Author: Cris Bloomfield

Cunego won the Giro leaving a lot of people wondering who he is. Cyclingnews produced the goods with an insight into the Italian rider many are hoping will be the next great Italian all-rounder. Interesting to see that he hails form the same town as Paola Pezzo.

There is once again to be a Tour of Britain. News about it has been varied but basically its to run over five days between September 1st and 5th. It will be the first national pro tour in the UK for five years when the PruTour saw some interesting stages, least not the riders all getting sent the wrong way…

Anyway it looks set to start in the UK capital of cycling, here in Manchester and will be followed by stage in Yorkshire. The third stage will visit cities in the East Midlands, with the fourth stage centred on South Wales. The finale will be a criterium in London’s Westminster area. The BBC has secured coverage rights.

How about this for a piece of kit? How long before it is being used for all the wrong reasons. Swear words an’ everyfink.

I’ve posted a few links to kev’d up motors in the past. This one gets extra marks for the fact that some people appear to have taken it seriously. The good news is that the car in question is now dead. The better news is that there is another one in the pipeline…

Did I say we’re into Sleepless in the Saddle again this year? I think I forgot to post that yesterday. Jed and I are going back for another attempt at the pairs class. I’m hoping for slighly cooler weather than last year and will not be using a Camelbak bladder that has been breeding nasty bacteria for several months.

There’s less than a month left now until my last day in the bike shop, after well over ten years working in the bike trade I’m going to be moving on to other things. It hasn’t all really sunk in yet, but I know I’m going to miss working with some great people, good friends and being involved in bikes. Ironically I may have actually more time to ride – something which I’m looking forward to.

The Penguin game mk. IV seems to have been a reasonable hit, but arguably this is even better: Red Bull’s latest campaign.

GT’s parent company also owns Mongoose who are now developing their own spin on the i-Drive suspension system. Bikemagic have taken a look at it. For some bizarre reason I actually quite like the look of that.

There are some more results from Madrid over at MBA. Interesting to see Ryder Hesjedal so far down the finishing list. There’s a substantial age gap between him and Thomas Frischknecht and a substantial gap in their respective placings. Miguel Martinez’s time out from Mountain Biking doesn’t seem to have worked in his favour either.

I don’t know whether Travis Brown won the recent Big Bear event on his Singlespeed, but it is fairly certain he is a rather impressive rider.

Along with Singletrack’s Mark Alker, I was on Radio 4s You and Yours programme today to talk about the global shortage of certain raw materials and how this may impact on the bicycle trade. There’s more about it on Singletrackworld and Bikebiz.

My point is that new season bikes don’t all appear on a certain date. The launch of bikes in recent years has been staggered across many months, spanning from July through to January. Different models appear at different times and if a particular style of bike from one manufacturer isn’t available, it’s fairly likely that another company will have a similar product that is available.

The advantage for many small IBDs is that there is a certain amount of flexibility in being able to move between suppliers to meet demand. I still think that the coming months will be a real test of the on-demand ordering and supply chain that certain elements of the industry seem to have adopted. I think the coming months are veiled in a certain amount of uncertainty partly due to many of the manufacturers playing their cards very close to their chests.

Price increases which seem to be due, are probably the biggest variable over which uncertainty remains. Increases as high as 20% have been rumoured, but quite what level of increase arrives is unclear. Further some manufacturers may lower the specification on bikes to retain certain models at certain key price points. Again it’s a case of riding out the event to see what happens…

There ain’t no drugs for you to find here. I imagine there are a few people pleased about that fact.

Pedantic or a just decision due to a flouting of the guideline? The decision to strip Marcus Gronholm of his victory in the World Rally Championship is a controversial decision and one that has undoubtedly resulted in some harsh words in the Peugeot technical team All this because of a little bit of plastic.

Meirhaeghe won in Madrid, beating his nearest rival by almost a minute and a half and covering 48km at an average speed of almost 24km/h. That’s fairly rapid. In the womens class Paola Pezzo finished 6th in her first big race since coming out of retirement to compete for olympic gold. The results are here. Race two of the series is in the Belgian Ardennes this coming weekend.

The Giro continues and there is a round up of the Tour du Languedoc-Roussillon over at Cyclingnews. Armstrong took the last stage, Moreau won overall and Cadel Evans was disqualified. Summary here.

This weekend sees the first round of the Mountain Bike World Championships taking place in Madrid. There’s a website dedicated to this years series up on the UCI website.

