Mankind's gravitational pull towards mountain ranges – for recreation, at least – is a relatively recent phenomenon. Before Horace-Bénédict de Saussure's expedition to Mont Blanc in 1786, mountains were largely regarded as places of danger. People ventured onto them only when necessity demanded it: to hunt, wage war or keep watch over the land.

Nowadays, we positively throw ourselves at them. Every year, hikers, runners, skiers, rock climbers and, of course, cyclists are drawn to the mountains in their thousands. We cyclists, in particular, love nothing more than squaring up to a sky-bound ribbon of tarmac and letting rip.

Why? I believe the answer is twofold. Firstly, riding up a mountain pass is arguably the most satisfying experience it's possible to have on two wheels. Climbing a mountain is pain and pleasure in equal measure; purgatory and heaven rolled into one.

Secondly – and I think this is where the real attraction lies – mountains are places of unparalleled beauty. More than that, they have an uncanny ability to remind us where we fit in the grand scheme of things. Stand in the foothills of a great mountain range, watching the Earth's crust buckle into towering peaks, and it doesn't take long to think, "Oh yeah... I'm actually not that important after all." It's good to be humbled. It tends to make you less of an idiot.

Which is why Dan Baines, my colleague at Cycling Weekly, and I headed for Corsica – the most mountainous island in the Mediterranean – in the hope of becoming less idiotic.

Summit searching

It wasn't until we'd landed in Corsica and driven across the island to our accommodation that we realised just how mountainous it really was. This little French island is the very definition of dramatic, so much so I was left lost for words. I turned to Dan and simply offered him a selection of expletives; he concurred.

Yes, the landscape in Corsica is otherworldly and the climbs, well, they just didn’t know when to stop. Between us we've ridden most of the great passes of the Alps and the Pyrenees, yet there was something different about the roads here.

More by luck than design, we discovered the following morning that our accommodation sat at the foot of what Strava's heatmap suggested was one of the island's most popular climbs: the Col de la Vergio. At 32.9 kilometres long, the climb accumulates 1,496 metres of vertical ascent, averaging 4.4%.

Naturally, we decided to ride up it, at speed. A two-up time trial was in order.

We were very much ‘all the gear’; I was rocking a Team UAE issue Colnago V5RS with all the bells, whistles and weight-saving measures that make absolutely no difference to a chap who is partial to a pint and pork pie. Dan was astride an aero Factor Monza, specced for pure speed. I hoped my lightweight climbing machine would close the gap between our power-to-weight ratios; Dan’s Functional Threshold Power (FTP) was around 4.2 w/kg at the time, whilst mine was 3.9. However, I could hold 350 watts for an hour, to his 320. Regardless of who was stronger or more built to climb, I knew this was going to hurt.

The road that just kept going up

We set off on shallow slopes, with my fresh legs setting a 300-watt pace out of the small town of Porto.

“Did you see that?” Dan asked, looking a little concerned.

“No, I was too busy looking at my power meter,” I unashamedly replied.

“It said we have 33 kilometres to the summit.”

You guessed it, we hadn't researched the stats before we set off – perhaps our goal of reduced idiocy required more work than the climb could offer. Yet, before I’d had the time to compute just how decimated our quads would be at the top, Dan rode through for a turn, maintaining that same high-tempo effort. Death or glory. The race to the top of the Col de la Vergio was on.

The early kilometres of the mountain aren’t without their charm. After 5km you’re high enough that Porto is a sea-bordered speck enveloped by skyscraping granite crags. But the real beauty of this climb reveals itself after around 10 kilometres.

We’d been riding through-and-off for around 40 minutes, keeping the chain tight and the concentration levels high. But rounding a tight corner through a corridor of red granite walls, we seemingly rode through a portal and onto another planet. A naturally formed colosseum of a biblical scale presented itself: the road – which was now a kind of mantel piece, built into the side of the sheer granite mountain face – provided a sweeping arc, and looking across its unending forested expanse made me feel, well… irrelevant.

Who cares about time trialling to the top? Who cares about 300 pathetic watts? Evidently we did.

A glance back from Dan confirmed that he’d acknowledged what we were riding through. I replied with a fresh selection of rasped expletives. The race to the top continued.

Cyclists often talk about purgatorial ascents – the ones on which you seem to live an entire lifetime. Just when you think you're about to crest the summit, bam, the road kicks up again and you're back at the coal face, asking your legs to deliver more than could ever be reasonably expected of a pair of limbs. The Col de Vergio is one of those climbs.

The road surface smoothed out as we approached the small village of Evisa. Glass-like tarmac means speed and we sliced through the little settlement replete with quaint cafes spilling out onto the pavements. I was pacing us – a rare turn on the front – and I looked back at Dan as we rode studiously past a glacerie. The temperature was still in the mid-20s despite the fact we’d reached and breached 1,200 metres – an ice cream would’ve hit the spot.

But no, we’d come this far at pace, to stop now would be a brazen act of surrender. Pralines and pistachio would have to wait.

Leaving Eviso, the road – which up to now had been open and exposed – disappeared under dense canopy cover. We rode through pine and fir: families of wildboar snurgled, rock lizards sprinted along drainage gulleys, a whip snake skimmed across the tarmac, cow bells rung deep within the wood. We barely looked up for our work.

It had been an hour and 45 minutes since we left Porto and the big push to the summit was on. Sensing the end was in sight, Dan added a few watts. I clung to his back wheel like a limpet, determined that we’d reach the top in unison, determined to share the glory of dispatching this mammoth ascent.

Three hundred watts; three-twenty; three-thirty; must hold on. And then, there it was: the summit of the Col de Vergio. We rolled over the crest and brought our bikes to a standstill.

“That was a bit long, wasn’t it?,” I said

“I think it’s the longest climb I’ve ever ridden,” he replied.

As it turned out, what we’d ridden was the longest continuous climb in France, if you discount the 36.3km Val Thorens, which cheats with a descent between kilometres 11 and 14.

What was left was the rather splendid task of riding back down.

The outing amounted to little more than 45 miles, yet it was a very strong contender for the finest day's riding I've ever experienced. The Col de Vergio isn’t the steepest climb, and it’s certainly not the highest. But its unrelenting nature and ethereal scenery provided a unique kind of dreamy discomfort.

Corsica had been sitting patiently in the Mediterranean waiting for our wheels. And now it’s been discovered I’m going to struggle to see a cycling destination beyond it. I’m not sure it’s made me any less of an idiot but it reminded me exactly why I ride bicycles.

“Do better for female cyclists,” says Olivia Moore in a video that appears on my Instagram feed, a well-earned medal hanging proudly around her neck.

She isn’t criticising the route, the atmosphere or the volunteers at the Mallorca 312 gran fondo. In fact, she describes it as “an epic day”. Her frustrations lie elsewhere: the toilets.

According to Moore, there were too few toilet facilities at both the start line and the first feed station. She says the first stop had just four portaloos – catering for the 8,500 participants taking part in the mass-participation endurance event – three of which were out of use.

Unsurprisingly, she says, the queue for the remaining toilet – ironically labelled “male-only” – was “ridiculous”, leaving her waiting for 45 minutes. Moore says the queue meant she “missed the time cut off to do the 225 [km] route”, leaving her feeling “super disappointed” and “a little bit robbed” after putting in the training for the annual gran fondo which sees riders cover up to 312 kilometres around the Spanish island. The organisers of the Mallorca 312 did not respond when Cycling Weekly reached out for comment.

Moore wasn't alone. Nearly 380 comments beneath the video echo her frustrations, with riders sharing similar experiences at the same event and others across the cycling calendar. They describe lengthy toilet queues, jerseys labelled as ‘unisex’ that simply don't fit women well, and a broader feeling of being an afterthought.

Toilets may be the talking point of this particular sportive, but the issue runs much deeper. Across the sport, women raise concerns about everything from facilities and event logistics to representation, safety and inclusivity. If organisers want to attract more women to their events, are they doing enough to make them feel welcome?

The stats speak for themselves

Running has shown what's possible. In recent years, race organisers have improved the female experience through practical changes, inclusive policies and community-led initiatives, helping to drive a surge in women's participation.

Participation data reflects that progress, with younger runners approaching gender parity on race start lines. The London Marathon lists its 2026 gender split with 44% female registrations. A 26.2-mile run is perhaps a closer comparison to grand fondos and epic sportives than the 5km ParkRun events held across the UK every Saturday, but interestingly, the split there is similar, with ParkRun’s organisation stating a 44% female competitor count in 2019 alongside a 53% female registration figure.

Cycling sportives – timed mass-participation events, some more competitive than others – still attract relatively few women. Around one third of riders at L'Étape du Tour de France Femmes 2025 were women, compared with around 15% at Maratona Dles Dolomites 2026.

Amber Keegan, writer and founder of Athlete Interactions, recalls entering a Band of Climbers Peak District cycling event that publicly stated its ambition to increase female participation to 25%, a goal she says was later dropped without explanation. “There's no shame in trying and failing to improve the gender balance,” Keegan told us, “but silently backing away from your commitment felt pretty pants.”

Founder Stuart Hall says the ambition remains, with 25% a “stretch target” en route to an end goal of a 50/50 split for its Toughest 100 event. “After seeing how few women took part in 2023 [five out of 150 participants], we worked hard to encourage more women to take part in 2024, which you can see by the fact we had 12% female entries,” Hall says. “We set a target of 25% for female entries. This was exactly that, a target, which we did miss, but I think the fact we worked hard to speak to female cycling groups, influencers, communities, showed by the fact we had 12% female entries.”

Maximilian Wussler, founder of Red On Sports, organisers of The Gralloch gravel event – which features competitive racers as well as more relaxed sportives – has seen the contrast first-hand since launching the combined running and cycling event 'explorr Festival'.

“Since we expanded into running events, we’re seeing a roughly 50/50 split, and we’ve done nothing different on the marketing side,” he says. “Running is still fairly new to us, but our sense is that a lot of the gap is structural rather than about how you market it. Running seems to carry fewer of the barriers cycling does, and it has a much deeper, more established base of women taking part already. Gravel is catching up, but even after the real progress of the last few years, the best case is still around 20% women.”

So, what can cycling learn from running to ensure more women not only sign up, but return year after year?

Why do women still feel overlooked?

It's rarely just one issue that makes female cyclists feel overlooked. Like any great sportive, the overall experience is shaped by countless small details, from the moment entries open to the moment riders cross the finish line.

“Women are biologically different,” says Sophie Power, founder of sheRACES. “We have periods; we have pregnancy,” she notes, citing pregnancy deferral policies as a key driver for change. “But we're sociologically different as well, and that is the point that I think races don't take into account.

“From the age of five, girls don't think they're as good at sports as boys, so when races describe their events as the biggest, the baddest and toughest, that actually puts us [women] off.”

That does not mean women aren’t drawn to challenge goals. Many females are motivated by testing their limits. Rather, Powers’ point is that the way events frame difficulty can influence who feels confident enough to enter in the first place.

Samantha Varley, head of product and operations at Sportive Breaks UK, says increasing female participation won't be solved overnight.

“There are numerous barriers that can influence whether women feel able, supported and confident enough to take part in cycling events,” she says. “Addressing these challenges requires a shift from a one-size-fits-all approach.”

What does change look like in practice?

Attracting more women isn't simply about reserving places for them at the start line. “You've still got to make your event something that women want to race,” Power says.

She believes many of the changes are simple. SheRACES outlines nine commitments that she says every race should adopt as standard. “There's basically no excuse if you don't,” she adds.

The commitments include using diverse marketing imagery, introducing pregnancy deferral policies, giving women equal prominence in event communications, adopting a zero-tolerance approach to unacceptable behaviour and actively seeking participant feedback after race day.

For many women, deciding whether to enter begins long before race day. The images, language and information on an event website all influence whether riders feel an event is for them.

“If I see pictures of all white, skinny men, I don't think that race is for me,” says Power. “We want to see a diverse range of imagery of all types of bodies.”

SheRACES nine key commitments

• Show a diversity of athletes in marketing imagery.
• Ensure all prizes and rewards for women are of at least of equal value to those for men. This includes prize money, number of categories and a choice of female fit or unisex t-shirt.
• Review toilet and changing facilities to ensure they are sufficient and well communicated. Having period products available at start and finish lines, and where possible on course.
• Ensure the women’s race is given equal prominence in celebrations, social media posts, interviews and other communications.
• Allow women who fall pregnant before the race to transfer their place to a future event within two years (for non-ballot races, refunds or athlete transfers are also permissible).
• Communicate and enforce a no-tolerance policy for harassment of any kind (to include runners, all event volunteers and staff).
• Actively seek feedback from participants after each race and making best efforts to make changes to support them better.
• Make these commitments easy to find on my website or in participant information.
• Review compliance with the guidelines on a regular basis (annually as a minimum).

Varley also believes organisers need to think about how they present the challenge itself.

“Men frequently sign up first and worry about fitness later; women tend to be more cautious,” she says. “Strict event time cut-offs create a major fear factor, causing capable women to self-select out due to worry over their pacing.”

Alex Miller, founder of Lawless Coaching, supports this. She’s found that more women hesitate to enter events, not due to lack of fitness but because they don’t see themselves as competitive or fit enough compared to male participants.

“Mothers are also often concerned that they cannot prioritise training enough to be competitive,” Miller adds. “In recent years I've seen a huge shift in the amount of support for both women and beginners in these sports, groups and clubs running women-only and beginner-focused sessions supporting a first step into the sport.”

Varley also suggests showcasing average finish times alongside training advice and promotional imagery featuring riders of different abilities to reassure more women that they can do it.

Another important change is pregnancy deferral policies. “If a woman's going to have a baby, she shouldn't be penalised for that,” says Power. “Even having that in place just lets women know, even if they don't want to use it.”

Clear event day logistics can be just as influential. Keegan points to this year's Maratona Dles Dolomites as an event that helped put her mind at ease.

“The 138km sportive had six toilet and mechanical stops en route,” she says. “That was such a massive reassurance.”

Power believes organisers shouldn't underestimate the importance of communicating those details in advance. “Be clear that there are toilets – where are they and where are the stops?” she says. “Logistics are really important to women to feel confident that they could take this on.”

With sportives and gran fondos attracting large numbers of cyclists who will have varying attitudes towards group riding etiquette, event day culture matters too.

Power states that organisers should have clear codes of conduct, making it obvious what behaviour is and isn't acceptable, while giving riders assurance that any incidents reported will be acted upon.

Founder of women's cycling clothing brand, Luca, Luca Kuhn noticed a clear difference between events. “Riding was much friendlier at the Maratona compared to Mallorca 312, where people were overtaking left, right and centre,” she says. “It was really intimidating.”

The impact of these changes is already being seen. Etape Caledonia, highlighted repeatedly by women in response to the Instagram video, partnered with Women in Tri to encourage more women onto the start line. Female registrations increased tenfold, the event's 40-mile route achieved gender parity, and one in three female participants was riding their first sportive.

Moore, in her Instagram video, still described her sportive as “an epic day”. She simply wanted the experience around it to match. If cycling wants more women collecting medals around their necks, success won't be defined by one big change, but by getting the small details right.

The speed bump came out of nowhere. Barrelling at 60kph towards the one-kilometre-to-go banner on stage two of the Tour de Suisse, Urška Žigart was feeling confident. She darted out of a chase group, kicked ahead, and began closing the gap to a tearaway rider. The next moment, her body hit the ground like a rag doll.

“I have an image in my head where my bike is flying to one side and I’m flying to the other,” she tells Cycling Weekly. “But the next things are very blurry.”

The diagnosis could have been so much worse. Unconscious along the finishing straight, Žigart was rushed to hospital in Locarno, where the doctors diagnosed her with a broken jaw.

Just six weeks on, however, she’s racing at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, crowning a remarkable six-week recovery. “Remarkable?” she smiles, and tries to play it down. “I don’t know about that.” She then takes us back to the beginning.

“The last thing I remember [from before the crash] is, because the men raced after us, Tadej [Pogačar, my partner] and his UAE team bus was going to the parking on the left side of the road, so I moved to the left side of the group and I was waving to the bus.

“I remember the last person I saw was their soigneur waving back at me. I saw there was one girl in front, and I was thinking, ‘Ok, we’re not supposed to be pulling or attacking or whatever, but just let me close this gap and we can roll to the finish.’”

Then came the speed bump, which jolted Žigart through the air.

The 29-year-old's sports director, Jolien D’Hoore, was at the scene within minutes. “I’ve never seen something like this in my life,” she says. “She was unconscious for a few minutes. As soon as I saw that, I started running back to the team car, and then the other DS came to Urška. It was really scary – something I will never forget.”

Due to the simple nature of the fracture, Žigart was fortunate to not require surgery. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t in pain, though. “They gave me quite a lot of medication to keep me from moving,” the Slovenian says. “I was trying to show them I was in pain by sticking my fingers inside my mouth.

“But I have to say that, after that, I bounced back really quickly. Of course, we did a lot of concussion tests, we started slowly, but I had no symptoms, other than a small fracture at the mandibular joint.”

In the days after the crash, Žigart flew to Belgium to see a doctor, who checked her jaw was correctly aligned. Everything seemed stable, so she was given the green light to begin training again, at first on the turbo trainer at home. “Then I started pushing the doctor to let me go outside slowly, and it was up from there,” she says.

Eleven days passed before Žigart’s wheels touched the tarmac again. She began with an easy ride – “it was all very touch and go; I wasn’t sure how a speed bump or a little hole in the road was going to move my jaw” – but everything went smoothly. All of a sudden, racing the Tour de France looked like a possibility again.

At the start of July, Žigart flew to Tignes to join her team-mates at their pre-Tour altitude camp. The team chefs chopped up her food so she didn’t have to chew it very much. Out on the road, not only was she able to keep up, but with the determination to restore her fitness before the Grand Départ in Switzerland, she ended up finding some of her best form.

“Her shape is incredible,” says D’Hoore. “She’s really at full capacity. I would say she’s even better than in Suisse. Also her morale and everything, she’s really good. She’s here in a support role for Kim [Le Court-Pienaar], and she enjoys it so much. There’s no pressure on her. She will be there on the climbs, and that’s what she likes the most.

“In the end, I think she was very lucky. I think she had a guardian angel with her.”

Žigart agrees. On the eve of the race, she shared a long Instagram post saying she had “an angel looking out for me from above”. She’s now back on solid foods, pain free, and enjoying the carnival of the Tour – her third Grand Tour of the season.

“Now it’s six weeks, they say it’s as stable as it’s going to get, so it’s safe to race,” she says. “The body is an amazing thing.”

Marion Rousse has worn almost every hat in the cycling world. Born in northern France, she learnt to ride at the Roubaix Velodrome and went on to become national road champion in 2012. Three years later, however, at age 24 and earning no income from the sport – she was working part-time at a town hall to make ends meet – she retired from racing to pursue a career in media.

Today, Rousse is one of the most recognisable and influential figures in the sport. She’s the voice of cycling on France’s national broadcaster, France Télévisions, and directs the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, having spearheaded the race's highly anticipated revival since taking the reins in 2021.

“I was always sure of one thing with this race,” she said after the first edition in 2022. “Creating a women’s Tour de France wasn’t a gift that we were giving to women’s cycling. They simply deserve it and you see the proof each day.”

Ahead of this year's race, we sat down with Rousse for a Q&A.

How did you get into cycling?

I started when I was six years old. I come from a cycling family: my dad was a high-level amateur cyclist and my cousins, Laurent and David Lefèvre, were pros. As a little girl, I had a lot of energy, and I was bored of cheering on my dad from the side of the road. So I told my parents I wanted to ride myself. Initially, they weren’t on board because they said it was really hard for boys and would be even harder for a girl. They also said I was too young. My mum ended up taking me secretly to sign up.

You went on to turn pro. What has been the proudest moment of your career?

I had some amazing moments in my career, even if it was in a different era of women’s cycling, when we weren’t paid. Winning the French national road title [in 2012] in my home region in front of my family was nice. For me, sport is the best school for life: it teaches you about discipline and pushing your limits. My time as a pro helped me get where I am today in my career.

Why did you decide to retire from racing at 24?

Because I wasn’t paid. After I became French champion, Eurosport asked me if I wanted to try commentating on bike races. I did that for two years, but I got the feeling I wasn’t giving 100% in either of the two roles. At that time, I didn’t see the future of women’s cycling evolving so quickly, and since I wasn’t paid, I figured commentary gave me a good opportunity to stay in the industry I loved while also receiving a salary.

In 2021, you became the director of the Tour de France Femmes. How did that come about?

I’d heard on the grapevine that they were bringing back a women’s Tour de France. Then, one day, [men’s race director] Christian Prudhomme called me and said, “We’re going to start the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. We need someone to organise it, and we want it to be you. We don’t have any other names. Take some time to think about it.”

Of course, when someone gives you an opportunity like that, you don’t have any other choice than to accept. I knew that the evolution of women’s cycling would come through the Tour de France; it was the only race that could get us recognised by the masses, bring in big audiences, and attract sponsors. I told Christian, “OK, let’s do it.”

Did you have any doubts about taking on the role?

Not really. Obviously it’s a huge role, but I knew that with ASO behind it, it would be run by experts. I also already had experience that I knew would help me in the role: as a former high-level sportsperson who knew and had lived through the past struggle of women’s cycling, I was probably more able to make the right decisions at the right moments than a man who had never been part of women’s cycling. I also had my media hat, and in the first few years, the race needed someone who was known to the public. It was all quite natural.

You also have your family life with Julian Alaphilippe, son Nino – and of course your dog Eliott. How do you find juggling everything?

It’s a unique lifestyle, and Nino’s arrival shook up a lot of things – the arrival of a baby for anyone is a big thing. We had to find a balance. Being able to count on my parents helps me a lot with fitting in all my work trips. I’m very lucky to have a little boy, five years old now, who is happy and understands the situation. And Eliott’s great – he’s so sociable, I don’t even know if he knows I’m his owner. He just adores everyone.

Has the rapid growth of the Tour de France Femmes surprised you?

The fact it’s been this fast, yes. I was confident, because I trusted ASO and I knew that if they put the resources in to make it work, it would be a success. Last year, Christian Prudhomme was with me at the race – we did a few stages in the car together – and he said, “Marion, I no longer see the difference [between the men’s and women’s Tours] in the number of people at the side of the roads.” Our big hope was that people would no longer see a men’s Tour and a women’s Tour, but rather the Tour de France.

Do you feel pressure to grow the race every year?

No, but we put pressure on ourselves to come up with an exciting route and meet the high standards of the Tour de France. It needs to be prestigious. The hardest gamble for us was making women’s cycling a household topic for people, even though they didn’t really get to see women’s racing on TV.

In the first edition, I went to speak to the wider public, and they struggled to name a single rider. Now I’m really happy because everyone knows the riders; you see signs at the side of the road, and journalists talk about end-of-season transfers. We’ve really overcome an obstacle and now people don’t watch because it’s men’s or women’s cycling, they watch for the performances.

How do you respond to people who say the race should be three weeks long?

You’ve really got to put the race in its context: barely five years before [the race began], there were hardly any riders in the peloton who were paid. That’s very recent. The Tour de France Femmes is there to accompany the evolution of women’s cycling, and we can’t evolve quicker than women’s cycling itself. If we do, it’ll implode.

There was a Tour de France Femmes before us, the Grand Boucle Féminine, and it disappeared. It would be a catastrophe if, in eight years, we have to say, “It doesn’t work, we grew too quickly, and it’s all imploded.” Yes, it’s evolving quickly, but we’re not at the same stature as the men’s peloton yet. We also shouldn’t put any barriers in our way, and one day there might be more stages, but we won’t go from nine days to 21 overnight. It will need to be done little by little.

The rider union The Cyclists’ Alliance stated in May that women’s cycling is in danger and “built on fragile foundations”. What’s your sense of the health of the sport?

Bad. We talk a lot about women’s cycling, but it’s the same outlook on the men’s side, too. At the top of the pyramid, you have the men’s and women’s Tours, which are very solid and attract the best riders because we have the resources to organise at this level. But it’s becoming difficult to organise bike races. At many levels, races are made possible by volunteers, and everything is expensive. The bottom of the pyramid is really fragile.

What have been the defining moments of the first four editions of the Tour de France Femmes for you?

There have been many. We’ve been very lucky. We’ve had four different winners and that’s great. One of my favourite Tour de France Femmes memories was giving the start on the Champs-Élysées [in 2022]. I popped out the roof of the car, turned around, saw the peloton with the road behind them, and knew it was a big moment for women’s cycling.

Then there were the four seconds that separated Kasia Niewiadoma and Demi Vollering at the summit of Alpe d’Huez [in 2024]. That was a crazy scenario. And Pauline [Ferrand-Prévot]’s victory last year, the first Frenchwoman to win the yellow jersey. The number of people who came out to cheer her on at the roadside, the TV audiences we had on France Télévisions – we peaked at eight million viewers, the second highest that year, including the men’s race [the first was the Paris stage in Montmartre] – it’s incredible. Pauline and I started around the same time and I know her well, so it was a nice quirk of fate.

What does it mean to have a French winner? Have you noticed more home interest in the race?

Oh yes. We’ve waited so long to see a French man or woman take the yellow jersey again, and now it’s been done. It brought together an enormous amount of people. Pauline already had a big fan base, with lots of people behind her, especially after [winning mountain bike gold at] the Paris Olympics. For the development of women’s cycling, it was a steal to have her return to the road.

Do you think Ferrand-Prévot will be the first person to win the race twice?

I hope so for her. People have been questioning Pauline’s form a lot this year, saying she’s not as strong as last year, but I think she’s on the same trajectory – I’m not too worried for her. She has this ability to fix an objective in the year, and arrive 100% ready. She’ll be very strong. That said, it’s true that Vollering has taken a step up. I think the level has improved since last year. You’ve also got riders like [Vuelta Femenina winner] Paula Blasi, who will be interesting to follow, and Marlen Reusser, with the time trial. I think it will be a bit closer than last year, but I still believe in Pauline.

Quickfire round

What was your first bike? It was a black Alan road bike with downtube shifters.

Who was your childhood cycling hero? When I was really young, I loved Erik Zabel. Then when I grew up a bit I was a Tom Boonen fan.

What’s your favourite place to ride? Now, with my lower level, I like going to Calpe [in Spain]. It’s a bit hilly, but you don’t have to climb mountains. The south of France and the Alps are also great.

Your favourite Monument? Paris-Roubaix.

Your favourite type of stage: mountains, sprint or breakaway? Not sprints, especially when I commentate on them for seven hours and nothing happens! High-mountain stages are always great. But as a commentator, you’re always less disappointed with the Classics-y stages, where there’s a fight from the beginning, compared to the high mountains. With those, you know you’re going to have a good afternoon in front of the TV.

Your favourite mountain in France? I love Mont Ventoux. I’ve climbed it five times.

Your favourite sport after cycling? I really like following biathlon and athletics. But especially biathlon, because it’s in the winter and there’s no cycling to watch.

Who’s the next star of women’s cycling? Célia Gery.

What do you do to relax? I go through real on-off periods, so when I’m at home, I’m a real mother hen. I love going for walks or to restaurants with my son.

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 30 July 2026. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

Cyclists are always chasing personal bests. Can you eke out a faster climb? Can you push a bit more power? Or can you beat your mate to the town sign?

For Charles Hall, who finished as the fastest amateur rider on the brutal 200km Icelandic gravel race The Rift last weekend, his PB was something else entirely. “The event was sponsored by a hot dog factory, so it was essentially just endless hot dogs [at the finish]. So, I said hello to nine hot dogs,” he explains confirming he’s never eaten that many in one sitting before. “I think that's got to be near an entire jar of hot dogs.”

“I don't really think sports nutritionists around the world would advise it for recovery fuel. But, I think my body was craving something and it saw that and it thought that's what I needed,” he says.

Hall, who has a full time job working in a market research firm, wasn’t even meant to be in Iceland that weekend, let alone trying to refuel from burning 7,000 calories in seven hours.

“The Rift were running a competition on Instagram. It was very much, comment, share, put something on your story for a chance to get in… I was like, no one ever wins them, but I thought, you know what, why not?”

But Hall, who rides for Rule 28 Factory Racing, did win. With just three weeks to go he had to book a flight to Iceland. But all the accommodation in and around the start town of Hvolsvöllur, home to just over 1,000 people, was booked, so in less than ideal race preparation he’d sleep in a tent.

Luckily for Hall he had been due to be in Essex for the ACME Grand West audax which takes them from Essex to the Welsh coast and so already had the day booked off work. “I left work on the Thursday evening, arrived there basically midnight, pitched the tent, and then just kind of went from there. It was all quite a whirlwind of a weekend,” he recalled.

Hall wasn’t totally unprepared. He tries to get at least two hours riding in each day, mostly on his way to and from work, and four hours a day at the weekend. But his hopes weren’t high.

“Obviously, I go into each race thinking you've got to give it your all, especially when you spend so much money and time to go away. But I was feeling a bit rough. So I called my parents, and my girlfriend was like, you know what? It's such pretty scenery. I'll just [take my] time and enjoy what's around me."

“But as soon as I got in the bunch amongst the other riders, riding shoulder-to-shoulder against some of the pros you can't. I just thought I'd see how long I can hold on to the front group.”

Contributing turns alongside a group of pros he recognised from their social media profiles Hall lasted much longer than he expected, only dropping from the front group 130km into the 200km race. “I surprised myself quite a lot. My normalized power for the first two hours, was over 350 watts. I set an average power for 20 minutes near 370 watts,” he says.

By the time he dropped back, the race had climbed most of its 2,600m of ascent up onto the plains of the Fjallabak Nature Reserve and was descending slowly back towards the start. “I was kind of in no man's land, like the next 70km. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, not really knowing where anybody was,” he recalls. “Occasionally, a rider would pass through, but they were an elite rider, not an age group rider. So, the last bit was quite tense.”

The terrain was also starting to take its toll. “The terrain itself was by far the hardest terrain I've ever ridden. I train in around Richmond Park, so it's fairly champagne gravel in Richmond Park, so this was very much just like a surreal experience.

“It was quite open farm roads not like the fire roads that you would get up in [gravel race] The Gralloch in Scotland, no tricky single track, just hard terrain. Also, you had to constantly look out for big hard volcanic rocks because they were very much hiding in the soil. There would just be flat gravel, and suddenly a massive rock,” he says. “At the end, my hands were just covered with blisters from the constant vibrations.”

Having wrapped up an impressive result, he was also 22^nd among the pro riders, it was time for a quick beer, nine hotdogs and packing his stuff up ready for an early morning flight back to the UK ready for a hero’s welcome in the office the next day.

“In the Monday morning meeting they ask, ‘How's everybody's weekend? What did people get up to?’ I said, ‘I went to Iceland and won a bike race’," he recalls. "They said, ‘Oh, nice. That's interesting.’ And then the conversation moves on.”

Mixing an electrolyte drink had become a firm part of my morning routine. The moment I was downstairs, I’d be reaching for a snazzily branded sachet. It didn’t matter what workout I had planned – I’d always find an excuse to accessorise my water. I must have tried every brand and flavour on the market, easily attracted by slick packaging and a novel taste, rarely glancing at the actual ingredients. But then I began to ponder the extra sodium I was consuming, which ranged from 300mg per sachet to a massive 1,000mg hit.

That 1,000mg is a whole gram of pure sodium – which is where the maths gets alarming. Because salt is only about 40% sodium, you have to multiply any sodium figure by 2.5 to find the true salt equivalent. Suddenly, that 1g of sodium becomes 2.5g of salt. Drinking just two of those heavy duty sachets meant I was downing 5g of salt – dangerously close to the NHS daily maximum of 6g, before I’d even eaten a meal. While sodium is the main electrolyte lost in sweat, these numbers made me question my habit. Was this actually supporting my training and health, or was I just heavily salting my water to make it more interesting?

That question led me to look at salt intake more broadly. A recent study by the British Heart Foundation found that the average Brit consumes the equivalent salt found in 155 packets of crisps each week – around 8.4g per day, roughly 40% more than the advised limit. Consuming too much salt carries risks – but more on that later. First, where do electrolytes fit into that picture? Do we really need them day to day, or are they better reserved for very long rides in hot weather?

What are electrolytes?

Electrolytes – sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium – are essential minerals the body needs to function properly. They play vital roles in maintaining fluid balance, transmitting nerve signals, enabling muscle contractions, and balancing blood pH. When we exercise, the body cools itself by sweating, and because sweat is derived from your blood plasma and extracellular fluid, it contains dissolved minerals – predominantly sodium. But to what extent do we need to replace the electrolytes we sweat out?

As a sports nutritionist for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Will Girling works with riders tackling the world’s biggest races, including the Tour de France, where carefully managing fluid and sodium losses over long, hot stages is critical. Failing to replace such losses could cause serious problems. “At its most extreme,” said Girling, “that could include hyponatraemia [low blood sodium levels, below the normal range of around 135-145 mmol/L]. More commonly, you might experience dehydration, headaches, nausea and a reduced ability to exercise.” But what about for recreational cyclists – do we need to take similar precautions?

Electrolytes don’t directly hydrate you, but they help your body retain and use the fluid you drink more effectively. This distinction is widely misunderstood, reckons Dr Lewis James from Loughborough University. “People mistakenly think that by having an electrolyte product, they’re getting better hydration, so they don’t focus on the thing that matters most – fluid intake,” he said. “The electrolyte content won’t magically make them more hydrated, not unless they are also drinking the correct amount of water they need.”

According to the experts, electrolyte use is considered most useful during sustained exercise lasting longer than 60 minutes, in hot environments, or for individuals who consistently lose relatively high amounts of sodium in their sweat, often indicated by signs such as white salt marks on clothing or sweat that stings the eyes.

Electrolytes drive hydration through a process called osmosis. In simple terms, water naturally moves toward areas with a higher concentration of sodium to balance things out. Because water always follows sodium, higher sodium levels essentially prompt the body to ‘hold on’ to more fluid. “Electrolytes assist water absorption and retention, so anything you drink can contribute more readily to the body water pool if electrolytes are present,” explained Professor Stuart Galloway from the University of Stirling.

Much of the time, we replenish electrolytes naturally through the foods we eat day to day: sodium from salt, potassium from bananas and potatoes, and magnesium from nuts, seeds, and leafy greens. During prolonged or very intense exercise, however, particularly in hot conditions, supplementation can offer a convenient way to replace what’s lost through sweat.

What’s inside the sachets?

Brands selling electrolytes are becoming increasingly visible, with the global electrolyte powder market alone expected to exceed $700m (£530m) within the next four years. Ingredient lists vary significantly between brands, but sodium is usually the primary ingredient, alongside potassium, magnesium and calcium. Many products also go beyond basic electrolytes. Some include carbohydrates to provide a quick energy source, while others also contain caffeine, amino acids, or “performance blends” designed to boost alertness or gut health. Flavourings, sweeteners such as stevia or sucralose, and anti-caking agents are also commonly used to improve taste and shelf stability.

The language used to market these products makes big, often vague promises. Some brands position electrolytes as an everyday essential, even those with up to 1,000mg of sodium, claiming benefits such as improved energy, enhanced performance, sharper focus and reduced fatigue. As a result, the lines between evidence-based sports nutrition and more questionable “wellness” fads have become increasingly blurred.

DIY it at home

Want to ditch the expensive sports drinks? Dr Carrie Ruxton’s DIY alternative takes seconds to mix and costs mere pennies.

To make 500ml, mix the following ingredients:

• 150–200ml 100% orange juice
• 300–350ml water
• 1 sachet of oral rehydration salts (like Dioralyte or a generic supermarket brand) for hot weather or sweat- heavy sessions.
• Want an even cheaper fix? Swapping the sachet for a single gram of standard table salt provides about 400mg of sodium for next to nothing.

Do we need them, and if so, when?

With electrolyte powders and tablets now regular fixtures in the supermarket, it would be easy to assume they’re an essential part of every rider’s training routine. But for most cyclists, the reality is more nuanced. “There’s salt everywhere in all of our diets,” James said. “Most of us get a lot more than we need on a daily basis, so I would question whether it’s needed for someone who is recreationally active and mainly exercising for health purposes or enjoyment.”

Girling echoed this view, adding that for exercise lasting less than two hours, hydrating beforehand and drinking to thirst during is generally sufficient, unless conditions are very hot or sweat sodium losses are unusually high. In these situations, consuming an electrolyte drink before exercise may help support fluid balance from the outset. “If exercise is prolonged – over two hours – you probably want to be considering it [electrolytes],” Girling added, recommending cyclists also check the sodium content of their gels and carbohydrate drinks.

However, many factors influence electrolyte requirements. Galloway points out that there’s no one-size fits-all approach. “It depends on how long the ride is going to be, what the conditions are like, what else the rider might be eating or drinking during that ride, and individual differences,” he said. The demands of a steady cafe ride in spring are very different from those of a four-hour ride or race at the height of summer. For James, the conversation changes when riders are training at a high level, completing multiple sessions a day, or preparing for events in hot environments. In these situations, sodium losses through sweat may exceed dietary intake, potentially affecting both performance and recovery.

For recreational cyclists, electrolyte supplementation becomes useful during back-to-back training days in hot weather or on longer, more demanding sessions where sweat losses are higher. The estimated average sweat sodium loss is between 800 and 950mg per litre of sweat, although this varies considerably between individuals owing to genetics and heat adaptation, with reported values ranging from around 200mg to 2,000mg per litre. While sweat sodium tests are available at a cost, most sports nutritionists consider them an unnecessary expense for everyday riders. Instead, simple observation is usually enough: riders who notice white marks on their kit after a ride correctly infer that they have lost significant amounts of sodium.

Sodium is the primary electrolyte lost in sweat, so that should be the main focus. James explained that, while other electrolytes (potassium, magnesium, and calcium) are essential for normal bodily function, there is limited evidence that supplementing them during exercise provides additional benefits. The consensus among the experts we consulted was that hydration strategies can be simple and cheap. The body doesn’t distinguish the sodium in table salt from the sodium in a supplement. “One gram of salt contains around 400mg of sodium,” Girling pointed out, suggesting that you don’t necessarily need to spend money on sachets and tablets.

