CyclistMeet the maker: Jonathan Thompson of Tomo BikesBe honest. If you had the opportunity to go on a ride with your eight-year-old self, would they be impressed by your slightly above average FTP or disappointed by the lack of skids, wheelies and den-building detours? Bikes are supposed to be fun, but some people seem to have forgotten that. Jonathan Thompson, thankfully, is not one of them.Ask a typical manufacturer why their bikes are special and theyll talk about things such as stiffness, weight and aerodynamics. Thompson, on the other hand, is more likely to start chatting about how good his creations are for riding through puddles or the numerous conversations youre likely to attract while out riding one.I never wanted to make just one type of bike, he tells Cyclist. I like the challenge of figuring out designs and how to make them. Its a big part of my motivation.Andrew GrantIts this curiosity that first drew Thompson to tall bikes, which, for the uninitiated, are exactly what they sound like bikes where you find yourself unusually high off the ground. If youd like to see tall bikes in action, type Frankenbiking into Google and watch the short film that pops up in videos. Its 15 minutes well spent.Thompson had flirted with the idea of tall bikes for a while, but when one particular project left him with a Transit van full of old bike frames he decided to build one for himself by welding an old Raleigh mountain bike and a 531 racing frame together.Andrew GrantI took it along the Thames and I was hooked. It wasnt an immediately comfortable experience. I dont normally ride around looking for attention quite the opposite and you do end up getting noticed, but its generally in a good way. Tall bikes make people smile, and you end up having a lot of interesting conversations.Its funny, he adds. It takes people a minute to work out what to make of them. They often want to have a go. It sometimes takes a little persuasion, but everybody loves them once they get going. It immediately breaks down barriers and promotes just having some fun. And all the better because its with bikes. Related Posts Meet the maker: Sam Alison of Singular Cycles Meet the maker: Pete Alfano of Alfano Frameworks Meet the maker: Alexander Plaisted of Selwyn Bicycles Back down to earthWhimsical as they may be, double-decker bikes arent much good if youre attempting to podium at gravel races. Thankfully, Thompson knows his way around a racing bike too. Thats why he decided to keep things relatively classic (but no less fun) when he designed and built this off-road speed machine for racer Sam Harding. The judges at the Bespoked Handmade Bicycle Show liked it so much they awarded it second place in the gravel category.Andrew GrantThe brief was a gravel race bike that would also be used for cross and some off-road commuting, Thompson explains. The focus was on making something that fitted him properly, designed for racing efficiency but also a bit of practicality.Frame-wise it uses a mix of Max, Spirit and Zona tubing from Columbus. The ovalised down tube aims to give a reasonably stiff pedalling platform, while the flattened top tube makes shouldering the bike more comfortable. This is helped by the positioning of cable guides on top of the down tube, which also reduces mud clogging.Andrew GrantSpeaking of mud, theres room for 50mm tyres, with Thompson noting that its even possible to fit a 650b x 2.25in tyre (as pictured here), albeit with very little clearance.The rear end has a compromise of not being uber-stiff for some longer distance comfort but stiff enough so as not to slow it down, Thompson says. Sam likes to run the front pretty long and low because of his TT and fixie background. The geometry is also fairly slack for a bit more stability and sure-footed handling.Spending time and money on a fancy paint job for a bike thats inevitably going to end up getting a bit of a battering is a fools errand. For that reason Thompson approached this finish with practicality in mind.Andrew GrantThis is a copper-coloured transparent powder coat, which gives better protection than just clear-coat paint and you can still see the brass, he says. I had done another customers frame with a transparent brown and liked the effect, so I thought wed try something similar. Its relatively subtle and has definitely grown on me. Thats one of the things I like about steel bikes ultimately, if the paint gets a bit battered or you get bored of it, its pretty easy to recoat or paint it and hey presto new bike feeling.If you like the look of Tomos award-winning gravel build or even fancy something a bit loftier still, Thompson invites you to drop him a line and talk it through.That build was in the region of 3,500 with some careful parts selection, he says. The frame can vary a bit depending on the tubeset and some of the parts the cost of dropouts can vary enormously, for instance. The build kit has much bigger variability but thats one of the joys of full custom builds: you can choose exactly what you want to fit your budget and make it yours.Tomo Bespoke gravel bike, approx 3,500, tomobikes.co.ukThe post Meet the maker: Jonathan Thompson of Tomo Bikes appeared first on Cyclist.

Tour Auvergne-Rhne-Alpes route announced, with three summit finishes

Michel Hessmann went through a seven-month suspension during his time with Team Visma | Lease a Bike, which ultimately ended his stint with the Dutch team. He has since returned to the peloton in the colours of Movistar Team almost a year ago, and details his current perspective as well as how he fe...

