Through lawyers, Giovambattista Iera says he has "already been convicted by the press without any evidence", strongly denying that he cheated at Les Routes de l'Oise stage race or played any part in assaulting the race director

Tadej Pogacar has won the Giro d'Italia with a dominant performance, and this opens up the way for other possible big achievements for later in the year. One of them being winning the Giro and Tour de France on the same season. Stephen Roche, one of those who has achieved this, analyses the past and...

The Grand Loop is a stunning 365-mile route that hits the Tabeguache Trail, Kokopelli Trail, and Paradox Trail in Southwest Colorado and Utah. This year, over 40 riders have registered for the grand depart, which took off this morning from Nucla, Colorado. With help from the organizers, we gathered details on nearly 40 riders and rigs taking on the 2024 Grand Loop. See them here...The post Rigs of the 2024 Grand Loop appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com.

Further to yesterdays post, I have now officially test-ridden the Spinergized Faggin:With my rusty chrome and my worn bearings I was taking the Dirtbag Road lifestyle to new heightsor depths:Funky appearance and rattly front wheel notwithstanding, the Faggin felt smoother and more refined than the Noner despite the two bikes being very close dimensionally:A lot of that probably has to do with the tired old Campy drivetrain versus the velvety-smooth shifting perfection that is Silver friction shifters with a like-new Dura-Ace derailleur, but who knows, maybe the Spinergys also have something to do with it:For example, perhaps its the delectable souplesse of a thermally aged wheel thats constantly on the verge of failure:I guess I should squeeze the spokes together and make sure theyre tensioned. Granted, I have no idea how theyre supposed to feel, but if the wheel explodes while Im squeezing it then Ill know not to ride it anymore. I should probably also wear heavy-duty gloves lest I sever a digit, as well as safety goggles for protection from the crabon shrapnel.As for the rear wheel, its still a bit off, but even without twiddling the dropout adjustment screws its more centered than it was on the LeMond:I dont know if maybe disassembling the rear hub helped after all, or if its just a simple matter of the ancient Faggin being out of alignment one way and the Spinergy being out of dish the other way and the two sort of cancelling each other out:Regardless, its good enough for me, though my next project will be to replace the bearings in the front hub:The bearings are easy to get, and I look forward to seeing how I manage to screw it up.Otherwise the bike feels great, though given its retro-excessiveness I I think I may need an entirely new wardrobe in order to ride it:Do I go with 90s CD cover?Classic Bike New York?Trolling the Smuggies?Office building lobby modern art?Or ironic accidental gravel reference?So many ways to reinvent myself! They say Spinergys explode. However, clearly when you welcome them into your life the real explosion happens from within.