Across the board, the experts suggested that performance generally begins to decline once dehydration exceeds 2% of body weight, meaning mild dehydration during shorter or lower-intensity rides is usually well tolerated by the body. “As you go beyond 2% dehydration, you may begin to experience brain fog, lose concentration, feel greater fatigue and you’ll start to heat up, as you’ve less fluid to keep your temperature down,” said Dr Carrie Ruxton, dietitian and co founder of Salt St Andrews gym.

To estimate your own fluid losses, weigh yourself before and after a ride. As a guide, a 70kg rider who loses 2% of their body weight, or 1.4kg, during a ride will have lost around 1.4 litres of fluid. How quickly you reach this level of dehydration depends on your sweat rate, which varies depending on temperature, intensity, and individual physiology.

Can you have too many electrolytes?

Supplementing with electrolytes may be useful for riders covering long distances in very warm weather, but if you’re regularly emptying sachets into your water, can you have too much of a good thing? “It will all come down to salt balance over the day,” James said. “If they’re consuming too much salt, then there could be negative effects.” One of the biggest concerns around electrolyte products is excessive sodium intake. Too much salt over time has been linked to high blood pressure, a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. For those who already have high blood pressure, Ruxton stressed the importance of monitoring the combined sodium intake from food or supplements.

The experts consulted all agreed that healthy, active individuals are unlikely to run into problems from occasional electrolyte use around training. “Generally, if you’re young and active anyway, with a healthy balanced diet, your body is good at sorting out how much salt and how much other electrolytes it needs,” said Galloway. “We excrete the excess and retain what we need.” More immediate issues tend to come from overuse during exercise. According to Girling, excessively concentrated drinks can contribute to gastrointestinal distress and may even slow carbohydrate absorption, potentially impacting performance. Higher sodium intake can also lead to short-term fluid retention, showing up as slight weight fluctuations or a bloated feeling after use. “That’s only important if you’re doing an activity or racing where it’s important not to gain weight the next day,” Girling said. Ultimately, electrolytes are best viewed as a tool rather than a daily necessity – useful in the right conditions, but otherwise pointless. As Ruxton pointed out, electrolytes should be treated similarly to energy gels – used strategically. “It’s about using these things in a planned way and doing the planning when you’re training,” she said.

Instead of reaching for an electrolyte sachet first thing in the morning, I’ll be taking a more mindful approach. For most of us, especially those training in cooler climates like the UK, electrolyte supplements aren’t a daily necessity. They have their place – particularly during longer rides, in the heat, or when sweat losses are high – but otherwise, most of us are likely to maintain electrolyte balance through our normal diet. Since writing this article, I’ve already kicked my electrolyte habit, and instead I’m paying closer attention to the amount of salt in my diet, which thankfully appears to be relatively low. For now, the sachets will stay in the cupboard – until I really need them.

How much should we aim to consume?

Lisa Charlebois spoke to a range of experts in search of a baseline intake suggestion.

Dr. Cristhian Montenegro – PhD in human bioenergetics, with a focus on cardiovascular and muscle physiology – argues the baseline sodium question is more nuanced than nutrition labels suggest.

"Sodium for cyclists during exercise is tied to the amount of water they are looking to retain or replace," he says. “Sodium and carbohydrates like glucose and sucrose all help with the retention of water, so the amount of sodium supplementation will not only depend on water intake but also the total other water-retaining sugars in drink mix or gels. In short, up to 500mg is a good baseline range if you’re drinking one 500ml bottle per hour.

"Generally, 500 to 1,000mg of sodium per hour is justified for performance-oriented hard efforts, as long as it is ingested correctly and for the right reasons, essentially with water, for water replenishment," he says. "If it is hot and an athlete is working hard and generating metabolic heat, total sodium consumption may be even higher."

However, he draws a sharp line between the elite athletes and the everyday rider. "As with most things marketed using professional athletes, us ‘mere mortals’ will get by with much less, especially on moderate intensity rides."

Andrea Rumschlag, a Registered and Licensed Dietitian, cites the general guideline of 300 to 600mg per hour. "I always like to remind athletes (or any consumer for that matter) to consider who is selling you something," she says. "Higher levels of sodium are typically needed for moderately intense activity exceeding two to eight or more hours. Otherwise, the average sweater doing one to two hours may be just fine with a sports drink, water, and a salty snack post-ride."

Frank Overton, founder of FasCat Coaching, with a Masters in Physiology and a USA Cycling Level 1 accreditation, puts it plainly: "Sodium loss varies wildly between people, roughly anywhere from 100 to 2,000mg per hour. That's why a one-size-fits-all 1,000mg product is ideal for some riders and overkill for others. The answer is genuinely individual."

The general consensus was that, for rides under two hours in cool conditions, water and food will work well. Rides from two to four hours, electrolytes in the 300 to 500mg range are reasonable. For rides over four hours, in heat, or for known heavy sweaters, higher sodium supplementation may be genuinely beneficial.

Sweat tests are available for those who really want to know if they’re losing more or less sodium than the average rider through sweat. Lindsey Hunt, MSc, PhD and Senior Sports Scientist at Precision Hydration, which offers the testing and tailored electrolyte drinks, told us: “Sweat rate you can train and measure. But how much sodium you lose in that sweat is largely down to your genes, and it barely shifts with fitness or acclimatisation. We see people losing anywhere from around 200mg of sodium per litre of sweat to over 2,000mg — that's a tenfold difference between two riders who look identical on paper. So if you're a salty sweater doing long, hot rides, generic advice can leave you a long way short without you ever knowing why.”

In October 2024, I discovered a stack of old copies of The Bicycle from the 1930s, tucked away in my father's wardrobe. They had belonged to my great-uncle, Bill Mills, who founded the magazine 90 years ago. Intrigued, I began piecing together his life. In the course of my research, a chance exchange with cycling historian Feargal McKay revealed that, in 1947, Bill had organised an Anglo-French stage race. The first race to cross the English Channel and the first backed by a national newspaper, it was designed to pull British cycling out of the post-war gloom ahead of the 1948 London Olympics. A radical plan, then - so why had I never heard of it?

The race, like Bill himself, has been all but forgotten. By coincidence, or something stranger, I had cycled a route similar to the race, albeit in reverse, shortly before discovering Bill's magazines. The chain of serendipities seemed to beckon to me to uncover the story behind the lost race that could have changed the course of British cycling.

Continental aspiration

By 1947, Bill was already a significant figure in British cycling. He had been devoted to the sport since boyhood, and as a young rider living in Brighton, he frequently travelled to France to watch European races. In his own racing, he rose through the club ranks to become one of Britain's leading time triallists. But it was mass-start racing that captured his heart.

After riding professionally with Swiss Hour record-holder Oscar Egg's team and crashing heavily in the 1932 Rome World Championships, Bill returned to England with a Continental vision for mass-start racing - and a taste for Italian gelati and red wine. Together with the forceful Vic Jenner, his GB team-mate in Rome, he organised closed circuit events at Brooklands, which soon became popular, proving that time trials were not the only way to race. A few years later, in 1936, Bill drew on his experience working for the News Chronicle to launch The Bicycle. Bold in his patriotic vision, he strove to shake up British cycling and keep pace with our European rivals.

Home Olympics ahead

Life in post-war Britain was bleak, defined by rationing, austerity and social upheaval. Out of the rubble and financial ruin, the 1948 Olympic bid aimed to restore national morale and international standing. Yet when London won the bid, the established cycling nations were alarmed. Britain was an eccentric outlier where mass-start racing was banned and instead riders raced against the clock in secret at dawn, cloaked in alpaca coats. There were doubts about whether the country could successfully stage an Olympic cycling event.

Bill was more optimistic: he believed British riders could be made Olympics-ready, provided they were exposed to European-style racing. He came up with an ingenious plan: a three-day Anglo-French cycling match. Stages one and two would be run under French mass-start rules, and stage three would be a traditional British time trial. Each nation would enjoy a home advantage.

By this time, Bill was working for the News Chronicle, and after much persuading, his bosses agreed to sponsor his race as part of Britain's Olympic campaign, stumping up £2,000 (roughly £95,000 today). Organisational support came from Bill's long-term friend and renowned French cycling journalist Jean Leulliot. Only one hurdle remained: securing approval from Britain's divided cycling authorities.

The go-ahead at last

World War Two might have ended, but a civil war was being fought between cycling's governing bodies over mass-start racing. The National Cyclists' Union (NCU) backed Bill's event without hesitation, nailing its colours to the mast with the slogan, "Not a single Olympic cycling title must leave this country." But because the race included a time trial, it also needed approval from the Road Time Trials Council (RTTC), which saw only danger and demanded full compliance with its regulations, including keeping races secret. The result was farcical: newspapers across the world would publish the race details, yet the News Chronicle would not be permitted to do so until the race had finished. With its back to the wall, the paper withdrew its sponsorship.

Bill responded in his usual outspoken style, publishing an article in The Bicycle that denounced the RTTC's decision as a monumental obstruction to Olympic progress and a blow to Britain's international standing. Matters escalated when Percy Stallard's rebel group, the British League of Racing Cyclists, announced News of the World backing for its Brighton to Glasgow race. Suddenly the establishment risked losing control altogether. Afraid of losing face, the NCU appealed to the UCI, which overruled the RTTC and issued an international permit. In March 1947, Bill triumphantly announced that the race was back on.

He pressed on with arranging trains, boats, customs clearance, police escorts, meals and hotels, chores made even more onerous by post-war scarcities. The race was christened the 'News Chronicle, Paris to London Anglo-French Road Race'. Teams were selected and dates fixed for the Whitsun weekend, 24-26 May 1947. Continental cycling was coming to Britain.

Heroic home victory

Under blue skies and a blazing sun, 30 slick, well-equipped French riders rolled up beside Le Bourget airfield, 10km north of Paris. The comparatively shambolic British team looked on uneasily, eyeing up their rivals' CO2 inflators, derailleur gears and gleaming alloy fittings. The playing field was far from level.

Britain's race got off to a disastrous start. Bill observed loose gear levers, broken cables, burst tyres, a snapped saddle and riders swapping machines mid-race. The lack of British teamwork was, in Bill's words, "almost laughable". Yet there was a flash of promise. Britain's Ernie Clements somehow reached the Lens track first, only to skid on loose concrete and surrender the stage to France's Dominique Forlini. Even so, two Britons made the top 10. One was George Fleming.

Overnight in Lens, a miracle took place: the British learned to ride as a unit. On cobbles early in the stage, under relentless heat, they attacked. The French, divided by interclub loyalties, refused to work together. Sensing disorder, the British seized the initiative and forced a break, with only one Frenchman able to respond. Seventeen miles from Calais, Fleming made a solo breakaway.

Watching the Briton attack into a headwind, the French journalists scoffed at his chances. They were soon eating their words. Bill clocked Fleming at 22.4mph as the gap extended beyond two minutes. Rushing onto the finish, he reported the moment a solitary figure appeared: "Is it Fleming? Of course it is! Desperately tired, he comes up to the finishing line. His head hangs; he cannot raise it even for a smile." "How was it, George?" Bill asked. "The last few miles were a bit hard," came the reply.

Back on English roads for the final stage TT, Fleming's strength against the clock proved decisive. At Herne Hill Velodrome, before a crowd of 10,000, he was declared the overall winner. For the first time in history, the British public watched one of their own triumph in an international cycling race and on home soil too.

Great expectations

For Bill, it felt like a beginning. Cycling was no longer dismissed by the national press as a moribund, irrelevant sport. British riders had entered the international picture, and he hoped the race had set a precedent. Buoyed by the headlines and profit, the News Chronicle handed Bill an increased budget of £3,000 for a sequel. "Ask for more if you think it necessary," they told him, "we want an even bigger and better race." Bill planned to widen the international field, creating an annual pre-Olympics showdown. It looked set to become a regular fixture, a world-class race linking France and Britain in a sporting partnership par excellence.

The governing bodies' truce proved short-lived, however. Jenner, formerly Bill's ally, had grown sceptical of mass-start racing and now, taking the RTTC's side, was locked in a dispute with the News Chronicle's promoter. He insisted on a traditional early start, for safety's sake. What had worked in practice was now overruled by bureaucracy and obstinacy.

Jenner revived a 1939 agreement that stripped the NCU of its right to object in defence of an Ilam start. The UCI could not bail them out this time. A meeting was called in the hope of compromise. An hour later, Bill received a memo from the News Chronicle: "Scrub Paris-London. It's all off." There was no alternative sponsor waiting in the wings and no organising body capable of stepping in. The race would never be repeated.

For Bill, the failure to reach an agreement was yet another example of egos and internal bickering holding back the sport. Fleming shared his frustration in an open letter published in The Bicycle on 14 April 1948, arguing that Paris-London had taught Britain more about road racing than had any domestic event before or since. Without races like it, he warned, Britain would never produce world or Olympic road champions.

Enduring legacy

Fleming was proved right. Britain won no individual road cycling medal at the 1948 Olympics. The ultimate verdict came from the results: Olympic gold was won by France's José Beyaert, who had placed third in Paris-London the year before. Britain's first post-war Olympic gold in road cycling would not come until Nicole Cooke's victory in Beijing, 60 years later. The governing bodies' bickering would continue until the British Cycling Federation was formed in 1959, delaying British riders' progress in elite road races by decades. Had Paris-London survived beyond 1947, it might have transformed British cycling's trajectory. Bill had understood what the sport needed to flourish in Britain, an established annual international stage race to rally national ambition, to learn from, and against which to measure.

In 1965, Bill approached the Daily Mail (then owner of the News Chronicle) to ask whether it was interested in reviving the race. He received no reply. On 2 April, 1965, Bill took his own life. He was 58. The weekend before his death, he had written his final article, about his dream of a Paris-London return; it was published posthumously on 17 April, 1965 in this magazine. The circumstances of Bill's death are not fully known to our family, but we do know that cycling had given him his purpose, and he had fought for its future to the detriment of his health and second marriage. It narrowed his world, and eventually the vision that had sustained him no longer held.

Paris-London left its mark, and so had Bill. It was a race that mattered, and a moment when Britain showed it could be a credible cycling nation. Its success prompted other national newspapers to seek cycling races to sponsor, eventually leading to the Daily Express's backing of the Tour of Britain in 1951. I will ride London-Paris again this summer, this time carrying with me the full story behind my great-uncle's creation and what it meant to him. And when the men's and women's Tour de France cross the Channel next summer, it will feel to me as though the spirit of Bill's race has finally returned.

THE PATH TO OLYMPIC ROAD RACE GOLD

Despite massed start road racing in the UK being in its infancy, Bill Mills's dream was for Great Britain to win Olympic gold at the 1948 London Olympics. In the end it would take another 60 years to achieve that goal on the road. Here are the major events along the way:

1942 First massed start race - Percy Stallard runs rebel Llangollen to Wolverhampton road race

1947 Paris-London - Bill Mills's race proves Britain has an appetite for major cycling events

1948 London Olympics - silver medal in the team road race

1951 Tour of Britain - the first major domestic stage race begins

1955 Tour de France - British team competes for the first time

1958 Tour stage win - Brian Robinson becomes first Briton to win a Tour stage

1959 Formation of the BCF - BLRC and NCU unify and form the British Cycling Federation

1965 Road world champion - Tom Simpson becomes Britain's first world champion on the road

1974 Tour's first UK visit - stage two of the Tour de France takes place on Plympton by-pass

1996 Lottery funding lands - the BCF is one of many British sports to receive major financial backing thanks to the National Lottery

2008 Olympic road race gold - Nicole Cooke secures the long-awaited victory in Beijing

This feature was originally published in the 21 May 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only). Digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazines Direct.

After years of speculation, I can finally provide a definitive answer to one of humanity's oldest questions: bears do indeed shit in the woods.

I was – against my better judgement – alone under dense canopy cover in the Carpathian Mountains, just south of the city of Brasov in Romania. The range yawns some 1,500 kilometres across Eastern Europe – from Ukraine to Czechia – and is home to Europe’s highest density of brown bears, wolves and lynx.

Brasov is known, quite alarmingly, as the City of Bears.

“Avoid the parks after dark,” our taxi driver told us during the journey from the airport to the AirBnB. “Bears will come down from the mountains to look for a late supper, and if you take them by surprise, well…,” he let the sentence hang. We got the gist.

Brown bears – Ursus arctos, if you're feeling Latin – sit just one rung below grizzlies on the ladder of things you really don't want to annoy. If you ever see one, it ideally wants to be through a very powerful pair of binoculars or from the safety of an armoured vehicle.

Yet here I was, on a bicycle. Never mind bears shitting in the woods, I was absolutely bricking it.

Just a month before our visit, a motorcyclist had been wrenched from his bike and dragged into a ravine by the side of one of the major roads on the way out of the city. Sadly, he did not emerge with a pulse. However, he had made a mistake that causes the most bear-related human fatalities – he had tried to feed them. Unfortunately, though, they forewent the appetiser and moved straight on to the main course.

Read more: Into the wild: What to know and pack when venturing into remote locations

I’d been given a thorough briefing by two separate parties before venturing into the bear-infested wilderness. Firstly, the bike rental shop owner was keen that under no circumstances should I attempt to get a selfie with a brown bear. This advice seemed fairly obvious to me, as I imagined – phone in hand – pleading with a grizzly friend, “if you could refrain from trying to eat my head for a moment please, you’re not quite in focus.”

But a number of Darwin awards have been dished out to people doing just this.

"Romania's forests have capacity for around 3,000 to 4,000 bears," Marius from Cycle Explore told me. "We think there are now more than 12,000. Attacks do happen, but they're usually because people try to feed them. They can turn very quickly."

I had absolutely no intention of sharing a sachet of SiS Beta Fuel with a 400-kilogramme killing machine, so I asked a more pertinent question.

"How can I – feeding and selfies aside – avoid being chased down a mountain and relieved of my limbs?"

“Make a lot of noise, particularly when rounding sharp corners,” Marius instructed. “Coming between a mother and her cubs will always end badly, so announcing your presence is key.”

I climbed into the Carpathians, then, letting rip a suitably loud rendition of ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, yet still every single crack or snap in the forest provoked another wave of anxiety.

Why, then, was I doing this? I’m very much of the opinion that visiting a different country and not turning a pedal in it is tantamount to treason. I was here with mates, who were not cyclists; the Hammer Horror fans were instead visiting Bran Castle, home briefly to Vlad the Impaler who inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I told them that while they were taking pictures of fictitious fangs, to spare me a thought while I rode amid real ones.

I’d just finished Lauper’s 80s anthem when my front tyre stopped dead before, slewing slideways violently. It felt like I’d just ridden into a swamp. I looked down to find that my tyre had become acquainted with a gargantuan pile of matter. Inspecting the gloop, I saw that it contained berries, lots of berries.

“Bear shit!”; fresh bear shit, to boot.

Vocal cords already shot, I gave myself a mental kicking for ignoring the advice of a friend who lives in Montana. The western state is home to the densest grizzly bear population in the United States, where venturing into the backcountry generally involves carrying two essential items.

"A lot of people in Montana use what's known as a bear bell," explained Andy Ryan, who's currently cycling around the world and riding through brown bear country in Japan. "It's simply a small bell attached to your backpack or bike. Bears are generally solitary animals and, for the most part, they don't want an encounter with people. Making noise gives them a chance to move away before you surprise them."

Fortunately, I had taken his second piece of advice: "Bear spray is the number one thing," he said.

"If you attract the attention of a brown bear and you're on a bike, get off it and hold it above your head if you can, spread your arms, shout loudly and stand your ground. If the bear continues to approach or charges, it's time to deploy the bear spray. The canister is highly pressurised and has an effective range of around 30 feet. Rather than aiming directly at the bear's face, sweep the spray from side to side to create a cloud that the bear has to run through."

And if that fails? “Curl up into a ball and pray!”

I reached behind me and touched the back pocket of my cycling jersey. The canister was still there, cocked and loaded.

There was a bear in my midst. And if its bowel movement was anything to go by, it was a big one.

I carried on riding towards the summit, now approaching 5,000 feet. The forest gradually gave way to sweeping views across Brașov and deep into the Carpathians, affording my mind a few blissful, bear-free moments. Those vistas were the real reason I'd come up here. Some, though, are harder earned than others.

Despite lasting barely two hours, it was the most exhilarating bike ride I'd ever been on. It felt less like a ride through the mountains and more like a trip through a theme park, every blind corner carrying the promise of the next jump scare.

Eventually I turned for home, hurtling back towards Brașov at speeds touching 38mph – still nowhere near fast enough to outrun a charging bear. Yet with every metre of descending trail, the forest began to thin and the tension slowly ebbed away. The ride's finale, it seemed, wouldn't be a face-to-face encounter with Romania's most famous resident, but the quiet satisfaction of rolling back into the city with all my limbs still attached.

For once, I hadn't been the apex predator. I was somewhere much further down the food chain in that forest.

In July 2013, second-year pro Luke Durbridge watched the final stage of the Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées. He collected the hats tossed out to the fans at the roadside, and gaped at the lights show on the Arc de Triomphe, as Chris Froome was crowned the winner on the race’s 100th anniversary. “This looks like the big show,” Durbridge told himself. “I thought, ‘Next year, I really want to go.’”

Twelve months on, the Australian was back, and this time he was part of the peloton. He has since raced 12 of the last 13 Tours – more than 200 stages – each one with the same team, now named Jayco AlUla. This edition, however, will be his last; after next January’s Australian Road Championships, the 35-year-old will retire from professional cycling, calling time on a 15-year road career.

“I’m just incredibly lucky to be able to do as many [Tours] as I did,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I just wanted to do one.”

Durbridge is one of at least five riders who have decided, on their terms, that this will be their final Tour. Alongside him in the Class of ‘26 are Damiano Caruso (Bahrain Victorious), Magnus Cort (Uno-X Mobility), Damien Howson (Pinarello Q36.5) and Ion Izagirre (Cofidis), all of whom are due to retire at the end of this season.

Riders don’t always have the luxury of knowing when their final Tour will be. Some careers end in crashes or contract breakdowns; other times, riders just never make the cut for the eight-man squad again.

While there’s often great fanfare around debutants at the Tour – take Paul Seixas and Isaac del Toro, for example – the final-timers tend to exit stage left, without a curtain call. Cycling Weekly spoke to three of them at this year’s race, and asked them about their best memories through the years, their toughest moments, and the wisdom they have for the next generation.

“Probably the most standout memory is actually the people,” says Durbridge. “All of my best friends and all of my closest relationships have come from just being in the trenches at the Tour. You probably remember the hard moments with your mates more than you do the ones where you might have got a nice victory.”

What, then, was his hardest moment? “Alpe d’Huez, 2018,” he replies, no need to stop and think. “I made the time cut by 50 seconds, last guy on the road.

“I was quite good on the climb beforehand, and then I just completely cooked it up in the heat nutrition-wise. Then I was just dipping into the soul. I got a lot of help from the crowd that day. That’s a pretty iconic moment for me. I’m pretty proud of myself that I got it done.”

Durbridge’s compatriot and former team-mate Howson is riding his third Tour de France. After competing in back-to-back editions in 2017 and 2018, he began to wonder if he’d ever return to the biggest bike race in the world. Now, eight years on, he’s back with debutants Pinarello Q36.5.

“I set it as a goal when I changed teams four years ago to Q36.5,” the 33-year-old says. “It was a goal of mine to get back to the Tour de France, and it was a goal of theirs to make the Tour de France, so it’s cool to be here in my final year, along with the team, both achieving our goals that we set many years ago.”

Howson chose the eve of this year’s Grand Départ in Barcelona to announce his retirement. Already, his farewell Tour has brought a full-circle moment.

“We started in Carcassonne the other day, and that’s the place where I fractured my scaphoid in my last Tour de France and ended my race there on stage 15,” he says.

“That was another reason I wanted to come back; after feeling the finish in Paris [in 2017], it’s an iconic moment in sport, and to get so close and break the scaphoid, I wasn’t able to get there that year. Now, eight years later, we’re back at the Tour de France and trying to tick off the team’s objectives and ambitions. But it’ll be a nice little cherry on the top for me to finish in Paris.”

Uno-X’s Magnus Cort has only failed to finish one of the eight Tours he started. Funnily, that uncompleted edition in 2022, which began in his native Denmark, is also the one that gave him the fondest memories.

“I was in the polka dot jersey,” he says of the opening stages out of Copenhagen. “Then I got a second day where I was riding alone in the breakaway. That was also very special.

“It’s something I won’t get the chance to do again now. It was the one time I had the opportunity to do something, and I was very happy that I could do it.”

Cort is one of two riders in the Class of ‘26, alongside Izagirre, who can call themselves stage winners. The Dane earned the first of his two victories on his debut in 2018, while the second came five days before he withdrew in 2022.

Rather than his wins, some fans might remember Cort more for his tongue-in-cheek hotel reviews, which he began posting on Instagram as early as 2019. “Many of them are not the best hotels, so I don’t think that’s a part I will miss,” he says. “I know a lot of people have told me they’ll miss my reviews.”

What’s the biggest hotel nightmare he’s had at the race? “It was this one we stayed in two years ago,” he says. “We stayed in a slightly different part of the hotel, and I don’t know if it was the weather in the different part, but it was a lot more moist there. There was water basically running down the walls. It was really, really nasty there.”

The rough nights, though, have taken nothing away from Cort's Tour experience. “It’s been great,” he says, but he won't reminisce any deeper just yet. That will come later. “For the moment, I’m thinking about the race and doing everything I can like every other year.”

Durbridge, too, isn’t letting himself sit back and reflect on his 13 Tours just yet. With two days still to go until Paris, he's sticking to the mantra he's always had: “I’m trying to keep it one stage at a time.”

It’s the same wisdom the Jayco AlUla road captain gives to any rider at the start of their Tour journey. “Try and take it all in,” he says. “Try not to get overwhelmed, because you want to do many Tours. I think in my first Tour de France I got a bit overwhelmed by just the size and the craziness of it, and I didn’t quite perform. But performing at the Tour is what you want to do – it’s not just about getting selected for the Tour.”

Howson’s advice is similar. “The hype is real,” he says. “But at the end of the day, it is still just a bike race, so don’t let it overwhelm you; embrace it rather than let it hold you back.”

Come Sunday evening, when the race closes on the Champs-Élysées, all the cameras will be pointed at the stage winner, the yellow jersey, and the other podium finishers. Spare a thought then for the final-timers – Durbridge, Cort, Howson, Izagirre and Caruso – and the legacies they leave behind. They might not be on the start line next year, but they'll be part of the Tour's history forever.

For more than 70 years, Alpe d'Huez has been an icon of the Tour de France. Its 21 hairpins - cycling's most famous switchbacks - snake up from the valley, climbing relentlessly toward the ski resort that spills from the summit. On any normal day, the road is wide and the bends are sweeping. But when the Tour takes over and hundreds of thousands of fans pack the slopes, that open road shrinks into a deafening, claustrophobic, smoke-filled corridor. "You have to just pray that everyone's going to move out of your way," said Tom Pidcock after he soloed to victory on the climb in 2022.

This year, in a curtain-closing double-header, the race will visit the summit twice: first via the traditional 21 hairpins on Friday's stage 19, and then from the east the following day, crossing the Col de Sarenne to finish on the final three bends. It is here that the yellow jersey will be decided, and another Tour legend could be written. Here are the stories of those who came before.

The first: Fausto Coppi, 1952

Though the first Tour was in 1903, it wasn't until 4 July 1952 that the race hosted its first true mountain-top finish: a 266km stage from Lausanne to Alpe d'Huez. Until then, the ski resort at the summit had stood deserted in the summer months. The hoteliers, tired of the tourist drought, had a whip round and paid to welcome the Tour.

The stage that day was hot and long. It took the riders more than eight hours to reach the foot of the climb, where, slumped over their steel frames and with spare inner tubes wrapped around their necks, they began hauling their bikes skywards. With 6km to go, the 1949 champion Fausto Coppi dropped Frenchman Jean Robic - "I knew he was no longer there when I couldn't hear him breathing anymore," Coppi later said - and soloed to an historic stage win.

The victory earned Coppi the yellow jersey, which he would keep to win his second Tour title. The slow nature of the stage, however, failed to convince the organisers that mountain finishes were exciting, and the climb didn't feature again until 1976.

The most surprising: Lucho Herrera, 1984

Luis 'Lucho' Herrera wasn't supposed to win on Alpe d'Huez in 1984. A 23-year-old amateur cyclist and former plant delivery man from Colombia, he was making his Grand Tour debut with team Varta-Colombia, a national squad invited to make up the numbers.

All eyes were on the yellow jersey battle between Laurent Fignon and Bernard Hinault that summer. On Alpe d'Huez, Herrera took advantage of his under-the-radar status to attack with around 10km to go. He rode at his own rhythm, and ended up holding off Fignon by 49 seconds.

The victory was momentous: Herrera became South America's first Tour stage winner, and paved the way for a golden era of Colombian cycling. The following season, Varta-Colombia turned professional as Café de Colombia, and Herrera went on to climb to greater heights, winning the King of the Mountains classifications in all three Grand Tours, and the overall at the Vuelta a España in 1987.

The fiercest: Bernard Hinault v Greg LeMond, 1986

If the 1986 Tour is, as many believe, the race's greatest edition, then stage 18 to Alpe d'Huez - the duel between La Vie Claire team-mates Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond - is perhaps its most dramatic single day.

That year, defending champion Hinault had promised to ride in the service of LeMond. The Frenchman, however, appeared to have a change of heart when he wore yellow for five days, and began eyeing his sixth title. Then, on stage 17, he lost three minutes, and the yellow jersey, to LeMond.

The scene the following day on Alpe d'Huez was one of bizarre tension. Having broken free as a duo, Hinault and LeMond rode through the hairpins shoulder-to-shoulder in what was supposed to depict team harmony, but instead laid bare the power struggle that had defined that edition of the Tour.

Team orders came for LeMond to cede the stage win to Hinault, which he duly did, on the expectation Hinault would stop attacking him. But fighting talk followed. "This Tour is not finished," Hinault told reporters at the summit. "If we have a war, it'll be a fair war and the stronger one will win." That rider ended up being LeMond. Hinault retired six weeks later.

The fastest: Marco Pantani, 1997

Still today, almost 30 years on, nobody has climbed Alpe d'Huez faster than Marco Pantani did in 1997. The full climb was measured in those days at 14.5km, which the Italian completed in 37 minutes and 35 seconds. Over the modern-day 13.8km route, his time was 36:55.

Pantani went on to finish third overall that year, before winning the race the following year, his trademark bandana wrapped around his head. Of course, history tells us that 'The Pirate' was a troubled character; although he never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs during his career, he excelled in an era when EPO plagued the peloton. His haematocrit level, the volume percentage of red blood cells in the blood, was so high that his veins were said to run with thick, red sludge. His resting heart rate was around 34bpm.

Pantani had died by the time anyone got close to his Alpe d'Huez record, succumbing to a cocaine addiction in February 2004, aged just 34. That summer, Lance Armstrong attacked Alpe d'Huez in a mountain time trial at the Tour. He won the stage (later revoked), but fell a second short of Pantani's benchmark. The fastest time recorded since the introduction of the biological passport in 2008 belongs to Nairo Quintana, who climbed the Alpe in 39:22 during the 2015 Tour de France.

The brightest: Geraint Thomas, 2018

In 32 appearances at the Tour, Alpe d'Huez has only ever seen one rider win on its slopes in the yellow jersey: Geraint Thomas. The Welshman began the 2018 edition as a lieutenant to the defending champion Chris Froome. But when Froome lost time on an early stage across the Roubaix cobbles, Team Sky gave Thomas the nod to see how far he could go. The answer, it turned out, was all the way.

On stage 11, Thomas climbed to a stage win in La Rosière and took hold of the yellow jersey. Then came Alpe d'Huez: could he hold off Tom Dumoulin, Romain Bardet and his once leader Froome?

Thomas and the GC group climbed as if attached by rope behind the pace set by 21-year-old Tour debutant Egan Bernal, who would win the race the following year. In the end, it came down to a shoot-out at the summit. Thomas launched first, slingshotted himself around the final bend, and won by two seconds. "Not a chance in hell did I think I was going to win today," he told the TV cameras post-race. "I just can't believe it. Alpe d'Huez, man."

The youngest: Tom Pidcock, 2022

It's funny, really, that the lasting image of Tom Pidcock's Tour debut wasn't his triumph on Alpe d'Huez, but his masterclass descent of the Col du Galibier from a few hours before. Still, such is the Olympic mountain bike champion's skillset that he is capable of stunning twice in one afternoon.

The then-22-year-old must have sensed that day was one for the breakaway. With 125km to go, he tore down the Galibier like a swooping falcon to join Chris Froome's group up the road. Barely two kilometres into the bottom of the Alpe, he left his fellow escapees behind. All that remained was to navigate the mass of the crowds. "At times it just seemed like there was no road in front of me," he later told Cycling Weekly. "Then suddenly people would move and I could ride through."

Prior to Pidcock's win, 23-year-old Lucho Herrera had gone 38 years as the youngest rider to win on Alpe d'Huez. That accolade now belongs to the Briton.

The closest: Kasia Niewiadoma, 2024

Kasia Niewiadoma didn't win the stage on Alpe d'Huez at the 2024 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. And yet, it's her name that became synonymous with the climb that summer.

The Polish rider led the reigning champion Demi Vollering by 75 seconds going into the final day. That gap, however, soon began to fall on the road, as Vollering broke clear on the Col du Glandon and barrelled towards Alpe d'Huez with the breakaway. Faltering behind, Niewiadoma chased as hard as she could. Could she manage to hold on?

The clock began to tick the moment Vollering lurched beyond Pauliena Rooijakkers to win the stage. Vollering then sat on the ground and watched. Thirty seconds passed. A minute. Until, with only four seconds to spare, Niewiadoma came sprinting across the line and collapsed.

It is, still today, the smallest winning margin in the history of both the men's and women's Tours. Had Niewiadoma eased off for only a few pedal strokes, she would have lost her yellow jersey. "It's so mind-blowing," she said afterwards. "I hated everything [up until] arriving at the finish line and learning that I won the Tour de France - it's insane."

ALPE D'HUEZ IN NUMBERS

Distance: 13.8km
Altitude: 1,850m
Elevation gain: 1,120m
Average gradient: 8.1%
Max gradient: 13%
Hairpins: 21
Tour appearances: 32 (34 after this year)
Fastest ascent: 37:35 (Marco Pantani, 1997, on the 14.5km route)

This feature was originally published in the 23 July 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only). Digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazines Direct.

Tom Pidcock returned to the Tour de France this year as leader of the Pinarello Q36.5 outfit after his ProTeam failed to earn a wildcard for the 2025 edition. To celebrate the occasion, the team is sporting a special, lighter-coloured switch-out kit with matching bike liveries.

The Yorkshireman’s size 53 Pinarello Dogma F is a very different bike to the one we covered at Opening Weekend: gone is the Classics-ready 1x configuration, and in comes a pragmatic 2x drivetrain to ensure everything from the flats and gradients to the serpentine descents are dismissed without issue. For the faster average speeds of the Tour de France, he’s opted for the lighter and mixed-depth 53/58mm Zipp 454 NSW wheels and shod them in 30mm Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed time trial tyres.

Colour-wise, the Dogma F looks resplendent in its blue-to-gold matte-metallic fade – officially dubbed by Pinarello as ‘Titan and Luxter Venice’ tones. Not only are the Pinarello wordmark and Dogma F logos finished in gold, but the Zipp decals get the same treatment. It’s a wonderfully balanced and thoughtful design.

As a SRAM-sponored team, Pidcock’s Dogma F is built around the American brand’s top-tier Red AXS groupset, complete with an integrated power meter. A 54/41T, 10-36T chainset provides a balanced, albeit taller, spread of gears, paired with 165mm carbon cranks. There’s also a nifty little Leap Components 3D-printed computer cradle (something we saw liberally used on his Pinarello Bolid F TT bike) that houses a Garmin Edge 850 and a 10mm spacer under the stem – proving slammed front ends are no longer de rigueur among the pro rungs.

The touchpoints comprise a 360mm Most Talon UltraFast integrated handlebar matched to a 120mm stem, complete with a 10mm spacer underneath, Shimano Dura-Ace PD-R9100 pedals, and a new Prologo Choice saddle that features a similar carbon-fibre rail shroud as the Predator TT saddle. The balance of the build includes Tacx Ciro bottle cages with Tacx-Garmin bidons.

All in, Pidcock’s bike safely meets the UCI minimum weight limit of 6.8kg with pedals.

Pinarello Dogma F specs

• Frameset: TorayCa M40X, TiCR
• Fork: eTICR Onda Fork with ForkFlap
• Cockpit: Most Talon Ultra Fast integrated cockpit
• Seatpost: Pinarello Aero
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS, 54/47T, 10-36T
• Wheelset: Zipp 454 NSW
• Tyres: Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed 28mm
• Saddle: Prologo Choice
• Weight: 6.86kg (with pedals)

“Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart”. This isn’t a line from a poem about the amount of work a rider puts into making the Tour de France ruining the romance of it, but it could be. The race did predate WB Yeats’ Easter, 1916 by over a decade, but that poem is about rather less trivial matters than a bike race.

Still, too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. The sacrifices that the 184 riders at this year’s Tour made just to get to the start line are innumerable, and would seem alien to most of the fans watching the bike race. As the race gets faster and harder, more is needed just to get to the base level for the whole peloton, not just for those who are aiming for the yellow jersey.

Days at altitude are increasing, and even if riders aren’t racing, they’re away training. While a weekend in a hotel here and there might be a treat, to be living out of a suitcase for weeks feels less appetising, especially as riders almost never have agency over which hotel they stay in. It’s rarely The Ritz.

