Very reasonably priced floor pump that covers the basics 7/10

One day until the Olympic Games kick off in Paris (and the weekend), Adwitiya is your live blogger this Friday with all the cycling news and views

Joshua Tarling is the reigning European and British time-trial champion and goes into the Olympic Games as a big favourite to take the victory this Saturday in the opening event. Despite this, he believes he is flying under the radar; and has commented on topics such as his rivals and Wout van Aert'...

With road bike manufacturers moving towards a one bike does it all approach in recent years, let's see if anything's changed with the latest crop of road race bikes at the Tour de France

Tom Pidcock is the reigning Mountain Bike Olympic champion and in Paris he will try to replicate it. The Briton has this as his main goal for the week, he will also race the road race event in Paris but will not be among the big favourites as is the case here. Off-road, the Briton is also the reigni...

With the Tour de France done a look at the UCI World Tour promotion and relegation standings. If you want to save a click then stage wins for Astana and Arka-B&B didnt make a difference. In fact they lost ground during the Tour.Were now approaching the opening of the transfer season when new hires for next year can be announced and this is all the more crucial with 2025 as the last of the three year cycle.Promotion, relegation?A quick reminder that teams will be ranked by the sum total of their points from each of 2023, 2024 and 2025 and the top-18 teams qualify on sporting terms for a WorldTeam licence and this gives them automatic entry to the Tour de France, the golden ticket.First just look at the top. UAE keep pushing the x-axis out. With over 26,000 points for 2024 theyre on more than double the next team. Tadej Pogaar has over 9,000 points to his name but two thirds are down to the rest. Seven, including neo-pro Isaac del Toro, have more than 1,000 points each. Even without Pogaar theyd still have more points than Visma-LAB.Going upPromotion candidates IPT and Lotto-Dstny are on course to get back in the World Tour, the former is buying in more talent for the future while the latter has an excellent pipeline from its U23 team just as long as it can fend off rival squads but its done with this with Flemish climber Jarno Widnar who is just one year out of the junior ranks and has won almost every major U23 stage race going so far this year except the mighty Ronde de lIsard where he finished second.Going downMeanwhile the standings still show Arka-B&B Hotels and Astana languishing below the red line. They enjoyed a successful Tour thanks to a stage win each. These triumphs are huge and mentioning the points is borderline petty as the 210 point reward isnt commensurate.Arkas Vauquelin got the stage win they craved for so long and had a great time trial in the Beaujolais but was missing in action in the mountains while Arnaud Dmare was only once in the mix for a sprint win and duly got relegated, forfeiting the points. So theyre now over 1,500 points adrift, further away than after the Giro.Astana pulled off a memorable win for Mark Cavendish but Project 35 has been the equivalent of painting a masterpiece fresco on a wall at risk of collapse. After the Giro they were 2,500 points away from safety, theyre now 3,300 points adrift. Chinese bike brand XDS is investing in the team and this could help them sign riders who can score for them next year. This short term plan is a way out but theyve signed riders like Lorenzo Fortunato, Ide Schelling and Anthon Charmig to do this job in 2024 and this trio have 376 points between them Schelling and Charmig havent scored. Hiring riders is one thing but having coaching staff, training camps and resources to support the delivery of results counts too.18th place = safetyIn the absence of a relegation battle DSM Firmenich-PostNL remain 18th. Star signing Fabio Jakobsen is more than a contender, alas, for flop of the season. This isnt meant as a swipe, rather hes just been such a solid sprinter but now has challenges just getting to the final kilometre.Cofidis are been good at scoring before but theyre stalling so far this year and its possible the Dutch team leapfrogs them. The French team is in an interesting position because it has no development team to supply talent and its two best scorers Axel Zingle and Guillaume Martin are leaving. It needs to recruit well.Both teams though still have a cushion above the relegation red line, theres yet to be the drama of the 2020-2022 relegation battle.This chart shows the difference in the rankings for 2024 between 16 July and 23 July, effectively the Tour de France points haul. You can see Astana and Arkas problems where a stage win was good but they struggled for more. It also illustrates the phantom Tours of Red Bull, Decathlon-Ag2r and Groupama-FDJ.2025 is crucialThe best two ProTeams on the UCI rankings at the end of year get automatic invites to the Tour de France and other major races next year. This means IPT and Lotto-Dstny now but imagine todays points situation transposed into 2026. IPT and Lotto would be back in the World Tour, Arka and Astana relegated. Automatic invitations would go to Arka and Uno-X.With relegation looking increasingly likely for Arka and Astana, this secondary contest to top the rankings in 2025 matters as it sets up a soft relegation, out of the World Tour but still qualifying although year to year rather than automatically.If they are going to get relegated because of weak 2023 and 2024 seasons then can they get enough points during the course of 2025 to become automatic picks? If not then the corollary is then whether they can sign star riders or have some unique selling point to win wild card invites ahead of squads like Tudor and Q36.5. Tudor especially are playing a clever long game here.The post World Tour Promotion-Relegation Update first appeared on The Inner Ring.

Disc wheels, new skinsuits and special paint jobs are all likely to be used on Saturday

Double disk wheel bikes are rare in road cycling nowadays but not unseen. On the track, they are a popular choice in the pursuit of aerodynamical gains but on the road it is impossible to match the smoothness of the surface and the lack of weather conditions. In the 32-kilometer time-trial at the Ol...

Reigning Olympic champion calls the lancourt Hill circuit blandTom Pidcock and Evie Richards have likened the Olympic mountain bike course to a gravel circuit, according to a news Continue reading