Hungarian National Champion Attila Valter has had a tricky first week at the 2024 Giro d'Italia. Suffering from a pair of crashes in the opening week, the 25-year-old is struggling to recover both mentally and physically."The roads in the last five kilometres were really ridiculously bad. I was ver...

Two riders leading the French womens junior road race championships, and on their way to the medals, crashed after one of their team cars ran into the other riders back wheel. Amandine Muller (Grand Est) et Clia Gery (Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes) were up the road in a two-rider move when the Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes team car pulled alongside Gery []The post Team car crash takes down breakaway riders in French Champs | Video appeared first on Sticky Bottle.

Note: Changed from three days to two days.Calling all politicians and professionals from around the world involved with cycling and street design: The Utrecht Master Cycling Study Tour runs from June 24-25th and is your chance to be guided around what is arguably the worlds best cycling city.This two-day study tour is hosted by Cyclemotions and IrishCycle.com and is open to attendees worldwide as long as they are politicians or professionals involved in cycling, planning, designing streets, etc. After consulting with current sign-ups, the number of days has been reduced from two to three. To reflect this, the price has been dropped to 390 per person, which includes bicycle rental and lunches. If you have any questions at all, please contact Cian Ginty at cian.ginty@gmail.com. More details are available at streetsandroads.com.The following are recommendations from past participants:Highly recommend this tour. Myself & @CllrMarianne loved the freedom & safety of cycling in Utrecht. It goes into nitty gritty of infrastructure so can be v stop/start rather than a cycling holiday. https://t.co/sPd6gkbtkq Cllr Michelle Hall (@MichelleeHall) April 4, 2024These study tours have been very significant in leading to better cycling conditions in Ireland. However we still have a lot to learn from Utrecht. Highly recommended. https://t.co/rIgHXhiYfL Cllr. David Healy (@davidhealyv) April 9, 2024

While I may diplomatically refer to you as readers, you are in fact merely victims of whatever my latest fixation happens to be, and currently thats the Green Noner:Or is it blue?Its like that Internet dress where nobody can agree what color it is:[See this dress? Some people think its black, but its actually yellow with purple polka-dots.]Since Fridays rainy ride Ive had more time to assess the state of the drivetrain, and thanks to my own photos I discovered something:See how that ferrule on the derailleur cable housing isnt seated in the cable stop? Thats what happens when you pull a bike out of a box of newspaper and dont take the time to look it over before riding it. Plus, it was raining, and wet conditions always make grimy drivetrains perform even worse. But after hosing the bike down, readjusting the cable, and test-riding it on a dry, sunny day, I think maybe the drivetrain not as far gone as I thought, and Im hoping a new cassette, chain, and cables will be sufficient to restore it to an acceptable level of performance for a non-racing semi-professional bike blogger. Certainly Im not expecting it to run like new:[From here.]But I like the shifters and Im hoping theyve got a little more life in them:Of course older Campagnolo shifters are famously rebuildable, as the Campy-philes never tire of reminding you, but good luck finding the parts for 8-speed shifters. Meanwhile, not only does Shimano continue to make 8-speed integrated shifters to this day, but if youve got an old bike you want to spruce up you can get one for like $50 or something:Sure, nobody gets excited about Claris, but Im guessing it works at least as well as the high-end 8-speed shifters of yesteryear, and is probably a pretty decent replacement for your old Ultegra shifter or whatever if youre not hung up on names. Meanwhile, Campagnolo has long abandoned 8-speed, and its right up there with Uniglide as far as component availability (or lack thereof):[Via Sheldon Sheldon Brown Sheldon Brown]Yes, unlike Uniglide, theres still like one company that makes Campagnolo 8-speed cassettes, though its not Campagnolo. But at least with Uniglide youre still in the Shimano universe, which makes mixing and matching easier. But using Campagnolo is sort of like being on an island, and using 8-speed Campagnolo is sort of like being on a teeny-tiny island in the middle of a lake surrounded by sharks (theyre fresh water sharks, okay???) on that larger island.Fortunately no matter how many cogs you have or how theyre attached to your hub theres always an easy and elegant solution:But heres the thing with the Noner: not counting the bikes ridden by other family members or owned by Classic Cycle, heres how my current shifting situation breaks down:Cervino[Old Campy antennae]Faggin[Silver]Milwaukee[Silver]Homer[Silver2: The Sequel]Platypus[Silver2]Jones[SRAM wide-range clickety-click]This is currently my only bike with an indexed shifter, though I even had a Silver2 shifter on that one for awhileand it worked pretty good, too, especially considering its not supposed to:Like riding commando in jorts, thats a lotta friction.The friction-ification of my bikes happened because not only do I love the feel of them, but not having to count cogs or worry about matching shifters and derailleurs is profoundly liberating. (I regularly switch back and forth between a 6-speed freewheel and a 9-speed cassette on the Cervino, and theres nary a complaint from the 42 year-old drivetrain.) Even so, I dont want to do the same thing yet again with the Noner, and prefer to enjoy it in its fin de siclelast-gasp-of-the-steel-race-bike glory, Ergo shifters and all. Also, once youre completely free from having to worry about stuff like cog spacing and cable pull thanks to friction shifters, its kind of fun to dork out over it a little and contemplate the little accidents and workarounds of indexed shifting compatibility when its totally optional:[From here.]For example, a Campagnolo 8-speed cassette has the same spacing as a 7-speed Shimano, which I guess means if youve got an 8-speed Campagnolo bike with a bad shifter and good everything else (and youve got an aversion to friction shifters and/or paying vintage Campagnolo parts prices) you could always stick a 7-speed Shimano shifter and Shimano derailleur on there and use seven of eight cogs:[Via Shimano]And while Shimano shifters are not theoretically rebuildable, anything can be overhauled if youve got enough time on your hands:I had enough time on my hands to watch up until he revealed the shifters innards, which was pretty cool:Then [dripping blood letters] The Algorithm [/dripping blood letters] served me this video of Jerry Seinfeld talking about his favorite things. While he didnt mention Campagnolo (at least I dont think he did, I didnt have time to finish the video) he did mention this Italian coffeemaker:He then noted that the company that made it went bankrupt, and remarked, Thats Italy: make the greatest thing in the world and still screw it up.Thats about as good a summary of Campagnolo as Ive ever heard.