“My whole life's a sacrifice in some ways,” George Bennett of NSN Cycling explains to Cycling Weekly. “Sometimes it doesn't feel like it, because you love what you're doing, and it's a super exciting process, but since January, we're living in this bubble of sleeping in altitude generators, I've done eight weeks without seeing my partner. It's not what I have to do, it's more what I don't do. I don't go for a beer with the boys, because I'm worried about getting sick.

“All these things you really lock down on before the Tour, I think I'm not alone in that. The whole peloton makes these sacrifices. We do a lot of things that are really hard, but it's more about what we don't do.”

Being away from home is a recurring theme when asking riders about the sacrifices they make to be a professional bike rider at this level. Those who are younger might enjoy the thrill of adventure, but as they grow older, different commitments cause more pain.

“It's the things out there that people don't really see,” Picnic PostNL’s John Degenkolb says. “The family, especially, has to make sacrifices for you not being there for many, many weeks you're not there. You cannot just be like a normal father at home. It's a period of time in your life that is limited, so if you don't make those sacrifices, then you're not competitive. It's the price you have to pay in the end.”

Tomš Skujiņš of Lidl-Trek echoes this: “I wouldn't call them sacrifices, they're just choices. Spending a lot of time away from the family is probably one of the biggest ones now, as I have a young family with two daughters.

“This spring I was home for a very long time which was nice, because I was super sick, which obviously is not nice, but good side, down side. Since the beginning of May, I have slept in my house less than 10 times, and we'll be at the end of July now.”

To be exact, Dylan van Baarle of Soudal Quick-Step has counted: “Since 20 May I have been home for four days, I think that says enough.”

Of course, it isn’t just the time away which would seem alien to us about the life of a pro rider. “Saying no to some of my favourite foods is another one [sacrifice], and my favourite drinks, is another,” Skujiņš explains. “Heat training is something I don't enjoy and people would find crazy. After a hard day already, riding indoors, dressed in more than you would outside is something that seems quite silly.”

“In general, it's just about dialling everything up a little bit before the Tour,” stage winner Mauro Schmid (Jayco AlUla) tells CW. “Before the Tour, you need to be in your own bubble, you can't do anything you would normally do off the bike. Be a bit more focused on nutrition and recovery. With the altitude camps, I was pretty strict on myself to get to the best shape possible.”

Altitude camps are a common theme when riders are asked about the stark choices they have to make, but being a pro cyclist does just seem sometimes like a life stripped of a lot of fun.

“My birthday was at an altitude camp,” Pinarello Q36.5’s Fred Wright says. “I've obviously missed the World Cup, and the heat in the UK at the moment. It would be so nice to be in a pub just enjoying the games. We get to watch them, but it's not the same as being in the UK in the summer. I guess just less time with my girlfriend, too, it's not just these four weeks. It's commitment to an altitude camp, the build up races beforehand.

“We're close to the finish line now. It starts a lot further back than the first day of the Tour. It's such a weird bubble that we live in. There's a lot of weighing of food, which to a normal person, would be considered quite toxic. It's part of our job, so you get quite used to it.”

It isn’t always this bad, especially if you’re not a GC rider. Schmid explains: “I try to really enjoy the winter and when I'm training in November, December I try to have a good time off the bike, because I know how many sacrifices I will have to make in the summer, so I really try to recharge, and enjoy the time at home.

“For us, it gets normal that during the year you're so dialled in, going from race to race. It's a lot of unpacking, and moving onto the next thing.”

Next time you watch the Tour, and you’re supporting or cursing your favourite rider, make sure to think about the amount of work that has gone into getting to this point. Even the rider who finishes last will have sacrificed a whole part of their life to reach here. Just hope their heart hasn’t completely turned to stone.

Pub pundits and sports scientists agree that the Tour de France is the ultimate test of human endurance, but compared with the pioneers of a century ago, today's riders have it easy. In 1926, La Grande Boucle was more than a nickname; that year's Tour took the peloton on a 5,745km ordeal around the perimeter of France. One hundred years on, that edition remains the longest, most brutal route in the race's history - a battle of attrition as much as it was a bike race.

The average length of the 17 stages was 338km. Yes, the average. One, stage 12, from Perpignan to Toulon, was 427km. But it's stage 10 from Bayonne to Luchon, through the Pyrenees, that's gone down in cycling folklore. Contested in apocalyptic, literally life-threatening weather conditions, this race-defining leg was won by the Belgian Lucien Buysse - in a time of 17 hours, 12 minutes. He went on to take the overall victory, and frankly, he'd earned it.

The 1926 Tour transcended sport. It took place in the long shadow of the First World War, a conflict many of the competitors had fought in - four editions of the race were missed between 1915 and 1918. Amid a feverish atmosphere of instability in central Europe, the 1926 event was riven with political tensions and dominated by strong personalities. At one political pole was the staunchly nationalist Tour director Henri Desgrange; at the other were members of the French Communist Party, with its newspaper, L'Humanité, campaigning for better conditions and pay for independent riders.

It was also a catalyst for change and became a key event in the evolution of the modern Tour, a point of inflection when the conflicting desires of everyone involved - riders, route-setters, teams, bicycle manufacturers and spectators - collided spectacularly. Arguably, 1926 was the year the Tour de France came of age.

National showcase

In 1926, for the first time since the Tour de France began in 1903, the race started outside Paris, in Evian, the Alpine town near the Franco-Swiss border. The route headed north, skirting the frontiers of Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, then hugged the coast of Normandy and Brittany, tracing the seaboard to the Spanish border before swerving south, crossing the Pyrenees, wending east along the Côte d'Azur and heading north along the land border with Italy and Switzerland. Having cycled an anticlockwise loop of the country, competitors then had to pass back through Evian and re-ascend mountain passes they'd previously climbed before riding through Burgundy and central France to the finish line in Paris. It was, quite literally, epic.

From a modern perspective, the route looks nuts. And it was. But for Desgrange, the founding father of the Tour, who was still the route-setter and organiser in 1926, the event had never been simply about bike racing. Nor was it merely a vehicle for selling copies of his newspaper, L'Auto. He had a bigger vision, and for the Tour's 20th iteration, he pushed that to its limits.

A child during the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, Desgrange was part of a generation that lived in fear of German invasion. Concerned that his fellow countrymen were more interested in smoking and drinking than sport, leaving them weak and defenceless against the newly formed superpower on France's eastern flank, he became obsessed with health and national pride.

After becoming a successful - and world-record-setting - cyclist, Desgrange published a book, La Tête et les Jambes (The Head and the Legs), a training manual for Frenchmen to get fighting fit through bike riding and running. The routes he designed embodied his vision for France. "For Desgrange, the Tour was a way to promote 'France' as an idea and to build belief in nationhood," says Gareth Cartman, author of We Rode All Night, a historical novel about the 1926 race, "and that's why they went right around the outside of the country. It's a way of reinforcing the French border."

Cartman says the same rationale had led Desgrange to route the 1919 race through Alsace-Lorraine, a region previously absorbed by Germany, which had just been returned to France by the Treaty of Versailles. "He uses the race to say 'this is our country', but also to inspire Frenchmen to take up cycling and become stronger," Cartman explains, "and that's why he keeps making the Tours tougher. Every time riders conquer the test, he makes it harder... until we get to 1926."

One for all

As a Cycling Weekly (then known as Cycling) reporter covering the 1926 race wrote: "With leisure and the right machine many could manage the mileage comfortably. But this is a struggle with time, when the rider who wins must keep to his machine although the roads are not worthy of the name, although he is lashed with rain and bespattered by mud and his limbs tremble with fatigue." These words would prove to be prophetic.

At 2am on Sunday, 20 June 1926, the peloton set off from Evian on a 373km 'plain stage' to Mülhausen. It was won by the Belgian Jules Buysse - no, not the eventual winner, but his younger brother. Jules, the youngest of three Buysse brothers competing in the race, also won the second stage, a 334km leg to Metz, but even early on, competitors were falling fast.

"Of the 126 riders who started the Tour, 15 fell out on the first day and seven on the second," reported Cycling on 2 July. Desgrange, who always intended the Tour to be a test of individual skill, strength and endurance, discouraged teams, and 82 of the riders who started the race were 'touriste-routiers', competing individually and without sponsorship. The remaining riders began working together, as a survival strategy. "On many stages, especially in Brittany and Normandy, riders effectively agreed not to race," says Cartman. "The route was so hard and long, they knew that, just to get to the Pyrenees in one piece, they should basically ride together. If people wanted to ride off the front, then fine. There was a kind of tacit agreement to not attack too hard."

However, each time they arrived en masse into finish towns, Desgrange responded furiously. "I think the best one was in Brest," chuckles Cartman. "After a 405km stage, he met them with folded arms and said, words to the effect of, 'You bloody bastards! You are now going to do sprints of the velodrome for this crowd because they've all come here to watch you and you can't be bothered to race each other.'" Cartman sympathises with the riders. "They knew they had three consecutive days coming up [amounting to] 900km, from Brittany to the Pyrenees, with no rest and in the middle of a heatwave. So of course they weren't going to ride hard. That's why Van Slembrouck kept the yellow jersey so long. And then came the big stage to Luchon, when the weather turned and the race started falling apart."

Atrocious conditions

Once the race entered the Pyrenees, everything changed. Stage 10 started pre-dawn, in dreadful conditions, and the weather got progressively worse. Tourists in their cars stirred up the mud and made it even harder for the riders to get through. Marcel Bidot - future coach of the French team - broke a crank and tried to continue, pedalling one-footed. The judges ultimately allowed him to borrow a bike from a spectator - it was far too small, but he managed to get to Luchon. Of the 76 riders who started the stage, 22 were forced to abort, including the favourite and defending champion Ottavio Bottecchia.

As the elements turned vicious, the tough, working-class Italian Bottecchia - a bricklayer who'd served in a cycling battalion on the frontline of WWI, and had won the two previous Tours - retired from the race "weeping like a child", according to a later report in L'Équipe. Meanwhile Lucien Buysse, a man who had very recently lost his young daughter and was already riding through waves of grief, pedalled grimly onwards, through the storm-strafed peaks, mounting an attack on the Col d'Aspin that earned him an unassailable lead and control of the race.

"After his ride from Bayonne to Luchon, Lucien Buysse seemed the least exhausted of the survivors," reads the report in the 23 July, 1926 edition of Cycling. "On this stage he rode one of the most brilliant races in the history of the Tour de France. Some motorcars that should have followed him broke down on the crazy roads. The cold on the hilltops so gripped the hands of one or two riders they were unable to change a tyre after a puncture."

Tour turning point

The middle Buysse brother was an Automoto team-mate of Bottecchia, and he'd helped the Italian secure victory in 1925, acting as the first domestique in Tour history. With a 30-minute lead in the general classification after stage 10, Buysse consolidated his lead with a consecutive win on the 323km mountain stage to Perpignan. He remained in the maillot jaune for the rest of the race.

Unsurprisingly, given his performance in the Pyrenees, Buysse was also named by L'Auto as meilleur grimpeur (best climber), an unofficial equivalent to the present-day King of the Mountains title. "It was an extraordinary Tour," concludes Cartman. "It was a pivotal point, which shaped the future of the race. Desgrange wanted to rip everything up and change it for the next year. He hated the flat stages, so he made them all time trials. He wanted it to be an individual competition, rather than teams and manufacturers using strategies to win."

Somewhat ironically, not a single stage in 1926 - Desgrange's toughest test and biggest national statement - was won by a French rider. That had never happened before and has occurred only once since, in 1999. This July, as French fans excitedly welcome to the race the nation's brightest prospect in decades, Paul Seixas, they will be desperately hoping the centenary of the 1926 edition doesn't come with a repeat performance.

1926 Tour in numbers

5,745km: The total distance - the longest route in the race's history.

427km: The length of the longest single stage.

126/41: The ratio of starters to finishers.

17:12.04: The time it took Lucien Buysse to win the brutal 326km Stage 10.

238:44.25: Buysse's total winning time.

1:22.25: The time gap between the winner, Lucien Buysse, and second-placed Nicolas Frantz.

This feature was originally published in the 2 July 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

Remco Evenepoel has moved into second place on the general classification following an emphatic first road stage win at the Tour de France. The Belgian has come into this year's race in impeccable form, and is clearly able to compete with the leading protagonists in the high mountains – something he failed to achieve last year when he abandoned the race in the Pyrenees.

With a 26.1km/500m individual time trial on the cards for stage 16, Remco can potentially claw back some time on Tadej Pogačar and cement his second place on the podium.

Let’s take a closer look at the reigning Olympian’s Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL9.

Having stolen the headlines at the Grand Depart for his unreleased Specialized S-Works Shiv TT bike, the Belgian also has an S-Works Tarmac SL9 at his disposal – both a regular team-liveried option (which he raced to victory on stage 15) and a gold-themed edition that celebrates his Olympic Championship win from 2024 in Paris.

The bike pictured here, however, is the latter, and was customised by Italian master frame painters, Lumarcolors.

Lumarcolors has done an amazing job with the bike, as it complements the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team livery and pays homage to Evenepoel’s Olympic gold medal. Naturally, there’s a lot of gold at play here, but it’s all done tastefully and not over the top.

As a result, it utilises a bespoke glittery white and gold paint scheme that still fits in with the team design – Red Bull and keyline logos are applied as a water transfer and subtly fade from gold to white.

The gold theme continues with his cassette and chain, base of the saddle, the inside crank arms (and SRAM logo on the outside arm), and the K-Edge computer mount and chain catcher. The level of detail is truly inspiring.

Having changed teams for 2026, Remco is now riding a SRAM Red AXS-equipped machine rather than the Shimano Dura-Ace Di2-outfitted bike he raced on at Soudal-QuickStep.

For the Tour de France, Remco has opted for a 54/41T, 10-33T gearing configuration, driven by 165mm cranks. As a Specialized rider, he meets sponsor obligations by using Roval Rapide CLX III wheels shod with 30mm Specialized Cotton TLR tyres. Other details/components include a Specialized S-Works Power Evo with Mirror saddle, a K-Edge computer mount and chain catcher, and Tacx Ciro bottle cages.

As usual, he's using a slammed Roval Rapide integrated cockpit.

All in, Evenepoel's 52cm S-Works Tarmac SL9 tipped our scales at 7.05kg complete with pedals, two bidons/cages and cycling computer.

Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL9 specs

• Frameset: S-Works Tarmac SL9 Fact 12r Carbon
• Fork: S-Works Fact 12r Carbon
• Cockpit: Roval Rapide
• Seatpost: S-Works Tarmac SL9 Carbon
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS 54/41T, 10-33T
• Wheelset: Roval Rapide CLX III
• Tyres: Specialized Cotton TLR 30mm
• Saddle: Specialzied S-Works Power Evo with Mirror

What do Mathieu van der Poel, Søren Wærenskjold and Mauro Schmid all have in common?

If you said they’re all stage winners of this edition of the Tour de France – you’d be right. But there’s also something else, a detail so subtle you might not have spotted it on the TV: they all shave their arms.

Though not a new practice, arm-shaving has seemingly become more common in big races. Cycling Weekly carried out a visual survey on the ground at this year's Tour, assessing riders' forearms as they passed through the pre-stage media zone, and found that around half of the peloton now shave their arms – maybe even a slight majority.

It got us wondering why. The advantages of smooth legs are well known in cycling – less aerodynamic drag equals seconds saved – but why the arms too? Their surface area is smaller, they don’t block the air flow as much as the legs, and if the rider’s bike position is low enough, they barely poke up above the handlebars. Surely there’s no point in shaving them?

In search of answers, we asked the riders themselves. Caja Rural-Seguros RGA's Fernando Gaviria, a two-time Tour stage winner, said this is the first Tour for which he has shaved his arms. “I spoke with [my team-mate, Alex] Molenaar about whether we should do or not,” he said. “Then we spent a night in the room and we said, ‘Ok, let’s do it.’”

As a sprinter, Gaviria’s main motive is to go faster. “It’s just for more aerodynamics,” the Colombian said. “I don’t feel the difference in the climbs. I get dropped all the same.” But what does the science say? Is there an aero advantage?

In 2015, bike brand Specialized carried out a test in their wind tunnel, and found that shaved arms saved 19 seconds over 40km. Though the study wasn’t far-reaching (their sample size was a single rider), its conclusion was clear enough: the aero gains are small, negligible even, but they exist all the same.

According to Casper von Folsach, performance director at Uno-X Mobility, the impact of arm-shaving is “very individual”, and depends on how much arm hair a rider has.

“Overall there is for sure a much more significant aero penalty in leg hairs as most people have more significant hair growth on their legs, legs make up a larger surface area and are more exposed,” he said. “But that doesn't mean there's not a difference for arm hairs.”

It’s partly for this reason that the entirety of Von Folsach’s Uno-X Mobility squad came to this year’s Tour with smooth arms. Gaviria did the same because he has “a lot of hair” on his body. But even riders who aren’t so naturally hirsute are shaving their forearms. This is because there’s another, perhaps more important reason to do so, as stage 13’s winner Schmid explained.

“It makes it a bit more clean in case you get a little road rash. It’s not only for aero gains,” the Jayco AlUla rider said. “It’s the same thing with the legs; in case you crash, I think it makes it much easier because then you’re not ripping all the hairs out if you get bandages.”

Lotto Intermarché’s Baptiste Veistroffer, this edition’s breakaway hero, concurs. “It’s because of crashing, firstly,” he said. “If you crash and you need to clean it, or you need surgery, it’s easier without hair.”

It was fortunate, then, that Gaviria’s arms were hairless when he crashed on stage 12, and shredded his skin on the asphalt.

Veistroffer, pressed for more information on his arm-shaving habits, was understandably perplexed by Cycling Weekly's questioning. “This is not expected,” he laughed, but conceded he shaves his arms every one to two weeks – “only when I’m racing, not when I’m home.”

Conversely, Schmid doesn’t shave his arms as routinely as he does his legs, and only originally did so to copy another rider. “I think Marc Hirschi normally does it, and I saw him do it and thought, ‘Maybe that’s the reason why he’s so good’,” he says.

So there you have it: riders shave their arms for a few reasons, namely the perceived aero advantage, and for ease in case of road rash.

Oh, and there's another minor reason, as Von Folsach points out. “For what it's worth, many riders also report that sun screen application becomes easier,” he said, “so that's also something I guess.”

Giles Pidcock remembers a conversation he had with his 12-year-old son, Tom, about what it meant to truly ‘make it’ in cycling. “My view of success was getting paid to ride your bike, being a pro,” he says. His son had grander ideas. “Tom said, ‘F*** that. No, no, no. I want to win Paris-Roubaix, the Tour de France, the World Championships’,” Giles laughs. “His aspirations were just unlimited, and that struck me as being quite ambitious. But that’s Tom, isn’t it? Everything’s possible.”

It was four years earlier, when Tom was eight, that his passion for the Tour took root. Every July he would wait for his father to get home so they could watch the daily highlights on TV. If they were heading out for an evening ride, they’d record the broadcast to watch when they got back. It was only natural, then, that when Tom turned pro with Ineos Grenadiers in 2021, the race became a central ambition of his career.

But over the three editions he raced with Ineos, his enthusiasm for the event faded. He would describe it variously as “draining” and “not the most enjoyable”. Where had the excitement gone? Now, after a year away, Pidcock is back on cycling’s biggest stage. Riding for Tour debutants Pinarello Q36.5, he is on a mission to rediscover the joy that filled those childhood evenings.

“To find passion, you first need to, well, enjoy it. It’s all an upward cycle,” he tells Cycling Weekly in Tarragona, Spain, at the start of stage two. Perched on the top tube of his bike, he shelters beneath a canopy of trees in the media zone. When his team press officer limits the gathered journalists to a single question, Pidcock pushes back. “One question?” he says, before happily answering four.

It is all part of a new lease of life the 26-year-old has brought to the race. At the time of writing, he is fourth on GC, thanks to time gained in a smart breakaway move on stage 13. But Pidcock has always insisted his goals this time around are less tangible than a stage win or a high GC finish. “I want to enjoy being back at the Tour, and look forward to coming back here every year,” he says. “That’s the main thing. The rest is just a bike race, you know?”

To understand Pidcock’s fraught relationship with the Tour, you need to rewind four years to Alpe d’Huez in 2022. Pidcock wasn’t supposed to start the race that year. “When he joined Ineos [in 2021], we had a six-year plan with Dave [Brailsford],” says Pidcock’s father Giles. “It was going to be Cyclo-cross Worlds, Mountain Bike Worlds, one-day races, win a few Classics, and just have fun for as long as possible.”

But then, in only his second year as a pro, as the team scrambled to find a leader following 2019 champion Egan Bernal’s life-threatening training crash, Pidcock was thrust into the yellow-tinted pressure cooker. He responded brilliantly. Aged just 22, he broke away on the descent of the Col du Galibier on stage 12 and soloed to an awe-inspiring victory on Alpe d’Huez, becoming the youngest rider ever to win at the mountain’s summit.

“That’s one of the best experiences of my life,” Pidcock said at the finish. His career path seemed laid out. With hindsight, though, his father views the win with mixed feelings. “I think the Alpe d’Huez stage almost wrecked his career,” he says bluntly. “At the time, we were really excited because it’s the Tour. Then he won the stage, and everyone was like, ‘Oh, you’re ready. You can do this. You’re the next big hope.’ Everything from that moment was about winning the Tour.”

The following year, 2023, Pidcock returned to the Tour under a weight of expectation, targeting the GC. He finished 13th, faltering in the second week as the race entered the Alps, and admitted he felt like a “pretender” among the favourites. The 2024 edition proved an even bigger struggle. After catching a stomach bug ahead of the Grand Départ in Florence, he was dropped on Ineos’s pre-race training ride and faced a battle to regain his form. He ultimately withdrew ahead of stage 14, sitting 36th overall.

Some questioned whether Pidcock was truly cut out to be a GC rider. Why wasn’t it working? According to Kurt Bogaerts, his coach since 2018, bigger aspirations were eclipsing his Tour goals. “He’s tried to become world champion in all disciplines, and one big goal [in 2023] was becoming world champion on the mountain bike,” Bogaerts says.

“In Glasgow, it was a home race, and that was a big target, so you have that in the back of your mind… The year after [2024], it was the Olympics, and he had a massive goal to be double Olympic champion. That was only a few weeks [after the Tour].”

Pidcock’s relationship with Ineos had also soured. Reports of a rift with management surfaced at the 2024 Tour, and by the end of the season, he decided to leave despite having three years left on his contract. “By the end at Ineos, nothing was good enough,” one source close to Pidcock says. “Unless you won the Tour de France, it didn’t matter. No one cared.”

While around half a dozen WorldTour teams sought the Briton’s signature, he surprised many by opting for second-tier outfit Q36.5, backed by billionaire former Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg. The hope was that a smaller set-up would provide a fresh outlook. “I believed it was the best option for him,” says Jacques Sauvagnargues, a friend and former Team Wiggins teammate who later co-founded the app Link My Ride with Pidcock.

“I was trying to explain to him how [Mathieu] van der Poel went to Alpecin and they built the team around him. I just said, ‘That’s what you need. You need the team built around you. You had it with Wiggins and Trinity and you flourished in those environments.’”

Sauvagnargues’s theory soon proved right. Last year, Pidcock’s first season with Q36.5, the 26-year-old opened with victory at the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia before riding to third overall at the Vuelta a España in September – a career-best Grand Tour performance. “I think he proved everyone wrong,” Sauvagnargues says.

For Bogaerts, the podium was “confirmation” of the talent he had helped hone over the years. Why had it all suddenly clicked? A key factor in his Vuelta success was riding unburdened by expectation. “Every performance is a kind of celebration,” Bogaerts says of Q36.5’s ethos. Pidcock’s past Tour experiences, challenging as they were, had also taught him to manage pressure. But another simple, often overlooked reason drove his upturn in form: he started prioritising fun.

Sauvagnargues recalls a recent example: at the end of April, he and Pidcock went to Germany’s Nürburgring to drive race cars. The trip fell just days before the Eschborn-Frankfurt one-day race, yet Q36.5 approved it as a way for Pidcock to unwind. “I’m not sure if Ineos allowed a lot of the play, but with Q36.5, they appreciate that it’s quite an intense lifestyle that [the riders] live, and they need to release,” Sauvagnargues says. “Tom’s release is car track days… He’s an unbelievable driver. He could be a professional if he wanted to be.”

Pidcock also found fun this year at an early-season altitude camp in Chile, where he trained hard and explored new trails on his mountain bike. British champion Fred Wright, Pidcock’s teammate at Q36.5, was one of six riders who travelled with him to South America. “It was a bit of an adventure,” Wright says. It also proved critical for team building.

“We played quite a bit of [the dice game] Perudo and a bit of poker. In the end, we had a big leaderboard of games and whoever had the most points at the end of the camp won the prize pot we’d all put money into.” Who claimed the haul? “Tom – on the last night,” Wright laughs. “I was gutted. I was leading and I lost it all.”

Trips like this have led Pidcock to praise Q36.5’s “family vibe”. “Everyone around me believes in me, supports me. We’re all in this mission together,” he told the Going Mental podcast in June.

Bogaerts, who also attended the Chile camp, has witnessed this first-hand. “I think the connection with the team is, of course, much stronger,” he says. “He is the leader there, he feels responsible for the team, he wants to look after the team, and that means a lot to him.”

In the moments after the opening team time trial at this year’s Tour, Pidcock cooled down in the middle of a row of turbo trainers, shoulder to shoulder with his teammates. While other teams did the same in silence, the Q36.5 comrades nattered away, laughing as they compared stories of the day’s test. Yes, Pidcock had lost almost a minute to stage winner Jonas Vingegaard and 45 seconds to Tadej Pogačar, but that mattered little. The important thing was that he had remained true to his sole race aim: he was smiling.

Speaking before the start, in the shadow of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família, after the team presentation, he had said: “If I finish in Paris, I’m happy, then it’s been a success.”

Of course, that won’t stop people asking what he’s capable of over the coming mountain stages. Four years on from his Alpe d’Huez triumph, the Tour returns to the same climb on its final weekend for a brace of summit finishes.

Fans might wonder if that presents the chance for the perfect full-circle moment – the ecstasy of that first Tour win, after years of indifference, repeated – but it’s not the be-all, end-all for Pidcock. His ambitions have always stretched far beyond the confines of a single event. The hope, perhaps, is that by riding at the Tour less weighed down by expectations, he might now fulfil his potential at the race.

“I think goal number-one is to try to win a stage,” his coach, Bogaerts, says. Pidcock’s already come close: on stage nine to Ussel, he placed third behind Van der Poel from the breakaway, let down not by his legs but a jammed gear shifter. “Today, I was really in the game,” he said proudly afterwards. Three days prior, the Tourmalet stage, he’d lost eight minutes to a rampaging Pogačar, but remained philosophical. “It’s not the end of the world,” he shrugged at the hill-top finish in Gavarnie-Gèdre, true to his new philosophy. “Just got to keep the spirits high.” Then came his third place on stage 13 to Belfort, and his leap back into the GC mix.

To pose to his father the same question he had asked his 12-year-old son: what does ultimate success look like? “Well, anything’s possible,” Giles says. “He’s surprised me enough times to know that anything’s possible.” That childhood dream may still be realised one day – and if it is, you can be sure it’ll be on Pidcock’s own terms.

This feature originally appeared in Cycling Weekly magazine on 16 July 2026. Some elements have been updated to reflect the results of stage 13.

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Early on in my racing career a more experienced rider told me, “The more worried you are about crashing, the more likely you are to crash.”

Always be suspicious of neat little formulations like this. They always leave a loophole – in this instance he failed to appreciate the magnitude of how much I didn’t want to crash. It turns out that if you spend the whole race cowering ten lengths off the back of the bunch, you’re pretty safe. Of course if you want to get a result, you have to learn to mix it. But you don’t have to learn to like it.

Only one of the reasons I didn’t want to crash was physical cowardice. The other was financial cowardice. I understood completely when my friend Bernard was involved in a sprint pile-up outside Saffron Walden and broke his collarbone. He rang me from A&E to ask how his bike was.

“Bar tape wrecked, saddle scuffed, otherwise it’s OK.”

“That’s a relief. I tried to let my body take the impact first. The NHS doesn’t fix bikes.”

This was in the merry days when stuff was cheap. When a whole pro-level bike cost “just” £2500, unless your crash involved a road roller or a giant vat of acid, your repair and replacement bill was a few hundred pounds at worst. (We still felt hard done by – an equivalent generational leap further back in time took you to the era when you could fix most things with a hammer, some tongs and a good hot fire.)

As bikes have grown more expensive and harder to fix, the attitude of most of the riders has, in defiance of all logic, become more aggressive. Where once you were terrified as you tried to edge up the outside of the bunch on your cheap bike by using the last available 25mm of tarmac, now you’d be triply terrified on your expensive bike because there’d be someone trying to move up outside you by bunny hopping the drain covers, and probably a 19-year old kamikaze coming up outside them on the grass.

I think the worst job in all cycling is to be the parent of a young racer. I was chatting to one of them recently who told me that the price of kit combined with the fearlessness of youth meant it was like setting your teenager off to learn to drive by doing laps of central London in a solid gold dodgem encrusted with diamonds. If your family finances exist on a bit of a knife-edge, a pyromaniac would make a more attractive child than a wannabe bike racer.

One suggestion I came across recently was to offer different racing classes based not on ability, but on the cost of the bike. That way you could race a cheaper bike and not be at a disadvantage. But there’s a major problem. If I go racing, I badly want to be surrounded by people as cowardly as me. Ideally more cowardly. I don’t want to spend my day riding at 50 kph among a whole bunch of people who’ve suddenly got one reason fewer to mind crashing. I might want my bike to be cheap, but I want yours to be expensive.

It's got to the point where I’m honestly amazed that amateur riders and juniors race on bikes that cost as much as they do. If, when I started racing, someone had told me that before I was finished most serious amateurs would feel pressured into buying super-bikes that cost very nearly as much as a new car, I’d have assumed that everyone would ride two meters apart from each other and multi-rider crashes would be something old lags like me would tell anecdotes about.

It says much for our bravery, confidence and above all for our financial irresponsibility that this hasn’t happened.

Great Inventions of Cycling

Before 2008, we all knew where we were with aerodynamics. If it looked aero, it was aero. And looking aero was about being thin, pointy and smooth. This applied as much to you as to your bike.

Then in 2008 the GB Olympic track team debuted race suits that were a bit on the baggy side and covered in huge, ugly, deeply unaerodynamic-looking raised seams, which were designed to “trip” the airflow over the suit and introduce turbulence in a carefully calculated place. Everyone scoffed, right up to the point where the team hoovered up almost all the medals available to them.

As a group, racing cyclists pivoted on the spot, and accepted the idea that things that did not look aerodynamic by the standards of “looking aero” could still be faster. After all, we didn’t want to look stupid.

This turn of events had the huge advantage for manufacturers that they could make things into funny shapes and declare that despite what they looked like, they were faster than any competitor’s product. Because we were all so sophisticated and knowledgeable, we had to believe them.

As long as the weird bump, ridge, scoop or texture had a proprietary name that included “aero” in it somewhere, and came with a nice set of graphs, it was impossible to prove it didn’t work short of actually testing it yourself. At just the moment that all bikes had been beginning to appear more or less identical, it was a valuable opportunity for some product differentiation.

It's reassuring to know that we’re still falling for it.

Acts of Cycling Stupidity

Word reaches us of a rider who was unlucky enough to crash on some ice over the winter. Among other things, his head hit the ground, fracturing his helmet into two halves.

Being tight-fisted and perhaps a bit stupid, he glued the two halves back together, and explained to a concerned clubmate that, “unless I have exactly the same crash again it’ll be fine, because the helmet will impact a different place and break a different way.”

Two weeks later he crashed again. Since his helmet hit the ground this time too, he was delighted at the cash he’d saved. However, he was a bit disappointed with a mild concussion.

He subsequently remembered that the helmet had come with a crash-replacement guarantee.

The Tour de France comprises more than 3,300km over 21 stages. Even the fastest rider takes in excess of 80 hours to complete the race, meaning an average of at least four hours a day in the saddle.

But how do riders stay comfortable during these gruelling events?

We end up seeing some interesting tech trends from riders on different teams to address comfort, some even going as far as to ditch sponsor-correct kit for the sake of enhanced ergonomics and performance.

We’re going to run through the key touch points on the bike, as well as emerging trends that highlight how riders have prioritised on-bike comfort.

The preference of pedal systems

Pedals might seem like a rather mundane component, but that doesn’t stop riders from having specific preferences. Juan Ayuso, GC leader for Lidl-Trek, is an interesting case study. On the road, he continues to use the Shimano Dura-Ace PD-R9200 pedals he employed while riding for UAE Team Emirates-XRG. His current team is SRAM-sponsored, so the bulk of the team uses Time pedals (a company SRAM acquired a few years ago). Both pedals have a similar three-bolt cleat mounting and engagement type, but the Time pedals are open by default rather than requiring pressure to clip in. The higher-end Time XPro 12 SL is also lighter than Dura-Ace and has a similar stack height.

Interestingly, on his TT bike, Ayuso changes things up again, using the SRM x Q36.5 pedal system. This is a two-bolt system and requires either the specific Q36.5 Unique Pro shoes or drilling out the sole of another shoe manufacturer. This choice has likely been driven by the lower stack height, 9.9mm pedal/cleat system versus 14.8mm for Dura-Ace pedals. It allows the saddle to be a touch lower to reduce the coefficient of drag, while also lowering the centre of mass slightly. It raises the question of why he doesn’t use these pedals on road stages, but he may just have more confidence in the Shimano pedals and know his cleat positioning on them better for comfort and performance on longer road stages.

The issue with running non-team issue pedals, though, is that in a crisis, Ayuso won't always have a teammate's bike to use. Think Mathieu van der Poel at Paris-Roubaix this year, who was using different Shimano cleats from Jasper Philipsen, which resulted in the Dutchman needing to wait on the side of the road for a spare bike.

Sticking with a shoe that works, or going completely custom

On the theme of Q36.5, Tom Pidcock, who rides for the Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling team, is forgoing the Unique Pro road shoes from the brand in favour of his preferred Specialized models. He currently uses Specialized S-Works Torch road shoes, as he has throughout his entire WorldTour road career. Having tested both shoes, there are many similarities between them, but the Specialized features a slight varus tilt and a 1.5mm built-in wedge that tilts the foot outwards slightly. For some riders, this can better fit their individual foot geometry, while the Q36.5 Unique Pro shoes feature a neutral shape or flat foot, but insoles can adjust this.

Pidcock has removed the branding from his shoes to avoid upsetting the sponsors. While you can be sure many fittings and test sessions have taken place behind the scenes to get him comfortable on sponsor-correct equipment, the Yorkshireman still feels more confident in the Specialized shoe.

Saddles are always a personal choice – even for amateurs

One of the most important touch points is the saddle. These have improved considerably in recent years. Previously, the Fizik Arione was a popular choice for its long, narrow, and lightweight design – now riders prioritise comfort for performance, with a wider array of saddle widths now available. Shorter-nosed stubby saddles such as the Specialized Power aim to be comfortable in more aero positions, and there are even custom-made options.

Tadej Pogačar and his UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammates are sponsored by Fizik saddles, but rather than use the off-the-shelf variants, they use the custom-made one-to-one models. Riders are measured to determine width and sit-bone positioning, and then pressure-mapped to create a custom 3D-printed cushion that reduces hot spots and excess pressure on soft tissue.

Posedla is another brand that offers custom-fitted saddles via an at-home kit, while other brands tend to have a wide array of options for riders to choose from. In previous years, riders have blacked out saddle logos and gone against sponsor commitments. A poorly fitted saddle and the resulting sores have even taken riders out of Grand Tours, jostling for high positions in the GC.

Some riders prefer sticking with a helmet shape/model that works

Helmets are a harder piece of equipment to swap out due to sponsor commitments, but riders will sometimes use a completely different model from their teammates. Mathieu Van der Poel is an interesting case in point. His team is sponsored by Abus, and uses the Gamechanger 2.0, which has won Tour de France stages on the head of Jasper Philipsen. MVDP, however, uses the older Gamechanger model rather than the newer one.

Having tested both, MVDP likely opts for the previous-generation model because the new model has a narrower profile that may affect comfort. As the superstar of the team, management will likely overlook this to keep him content and comfortable.

Richard Carapaz was another who had a preferred helmet. When the POC Cytal was first launched, he opted to continue using the Ventral Lite model – likely owing to its lighter weight and better ventilation. However, when POC unveiled the Cytal Lite, he eventually made the swap.

The rise of bike fits and geometry analysis

Almost every rider at this year’s Tour de France will have been specifically fitted to their bike by a professional bike fitter. Specialized-sponsored teams use Retül for this to gauge what frame size, saddle position, bar widths, stack height, and every other measurement are required.

The pursuit of comfort is also apparent in the new design of bike frames. Previously, long-and-low slammed bikes were de rigueur in the peloton. Nowadays, bikes tend to feature a slightly higher stack, and riders are opting for more spacers underneath the bars. Although not as low as before, bikes tend to be more aerodynamic when ridden with the forearms horizontal.

For climbing and riding in the bunch, a more upright position can provide greater comfort over three weeks of racing and potentially better power production on steeper gradients. Even riders such as Pogačar and Vingegaard use bikes (Colnago Y1Rs and Cervelo S5) that feature stem/bar designs with an in-built rise to them rather than a slammed design.

Another attribute of frame design is compliance. Essentially, you want carbon fibre to be stiff in one direction (laterally at the rear triangle), but you also want some vertical flex in that area, too. This should result in high power transfer and precise handling and sprinting, while providing some rear comfort to reduce fatigue from road buzz.

French Tour de France hopeful Paul Seixas has been riding what appears to be a Van Rysel RCR-Pro prototype, both at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (Critérium du Dauphiné) and now the Tour de France. Decathlon CMA CGM cycling team mechanics were tight-lipped about any details on the bike when we photographed it at the Grand Départ in Barcelona, but it does bear a resemblance to the current all-rounder and also features the brand’s ‘Road-Aero-Light’ nomenclature on the inner triangle.