CyclistColnagos classic bike collectionIremember I had to lie to get the job, says Ernesto Colnago in hisoffice in Cambiago, Italy. Short, slightly stooped but still spry, the great framebuilder is nearly lost behind his vast mahogany desk and a litany of awards, photographs and memorabilia that covers almost every wall and surface.Bicycles are very much where his heart is and seemingly always have been. He cheerfully regales us with the tale of forging papers to secure his first job as a welders assistantin the Gloria bicycle factory when he was just 13 years old.The young apprentice progressed quickly, and by the time he turned 20 in 1952, he had set himself up as a subcontractor, building bicycles for other companies in Cambiago, just outside Milan.Mike Massaro / CyclistTwo years later, in 1954, hedbegun selling bicycles with his own surname on the down tube.Thus started an illustrious career that has seen Colnago make bikes for everyone from Eddy Merckx to Pope John Paul II, the latter a keen cyclist whose Colnago-made gold-chrome bike now sits in a sealed case at thecompanys factory.Trophies and accolades came thick and fast, as did a cult following, yet its the innovations themselves that Ernesto Colnago is most proud of as he walks us through his private museum.Whether its a Paris-Roubaix winning fleet, five Colnago victories with the Mapei team, or a never-seen-the-light-of-day track bike, here is a man very much still in love with the very idea of the bicycle.Mosca Master, 1980Mike Massaro / CyclistImade this bike with the Master tubes, which are crimped, says Ernesto Colnago.The idea for the Master tube shape came to me some years before when I was in Tokyo. I could not sleep because of jetlag, and I started thinking what if tubes were not round, could they be stiffer?The crimped shape I came up with has a better bending resistance of 15%.This bike really needed to be stiff. It was built for a Russian track athlete who was very heavy more than 100kg. He was competing in the Olympics in the kilo, which is all about power.With one stemit was impossible to make the bike strong enough for him, so I used two stems, one either side of the fork crown.Colnago says he cannot remember the name of the rider, and further research suggests that, despite the name, this bike might not have ended up at the 1980 Moscow Games after all, and was insteada prototype made in 1979 as a forerunner to kitting out the Soviet team the following year.Again, Colnago is not sure. What isnt upfor debate, however, is just how extreme the position is, and justhow well the Soviet team did in Moscow.They won the 100kmteam time-trial, team pursuit and road race aboard Colnago bikes.Rominger hour record, 1996Mike Massaro / CyclistImmediately after Tony Rominger broke the Hour record in 1994 he said to me he can go faster, he can break 57km, so I started work on this bike, a collaboration with Ferrari.To go further the bike had to be the most aerodynamic possible in every detail, so the cranks are made from titanium to my designs, with the leading edges almost as sharp as knives to cut the wind, and the track nuts are rounded and smoothed.The bars are a special project with me and ITM, but the most important aerodynamic features are the frame and the wheels.Look at the wheels. We made these, and they have patterns on them like a golf ball to stabilise airflow. This is long before Zipp!Mike Massaro / CyclistThe frame is one-piece moulded, there is no internal structure, the same with the wheels, and it is very thin when you look from the front or above.Today many aero shapes are wider, but on the track where there is no wind, the thinner an object is, the faster.Sadly for Colnago and Rominger, the UCI banned the bike as soon as its commissaires saw it.They said it presented an unfair aerodynamic advantage.In any other place this innovation wouldbe welcome. I am still very sad.It might be the most expensive bikeI have ever made, and probably one of the most beautiful.Super, 1986Mike Massaro / CyclistBy the spring of 1981, Belgian pro Freddy Maertens was a fading flame. Hed won multiple Grand Tour stages, the rainbow stripes, a Vuelta a Espaa and two green jerseys, but form was eluding himon the bike and financial woes eclipsing him off it.Poor money management and bad investments had left him a huge unpaid tax bill. Then came the summer of 1981, racing on the Boule dOr-Colnago team.First he took the points jersey at the Tour in July, and then in August came the World Road Championships in Prague.This is the bicycle that Maertens rode in Prague, says Colnago. It is a steel frame with round tubes, although by now I was already using crimped Master tubes in other bikes.Mike Massaro / CyclistIts traditional a lugged steel frame with a raked fork but there are still plenty of flourishes.The Colnago name is engraved in the top eyes of the seatstays, chainrings and fork crown, and embossed into the chainstays, and an alarming amount of material has been drilled out from brake levers and chainset and milled from the seatpost to save weight.It worked, and Maertens beat Giuseppe Saronni and Bernard Hinault. He had surprised everyone, except Ernesto:He knew he had to win he was driven by the fear of going bankrupt.Concept, 1986Mike Massaro / CyclistIwas researching new materials and I came across carbon fibre, which was being used in Formula 1, so of course I went straight to Enzo Ferrari, says Colnago.This was our first collaboration. Enzo personally designed the wheels.Those wheels are three-spoke and fabricated from carbon fibre,as per the frame, which is constructed from carbon tubes bonded and wrapped to carbon composite lugs, made from a polymide material still found in the headset of Colnagos latest C64 and Concept 2.0.It was two years of development work just to create the frame. Then we worked on these hydraulic rim brakes, the straight-blade fork which was a first, now the cycling world copies the straight-blade fork and I created an adjustable stem that could extend outto 130mm. But the real innovation was the gears.Mike Massaro / CyclistHoused inside the crank spider is what Colnago refers to as a desmodromic, but might better be described as a planetary gearbox, much like a cars transmission.Seven speed and controlled by a gear stick on the down tube, it added 5.3kg to the bikes weight.We studied and designed like they design a car, where weight is not a very big concern compared to performance, as you have an engine.But for road cycling the Concept was far too heavy, over13kg, so we never made it a production bicycle.Gloria La Garibaldina, 1947Mike Massaro / CyclistThis bike is actually one of my personal ones, the very oldest.I have had it since I was 15. I was working at the Gloria factoryin Milan as a young guy, just practising, just starting