s peloton. The behemoth behind Wout van Aert, Primoz Roglic and Tom Dumoulin signed 33-year-old Vos to spearhead this latest project and in the hope of becoming a dominating force in women’s cycling much as they have in the men’s game.

All they need to do now is find a former ski jumper-turned-pro cyclist...

Annemiek van Vleuten - Movistar

Before Christmas, former World Champion Annemiek van Vleuten revealed that she had turned down a bumper deal at cash-rich, superstar-lined Trek-Segafredo, instead opting to sign for Movistar. Why? She wants to keep women’s cycling exciting.

A touch of Dutch arrogance or a perfectly valid rationale that will benefit the women’s peloton? A healthy mix of both, I would say.

Van Vleuten is right in her assessment of the Trek deal. Lining up alongside Lizzie Deignan, Elisa Longo Borghini, Ellen Van Dijk and Amalie Diedreksen would saturate the talent and lead to a similar situation as to when Boels-Dolmans routinely dominated women’s cycling a few years ago.

The signing of Van Vleuten should also help in kickstarting Movistar’s women’s team, too. Since joining the peloton in 2018, they have been solid yet unable to secure that big victory. The 28-year-old Dutchwoman should rectify that in no time.

Miguel Angel Lopez - Movistar

The best thing about this transfer is the fact that Superman Lopez openly criticised Movistar, quite harshly, at the 2019 Vuelta a Espana. Back then, he called his now-teammates ‘opportunistic idiots’ after attacking race leader Primoz Roglic after he had crashed.

I think we can all safely assume that the first meet of Lopez with the likes of Alejandro Valverde, Marc Soler and team boss Eusebio Unzue may be an awkward one. And once the butter knife has cut the tension, there’s the never-simple question of what Lopez’s purpose will be in the team.

Of course, he will be leading the team at Grand Tours but with Movistar, things are never that simple. The chances are he will be sharing responsibilities with the likes of Valverde, Soler and Enric Mas and as history shows, this can quickly lead to disaster.

Don’t believe us? Then ask Lopez’s compatriot and former Movistar man Nairo Quintana.

Bob Jungels - AG2R Citreon

While Greg van Avermaet in AG2R Citreon livery feels natural, on his new teammate Bob Jungels, the Supreme-inspired jersey of the French team feels a little odd.

Firstly, it is purely mad that Jungels is no longer the road race champion of Luxembourg, I thought that was some sort of birth right? And secondly, while I know he started life at Leopard-Trek, I could never envisage Jungels away from Deceuninck-QuickStep and his best mate, Julian Alaphilippe. The two were inseparable at times and exemplary teammates for one another on many occasions.

Jungels’s move to AG2R should be a good thing, however, as he has much more to give than that Liege-Bastogne-Liege victory of a few years prior.

And a fun fact about Bob Jungels, he can recommend you some excellent restaurants to visit in Luxembourg City.

Ilnur Zakarin - Gazprom-Rusvelo

Has a transfer ever made more sense? When the CCC Team announced it was closing its doors last season, you could have put your mortgage on Illnur Zakarin finding a home at Gazprom-Rusvelo.

A Russian rider with Grand Tour stage victories but nowhere to call home in the WorldTour, Zakarin now has the opportunity to become the big duck in the small ProTeam pond among a bunch of teammate compatriots who all speak a common language, a barrier that did peg Zakarin in the past.

The only issue for the Russian rider could be invites because, as it stands, it does not look likely that Gazprom-Rusvelo will be on the start list for any of the three Grand Tours.

And while we are here, 10/10 on the new jersey from Gazprom. Chapeau!

Simon Geschke - Cofidis

Simon Geschke could wear a bin bag and he’d still look cool. Just look at that beard, people! It is so thick, full and luscious, you almost want to set up shop in it.

Luckily, the German does not have to wear bin bags. He has to wear Cofidis kit – which actually pretty decent – having landed with the French team for 2021 after the closure of CCC Team.

An old hack these days, the signing of Geschke is a canny one considering his ability to support big names around him with the desirable selflessness of the very best domestiques while also having the personal ability to nab good results when asked to.

Lots of rain around over the next few weeks and we're expecting a lot of it this weekend. Pretty grim especially for us cyclists who thrive on sunshine and warm weather.

Although it doesn't have to be that way. Not if you prepare correctly for wet weather cycling. If you do, it can be quite a bearable experience, even enjoyable!

So below, Cyclist has compiled the ultimate guide to wet weather riding.

Keep it slick for more grip

Unlike car tyres, there’s no danger of aquaplaning on wet roads when cycling due to the more rounded profile of bike tyres, which easily displace water.

Therefore, there’s no need to fit tyres with a grooved tread – in fact, a slick tread is much better in all conditions, since it means there’s more rubber in contact with the tarmac and thus grip is better.