With product lifecycles lasting between three and four years, it’s likely this prototype is indeed the new RCR-Pro, which was first unveiled in late 2023. Keeping with the current aero trends dominating contemporary road bike design, the new bike utilises Van Rysel’s super-high-mod carbon fibre. There’s a notably deeper and pointier head tube, with matching fork legs that taper towards the dropouts. The top tube looks straighter, and the rear end is underscored by a thinner seat tube that tightly hugs the rear wheel, with reprofiled seat stays that attach lower down than before.

Not that it was ever undergunned in the tyre clearance stakes, but closer examination also suggests the new bike has space to safely fit widths upwards of 34mm. Interestingly, like many of the riders, Seixas has opted to use 28mm - in this instance, Continental GP5000 S TRs paired with Swiss Side Hadron 3 Ultimate 550 wheels.

As a SRAM-sponsored team, Seixas’ Van Rysel is fitted with a Red AXS groupset, complete with a 54/42T chainset, 10-33T cassette and 170mm cranks. No Time pedals here though; instead, Seixas uses Look Keo Blade Ceramic Ti pedals. Decathlon CMA CGM is currently the only WorldTour team that uses Deda Elementi components - pictured here is a custom integrated cockpit matched to a 140mm stem. Seixas is also running 15mm worth of spacers under his stem.

The rest of the build comprises a Fizik Vento Antares 00 saddle, Elite Leggero Carbon bottle cages, and a 3D-printed race number holder for the seatpost. There’s also a section of butyl inner tube wrapped around the right fork leg to hold a transponder.

Van Rysel RCR-Pro prototype specs

• Frameset: Van Rysel Super High Modulus Carbon Fibre
• Fork: Van Rysel Super High Modulus Carbon Fibre
• Cockpit: Custom Deda Elementi integrated bar-stem
• Seatpost: Van Rysel Carbon
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS 54/41T, 10-33T
• Wheelset: Swiss Side Hadron 3 Ultimate 550
• Tyres: Continental GP5000 S TR 28mm
• Saddle: Fizik Vento Antares 00

Away from his bike, Seixas rides some of the most affordable kit in the peloton, as my colleague Matt highlights in his piece on getting the Seixas look, including the Frenchman's £69 budget sunglasses.

While we know Seixas is clearly riding a prototype, it looks pretty much ready for production, and there are already significant discounts on the current RCR & RCR-F at Decathlon; check out some of them below.

Every rider knows the feeling. It’s time for the session circled on the training plan that makes your stomach tighten just a little. The one you don’t skip – but might quietly hope will get rained off. It’s not the longest ride or the most challenging route, but it is the hardest one. Usually the one that strips everything back to effort, discipline, and the ability to sit with discomfort.

Many riders approach their hardest sessions with trepidation, but it's here that the biggest gains are made. “These are the sessions that expose your limits, then ask you to push beyond them,” explains coach Matt Bottrill. “Threshold blocks that burn through your legs and lungs.

VO2max efforts that leave you gasping over the bars.” Or else, it’s repeats that seem manageable on paper but quickly become a battle of will as much as fitness. They are, in every sense, uncomfortable. And yet, these hard rides are where the real gains are made, building strength, resilience, confidence and even teaching you how to suffer – and, more importantly, how to keep going when it counts.

BEN MILLAR – NOPINZ RACE TEAM

‘Two minutes at 700 watts: nowhere to hide’

For many, hill-climbs compress competitive cycling into its purest form: fractions of seconds, no tactics, nowhere to hide. Hill specialist Ben Millar built his season around sustaining 700 watts on Matlock’s Bank Road. This brutally specific session, repeated sparingly but precisely, has, Millar concedes, taught him controlled aggression, composure under pressure and how to suffer efficiently. It also helped power him to sixth place at the Nationals.

“Last season my entire preparation centred around one demand: holding 700 watts for two minutes – the approximate duration of the brutal climb at the National Hill-Climb Championships on Bank Road,” explains Millar. “The week before Nationals I managed exactly that during a winning ride at the Walcot Hill-Climb. The session below was the key workout that made it possible. I always do it outdoors – ideally on steep Mendip ramps or Cheddar Gorge – because hill-climbs are about more than power numbers. Position, gradient changes and the psychological load all matter.”

“This session is all about repeatability at race intensity. The one-minute efforts simulate the sustained agony of a hill-climb,” says Millar. “Then the 30-second reps force you to keep producing power when you’re already flooded with lactate.” The physical pain is predictable – the real difficulty is staying calm. “I focus on committing to the effort I’m currently in, not the ones still to come. If you start thinking ahead, you’re finished.”

Coach’s notes

Millar uses the AI coaching app Vekta for his post-session analysis. “It lets me dive beyond headline numbers to see how effort is executed, tracking W′ (anaerobic work capacity) use and recovery to assess pacing, repeatability, and session effectiveness – essential for high-intensity hill climbs.”

According to Joe Staunton, cycling coach with Ceyreste Performance, this workout is deliberately designed to build repeatability at race intensity with three one-minute efforts around 800W followed by six 30-second bursts at 900-1,000W. “What surprises most people is how little time top hill-climbers actually spend at this intensity. Ben completed fewer than five sessions of this type during his entire hill-climb prep. His W′ reached 50kJ – roughly double that of many well-trained riders – showing strong natural explosiveness.”

JAKE SARGENT – TEAM BOTTRILL NOPINZ

‘The last interval tells the truth’

For TT specialist and five-time national champion Jake Sargent, the hardest ride isn’t epic in distance – it’s precise, repeatable and brutally honest. “I do 90% of my training on my commute, on my way to my job as a bike mechanic at Bomber Bikeworks in Bristol, so making the most of my time is key. My hardest session is one I do multiple times,” he says. “It’s designed around the type of racing that I mainly do: 10 and 25-mile TTs. A high FTP is crucial, and the ability to finish the race strong is key.”

After a warm-up, the session hits hard: 30/30s at top Zone 5, 20 minutes at sweet spot, then a decisive 12-minute push at FTP – averaging 285W (307W normalised) with a cadence of 94rpm, yielding an all-time power PB. Sargent says the key difficulty is psychological. Riders naturally want to hold something back for the finale – exactly what he tries to avoid. “Subconsciously you want to save yourself for the last interval, but you’re only cheating yourself,” he says. “You’ve got to trust the training and commit.”

Coach’s notes

For Sargent’s coach, Matt Bottrill, this session works because it demands the rider accumulate fatigue first before executing the most important effort at the end. “That mirrors racing – especially short time trials – where the best riders don’t just produce power, they produce the right power at the right moment. Jake’s training is always built around the specific demands of his goal event. A 10-mile time trial requires a completely different approach to a 12-hour ride, so we focus heavily on pacing control and decision-making under fatigue as much as raw power.”

ALISON JACKSON – ST MICHEL-PREFERENCE HOME-AUBER93

‘The efforts just keep coming at you’

When Alison Jackson talks about her hardest training sessions, it’s not one mythical, epic ride that stands out, but a specific type of suffering: repeated high-intensity efforts with no real let-up. Last season, while recovering from a broken hand, much of that work happened indoors, where there’s nowhere to hide.

“One of the harder ones was trying to get back to race-pace efforts on the trainer,” Jackson says. “It was a lot of high-end work, and the efforts just keep coming at you. The session kicks off with a long warm-up, then 12 times 40-second Zone 6 efforts at high cadence, immediately followed by 12 minutes at low threshold – hard because there’s no reset between efforts.”

“What I love about on-off or over-under workouts is that the change of pace means a repeated change of focus,” Jackson adds. “Mentally it’s easier for me than one long sustained effort. You just lock yourself into the next job.” The numbers underline the stress. Jackson hit a maximum heart rate of 176bpm, produced a peak 30-second power of 453 watts, and accumulated around a Training Stress Score of 160, with much of the session spent in anaerobic capacity, threshold and endurance zones.

Coach’s notes

Adam Pulford, Jackson’s coach and a specialist with Carmichael Training Systems, says the session mirrors World Tour race demands. Anaerobic efforts, threshold blocks and repeated accelerations train the body for changing intensities. “The goal isn’t just high power, but recovering while still riding hard – recoveries are incomplete, so Alison can produce quality power again, just like in a race.”

Amateur riders' hardest sessions

GRACE WARD, 18 – O’Shea RedChilli Bikes

“One of my hardest sessions is my ‘race mixer’ ride, which I know is going to be a tough three and a quarter to four hours, often done with a bit of fatigue in my legs. I love it because, as I step up to U23 racing, longer races demand these longer, hard sessions. It starts with a progressive warm-up and Zone 2, then a few tough one-minute glycolytic efforts.

After five minutes’ recovery, I hit race-style attacks: 15-second sprints, 4.45 at sweet spot, one-minute high MAP, and two-minute all-outs. I do this set three times, with five-minute recoveries. A 15-minute Zone 2 break follows, then 30 minutes at threshold before finishing with Zone 2 and sprints. I push a bit harder to replicate race conditions. It’s brutal, but I love pushing myself before the season kicks off.”

MICHAEL STANLEY, 37 – Dulwich Paragon

“My hardest session is one my coach calls ‘race-winning attacks’: it simulates the moment you launch a decisive move in a race and try to make it stick. After a good warm-up, the first of three sets starts with a 30-second attack at 160-200% of FTP to replicate the explosive acceleration needed to get a gap. Straight after that comes 2.5 minutes at 110–120% of FTP, which is about sustaining the move while everyone else is already under pressure. Then you’re into six minutes, 40 seconds at threshold (90–100% FTP) where the goal is to measure your effort to your imaginary finish line.”

Thanks to TrainingPeaks for facilitating the interview with Alison Jackson.

This feature was originally published in the 9 April 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

Ask Jonas Vingegaard the secret to his success, and he'll point to his eight years with Dutch coach Tim Heemskerk. “He's one of the best coaches out there,” the two-time Tour de France champion said in March, shortly after Heemskerk departed Visma-Lease a Bike. “He was more than just my coach – he is a good friend… I had complete trust in him. Tim is hard to replace.”

In early May, Heemskerk was announced as the latest person to join the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe staff as the German team continue their bid to challenge UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike at the Tour.

To launch Cycling Weekly's new Masterminds of Performance series exploring the philosophies of the world's best coaches, Heemskerk shares the wisdom gleaned from three decades in the sport. “I wouldn't say coaching is an experiment,” he says. “It's applied science and art, which you implement using your intuition.”

A former Dutch national mountain biker, Heemskerk's coaching journey began at just 20 while studying human movement sciences at Maastricht University. After stints running his own coaching business in Canada, managing the Dutch national MTB squad through the 2016 Rio Olympics, and working with USA Cycling. He joined Jumbo-Visma in late 2018.

He arrived at the exact same time as a young, unpolished diamond named Jonas Vingegaard. Though Heemskerk would also go on to coach Giro d'Italia winner Simon Yates and American Matteo Jorgenson, it is his history-making partnership with the Dane that ultimately cemented his reputation.

Q: How would you describe your coaching philosophy?

A: My coaching belief is that yearly progression and variation are key. When I started to work with Jonas, some coaches laughed at [the volume I had set] and said they were training more than Jonas, but that's part of yearly progression.

You have to see where someone is coming from, and year by year you increase the load. Someone said to me when I started coaching that the magic starts after three years.

I was working with Jonas for three years before he got a big result. We had been preparing his body for riding GC – whether a week, 10 days or a Grand Tour – to make him strong enough to be able to recover properly and handle those loads.

That takes years, and you have to be patient to learn what does and doesn't work. Progress is not so loud, and it doesn't announce itself – it quietly stacks up day by day and then you see the results.

Q: What was Jonas Vingegaard like to coach?

A: It was very nice to work with him. If we decided to go for something together – and we always decided together – he completely went for it. He was always giving feedback, such as saying he felt good and could cope with more – and then we discussed with the team what it meant.

After working with someone for eight years, you become friends and get to know each other very well, and you both pick up the phone to each other. I am not a waiter with a golden plate who will give you what you want; I will give you what you need. We will discuss it, we will agree or disagree, and then we'll find the right approach together. Jonas always understood that.

Q: Why did you decide to step away from Visma?

A: I don't need to discuss anymore why I made the decision I did. I said when I left that recently I had been struggling to apply my creativity and passion. People in the media and on podcasts said that I had an ego, and that hurt me because I'm a coach – I'm in the background. It's never been about me, but what we did as a team. I continued working with Jonas until right before Paris-Nice, and of course, I've stayed in touch with him. I'm so proud of what we did together as a team for eight years.

Q: As a coach, how do you prepare a rider for an exceptionally demanding race?

A: If a race is raced very aggressively, you need to prepare for that, but there is no guarantee it will suit the rider's physiology. For example, when working with climber-type GC riders who are very aerobically trained with a very high threshold power, getting into a very aggressive way of training and racing changes the rider's physiology within weeks. So you've really got to work together, discover what works physiologically for the riders, and then discuss what races suit them and how to adapt.

Q: How do you design the perfect training schedule?

A: I strive for maximum adaptation, which sounds easy but is actually complex. When I finish a weekly schedule, it's like a painting; it's personal. Maybe 80% is the same as another similar rider's schedule, but there are little adjustments here or there, small finesses, and that personalisation that makes it a painting.

Then the daily monitoring starts and you need flexibility to adjust it on a daily basis. Every rider has a unique physiology and you can't exactly predict the outcome of a training session. After training, the work starts to really monitor and reflect and talk to the athlete to see if what happened is what you expected. So you have the planning part, and then the monitoring and reflecting part which are just as important.

Q: How much do you involve your riders in the coaching plan?

A: You have to work together. You learn about each other over the years and learn how to get the best out of the athlete. To use Jonas as an example, after eight years working with me he can make his own training schedules, as he knows so much.

That's a different way of working together – he can tell me what he needs. Obviously, the coach makes the schedule, but what the athlete actually does is decided by talking and together deciding what is needed at that moment.

Q: How often are you in contact with your riders?

A: Every day, because proper daily monitoring is essential. You can use all the metrics in the world, but the challenge and difficulty is to make it simple for yourself. That's something that only comes with experience.

A young coach will look at everything – mountains of data, spreadsheets and research papers – and over the years you, with intuition, learn how to judge everything properly, filter out the less important information, and discuss it with your colleagues. It's a matter of asking yourself: what did we learn today that will help us tomorrow?

Q: What's a good recovery day?

A: This is something I've been thinking about more and more recently, as it's very common now for heat training and strength training to be added to a rider's schedule on their recovery day.

You need to ask yourself: is the rest day a proper recovery day? Or is this now a day that has increased in load over the years? I'm a strong believer that if you've done the work, you have to respect your recovery days and reduce the physical and cognitive load on a rider.

That also means not doing as many interviews on a rest day or reducing screentime, as that all increases the cognitive load. Athletes and coaches always want to become faster and want to do more and more, but it's better to plan to do heat training or the gym session on training days.

Some riders like to ride their bike on a rest day, and you can allow them to do so for a little while, but really you shouldn't be focusing on cycling when you're meant to be recovering.

Q: How do you improve your coaching skills?

A: My background is in research and I'm curious all of the time, so I'm always reading research papers on sports science. And not just about cycling; some new developments in football, for example, can be applied to cycling.

You want to be asking questions and you want to be critical and disruptive because only then do you and others start thinking. If people call me a pain in the arse, I say to them: thank you, because that's how you make progress. If I created a team, I wouldn't want people to say yes to me. I need people to throw ideas in, to question what we're doing.

Q: How do you envisage training evolving in the coming years?

A: I think we'll see a reduction in hours, and instead more quality training. Maybe we'll laugh about seven-hour sessions. I know there are races like the Monuments that are that long, but maybe better adaptations will come from having multiple sessions [per day]. Two three-hour sessions in one day could be better than one seven-hour ride without a break.

Athletes can now take on board more carbohydrates, so with this added jet fuel it could be possible to add in more quality work. I think we'll also have better tools to monitor riders, such as wearables that allow you to see a rider's lactate or oxygen saturation values. We could learn a lot from that, but nothing will replace speaking with a rider, asking them at breakfast how they feel.

Q: How do you think artificial intelligence (AI) will change coaching?

A: It will never replace daily monitoring and the feeling of what's happening – the coach and athlete will always decide together what they're going to do. But it can be useful. You can ask AI to process data faster and the results can promote and accelerate thinking, as well as highlighting trends which you otherwise might not have seen. It might even come up with out-of-the-box ideas.

Yet we have to remember that AI always uses data from the past to make a prediction and it never has the full context. It might review a test from January and say it was a bad result, but AI doesn't know that the rider had a travel day or that when they woke up they were tired – other reasons why the test's outcome was affected. I think it will – and it is – helping us make sense of data, but I also think human excellence will only become more valued.

As the Tour de France continues its journey across the country, the dust is settling on a spectacular, sun-drenched Grand Départ in Catalonia. With explosive back-to-back stage finishes atop Montjuïc - the imposing castle fortress looming high above Barcelona - northern Spain delivered a vibrant, unforgettable opening act: A brilliant reminder of the unique, intoxicating allure a foreign start can conjure.

It's a reminder, too, that the clock is already ticking toward Britain's own turn in the spotlight. Next summer, 13 years after Yorkshire hosted the 2014 Grand Départ, the world's biggest bike race returns to our shores. The 2027 edition will roll out of Edinburgh before carving its sweeping way down through northern England and Wales, ensuring the eyes of the sporting world are once again fixed firmly on the UK for three monumental days in July.

As the current Tour moves northwards from the Spanish border, through the Pyrenees, then into central France, we break down the vital ingredients that elevate a Grand Départ from a simple starting line into a truly historic spectacle.

1. Attract massive crowds

It's something no successful Grand Départ can do without: millions of people at the roadside, all ages getting into the spirit of the Tour. Not only do big crowds spur on the riders and leave them with lasting memories, but they provide incredible backdrops for photos and TV coverage, which go down in history. Who can forget that image of the Tour peloton riding up Buttertubs in the Yorkshire Dales?

"I rode the London Olympics in 2012 and in 2014 the Tour started in Yorkshire and it was pretty amazing," says dsm-firmenich PostNL's 37-year-old John Degenkolb. "There were so many people there and the cycling hype was real. In some places it was like riding through an arena. It was a tunnel of noise and it was really, really special on the climbs. It was something that money cannot buy."

1. Crown a fairytale first yellow jersey

Most riders would prefer to gently ease into 21 days of racing, but this is a major global sporting spectacle - fans want fireworks from day one. Stages can end in sprints, or time trials can establish a GC hierarchy from the off, but there has to be some climbing that tests the legs of the yellow jersey contenders and produces captivating racing. Bilbao in 2023 certainly achieved this, as did Florence the year after. Did Lille last year? Not really.

An immediate hierarchy in the battle for yellow, as has happened this year, has the benefit of calming the peloton down. "To have a couple of harder stages and to have the GC in shape early on is definitely much safer," says Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's Jai Hindley. "The Tour is always chaotic, but the team time trial and a super challenging second stage was a good spectacle for the people watching and helps us riders too."

Jay Guarnieri, formerly of the world-famous British cycling fan group the Beefeaters, says: "A lumpy circuit is always a good idea, but not too lumpy - something some of the sprinters could manage so that suspense is built over who gets the first yellow."

3. Don't become a lightning rod

The build-up to most Grand Départs is at least partly overshadowed by the threat of a protest or a certain group promising to exploit the spectacle for their own movement. Catalan independence groups called on volunteers to "mobilise" in large numbers in Barcelona to push forward their cause.

Protests are never far away in the Tour, and it's always a concern for the race - but that risk is acutely felt by the local organising group for the Grand Départ, who are tasked with making sure that the Tour's visit runs as smoothly as the race does on home soil, without taking away from the ordinary show. There can be no hiccups, no drama - just celebration.

4. Reward a home hero

Yorkshire in 2014 had four Brits, including the defending champion Chris Froome, but it failed to crown a home hero - no Brit won a stage (and Mark Cavendish's crashing out in Harrogate still stings). Denmark in 2022 had it, when Magnus Cort infiltrated the breakaway on day two, earning the polka-dot jersey, and then mounted his own solo break on day three. "It was pretty insane getting to the first town," he later said. "The yelling from the crowds, all by myself, with such a big crowd. That was quite special."

"It's the Magnus Cort Show," his EF Education-EasyPost team declared. It was - and he was on the front page of all the national newspapers, fans even coming out in Cort face masks. For two days, he was the King of Denmark. It left a lasting impression on his countrymen.

5. Bathe us in sunshine

As much as we'd like to say that the weather doesn't matter, we all know it does. The last thing the Tour's opening needs is a rain deluge. Think back to when German city Düsseldorf welcomed the Tour in 2017. Aside from Geraint Thomas winning the opening day's time trial to go into yellow, what else do you remember?

The countless crashes under torrential rain, big names such as Alejandro Valverde breaking bones, and GC riders losing big chunks of time. Ditto Nice in 2020. Riders staged a strike because conditions were so treacherous, and by the end of the day it was easier to count who hadn't crashed. So, please, weather gods, be kind.

6. Double-up as dream get-away

Most cycling fans don't just come to watch the Tour - they also want to experience the culture, see the sights and eat the local cuisine. The best Grand Départs are the ones where you can stay a few days before or after the race has passed and have plenty to see and do. Barcelona, Florence and Monaco (way back in 2009) ticked that box brilliantly as will Edinburgh next year.

7. Serve up first-rate cycling for fans

Why just watch the pros when you could ride the same routes as them? If you're going to watch a Grand Départ, you'll probably want to take your bike. Barcelona was great, as it's surrounded by the pre-Pyrenees and dozens of cols, but Brussels in 2019 or Utrecht in 2015 were a bit too flat and dull for scenery-seeking cyclists. The UK's routes visit the Lake District and the Welsh hills - scoring top marks in this regard, weather depending!

8. Put on a party

The host city and region has to buy into Tour fever. There have to be music festivals, fan parks, bike expos - who doesn't want free merch? - affordable, delicious street food, and plentiful welcoming bars to build atmosphere and excitement. A team presentation set against a famous landmark also helps; Edinburgh Castle will host the 2027 presentation - surely setting a new standard.

"It has to be in an iconic start town and somewhere the locals will totally get on board," fan Guarnieri says. "The most important thing is fostering anticipation."

"Having events involving people in the industry, such as ex-riders, really helps," he adds. "Fans just love to feel part of it."

9. Mobilise the local masses

To truly elevate a Grand Départ, host regions need to generate the kind of fanatical community buy-in that physically transforms the landscape. The ultimate benchmark for this remains Yorkshire in 2014. Before a pedal had even been turned, Tour race director Christian Prudhomme predicted that roadside passion would define the event, expecting "houses painted yellow and in polka-dots, and everyone so enthused."

Yorkshire more than lived up to its billing, with 3.5 million people flooding its cities, villages and moorlands to create a wall of noise. The atmosphere was so electric that Mark Cavendish recalled getting goosebumps climbing Holme Moss. Prudhomme later crowned it "the grandest Grand Départ in the history of the Tour." It also spawned the creation of the Tour de Yorkshire.

If Edinburgh and Wales can tap into that same unbridled, paint-the-town-yellow community spirit next summer, the 2027 Tour will be an undeniable triumph.

10. Go big, not small

The Tour visits plenty of quaint and lesser-known villages and towns on its three-week voyage, but the start must be in a populous city to really kick the race off with a bang. "It's nice to begin in a big city because the race is able to reach a bigger audience and people who don't really follow cycling," says Matteo Trentin, a veteran of nine Tours. "After the Grand Départ we'll have more fans of cycling. But if you go to a smaller city or a place that doesn't have a big city nearby then the locals will come, but you won't have as many fans."

NSN's George Bennett, a veteran of 18 Grand Tours, concurs: "Buy-in from the public is the biggest thing. You saw the buzz in Barcelona and how excited everyone was. Compare that to a Grand Départ in a place where no one really cares about cycling. I remember one time in the Vuelta a España, the team presentation was in a paddock in the middle of nowhere and no one gave a damn. It took until the fourth stage when we got out of the region for locals to get excited."

There's another advantage with starting in places like Barcelona. "It's pretty easy to fly in and out of here and it makes it so much easier logistically," Trentin adds. "Especially for us riders it means that we don't have to spend much time driving around before the race begins." The upshot of that is that the riders are not mentally taxed before the first pedal stroke.

While the diamond-shaped frame steered bicycle design on a fairly straight course from the 1880s, its invention arguably sparked a period of intense creativity, compelling frame designers to find solutions that fitted within the rhomboid template, yet weren’t constrained by it.

The early to mid-1900s were a period ripe with intriguing design flourishes. Hetchins had its curly stays, Paris (of, erm, Stoke Newington) had its elevated downtube, Thanet introduced its floating bottom bracket, and Bates employed both Cantiflex frame tubing and Diadrant front forks.

It’s debatable whether any of these innovations enhanced performance or merely served as effective marketing USPs, particularly in the 1930s, when displaying brand logos on frames was prohibited for certain races.

This particular Bates, dating from 1938, is a range-topping Volante in track guise; a rare one at that. “It’s exceptional because it hasn’t been drilled for brakes,” confirms current owner Richard Hoddinott of vintage specialists Velo Pages.

“Despite being intended for the track, almost all of them were. The serial number is also unusual because it’s simply 257. Usually, the numbers are preceded by two letters, which makes me wonder whether this frame was specially made for a pro.”

The Cantiflex tubing was exclusively produced for Bates by Reynolds. Examine the image and you’ll notice that the primary tubes swell in the centre before tapering gently towards the lugs. Similar to Reynolds’ double-butted tubing, the walls are thicker at the ends as well. Bates claimed that this unique profile enhanced strength and rigidity, ‘entirely eliminating whip’.

The flamboyant Diadrant forks are a delight. According to Hoddinott, they’re better at absorbing the hit from rough surfaces and even potholes (unlikely on a track, I know), enabling composed riders to deliver more power.

The wheels aren’t original, but they are stunning, period-correct pieces. “They’re laminated maple rims from Constrictor, made by Fairbanks Boston of Paris,” says Hoddinott. “The large flange hubs are from BH Airlite, who, interestingly, would attach large steel flanges to small flange hubs.”

Riding the Tour de France is not just the accomplishment of a lifelong goal for a bike rider, but the fulfilment of an entire family's ambition. The 50 debutants in this year's race are chuffed to be here, but so too are their parents and siblings, and everyone else who has been part of their journey.

Take Zac Walker, two years younger than his brother Max, who is riding his maiden Tour at the age of 24 (he will turn 25 on July 12) for EF Education-EasyPost. "This has always been our childhood dream, so I didn't want to miss out on the opportunity to watch him," Zac says, placing the emphasis on the collective. "It was always our dream and we're just all so proud of him. He's such a nice guy and it couldn't happen to anyone better."

Zac is supporting his brother throughout the Tour by driving "a hire car that is probably a bit too big for my driving capabilities" but he hasn't got much of a plan beyond the first few days. "If my preparation isn't good enough and the worst comes to the worst, there's always the backseat so I can sleep in the car just fine. And if not, I've got a Decathlon tent."

It's likely Zac will be visible - and audible at the side of the road over the coming weeks. "I don't think it's a problem at the Tour, but at some cycling races there's not enough cheering, so I'll be giving Max a big cheer. I've got my Isle of Man flag in my bag, as well as a cowbell. My voice does wonders as well."

The Walkers' mum, Sally, can't quite believe her oldest son has made it to the Tour when she speaks with CW at the start in Barcelona. "For the family it's massive, huge," she smiles. "He's always watched it, especially with Mark Cavendish and Pete Kennaugh being from the Isle of Man as well. But I never thought in my wildest dreams that he'd make it. He always said he wanted to, and I did believe he could, but I just never thought it would happen. It's not until I've got here that I see that, yeah, it is happening."

She turns her thoughts to Dot Tilbury, the Isle of Man coach who has been credited with launching the careers of all of the small island's pro riders. "Dot will be so proud. She's massive to anyone from the Isle of Man," Sally says. "Everyone's talking about it and knows what Max is doing - they call it the Isle of Man posse, and they're all rooting for him."

Max, who is in the second year of his first professional contract with EF, was told nine days before the race started that he had been selected. "But I missed the original phone call as I had my phone on silent!" he laughs. "I didn't know what to expect when I called Charly [Wegelius, the team's sports director] back as I knew I was one of the last two picks and that it was 50-50. I was half-excited but half-nervous that he might say no, so when he said I was going I was really happy."

But just like most 20-somethings who delay informing their parents of any news - no matter how small or big - Max didn't tell his family of his selection until three days later. "He didn't tell us for ages!" Sally chuckles. "And when he did, he just dropped it in, five minutes into another chat we were having!"

The Walkers have twice seen the Tour: in Harrogate on day one of the 2014 race, when their fellow Manxman and idol Mark Cavendish crashed out, and in Morzine in the Alps when they hiked for hours up a mountain to watch a mountain stage - only for incessant rain to leave them sodden. What they've learned from their previous trips is to maximise the caravan freebies.

"Seeing the riders was cool, but the caravan was even cooler," Max says of that day in Morzine. "I was dancing on the side of the road, getting all the Haribos and caps. I think half of my suitcase was filled with caravan stuff. I've been telling my family to make sure they get out early to see the caravan."

Zac has listened and is obliging. "My aim is to have to buy another suitcase to put on my flight on the way home. Not that that's booked, by the way. I haven't got much of a plan for anything."

One family who did have a plan at the start of the race was the Molenaars. Alex, 26, was riding his first Tour for race debutants Caja Rural-Seguros RGA. Born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands to his Dutch father Gerrit, Molenaar lived in Olot, Catalonia from the ages of 10 to 16. His Spanish mother, Dolors, is from Barcelona, and her childhood home was at the foot of Montjuïc where stages one and two finished. Molenaar essentially had a home Grand Départ.

"Buah, it's everything!" Molenaar tells CW before stage one. "From the first day I started riding a bike until now, I've been dreaming of this. When I was young, when I started my first training sessions and races, through all the suffering, it's all been for this moment. And it's all worth it."

Up until this spring, when ASO, the Tour organisers, announced that Caja would receive a wildcard to ride the race, Molenaar had never seriously thought he would appear at the Tour. He's spent his entire career so far riding for third-division Continental teams and second-tier ProTeams. "You dream, but at this level it's difficult to believe it's possible," he says. "For riders who are at this level, it's an opportunity that presents itself very few times. To ride the Tour is something really fuera de normal - extraordinary. It's a huge prize for all of us and the team as a whole."

Caja were the first team down the team time trial start ramp in Barcelona, and Molenaar was the first rider across the finish line. For a few minutes, he was in virtual yellow - the de facto leader of the race sat in the hot seat. His mum, watching on with Gerrit and their extended family, could barely believe what she was witnessing.

"You couldn't imagine that so many years later your son would be riding the Tour de France on the same streets that you played on as a child," she says, just hours after Molenaar passed them. A day later, Molenaar was one of three escapees, and ended the day in the King of the Mountains jersey. "It's just a beautiful experience, truly unforgettable," Dolors says.

The Molenaars picked up their family campervan on stage three to follow the rest of the Tour, but two days later were dealt a blow when their son crashed on stage five, sustaining injuries that would see him pull out before the next day. But that wasn't their summer over. In August they go to the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift where their daughter, Laura, will make her second successive appearance for VolkerWessels. "It's incredible that our two children are competing in the Tour de France," Dolors beams.

While Walker, Molenaar and other debutants, including Netcompany-Ineos's Josh Tarling, are being supported at the roadside by their partners and family, New Zealander Aaron Gate has his two young sons cheering him on. "It was quite surreal that all four of us just jumped in our car and drove two-and-a-half hours from our home in Andorra down to Barcelona to start the Tour de France," he says.

"To have my wife and kids with me is pretty cool." Aged 35 and seven months, Gate is the oldest debutant since Mathew Hayman in 2014 and one of only nine riders this century over the age of 35 to make their Tour bows.

The Kiwi has spent most of his career focusing on the track, winning four Commonwealth Games medals for his home nation and a bronze medal in the team pursuit at the 2012 London Olympics. It was only in 2017 that he started to properly commit to the road, but he didn't reach the World Tour until the 2025 season, signing for XDS-Astana, who he's riding for at the Tour.

There was a certain symmetry that the Tour began with a team time trial, for Gate's first taste of competitive action when he was a teenager was racing 10-mile team time trials in inter-school national competitions.

"The guys who I used to race those TTTs with rekindled an old chat last week and they were joking that one of us has finally made it to the Tour de France," Gate says. "It was through those guys that I got interested in following cycling so this is for them as much as it is for me."

The super-slick time trial set-up that Gate was on in Barcelona was quite the contrast to the races of old. "We had restricted gearing set at 53-17," he says. "Our best time on a flat course was 20 minutes, 6 seconds. We were gutted we didn't quite break the 20-minute barrier for 10 miles." That definitely doesn't matter now he's riding the Tour.

"Everyone has dreams, but I've never been someone to set really long-reaching goals. I just go with the flow and when opportunities present themselves, I take them with both hands," he says. But, he confesses, there were fears in the past month that injury or illness might scupper his chances.

"I will admit that it was nerve-wracking from a crash point of view at the Tour of Belgium and Copenhagen Sprint," he says. "I was just making sure that I got through them both with my body intact. When I crossed the line in Belgium, I did so with a big sigh of relief. 'I've done it! I've survived without falling off!' I was telling others."

Gate had done everything he needed to do to make the Tour squad, just like Walker, Molenaar and the other few dozen debutants. While they will be the ones who are spoken about on TV and featured in the press, their achievements will belong as much to their families as to them.

"Watching your son at the Tour de France is such a privilege," says Molenaar's mum, Dolors, "We're really, really proud. Our son is a good rider but he's not a superstar. We're so grateful that our son gets some attention in these few weeks - as all other parents will be."

Wearing the yellow jersey after riding into the lead of the Tour de France is a career highlight for any cyclist. In addition to donning the iconic maillot jaune, they usually get to ride a specially painted bike equipped with as many matching components as their mechanics can find.

We saw a similar exercise carried out last year, when Cannondale worked around the clock to paint a Lab71 SuperSix for Ben Healy before escorting it in a Porsche 911 Carrera 4 GTS Cabriolet to ensure it arrived in time for him to defend the jersey in Toulouse.

The current race leader, Torstein Træen, has this honour and his Uno-X Mobility team has pulled out all the stops to commemorate his remarkable route to yellow. From its factory in Belgium, Uno-X's bike sponsor Ridley delivered a yellow Noah Fast 3.0 to southern France within 30 hours of Træen pulling on the leader's jersey.

In May 2022, Træen discovered he had returned an abnormal doping test result. His team doctor interpreted this as a sign he could be ill, and urged his rider to see his GP. As pain in his testicles increased, an ultrasound scan revealed he had testicular cancer. When his left testicle was removed just 41 days on from his doping alert, a 15mm cancerous tumour was found inside. But it hadn't spread, enabling him to make a full recovery and restart racing in August 2022.

At last year's Vuelta a España, Træen, now 30, wore the red leader's jersey for four stages on the way to finishing ninth on GC. On stage four of the 2026 Tour de France, he joined a strong breakaway powered by Mads Pedersen's Lidl-Trek teammates, who succeeded in setting up Træen's fellow Norwegian for stage victory in Foix.

Træen now leads EF Education-EasyPost's Sean Quinn by 28 seconds in the general classification, and more importantly, he is ahead of race favourite Tadej Pogačar by nearly eight minutes. Being a good climber, this buffer could help him retain yellow through the mountainous second week.

Now let's take a close look at his custom Ridley Noah Fast 3.0, which was sprayed by the brand's CEO, Jochim Aerts, in a return to his frame-spraying roots. The third-generation bike is considered one of the peloton's best aero bikes, thanks to a combination of minimal frontal area and deep tubes designed to take advantage of the 'sailing effect'.

The byproduct of this chunky tubing is weight. At the Opening Weekend, we weighed one of Træen's teammates' bikes at 8kg, which is on the heavy side for a WorldTour bike. In light of that, Ridley hasn't gone all out on the yellow paint – just spraying parts of the head tube and top half of the fork saves 100g over a full coat.

His Noah Fast will be built with a full SRAM Red AXS groupset, including a power meter – the complete bike is estimated to weigh 7.9-8kg, according to Ridley. As for the yellow details, expect to see yellow handlebar tape, wheel decals, and SRAM stickers on the levers and cranks.

Whether the Norwegian uses his custom Ridley Noah Fast for the first mountain stage of this year's Tour de France between Pau and Gavarnie-Gèdre, we'll have to wait and see – we suspect he'll be on the unreleased Falcon RS lightweight bike to ensure he stays in yellow for the coming stages.

Why climb one mountain when you can climb all of them? This is the principle behind the Everest Roam.

Everesting is a challenge whereby a rider completes repeats of the same climb until they’ve accumulated the vertical ascent of Mount Everest - that’s 8,848 meters (or 29,029 feet).

The format was first introduced in 2014 by Australian cyclist Andy van Bergen. Since then, it’s become so popular it’s transcended cycling, with athletes ‘Everesting’ in running, stair climbing and even rock climbing.

Launched in November 2025, the Everest Roam invites athletes to hit the same elevation, but in one continuous ride with no repeats, and no sleep. It’s a challenge I accepted on Saturday, June 6, completing the ride in 19 hours, 40 minutes on a route totalling 231 miles (371 km) and 29,056 feet. Just enough extra elevation to be safe.

THE PLANNING IS HALF THE BATTLE

As a randonneur—or Audaxer in the UK— and ultra-distance cyclist, I’m not afraid of a tough day out. I’ve finished multiple 1200km, 600km and 400km events, so the thought of riding all day, night, and the following morning wasn’t too daunting. The idea of doing all that and hitting just about every hill, valley, and dell on my way back home? That’s a different story.