out.In fact, Colnago was so young he had as hes already confessed to Cyclist lied about his age to secure a job as a welding assistant at what was then one of Italys most lauded framebuilders: AMF Gloria, founded in 1921 by Alfredo Focesi in Milan.I got the job through a friend who worked at Gloria. I won the Mamma Isolina Caldirola trophy in 1950 as an amateur on this bike, and I continued to race it until I was 18.Mike Massaro / CyclistI had only three gears, and they were operated with these lever rods. It was custom for me ata time when people were not used to building custom bikes.The bike model, La Garibaldina, derives from Italian general Giuseppe Garibaldi, who fought for the unification of Italy, and signifies single-mindedness and willpower, two characteristics Colnago says carried him as a decent amateur but really cameto the fore as a professional framebuilder.The lugs are quite ornate for the time, the lily flower shape the pattern of Gloria, and the tubing is of course steel, the saddle leather, and we even have flint scrapers on the tyres. Gloria made the finest bicycles of the time, which is what Colnago makes today.Eddy Merckx hour record, 1972Mike Massaro / CyclistIbuilt this bike for Eddy Merckx to attempt the Hour record on.At the time it was the lightest I had ever made, 5.75kg, andthis was 46 years ago!The stem is titanium, and I had to send itto America to get it welded as no one in Europe knew how to weld titanium back then.The spokes are titanium as well, and the hubs are made by Campagnolo from beryllium alloy, very light and stiff.I drilled out every chain link by hand [saving 95g], which upset the chains makers, Regina Extra, as they said it would be too weak for Eddys power.Colnago also created an especially light headset just 122g and had a Columbus steel tubeset drawn that thinned to a mere 0.4mm wall-thickness in the middle, groundbreaking for the day.Mike Massaro / CyclistFrench company Clement provided 80g tubular tyres and Colnago redesigned a Cinelli Unicanitor saddle to have special sliding seat rails to achieve Merckxs desired position.The bars were also Cinelli, again drilled out to save weight. Colnago says the fabrication alone took over 200 hours, but it was worth it.I went to Mexico City [chosen for its high altitude and lowair pressure] as Merckxs mechanic. I was not that nervous, butEddy was. Just five minutes before the start he asked to changethe handlebars.In the end he broke the record with 49.431km,and we got drunk together afterwards. It was one of the greatestdays of my life.Prototype hour record, 1968Mike Massaro / CyclistNow every saddle has a hole in it, but I can assure you this was the first one, invented by me, made by hand, says Colnago of the slit-leather upper of this bikes saddle, tensioned by a coiled extension spring at one end and clamped atop a seatpost whose multifarious bolts, grub screws and levers look more like a miniature dentists chair than a perch for a prototype record breaker.The seatpost had to have many adjustment options as the position is very different to a normal bicycle.The crank axle is far behindthe riders hips, and they lean far forward onto the bars, a bit likea recumbent bicycle but as if you were lying on your front. My idea was for aerodynamics and for the rider to generate more power.Mike Massaro / CyclistAs such, there is no chain as one would expect. Instead, thecrank appears almost fixed to the hub axle like a penny-farthing, but closer inspection reveals an intricate system of sprockets, chains and freewheels.The Ofmega CX crank turns a large chainring, which turns a smaller sprocket directly above it, on which another larger sprocket is mounted behind, with both attached to a freewheel bolted to the stay.That sprocket drives a fourth smaller sprocket attachedto a freewheel on the wheel hub. So precisely how many gear inches is that, Mr Colnago?I cannot remember. We will need an engineer!C35 Oro, 1989Mike Massaro / CyclistThis is another bike made with Ferrari. It was never really raced at the top level. I think Giuseppe Saronni did maybe three or four races on a C35, but never won anything. This is the first one we produced.As legend has it, Colnago was first turned on to the idea of working with Ferrari not by investigations into carbon fibre in the mid-1980s although that would be the match to the touch paper but after the Merckx Hour record in 1972.King Leopold of Belgium, together with his wife and daughters, had travelled to Mexico City to watch the feat, and when he saw the Colnago bike the king said to his wife, This man is the Ferrari of two wheels.Mike Massaro / CyclistCollaborating with Ferrari is, of course, every marketers dream, but where the C35 is concerned, Colnago says it bore legitimate fruit.With Ferrari we used incredibly sophisticated computer tools at the time finite element analysis, CAD to produce the C35, which was our first monocoque carbon fibre road bike. The name is because it celebrates my companys 35th anniversary.This C35 also bears the mark of another longstanding relationship: a gold-plated Record groupset provided by Valentino Campagnolo complete with Colnagos flying ace of clubs and engraved name.Rominger hour record, 1994Mike Massaro / CyclistMapeis Tony Rominger was out to beat Miguel Indurains Hour record, and as team sponsor, Colnago was only too happy to help.However, despite being deep into carbon fibre design, Colnago opted for steel for Romingers machine. Partly this was due to time,of which there wasnt enough to create a purpose-built carbon bike. But it also concerned something else.Tony was a very good rider but he was not so good on the track, and carbon fibre bikes proved too stiff for him to handle on the track, so we produced this from Columbus Oval CX steel.Mike Massaro / CyclistLook at the frame, the seatpost. See how thin everything is. The seatpost is 3mm thick, the seatstays 5mm. But the main drag on a bicycle, 85%, comes from the rider.Colnago had deduced that although Indurain was fast, he could have been faster. Not only did Indurains carbon fibre Pinarello Espada present a wider frontal area than Colnagos steel bike, his position was sub-optimal, producing what was later reckoned to be a 13% larger frontal area than Rominger.So with specially designed bars made with ITM, and pedalling a 6014 gear, Rominger propelled this Colnago machine to a total 55.251km in an hour, breaking Indurains record by over 2km.This article was originally published in 2022. Related Posts Pogaar Tour de France Colnago V4Rs 2023 Colnago C64: In-depth review Feast your eyes on these 7 stunning classic road bikes: The Flandrien Hotel bike collection One man brand: behind the scenes at Basso A history of Bianchis classic bikes The post Colnagos classic bike collection appeared first on Cyclist.