I think Meirhaeghe is going to be tough to beat again this year which is a good thing if it makes for an exciting series and everyone trying to beat him. I don’t know how but I missed this Bikemagic interview originally – it’s a reasonable read. Following up from a recent post I think his comments on 29ers are interesting:

Q: Do you expect to see more 29in wheel bikes used by World Cup racers, now that they are UCI legal?

A: I am not in favour of 29inch wheels being allowed in racing. First of all it is so difficult for the market to adapt – brakes, forks, everything has to be adapted. I think it is rude they have allowed that, maybe they want to evolve it more like cyclo-cross. Also, the length of race, some people want them shorter. In one or two years it could be just like cyclo-cross – one hour races with cyclo-cross bikes. It’s two completely different sports and it’s a difference in length. One hour is a resistence sport and two hours is an endurance sport, [and it’s a] completely different athlete who does these two things. So I don’t think we should evolve into shorter races or to 29in wheels. They will be allowed from the first of January, I hope they will be disallowed from the second of January. There was a questionnaire to all of the teams and I think 90% of the teams said no and then it was approved. Why have a questionnaire? I cannot understand that.

The fourth version of the penguin series has been released. You can find it at yetisports.

There is a fair chance that John Kerry will be the next President of the United States and if you didn’t know not only is he a rider, he has fairly good taste in bikes, although possibly not cycling apparel. That’s a rather expensive Serotta…

If you only follow one link from todays post, then let it be this one: Jim Strange’s list of potential sponsor replacements for the US Postal Service team is here. Including suggestion #4:

Federal Express. The other mortal enemy of USPS, the kits would be a great improvement over UPS and they could have clever mottos like “When you absolutely, positively have to be there first.” The team would flown around Europe stuffed into boxes on a cargo jet.

Mean while the US Postal team have been keen to show that T-Mobile will not have an easy fight on their hands come the Tour. They have been showing their strength in recent stages of the Tour du Languedoc-Roussillon. Even the current leader of the race, Thor Hushovd, commented: “I asked myself what was going on. Honestly, I was worried. It was as if they wanted to test everybody before the Tour and frankly I think everyone was tested. Even Armstrong took pulls at the front… Incredible.”

When you find out that you’ve killed a bike, there are a few things you could do, but whilst you think about what it is you want to be riding next, you could always do a sort of photo tribute to it and go through the highs and low of ownership. Sort of a bit like this.

Someone over in the ‘States has made the critical error of saying he doesn’t like Singlespeeding being the way it is. Yep it’s different and deservedly so. In what must be the first post for a long time, maybe ever without either politics or porn, Big Jonny has composed a critique and defence of the one geared riders. Unfortunately given that there is a huge amount of ‘interesting material’ over at Drunkcyclist, some of you won’t want to be reading it at work…

The Giro has passed the halfway point and Saeco have a firm rein on events. There’s more on that and the fact that Lance Armstrong’s USPS presented by Berry Floor team seem to have secured a replacement sponsor for US Postal here.

Cipolini’s departure from the Giro hasn’t been a silent event. He’s had some choice words about, well pretty much everything and is now talking of throwing in the towel before Le Tour. And finally Millar has spoken about the Cofidis shenanigans for the first time – Velonews has the article.

An old friend of mine from Guernsey was in the shop again today. Damian Thacker and I met at a ten mile time trial one Thursday night. It might have been a Tuesday, but my memory is a bit hazy. Anyway he rocked up on a mountain bike with slicks and proceeded to set one of the fastest times of the night, much to the chagrin of some of the roadies there. To all present it was obvious that he was pretty handy on a bike.

These days, Damian is most frequently seen in various stages of preparation for what seems to be an increasingly successful Triathlon career, including a recent 16th place at the ITU World Triathlon Championships in Madeira. High Tri placings mean that you not only have to be good on the bike, but that you have to be good in each of the three legs. Good effort I reckon.

Here’s the latest from Italy.

And the new XC course at Innerleithen is now nearly all finished. I think we’re going to have to get back up there for another crack fairly soon.

And this is a very, very, very good idea. I am quite jealous.

The Giro is on. Simoni is in Pink and Cipo is in the stink:

From: Cyclingnews
Subject: Cipollini carries on

Mario Cipollini took the start in the fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia, the morning after a violent crash in the closing metres of a wet, dangerous stage 4. Cipollini crashed heavily in the final sprint, taken out by his leadout man Andrus Aug who drifted off course while looking around in the bunch finish. The Lion King required 14 stitches to attend to deep cuts in his shin and elbow, but slept in the team hotel after being examined at the hospital in San Donato di Arezzo. X-rays ruled out any fractures for Cipollini.