There’s perhaps a reason the original Everast challenge utilises hill reps. As you can imagine, finding a route where you can accumulate almost 9,000m without turning into a 1000km adventure isn’t easy. And depending on where you live, it could be downright impossible. So the Everest Roam really does start where most epic adventures begin—your computer.

Living in Northern California, we’re lucky (depending on how you look at it) to have an endless array of mountain ranges right in our backyard. When it came to figuring out how to stack up the meters, it was about calculating where. Not how.

Next were the logistics. Randonneuring is famous for its unsupported philosophy. However, for a Roam, this is nearly impossible. The idea of carrying anything extra seemed diabolical, not to mention the fact that I’d be riding throughout the night, in remote areas, where access to food and water would be tough. Support was going to be essential.

With this in mind, the best option was a point-to-point route. Starting north in a town called Geyserville, located in the lush Sonoma wine country, I’d essentially be “riding home” to San Francisco, making detours for every climb between there and here.

THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB

For a ride built entirely around going up, up, up, weight matters. Which meant I wanted the lightest build I could find. I went with the XDS X-LAB RT9—a true climbing machine at just 5.9kg (13 lbs) for a size small. Light, stiff, perfect. To help keep the legs spinning, the bike was set up with a 1:1 gear ratio (50/34 in the front and 11/34 in the back) on a Dura-Ace Di2 groupset.

I used two Exposure bike lights, ensuring I had some built-in fail-safes. The extra light comes in handy on nighttime descents, illuminating up the entire road like a car’s headlight. Finally, I used Apidura’s race frame bags to carry my on-bike essentials, while still keeping the overall weight as light as possible.

Fueling an effort like this is just as critical as the route itself. I aimed for 80 to 90 grams of carbs per hour, creating my own fueling recipe of 60g from my carb drink and the other 20-30g from Swedish candy, Twinkies, crisps, honestly, whatever I could get my hands on. There's no elegant strategy at 2am. There's just what’s in front of you.

The final piece was finding some folks to join the adventure. We had six intrepid riders sign up. Two opted for a half Everest while the other four decided to go the distance. Who was at the finish line? Spoiler alert—just me and another cyclist.

THE RIDE....

The adventure kicked off promptly as we rolled out at 6:05am, just as the morning sun was starting to poke through the vineyards. I began the ride with three other women, with three guys due to join later.

It wasn’t long before the terrain began to pitch up, and the first few climbs served as a wake-up call. It’s tough to describe what it’s like to look down at your computer and see a number like 26,722 feet worth of ascent remaining. Plus, a cool double century on top of it.

Whilst I’ve completed many long-distance events, this one was going to represent a major challenge. So, it was critical to think of this ride in different chunks. One hill. One 10-mile stretch. One rest stop at a time. Breaking the ride up into four distinct chapters really helped — all of a sudden, this monumental task was approachable.

As the miles and hours wore on, the climbs took their victims, and before nightfall, it was just me and my friend Evan, leapfrogging each other up the road. I was faster on the climbs. He was faster on the descents.

Eventually, we got gapped, and it was time for some solo miles. I’m a pretty social person, so this kind of “me time” is my own personal hell. To stay focused, I relied on plenty of positive self-talk, a gratitude mindset (feeling lucky to be fit enough to take on an endeavor like this) and of course, plenty of music to keep spirits high.

Before long, the ride had stretched into the night shift. At around 10pm, after several solo hours, I pulled into our SAG wagon that had created a makeshift rest stop. My friend Evan had already gone up the road, and I was bracing myself for another six hours of lonely miles. Suddenly, my support crew kicked into a whole new gear. My husband was putting on his bike kit from his much more humane ride earlier that day, and was going to finish the remaining 75 miles with me. To say I was overwhelmed was an understatement. Tears welled up, and I couldn’t help but let the emotions flow.

It’s certainly not the first time I’ve cried on a long ride. Not because of pain, oftentimes because of sheer overwhelm. Your emotions are heightened in these moments. Everything becomes amplified, and even the smallest act of kindness is enough to leave you in a puddle of tears.

Reflecting on the lower points of the ride feels strange, because if I’m honest, in my body I felt strong the whole time. Sure, there were moments that tested me and 25% grades that had me questioning all my life decisions. But with some good training in the legs and some great company, the ride pretty darn fun.

After all, if you want to see who your true friends are, do an ultra event. I was blown away by the support I had and the lengths my friends went to ensure my safety. As we got closer to San Francisco, the iconic Golden Gate Bridge nearly in view, our friend Adele, who had been driving the SAG car since 10am the previous day, hopped on her bike to escort us home.

At 4:45am I was over the bridge and finished. I had successfully completed an Everest Roam.

To Roam, or not to Roam

If you've been thinking about Everesting, but the idea of riding the same hill sounds like punishment, the Roam is genuinely the better option. It will test your ability to plan, adapt, and keep going. But the feeling at the end makes it all worthwhile.

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge with my friends beside me, I wasn't thinking about elevation gains or finishing times. I was thinking about how lucky I am to have people willing to drive a SAG car for 18 hours and hop on a bike at midnight just to make sure I got home. That's what ultra events do. They show you who your people are. And mine showed up at 10pm with a bike and no hesitation. In the nearly 20 hours of riding, that was the moment that mattered most.

For more information on how to take on your own Everest Roam, visit everesting.com

When Tom Pidcock left Ineos Grenadiers for Q36.5 Cycling Team two winters ago, the British star wasn't only swapping a fading superpower for an up-and-coming, ambitious start-up - he was jumping from one billionaire-backed team to another.

The difference between Ineos owner Jim Ratcliffe and Q36.5 bankroller Ivan Glasenberg is that the former appears to be looking for an exit from cycling while the latter is just getting started in the sport.

Glasenberg, a mining tycoon worth $13.9bn (£10.4bn) according to Forbes (about £3bn less than Ratcliffe), has emerged as a key figure within cycling politics in the past year. He has shown serious intent to overhaul the sport's business model, and to make his Pidcock-headlined team one of the strongest.

It's a bold vision worth shouting about - or so you might think. But the curious thing is, Glasenberg is a hard man to reach, and an even harder one to profile. Intensely private, he almost never speaks to the media and is reluctant to discuss his cycling ambitions, despite being a regular presence at the sport's biggest races. In three-and-a-half years as owner of what is now Pinarello-Q36.5, no quote attributed to Glasenberg has appeared in the team's press communications. In 2011, the Financial Times described him as "one of the great enigmas of the corporate world" - a label that fits his role in cycling too.

His curiously low profile should not be interpreted as a sign that Glasenberg, whose team is making their Tour de France debut this July, isn't serious about transforming the sport. "He's got a big voice and people seem to listen to him," said one source who has interacted with Glasenberg frequently in the past six months. Word within cycling has it that the UCI, the sport's governing body, is acutely attuned to his ambitions.

Born in 1957 in a wealthy Johannesburg suburb to a Lithuanian father and South African mother, Glasenberg showed signs of being a sharp, subversive operator from an early age. Former teachers, cited in previous profiles published elsewhere, described him as "outspoken, cheeky" and not "always accepting that the teacher was correct". Before studying to become an accountant, he'd had his own elite sporting ambitions. One of the country's leading race walkers - reportedly a junior national champion in the late 1970s - he had hoped to represent South Africa at the 1984 Olympic Games.

International opposition to South Africa's apartheid policies scuppered that dream. Glasenberg later obtained Israeli citizenship through his Jewish heritage, but he was unable to compete for his adopted country owing to apparent bureaucratic complications. The rejection from sport's biggest stage is said to still irk him, but it hastened his move into the even more competitive world of international business.

In 1984, he married Elana Beverley Orelowitz - they have two children - and joined Marc Rich & Co AG, later renamed Glencore. The Swiss-based commodities giant specialises in mining and trading raw materials and goods around the world. Glasenberg began in the coal division, and soon made his mark, earning the nickname 'King of Coal'. As Glencore grew, so did his standing, and in 2002 he became CEO. In 2013, two years after the company floated on the FTSE 100 - an event that laid bare Glasenberg's vast personal wealth - he oversaw the acquisition and merger with Xstrata, creating one of the world's largest commodities companies.

Operating in more than 30 countries and boasting around 140,000 employees and contractors, Glencore is said to have more ships than the Royal Navy. It is responsible for 60% of the world's tradable zinc, half of the globe's supply of copper, and also trades 9% of the grain and 3% of the oil markets. Essentially, the world pivots on Glencore's trading, with Glasenberg the man at the steering wheel for almost two decades - until stepping down as CEO in 2021. He remains the company's largest shareholder and was part of recent failed merger talks between Glencore and Rio Tinto, which if successful would have formed a behemoth company worth some $240bn (£179bn).

Glasenberg's rise was partly built on 16-hour workdays. In a rare interview with the Wall Street Journal, in 2013, he refuted the notion of a work-life balance. "No. We work," he insisted. "You don't come here to take life easy. And we all get rich from it, so, you know, there's a benefit from it." There is little evidence of him splurging that wealth on a lavish lifestyle. Fifteen years ago, the Guardian reported that he owned only one house - a discreet modern villa in Switzerland - while one business associate is reported as saying he is "a positive outlier. So many of these guys are poseurs. He's not a poseur."

Poseur or not, he is without doubt a driven and uncompromising businessman. That same Guardian report stated that failure is his "biggest fear of every minute", while Reuters reported that he is "well known to drive a hard bargain and will not easily give in", adding that his notable personality traits are "his fiery temper and his charm".

As CEO of one of the world's most important trading companies, Glasenberg has mixed it with the world's elite. In 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin personally awarded him the Order of Friendship after Glencore invested $10.2bn (£7.6bn) in Russia's state oil producer Rosneft (the company sold its 23.46% stake in Rosneft in 2025). It is far from his only controversy or questionable association.

His early years as Glencore CEO were spent dealing with the legacy of predecessor Marc Rich, which included accusations of illegal dealings with apartheid South Africa, the USSR, Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Under Glasenberg's leadership, Glencore continued to face allegations of human rights abuses and ethical failings, including the forced relocation of entire villages in Colombia to make way for mine expansion, profiting from child labour in the DR Congo, and releasing waste acid into rivers in the same country. These are claims Glencore, and Glasenberg, have always strenuously denied.

In 2021, at the age of 64, and presumably with more time on his hands, Glasenberg decided to invest in cycling. He first became the owner of the then small Swiss apparel brand Q36.5 in 2021, and in 2023 he bought Italian bike brand Pinarello for a reported €200m.

He's also said to have stakes in SRM power meters and the nutrition brand Amacx. He told Canada's Globe and Mail in 2021: "I love sport and I am doing this for pleasure," and that "no one has ever put luxury sports brands together successfully." His purchase of Pinarello in particular was a nod towards that ambition.

In 2022, when fellow South African Doug Ryder was looking to build a new professional cycling team after the collapse of Qhubeka NextHash, Glasenberg spotted an opportunity. "Q36.5 had been looking to sponsor a team with their jerseys but they were unable to reach a suitable agreement with the two teams they were in discussions with," team manager Ryder explained to CW.

"I then approached Q36.5 regarding sponsoring our team, and they agreed on the basis that the team would carry the Q36.5 name." With that, Glasenberg became cycling's latest billionaire backer, following in the footsteps of Ratcliffe, Sylvan Adams, Igor Makarov and Oleg Tinkov.

CW spotted Glasenberg outside his team's bus at last year's Giro d'Italia, seeming to confirm that he takes a hands-on role, but we were informed that he does not give media interviews. "Ivan attends training camps for a few days at a time but leaves the day-to-day management of the team to the managers," Ryder said.

When Pidcock won two stages and the GC of the AlUla Tour in early 2025, his first race in what has been undeniably a very successful partnership to date, the Briton said: "Ivan is the reason I'm on this team." Asked to elaborate, Pidcock refused. Similarly, Ryder didn't engage with more specific questions about Glasenberg's involvement with the team. Employees appear to be briefed on maintaining Glasenberg's low public profile - a marked contrast to how Adams and Tinkov ran their respective teams.

In private, however, Glasenberg has been stretching his influence, leading the latest team-led reform project, TeamCo, which aims to improve teams' financial sustainability and make cycling more attractive to a wider audience. One person who has been in TeamCo meetings said that "Ivan can be convincing when he wants to be, and charming", while the same source and others also highlighted how he has brought his reputation as a hard-headed negotiator to the table. If TeamCo succeeds in wresting some power away from the UCI and the biggest race organisers and handing it to the teams, he could become the most transformative billionaire the sport ever known.

One thing is for sure: Glasenberg won't be daunted by cycling's thorny politics. He is, after all, a man who has brokered multibillion-dollar deals with authoritarian strongmen in some of the world's most volatile jurisdictions.

As one of his peers said of him in 2021: "Ivan is the ultimate competitor, and that applies across business and sport." His return to elite sport, almost half a century after his own Olympic rejection, is more than just dipping his toes in. When Glasenberg commits, he doesn't rest until he has bent the objective to his will. As one source succinctly put it: "He rarely invests and loses."

Felix Engelhardt bagged his first national championship less than a week before the Tour de France Grand Depart commenced in Barcelona, Spain, and while this signaled the German would be coming into the race in fine fettle, it also meant his Jayco-AlUla mechanics needed to work around the clock to build him a very special bike. We spotted Felix's bike in the team paddocks while compiling our mega gallery of all the TT and road bike tech from the Tour de France Grand Depart.

It’s become increasingly fashionable for national, continental, and world champions to have a custom paint job – not only does it add a bonus layer of pageantry to the quotidian themes comprising the WorldTour peloton, but it also honours their achievements. For Felix Engelhardt, his Bundesflagge-themed Giant Propel Advanced SL nearly didn't make it to Barcelona.

Following his victory in Bad Liebenstein, where he beat Lennart Jasch and Nico Denz to the line, a quick turnaround was needed to ensure the German had something special for the Tour de France. Jayco-AlUla sent a raw Giant Propel Advanced SL to Unlimited Colors, based in Venhorst, the Netherlands, and let the creatives loose to create a truly unique yet sophisticated livery to celebrate Engelhardt’s win while still retaining the team-specific logo placements. The result? A tricolour German flag design applied to mimic fire, complete with a Propel flame glyph on the top tube.

At 5 feet 11 inches, Engelhardt rides the all-new Giant Propel Advanced SL in size medium, which made headlines in March for its subtly tweaked tube profiles and exceptionally low total system weight of 6.8kg. Giant’s in-house component brand Cadex supplies the rolling sock – pictured here are Ultra 50 hookless wheels wrapped in 30mm Aero Cotton tyres. The wheels are not only an impressively aero option but are also very light and come tricked out with a R3-C40 Aero hub and carbon spoke configuration.

Unsurprisingly, the Giant is built around a Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 groupset, complete with a 55/40T, 11-34T chainset, and power meter, and 165mm crankarms. The bike also benefits from a 3D-printed Cadex saddle and integrated Giant Contact SLR Aero handlebar configuration.

An interesting observation is the stack of 2.5cm spacers under the stem, a move that prioritises comfort over a three-week Grand Tour – and something I listed in my 2026 Tour de France tech trend predictions.

Other notable bits and bobs include a 3D-printed race number holder, Fouriers chain catcher, Elite Leggero Carbon bottle cages, Shimano Dura-Ace pedals, and a fabric transponder strip on the fork.

Giant Propel Advanced SL specs

• Frame: Propel Advanced SL
• Cockpit: Giant Contact SLR Aero
• Seatpost: Giant Vector integrated
• Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace Di2, 54/40T, 11-34T
• Wheelset: Cadex Ultra 50, 50mm
• Tyres: Cadex Aero Cotton, 30mm
• Saddle: Cadex Amp 3D

I’ve run many marathons. I’ve completed even more 100-mile, or century, rides. Some marathons have felt easy, others have felt like I’m treading shark-infested waters with an open wound.

Century rides are a bit different. They invariably take longer than running 26.2 miles, bringing with them greater challenges around fueling, nutrition and mechanical mishaps, but, riding 100 miles consistently inflicts far less impact on the joints and tendons.

Both are rites of passage within each discipline, but which is harder? Can they actually be compared? Given the impact involved in running, most would probably immediately come down on the side of the marathon; however, it's worth considering the fuelling and pure admin involved in spending around seven hours in the saddle.

To help me answer the question, I spoke with strength and endurance coach Ed Norman of Calibre Athlete. For this feature, we focused on the most common forms of each endurance feat: a standard road marathon and a standard undulating road century, both completed at pace which keeps the heart rate around an endurance-focused zone two, with no drafting.

DURATION

Looking back in the mists of time, my first century took 7.5 hours. I remember how completely broken I felt: how unresponsive my legs were in the final 20 miles, how my back howled, how my backside grimaced and how my feet begged for mercy.

“Seven hours is a solid time for a fit cyclist to complete 100 miles, but others could be going considerably longer, which creates a unique endurance challenge,” Norman says.

Data backs up his sentiment; having crunched the numbers across Strava and Garmin Connect, we know the average cyclist is travelling just under 30 miles (46km) at a time, at an average speed just under 15mph (24k/mh). If that cyclist takes on a century challenge, it’s fair to expect their pace to slow.

“The biggest factor with cycling is the sheer time spent on the bike. You're asking the body to maintain an efficient position for hours on end,” Norman says.

While a marathon may take considerably less time than a century ride – the average duration across both genders being 4hrs 30mins – Norman argues that the nature of the effort is very different.

“If you hit a downhill on a bike, you can let the bike do the work, whereas on a run you are absorbing even more impact, even if it's a gradual descent. The energy return you get from concrete or asphalt when you’re running is very little.”

Hardest for duration: 100 miles

When it comes to duration, the century ride is the bigger challenge. Even relatively strong cyclists can expect to spend seven or more hours in the saddle, while most marathon runners will finish within three to five hours. The sheer length of time spent riding places unique demands on comfort, endurance and pacing. As Norman puts it, “you're asking the body to maintain an efficient position for hours on end.”

TRAINING

Preparing for a century ride is largely about accumulating saddle time and adapting the body to spending long periods on the bike. “You need to get very specific; specific time in the saddle — building up to around two-thirds of your target distance — and specific positional durability on the bike,” suggests Norman.

Indeed, it’s the position you hold on the bike while generating a smooth cadence that will increase speed and efficiency while mitigating the chances of picking up an injury. Time in the saddle is key. As Norman concludes: “You can't really cheat your way to that sort of distance.” The build-up to a century varies according to your current ability, but for someone who regularly rides 20-30 miles, a lead-in of around six weeks should be enough to elicit the necessary muscular and cardiovascular adaptations.

Running, however, places greater demands on the musculoskeletal system and requires a more gradual build-up. Norman recommends patience. “You need to be incredibly specific around your training,” Norman warns. “You need to have a progressive plan, similar to biking, but the lead-in to a marathon needs to be longer, in my opinion. You need to have at least four to six months of a base to build into marathon training.”

HARDEST FOR TRAINING: MARATHON

While a century ride demands more hours of training on the bike, marathon preparation is arguably more complex. The impact forces associated with running require adaptations in the muscles, tendons and bones that simply cannot be rushed.

Norman's view is clear: although the marathon is shorter in duration, “the exertion rates are much more demanding on the body from a musculoskeletal and bone-adaptation perspective,” meaning the training build-up needs to be considerably longer and more carefully managed.

NUTRITION

If you’re an experienced cyclist, you’ve likely suffered the afflictions of the dreaded bonk. The ‘bonk’ is a term used when glycogen stored in your muscles is running dry and you hit a wall.

A century ride is fertile ground to experience this if you get your nutrition wrong, and there’s plenty of scope for error over seven or more hours in the saddle. Norman highlights the importance of taking on carbohydrates over such a protracted period of riding. "A century ride is long enough that your nutrition strategy becomes a major part of the challenge. You need to think about fuelling across a much longer duration and that needs to be practised.”

In theory, consuming 90g of carbohydrate per hour (the recommended quantity for those riding or running for more than 90 minutes) appears a relatively easy proposition, but as the hours accumulate so too does the risk of gastrointestinal distress and the body being unable to process the fuel you’re taking on. This is where many ultra-distance riders come undone; under-eating or taking on calories that your body rejects is one of the most common ways to DNF. Indeed, a 75kg rider looking to ride a moderately brisk undulating century, as many as 6,000 calories could be burned.

Marathons, by contrast, although still demanding a good deal of fuelling, are completed over a shorter period of time, usually before flavour fatigue sets in. Flavour fatigue is a very real issue among endurance athletes which occurs when the thought of yet more sweet and sugary carb-loaded fuel makes going hungry more appealing than eating. For marathon runners, where the rule of thumb is 1 kcal per kg per km, this is unlikely to be a problem. The shorter duration will also reduce the chances of GI distress.

Hardest for nutrition: 100 miles

A century outing, while not quite in the realms of an ultra ride, should still be undertaken with fuel and hydration very much in mind. Unlike a marathon, nutrition for a 100-mile ride should be part of the training plan to make the ride as smooth as possible.

Kit and equipment

First and foremost you'll need a bicycle. Then come the cycling shoes, bib shorts, helmet, glasses, lights, pump, inner tubes, tools and navigation. The kit list for a century ride is surprisingly extensive, and will also leave a sizeable dent in your bank account. An entry-level set-up could easily reach and breach £2,000.

It's unlikely that your chain breaker or third spare tube will ever leave your saddle bag, but a belt-and-braces approach is sensible when you're potentially several hours from home. The bike itself also requires preparation – batteries charged, brakes checked, tyres inspected and bolts torqued.

Then there's navigation. Unless you're following a well-signposted event, a century ride often requires a GPS head unit and route planning. Just don't forget to charge it.

First and foremost you will need a pair of trainers… and, well, not a lot else really. Although depending on how deep your pockets are, a good pair of running shoes can be bought for as much as £150, with entry-level models sitting somewhere around the £50 mark. Obviously a sweat wicking running shirt and comfortable pair of shorts are non-negitiable. Some marathon runners go that extra mile and splash out on a pair of compression socks. And then of course there’s the all-important watch – because if it’s not on Strava, as the saying goes, it did not happen.

Hardest for kit and equipment: 100 miles

Century rides require forethought, lots of planning and pockets bulging with spares and tools. There’s also the added complication of having to transport your bike to the start of the ride or race and then clean any crud picked up over the course of the outing.

Running? Just put on your shirt, shoes and shorts and step into the fray. Simples.

The final scores on the doors...

From a logistical standpoint, there is only one winner. The century ride is rife with "what ifs" – mechanicals, navigation errors, fuelling issues and weather changes. The marathon is, at least on paper, beautifully simple. Just run.

It is when we introduce impact and training load that the waters become murkier.

Training for a marathon is anything but straightforward. Without a structured build-up, there is a genuine risk of injury. I've made the mistake before, rushing into longer runs and limping away with shin splints or hip problems. As Norman points out, marathon preparation needs patience, progression and months of conditioning before race day arrives.

Cycling presents its own unique challenges. The glutes, quads and core must be conditioned, and perhaps more importantly, riders must learn to remain comfortable and efficient on the bike for seven or more hours. That asks questions of the entire body, not just the legs.

So, is a marathon the running equivalent of a century ride? In some respects, yes. Both demand commitment and consistency. But they are challenging in different ways.

Objectively, the marathon probably edges it. The training build-up is longer and under-preparation can come with severe consequences. Norman's verdict is clear: despite being shorter in duration, the marathon places greater demands on the musculoskeletal system and requires more careful preparation.

Subjectively? I'm still not convinced. As I crunch my way up another 12 percent climb on a ride that was meant to be an easy lunchtime spin, I'm reminded that seven hours on a bike can feel like a very long time indeed. For me, that's enough to give the nod to the century ride.

Prior to the time trial stage of the UAE Tour earlier this year, Ineos's Josh Tarling admitted that, on the whole, he’d have quite liked it if Remco Evenepoel had been somewhere else for the day. He said it somewhat tongue in cheek, but still, I liked the honesty.

There are unwritten rules of bike racing. Among them is the idea that you, as an athlete, always want to measure yourself against the best. Every day of your racing career, you want that opportunity to stand with the biggest stars, race mano-a-mano, and see your place in the firmament.

But I think I speak on behalf of athletes everywhere when I say that there are only so many times you need to measure yourself against the very best before you’ve learned everything about taking a thrashing that you are ever going to.

Eventually your thoughts turn to more parochial matters – like the chance to go home waving a medal and give yourself a fighting chance of convincing your nearest and dearest that you’re not wasting your time at this “cycling” thing.

I was privileged to spend quite a lot of my career with Sir Bradley Wiggins as my perspective-provider. And it was always an honour to have him crush me under his wheels. But there were also days when I would definitely have preferred it if he’d stayed in Tenerife and enjoyed the sunshine and the altitude training. I would not have admitted to this thought, obviously.

Occasionally you get your wish. I once won the British Individual Pursuit championships. This unexpected turn of events came about because it was a Commonwealth Games year, which prompted most of the UK’s best pursuit riders to skip the championships.

And let me tell you, it’s a lot more fun being self-deprecating about the championship jersey you won because all the country’s best pursuiters from Bradley Wiggins to Steve Cummings (inclusive) weren’t there, than it is telling people for the fourth year running that fifth place was pretty good considering.

I was always a little flattered that my friend Bernard never wanted to race against me. It acknowledged what he wouldn’t want to admit directly, which is that in any race that ran without incident, I would beat him.

But it was curious to me that any time I went to race at a major event, Bernard was keen that I get beaten by as much as possible. On the one occasion I raced Tony Martin, Bernard had a viewing party, bought popcorn, and had a sweep on how much the reigning World Champion would beat me by. He optimistically picked eight minutes. (It was a 50 km time trial, since you ask.)

It wasn’t quite that much – it was about five. Bernard was still happy-ish. He didn’t like that I’d won the sweep, but said he could still see the bigger picture.

“But Bernie,” I pointed out, “The bigger picture is that by the transitive property of people beating each other, him beating me by five minutes means he’d beat you by about ten.”

“That’s all right. I mind the idea of the World Champion beating me by ten minutes a lot less than I mind the idea of being beaten by five by some bloke from the next village who borrowed my hedge clippers and cut through the cable.”

I suppose the truth of the matter is that even at second hand, what Bernard was doing was the same as any of us do when racing star riders in person – getting a simple thrill from a direct handle on how good some of the big riders are.

The difference for him being that the novelty of measuring-against-the-best would never have worn off:

“It’s just a shame that Tony Martin is too busy to do that to you every week,” he said wistfully.

Acts of Cycling Stupidity

I was at a book festival recently, and signed a book for someone who said, “My son is a professional cyclist.”

I asked who it was. He said, “Oh, you won’t have heard of him. He was watching the Tour when he was ten and just thought he’d like to be a pro cyclist, and asked me if I’d pay him to ride his bike. So I agreed to pay him £2 a week.”

“That’s cute,” I said. “Maybe he’ll be a real pro one day.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “He’s 22 now, and I’m still paying him £2 a week.”

Great Inventions of Cycling: Shorts (1886. Then again in 1919 and again in 1946.)

In the beginning, bicyclists wore breeches and knee-high leather boots. This was to provide protection from the front wheel of a bone-shaker or penny-farthing, which would pass between their legs like a giant meat slicer.

Shorts only appeared after the safety bicycle. Even then, they were only worn by racers – gentleman leisure cyclists wore breeches or plus-fours and stockings, lady cyclist wore skirts or (if they tended toward the scandalous) some variety of baggy trousers.

This continued until after the First World War, when women (and only women) started to wear shorts. Men stuck to their plus-fours, unless they were racing, in which case they wore black woollen tights that could absorb several times their own weight in water and rubbed most of the skin off a rider’s knees on any ride longer than a couple of hours.

Shorts were in fact prohibited by the racing rules in Britain – when the hour was first beaten for a 25-mile time trial, it was in Ireland, a liberal paradise where shorts were permitted. Every time triallist in Great Britain scoffed that anyone could go that fast if they were allowed to wear shorts.

After the next war, everyone was finally allowed to wear shorts for racing. These shorts were still made of wool, like cut-off versions of the tights, and were generally very short because if they weren’t they rucked up around a rider’s inner thighs and abraded the skin off those instead.

Finally, in the 1970s, stretchy synthetic shorts arrived, and everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief and put away their E45 cream. They’ve remained more or less unchanged since.

Defending Tour de France champion Tadej Pogačar goes into Stage 1's 19.6km team time trial on a new Colnago time trial bike, code-named the TT2. The Slovenian was spotted using it during the Tour de Romandie prologue in April already - no doubt a move to get some race-effort miles on it in preparations for July.

According to Colnago, complete bikes, including a solid-disc rear, can be built to the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg, which is an incredible feat. The TT2 is some 580g lighter than the model it replaces, with savings said to come from across the bike to improve stability and weight distribution and to aid performance on modern WorldTour TT courses and uphill finishes. Of course, it's faster, too, thanks to a new-fangled front end with a conventional steerer (no bayonet here) that is claimed to save 2 watts over the TT1 and cull weight.

The new bike is also bang-on trend to accommodate wider tyre clearances – up from 28mm to 30mm. Based on what we examined, that might be considered overkill, as Tadej's bike was fitted with 25mm Continental GP5000 TT TR tyres.

The bike is built with Shimano Dura-Ace Di2 components and adorned with Carbon-Ti trim here and there. Up front is a one-by-specific 64T Carbon-Ti chainring with an 11-30T cassette out back, driven by 160mm cranks – a balanced gearing configuration for the flats but something that will pose a notable challenge for the double-kick ascent up Montjuïc hill to the Olympic Stadium.

Despite the narrow-wide profiling of the Carbon-Ti chainring, Pogačar is using a UAE-branded K-Edge chainkeeper to ensure retention across all terrain types.

An interesting move was the fitment of 25mm Continental GP5000 TT TR tyres – the narrowest size we've seen across all the teams we visited at the Grand Depart weekend in Barcelona. Despite the 22mm internal rim width of the Enve SES Pro wheels, the tyres will - at the most - inflate to between 26-27mm, which suggests it's been employed as an aerodynamic move. UAE Team Emirates-XRG have also been running 28mm tyres on their Colnago Y1Rs and V5Rs road bikes, again an aerodynamic ploy, according to the mechanics.

Pog's Colnago TT2 rolls on a pair of Enve SES Pro wheels with a 100mm depth up front and a solid disc at the rear.

The touchpoints come compliments of Enve and Fizik. The Slovenian's cockpit is a custom one-piece Enve solution that mounts directly to the basebar via dual risers. For extra support, there's a bridge near the top that doubles as a Wahoo computer mount.

After parting ways with Prologo at the end of the 2024 season, UAE Team Emirates-XRG are now using Fizik saddles, with Tadej opting for the 192g 3D-printed Aeris 1.0 TT model.

We spotted some interesting hacks on the Colnago TT2. For hand retention during cornering, the base bar has grip tape mounted over a layer of black electrical tape – not the prettiest solution, but these rudimentary solutions have become part of the discipline.

Closer examination of the front end reveals an extra shifter button that has been hot-glued onto the Dura-Ace Di2 ST-R9180 STI TT brake levers. Given that these levers already have a remote shifter button, the extra shifter offers an alternative for shifting with the index finger rather than the thumb.

Other details worth noting are the gold Bikone ceramic bottom bracket, gold Carbon-Ti UDH-compatible dropout and axles, 140mm front/rear disc rotors, and Shimano Dura-Ace pedals. Sadly, no baby Hulk sticker was to be found.

Colnago TT2 bike specs

• Frameset: Colnago Carbon monocoque
• Fork: Colnago Carbon fork with 25mm steerer
• Cockpit: Custom Enve bar and extensions
• Seatpost: Colnago Aero
• Groupset: Shimano Dura-Ace Di2: 64T, 11-30T
• Wheelset: Enve SES Pro front, SES Disc Pro rear
• Tyres: Continental GP5000 TT TR 25mm
• Saddle: Fizik Aeris 1.0 TT

Bookmakers were thrown into panic in April when a French teenager won three stages and the overall at Itzulia Basque Country. They might not have heard of him, but at that moment, Decathlon CMA CGM's 19-year-old wonderkid Paul Seixas became the youngest rider in history to win a World Tour stage race – presenting the bookies with a problem. Could this upstart kid win the Tour de France? Too terrified to rule it out, they slashed Seixas's odds to 5/1, making him joint second-favourite, with two-time champion Jonas Vingegaard, to win the world's biggest race.

Surely the bookies were being overcautious. Not since 1937 has a rider younger than Seixas started the Tour, let alone won it. Besides, at the time of Itzulia, the Frenchman hadn't even committed to making his Tour debut – that would come a month later, with a social media video of him breaking the news to his grandparents.

As of today, the longest stage race Seixas has finished was just eight days. But the manner of his Itzulia victory showcased a physical maturity that makes those statistics practically irrelevant. Bolstered by the hopes of a home nation desperate to end a four-decade drought, Seixas arrives with the kind of boundless momentum that signals one of the most captivating Tour debuts ever.

The youngster's rise has been genuinely unprecedented. After winning the junior time trial world title in 2024, he turned pro at 18, and has since won a major Classic (Flèche Wallonne), finished runner-up in a Monument (Liège-Bastogne-Liège), and podiumed at the elite European Championships, all before his 20th birthday.

Tadej Pogačar was, at the same age, yet to become a pro cyclist; as for Vingegaard, he was still working part-time in a fish factory. Even the great Eddy Merckx, the most prolific cyclist of all time, was 20 when he took his first of more than 500 victories. Seixas's physical talents are undeniable, then, but what no one can predict is how well he'll handle the psychological toll.

How does a 19-year-old shoulder the heavy hopes of a win-starved nation? France in July is a pressure cooker of national pride, catalysed by a media deprived of a homegrown champion since Bernard Hinault in 1985. It's a pressure that has, over the years, overwhelmed even hardened veterans. Now it's the turn of a teenager to try and bring the yellow jersey home.

Chris Froome is the earliest Tour winner Seixas remembers watching. He was just six years old when he sat alongside his paternal grandfather José Manuel following the 2013 edition on TV. Two years later, he started riding with local cycling club Lyon Sprint Evolution.

Seixas would visit his grandparents in the Alps regularly, and train on the 4km climb behind their house. At eight years old, he was already riding "as if he had three lungs", according to his former coach Marc Pacheco.

Yet anyone assuming this early promise translated into immediate, untouchable dominance would be mistaken. He was small for his age – "he had the motor of a Ferrari in the body of a Renault Twingo," Pacheco told RMC Sport.

Camille Charret, now of Cofidis, first met Seixas when the two were 12 and competing in the same local race circuit. "He was a very late bloomer, really thin, but still very strong for his size," Charret says. "He didn't win all the time. He won regularly, but not every weekend. He wasn't dominating."

That changed around the time Seixas and Charret became team-mates at VC Villefranche Beaujolais in 2021. Seixas won the under-17 national road championships that July, a breakthrough victory that cemented his promise but changed nothing about his character.

"He's very humble," Charret says, noting a laidback approach that extended to his team-mate's housekeeping – "when you're sharing a room with Paul, you can't be scared of mess," Charret laughs – and, crucially, in how he absorbed the weight of always being the favourite. "Even when the whole team was counting on him, he never seemed stressed. It's not at all in his nature."

Still, the Tour's a different beast to junior racing, and the French fans, for all their polka-dot-clad passion, can be demanding. Might Seixas fare differently with millions watching? Charret doesn't think so. "Knowing him, he's a bit – how can I say this without causing offence? – euphorique, a bit lost sometimes. I don't think he clocks everything," he says.

"He can be really detached from things, and that's an advantage in cycling because it means he doesn't know what's waiting for him. He doesn't put pressure on himself, because he knows what he can do. Clearly it works."

Seixas's ability to handle pressure will be tested as never before this July. Until now, he has risen to the hype; on his Strade Bianche debut, he finished second to Pogačar, and did the same at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a race he won as a junior just two years ago.

When his Tour participation was announced in May, the media furore took on a new dimension. Former French pro Pierre Rolland hailed Seixas as "the chosen one" on L'Équipe's evening television show, saying he was "born to win" the Tour. National outlets Le Monde and France24 both labelled him a "prodigy".

Then, just three weeks ago, as Seixas-mania swelled, disaster struck. On the penultimate stage of the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, he crashed heavily, then somehow closed a four-minute gap to get back to the bunch before collapsing at the finish, childlike, in his father Emmanuel's arms. "I'll keep fighting until I have nothing left in my legs," the bloodied rider said afterwards.

That moment came the following day, when he was dropped on the opening climb and abandoned the stage, his arms heavily bandaged.

The race had been supposed to stamp Seixas as a main contender for the Tour. Instead, the bookies swung his odds back out to 10/1. L'Équipe published eight articles on its website documenting Seixas's crash and withdrawal. Le Figaro, one of the country's biggest national newspapers, published nine.

Fortunately, the injuries were inconsequential, but the saga served to remind that the rider described as "buitenaardse", or extraterrestrial, by Belgian outlet Sporza was, in fact, human. It also showed that, win or lose, Seixas remains a huge news story.

How, then, might the media approach his Tour debut? Alexandre Roos, L'Équipe's chief cycling writer, is wary of "overselling" Seixas's prospects. "The media has to have a balanced approach," he tells Cycling Weekly, "and avoid starting hazardous comparisons with Hinault or Pogačar when he hasn't won that much yet."

Roos believes Seixas is right to ride the Tour this year – to "get used to it early" – adding that the media should not be expected to treat him differently from any other high-profile rider. "His team particularly has to protect him, because they can't prevent the media from writing about him."

At Decathlon CMA CGM, Seixas has a designated press officer who deals with his interview requests. It's a measure only super-talents like Pogačar and Peter Sagan have had before him. In researching this feature, Cycling Weekly asked to speak to Seixas's coach and a sports director, but our requests were denied by the team; a press officer assured us it wasn't personal, it was policy.

To assist him further in navigating the pressure, the team has drafted in Romain Bardet as an aide – well qualified for the job as the last Frenchman to finish on the podium at the Tour (third in 2017) and joint holder of the best French GC result this century (second in 2016).

