100 Days to Paris – How Cycling’s Olympic Champions showed off their success

With 100 days to go until the Paris Olympics begins, possibly in the Seine, possibly not, here's some nostalgia as we look back at the male winners of the professional era of the Olympic Games Road and Time Trial races, and how they celebrated their triumph with liberal application of the colour gold. The Olympics...

Monument Ages – Is Pogacar on track to conquer Merckx?

At the start of the Volta a Catalunya this year, a race he went on to dominate with the overall, four stage wins, the points and mountains competitions all coming home with the Slovenian, Tadej Pogacar was asked whether he was thinking about his place in cycling history. "Yeah," he replied, "Now I have arrived...

Pogacar’s One Week Stage Race Chase

Having already signalled his intent to, as borrowed from Philippe Gilbert, "Strive for Five" and win all five monuments across his career, Tadej Pogacar has signalled a new goal - triumphing in all seven of the top level week long stage races. He hasn't signalled his desire to win all three Grand Tours yet, but...

A brief history of Time Trial helmets

A giant yellow M&M, a shark's head, Darth Vader's visor - just some of the interpretations of the new Jumbo-Vis-sorry, Visma-Lease a Bike (that's going to take a while) helmet from Giro, the 39 year old American company who produced what is officially known as the Aerohead II. Within a week, they'd redefined what people...

Adventures in local newsletters

Where I live, in Northumberland in North East England, the powers that be have, in the last year, to build a new cycle route from the town towards the nearby Metro station, with £815,000 of funding from the Transforming Cities Fund, £500,000 from Transport North East, and a mere £50,000 contribution from the county council....

Breakaway! The longest solo breaks of recent years

One day into Tadej Pogacar’s season, and already the commentators are rolling out the “we’ve run out of superlatives” cliché, having watched the Slovenian ride away with 80km to go at Strade Bianche, surpassing his previous record of 49km on his prior triumph. Whilst Pog’s victory was all the more impressive due to his literal...

Who has spent the least time in the Tour de France malliot jaune?

We all know the big stats - that Eddy Merckx leads the way with having recorded 111 stages in the Tour de France leader's jersey, the malliot jaune. We know that Lance Armstrong would be second on 83 stages if he hadn't been expunged from the official records, and that his place is instead inhabited...

Loops and Transfers: The Increasing Fragmentation of the Grand Tours

Comparing the maps of the modern and early Tours de France show an impressive disparity. Those early 20th century routes are essentially full laps of France, taking in the edges of the hexagon and starting and finishing each of the mammoth stages in the same host cities. The Tour Started and finished in the capital Paris...

The Scrabble Test – are team names getting longer and more complex?

If you're a cycling commentator, things are about to get more complex in 2024. It's going to tricky enough remembering to call Jumbo-Visma Visma-Lease-a-bike, and then you've got to remember that the long time Arkea-Samsic are now Arkea-B&B Hotels. Then, when you've strained your gray matter not to mess those up, you've got to wrap...

Goodnight, sweet prince – a fond farewell to Ag2R’s Brown Shorts

And whether we shall meet again I know not.Therefore our everlasting farewell take:For ever, and for ever, farewell, brown shorts!If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;If not, why then, this parting was well made. It has finally happened dear friends. After fourteen, long, glorious years, we have been stripped, nay, robbed, of one...