With only nine stages at the Tour de France Femmes, a relegation, time penalty or yellow card can carry consequences far beyond the immediate result. Sprint deviations, sticky bottles, feeding breaches and littering offences can all affect stage placings, jersey battles and the shape of a riders ra...

We sat down with the people behind DT Swiss, Enve, Zipp, Cadex, Scope and Schwalbe to discover what's shaping the next generation of road wheels and tyres, and to get their take on cycling's ongoing hookless debate

The Tour de France Femmes is women cycling's largest event of the year. And yet, the race has to do with only a partial coverage as mainstream platforms prioritize the men's Tour de Pologne instead with the full race being broadcast. But there's more. Just three stages of the 2026 Tour de France Fem...

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney's furious accusation against FDJ United-SUEZ has received significant backing from former professional rider and Dutch cycling analyst Thijs Zonneveld, who believes Celia Gery deliberately tried to prevent the Pole from responding to Demi Vollering's decisive Stage 8 attack....

Wout van Aert will be one of the biggest names on the start line at the 2026 Vuelta a Espana. The Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider returns to the final Grand Tour of the season two years after his first appearance, and although his ambitions will be very different to those of Tadej Pogacar, he has ev...

I remember taking my first proper road bike for its first ride. After about 20 minutes I thought, This is great. I love this. But I really, really need to do something about this saddle.To this day, about 20 minutes into any given ride, I still think the same thing. Its been 30 years.And its discomfiting. As roadies, the skinny saddle is what defines us. Many, many times, in the face of outsiders cackling, That must feel like sitting on a razor blade, I have explained, in as boring a manner as I can, that the narrow shape and careful anatomical shaping means that counterintuitively its much more comfortable than the big, squashy saddle on a cheap hybrid. I do this with a straight face, while less intellectual parts of me are muttering, Mate, a razor blade is exactly what its like. Ive tried saddle after saddle, and never managed to find one that I truly like. Theres better. Theres worse all the way down to the one that I removed and threw into a Fenland river in rage, preferring to ride home standing up. But there isnt really good. There is something wrong with each of them, as if the saddle manufacturers are deliberately withholding perfection: Weve found the perfect shape! Great. All we need to do is add a weird plastic trim under the nose of the saddle. Ill do that. Shall we make it really sharp, and ensure it sticks into the riders thighs?Of course! Why do you even ask? Mamma mia, its like youve never designed a saddle before!A couple of years ago, in desperation, I went for a saddle pressure-mapping session with a bike fitter. The fitter put a pad over my saddle that, when I sat on it, showed how my weight was distributed red for high-pressure areas (the uncomfortable bits), then orange and yellow, then green, and blue for lower.Its oddly intimate. No one has ever paid so much attention to that area, or blown it up to such size on a monitor. And never has the phrase, Oooh. Thats strange, filled me with such anxiety.The image looked like a thermal imaging camera shot of a burning petrol station. We swapped saddles, again and again. We never achieved the soothing blues and greens of proper comfort. We did, at last, get to something that looked more like a crooked financier burning evidence while eating curry under a patio heater, but never any better.Apparently what I needed was a very flat saddle without a hole in the middle. It seems strange that that should have been so difficult to find. Inevitably, the best saddle we came across has been discontinued.Of course, I dont know what it feels like for anyone else. Perhaps after 100 miles, every rider is equally blighted by pressure points and abrasion. It could well be that Im just soft figuratively rather than literally, and everyone else has grown numb from the waist down.Certainly there is some evidence in that direction. It came from my friend Bernard. He was openly contemptuous of my saddle-mapping exercise.You know when you get a really big saddle sore, he said. Well, that doesnt stop me. Even if it feels like Ive grown another testicle, I keep riding because thats what bike riders do. When it boils down to it, no one should ever stop doing what they love just because their backside hurts. I told him he should put that on a T-shirt.

Primoz Roglic's bid to become the first five-time winner of the Vuelta a Espana has been plunged into serious doubt, with the Slovenian now reportedly facing only a 50-50 chance of making the start following his recent training collision. Gazzetta dello Sport journalist Ciro Scognamiglio reported on...

Demi Vollering has defended teammate Celia Gery against Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney's explosive accusations after Stage 8 of the Tour de France Femmes, insisting the French champion did not deliberately impede her rival despite admitting she did not see the incident herself. Niewiadoma-Phinney was furi...

Maeva Squiban has avoided any fractures or serious injuries after a painful late crash brought her Stage 8 breakaway bid to an abrupt end at the Tour de France Femmes. The Frenchwoman had spent much of the day at the front alongside Loes Adegeest and was still in contention for a major result when s...

Taylor Phinney has launched a fierce defence of wife Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney after the controversial incident that preceded Demi Vollering's decisive Stage 8 attack at the Tour de France Femmes, branding Celia Gery's riding dirty and comparing it to something more likely to be seen in a junior ra...