The man who shares that accolade with Bardet is Jean-Christophe Péraud, the 2014 Tour's runner-up. Did he find it hard to cope with the home pressure that year? "No, absolutely not. I was focused on my personal objectives in the race," Péraud says.

"I was also lucky that the media didn't take a lot of interest in me because I only went into second place after the time trial, the day before the Champs-Elysées. They were focused on Thibaut [Pinot] and Romain, the young guard. The media had chosen their little sweethearts, and I was protected behind that."

It also helped that Péraud was already a mature, experienced rider. A latecomer to road cycling, having started out in mountain biking, the Frenchman was 34 when he made his Tour debut, and 37 – almost twice Seixas's age – when he finished second. The expectations on him, he acknowledges, were not as great as they will be for his teenage compatriot.

Even so, he does not foresee Seixas being fazed by the furore this July. "It's about your mentality and how you apply it," Péraud says. "Performance is about maturity, and you can be mature in your discipline at 19 years old, just as you can be at 25, 30 or 35." He goes further. "It'll be easy for Paul. He knows what he wants and where he's going, and he's got the legs for it. I get the impression that media pressure just runs off him. [The team should] just let him be. He's ready."

The portrait of Seixas ahead of his Tour debut is one of a calm and fearless racer, a boy who can retreat into his bubble, undaunted by immense expectation. In interviews, he has seemed bullish about his prospects - prompting his maternal grandmother Annie to joke to Le Télégramme that he had "some nerve". Her grandson had been quoted in a team press release saying: "It is not in my nature, nor is it my conception of cycling, to compete in the Tour de France with the sole aim of learning the ropes."

The preparation is over. Seixas spent the second half of May on a training camp in Spain's Sierra Nevada, racking up more than 37,000m of climbing in just two weeks, before heading to the Pyrenees to recon the key mountain stages.

It's a lot of volume, a lot of stress on the body of a teenager; yet, as Seixas's results have shown, he isn't like other riders his age. Is there a serious chance he could upset the bookies? "He can be in the mix for the podium this year, and probably win it in the next three years," says L'Équipe writer Roos.

Decathlon CMA CGM are being more cautious. "At 19, in the Tour de France, there's no such thing as failure," said sports director Luke Rowe on his podcast Watts Occurring. "Being on the start line is already a success." The yellow jersey odds may be against him, but Seixas is ready to have a punt.

Tom Pidcock and Pinarello Q36.5 kick off their 2026 Tour de France campaign with a challenging 19.6km team time trial around Barcelona's iconic roads on Saturday.

Pidcock comes into the three-week Grand Tour among the GC favourites and will be looking for the best possible start, which will require a strong, well-executed team effort. As the leader of Pinarello Q36.5, he has a host of riders to support him, including newly crowned British National Road Race Champion Fred Wright.

As a multi-discipline rider, Pidcock has myriad bike options at his disposal, but will naturally be riding a Pinarello Bolide F time trial bike. While his teammates will use the same bike, albeit with the regular navy-blue-and-gold livery, the Yorkshireman will ride a unique black-and-gold-themed machine.

Let's get into the details.

The Pinarello Bolide F underwent an update in 2024, borrowing technologies from the Bolide F HR – the bike used by the men’s and women’s Italian track teams in the Olympic endurance events. Look closely, and you'll notice the ribbed, drag-reducing edging on the seat tube and seatpost called AirStream technology.

The front end is fairly high, with a dual-stack, five-spacer system that supports custom one-piece bar extensions by Most. While the cups use standard foam padding, two 3D-printed strips - like the lattice structures you'll find on some saddles - are located on each extension to support the forearms.

The Bolide F is outfitted in a full SRAM Red AXS groupset, including a power meter. Pidcock has opted for a fairly traditional 1x gearing configuration comprising a single 60T chainring that drives a 10-36T cassette via very short 160mm cranks. While the X-Sync narrow/wide tooth profiling should keep the chain in place, there's a Wolf Tooth chainkeeper for added security.

Look closely, and you'll notice that the BB ends of both crankarms have been filled with 3D-printed plugs to smooth the surface and possibly save a few watts . There's also a waxed chain.

The wheels come compliments of Zipp. In this case, an 858 NSW front and Super-9 solid rear disc wrapped in surprisingly 'narrow' 28mm Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed tyres – no doubt a personal choice and aerodynamic decision. The Bolide can accommodate tyres as wide as 32mm, so the chosen configuration is far from maxed out.

Because SRAM only supplies its wireless blips with adhesive tape, to improve the look and ergonomics, Pidcock has used a 3D-printed Leap Components Aero Grip Blip Mount for the brake levers and TT Shift assembly to neatly house the blips. It looks super refined and also adds extra grip when holding the basebar during cornering. While Leap products are becoming popular among riders and teams who use SRAM, we're told Pidcock sourced these items himself.

The Prologo Predator saddle has become a popular choice for riders during time trials, thanks to its aero and ergonomically optimised shape. Pidcock's one is the new 02 version, which gets added padding and grip from Connect Power Control technology strips along the top. This model is constructed from injected carbon fibre and uses a standard Nack (nano carbon-fibre) 7x9mm rail - and is compatible with any seatpost. At £520 a pop, it's not a cheap component, but at 163g it is light and promises a 6.4-Watt saving over the previous model.

The finishing touches include a pair of Shimano Dura-Ace PD-R9100 pedals and a Taxc time trial bottle cage.

With many fully built time trial bikes tipping the scales at between 9-10kg, Pidcock's Pinarello Bolide F weighed in at a feathery 8.85kg.

Pinarello Bolide F TT bike specs

• Frameset: TorayCa 1100G, TiCR
• Fork: Bolide TT Onda Fork with ForkFlap
• Cockpit: Custom Most TT basebar and extensions
• Seatpost: Pinarello Aero
• Groupset: SRAM Red AXS 60T, 10-36T
• Wheelset: Zipp 858 NSW front/ Super-9 Disc rear
• Tyres: Vittoria Corsa Pro Speed 28mm
• Saddle: Prologo Predator 01//TT
• Weight: 8.85kg (with pedals)

Bike racing fan or not, once July hits, there’s a different energy in the air. It’s time for the Tour. But whilst the Tour de France may be the oldest Grand Tour, there’s another French event that predates it, and some might say it’s even tougher.

Paris-Brest-Paris is a 1200-kilometre ride that ping-pongs riders between the two locations in under 90 hours. And that time includes everything: riding, sleeping, eating. Once the clock starts, it doesn’t stop until the rider returns or the time is up. Whichever comes first.

The first Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) was a competitive event, held in 1891 and imagined by Pierre Giffard, an editor at Le Petit Journal. He wanted to create an event that celebrated the resilience of cyclists and showcased what a bicycle could do. The winner, Charles Terront, completed the route in 71 hours 22 minutes, riding without sleep.

The event continued as a competitive race until 1951. Nowadays, PBP is an amateur event that takes place every four years, but riding it is certainly not as simple as just strolling up to the start line. I would know, having completed my first PBP in 2023.

Since then I’ve taken on multiple long-distance routes of this nature, including the 1200km Midnight Sun Randonnée (riding through the Arctic Circle), the Humboldt Coast 1200km (along the shores of Oregon and California) and the Gamblers 1000k (Reno to Las Vegas, through Death Valley) to name a few. Next up for me is the UK’s infamous LEJOG (Land’s End to John O’Groats), in August. Needless to say, I've fallen in love with this sport.

WELCOME TO RANDONNEURING

Randonneuring — or Audax in the UK, India and Brazil — is the sport of endurance cycling, not ultra racing. It's a subtle but distinct difference. Think of courses with time limits, not winners. The spirit of randonneuring is really in the name: from the French word “randonnée”; the sport is about exploring, adventure and seeing what you’re capable of, not fighting for the podium.

Like most sports, randonneuring also has its own language. Here’s a quick start guide to get you up to speed:

• Brevet: The name of each event. There are standard distances and each brevet has a maximum allowable time limit: 200km (13.5 hrs), 300km (20 hrs), 400km (27 hrs), 600km (40 hrs), and 1000km+ (75 hrs).
• Randonneur/Randonneuse: A rider who participates in randonneuring. Randonneur is masculine, randonneuse is feminine, though "randonneur" is often used as the general term.
• Control (or Contrôle): A checkpoint along the route where riders must get proof of passage. Sometimes a stamp on a brevet card, a receipt from a local shop, answering a question about the location’s landscape or simply passing through with your bike computer.
• Brevet Card: A paper card (sometimes digital) stamped at each control to show proof of passage.
• ACP (Audax Club Parisien): The most notable randonneuring club in the world as this is the “local” club that hosts Paris-Brest-Paris. Plus, they oversee randonneuring internationally, including setting the rules for brevets worldwide.
• Super Randonneur (SR): Completing a full series of brevets, 200km, 300km, 400km, and 600km, all within a single season (a calendar year). This is the qualification required for PBP.

THE ROAD TO PARIS-BREST-PARIS

The next edition of Paris-Brest-Paris is coming up in August, 2027. If you’d like to be one of the thousands of riders toeing the line in the official start town of Rambouillet, there’s some real work you need to accomplish in 2026.

Step one: ride your first brevet in 2026. It can be any length, from 200km up to 1000km or longer — but there's a strategy to consider. PBP pre-registration opens first to those who've completed a 1000km brevet (or longer), then 600km, then 400km, 300km, and 200km.

According to the ACP website, the number of participants will be capped at 8,000, but keep in mind 2,500 of those spots are reserved for French riders until March 31, 2027 (it is the Parisienne club after all). After this date, any remaining spots will be open for anyone to pre-register.

If you miss your 2026 brevet, there’s still a way to pre-register without a brevet — it just depends if there are any spots left.

For context, in the 2023 edition, there were over 6,400 riders from 66 different countries. So if you're worried about securing your spot, the smart move is to complete the longest brevet you can manage this year.

COMPLETE YOUR SUPER RANDONNEUR SERIES IN 2027

Your 2026 brevet only earns you a place in the registration queue — it doesn't qualify you to actually start. Step two happens the following year: before the deadline of June 30, 2027, you'll need to complete a full Super Randonneur Series of 200km, 300km, 400km, and 600km, to confirm your place on the start line on Sunday, August 27, 2027.

Each of these brevets must be completed with a randonneur club (you can’t simply ride your own route and submit it). Plus, routes must be ACP approved, which means the brevet has been verified by the club in Paris and will act as a qualifier towards your Super Randonneur Series.

FINDING A RANDONNEUR CLUB

To find a club visit RandonneursMondiaux.org, or if you’re in the US, you can visit RUSA.org. UK cyclists can go straight to audax.uk.

Costs are very reasonable, sometimes less than the price of lunch, for a year’s worth of riding. But this is not a glitzy Gran Fondo. Riders take part self-supported; there are no SAG (support) wagons or follow cars, and no elaborate feed zones. You’re in charge of your ride, and to be honest, this is really part of the appeal. Just you, your fellow randonneurs, and the road.

Keep in mind, you’re not just joining a club. You’re joining a community. Brevets and all of the club activities are possible thanks to the dedicated volunteers. Giving back to the organization is how these rides happen. Which means, even if you’re not riding, you can still participate by volunteering. Oftentimes, that’s just as fun.

IS IT WORTH ALL THE HASSLE?

That’s really a question for you to decide. But I’d give a resounding ‘yes’.

When was the last time you rode a piece of history? Being able to pedal through picturesque villages, and participate in a ride with thousands of people, from cities and towns all around the world, not to mention the fact that this ride is unlike anything else.

With such deep roots, there are generations of people who have been coming to the roadside to support: grandmas cheering at 2am, townsfolk handing out food and encouragement. It’s a special experience with a unique spirit of camaraderie and connection.

WANT TO RANDO?

You still have time to do your pre-qualification ride. Find a club near you and sign up for your first brevet. And even if PBP isn’t in the cards for this upcoming edition, it’s still worth giving randonneuring a try. It’s a challenge without the anxiety of pinning on a race number.

After all, racing doesn't have to be the only love letter to cycling. Sometimes the longest letters are the ones that say the most.

Joe Whittingham met me from the future over a virtual call. It was 9am for him in Xiamen, China, 9pm for me in Philadelphia, USA. He had a head start on the day, and in many ways, so do the brands he works with. Whittingham is the founder of Panda Podium, an English-language retail platform for Chinese cycling brands. A former teacher who moved to China 17 years ago, he stayed, learned Mandarin, and found himself living within driving distance of most of the factories he now sells for.

From those factories come bikes with lighter frames, better-value specifications and greater customisation options than comparable offerings from familiar Western brands. Chinese bike and component brands have crept from the corners of weight-weenie forums and AliExpress rabbit holes into World Tour races and the shopping lists of riders who, not long ago, would have sniffed at them.

The question for real-world road riders is no longer whether Chinese bikes are any good, but whether the trust, service and warranty infrastructure has caught up with the product. That is before you even consider the industry's open secret: many of the Western bikes riders already own were quietly built in those exact same factories.

Whittingham offers a sharp insight into why weight, not aerodynamics, has shifted perceptions. "Every brand claims to have the fastest bike in the wind tunnel," he says. "They can't all be right." Weight, by contrast, is easily measured. Chinese manufacturers chased grams with a single-mindedness that appealed directly to the riders who cared most: the weight obsessives, the people drilling holes in their carbon handlebars at midnight. By satisfying those extreme early adopters, the brands built real credibility. Now the mainstream is catching up.

Economical elitism

That cultural shift has produced its own status economy. For decades, cyclists bought expensive brands the way drivers bought German cars - for social status. These days, that logic is being turned on its head: boasting rights come from finding a product of comparable quality at a much lower price. "If your friend buys Enve wheels, you buy Farsports," Whittingham picks up the thread.

"It's not to show you have more money. It's to show you've spent half what they spent and your wheels are lighter." The bike, in other words, has begun to signal something other than wealth. It signals attention, research, critical thinking and the willingness to look past the down-tube logo. Quick Pro, Magene, Tavelo: names that mean nothing to a casual rider and everything to the trend-setter at the top of the pyramid, whose opinion the level below is quietly watching.

At this year's Sea Otter Classic, the largest consumer cycling expo in North America, the asymmetry was hard to miss. In a field of over 900 exhibitors, one mainland Chinese brand was making its road debut: X-Lab, the consumer-facing arm of manufacturer XDS, whose premier aero road bike, the AD9, developed with input from former pro Alex Dowsett, retails at about £6,000, or £9,900 for the Astana spec, undercutting comparable halo models - many of which are made in the XDS factory - from established names by around 40%.

Panda Podium was also at Sea Otter for the first time, its booth a few places down from Specialized and across from Shimano, drawing a near-constant queue of interested riders. Among the bikes on display was the Quick Pro AR:One that Harry Hudson rode to a junior world title. Trek did not exhibit. Specialized, Giant, Pinarello and Canyon were all there - but, for once, they didn't own the spotlight.

Unbeatable value

To understand why brands like X-Lab, Winspace, Yoeleo, and Farsports are unsettling the established order, it helps to remember how that established order works. Most Western bike brands do not own their factories.

Typically, carbon frames are contracted to one manufacturing partner, alloy frames to another, wheels to a third. Each link in the chain adds margin. A frame with an actual cost of a few hundred dollars can end up retailing for thousands by the time it reaches a shop floor.

XDS, by contrast, owns its entire process, as CW discovered when we became the first western media brand to visit its factory in Shenzen this year. XDS produces its pre-preg carbon fabrics from dry fibre, cuts its own multi-piece steel clamshell moulds, and hydroforms its aluminium tubing in-house using proprietary alloy blends.

Robot-welding, painting, testing and assembly all happen under the same roof. The company claims to produce around eight million bikes a year as a contract manufacturer: more than 20,000 frames a day, including weekends. When XDS launched X-Lab as its own consumer-facing brand, it did so with three decades of refined infrastructure already behind it.

"They're kind of holding all the cards in a lot of ways," tech journalist James Huang told me. "Their OEM clients aren't going to find it easy to leave." The result is pricing that puts a smile on the face of the budget-conscious modern consumer. Compared to Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8, which costs from around £12,000, X-Lab's AD9 is literally half the price; a Trek Madone SLR lists at £10,000.

At the entry point, X-Lab's RS5 - an alloy road bike with a dual-sided power meter and a one-piece cockpit - retails at £1,050. Patrick Pan, X-Lab's head of international growth, frames this keen pricing not as undercutting but as correction. "Prices have been inflated artificially," he told me.

We put questions to the biggest brands. Specialized, Trek, and Giant all formally declined to comment. Ribble and Canyon did not respond, nor did several of the Chinese brands we approached, including Quick Pro, Farsports, and Light Bicycle. Strict non-disclosure agreements and guarded trade secrets mean neither the mega-factories nor the legacy brands will officially confirm whose frames are made in whose plants.

Manufacturing expertise

"Ninety per cent of the leap forward in carbon frames is manufacturing," says Shawn Small of Ruckus Composites, a US carbon-fibre repair specialist. "The material itself hasn't changed that much in 30 years. It's how we're using it that's smarter." The Asian workforce that has spent two decades making frames for Western brands has, in the process, become extremely good at it.

In the book Apple in China, journalist Patrick McGee argues that Western companies did not simply exploit Chinese factories: they educated them. Apple deployed its own engineers on factory floors, transferred precision techniques at scale, and in doing so built the very capabilities that now power its domestic competitors.

The cycling industry has been running a quieter version of the same experiment for 30 years. Every spec sheet sent to a contract manufacturer, every quality rejection, every technical back-and-forth is a transfer of expertise. XDS did not arrive at World Tour-quality carbon manufacturing by accident. The brands currently declining to comment helped get it there.

Phil Gaimon, a former World Tour professional now sponsored by Panda Podium, takes a pragmatic approach to Chinese tech. His own set-up is a mix: Chinese wheels and accessories sourced through Panda Podium, a Shimano drivetrain, and a State Bicycle frame - an Arizona brand whose carbon is made in Taiwan.

Partial trust, in his telling, is not a contradiction. It is a rational position built over years of sampling - he trusts what he has found to be dependable. What marketing researchers call country-of-origin bias, or the instinct to judge a product by where it was made rather than how it performs, is fading in cycling, and may soon disappear entirely.

Aftermarket qualms

None of this means the question of trust is settled. Distribution hubs, warranty turnaround, replacement parts, crash replacement, after-sales service: this is the unglamorous infrastructure that established brands have built over decades and that newer Chinese brands are still constructing.

"Local support is going to be really important," says Huang, drawing a comparison that will sting for some: even SRAM, one of the largest component manufacturers in the world, once left Canyon owners unable to source UDH derailleur hangers for a period. Some, like Light Bicycle, now hold stock in American and European warehouses. Others do not.

A Western rider buying direct is buying performance and pricing, but accepting a different relationship with what happens after the sale. A Farsports client who recently destroyed a rear wheel on a pothole received a 35% crash discount within days. That is not the same as walking a cracked rim into your local shop, but it is arguably no less convenient.

Safety testing sits in the same grey area. ISO 4210, the global benchmark, was largely designed around steel and aluminium in the late 1990s and has notable gaps - carbon steerer tubes carry no required test at all. Dan Chabanov, a tech editor at Bicycling who tests wheels professionally, has spoken to engineers at multiple major Western brands who describe the standard as inadequate: a product can pass it and still fall short of what the industry would consider genuinely safe.

The question worth asking any brand, Western or otherwise, is whether they test beyond the minimum. Zipp and Roval, for instance, say they do, but many brands do not advertise this information. For UK riders buying direct, there is a further consideration: pursuing a claim against an overseas company with no domestic presence is a different legal proposition from a dispute with a brand that has a British importer behind it.

Among enthusiasts, the wheels argument is largely settled. When Chabanov recently received a set of 55mm Light Bicycle wheels for review, Zipp had just released a new lightweight 35mm wheelset. The Zipp came in at around 1,090g and retailed at £3,150.

The Light Bicycle set was 20mm deeper, weighed 20g more, and cost around £1,180. "If you're shopping on price, weight, and depth," Chabanov says, "you have to ask, what am I missing with the Light Bicycle that I would get with the Zipp?" One rider on Trainer Road's forum bought a Light Bicycle set three years ago, put 12,000 miles on them, and immediately ordered an identical second set.

Frames are a different conversation. UK-based experts offer a more nuanced view. Alex Thomas at Peak Torque, an engineer who has tested Yoeleo and Winspace, remains measured; his reservations focus less on build quality and more on geometry. "The Chinese brands care more about the aesthetic than actual biomechanics," he says, pointing to short head tubes as an area of concern.

Reviewer Dan Chabanov found the Silverstone-validated Seka a "genuinely strong alternative" to the Tarmac, at half the price, with a finish that gave no cause for concern. Cyclingnews has tested an X-Lab AD9, saying it sets the stall out for Chinese bikes being more than a match for western brands.

Whittingham is careful to qualify his position. "Not all Chinese stuff is good," he says. "Everyone's gone from 'it's all dangerous' to 'it's all fine.' Neither is true." Brands like Farsports and Light Bicycle have review histories, race provenance and established customer bases. The unreviewed product on a marketplace platform, with no accountable brand behind it, is a different proposition entirely.

The challenge is on

Imagine walking into your local bike shop and seeing the usual line-up of Specialized, Giant and Trek carbon alongside a carbon road bike from X-Lab and a hand-built steel or titanium frame from a boutique maker, British or otherwise. Three price points, three philosophies, three different types of road bike buyers served. Today this looks unlikely, but it may be the reality within a few years.

Most of us are not looking for a revolution. We're looking for a bike we can afford and that looks good, from a brand we know we can trust. A fresh-looking carbon frame at an affordable price tag may not reflect a "Chinese takeover". It may simply be the correction the industry has been postponing for years.

The irony worth sitting with is this: the very brands democratising the market today could be the ones that monopolise it tomorrow. "If no one else is going to compete with them," Huang asks, "why wouldn't they want to make more money?" If manufacturing giants like XDS drive enough mid-tier Western brands to extinction, the resulting market won't be a paradise of consumer choice.

Instead, we could be left with a hollowed-out industry - a handful of global mega-brands, a thin layer of ultra-premium niche makers, and not much in between.

Aaron Stinner, whose Stinner Frameworks operation has grown from 30 titanium and steel frames a year to around 3,000, with a team of 12, is not panicking. But he is paying attention. "The big brands are going to have to be on their toes," he told me.

"They're going to change the game." He means it as a compliment to the disruptor and a warning to the incumbents, more or less simultaneously.

For now, the riders are the ones already adjusting. They scroll the forums, watch the YouTube reviews, click through to Light Bicycle, and compare the savings against the weight. The established brands will catch up, or they will not. Many riders have already decided not to wait and find out.

This feature was originally published in the 21 May 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

Three years ago, I wrote an article for Cycling Weekly about how cycling needed to open itself to newcomers and become more welcoming. I'd only been riding for a year or two at the time, and I'd soon realised, with a certain discomforting shock, that - as a young, female rider - I was in a minority, and that cycling was very male-dominated. To an experienced rider, that might sound obvious. Cycling has long been a predominantly white, male sport, but as a new rider with a fresh pair of eyes, I was grappling with a sense that the sport I was falling in love with wasn't meant for me. Herein lies the problem.

That feeling isn't unique to me. Barriers to cycling have the power not only to deter newcomers, but to make whole groups of people feel unwelcome. Women, ethnic minorities, those on low incomes, beginners - all must overcome hurdles, if not to participate, then to feel they belong. My views have evolved since writing that piece in 2023. Speaking to riders, campaigners and community leaders who are paving the way for real change, I feel brighter about where cycling is headed. But change is still needed, with exclusionary factors including cost, infrastructure, representation and perception continuing to deter certain people from cycling.

The question isn't simply how to get more people riding. It's what needs to change to make cycling genuinely accessible and welcoming - for women, for under-represented communities, and for anyone who's ever felt that the sport isn't for them. Here is my manifesto for how to make that change, or at least how to make a start.

Closing the gap

The gender gap in cycling is one of the clearest indicators that access isn't equal. Department for Transport (DfT) stats show that, on average, men are nearly three times more likely than women to make a journey by bike. Despite growing female participation overall, women remain sorely under-represented in certain areas, from elite racing through to everyday riding and clubs. It's a gap that Cycling UK says is still overlooked in the government's active travel plan.

Safety is a major factor. A recent YouGov poll found that the barriers to cycling have actually widened between men and women over the last seven years, with 58% of women saying they cycle less because of safety concerns, poor infrastructure and intimidating driver behaviour. "The barriers many women need to overcome simply don't affect men in the same way," explains Sophie Gordon, campaigns manager at Cycling UK. "We've heard from so many women who are put off cycling because of intimidating driver behaviour." Women are more likely to feel vulnerable in traffic, less catered for by existing infrastructure, and intimidated by other road users, instilling a fear of cycling long before they get in the saddle. "Our roads don't just belong to cars - it's important we call out bad behaviour and educate all road users on sharing space," adds Gordon. The problem is self-perpetuating: the fewer female riders on the road and in clubs, the fewer women feel like cycling is for them. But breaking that cycle requires investment. "What's really key is that we build safe cycle routes designed with the experiences of women in mind, while also calling out bad behaviour," Gordon says. "When women see other women out on bikes, they start to feel it's a realistic option for everyday trips - but investment needs to come before we can see that virtuous cycle."

Safety isn't the only barrier. Many women turn to group riding to build confidence in the saddle, yet traditional cycling clubs can feel intimidating. That gap is what led Lucy Eastoe, Emma Keyes, Phoebe Rylatt and Megan Redding to found Lila, a female-focused cycling club designed to make cycling accessible to women. "All four of us faced challenges at the start of our cycling journeys," says Eastoe. "Joining clubs that felt intimidating or didn't quite suit our level, and not having friends who wanted to give it a go made it hard to stay motivated. We wanted to create a space where women could feel supported, and draw motivation and confidence from riding alongside like-minded others." In practice, that looks like no-drop rides, beginner-specific sessions and bike maintenance workshops. These all help remove the pressure to be fast or confident from day one. Interventions like these have the power to completely change the experience for new female riders. But the end goal for women isn't just about riding with other women; it's about feeling confident to ride freely with everyone.

A broader church

It's not only women who experience exclusion from the sport. Cycling has long been associated with middle-aged white men, and its diversity problem is visible at every level. Of the 148 British-registered riders racing for UCI teams in 2025, just one was from an ethnic minority. It's a sorry precedent that filters down to grassroots participation. In the UK, just 14% of ethnic minorities, 12% of disabled people and 19% of LGBTQ+ individuals cycle regularly.

The issue isn't simply about participation figures. Perception shapes participation just as powerfully as safety and affordability factors. "One of the biggest things that needs to change is the perception of who cycling is and isn't for," says Yannick White, co-founder of inclusive cycling team Chain Gang Cyclists. "When people only see a certain type of rider represented, whether that's in cycling clubs, the media or online, it can create the feeling that the sport isn't meant for them." That perception is shaped everywhere: advertising, social media, club culture and professional racing. And when representation is narrow, it sends a quiet but powerful signal about who belongs in that space. More visibility of diverse riders and communities is one of the most important levers to address. "Coming out of the pandemic, there was a huge influx of new cyclists from various backgrounds," says White. "Now is the perfect time and opportunity for brands to stand up and be the change that we all want to see."

Andy Edwards published the 'Diversity in Cycling' report in 2022 to encourage cycling to be more inclusive and help demystify it for newcomers. In the report, he offers practical, real-life solutions on how to promote diversity within the sport: increase representation across media and marketing, actively invite riders from different backgrounds into cycling spaces, and encourage existing cyclists to reflect on their own role in shaping those communities. "I sometimes come across white guys in my age group who question the need for diversity," he says. "My response is: listen to more people from different backgrounds, and you'll hear a range of perspectives you might never have considered." Edwards also points to simple but effective interventions, prompting anyone who rides in a club to consider ways to welcome new riders. "I like to mix things up and run guest rides, purposefully inviting riders from different groups and backgrounds for a coffee ride." It's small acts like these that can have an exponential impact. "More newcomers mean more potential coaches, ride leaders, and race organisers. At a global level, new audiences increase the commercial impact." Groups like Chain Gang Cyclists are proof that progress is being made, but Edwards is clear-eyed about the pace of change. "Progress isn't linear; it ebbs and flows. We must stay positive and keep going."

The cost of entry

Cycling is often framed as an affordable mode of transport, but the reality is more complicated. At the very least, you need a bike and a helmet to participate. For those on low incomes, that can be out of reach, given the added cost of maintenance, kit and basic repair tools.

The upfront costs of a bike and helmet are just the starting point. "Cycling has the potential to be one of the most affordable and empowering forms of transport," says Ozgur Korkmaz, founder of London Cycling Club, based in Edmonton, in Enfield, north London, one of the most deprived areas in the UK. "Yet for many people, the barriers are cumulative rather than singular." Maintenance, repairs, storage and security all add to the financial load. "If someone cannot afford repairs, or lives in a flat without secure storage, cycling becomes unreliable," Korkmaz explains. "If they lack road knowledge or confidence in traffic, it can feel unsafe." In lower-income communities, these challenges can be difficult to overcome.

Structural changes are needed to make cycling a real option for those who can't afford a bike. Since 2022, London Cycling Club has run a Bike Library programme allowing residents to borrow a refurbished bike for £10 a month, with fees waived entirely for those in financial hardship. But the solutions need to be as layered as the problem. "We need long-term bike borrowing schemes, free bike maintenance education and access to tools in bike hubs," says Korkmaz. "Safe cycling facilities in parks, particularly in lower-income areas, and secure bike storage in estates and flats are also crucial."

These interventions tackle multiple barriers in tandem. "When cost, skills, infrastructure and confidence barriers are addressed together," says Korkmaz, "cycling becomes not only viable, but transformative for low-income communities. If we want cycling to be truly inclusive, we must design systems around those currently excluded, not just those who already ride."

Paths to participation

Statistics show that safety concerns are the leading deterrent putting people off cycling. A recent study by the DfT revealed that nearly half of all potential cyclists are deterred by perceived risks. To put the risk of riding on the road in perspective, there is one cyclist fatality for roughly every nine to 10 million cycle trips in Britain. Of course, even one death on a bike is too many, but fears around safety are often out of proportion with the actual risk.

Still, busy roads, fast traffic and poorly designed junctions are an intimidating prospect for less experienced cyclists. To encourage more newcomers onto bikes, the importance of proper infrastructure cannot be overstated. "The number-one thing that helps more people feel like cycling is a real option for them is well-designed, high-quality cycling infrastructure," says Gordon.

The impact of investment is already visible in cities like London, where the cycle network has expanded from 90km in 2016 to over 431km in 2025. Since 2019, daily cycling journeys have risen by 43%, with the majority of Cycleway users reporting that they feel safe most or all of the time. High-quality infrastructure makes a huge difference to both real and perceived safety - and in cycling, perception is half the battle. Segregated cycle lanes protected by bollards, not just painted lines, and bike-friendly traffic light systems are crucial to ensuring cyclists feel safer, especially at major junctions. The next step is to build these systems into commonly used routes across the country. "To make cycling truly accessible, it's not enough to just build cycle lanes along commuter corridors," Gordon explains. "We need well-connected networks that also service neighbourhoods and high streets, to allow for school runs, shopping and daily errands." This makes cycling accessible for everyone, not just commuters.

Snuffing out sniffiness

Beyond practical barriers, elitist attitudes and intimidating club culture can make newcomers feel nervous about entering the cycling space. Fast rides, baffling jargon and photos of perfectly dressed riders on social media make new riders feel like they're on the outside looking in - something White has experienced first-hand. "One club told me that they only admit new participants once a year, and another that I'd need to be able to hold a set average speed. It made me realise that joining a cycling club isn't always like joining a local gym or turning up for a casual football game. There can be unspoken barriers that make people feel like they need to prove themselves before they're welcome."

This aura of elitism isn't always intentional, but it's reinforced by deep-rooted behaviours and traditions. Something as simple as an off-hand remark about clothing style or brag about FTP has the potential to make someone feel like an outsider. The solution? "Clubs need to think about how they create entry points for beginners and recreational riders," says White. "They can co-exist with performance and race-focused athletes. We've done exactly that in CGC, so it's more than possible."

Beyond clubs, social media is increasingly where cycling makes its first impression. A growing wave of female content creators are sharing their cycling experience in honest and relatable ways, such as buying their first bike or making their first attempt at clipping in, showing what starting out actually looks like. CGC is proof that a welcoming approach works. "A big part of our growth has come from sharing our rides on social media. Every week we hear from new riders who saw our content and simply wanted to find like-minded people to ride with," says White. "When someone joins our rides and says it feels like home, that's when we know we're doing something right."

How to drive the change?

Cycling's accessibility problem isn't driven by a single issue. Safety concerns reduce confidence, and low confidence limits participation. Limited participation reduces visibility and, in turn, a lack of visibility reinforces the perception that cycling isn't for everyone. Add cost and cultural barriers into the mix, and the effect becomes self-perpetuating.

So what actually needs to change? Structural, physical and cultural barriers all need an overhaul. Safer roads, inclusive clubs, affordable bike schemes and improved visibility of marginalised groups in cycling are key to opening up the sport. Crucially, cycling becomes more accessible when it stops asking newcomers to adapt - and starts adapting to them. Because ultimately, making cycling inclusive isn't about getting more people onto bikes for the sake of it. It's about ensuring that everyone feels they have the right.

The disconnect in data

3x: Men in the UK are nearly three times more likely than women to make a journey by bike

58%: The percentage of women who report cycling less due to concerns over road safety and intimidating driver behaviour

1: The number of British-registered riders racing for UCI teams in 2025, out of a total 148, who were from an ethnic minority

43%: The surge in daily cycling journeys in London since 2019, following a 340km expansion of the Cycleway network

14%: The proportion of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the UK who cycle regularly

This feature was originally published in the 16 April 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

One thing’s for certain, this is not Eddy Merckx’s bike, it’s far too large for him. Instead, it’s a team bike, sprayed in Molteni colours, which, among other clues, dates it to the early 1970s.

It was almost certainly ridden by Merckx’s loyal, taller teammate Joseph Bruyère, a rider blessed with a talent of such magnitude that he was only eclipsed by ‘The Cannibal’ himself. The bike now forms part of Dave Marsh's collection.

Identifying the builder of this bike is a trickier proposition. The list of those who made frames for Merckx around this time reads like a roll-call of the most skilled artigiani who ever lit a brazing torch – Masi, Colnago and De Rosa being the most iconic.

However, the frame is later than Merckx’s Masi period, and it predates De Rosa. The Molteni-era Colnago frames often include an Ace of Spades emblem somewhere, often on the fork crown, but there’s no sign of a logo on this bike.

The Reynold 531 decal on the rear face of the seat tube does provide a clue. It practically rules out any Italian builder (Colnago occasionally specced Reynolds) and instead points us towards Belgian bike brand Kessels.

Fernand Kessels fulfilled orders from Merckx during this period, with many bikes featuring Reynolds 531 double-butted tubing throughout. However, he was not a builder, and instead relied on others to construct the frames for him. So, we’ll probably never know the builder behind this bike.

The components are mostly Campagnolo Nuovo Record – the outer chainring is Super Record – augmented by a Cinelli 1A quill stem and deep drop 66 pattern bars. The wheels feature Mavic Pro Rims laced to Campagnolo Record large-flange hubs. The sharp-eyed will notice that the Brooks Professional saddle has been modified by Ottusi of Milan.

It was 20 years ago that the bicycle was voted the best invention ever in a BBC poll, taking 59% of the vote ahead of the radio, internet and nuclear power. Its appeal and value lie largely in its simplicity and affordability and while ‘the humble bicycle’ is now more than 130 years old, it has been constantly refined in an effort to make it, perhaps, a little less humble.

Some of these efforts have proved revolutionary; others failed to make the grade. While the derailleur, high-pressure valves, and clipless pedals became cycling staples, other innovations showed early promise but never took off, or were snuffed out by circumstance. We take a look back at the tech that fell by the wayside – and ponder which new creations might, or might not, break the mould in coming years.

1. Shimano Biopace chainrings

For a time in the Eighties and early Nineties, there was something that did not look quite right about a vast range of off-the-peg road bikes. The standard bicycle has grown up with a comforting triangles-and-circles aesthetic that was now being challenged by the industry giant that was Shimano – with an oval chainset. Except it wasn't oval, not exactly.

The less wieldy but more accurate description would be non-round, and it was called Biopace. Its non-conforming shape, which was somewhere between an egg and a square, was designed to improve pedalling efficiency by ironing out the ‘dead spot’ over the top of the crank revolution, where power is much harder to put down.

Launched in 1983, it was embraced by many, attracted to the futuristic new look. The design snowballed to a point that, in the early Nineties, many road and mountain bikes came specced as standard with Biopace. So what went wrong? Bike tech expert, the late Sheldon Brown, said that Shimano shot itself in the foot by overcomplicating the marketing – in particular the claim that Biopace was optimised for a cadence of 90rpm. “Many interpreted this as an indication that Biopace chainrings would somehow interfere with pedalling faster than that," Brown wrote. "[and] the conventional wisdom arose that Biopace was bad for high-performance cyclists for this reason."

More recently non-round rings made a reappearance, with Sir Bradley Wiggins even winning the Tour de France on his Osymetric rings, and Chris Froome using them too. Did they really boost performance? According to then-Team Sky head of performance Tim Kerrison, "performance-wise, there is very little in it either way". It wasn't a team policy, he said, just a personal rider preference.

2. Campagnolo Delta brakes

There was a lot to love about racing bikes in the Eighties, at least 50% of which was all the gorgeous polished alloy that hung on them (the other 50%, of course, were the lithe steel frames that held all the shiny bits). Groupsets were a thing of beauty that were being refined aesthetically with each new iteration – and then, in 1985, Campagnolo raised the game with its Delta brake.

