Cycling Weekly December 2, 2021

Well dear reader, we tried to delay the onset of winter for as long as possible but we couldn’t hold off any longer. We’ve kept the cold, wintry images and supporting headlines off the cover, but this week there was no avoiding it. It’s not that we don’t like the season, some of my most memorable rides have been long club runs on cold, crisp winter days, but there are several months of winter still to come and we didn’t want to jump in too early. In my head I just have to get through to the end of February. Yes, March can still be wet and cold but it means we’re out the other side, and rather than worry about cold, dark days I can instead worry about not being fit…

How does the league scoring work? Riders score points for their placing in each of two races over the course of the night. For the endurance riders there’s a scratch and elimination race, for the sprinters it’s match sprinting and keirin. Winner gets 20 points, second 17, third 15, all the way down to a single point for 15th place. The maximum points a rider can get across the whole competition is 200. When are the races? Round three London, Fri 3 December 18:30-22:30 Round four London, Sat 4 December 18:45-22:30 Round five Tel Aviv, Sat 11 December 16:30-20:45 Where can I watch it? All races are available on Eurosport and GCN+…

Two-time Olympic champion Katie Archibald heads to this weekend’s Track Champions League double-header in London with the leader’s jersey firmly on her back. The Track Champions League is a new event on the UCI calendar for 2021. There are five rounds, two of which take place at London’s Lee Valley VeloPark on Friday and Saturday this week. At each one the endurance athletes race a scratch and an elimination, while the sprinters do a sprint and keirin competition (for more details see box). Following a victory in the elimination race at the series’s opening meeting in Majorca Archibald was leading the women’s endurance competition as racing got under way in Lithuania. She then proceeded to attack the scratch race from lap two, only to be reeled in and then win the eventual bunch kick.…

The former pro had been suffering with mental health issues and alcohol dependency when he committed the crime and was given a 14-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, and required to attend alcohol treatment and rehabilitation. The Yorkshire Evening Post reported that Leeds Crown Court heard the girl had been riding home when Edmondson, shirtless, without shoes and covered in blood from a cut on his neck, had told her to get off, pushed her and ridden away. The paper reported his lawyer as saying he had been detained under the Mental Health Act for several days in November and was hospitalised for alcohol treatment just last week. The Post reported that Judge C. Batty said: “You were in a dreadful place and I am really sad to hear, while some…

Dan Bigham, the British Hour record holder, has said he’s been inundated with tips for how he can beat the World Hour record after he announced last week he’d be making an attempt. In October the 30-year-old set a British record distance of 54.723km in Grenchen, Switzerland, surpassing Bradley Wiggins’s 2015 mark by 197m. Due to his Continental level status with the Ribble-Weldtite team, Bigham is not in the UCI’s athlete testing pool, meaning his ride did not qualify as a full Hour record attempt. The Briton has since accrued more sponsors off the back of his ride and is now set to pay to be registered on the anti-doping system. That will allow him to attempt to better the current outright Hour record, which Victor Campenaerts set in 2019 at 55.089km. “I’ve had…

The cyclo-cross World Cup has been hit by Covid-19 once again. A surge in Belgium and the new Omicron variant has forced the cancellation of the Antwerp round planned for this weekend. Christophe Impens of organiser Golazo told Dutch website Wielerflits: “Cyclocross in Antwerp lives from the public and it is traditionally a meeting place for all Antwerpers who love cyclo-cross and atmosphere. But to guarantee the safety and health of everyone, we would have to impose a lot of extra measures that are also hardly controllable.” There are now another seven World Cup races on the calendar with Val di Sole in Italy the next one in two weeks’ time. The rest of the races remain under review. The cancellation of the Antwerp round came after Eli Iserbyt and Lucinda Brand continued…