Cycling Weekly

start line 14.01

I found myself thinking long and hard before riding over the last week or so. During last spring’s lockdown lots of people thought cyclists were selfish for ‘putting pressure on the NHS’. This was nonsense. The act of riding a bike is not dangerous, and more people riding bikes would, in the long term, save the NHS billions. The ‘one hour of exercise’ was never a thing either. It was said by Michael Gove when asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about what ‘reasonable exercise’ was. There never was a time limit on exercise in the regulations. However, January is a bit different. Cold, wet weather can catch an unfit rider out if they overdo it, road conditions can be poor, with standing water making it worse, and the risk of…

time trialling on verge of step toward equality

The board of governing body Cycling Time Trials will meet this Sunday (17 January) to decide on whether to make prize money for men and women competing equal. The push for prize money parity comes from a group of campaigners that have amassed the signatures of over 4,000 people – including prominent time triallists Jasmijn Muller, Alice Lethbridge and Ed Laverack – on an open letter calling for changes to the regulations. Alice Thomson, one of the Equality and Parity in Cycling (EPIC) group pushing for the changes, told CW: “I honestly think it would be huge. To women in the sport, it would be a massive step change. It’s more than the change in prizes. It’s a statement that says we are progressive, we recognise the women of this sport…

my view…

News editor For a sport obsessed with the passage of hundredths of a second, time trialling is bizarrely stuck in the past, at least when it comes to gender equality on prize money. It’s even more odd when you consider it’s a sport that has a lot to celebrate on the gender parity front. Men and women regularly race at the same time, on the same courses and over the same distance. How many other sports offer women the chance to answer a question such as: “I wonder how I’d fare against a men’s world champion or Hour record holder on a drizzly Wednesday evening?” I don’t know if making prize money equal will encourage more women into the sport, which is still, like a lot of cycling, a male-centric pursuit. But it’s…

hill-climb champ: ‘i just ride on feel’

Reigning hill-climb champion Bithja Jones has revealed that she has spent much of the last year training for the National Championships with no heart rate monitor or power meter, just riding on feel. Jones won the hill-climb title last year with a new course record on the short sharp climb of Streatley near Reading. She rode 2.47.9, a good two seconds faster than her nearest rival, Mary Wilkinson (Yorkshire Road Club). Jones told CW she doesn’t have a heart rate monitor, power meter, or coach. “If you never ride with a Satnav you know your way around while if you ride with one you then get dependent on it,” Jones said. “I guess it’s similar because I haven’t got all these gadgets. I just have to listen to my body and you get…

froome ‘rejuvenated’ at israel start-up nation

Chris Froome says changing teams feels “rejuvenating” and likened his long tenure at Ineos to “copy and pasting year after year,” as he embarks on his first season with Israel Start-Up Nation (ISN). The four-time Tour de France winner left Ineos Grenadiers, formerly Team Sky, at the end of last season after a decade of Grand Tour dominance. Froome, 35, has signed with Israel Start-Up Nation for 2021 as part of a deal he says will last until the end of his racing career and even beyond. In a video interview shared by the Israeli WorldTour team, Froome said: “I’m 35 and coming back from a big injury – year after year with the same team I’ve been almost copying and pasting every year. “Changing teams at this point in my career is…

ewan: ‘returning to racing could be difficult for groenewegen’

Caleb Ewan believes that sprinting “may never be business as usual again” for Dylan Groenewegen when the Dutch sprinter returns to racing in May, with Ewan adding that he would personally find rejoining the peloton difficult. Jumbo-Visma sprinter Groenewegen is currently banned following the incident at the Tour of Poland in which he caused Fabio Jakobsen to crash into the barriers during the sprint after moving off his line, leaving Jakobsen in intensive care. Groenewegen’s backdated ban means he will be able to return to racing from 7 May. “The first thing I am going to say, when you decide to be a sprinter, you know sprinting is not the safest thing in the world. Every sprinter has accepted that. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a 10-lane road, sprinting is going…