Known officially as the C-Record brake, the Delta got its nickname from its triangular shape (like the Greek letter) and was famously bad at actually doing what it was designed to do – stopping the bike. However, it looked beautiful. Unlikely as it sounds today, there are numerous groupset components from the Seventies and Eighties that might be referred to as iconic – and few would omit the Delta from that list.

Beneath a polished alloy cover adorned with the Campagnolo logo nestled a series of pivoting arms that the Italian firm called an articulated parallelogram. Between 1985 and its eventual demise in 1992, the Delta was released in five iterations, including a lower-tier Croce d'Aune edition. It has been labelled 'the greatest worst brake ever' by Bicycling, which probably sums it up rather well. Either way, it still has a dedicated following, as eBay prices of £1,000 and upwards for a NOS brakes attest.

3. Direct mount brakes

While we're on rim brake systems… They’ve slowly improved over the years, and despite the advent of discs, rim brakes have very much stood the test of time. We've seen them offered in all sorts of formats, from early rod brakes to the dual-pivot design most modern riders have used, or at least seen – perhaps on the group ride, along with a sticker proclaiming “I heart rim brakes” or similar. While the trusty dual-pivot is the modern iteration, direct mount saw it refined even further. Unfortunately it was a design that came along just in time for cycle manufacturers to embrace disc technology.

The direct mount design is very similar to that of the dual pivot – but instead of those pivots using the standard centre bolt, they are both mounted to the frame either side of the fork or seatstay, effectively bracing the brake across the rim. This means less flex and, as a result, better modulation. They are also more accommodating of wider tyre size than the standard-drop dual pivot, but only up to a point. 30mm, for example, so don't go looking for a gravel bike with direct mount brakes.

Unlike Shimano Biopace rings or Campagnolo Delta brakes, direct mount brakes can still be bought brand new to service the plentiful frames fitted with the appropriate bosses. Thus, they have far from died off, but the advent of disc brakes means they've not thrived as they otherwise might have done.

4. Shimano Octalink and ISIS

Anyone with a long enough memory to recall using square-tapered cranks may well also recall how vulnerable this system rendered your beautiful but rather soft alloy cranks – either from the bottom bracket spindle itself, or the tool used to remove them. The issue was that the cranks were effectively wedged onto the tapered spindle, with the mechanic's own judgement usually the only measure of how aggressively this should be done. Not enough, and the crank could work loose midway through a ride, and any attempt to ride gingerly home with a loose crank could easily round-out the square hole, rendering it useless.

Alternatively, tightening the crank too hard could lead to the opposing problem – a crank that was an absolute brute to remove, with threads that could readily be stripped out by the removal tool. Again, a useless crank was the result.

Surprisingly, square-taper cranks lasted more than 50 years by the time they began to be phased out.

In their place came Octalink (a Shimano offering) and ISIS (International Spline Interface Standard), which was essentially open source. Unlike the square taper, the cranks were mounted rather than wedged onto a splined axle, meaning users were able to remove the cranks without losing their dignity or turning the air blue.

Like direct mount brakes and square taper bottom brackets, there is still a market for both these splined BB standards so they are still sold. However, the 'big three' groupset manufacturers now predominantly use a design that sees the axle mounted to the cranks and the bearings mounted to the bike.

5. Shimano Flight Deck with gear sensor

The idea of having a display indicating what gear you're riding in sounds as though it ought to be appealing. After all, if you add up all the time spent looking down at your sprockets over the course of a ride, it would likely amount to an alarmingly substantial portion of it looking in precisely the opposite direction to where you're supposed to.

Shimano's Flight Deck, introduced in 1998 with the 25th anniversary Dura-Ace groupset, in theory did away with all that. It plugged into the STI levers and could display current gear and cadence, as well as the more usual metrics like speed, time and distance.

Nearly 30 years ago, such a gadget was pretty much akin to wizardry and, along with Campagnolo's arguably better Ergobrain unit, had plenty of buyers. However, set-up required Olympian levels of patience, and even once that was done, not everyone got on well with it. Opinions from one selection of users ranged from 'ultimate cool' to 'the best thing I ever did for my bike was take off the Flight Deck and chuck it in the bin'.

It was ultimately killed off by the advent of GPS units, and somehow nobody missed having a computer to remind them what gear they were in – although it is a feature that has made a resurgence in modern head-units.

6. Mavic Zap and Mektronic

The rise and fall of the then-ultra-futuristic Mavic Zap rear derailleur brings to mind the immortal line from Back to the Future, as protagonist Marty McFly attempts to explain away his before-its-time rendition of Johnny B. Goode: "I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet – but your kids are gonna love it". Electronic gearing like Shimano Di2 and SRAM AXS is, after all, unfailingly popular with modern riders – but back in the early Nineties it was a step too far.

There were, perhaps, a few reasons why Mavic's early attempt did not gain the traction it might have. For one, unlike the modern electronic mechs, the grey and rather ugly Mavic Zap looked like it was from another planet compared to the standard polished groupset fare.

Then there was the famously lofty price tag, and the fact it was made by a brand less popular as a groupset manufacturer (the Zap came as part of a full groupset that looked otherwise rather lovely). While Chris Boardman rode a Zap to Tour de France prologue victory in 1994, the wider buying public were less enamoured. The French brand tried again with the wireless Mektronic in the late Nineties, but it wasn't until 10 years after that, when Shimano introduced Di2, that electronic shifting began to catch on.

7. Spinergy Rev-X

The spectrum of mid-ride component breakages ranges from inconvenient at one end to catastrophic at the other. Wheels are at the extreme end of the latter. The closest I've come personally to this happening is having a worn rear rim surface blow out less than half a mile from home. I might consider myself lucky though, given I was for a time the owner of a pair of Spinergy Rev-X eight-spoke wheels.

These Nineties hoops were described by a former colleague as the James Dean of wheels, with a dangerous look and an even more dangerous reputation. From a distance these appeared to have four wide-bladed carbon spokes, but there were in fact eight, bonded in pairs. They looked great, and they were very fast, but they had a reputation for failing under the rider.

That didn't stop their use in the pro peloton for a time, which yielded various stories of their blade-like spokes inflicting injury in crashes. Eventually, in 2001, they were banned by the UCI after failing to meet updated impact test regs. Perhaps surprisingly, they continue to have a keen following and, if you really want, you can buy yourself a pair on eBay for a few hundred quid.

What comes next?

It is hard to imagine a top-tier modern bicycle feeling antiquated but it's written, indelibly, in the stars. As new technologies and new science come down the line, the future becomes current, and current becomes old. But what exactly might those new technologies look like? Here are five things that could happen or perhaps already are to some degree. Whether they are eventually written about in years to come in a feature about technology that never made it, only time will tell.

14-speed cassettes: currently, none of the 'big three' produce such a thing, though Campagnolo and SRAM are currently on 13 and Shimano, by all accounts, is almost there too. However, a 14-speed option available from Chinese brand Wheeltop shows it can be done – it's hard to imagine the big brands not following suit eventually.

Suspension tech in road bikes: with tyres get bigger and roads more poorly maintained, bike riders are beginning to realise that a lack of comfort is not inevitable. Elastomer-type road damping has been around for a long time on road bikes like the Specialized Roubaix and now, with the advent of all-road and recreational riders being less in thrall to pro peloton tech, expect to see more suspension options.

Abrasion-resistant clothing: crashes happen, and road rash is never fun. Cycling togs from the likes of Ekoi and Santini now feature in-woven abrasion-resistant fabrics to protect against tearing and grazes. While they're not a magic bullet against crash damage, any reduction in injury has to be a good thing.

Airbag tech: Still on crash protection, if you ever looked at the Michelin Man and thought he'd be well protected in the event of an 'off', you might be interested in one of the latest and most futuristic developments in cycling – airbag clothing. Already garments from the likes of Decathlon/In&Motion and Aerobag offer airbag vests for cyclists that can detect a fall happening and deploy instantly. Not particularly aerodynamic, but definitely more cushioned in a crash.

On-the-fly AI coaching: Should you go for that last interval set? Is today even an interval day? With AI already able to design coaching programmes, we can expect a system somewhere down the line that allows a wearable to interact with your head unit and advise you, in real time, on the course your ride should take – using your own physiological data to urge you on to greater efforts, or tell you that today, discretion is the better part of valour.

CW: How did you get into cycling?
OP: I started off running, doing local cross-country races. My uncle [Andy Peace] won the 3 Peaks Cyclo-cross race four times, so I got into cycling through cyclo-cross. I joined my local club [Bronte Tykes], raced on the local circuits, and gradually as I went through the age groups things got more serious. I raced internationally as a junior and was picked up by the Picnic development team.

CW: How were your two seasons as an U23?
OP: All of Picnic's development riders live on site in Sittard, in the Netherlands, where there are 12 houses with two riders in each. I shared a house with Jacob Bush, who is a really good mate. I really enjoyed my two years living there, and this team is great for developing riders, not just physically but mentally in lots of different situations.

CW: What sort of rider are you?
OP: I'm still exploring, but for sure I am more of a climber. I prefer the shorter stuff like in the Ardennes, but I've also really enjoyed the longer mountain stages that I've done so far.

CW: How are you adapting to life in the World Tour?
OP: It's clearly a big step up physically, and being in the bunch is obviously faster, as when the racing is on it's really on, but it also feels more comfortable. Because everyone's at such a high level and knows how to ride a bike, racing is more predictable. In the U23 scene, everyone's scrapping around, willing to risk it all to get to the bottom of the climb first. There's more trust in a World Tour bunch.

CW: How has your training evolved?
OP: I've changed coaches, and the main change has been the amount of intensity I've been doing, especially more VO2max stuff from December onwards. It works for me and has helped me to improve a lot.

Oliver Peace's training diary

Monday: VO2max intervals This was the last day of a three-day block and there were four sets of intervals. I started with four times 90 seconds at Zone 5, so around 490 watts, with 45-second rest periods. Then it was five reps of 60 seconds at the same intensity, with 30 seconds off. The third block was six lots of 40 seconds with 20 seconds' rest. In the last hour I did 10 reps of 30 seconds at the same power, with 30 seconds' rest.
Total riding: 4hr 55m

Tuesday: Rest day Usually I like to ride to the cafe for an hour on a rest day and meet guys who are returning from their own training, but this time I took the day off.
Total riding: 0hr

Wednesday: Sprint intervals This was mostly a Zone 2 endurance ride but after 30 minutes I did three lots of one-minute max efforts with 10-15 minutes' recovery in between. I also did two five-second sprints, and two 10-seconds sprints. My maximum power was 1,190 watts.
Total riding: 4hr 10min

Thursday: Threshold session After a 45-minute warm-up, I did two intervals of 20 minutes in Zone 4, which is 365 watts, just below 5W/kg. I then did four two-minute Zone 5 efforts with three minutes recovery in between, followed by four lots of five minutes at 400 watts, with just four minutes between each effort. I used the same climb for all the efforts.
Total riding: 4hr 15min

Friday: Recovery ride This was a day off, and even though it was raining I still went out for an hour to spin the legs. Depending on my racing schedule, I usually go to the gym a couple of times a week, and at specific points of the year - such as before the Tour Down Under - I'll go to the sauna and have hot baths.
Total riding: 1hr 5min

Saturday: EMOM spikes I fluctuated between Zone 1 and low Zone 3 for most of this ride, and in the third hour I did two 10-minute efforts at 300 watts with EMOM [every minute on the minute] spikes for 10 seconds at 420 watts. In the final hour, I had two eight-minute Zone 5 efforts, so around 425 watts. It's nice just to go out and just ride, but I prefer doing efforts and having a structured ride, so I enjoy days like this more.
Total riding: 4hr

Sunday: VO2max intervals This was the exact same session as Monday: five hours with four sets of VO2max blocks of between 30 and 90 seconds. I felt a lot better than I had on Monday, and was able to push a little bit more, especially in the last hour. My Training Stress Score for this day was 266-quite high. I didn't feel magic after coming back from the Tour Down Under, so this was a productive training week and it was nice to do some grippy efforts ahead of my next goals.
Total riding: 5hr 5min

Total riding: 23 hours, 30 mins

A “blur” and an “influx of words” is how Rebecca Charlton describes receiving her cancer diagnosis to me. “It was just knocking me sideways. It was a string of chemotherapy, cancer, spread… it was the biggest shock of my life.”

The cycling journalist and commentator had arrived for what she expected to be a “routine” appointment, resulting in perhaps a “course of antibiotics”. Instead, she heard the words: “I'm really sorry, it's cancer.”

The former Cycling Weekly writer and author had given birth to her second daughter just a few months prior, and now faced a fight against an aggressive form of breast cancer. Hours after that appointment, she was live on TV, enthusiastically guiding fans through a chaotic sprint finish on day three of the Tour de France Femme Avec Zwift, eventually won by Lorena Wiebes (Team SD Worx–Protime).

“That world of bike racing became my escape. I couldn’t control what was happening with the cancer. I could control focusing on doing my job well; I could focus on Pauline Ferrand-Prévot getting up that mountain first, and it helped me immensely,” she recalls. “That initial period of time was really dark. Cycling is such a constant in my life, and once again, it came to the rescue.”

Being the face and voice of live TV coverage requires laser focus, “there isn’t time to let intrusive thoughts in,” says Charlton, “I love the adrenaline of live TV, and once that countdown happens, and you're into the stage of a race like the Tour, you're fully immersed in that. You're trying to constantly think one step ahead the whole time, you can't think about cancer.”

Charlton has kept her diagnosis private for the best part of a year, eventually opting to commentate off-screen. “As my lashes and brows and things all fell out, and I suddenly looked like a cancer patient, I suddenly looked very unwell,” she recalls. “So I wanted to hide that, but what the joy of commentary brought was that no one could see me, and I still got to just be me and talk about what I love.”

With active treatment now concluded, Charlton will be presenting highlights of the Tour de France and Vuelta a España this summer on Channel 5. “From the darkest low to the brightest high, this is a dream come true,” she told me. “I’ve watched the Tour religiously since the 90s and this is a true pinch me moment.”

No warning signs

Before her diagnosis, the only alarm bell Charlton had had that something might be amiss was a lump under her armpit. In the sleep-deprived haze of the newborn bubble, the lump was initially put down to breastfeeding and the huge changes that take place postpartum. A nurse told Charlton, “‘we're dotting the i’s, crossing the t's, everything's going be fine.” Her mammogram was clear, as was her ultrasound; Charlton didn't expect bad news at her follow-up appointment, but a biopsy showed up cancer cells.

What followed was months of waiting; by the time Charlton finally arrived at the first of two surgeries – which would leave her unable to pick up her newborn baby – she was eager for the treatment to begin. “It's a very bizarre thing to say, like you want to get under the knife, you want to get into chemotherapy. These are things that you know are going to be hideous. But I was excited to get started. I wanted to fight it. I wanted to be proactive, I wanted to get back some control.”

Next, Charlton endured a course of ‘dose dense’ chemotherapy and weeks of daily radiotherapy. Having spent a decade working as a fitness editor at Cycling Weekly, her go-to response was to square up to treatment like it was a very, very tough bike ride.

“I really likened the whole process of recovering for each [chemo] session to interval training. If you're doing a VO2max test or a ramp test, you're just focusing on ‘how long can I keep going when I'm absolutely depleted on the floor, and I've given it everything, how can I get back up again?’ - I was seeing chemo like that.

“I had days when I was lying on the bathroom floor, so unwell, I didn't think I could ever get to the next session. But I started keeping a diary, and I knew that on day seven, I would be quite bad, and then things would start to improve and, all being well, I could get back up again. And that's absolutely how I viewed it: ‘this is interval training, and I've just got to get myself well enough again, so in two weeks’ time, [I can] get bashed, knocked to the floor, and get back up again’.”

Get up again she did, using cycling as and when possible to limit symptoms. Finding a research paper that suggested that short, targeted bursts of exercise could reduce the chance of developing peripheral neuropathy - which Charlton describes as “crippling nerve pain” - she combined this with wearing compression garments, finding relief from previously “excruciating” pain.

“All the pain - having been on morphine to control it - started to subside. I'm not saying that this is a miracle cure for everybody. But by doing that research and treating it like I would have done if I was training for a bike ride or a bike race really helped me. It also kept my mind calm, thinking, ‘what can I do? How can I help myself?”.

Of course, Charlton cautions that balance is key. Looking at the broader cycling landscape, and the trend towards riders taking a more holistic approach to training - something she did herself when using Zwift to stay fit through two pregnancies - she says: “I think we're - in so many ways - starting to realise that actually just going harder and faster all the time isn't necessarily the best route to longevity, to getting fitter, to keeping your health topped up. And that's something again that cancer has taught me: pushing through that pain barrier isn't always the answer; if it feels like too much, you have to rein it in and listen to that.”

Though riding outdoors was rarely possible, the indoor community on offer via Zwift was a lifeline, Charlton remarks that jumping on, “even if it's not for a long ride, just fills me with joy and positivity.”

A community that supports its own

The support of the cycling community is a topic Charlton returns to repeatedly in our conversation. From the anaesthesia team who recognised her - and sent her to sleep before both surgeries with a mind full of bike racing - to Jo Rowsell, who comforted her in the commentary box immediately after her diagnosis, and Dani Rowe MBE who “held” her and “stocked the fridge” with healthy meal replacements when food was just too much. But the influence of Sir Chris Hoy - who was himself diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2023 - has been a lifeline.

Having read his book All that Matters before her own diagnosis, she notes “it might sound like a cliche, but I am able to appreciate everything. The sun comes out, that’s brilliant. If I have a moment with my children, reading them a lovely book that they enjoy, everything is heightened, and I'm just so grateful for everything.”

Charlton’s has now finished active treatment. “There is more to come for me,” she acknowledges, adding that she will be sharing her journey through any future treatment. She observes “there's no guarantees in this situation”, but adds “I am just so grateful for everything now.”

Sir Chris’ charity ride, the Tour de 4, takes place in September, having last year raised over £3 million for cancer charities. “Research matters so much,” Charlton says, “I am not only looking for hope for myself with advancements in treatment, but for everybody affected now, affected in the future, who's already been affected in the past,” she says.

“[Cancer] is becoming more prevalent in younger people below screening ages,” Charlton adds, noting that her young age “added to the shock…I thought ‘it's a risk in my lifetime, and honestly, that's something I have to worry about later along the road, that's not a now problem’, but it did happen now, and I think that's why it's so important for people to check themselves.

“I didn't, unfortunately, have any warning signs until it had spread [to my lymph nodes], but I'm so glad I went to the GP that day, and he took it seriously. So you've just got to speak up if you think something might be wrong.”

Charlton’s demeanour throughout our interview is one of immense positivity, and that’s in part a viewpoint she’s learned: “[After my diagnosis] the first thing I wanted to do was find other people that have been in my situation and that were positive and in a happy, good place having come through a diagnosis and treatment.

“I want to be that - if possible - for anybody else hearing those words and going through the darkest time that I could have imagined going through, I would be so heartened to be that person that makes somebody else feel a little bit less alone and a little bit better about it.”

A balancing act like no other

“There is no good time to get a cancer diagnosis, is there. But to have it postpartum was brutal. Not only was my focus having and feeding and staying up all night with a newborn baby, but I had a toddler as well,” says Charlton. She and her partner opted to tell their now four-year-old that “mummy had a poorly arm”, since the PICC line used to administer drugs was a visual cue, but Charlton notes “it was pretty heartbreaking, not being able to tell her why. I was coming back from the second surgery, trying to read bedtime stories, having just been under general anaesthesia. There was a lot to cope with, but I just had to keep going for the kids,” Charlton recalls.

Thankfully, support is available, in the shape of a specific charity fundraising to support women who are diagnosed during pregnancy or shortly after: Mummy’s Star.

“My partner Paul was absolutely incredible, I cannot put into words how much he has done. I was really lucky to have this brilliant support network, but knowing there is support out there with charities like Mummy’s Star is huge as well,” Charlton says.

Check your breasts once a month

One of Charlton’s many supporters during her treatment was Dr Liz O'Riordan. A former consultant breast surgeon herself, O’Riordan is also a cancer survivor and avid cyclist. She talked us through how and when to check your breasts, and what to do if you’re worried. You can also watch her guide on her YouTube channel.

Ideally, you should check your breasts every month. If you are still having periods, it's often easier to do it mid-cycle, because that's when your breasts are less lumpy. If you're not having periods every month, put a reminder in your phone. And if you're at the screening age and you're still having mammograms every three years, you should still check every month, because cancers can appear between scans.

To check, look in the mirror at your breasts: are there any changes, dimpling, lumps, bumps, changes to the nipple that you can see? Then lie down and firmly press your breast tissue, pushing the breast tissue with the flat of your hand against your rib cage, trying to feel a lump. And, the final thing you do is have a feel in your armpits.

Most women we see in the clinic with a breast lump, or breast pain, don't have breast cancer. But the only way to find out is to be seen in a breast clinic, where we can scan and examine you.

The survival rate of breast cancer is increasing all the time. There are new treatments that have been developed, about 20 new treatments in the last five or six years. Though it's awful seeing stories when young women are dying, lots and lots of women are surviving and living long, healthy lives after a cancer diagnosis.

I would tell anybody, if you're worried, don't wait, get it checked out; it's probably nothing, but we need to put your mind at ease.

If the issues raised in this story have affected you, you can get help and support now. Contact Breast Cancer Now on 0800 448 0822, or visit breastcancernow.org.

Has there ever been a more divisive commentator than Carlton Kirby? His puns and mixed metaphors have earned him legions of fans, but also hordes of detractors-making the 64-year-old something of a Marmite character on the mic. A veritable globetrotter, Kirby describes himself as "a bit of a journeyman" - although he's starting to feel most at home in the south-west London suburb of Molesey, where he lives with his wife and two teenage children in a rickety Tudor cottage.

Kirby grew up in the Sheffield suburb of Hallam in the 1960s, where he rubbed shoulders with Jeremy Clarkson and Michael Palin. His brother dated the sister of head boy Seb Coe, and Def Leppard were the school band. "I think there was something in the water," says Kirby, who stepped out with a supermodel and lived on a desert island before finding his calling through motorsports and cycling at Eurosport.

What was your first job?

A paper round in Sheffield. It's how I got into cycling. I only had seven papers to deliver but I was doing the hill farms, so it took me a couple of hours. I got really fit but crashed my Hercules Jeep so many times. My dad said the tyres were too thin, so I put fat tyres on, had a fork forged and put in straight bars. I'm still convinced I invented mountain biking.

What was your first memory of the Tour de France?

When I was 16, I got a summer job working in a biscuit factory in a place called La-Haye-du-Puits in Normandy. We would watch the Tour in a café with all the locals on our lunch break. Then, of course, one day it passed through. All the villages went mad and the factory closed. I remember seeing Bernard Hinault, who was in his pomp then, on a time trial bike - just ready to set off with his graded specs, looking fantastic. He was so charismatic. He was Elvis to me. I fell absolutely in love with it all.

Did you always want to be a broadcaster?

Yes. At Lancaster University, I joined the radio society but left with a dry degree in management sciences. I got a job for a marketing magazine in Carnaby Street, part of the Haymarket Group. Michael Heseltine, the owner, sacked me with the immortal words: "Men of renown never wear brown". And there's me in a fetching brown corduroy shirt with an amber cravat.

What did you do next?

I wrote about the lifestyles of the rich, famous and odious for Middle East Money magazine. I was so bored. So, aged 26, I did a postgraduate diploma in radio journalism at the London College of Printing and started dating a lovely student from the College of Fashion. She became a supermodel in the Eighties-the face of Diet Coke and a Vogue cover star. Then I got a job at BBC Radio Norwich and a door opened in the research department at Look East. I became the gatekeeper for all the weird stories from Norwich - from miniature earwax sculptures to sink holes. I was the original Alan Partridge. After a run-in with my editor, I got a broadcasting gig on the United Nations development programme on Funafuti Atoll on the tropical island nation of Tuvalu.

How long did you spend in the South Pacific?

I only lasted 14 months. I was bored after a week, completely divorced from the Western world. I'd met everyone on the island after 10 minutes because it was only a square-mile. I had no telephone and there was no internet. A mail plane came on Wednesdays. I had no idea that Pat Cash won Wimbledon or that the Berlin Wall had fallen.

How did you keep busy in the middle of nowhere?

I won the Tuvalu coast-to-coast cycling race-the Coconut Cup. I beat Ari Leppäniemi, a Finnish engineer, in the 350m race from the airport terminal to the diesel generator. There was a hotel opposite the radio with a bar, where we used to drink coconut milk with gin left behind from a royal visit. But I got stir crazy. In the end, I paid a Swedish freighter to take me off in the middle of the night. After 12 days we arrived in Fiji, then I flew back home.

How did you get into sports journalism?

An opening came on the sports desk at TV-am, where I wrote the racing tips for a certain Jeff Stelling. When he went to Sky, he tipped me off about Eurosport, which had just started. My first gig was voicing the Dakar Rally in the mid-Nineties, then, through the ASO connection, started on the mountain-bike Tour de France.

Where were you living at this point?

I couldn't afford anywhere in the UK but property in northern France was incredibly cheap. I bought a beautiful 300-year-old farmhouse in a village in the Pas de Calais. I'd drive my Sirocco to Dover, jump on a booze cruise, then get in my Renault 4 on the other side. I lived in France for three days a week and then went back to hot-bedding with another journo in Battersea.

How hard was it to break through into cycling?

Back then, the Midlands mafia controlled it all: you had Phil Liggett doing ITV, Hugh Porter on the BBC and David Duffield at Eurosport. They were the three kings. But I kept plugging away. For the Tour in 2012, I was doing all the background stuff for Eurosport. Then David Harmon lost his job, and I was parachuted in for the Vuelta. Soon, I was part of the Midlands mafia.

Do you have a favourite anecdote from those early years?

There was a Dutch commentator at Eurosport who knew sod all about cycling. When the regular guy was taken ill, he needed to step in for Mont Ventoux on the queen stage of the Tour. He thought it was his big chance. The riders came out of the woods, by Chalet Reynard, and past the sign that says 'Col Ouvert'. And the guy says in Dutch, "And here it is, the mighty, the one and only, Col Ouvert." The producer was livid.

You're a betting man. What's been your biggest win?

Best win was £10 at 66-1 on the nose for Milan-San Remo, when the French guy [Arnaud Démare] won after Fernando Gaviria crashed. I also backed Tom Dumoulin for a top 10 in the 2015 Vuelta at 66-1. I had a fiver on him winning at 1,000-1, so I came close to a huge pay day. Sean Kelly thought I was crazy but I had a feeling.

Do you prefer commentating mountaintop finishes or bunch sprints?

Anybody can call a mountaintop finish because it's in slow motion, while a sprint is probably the most difficult call in all of sport. You've got to say what's happening, what the plan is, who's helping who, who's moving where. My time calling speedway helped. Nobody ever screamed them home like me - but now it's a style that's everywhere.

And your most memorable moment?

The biggest, most cathartic moment for me - when everyone went, "Bloody hell!" - was the iconic Iljo Keisse win in Turkey. He crashes on a corner with an 18-second lead, gets back on the bike, chain comes off, gets off the bike, puts the chain back on, then holds off a charging Kittel and Petacchi by a metre and a half. "Joy for cycling fans globally! What an effort that was!" I screamed.

What are your main strengths as a commentator?

As you've probably gathered, I have an ability to carry. At Milan-San Remo, I do the hard work to get the viewers over the plains before the action starts. I find the banal and ordinary interesting. It's where I earn my crust.

There's an online petition to get you cancelled. How do you cope with the haters?

I have only sympathy and love for the haters. Anyway, that petition has been going for 10 years and it's only got 2,500 signatures! Sometimes it gets nasty. Then again, a Carlton Kirby fan club wrote my name on the road during the Tour, so there's also a lot of love.

What's been your diciest moment covering the Tour?

I came very close to being beaten up by one of Oleg Tinkov's henchman after scratching his massive gold coach with my wing mirror while getting off the Galibier. [Sean] Kelly said, "Just f***ing drive!" so I put my foot down.

What are your hobbies outside cycling?

I still row - a bit with the Molesey club on the river, but mainly to keep fit with an ergo in the garage. I absolutely love walking in the Derbyshire hills. I'm also a very good chef, and a good artist and photographer. My dad was an artist, my sister's an art teacher and my brother's a renowned Hollywood set designer.

What would be the epitaph on your gravestone?

"Joy for haters globally. What an effort that was!" Yeah, that's it, I think.

Quick-fire with Kirby

What was your first bike? Hercules Jeep. Second was a violet Carlton Corsa.

Biggest cycling bugbear? The traffic.

Rim or disc brakes? Rims 100%.

Best Grand Tour? I have the most fondness for the Giro.

Best Monument? Am I allowed to say Strade Bianche? If not, Flanders.

Pogačar or Vingegaard? Pogačar.

How many Tours can Pogačar win? He's young enough to get 10.

Dogs or cats? Cats - we have two, Steve and Bob.

Favourite sport to watch? Shinty-Scottish hurling.

Favourite sport to commentate on? Nothing beats a Grand Tour. But 24-hour motorcycle or car races have something amazing about them, too.

Most sprint wins in 2026? Matthew Brennan. He's getting better and better.

Final meal before death row? Tinned salmon and cucumber sandwich on rye bread.

Rider you respect the most? Cadel Evans - a quirky but lovely man.

Six Days or World Championships? The Worlds are special, but I do love a Six Day.

Favourite Kirbyism? "It's fun. It's mental. It's fundamental."

This feature was originally published in the 2 April 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

Coffee and cycling go together like, well, coffee and cycling. The mid-ride café stop is a time-honoured tradition for good reason. If you follow any professional cyclists on social media, there’s a good chance you’ve seen them post a photo of cappuccinos and baked goods on a table, or else a shot of a bunch of fellow pros sitting in their respective team kits grinning at the camera.

Café stops aren’t just for pros, either. Coffee shops offer easy, accessible places to refuel for anyone on a bike, whether on a long day out or as a spot to meet up with friends or a handy departure point for a group ride.

Professional cycling and coffee have a formal history together. Notable examples include espresso machine maker Faema’s sponsorship of a pro team in the 1950s and ’60s, for which Eddy Merckx famously rode. More recently, Italian coffee company Segafredo was the co-sponsor for the squad currently known as Lidl-Trek for several seasons.

The effects of caffeine on endurance athletes are well-documented at this point. It provides a boost that allows for longer and harder efforts on the bike. Along with sugar, it’s one of the most helpful legal substances one can consume.

Mid-ride espresso stops are not an option for everyone on a bike, however. Bikepackers, touring cyclists or those who live in rural areas may not have access to a café for their coffee needs.

Making one’s own coffee is the solution to this conundrum, and doing so has become popular enough that it has inspired communities of people to regularly meet up for "coffee outside" together. Fortunately, a variety of easy-to-use, lightweight coffee brewing methods are now available to meet the needs of those who are interested in making coffee on the go.

What is coffee outside?

The idea was first popularised on social media via a hashtag by Rob Perks of Ocean Air Cycles in California. It has since become an enduring cultural phenomenon that provides the opportunity for friends and fellow cyclists to socialise, refuel and relax by drinking coffee outdoors instead of in a coffee shop.

To participate, all you need to do is either bring or brew your own coffee while out on a bike ride (or other outdoor pursuit). If you’re interested in doing this with other people, you can check out the map created by Russ Roca on The Path Less Pedaled website, which includes coffee outside meetups all over the world.

Making one’s own coffee is often less expensive than going to a coffee shop, and brings a camping feel and pace to the whole experience. It’s an easy way to feel more connected to the outdoors, even for people who work in an office every day. It’s a sort of micro-adventure that fits easily into everyday life.

Where I live in Seattle, there are two regular coffee outside groups that I am acquainted with. Most participants join on their way to work, and stop in to hang out, network and share hot drinks and baked goods.

I spoke with Peter Hanchak, who organises one of Seattle’s coffee outside meetups, about how it fits into the community at large. He’s been organising the weekly meetups since 2017, and likes to think of it as “a way to meet new friends and old friends and to enjoy the beautiful corners of our city. [Keeping] it as a meetup vs. a ride [allows] folks to come and go as they please and not have to be on a specific schedule or ride at a particular pace. We have the ability to find new locations and explore parks and locations as they change and evolve around the city.”

For Hanchak, “the connection of making coffee with a stove outside connects nicely to the simplicity and self-sufficiency of a bicycle as a mode of transportation. Biking somewhere under your own power and then making a cup of coffee with equipment you’ve carried with you feels so simple and elegant.”

For cyclists who are travelling or new to an area, attending a coffee outside meetup is a good way to meet fellow cyclists and to expand your social network.

What is the best way to make coffee outside?

Some people take coffee outside very seriously and have developed elaborate brewing rituals. Others, not so much. People are free to participate in any way they wish.

The simplest way to make coffee outside is to put standard coffee grounds in hot water—true cowboy coffee. On the other end of the spectrum are lightweight Aeropress, espresso or pour-over setups. When coffee outside first became popular, many of these specialised coffee products did not exist. Since then, many new coffee brewing tools especially designed for outdoor use have become readily available.

I am not an everyday coffee drinker, but when I make it at home, I typically grind the beans with a handheld burr grinder and use a pour-over setup with a gooseneck kettle. This is a reliable method that makes good coffee without actually needing to know what I’m doing.

For making coffee outside or on a bike trip, I utilise a simpler setup that works with instant coffee. I bring filtered water in a metal bottle, and heat it in situ. My preferred system includes a lightweight backpacking stove, fuel canister, mug, spoon and lighter. These items nestle together easily for packability and weigh very little.

I have found two particular products that I like for making coffee on the go. The first is rather unusual: it’s a coffee extract that comes in a tube, made by NoNormal coffee from Switzerland.

It’s very simple to make: all it requires is stirring the coffee paste into water, hot or cold. The tube is made of aluminium and contains 100 grams of concentrated extract, good for up to 30 cups of coffee. You can also add it to other food items if you so choose. NoNormal recommends a ratio of 1 tsp of coffee paste to 100-150 ml of water, depending on how strong you like your coffee. Co-founder Alexander Häberlin’s personal favourite? “Anything peanut butter + the coffee. Snickers with some paste on top is a BOMB.”

I have found I prefer to make it on the stronger side and like it best hot, but it’s great how versatile it is, especially as it makes zero garbage (you can recycle the tube when you run out).

The other method I have found that makes consistently great coffee is the freeze-dried coffee from Pretty Great Instant, based in Sacramento, CA. It is available in either resealable larger bags (claimed for 30 cups worth), or single-use 2-ounce packets. According to Pretty Great Instant, each serving is the equivalent to two espresso shots. To make it, you simply stir a scoop, or the contents of the packet, into hot water. It’s extremely easy to use, even with less-than-ideal outdoor brewing conditions. No measuring is required, and the single-serving packets are extremely light and packable, similar to individually packaged tea bags.

Regardless of the technique used, for the best results, I recommend using filtered water if possible. It’s also useful to figure out a reliable way to measure the volume of water you’re using, in some form or fashion.

For people who are not interested in the rigamarole (and associated accoutrements) of brewing coffee outdoors, it’s also perfectly acceptable to brew coffee (or any other hot beverage) at home and bring it along in a thermos or other vessel.

Conclusion

Over the last decade, we have seen gravel cycling and bikepacking take off in popularity, two disciplines that, by definition, take people away from the comforts of home and easy-to-access cafés. People seem drawn to this kind of riding because it allows us to access new and different locales, and because it provides variety from the traffic and clamour of paved roads. Carrying your own food and coffee allows you to go farther and explore more, as well as tap into a vibrant community of people who like to do the same.

The Calder Valley is home to some of the UK's steepest and most leg-sapping climbs. The southernmost of the Yorkshire Dales- though sitting just outside the National Park - this deep gritstone trough follows the River Calder, while the valley sides offer a mix of winding ramps and brutal pitches that make the whole area a climber's playground. Historically a textile hub, the valley floor is still dominated by the towering mills of the Industrial Revolution.

It makes for a claustrophobic riding environment, where ruins, rivers, and canals are squeezed into whatever flat land is available. But I'm not here to linger in the basin. Instead, I'm looking for the exit: nine vicious ascents that rise straight out of the post-industrial gloom. I start my ride in Halifax, at the sensational Piece Hall. This Grade I listed building is a remarkable feat of architecture that looks as if it's been plucked from the centre of Bordeaux or Vienna and dropped in a northern English town.

Composed of 315 separate rooms around its vast central plaza, it was opened in 1779 to sell the woollen goods produced in the valley's many mills. Since then, the Piece Hall has undergone a makeover, and now houses cafes, restaurants and other small businesses that make it the perfect place to start and finish a ride. Calderdale is famed in cycling circles for its cobbled climbs; in fact, it is second only to Flanders in this respect.

Out of a desire to explore something different, I've decided to avoid a cobble-fest in favour of some of the lesser-known but equally savage climbs. Of course, there will be a couple of stony kickers - it would be rude not to try them - but if you want to ride them all, I recommend the spectacular 'Ronde van Calderdale' sportive, which runs every spring and loops all the famous cobbled roads together.

Rolling out of the Piece Hall, my first task is navigating the carbuncle of Halifax's road network. I swear I take a wrong turn every time I visit; despite my head unit's best efforts, it is easy to tie yourself in knots in this asphalt tangle. Eventually, I find the A646- the spine of today's route - and head toward the first ascent: Halifax Lane.

Venue for the 2003 National Hill-Climb Championships, where Jim Henderson took the last of his five titles, Halifax Lane features 20% ramps and a few brutal corners to warm the legs. The official hill-climb course amalgamates this climb with Birch Lane and Raw End Road to reach the summit.

Legs already aching, I pedal on to Mount Tabor, then descend the famous Stocks Lane hill-climb course back into Luddenden. Here comes an amuse-bouche of cobbles: the dreaded, sadistic Old Lane.

My personal score with this climb currently stands at 2-2- two successful ascents and two "walks of shame". It's a brutal little road that demands total commitment; if a foot goes down on these gradients, it stays down. I carry speed into the base, but two-thirds of the way up, the stones become too slippery. My front wheel skews, I hit a patch of dirt, and it's game over. The scoreboard in my head ticks over: Old Lane 3, Old Cyclist 2. I'll be back to draw even.

