CyclistSummer 2024的目錄

Just recently, Thomas could only watch while Pogačar crushed the field by almost ten minutes at the Giro d’Italia, and last year he suffered the heartbreak of having the pink jersey taken from his shoulders on the final day of the Giro by Primož Roglič. But at age 38, it’s testament to Thomas’s resilience that he is still able to make the podium at the biggest races and against the some of the greatest racers ever to turn a pedal. How many of today’s wunderkinds will still be challenging for the top spot 17 years after their Grand Tour debuts? Riders may be reaching their peak younger these days, but it suggests that they will also burn out sooner – especially as teams are now constantly searching for the next…

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Asphalt must have been in short supply when the Col de Beyrède was paved. It’s the only explanation I can think of for its sadistic steepness: that there simply wasn’t enough road to take a less severe route to its 1,417m summit. This is the unknown Pyrenees. We’re barely two kilometres from one of the range’s most famous climbs yet the one we’re on is almost entirely overlooked. The Strava stats at the time of writing reveal that fewer than 1,000 users have climbed Beyrède. Maybe most people know better. The Col du Tourmalet, by contrast, needs little introduction. No climb has featured more frequently in the Tour de France. This titan of the borderlands rises to 2,115m and this year marks its 90th appearance in the Tour since it…

The route planners of the Tour de France have always had a sadistic edge, but it took them 110 years from the race’s inception to find the courage to send the peloton to the rough roads, precipices and primitive landscapes of the Col de Sarenne. This notoriously wild col, which forms part of the hulking Grandes Rousses massif in the French region of Isère, provides a ‘back door’ route to the cycling legend of Alpe d’Huez. But when the Sarenne appeared in the Tour for the first time, in the centenary edition of 2013, the pro riders were not happy. The climb itself – 958m of altitude gain over 12.8km with an average gradient of 7.5% and sharp ramps at 14.1% – would have been brutal enough, but the problem…

Trek, along with its in-house components brand Bontrager, has long touted its use of OCLV (optimum compaction low void) carbon fibre in its frames and wheel rims. Now the American company is welcoming a new kind of carbon fibre composite, which it is calling OCLV NEXT. The difference is in the resin. Like most carbon fibre bicycle products, OCLV is moulded with a thermoset resin that retains its physical properties and cannot be reworked once it has been cured. OCLV NEXT, by contrast, is produced using a thermoplastic resin, which doesn’t form a chemical bond and can therefore be remoulded and recycled. It’s this composite that features in Bontrager’s new Aeolus Pro 37V and 49V wheels, meaning the rims will be 100% recyclable at the end of their life. Trek…

As the bike sponsor for the most successful WorldTour team of recent years, it makes sense that Cervélo has largely concentrated on designing bikes that go very quickly over smooth tarmac. That changed somewhat in 2019 when, emerging from the dusty clouds of the off-road renaissance, the US-based company launched the Áspero, a speedy gravel bike which, with its dropped seatstays, subtle wheel cut-out and road-adjacent geometry, still very much had its roots on the road. This was followed by the release of Cervélo’s all-out gravel race bike, the Áspero-5, in 2021. Compared to the previous version it was a touch lighter and came with more aerodynamic tube profiles, but this speed-focussed bike was also a big step up in price. As if by magic, Cervélo had created an affordably…

Italian bicycles often come with a history lesson attached. Not so Officine Mattio, which was only formed in 2014 and gives the impression of a brand facing forward rather than looking back misty-eyed on its heritage. Over the past decade it has grown in size to now occupy a gleaming facility in the Piedmontese city of Cuneo, from which a complete range of high-end road and gravel bikes emerges in materials as varied as carbon, stainless steel and aluminium. The OM1 is the company’s top-end racer, and this new RT version is the poshest, lightest and stiffest version thereof. The OM1 RT’s frameset is composed of plies of high-grade Toray T1100 carbon fibre, which contribute to a reported frame weight of 890g (size medium) and a claimed 15% weight reduction…

It’s fair to say that, over the past decade or more, Sram has been the most consistent instigator of new groupset technology. More often than not those innovations have been introduced on the road by the brand’s Red platform, yet in the years since its last overhaul in 2019, Red has found itself in danger of being shown up by newer, lower-tier siblings, most notably in terms of ergonomics. The 2019 Red eTap AXS may have introduced plenty in the way of techy new features, but its controls left something to be desired: their oversized, blocky shapes were a hangover from the brand’s early HRD (Hydraulic Road Disc) system combined with mechanical rim-brake Red22’s ‘Double Tap’ shifter and lever designs. A revised control shape was arguably top of the list…