Another thing you can do to improve grip is let a little air out of your tyres (reduce the pressure by as much as 15-20psi), which provides a larger contact patch on the road, and therefore more rubber in contact with the tarmac at all times, even on rough road surfaces.

Another option is tubeless tyres which we discuss below.

Watch out for your feet

There are many reasons to invest in a decent pair of overshoes for riding in wet weather.

It’s practically impossible to keep all of the rain out when cycling, but a pair of overshoes made of neoprene (the same material used in making wetsuits for divers) will at least keep your feet partially dry and stop you developing a nasty case of trench foot.

Among our favourites are Gore Windstopper overshoes (£49.99, goreapparel.co.uk) which are also available in a high-viz fluoro yellow for added visibility on grey days.

Preparation is key

British weather being what it is, even if you set out in glorious sunshine, there’s no guarantee it won’t be pouring down before you finish.

This is why it’s always a good idea to pack a lightweight rain jacket in your pocket– they may not protect you from the heaviest downpours but they will fend off showers.

We’re big fans of the Sportful Hot Pack Ultralight jacket (£125, sportful.com) – made from wind-resistant nylon with a DWR (durable water repellent) treatment, it weighs a mere 56g and packs down into a tiny bundle so won’t take up much space in your pocket when not being worn.

Care for your shoes

Your cycling shoes are especially vulnerable to the damaging effects of road spray, being right in the line of fire behind your tyres.

Overshoes can keep off the worst of the grit, grime and oil thrown up from the road, but if you’re caught in a shower, always clean your shoes properly when you get home – get stuck in with an old toothbrush.

It’s also a good idea to dry them out properly – but don’t put them on a radiator, as the heat can damage the synthetic fabrics and glues. Instead, stuff them with scrunched up newspaper to absorb the moisture.

Protect your head

In summer, a helmet with lots of vents will keep you cool, but it won’t do much to keep the rain out. A traditional cycling cap under the helmet can be handy in wet weather, as the peak will deflect the rain away from your eyes.

A helmet with a built-in visor will do the same job, although these are more common on MTB designs than on helmets aimed at road cyclists.

You could also get a waterproof helmet cover that fits over your lid with an elasticated hem – or opt for a helmet such as Bollé’s The One (£109.99, bolle-europe.co.uk), which comes with clip-in panels to cover up the vents when you want to be more aero or keep the rain out.

Consider going tubeless

Once the preserve of mountain bikers, tubeless tyres are increasingly popular with road cyclists, especially with the fashion for go-anywhere adventure bikes.

Their main advantage in wet weather is the sealant which means any small holes in the tyre are filled almost instantly, preventing air escaping.

Another advantage is that they can be run at much lower pressures than conventional clinchers, giving you a larger contact patch which is a real help on slippery roads.

Use your brakes wisely

In normal riding conditions, most of your stopping should be done with the front brake. However, this changes when there’s water on the road.

The reduced grip makes it far more likely that you’ll lock up the front wheel if you brake hard, and once your front wheel loses traction, it’s almost impossible to stay upright on a bike.

Try to ‘feather’ your brakes to slow down gradually, and make more use of the rear brake, which lacks the stopping power of the front brake but is useful for scrubbing off excess speed.

Watch out for punctures

It’s no surprise that cyclists suffer a lot more punctures in wet weather. This is for two reasons. First, the rain washes all the debris out of the gutter and into the road.

Secondly, water acts as a lubricant, so those flints and glass shards cut through far more easily than in dry conditions.

This is why it’s a good idea to look for tyres with extra puncture protection in autumn and winter, when rain is likely – we like Vee Tire Co’s Rain Runners (£32.99, veetireco.co.uk) – available in 23 or 25mm options, these are supple, high-performance tyre for fast riding, offering impressive levels of grip on wet roads, and featuring rugged sidewalls for added puncture protection.

Look after your eyes

Sunglasses may not be the most obvious thing to wear when dark clouds loom overhead but some form of eye protection is always a good idea.

Shades with a wraparound design will help keep stinging rain out of the eyes, and many designs come with changeable lenses for different conditions.

Endura’s Char glasses (£59.99, endurasport.com) come with two sets – light-reactive photochromic lenses that adjust to variable light conditions, and a clear set with an anti-fog finish and super-hydrophobic coating to repel water, which makes them ideal for riding in all weather, all year round.

Get a proper waterproof jacket

For heavy rain, only a fully waterproof jacket will do. There are certain key features to look for when choosing a jacket.

First, a high collar will keep rain from dripping down inside at the top, and a long tail to fend off any spray from the road, while extra-long sleeves will ensure there’s no wrist gap between cuffs and gloves.

If you’re putting in some effort on the bike, breathability is vital to ensure you don’t get soaked from the inside with sweat.

Altura’s Nightvision Evo 3 Jacket (£99.99, altura.eu) fits the bill, being rated to 15k waterproofing, with pit and yoke vents to let moisture out, and incorporates Darkproof technology for added visibility.