Counting down the days to the sprint finals at the Olympics, Emma Finucane and Sophie Capewell tell Tom Davidson about their final push to find that decisive tenth of a second

A shiny new road bike, loud clothing choices, a video camera and the wheel upgrade you've been waiting for?

CyclistRemembering Echo and the Bunneymens A Crystal Day bike ride 40 years onYesterday saw the 40th anniversary of one of the strangest bike rides in history. It wasnt a race, sportive or club ride. Nor was it entirely recreational. It started at the steps of a neglected neo-classical building and wound its way through a litter-strewn city centre and past boarded-up shop windows to a series of stops at, respectively, a Gothic cathedral, a greasy spoon cafe and a ferry terminal.The ramshackle peloton was led by the guitarist and bassist of the UKs biggest group at the time, and the bike ride was the first of a days worth of happenings leading up to their gig in the city that night. This was the wonderful, shambolic and utterly original celebration of life, Liverpool and Echo and the Bunnymen that was A Crystal Day named after one of their songs that I was an enthralled participant in on 12th May 1984.I had never imagined my devotion to the Bunnymen would lead me on a series of increasingly weird escapades culminating in a bike ride that traced the outline of a giant rabbit called Echo around a Liverpool city centre that had yet to be gentrified by what lead singer Ian McCulloch called pastel-coloured trouser bars. Related Posts Route planning lessons from The Swimmer (1968) Sids kids: The freedom and adventure of cycling in the 1980s with Sid Standard The two Nicks: Adventure cycling across the globe in the pre-internet age Channel 4A Crystal Day was dreamed up by the groups charismatic manager, Bill Drummond, as an antidote to the Garden Festival that had been stuck on the banks of the Mersey like a sweet-smelling Elastoplast by Margaret Thatchers government in response to the riots that had scarred the city a few years earlier. Drummond had previously organised a Bunnymen tour featuring only venues located on ley lines and a top-secret gig that involved getting on a coach from Liverpool in the middle of winter to a mystery location codenamed Gomorrah. (We were eventually decanted in the middle of a snowy Peak District to find ourselves unwitting but happy extras in a live performance film called Shine So Hard.) Now he had produced an eclectic itinerary as a prelude to a triumphant hometown gig.As well as the bike ride there was a visit to the Bunnymens barbers, a choral concert at the Anglican cathedral, a compulsory all-day breakfast at their favourite greasy spoon cafe and the inevitable ferry ride across the Mersey, which, for reasons long since forgotten, descended into a banana fight after stalks of the fruit were handed out during the crossing.But it was the bike ride that kicked off the day from outside St Georges Hall, venue for the climactic gig that evening. Inevitably, instead of being a finely honed chaingang, the ride crumbled into joyous chaos as it was discovered that Liverpools city centre street layout bore not even the faintest correlation to the shape of a giant rabbit.Closer inspection showed Echos lines didnt actually coincide with any streets and that a large part was under water, wrote Penny Kiley in Melody Maker. Still, a handful of cyclists led by Will and Les seemed confident enough as they launched themselves into the city centres bewildering one-way system, and only one of them fell off.Guitarist Will Sergeant and bassist Les Pattinson were both keen roadies known to occasionally don vintage woollen jerseys and ride lovingly preserved steel frames but a lack of secure bike parking meant the turnout for the ride was meagre.However, the footage on YouTube reveals what the best-dressed, bicycle-riding, post-punk music fan was wearing at the time (or at least what I was). Dont be too judgemental this was when Lycra was the preserve of serious racing cyclists only, clipless pedals were still on the drawing board and waterproofs were of the boil-in-the-bag variety but that sullen youth behind Jools Holland sporting drainpipe jeans, sockless deck shoes, an aerodynamic mullet and a plastic carrier bag in lieu of a musette is, dear reader, your faithful columnist. This article originally appeared in issue 152 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe Related Posts Route planning lessons from The Swimmer (1968) Sids kids: The freedom and adventure of cycling in the 1980s with Sid Standard The two Nicks: Adventure cycling across the globe in the pre-internet age The post Remembering Echo and the Bunneymens A Crystal Day bike ride 40 years on appeared first on Cyclist.

With the first week done and dusted at the 2024 Giro d'Italia, it's been one without success for Team Jayco AlUla sprinter, Caleb Ewan. The best the Australian has managed was 6th place on stage 5 when the breakaway took the spoils through Benjamin Thomas.Last year he was second and third on stages...

To celebrate the brand's 85-year history, Rene Herse recently released an all-black version of the popular 29 x 2.2" Fleecer Ridge in Endurance casing, as well as several other tires. Find all the details here...The post Rene Herse Fleecer Ridge in All-Black Endurance Casing appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

The Italian Grand Tour is firmly underway and Tadej Pogaar is in the pink jersey. Here are our takeaways from the first week of action