Cyclist: You will be among the favourites for a time-trialling medal at this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris. What are your expectations? Josh Tarling: To win. I’d like to do the road race as well, but it depends because there are only four spots on the GB team. I also want to do the Madison on the track. So I’d like to win the Madison and the time-trial. Cyc: You’ve now beaten almost all the top time-triallists on the WorldTour. Who’s your biggest remaining rival? JT: Filippo Ganna, my Ineos Grenadiers teammate. He’s the only one. We could be going head-to-head at the Paris Olympics. It would be nice to race against a friend; it’s exciting and I want to see what I can do. Cyc: You’re from Aberaeron in West Wales, which…

1 Hiplock D1000 lock £249.99, hiplock.com When a drummer comes out of retirement there are serious repercussions. There are even more serious repercussions when your bike gets stolen, but thankfully Hiplock’s D1000 can fend off angle grinders for 20 times longer than a normal D lock. It’s rated Sold Secure Diamond and is made with a reinforcing graphene composite called Ferosafe, which helps make it one of the lightest Diamondrated D locks at a claimed 1.9kg. 2 Buff ThermoNet snood £21.95, buff.com Why won’t you find Cyclist at the chiropractors? They got rid of all our back issues. A Buff gets rid of all sorts of issues, depending how you wear it. This ThermoNet model is made for cyclists with a comfortable four-way stretch and PrimaLoft fibres that are lightweight,…

If you’re going into battle against mountains as fierce as these, there are few bikes that you’d be as glad to have on your side as the S-Works Aethos. Specialized raised the bar for ultralight disc brake bikes a few years ago and did so by such a margin that it is yet to be surpassed. This one, in size 56, weighs 6.19kg out of the box with no pedals. This bike belongs to a staff member at Specialized France, and features Alpinist CLX II wheels, an Alpinist cockpit and Turbo tubeless tyres as upgrades. The Sram Red AXS groupset comes with a Quarq power meter, 50/37t chainset and 10-33t gearing, which creates a huge range, albeit at the cost of less closely stacked ratios in the cassette owing to…

Geraint Thomas’s professional career started in 2007, just four years after helmet-wearing was made mandatory. Nearly two decades on, with the 2024 Grand Tour season underway, it’s testament to his longevity that he’s still seen as a podium contender in every race he starts. Resilience, durability, strength of character – these are the traits that are now associated with him. When it comes to commitment to the Ineos Grenadiers cause, there’s no doubting Thomas. Right now though, he’s warming to his theme of ‘those pesky kids’… ‘I don’t want to sound like this old guy that’s berating the younger guys all the time,’ the 2018 Tour de France winner says as he relaxes one evening midway through the Tour of the Alps and before the start of the Giro d’Italia,…

2003 First-generation Tarmac E5 is made from a blend of aluminium and carbon tubes for light weight and stiffness 2006 Developed with input from Tom Boonen, the SL1 is the first full-carbon Tarmac, introducing Specialized’s FACT composite blend 2008 SL2 improves stiffness and comfort for riders of different heights using specific tube profiles for each size 2010 SL3 drops more than 150g in weight over SL2 thanks to refined fabrication methods 2010 The Tarmac wins the Tour de France under Team Saxo Bank’s Andy Schleck 2011 Mark Cavendish wins World Championships Road Race on a Venge, pipping Australia’s Matt Goss, riding a Tarmac, on the line 2011 SL4 arrives just one year after the SL3, with claimed 19% better stiffness-to-weight thanks to another revision in frame construction 2015 SL5 is…

There is a phrase in the Irish language, In Éirinn tá Neart – ‘In Ireland there is strength’, and it’s hard to think of a more apt description of the TransAtlantic Way. To tame every corner, every climb, every cliff-clinging road of this event takes the deepest resolve and resourcefulness. Over the course of this week-long, self-supported expedition, riders will not only be required to climb the equivalent of Everest three times over, they’ll find themselves sleeping under Gaelic football stands, foraging for food and sheltering in hedges, all in the name of conquering Ireland’s wildest roads. Setting out from Derry under the shadow of the Peace Bridge, riders pedal from the tip of Donegal, past the Gaeltacht, through Connemara and around the Ring of Kerry before a final push…

I remember having my mind blown when erstwhile colleague Peter Stuart (who now works for a small but competent cycling website as editor), interviewed a top aerodynamicist for Cyclist and returned with news that a classic glass Coke bottle is more aerodynamic thrown bottom first than pointy end first. ‘But how?!’ I raged as I smashed down my coffee cup and clawed at my eyes with spokes. The answer, of course, was a mixture of witchcraft and laminar airflow, and it’s this principal (along with the huge tyres) that makes the Extrema Italia what it is: a megabike. The down tube is 60mm wide where it meets the head tube, and 75mm wide at the BB end, totally un-aero sizes surely, because narrow is fast, right? It can be, but…