Table of contents for March 26, 2026 in Cycling Weekly

The finish of Milan-San Remo came down the finest of margins, Tom Pidcock beaten in a photo-finish after almost 300km of racing. It left the Yorkshireman “disappointed”, despite being “super proud”. However, speaking to CW on Monday, his DS and coach, Kurt Bogaerts, said there was “not much” the 26-year-old could have done differently to get the win. “I think he executed really well, rode really mature, cooperated where he needed to cooperate,” the Belgian said. “With a sprint, I think you can say many things. I think he had a strategy, and the other one [Pogačar] was just a little bit faster. I don’t think he could have done much more than he did. “I’ve followed Milan-San Remo for many years,” he continued, “everything needs to fall into place…

Although we’re still at the start of the 2026 season, today’s article has its sights set on the summer of 2027, as in just 500 days time we will be racing the Tour de France Femmes on UK soil! This excitement comes after the recent announcement of the Grand Départ stages for the TDFF, which will cross overseas for the very first time. We are lucky enough to be gifted three stages on British soil, taking place a month after the men’s Grand Départ, also in the UK. We will start in Leeds and the first wearer of the maillot jaune will be crowned after the fast finish in Manchester, before a more punchy stage two finishing in Sheffield. The race will then head down south for stage three, which…

Modern Adventure Pro Cycling is having a stellar debut season, having already notched up some impressive results at the AlUla Tour and the UAE Tour. With a wildcard ProTeam invite to Opening Weekend, the American team rocked up at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne full of confidence, with reigning U23 United States TT champion Cole Kessler riding in the eventual breakaway that lasted for 146km before being reeled in. As a Factor-sponsored team, Modern Adventure has two bikes to choose from: the all-round Ostro VAM and the outlandish One aero bike. Kessler favoured the heavier Factor One over the Ostro VAM. Outfitted in a raw-carbon-look with white Factor graphics, the One’s wide-set bayonet fork, seatstays and integrated handlebar took centre stage in the paddock. The intriguing handlebar uses an integrated stem and gull-wing design,…

As road bikes have become more expensive, it has become more justifiable to spend a not inconsiderable amount of money on safeguarding the carbon frame from potential damage whilst travelling. Evoc offers a number of options for air travel with a bike, but its latest is the Road Bike Bag Pro. Perhaps the most important aspect of it, compared with many boxes, is that it folds down to less than half its expanded size, which, whilst still quite bulky, is significantly easier to store than a hard plastic box. The basic design is a zipped clamshell, with removable, colourcoded vertical fibreglass struts that support the structure and provide enough width that the handlebars don’t need to be removed. The top and bottom sections of are made from tough polycarbonate, giving…

Until 1900, bikes (other than a few home-cooked experiments) were singlespeed. They had one gear, and you had to decide whether you were going for a long attack or sitting in for the sprint before you left home that morning. If the UCI had had its way, this is how we’d still be doing it. In 1900, someone realised that if you put a sprocket on each side of the rear wheel, you could take it out, flip it round, and put it back. This could be accomplished in a fleeting 30 seconds or so, and was responsible for making cycling very slightly faster. Ever since then, we’ve been adding sprockets. Early derailleurs in the 1930s quickly came to offer three. Then four. By the 1970s most racing bikes had…

The seaside warmth of the nearby Côte d’Azur seems far away as riders in the 1933 Tour de France brave the weather to negotiate the tight hairpins of the Col de Braus. This 11th stage took them from Nice to Cannes, just along the coast, with a loop into the mountains thrown in to keep things interesting. It isn’t clear who these riders are; they could be France’s Maurice Archambaud, who won the day, and runner-up Gaspard Rinaldi, who finished 1.17 behind him. Neither featured on the Paris podium 14 days later, which was topped by another French rider, Georges Speicher, and completed by Italian pair Learco Guerra and Giuseppe Martano, who were second and third respectively.…

Champion’s roar After checking he has won the photo finish at the end of Milan-San Remo, Tadej Pogačar lets out a guttural roar as he rides towards our photographer. The Slovenian now has four Monuments to his name. Leicestershire lanes The pace is high at the front of the bunch midway through the Anexo/CAMS Women’s CiCLE Classic on Sunday. The camera is positioned so you can see the whole bunch, along with the race entourage. Genoa-San Remo The peloton in Genoa at Milan-San Remo Women on Saturday – the women’s race begins on the Ligurian coast, rather than inland like the men’s. Lotte Kopecky won, but her team is out of view here. On the edge Samuel Leroux of TotalEnergies sticks to the edge of the cobbles during the Bredene…

There are few gaps on Lotte Kopecky’s CV. The Belgian is a two-time world champion and has won the Tour of Flanders three times, as well as Paris-Roubaix. Milan-San Remo was absent only because the race didn’t exist for women until last year. It took just two attempts for the SD Worx-Protime rider to triumph at the event seemingly designed for her skillset. The 30-year-old was part of an elite group that went clear on the Poggio, meaning the race would not finish in a bunch sprint, and then outpowered her rivals on the Via Roma. It was proof – if it were needed – that Kopecky is still a force to be reckoned with after a 2025 that, while not unsuccessful, was derailed by injury. The upcoming Classics will…

I think his main goal this year is the Giro. Yes, he will be up and ready for the Tour, but winning all three Grand Tours is a much bigger performance. Brian Vonta How does anyone know if this is not his actual foundation/baseline and he is going to build from here? He was recovering much of last year. What’s the difference between his early form this year and the years he won the Tour? Peter Granick He will have at least two more peaks this year, one in May and the second in July, and both of those will be at a higher level than where he is currently. Tony Chastain He had a fantastic race [in Paris-Nice], I really don’t understand all the second-guessing or the hate. Terry…

