3rd Spot: Lars Boom – Belkin Pro Cycling You have got to ride fast if your name is Lars Boom. His middle names are Anthonius Johannes. Really, they are. 2nd Spot: Boy Van Poppel - Vacansoleil-DCM One of two sons to Dutch former pro cyclist, Jean-Paul Van Poppel. Boy and his brother Danny both ride for the same team whilst Dad is their ... Read More
Latest Blog Entries
Ride Report – London Surrey 100 – A.K.A. Olympic Leg-achy
Sunday 4th August 2013. The Olympic Park, London. A year on from the balmy party evening that became known as “Super Saturday” and the Olympic Park in the East End of London is looking a little less than super. For starters it’s 7am, it’s cloudy and decidedly cool. An enthusiastic PA is trying to rally the 8,000 or so cyclists still being corralled into starting ... Read More
Domestique – Charly Wegelius – Book Review
Most cycling biographies focus on what we have come to believe are the two fundamental cornerstones of pro cycling: the Agony and the Ecstasy; the pain and the victory. Epic suffering (often experienced both on and off the bike) is eventually contrasted with transcendental glory as the subject overcomes adversity to achieve their goal. The format is repeated in any number of books for any ... Read More
The lights weren’t on but somebody’s home.
Had to work late yesterday evening and cycled home in the oncoming dusk without lights. As I got ready to leave the office I realised that I had left the set which I always carry in my work bag on my other bike when I took it out the other evening. Glad to report that I made it home without incident. After recent events I ... Read More
Tour de France – Final Roundup – nothing artificial about this race (except the ‘fireworks’)
In the end the promised finale fireworks never came. Not from the top of the Arc de Triomphe after the evening stage on Sunday, where we given a projected feu artifice lightshow instead of some actual gunpowder explosions (the whole show was greeted with polite bemusement rather than rapture in our house), and not from the last few days of racing either where the assumption ... Read More
Tour de France – Stage 15 Roundup – Bang, Froome, straight to the Moon.
The second rest day of the Tour de France marks, for us armchair followers at least, the beginning of the end. Sure, those guys on the bikes still have a mind-bending amount of cycling to do, but if the 3 weeks of the Tour was condensed into just one stage (like when TV scientists cram the whole of Earth’s existence into just one year and ... Read More
Back to Black – another London cycling death
“The first thing I noticed today was that the LFGSS logo was black instead of the usual light blue. The black logo means that a cyclist has been killed on London’s roads. Lately it seems to have been black almost as much as it has been blue.” I’m a member of the online LFGSS (London Fixed Gear Single Speed) cycling forum – it’ ... Read More
Tour de France – Stage 9 roundup – “Cycling, Bloody Hell!”
As Alex Ferguson sort of once said: “Cycling, Bloody Hell!” Or as Johnny Rotten didn’t quite say once either: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been treated?” What an epic weekend! The Pyrenees were meant to play second fiddle to the Alps this year; only two stages and none of the hoo-ha of Mt Ventoux or Alpe d’Huez. I’ll tell you what ... Read More
Ride Report – The Sweet Smell of Success
It was the pre-ride cup of tea that set off my reveries this morning. Or rather, more specifically, it was the lack of a readily available teabag that got me thinking about childhood smells just before I left the house and which gave a theme for my ride today. I’m not really one for coffee so I always have a cup of tea before ... Read More
Yorkshire’s Grand Depart – Countdown commencement
A year from today, July 5th 2014, the Tour de France will roll out from Leeds – it’s most Northerly, and perhaps least likely starting point ever. Last December Yorkshire won the bid to host the 2014 Grand Depart, beating competition from much more apparently obvious choices such as Florence, Berlin and Barcelona (as well as the less immediately obvious choice of Venice…. Hello? Canals?). Succesfully ... Read More