High-level roads running parallel to the valley provide an escape from the congestion below, whistling through open country before dropping into Hebden Bridge. Once dubbed 'Trouser Town' for its textile industry, the town is now a bohemian creative hub and a key filming location for BBC dramas Happy Valley and Riot Women.

It's also home to The Buttress: a 21% cobbled killer omitted from this route because I've never successfully scaled it on a road bike- and have long since given up trying. Feel free to give it a go yourself, though.

There's an abundance of cafes in Hebden Bridge, but as I am only 20km into the ride, I choose to press on to the next climb, Mytholm Steeps, which very much lives up to the name. The village of Mytholm clings to a string of tight corners, twisting hairpins and 20% ramps, and this one drags me out of 'Happy Valley' with a ferocity that's anything but. Of all the roads I'm revisiting on this ride, this is the one that catches me most by surprise; how on earth had I forgotten what a leg-breaker the ramp up to the first switchback is?

After a brief stint up high, I plunge back into the valley to ready myself for the dreaded Dog House Lane. Rising from the back of Todmorden, this westward ascent kicks off with a 30% corner that has me breathing through my eyes. It is full-gas and unrelenting; I crawl upward in the shadow of a moss-covered wall before emerging past farm buildings to reach the open expanse of Todmorden Moor - a peaceful idyll a world away from the chaos below. I catch my breath and brace for the return leg.

My fifth climb of the day - the halfway point - takes me out of Cornholme and up Shore Road. Although not as spectacular as others on this ride, it's still a tough ascent that takes me up to higher ground and has me retracing my tyre tracks down Mytholm Steeps, slaloming through the hairpins and back into Hebden Bridge.

Again, I resist the temptation of the coffee shops, and instead take on another cheeky kicker, looping though Heptonstall via its neatly cobbled high street, and then back down into Trouser Town, where, finally, I can take my rest. While the previous climbs were short and vicious, Cragg Vale is a different beast. As the sign at the base confirms, this is officially the longest continuous incline in England.

The 9km road featured in the 2014 Tour de France and was recently renamed the Oliver Collinge Climb in memory of the local rider and teacher who died from a rare form of cancer in 2016 aged just 28. It's gentle by today's standards - 10% at its steepest - and, with only a gentle crosswind to contend with, I'm able to hack up it in the big ring.

The gradient fluctuates but never significantly flattens, the scenery opening up toward the serenity of Blackstone Edge reservoir, which marks the summit. I pause to take stock and let the fire in my legs die down before descending into the bustle of Sowerby Bridge for my penultimate foe: Sowerby Croft.

It was here, in the autumn of 1991, that I got the chance to race against one of my heroes. I was a hill-climb-mad teenager, and when the start sheet came through for the Condor RC event on Sowerby Croft, the man listed last was none other than Chris Boardman.

The then-23-year-old was my idol and the nation's premier climber, and I was eager to see how I'd measure up. That year proved to be a fine vintage for my ascending - my power was up and my weight was down - and I took eighth on the day. Boardman won, obviously, taking 10 for his efforts - and eight months later he would become Olympic champion in the individual pursuit.

With my trip down, or rather up, memory lane complete, it's time for the finale. My Calder Valley adventure ends not with a bang but an explosion, an atom bomb of a climb that gives legend status to anyone who makes it to the top without walking. It goes by the formidable name of Trooper Lane, and of all of Halifax's cobbled streets, this is the hardest - it's one of the toughest roads to ride up in England.

It's not as slippery as Old Lane, thanks to the sunlight, but it's steeper, much steeper, hitting 30% at its cobbled peak - a figure that makes Tour of Flanders climbs such as the Koppenberg or Paterberg fade into insignificance. Whose idea was it to finish up here? It's such an evil road that, once I'm at the top, I'm 10% sad the ride is over but 90% relieved that my legs have held out.

In the process, I've ticked off some of the toughest roads in the country, absolute classic climbs that never fail to disappoint. I could swear that Old Lane and Trooper Lane get steeper with each passing year - though I've no concrete proof of local tectonic activity, it's the only plausible explanation of my extra suffering.

All that's left to do now is complete the loop with one last descent back into the maze of Halifax's road system and return to the Piece Hall to taste the rewards of my labour. After my morning's toil in the Calder Valley, the goods I'm bringing to trade aren't pieces of fine cloth but sore legs and an empty stomach. Finding a suitable vendor among the Georgian colonnades, I feast on pizza and raise my bidon to this industrial masterpiece and the formidable terrain that surrounds it.

9 climbs to ride

Halifax Lane
Segment: strava.com/segments/6690955
KOM: Andrew Feather, 5.28
QOM: Annabel Fisher, 8.33
Length: 1,635m
Height gain: 172m
Max gradient: 20%
Avg gradient: 11%

Old Lane
Segment: strava.com/segments/3386216
KOM: Laszlo Panaflex, 55s
QOM: Jade Simpson-Field, 1.50
Length: 209m
Height gain: 43m
Max gradient: 23%
Avg gradient: 21%

Mytholm Steeps
Segment: strava.com/segments/16343511
KOM: Andy Cunningham, 8.57
QOM: Holly Page, 11.54
Length: 3,225m
Height gain: 223m
Max gradient: 25%
Avg gradient: 6%

Dog House Lane
Segment: strava.com/segments/19513443
KOM: Andy Cunningham, 8.58
QOM: Rachel Meredith, 13.43
Length: 2,999m
Height gain: 238m
Max gradient: 30%
Avg gradient: 7%

Shore Road
Segment: strava.com/segments/627919
KOM: Jude Taylor, 6.00
QOM: Laura Tring, 9.34
Length: 1,862m
Height gain: 196m
Max gradient: 22%
Avg gradient: 10%

Heptonstall Road
Segment: strava.com/segments/878156
KOM: Andrew Feather, 5.40
QOM: Annabel Fisher, 8.06
Length: 1,653m
Height gain: 171m
Max gradient: 14%
Avg gradient: 10%

Cragg Vale
Segment: strava.com/segments/16336054
KOM: Roberto Scottini, 14.49
QOM: Beth Harley-Jepson, 19.14
Length: 8,762m
Height gain: 288m
Max gradient: 10%
Avg gradient: 3%

Sowerby Croft Lane
Segment: strava.com/segments/19507981
KOM: Kiki Savdog, 2.32
QOM: Nikola Matthews, 4.38
Length: 781m
Height gain: 92m
Max gradient: 20%
Avg gradient: 11%

Trooper Lane
Segment: strava.com/segments/19508001
KOM: Kiki Savdog, 3.46
QOM: Tracy Healy, 5.51
Length: 769m
Height gain: 123m
Max gradient: 30%
Avg gradient: 14%

Think of America’s hallowed cycling grounds, and you probably conjure images of Colorado, California, Hawaii, Arizona, and Utah. But on the East Coast, snaking through a mountain range that is older than the rings of Saturn, are some of the best cycling routes, some of the toughest and most rewarding climbs and their thrilling descents, all tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North and South Carolina.

I recently had the opportunity to ride 270 miles through Appalachia as a guest of the Arthritis Foundation's Carolina Hills Classic, and experienced it all: the undulating, never-ending rollers, the fearsome grades, and the hush-quiet farm roads that seem to stretch endlessly in the valleys between the mountains.

If you've ever ridden there, you already know Appalachia offers some of the most leg-crushing climbs in the United States. But with seemingly endless roads, most of which are very lightly trafficked, picture-perfect mountaintop views, the kinds of long, sustained climbs that you might find in the Alps or the Dolomites, and plenty of Southern Hospitality along the way, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North and South Carolina should be considered amongst our country’s cycling meccas.

"Wait," you might be thinking. "Did this guy really just compare the Carolinas to the Alps?"

I did. Of course, you don’t have to believe me. But maybe you’ll believe legendary American racers like Christian Vande Velde, Bobby Julich, and George Hincapie, who have long called the area home, drawn to it for precisely those reasons I just listed. With 37 Tours de France raced between them, they might know a thing or two about Alpine climbs.

Matthew Busche is another former pro who relocated to the area more than a decade ago, decamping from New Mexico to the Blue Ridge Mountains while he was still racing for Team RadioShack. Like me, he was a guest of the Carolina Hills Classic. Unlike me, he can maintain a conversation while climbing an 11% grade.

"The climbs are long here, some are steeper, some are more gradual," said Busche, a two-time National Road Race Champion who’s raced the Tour de France, Critérium du Dauphiné, Vuelta a España, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Amstel Gold Race, Strade Bianche, and the Tour of California, amongst dozens of others of pro cycling’s biggest and most prestigious races.

"And there’s such a good variety of terrain here, the roads are quiet, and it’s just beautiful. But the cycling culture is so deep here that, any time you show up to a local race, someone from this area is potentially going to win."

Our route was a four-day, 270-mile endeavour that took our group of 44 riders from Asheville, North Carolina, through the charming little mountain village of Brevard, and finally to the bustling mini-metropolis of Greenville, South Carolina. It was conceived by Chris Reed of bike-race production company Medalist Sports, who worked with local cyclists and guides to stitch together four days of riding through the Blue Ridge Mountains. And while the route was eminently achievable for riders of all abilities, I was a bit shocked at just how brutal some of the days were.

"These particular riders, despite their age and their ability, are grinders," Reed, who has planned the Foundation’s other big events in the past, said. "They’re just like, ‘Throw something at us, we’ll get it done.’ They’re open to hard routes, and the Carolina Hills Classic, with all of the vertical, is a hard event."

Reed’s route featured two 70ish-mile loops bookending two point-to-point days. We spent our first and last days looping 70 miles around Asheville and 50 miles around Greenville, South Carolina, respectively. Day two, we travelled from Asheville to Brevard, a charming little mountain town a few dozen miles down the road as the crow flies (though the bike route would be a bit more circuitous). And early on day three, we shoved off from Brevard and headed south toward Greenville, tackling 70 more miles as we wound up and sped down the mountains and foothills that span the North and South Carolina borders.

The second day of the ride was an easy highlight, as we enjoyed most of the day on what is widely considered amongst the most scenic routes on Earth: the famous Blue Ridge Parkway.

There, we tapped away at a marathon-like 14-mile climb. And while it only averages a moderate 3-4% grade, the climb took us nearly 4,000 feet into the clouds, to the top of Mount Pisgah, where absolutely jaw-dropping views of the Blue Ridge range stretched out beneath us. After a tiny respite, maybe three miles of gentle rollers, another five-mile climb proved the weekend’s biggest gut punch, where the scenery fell away, the walls of my tunnel vision caved in, and all I could see was the short bit of road, five or ten feet in front of my wheel.

However, what goes up must come down, and what followed that climb was perhaps the greatest descent I’ve ever ridden: 16 miles of wide, sweeping turns, a negative grade that was steep enough to blow my hair back but gentle enough to allow me to really enjoy the ride.

After about 45 minutes, I reached the bottom of the mountain, the valley floor, and rode another 20 miles over beautifully undulating two-lane farm roads, eventually pulling up to our hotel in downtown Brevard. The day’s final tally: 85 miles. 8,000 feet.

For our second point-to-point, a 70-mile ride from Brevard, North Carolina, to downtown Greenville, South Carolina, we traded the long mountain climbs for the gentler rollers of the Appalachian foothills. "Gentler" is, of course, a relative term, as the route still packed in 3,500 feet of climbing. The highlight was a 15-mile descent out of the mountains on Old Highway 25 with a brief stop at Hotel Domestique, the cycling-focused inn owned by George and Rich Hincapie, before tackling our final stretch into Greenville’s famous Swamp Rabbit Trail greenway.

My favourite surprise came on the final day. Away from the long climbs that define the Blue Ridge, the route ducked onto narrow farm roads connecting towns like Tigerville and Travelers Rest and Mountain View. As the day had us taking quick rights and lefts, roaring up short, punchy climbs and over less-than-ideal tarmac, I felt like I was racing my own little Spring Classic (albeit, much, much slower). And though I kept telling myself that I wanted to spend the day riding with relative ease, I couldn’t help but hammer up the area’s bergs. It was a route that was simply too much damned fun.

By the time we rolled into downtown Greenville on day four, our legs had logged more than 270 miles of road and climbed over 20,000 feet. But, more impactfully, the 44 riders who undertook the Carolina Hills Classic raised nearly a quarter-million dollars for the Arthritis Foundation.

But beyond the miles ridden, the friendships made and fostered, the elevation gained, and even the fundraising impact, the impression that will stick with me, and the one I will evangelise to anyone who’ll listen, is how rich and compelling a place the Blue Ridge Mountains are to ride a bicycle. These mountains, these roads, these climbs and their descents deserve equal billing with the likes of Colorado, California, Hawaii and Utah. This place is one of our country’s true hallowed cycling grounds.

Whereas homeostasis is the body's attempt to keep vital signs within a very tight, static range, allostasis is the active process of adaptation. Allostatic load is the body's running total of stress. Every challenge - a hard training ride, poor sleep, work pressure, illness, travel, even emotional strain - triggers stress systems whose purpose is to adapt and reach a 'new normal'. Provided the stress doses are manageable, this is a healthy process.

It's how you adapt and get fitter. "While allostasis is the healthy process of the body changing its internal state to match external demands- such as your heart rate rising during a steep climb - allostatic load is the physiological price the body pays for that adaptation over time," says Professor Sebastian Sitko.

When stress is frequent, intense or long-lasting, and recovery is incomplete, the strain starts to build up. Over time, this cumulative "wear and tear" can affect mood, immunity, energy levels and long-term health.

What is allostatic load?

Allostatic load is the cumulative strain that builds when those demands keep stacking up without enough recovery. "Allostasis is how the body adapts to challenges," says Professor Mike Gleeson. "But every adaptation has an energy cost." In simple terms, your body doesn't try to stay at one fixed point - it constantly adjusts to meet demand. Training, racing, work stress, travel and lack of sleep all require adjustment.

"For a cyclist, this load is not just the sum of kilometres ridden or total kilojoules burned," says Sitko. "It is the integration of training stress, environmental factors like heat or altitude, and psychosocial stressors such as career pressures or lack of sleep." The body does not distinguish between the stress of a VO2max interval and the stress of a high-pressure deadline at work; they both draw on the same recovery resources.

How does allostatic load affect cyclists?

Allostatic load doesn't mean training hard is harmful. "Stress is necessary for adaptation," explains Gleeson. "The problem is sustained overload without adequate restoration. An athlete doesn't experience stress in compartments." When the total load rises too high, early warning signs can include stalled progress, unusually high perceived effort, irritability, low motivation and more frequent colds.

"In my experience, one of the most telling signs is a 'muffled' heart rate response," says Sitko. "If during a high-intensity effort your power is failing, yet your heart rate refuses to rise to its typical training zones, this can indicate autonomic nervous system fatigue, where the body effectively applies a 'governor' to prevent further damage."

Other manifestations include a loss of explosive 'snap' in the legs, disrupted sleep patterns despite deep physical exhaustion, and an increase in perceived exertion during routine efforts. "The athlete is capable of riding, but the physiological ceiling has been significantly lowered," adds Sitko.

To mitigate the risk of progressing into overtraining or relative energy deficiency (REDs), cyclists must move beyond simply tracking external metrics such as power or training stress score (TSS), and begin monitoring internal response markers. "One of the most effective protocols is the use of heart rate variability (HRV) as a morning readiness check," suggests Sitko.

A consistent downward trend in HRV is a clear signal to prioritise recovery over intensity. "Addressing the energy availability component is also critical," he adds. "Many cyclists trigger REDs by trying to stay lean while increasing training volume. Ensuring that carbohydrate intake scales with training intensity is a non-negotiable requirement for hormonal health and bone density."

OVERLOAD ALERT: IDENTIFY, ADAPT, RECOVER

How to identify
- Hard sessions feel unusually difficult: Power drops while perceived effort rises.
- Muted heart-rate response: "Your heart rate may refuse to rise to typical zones," says Sitko.
- Loss of 'snap' in the legs: Explosive efforts feel flat or sluggish.
- Sleep disruption: Fatigue is high but sleep becomes restless.
- Mood changes: Irritability, low motivation or mental fog.
- More frequent illness: Repeated colds or lingering infections.

How to respond
- Prioritise sleep and recovery days.
- Match carbohydrate intake to training load.
- Track HRV or readiness markers.
- Adjust training when life stress is high.
- Maintain consistent fuelling to avoid cumulative strain.

Running a men's WorldTour team has never been so expensive. It now costs around €30m a year - and that's just to be competitive. If you're a cash-rich business or billionaire who fancies knocking UAE Team Emirates-XRG off their perch, you'd need to find twice that much.

Where, you might well ask, does all that money go? Cyclists are not paid the megabucks of stars in other sports. Cycling Weekly ascertained from leading agents that, of the 1,182 professional riders (men and women, WorldTeam and ProTeam), only 60-70 earn more than €1m, and fewer than 20 exceed €2m. Tadej Pogačar, with his €8.4m salary (before bonuses, private sponsorship deals and appearance fees), is an outlier - as are Remco Evenepoel, Jonas Vingegaard and Mathieu van der Poel, who command salaries of between €4 and €6m (contrast with Manchester City's Erling Haaland's £27.3m).

If most riders aren't hoovering up the big money, where does it go? CW has obtained official figures from the UCI that break down where teams spend their dough. We have also spoken with senior figures in the sport to better understand how the costs of running a cycling team in 2026 stack up.

Budget breakdown

At cycling's World Tour seminar in Geneva, Switzerland, in December, UCI President David Lappartient's slideshow illustrated the projected cost structure of professional teams for the 2026 season - encompassing men's and women's WorldTeams, and the second-tier men's and women's ProTeams. The data showed the combined budgets of the 18 men's World Teams in 2026 will reach €620-630m, up from €570m last year. The average budget will be €33m, with a median of €28m.

The 15 Women's WorldTeams will share €80m, an increase of €10m from 2025 despite having one fewer team. The average budget is set at €5.7m. UCI ProTeams - such as Tom Pidcock's Pinarello-Q36.5 - have an average budget of €9.4m, while their female counterparts come in at €1.9m.

Most of the money, an estimated 90%, comes from sponsorship deals; teams have few other revenue streams. Spectators pay no admission fee, and only a minority of diehard fans buy replica team jerseys - contrast with Premier League football, where 15-20% of a team's revenue comes from matchday receipts, including ticket sales and catering.

By far the biggest expense is staff salaries. For the 2026 season, men's WorldTeams will spend on average 73% of their budget on "personnel expenses", most of it going to riders (capped at 30 per team). A 2024 UCI document seen by CW shows the median amount spent on riders' salaries was €11.2m. The gap between the highest- and lowest-spending teams was a whopping €22.1m.

Some pro cyclists are employed, others self-employed. The former have their various taxes paid out of their salary at source, while the freelancers have to cover it themselves. Figures show that the average salary for self-employed WorldTeam riders (57%) is €654,000, while the median is €350,000. For employed riders (43%) the average salary is €384,000, with a median of €350,000.

Those numbers don't take into account win bonuses, which can reach seven figures for winning the Tour de France, and around €250,000 for victory in a Monument. These bonuses are typically divided among team-mates, as per cycling custom, but for a big win a rider can expect to be rewarded with an extra payment. Riders on employed contracts earn 50% more than they did in 2023, while those on self-employed contracts have seen, on average, a 27% pay rise in the same three-year period.

Last spring, while reporting for Escape Collective, I spoke to Brent Copeland, general manager of Jayco-AlUla and president of the teams' union AIGCP, who told me: "The numbers keep growing by percentages it is difficult to comprehend."

The document also shows how rapidly team staff numbers have grown. Across men's World Teams, the total now exceeds 1,250. Most teams now average 65 personnel - a few years ago it was in the low 50s. Total staff salaries in 2024 amounted to €71.5m, which worked out at just under €4m per team on average; two teams, one of which is assumed to be UAE, forked out €7.7m on staff wages in 2024. "With the amount of work the staff put in - 180 days away from home, the commitments, the amount of travelling and driving around Europe - if you look at the daily European hourly wage for someone who works away from home, we've got to the point that most staff are earning what they should be earning," Copeland said.

Paying to race

Even after wages, teams spend millions attending races. According to the UCI's figures, 15% of men's WorldTeam spending is on "competition expenses". World Tour teams may skip only one WorldTour race, but it cannot be a Grand Tour or a Monument. Teams receive a few thousand euros per race day from organisers, and they're also provided hotel rooms to cover all riders plus essential staff; that number rises to 26 staff members during the Tour de France. Accommodation for any extra staff has to be paid for by the teams themselves - and at big races such as Grand Tours, this amounts to a major outgoing.

Added to this are the costs of getting to races, with 3% attributed to vehicle expenses. In effect, most teams pay to race. "Just to fill up a bus costs a fortune," Copeland said. Flights, road tolls and training camps also have to be factored in. "All these small expenses add up," Copeland said. "The operational side of teams has grown substantially in the past few years."

Stephen Delcourt, manager of the women's World Team FDJ United-Suez, revealed the cost of sending just a few of his team's riders to altitude. "We have three camps where three or four riders go, and one before the Tour where all seven riders go, plus a physio and a nutritionist," Delcourt tells CW. "In total it costs close to €100,000."

Growing financial disparities are also reflected in equipment spending. While teams generally receive bikes, parts, clothing and cars free of charge from sponsors and brands as part of multi-year deals, in 2024 teams spent an average €2m on equipment-related expenses, with some spending almost €5m. This includes activities such as aerodynamic and wind tunnel testing.

"General expenses" accounts for 6% of spending. This likely includes legal fees and insurance, as well as media and hospitality-related outgoings. Visma-Lease a Bike, for example, invest huge sums into their VIP offering. Finally, 3% of all costs is spent on unspecified "other expenses" which may include registration fees. For men's WorldTeams, a fee of €100,500 is paid annually to the UCI, plus a mandatory €215,000 anti-doping contribution. The respective figures for their female counterparts are €13,000 and €25,000.

Every euro counts

As the boxout illustrates, the breakdown of costs is similar across the various different divisions, but cannot be applied to the more than 180 third-division men's Continental teams who exist on shoestring budgets. An increasing number of these outfits are development teams for WorldTeams - Ineos Grenadiers Racing Academy is the sole British Continental team in 2026 but the vast majority are small set-ups racing the smallest UCI races. European Continental teams wanting to give their riders a competitive calendar typically require a minimum annual budget of around €500,000, with some reporting overall revenue from sponsors of around €1m.

One of those teams is ColoQuick, which was the first team of two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard. Sports director Christian Moberg is one of two full-time staff at the Danish team and he told CW that his team has "more than 100 different sponsors", with the minimum fee to invest set at €2,000. "Every euro counts," Moberg said.

Except in France, Belgium and a select few other countries where riders are classed as professionals and thus must be paid, many riders on Continental teams are not paid and only have their basic expenses covered. Travel costs are the biggest expense for Continental teams, followed by insurance fees, which Moberg estimates at around €100,000 for his team - a 10th of their annual budget. Like World Teams, Continental outfits often receive bikes free of charge from sponsors, but some teams go it alone, either out of necessity or wish. "We buy all of our equipment ourselves because we want the best equipment," Moberg said. "We have very good deals with Trek and Shimano, but we still spend more than €150,000 a year on buying equipment."

David vs Goliath

Cycling's business model has been widely debated in recent years, with many World Team managers and owners pushing for a new model that would reduce teams' dependency on wealthy backers and companies. Yet even as inflation pushes up costs, investing in cycling teams remains attractive. Even adjusted for inflation, there has never been as much money in the sport.

Yet both Copeland and Moberg - two men sitting on very different budgets and operating in very different landscapes - agree that if cycling isn't careful the bubble might burst. Just like it did in the UK with the demise of the domestic scene at Continental level.

"With more World Teams starting development teams and those teams taking the spots in races like the Tour de l'Avenir and Baby Giro, it would be impossible for a team like ours to start now," Moberg said. "It's not sustainable and with the state of the world right now it's very difficult to get money out of companies."

At the top end, is it really fair or sustainable for the average team on around €30m to be expected to compete with goliaths UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Netcompany-Ineos, estimated to have budgets of €55-€60m? Copeland, who is a proponent of a budget cap in cycling's highest echelon, shared his concerns. "I'm not trying to put a negative spin on the fantastic period that cycling is going through and will continue to go through, but we need to carefully look at the trajectory of budgets in the sport and make sure we keep things sustainable."

How they spend it

These figures were disclosed at the UCI World Tour seminar in December 2025, and subsequently obtained by Cycling Weekly.

This feature was originally published in the 19 March 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only) while digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazine's Direct.

When To Replace It is a feature series in which we explore when one should replace common cycling products like helmets, apparel and various moving parts on your bike. Curious about a particular product? Shoot us an email at anne.rook@futurenet.com

Pedals and cleats do a massive amount of work to keep you connected to your bike each and every pedal stroke. They are relatively inexpensive, easily replaceable and never in short supply. So why do so many riders neglect proactively replacing them?

These touchpoints are second only to tyres in keeping you grounded and connecting you through your bike. Worn cleats can allow your shoe to come free from your pedals when laying down power, which could result in your foot coming off at the worst possible moment.

Every time you come to a full stop and put your foot down or walk into a coffee shop, you wear down your cleats. And every time you clip into or out of your pedals, you put a bit of wear on them, too. So how do you know when it's time to refresh them?

A clear indicator for replacing your cleats is when the rubber no-slip pads on the corners are worn away. But what if you use cleats that don’t have these rubber bits, or other tell-tale wear indicators?

Cleats with built-in float allowing some side-to-side play will noticeably feel looser, and there may even be some vertical play to them, letting you know it’s time for new ones. If you use cleats with zero degrees of float, it’s probably time to replace them as soon as you notice any play in your shoe-pedal connection.

Deciding when to install new cleats onto your shoes is relatively easy if you don’t ignore simple tell-tale signs.

What do the manufacturers say about replacing cleats?

Cycling component manufacturer Shimano suggests cleats should be replaced when clipping in or out becomes harder or easier. A bit vague, perhaps, but it comes down to this: if you notice a change in how the pedal/cleat interface feels in use, then it may very well be time for a replacement.

The Japanese cycling component giant also suggests that when the coloured portion of the cleat is worn away, it’s time to throw them out.

"It’s time to change your cleats when you can see the cleat body underneath the coloured pads on the front and back of the SPD-SL cleats," advises Shimano.

Look KEO cleats, which appear similar to Shimano in shape but are not interchangeable with other systems, also have colour-coded wear indicators. As soon as you see the contrasting colour cleat material flush with the grey, red or black portion of the cleat, you’ll know it’s time to bin them and install new ones.

Time, part of the SRAM family of bike components, suggests when the walking pads that double as wear indicators on its iClic system feel like they are sticky when clipping out, it’s replacement time. Be aware that Time's cleats are known to wear quickly if you do a lot of walking in them.

Like other types of cycling parts and accessories, wear is dependent upon so many different factors. Wahoo suggests its SpeedPlay cleat life may range greatly—from 3,000 to 5,000 miles—depending on rider weight, riding surface, frequency of use, and more.

The SpeedPlay pedal and cleat system is slightly different from other brands—the cleat comprises most of the size and mass of the system. Wahoo cautions against using a combination of new and old cleat parts when servicing your cleats.

New Cleat Installation Tips and Tricks

Use a small amount of high-quality bearing lube (or similar) on cleat mounting bolt threads. These bolts are exposed to sweat, road spray, and other dirt ingress, which could 'freeze' the bolt/shoe interface. The next time you replace your cleats, you’ll be happy you properly prepped them.

To be sure you install new cleats in the same place as your existing cleats, you can use a Sharpie or a paint marker—or even a bit of chalk if you don’t want to graffiti the soles of your cycling shoes with ink—to trace the outline of your worn cleats before removing them.

Some pedal and shoe systems have built-in guide indicators to assist in replacing cleats. If you’re not sure if your system offers this feature, or how to use it, the aforementioned outline method is simple and as accurate as your hand allows.

For optimal outcomes, use a torque wrench to tighten the bolts to the manufacturer’s guidelines.

When to replace cleats:

• When colour-coded indicators are worn away
• When the cleat is loose, and unintentional clipping out is a problem
• When clipping in is hit or miss

Do road pedals even need to be serviced or replaced?

The short answer is yes, but not nearly as frequently as other wearable components. While pedals wear at a slower rate than cleats, you’ll want to service them as needed, paying attention to how they perform.

Worn pedal bodies don’t offer the same positive engagement when clipped in, or make clipping in a challenge. Unwanted side-to-side or vertical play, allowing you to lift your shoe from the pedal even when engaged, can cause you to clip out, similarly to a worn cleat.

Signs of wear include grooves and scuffs in the forward part of the pedal (except for Speedplay) and in the retaining clip at the rear top of the pedal. Wear and tear on pedal bodies is normal, but be mindful of rusty springs.

Diagnosing pedal spindle problems can be trickier, since wear can be mistaken for bottom-bracket or drivetrain issues. Spin the pedal in place while holding your crank steady, and feel for clicking, movement or rough spots.

To be sure, when spindles feel rough or the pedal body has side-to-side play on the spindle, you’ll want to service them sooner rather than later, to save yourself from having to replace pedals outright.

Many pedals feature serviceable bearings, and bearing swaps are easy to do.

For pedals with open internals, or exposed retention springs, a little bit of dry chain lube can prolong life and performance.

When to replace pedals

• When the body is grooved and worn
• When clipping in/out is inconsistent
• When the pedal has lateral play or wiggles on the spindle

At the beginning of a recent solo ride, I tried to add up the costs of going faster on the bike. With no paper or calculator within easy reach, I quickly exceeded my math abilities. But not before I reminded myself of the adage: there’s no such thing as a free lunch. This suggests there are always hidden costs and trade-offs to what seems free. But there’s got to be ways to hack the system, I thought.

I then started pondering if it’s OK to shell out $100/watt saved, or should the threshold be lower, say $25/watt saved. What are the real costs of seemingly free speed? And, importantly, can I go faster without spending anything at all?

I considered the scenario of riding a five-hour 100-mile gran fondo. This means being able to maintain an average speed greater than 20mph, when accounting for refuelling stops and nature breaks. While upgrades like a power meter and heart rate monitor can help with pacing, they won’t help maintain the necessary effort, especially when detracting factors like hills and wind are at play. So how could I get faster without paying for it?

Drag is a drag

In a previous article, Cycling Weekly generalised that if you're riding on the road at about 25mph (40kph), about 20 percent of power generated by the rider goes to overcoming rolling resistance, a whopping 70 percent goes to overcoming aerodynamic drag, and the remaining 10 percent is lost to drivetrain friction.

Specialized ran an ad campaign about a decade ago that leaned heavily into upgrading your bike, kit, helmet, shoes, etc., to the most aerodynamically available at the time, even if there was a small weight penalty. Of course, new bikes and parts aren’t free; quite the contrary. Each aero upgrade was more marginal and significantly more expensive than the previous.

But the California-based manufacturer made a point: putting a bike on a diet would not be as beneficial as tricking it out with the slippery bits that tested fastest in the company’s WinTunnel. Aero always bests weight, unless doing Alpine Grand Tour riding. My mind then wandered to non-obvious aerodynamic enhancements and their relative cost.

What can I get for the cost of a pre-ride cappuccino?

All the stiffest, most aero carbon gear won’t do a bit of good if I’m not comfortable on the bike. A bike fit performed by a professional bike fitter should allow for the most aero-optimised position sustainable for an extended period. OK—check—I’ve done this.

But fits often lead to buying new components like a stem, crank arms or handlebars. This means you're looking at several hundred dollars after the cost of the bike fitting. Certainly, this speed isn't free.

What if I could simply stay in the aero-optimised positions longer? Say with some dedicated stretching and some anti-chafe balm? That certainly isn’t as slick as a one-piece cockpit, but the upgrade can be had for the price of a few pre-ride Starbucks fill-ups.

Merch purch: get a performance perch

If being comfortable allows me to sit in the aero position for longer, then the right saddle that’s been installed properly (height, tilt, and fore/aft) is at the top of my list.

But here, too, is a slippery slope. Should I get the saddle with carbon rails or not? While carbon weighs less, the real benefit is its vibration-dampening properties. And when combined with a carbon seatpost, the system can help negate the discomfort of road noise communicated through an ultra-stiff bike frame. But this upgrade can be even more expensive than a new cockpit. There’s got to be a compromise.

When it comes to cycling apparel, I always opt for a form-fitting cut, which incurs a slight cost over a club cut, but eschews extra, wind-catching material.

Usually, an aero kit is performance-oriented and comes with a higher-quality chamois. So while this speed upgrade is by no means free, I figured since I’m buying a new jersey and bibs anyway, why not go with a drag-reducing option?

The best things in life are free but bike upgrades are not

Inflating tyres to the optimal pressure is about as close to free speed as I can get. The sum of a tubeless tyre, valve and sealant weighs about the same as the equivalent tyre with a latex tube (rotating weight of wheels can negatively impact handling and ride feel). Since tubeless systems are run at lower tyre pressures, the added benefit is comfort and lower rolling resistance, even when compared to the best tyres with latex or synthetic inner tubes.

If you’re still stuck on tubes, the $1/watt savings TPU tubes offer over a similar butyl tube is about as close to free as the air you put into them. If you’re not already riding tubeless tyres, this might be a relatively affordable upgrade the next time you’ve got to swap rubber.

An almost free speed upgrade is chain wax. Although not as sexy as deep-section carbon wheels wrapped in rubber from Continental, it’s a much better value in terms of financial outlay vs speed return—and it could actually extend drivetrain life. I use drip wax on all my bikes’ chains, even my dedicated indoor-only Zwift bike.

Before I drip wax onto my chain, I clean it in a tabletop ultrasonic tank. While I’m at it, I also clean my cassette, de-gunk my chainrings, and rear derailleur pulleys to reduce friction. Dirt and buildup cause drivetrain wear, which, according to CeramicSpeed, may cost one up to four watts when pushing out 250 watts. And dirt and grime greatly shorten component life, too.

The only real free speed is someone else’s work

About 100 minutes into this ride, where I pondered how to go faster with no effort, I joined a dozen friends. My 200 watts at 20mph became 160 at 23. Sitting in with them is the closest thing to free speed I could get.

The tradeoffs are relatively minimal, and the risks few: I had only to suffer a few shoulder bumps and some really poor dad-jokes, while I let the front of the group keep their noses in the wind for a few more pedal strokes.

Rachel Anderson picks up the phone somewhere between Leicester City’s King Power Stadium and Milton Keynes

Her knee is throbbing, the result of six days of riding long distance across the UK between football stadiums in England. For now, she’s putting her knee pain to the back of her mind; she’s got another three days on the road to go yet.

Anderson is cycling between all Premier League and Women’s Super League football stadiums to raise money for Motor Neurone Disease research, after the illness took her dad’s life two years ago. Both football fans - and Anderson a footballer herself - this challenge was a way to raise money to fight the disease, to test her own resilience on the bike and to honour her football-mad dad, Mark.

So far, the 32-year-old has been to Lee Bridge, Anfield, Sunderland and Newcastle, but the highlight so far was seeing Old Trafford, the home of her team Manchester United. She still remembers going to her first football match with her dad as a shy ten year old, draped in a Man Utd t-shirt to watch her team play Sheffield United. She hasn’t forgotten that first experience of team mentality, in amongst the buzz of the stadium.

“I just remember watching all of the Man United players warming up and being mesmerised by Wayne Rooney and all of the players, and how good they were,” Anderson tells Cycling Weekly. “Seeing that in person and the energy of everyone around me was just completely different.” She was hooked.

Anderson isn’t afraid of doing hard things. She’s a footballer who rationalised that her pitch-strong legs would translate into cycling stamina. And it’s working out well for her so far, despite only picking up a bike six months ago.

I ask her what she’s learnt so far as a relative beginner to cycling. She said a fear of hill climbing was her main concern before hitting the Yorkshire Dales, but that the satisfaction of scaling the hills soon put an end to the pain of climbing them.

"You look back and it's like, oh, I've done that, and I've managed it, so kind of proved to myself that I am capable," she says.

"I know I've had moments where I've been in like the rain and the wind and hated every second of it, but then ten minutes later when the sun came out, I kind of forgot about that. It's almost like even like the worst times, they do get better. I was just thinking when the sun came out, and then the rain hit again, that the bad times will pass, and you can get through them."

She used Komoot to help her connect all the stadiums together, breaking the route into days, country lanes, roads and b roads. "There has been a couple of dodgy roads that's taken me down, or like the canal path that's really bumpy, but overall I think it's been pretty good. It's worked out pretty well."

Aside from accidental canal side off-roading, Anderson has only suffered one truly bad diversion so far. Mid way through a tunnel between Chester and Liverpool, she realised she really should not be there. Police were waiting on the other end - as was a whole afternoon of rain.

After a particularly tough day on the bike, her family were waiting in a campsite on the other end ride, a reminder of who she’s riding for: her dad, Mark.

“Receiving a diagnosis of motor neurone disease is unbelievably hard news,” Anderson explains on her Just Giving page. “There is no cure. There is no effective treatment. Average life expectancy is 1-3 years from onset of symptoms.”

Anderson’s dad gave her football, a legacy she’s keeping alive with every mile clocked on her bike.

“He was just my biggest fan,” Anderson says of her dad. “I started playing football when I was seven, he took me to all of the matches, drove me to all of the sessions. I remember growing up…I just sensed how proud he was of me, watching me play football. He played semi-professional back in the day, we’ve always watched football together, and that I thought it'd be a good way of remembering him.”

Returning the topic to cycling, I ask her if she’s got a taste for long distance riding now.

“At the moment I don’t want to see my bike ever again,” Anderson says, exhausted by the test so far.

She waits for a second before continuing: “but there are stadiums in Europe…”

To donate to Anderson's fundraiser for The Motor Neurone Disease Association, you can click here.