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Further to yesterdays post, a reader chided me for neglecting to mention two news items, the first being this one:Though in my defense theres nothing ironic about this at all:In a strange twist of fate, a fire broke out this week at the Rad Power Bikes retail store warehouse in Huntington Beach, California,Electrekreports. The structural blaze came less than two months after theConsumer Product Safety Commission(CPSC) warned customers to immediately stop using and dispose of some of the companys e-bike batteries due to fire hazard. In December, Rad filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, stating it couldnt afford to recall the batteries.Were working with local authorities to review a thermal incident that occurred at our Huntington Beach store Sunday evening, a Rad Power Bikes spokesperson told Engadget. The incident was contained and happened while the store was closed. The cause of the fire has not been confirmed.Or suspicious for that matter:Plus, its 2026. A price is a price point. A system is an ecosystem. And a fire is a thermal event, which until recently would have meant this:50% off long underwear!?! Now thats what I call a thermal event!So altogether this CONFLAGRATION AT A BANKRUPT E-BIKE COMPANY is wholly unremarkable and in no way topical or metaphorical.The other story was this one, which I wasnt even aware of until I read the comment:Apparently some wheelsucker caused him to crash and then gave him a big attitude about it:Vingegaards crash came to light after amateur cyclist Pedro Garca Fernndez posted on his Strava account that he had followed the Dane, and also posted pictures of his own descent behind the 29-year-old. Fernndez wrote that Vingegaard had crashed while trying to drop me on the descent of Fuente la Reina and, after stopping to check on the two-time Tour de France champion, said that Vingegaard got angry with me for following him down the hill.Fernndez said in his post: You can be a professional, but you can also be humble. He was going fast to drop me and ended up on the ground. I dont make a living from this, and Im just an amateur like most people, so I dont understand his anger as a professional about it.Annoying one of the worlds top professional athletes while hes training, causing him to crash, and then complaining he wasnt humble about it seems about right for a typical Strava Fred. In fact, I logged into my own Strava account for the first time since July 15th, 2023 just to take the measure of him:[Thats my account, not his.]Presumably this is the wheelsucker:Yep, looks like your standard issue Fredus ordinarius.Look, maybe its a generational thing, but one of the first things I learned when I started Fredding was that you dont sit on a strangers wheel, and that if youre looking to engage in anonymous sucking of wheels or other parts you should instead visit your nearest gloryhole, where youll no doubt find plenty of willing participants. Sure, you might think that just because someones wearing similar clothes and riding a similar bicycle it means they want you to come play with them, but thats not how this works. When you latch onto someones wheel you become their problem. They have to be sure not to change speed or direction too suddenly. They have to manage their expectorations and snot rockets. Granted, being really slow I rarely have a problem with people sitting on my wheel anymore (few have the patience), but its happened to me in the past, and its rather infuriating:I suppose another issue is that theres not as stark a divide between pro cyclists and their amateur counterparts as there is in other more mainstream sports. Your average schlub who plays in an adult softball league knows hes not Irish baseball phenomenon Shoigh Otani, and hes virtually guaranteed to never encounter him in a sporting setting where he has a chance to derail his season by hitting him with a bat or nailing him in the face with a wild pitch. Fredus ordinarius on the other hand has the same bike and the same type of uniform as his professional counterparts, and even has a racing license and rides on a real racing team himself, so he thinks he and Jonas Vingegaard are basically equals. This is a dangerous situationfor Jonas Vingegaard, whos basically in his office when hes on his bicycle, and really doesnt need people who suck at riding bikes distracting him and messing with him while hes trying to make a living.By the way, I also used to ride with a pro cyclist sometimes, so I know how people tend to latch onto them when theyre out riding:And no, I was not one of those people who latched onto him; this was 2009, I was still relevant in the cycling world, and HE latched on to ME for cycling social media points. Speaking of which, one of the strangest things about those rides was reading comment after comment on NYVelocity about how Lance Armstrong was the most despicable person on Earth, then heading out for a ride with him on 9W and seeing every cyclist in the greater metropolitan area kissing his ass. (Yes, I managed to notice this even though I too was busy kissing his ass.)Finally, speaking of wheelsucking, which tire size is the fastest?No seriously, which is it? I dont have a subscription. All I could read was this:I was early to the wide-tire road bike thing, maxing out the clearance on my road bike with 32 mm Panaracer GravelKing slicks (that measured nearly 35 mm) back in 2020. For me, this was a big benefit of the move to disc brakes on the road. Wider tires meant more comfortable, more capable road bikes.This raises some important cultural questions. If using gravel tires in 2020 makes you an early adopter of the wide-tire road bike thing then how far do you have to go back to be considered an early adopter of gravel? To answer that I suppose you have to figure out when they started actually putting the word gravel on cycling products and determine if you were riding bikes with wide-ish tires on mixed terrain before that. (In those days, what people now call gravel riding was loosely referred to as epic.) According to a popular search engine, the GravelKing tire was released in 2014, and the first production gravel bike was the Salsa Warbird in 2013:I suppose that could be, because 2013 is also the year I began to express my ongoing befuddlement with the term gravel, starting with the introduction of the Raleigh Tamland, making me a pioneer in the field of Gravel Derision:Its fascinating to go back to the days when, for five or ten minutes, they actually believed stuff like mechanical disc brakes and external cable routing made sense because it was simple and it worked:Raleigh stocks TRP Spyre mechanic disc brakes on both the Tamland 1 and 2. The Spyre disc brakes, unlike most other mechanical disc brakes, are dual-piston, meaning both pads actuate simultaneously, making setup much easier. The Spyre, while not as powerful as some hydraulic options, is more than adequate for a gravel grinder who wont be burning through brake pads like a cross racer.Cables are routed externally on the downtube with brake housing that runs the length of the frame, which keeps maintenance low, while making it easier on home mechanics to replace cables and housings when the time comes.Oh, how naive we were

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Stage 3 of the AlUla Tour was the first and only stage finishing with a climb, which can ultimately be key for the overall classification. Several teams took up the responsibility, however it was Tudor Pro Cycling who managed to take the glory on the day as Yannis Voisard took the stage win and is t...