Clean your bike

While components such as the chain and brakes require special attention after a wet ride, it’s a good idea to clean your whole bike as soon as you get home – if you get into the habit, it won’t take long.

After cleaning, dry the bike off as thoroughly as possible with a clean cloth, then use Muc-Off MO94 spray (£5.99 for 400ml, muc-off.com) to lubricate moving parts such as brake pivots and derailleurs, and Muc-Off Silicon Shine spray (£9.99 for 500ml) on the frame – this will also help repel water and grime next time you’re riding in the rain.

Steady in the corners

Grit washed into the road by rain doesn’t just cause punctures – loose material on the road surface can significantly reduce grip when cornering.

In fact, cornering is perhaps the biggest challenge for cyclists in wet conditions. The key to cornering safely in the rain is to take it steady as you approach the bend – do your braking before you start turning, and stay away from the edge of the road where you’ll find the worst of the debris.

Also look out for painted road markings, which can be slippery when wet, while in autumn, fallen leaves are a major hazard.

Keep your hands warm

Most gloves are not properly waterproof, even if they are made with waterproof fabrics.

This is because they have lots of seams – necessary to make sure they fit well – which can let water in, and being stuck out on the front of your bike, they bear the full brunt of any wind and rain you encounter.

Neoprene gloves such as Endura FS260 Pro Nemo (£29.99, endurasport.com) have bonded seams so are completely waterproof. Their thin material and snug, stretchy fit also means they won’t interfere with braking or gear shifting.

Lube your chain

Among bike components, your chain is one of the most vulnerable to wet conditions. Riding in a shower will see much of the vital lubricant being washed off, which leaves your chain prone to becoming rusty and seizing up later.

Especially in winter, use a lubricant specifically designed for wet conditions such as Shimano Wet Lube (£6.99 for 100ml, madison.co.uk), which is made with high-viscosity synthetic oils for optimum chain performance in all weather conditions and great durability.

Also remember to clean your chain after every ride to remove the grime that accumulates on the outside – over time, this will work its way into the links and cause premature wear.

Be seen – fit some lights

When skies overhead fill with heavy clouds, it can get a bit gloomy out there, so do your bit to ensure your visibility by using lights at all times, not just at night.

Avoid puddles

When you were a kid, popping on a pair of wellies and jumping in puddles was the height of fun, but puddles are a hazard when you’re on a bike.

The simple reason for this is that you don’t know what’s lurking beneath that murky water – it could be a puncture-causing stone or worse, a deep pothole or drain cover that could wreck your wheels or send you flying when you hit it at speed.

The same rule applies to metal manhole covers, which are treacherously slippy when wet.

Fit some mudguards

Many clubs make mudguards obligatory on winter rides, for obvious reasons. If your bike has the necessary mounting points, a set of full-length mudguards are always the best option.

Otherwise, fit a set of clip-on guards such as SKS Raceblade Pro XL (£44.99, zyrofisher.co.uk) – with their quick-release fittings, these are compatible with most road bikes, even ones with aero forks.

As an emergency measure, the SKS S-Guard (£7.99, zyrofisher.co.uk) will clip under your saddle and keep the worst of the road spray off your backside, though it won’t protect following riders.

Dress like a pro

Even the most breathable waterproof jacket won’t be permeable enough to let water vapour out fast enough when you’re riding hard, but fortunately there are other solutions.

A few years ago, Castelli’s Gabba made a name for itself when it was worn by the pros in cold, wet, early-season races.

This softshell jersey is made with Gore’s Windstopper X-Lite Plus fabric for a combination of superb breathability with warmth and protection from wind and rain.

\We’re big fans of the long-sleeve version, called the Perfetto (£175, castellicafe.co.uk) which uses the same tech, and even has holes in the rear pockets to let any collected water drain out.

Check your brake blocks

Riding in the rain can leave your wheels coated with water and grime, which will eat through brake blocks and wheel rims very quickly, as well as reducing their stopping performance.

Feathering your brakes while riding will also help keep your rims relatively clean and make braking safer and more effective. After your ride, be sure to wipe down your wheel rims and inspect the brake blocks for any embedded grit.

Also consider fitting brake blocks made with a compound designed for all-weather riding, such as Kool Stop Dura 2 Salmon (£8.99 a pair, i-ride.co.uk).

Adjust your attitude

Also known as ‘HTFU’ or ‘harden the flip up’. This is all about embracing the weather rather than being afraid of it.

If you’re kitted out sensibly with the right gear, there’s no reason to be afraid of the rain – in fact, it can be fun to be out on the bike when the skies open, safe in the knowledge that there’s a warm shower and hot coffee waiting for you at home.

Once out there, you’ll often find conditions aren’t as bad as you feared, and it’s got to be preferable to sitting on the turbo trainer staring at the garage wall, right?

This feature originally appeared in BikesEtc