“Last night wasn’t easy,” Cipollini said before today’s stage start. “What worries me the most is my ankle, but I have to try [to start] for the tifosi… it’s my duty. I’ll try to pedal and I hope to finish the stage. To finish would already be a success.”

All exciting stuff, but perhaps not as exciting for wheel connoisseurs as a first glimpse of the widely expected and much anticipated Dura Ace carbon wheels. They’re here.

Causing a bit of an uproar is news that a 29er has won a mountain bike cross country race in the Netherlands, where since UCI rules were changed to permit the inclusion of 700c wheeled bikes, racers have been turning up with thinly veiled cyclo cross bikes, much to the angst of ‘mountain bikers’.

Officials have now stared debating a world of weirdness including making the use or proper sized mountain bike tyres a requirement. Quite wether a proper mountain bike tyre is a 1.5 Conti Cross Country or a 2.5 Nokian Gazzalodi or something in between is not clear, but as John Stevenson has aptly pointed out:

As someone who was deeply involved in mountain bike racing in the UK the first time this debate rolled round in the late 1980s, I can’t help but think this is all a bit silly. If a ‘mountain bike’ race course is so technically undemanding that it can be won on a cyclo-cross bike, then so be it. Either redesign the course, or put up with it. Artificial equipment rules to exclude a type of bike that you don’t like is exactly the sort of nonsense that drove people away from road racing and into mountain bike racing back in the ’80s and early ’90s.

The original rule against tyres bigger than 26in was introduced on ‘safety’ grounds – on a well-designed mountain bike course a cyclo-cross bike would be a hazard, the reasoning went, even though cyclo-crossers seemed to survive events like the UK’s Three Peaks Race on a course that no sane person would tackle on anything but a mountain bike. No mountain bike racer I talked to at the time wanted to exclude the ‘crossers, especially as we’d found ourselves being welcomed warmly at their events. But the rule happened anyway, because it’d never do to actually foster good relations between different branches of cycling.

What happens when you mess with a fixed gear bike? It shows it’s disgust by exacting oily revenge, meaning you’ll have one less digit to prod at it with in future. Carnage here.

And on singlespeed themes, Race Face kit is not invincible to the power of one.

Finally the recreational drug of choice for a generation is starting to get people into trouble, especially those growing it for personal use. America might be the land of the free, but I’m fairly certain the American dream wasn’t based on building wealth by growing pot. As former professional downhiller Myles Rockwell has just found out. I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere, but ‘don’t get caught’ isn’t necessarily it.

Why no photos from Glentress? Several people have asked. Well it’s because I forgot the camera, which I have started to thing was a good thing. Now normally I like stopping every now and then and taking in the scenery and the view and recording it on the camera.

Yet doing that does tend to interrupt any flow you get to your riding, so when the trails are good sometimes it’s better to ride them and not have to worry or think about anything else. Secondly I think when you’re carrying something delicate and expensive, you tend to subconsciously hold back a bit, which isn’t what you want when you’re trying to progress your riding.

Talking of progression, I have decided that there is no need for a big ring on the FSR and so I’ve just put on one of the Race Face bash guards, which is a fairly substantial piece of kit by any standards. It means the bike now has an enormous amount of BB clearance and there’s less to worry about when riding over stuff.

Steve Peat won the recent and increasingly popular Red Bull downtown race in Lisbon. There are some photos over at cyclingnews and PinkBike has the report.

Meanwhile the Giro d’Italia is in full swing. There’s plenty of coverage around, but Cyclingnews seem to be leading the way in terms of excellent reports. There’s more from the BBC and Pezcycling.

I linked up pushbikes.ca when it first started out. The site seems to be going from strength to strength, so if you haven’t been back there for a while it might be a good time to take another look. hilst you need flash to look at Leigh Hargrove’s site, it’s a class bit of work and the photos are fantastic.

Busy, busy, busy. Not much time for thinking about bikes these last few days.

Computer problems, work problems and tonight the backbox of the exhaust fell off the car on the motorway transforming a normally burbly motor into a TVResque monster. Fortunately my hearing is now recovering.

There’s some nice kit in the latest tech update from Cyclingnews. The Morningstar tools are also tested in the latest issue of Dirtrag.

I’ve been saying it for a long time but here’s the latest doom and gloom.

From: Bikebiz
Subject: Will bike shops be bike shops in summer 2004?

It’s becoming increasingly likely that there’s soon going to be a critical supply and demand problem in bicycle shops around the world. There’s not enough Shimano to go round. Not even the big guys can get their hands on enough of the stuff. For the first time ever, bicycle suppliers are hoping for a damp summer. BikeBiz.com has been reporting on the Shimano gruppo delays since December 2003 and on the raw materials shortage since February.