It was a surprise to many that next toMathieu van der Poel and Dylan van Baarle, Lidl-Trek's all-rounder Daan Hoole is the third Dutchman selected for the Olympics. However, national coach Koos Moerenhout preferred the tall 25-year-old, because he won't hesitate to fully devote himself to his leade...

With the Tour de France quickly approaching, Chris Froome's hopes of making a return to the Grand Tour have been boosted with his selection for theCritrium du Dauphin confirmed by Israel - Premier Tech.Froome, who is a three-time winner of theCritrium du Dauphin (2013, 2015 & 2016 ed.), recen...

A large section of a cycle path on North Road and a section of a bollard-segregated cycle lane on Chesterfield Avenue in Phoenix Park has been closed for safety, according to Bord Bia, the State food and horticulture promotion agency which runs Bloom.Bord Bia and the OPW, which runs the park, closed sections of cycle lanes as two other State agencies with responsibility for road safety, the RSA and the Garda, were giving road safety warnings for the June bank holiday weekend. Bank holidays are statistically more dangerous on our roads, and Bloom brings a larger volume than usual of traffic to Phoenix Park. IrishCycle.com reported yesterday how Bloom, described as Irelands largest and most spectacular gardening event, is offering free guarded bicycle parking. But parts of cycle routes have been closed to facilitate a car parking area on North Road and a shuttle bus drop-off on Chesterfield Avenue.This morning, a spokesperson for Bord Bia said: Cycles lanes have been partially closed for safety where traffic is crossing and to allow for the shuttle bus to park up on Chesterfield Avenue. Bord Bia Bloom encourages the public to cycle, walk or take the free shuttle bus, and we provide bike parks at both entrances to the Bloom site.Except for holding responses, the OPW has yet to respond to a request for comment. If they respond today, this article will likely be updated.

After months of speculation, it was recently confirmed by Alpecin-Deceuninck that Mathieu van der Poel will not compete in the Mountain Bike at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. A blow for Dutch national coach Gerben De Knegt, although he can empathise.Although for a long time van der Poel was consider...