This Monday, 6 April, the 2026 Itzulia Basque Country begins. Also known as the Tour of the Basque Country, it is one of the toughest and most exciting stage races on the WorldTour calendar. Stage 1 will already test the general classification favourites Isaac del Toro, Juan Ayuso, Paul Seixas and...

Demi Vollering delivered the defining performance of the 2026 Tour of Flanders Women, breaking clear on the Oude Kwaremont before riding solo to victory in Oudenaarde to secure the Monument that had long been missing from her palmares. In a race that built gradually before exploding on the final seq...

Remco Evenepoels first appearance at the Tour of Flanders ended with a podium finish, but more telling than the result itself was how long he was able to match the two riders who ultimately decided the race. On a day shaped by repeated accelerations across the cobbles, the Belgian held his place al...

Tadej Pogacars Tour of Flanders victory was delivered through force on the road, but Sean Kellys reading of the race pointed to something more calculated beneath the surface. On a day where the pace never truly relented, and the favourites were under pressure from a long way out, the Slovenian rep...

When it comes to a stem on a gravel bike there isnt much of a job that this component has to do, granted they need to clamp to the fork steerer tube to hold the forks on and they also have to hold a handlebar securely at the right angle. Simple eh? Well not really because you are quite literally trusting your life to this piece of metal (or carbon fibre) So all in all its one of the most important parts of the bike. Afterall you can only steer so far by leaning the bike over, to turn the wheel you need to be connected to it!However, lets face it all that safety and steering stuff is secondary to how good a stem looks! youll be staring at it for hours anyway so might as well get one that looks great from above and from other riders perspective. If the bike looks and feels good youll want to ride it more. Hope RX stem frontHope RX stem sideThe recently rebranded hope RX stem, it used to be Hopes XC stem, achieves all the above with ease. It is designed and built in the UK at Hopes factory at Barnoldswick in Lancashire. Hope are not new to the bicycle industry, they made some of the first disc brakes for those new fangled mountain bikes way back in 1989! I had a pair of their C2 hydraulic brakes and have had lots of their excellent hubs and wheels ever since. Their reputation for CNC machining is exemplory and their customer back up and service legendary. Since 2000 the company has concentrated fully on bicycle components.Hope RX stem made in the UKHope RX stem 70mm 0 degreesThe RX stems are all CNC machined from a solid piece of aluminium with a separate face plate to hold the bars. They come in 80mm length with an agressive -15 degree rise/drop or the version I opted for, a 70mm 0 degree rise (90mm also avaliable). I chose the black version as it goes with anything but you can choose from orange, purple, red, blue, smoke, or silver. my 70mm length stem weighs in at 137g on my unvarified kitchen scale. the anodising is perfect and a much better way to colour the stem than painting as you can see where all the machining has taken place. The finishing is spot on too, all surfaces are smooth with no burrs or imperfections, the stem just looks and feels like a quality product. A few grams can be saved by opting for the titanium hardware version, I went for standard bolts.Hope RX stem topHope RX stem face plateIts not a superlight carbon stem but then i really really dont want to trust a featherlight piece of plastic with my questionable riding style rolling down some of the stupid things I find myself riding down. it does everything a stem needs to do but does it with style and you also get that proud feeling that youre using something designed and actually made right here in the UK which is priceless in my book.At the end of a test period I always like to balance whats good and what i think could improve a product, This is impossible with the Hope RX stem, quite simply for everyday gravel riding, bike packing and exporing it is faultless.you can find out more about the RX stem and all he other UK made products from the Hopetech website here Hopetech.com

Demi Vollering has won the 2026 Tour of Flanders WE after a decisive attack on the Oude Kwaremont, riding clear of all her rivals before extending her advantage on the Paterberg and the run to Oudenaarde. In a race that moved from a hesitant opening into a relentless, selective finale, the European...

Tadej Pogacars victory at the 2026 Tour of Flanders was not just another Monument added to his palmares, but another step towards a potentially unprecedented season. Fresh from his maiden Milano-Sanremo triumph earlier in the spring, the Slovenian has now made it two from two in Monument races this...

Tadej Pogacar and Demi Vollering produced two of the most authoritative performances of the spring classics season, each conquering the Tour of Flanders with long-range attacks on the Oude Kwaremont that left their rivals scattered across the Flemish hills. In races defined by attrition, positionin...

Wout van Aert was left to settle for fourth place at the 2026 Tour of Flanders, narrowly missing out on the podium after a relentless and fragmented finale that saw the race explode on the decisive climbs. In a race ultimately won by Tadej Pogacar ahead of Mathieu van der Poel and Remco Evenepoel, V...

We're used to seeing sprint trains or mountain trains in the peloton, but the naming ancestor of those - a means of public transport - had come close to becoming an unlikely protagonist of this year's Tour of Flanders. And no, unlike the legendary debut edition of Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 1892, this...