As you glance up at the wattage on the screen while churning out a hard session on Zwift, the thought has probably crossed your mind: couldn’t all this energy be put to better use, saving me some cash? After all, energy for our homes no longer comes cheap, and with millions of people now riding indoor bikes for fitness, it seems logical that some of that human power could be harnessed for everyday electricity. So why aren’t our workouts lighting our homes or boiling our kettles? The main reason is that the modern home is just too power-hungry. Even if it could be harnessed, our cycling power would struggle to make a dent in our household energy use. The average UK home consumes roughly eight to 10 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of…

Danylo Riwnyj won a two-up sprint finish at the 65th edition of the Wally Gimber Trophy Road Race, staged in Surrey by Dulwich Paragon CC. The 27-year-old, riding for Foran CT, edged ahead of VC Baracchi rival Luca Nicholson at the end of the 140km event near Bletchingley. Twelve seconds behind and completing the podium was Alex Pickering (Ride Revolution Coaching), while the bunch came home three minutes back. “It was attritional,” said Riwnyj. “The group worked well together, but the finish came down to a standing sprint. It’s good to kick-start the campaign with a win.” At the Abergavenny Classic Road Race near Llanarth in Monmouthshire, Matthew Wales (Fibrax Fenwicks Wrexham CC) crossed the line alone, 11 seconds ahead of chasers Kyle Jones (trainSharp) and Josh Hall (Nopinz). Meanwhile,…

For a young railway apprentice in 1949, wages were slim and post-war austerity was brutal. Yet, clearly, Dennis Harbour wasn’t interested in ‘making do’. Instead, he went all out to build the finest racing machine possible. I can picture him now, eagerly selecting the premium parts that would add something special to his new Holdsworth La Quelda frame. One component at a time. This is no sedate clubman’s mount. Built for the elbow-to-elbow intensity of the then-controversial British League of Racing Cyclists’ mass-start events, it’s a high-spec, highly-strung racing thoroughbred. Note the Holdsworth fancy lugged stem, the South of France handlebars, and gleaming Constrictor Asp rims. The star is the Osgear drivetrain – the double rings on the Gnutti chainset offer micro-incremental ratios, set up so tight the rider had…

The thinking was that everything had to go perfectly for Tadej Pogačar to win Milan-San Remo – the clichéd easiest race to finish, the hardest to win. The results for the Slovenian over the past few years proved it: fifth, fourth, third and third. Perhaps the race was just not hard enough for the best rider in the world, maybe it was a challenge too far; if it were to work for him, things would have to go to plan. On Saturday, that received wisdom was turned on its head. The UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider was already deprived of some of his top domestiques, and then lost another one mid-race, before the action had really kicked off. That was followed by his crash just before the Cipressa with 32km to…

Noémie Thomson (DAS-Hutchinson) drew on her considerable gravel racing skills to win the Anexo/Cams CiCLE Classic in Rutland on Sunday. Her solo victory also saw her head straight to the top of the leaderboards in both the Lloyds National Road Series and the Rapha Super-League. Riders in what was the year’s first big domestic appointment enjoyed uncharacteristically clement conditions, with dry, dusty surfaces making for faster going than is typical, with riders often finishing the race covered in mud and grime. Thomson, 22 and from Kent, escaped on her own in the final third of the 105km race, attacking breakaway partner Maddie Cooper (Handsling Alba Development Road Team) on the final climb on what is a new finishing circuit for this year’s race. When she crossed the line in Melton…

Cycling Weekly’s David Bradford took a busman’s holiday to Burnley to try out a specially adapted turbo trainer built by a have-a-go innovator The idea of using cycling power to run household appliances had intrigued me for years. Then, in 2025, I heard about a clever tinkerer up north who had built his own bike generator. A Christmas hiking trip to the Calder Valley provided the perfect opportunity – the inventor, Andrew Smalley, lived just up the road in Burnley. We arrive on a freezing January morning. Smalley welcomes us in, apologising for the mess – he’s about to move home – but amid the boxes he has left the homemade generator set up in the kitchen. “I was studying for an Open University physics degree and doing lots of…

In a world forcing the aerodynamic performance narrative, the Specialized Aethos is a breath of fresh air, eschewing the mainstream dropped seatstay and deep head-tube configurations of contemporary road bikes for classic double-diamond architecture. The first-generation Aethos, launched in 2020, was a hit among purists and, in many ways, close to perfect in terms of rider enjoyment. So Specialized was careful not to lose those attributes with the new model, which gains an integrated cockpit, wider tyre clearances, subtle tweaks to the geometry and a carbon layup inspired by the Tarmac SL8 race bike. Despite these alterations, the lightweight ethos and character of the original Aethos remain unchanged, as does the exorbitant sticker price of the S-Works derivative. As expected from a halo bike, it gets all the bells and…

This ultra-sleek Officine Mattio SL belongs to Ross Howcroft-Jones and boasts a 660g frame weight. It is kitted out in full hill-climb regalia, which in fairness, amounts to as little as possible: it’s devoid of bar tape, has a single Shimano Dura-Ace chainring and an ultrasparse saddle. Wheels are Reserve 37, with Continental Grand Prix 5000 S tyres. Want us to feature your race bike? Send a pic and information to cycling@futurenet.com…