Decent stab at a quiet, light, secure luggage system

Seff Van Kerckhove will miss the 2026 Montral World Championships after a serious training crash. The 18-year-old Belgian, one of his nations key hopes in the junior ranks, collided with a car during a prep session for the Worlds and was taken to hospital. Van Kerckhove arrived in Montreal with hi...

Work is well underway on the latest section of the Dodder Greenway on Dodder Road Lower, between Elys Arch and Orwell Road. The road is now permanently one-way, with the two-way cycle path still under construction.The images below show the cycle path kerb is now in place, but significant work remains, including surfacing and the crossing at the Orwell Road end.The project is one of the short sections of the River Dodder Greenway that is controlled by Dn Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. At this point, to the west, South Dublin County Council has built most of its route, while to the east, Dublin City Council has yet to upgrade a number of key sections.Ciarn Ferrie sent in these photos of the current works between Elys Arch and Orwell Road:As previously reported, soon the route, from its Tallaght end, will extend over 8km towards the city end. While the route is formed by different sections, this 8km is all segregated from motorists. Five areas will need to be upgraded to make the route fully continuous, mostly in the Dublin City Council area.IMAGES: Drawings of the project.The new Dn Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council section of the route will link to the existing near-8km South Dublin County Council section greenway. But towards the city centre at Dartry Park, there are steps at a narrow bridge along the route, with no current plan to solve this issue.The bridge with steps straddles the Dn Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and Dublin City Council areas and is marked with a cyclist dismount sign on the maps below because the current narrow bridge includes steps.IMAGES: Images of the bridge with steps. Thanks to Ciarn Ferrie.IMAGE: An overview map of the opened and planned sections of the route.IMAGE: A closer zoomed-in overview map of the opened and planned sections of the route.

Ive always liked long-sleeved jerseys. I have weirdly long arms that Ive never really liked, and I enjoy my riding more if I cant see them.In winter, its fine. Winter jerseys have long sleeves. In summer, its harder. The vast majority of modern summer jerseys are short-sleeved, and the handful of properly light long-sleeved ones are never really comfortable because the arms are weirdly stretchy. So that means the irritation of arm-warmers, and the annual spring ritual where I lose my grip on an arm-warmer as Im pulling it on and smack myself in the face.It never used to be like this. Im always a bit self-conscious about how long Ive been a bike rider but Im not ashamed to admit to being old enough to remember that perfectly normal, usable, long-sleeved and lightweight jerseys definitely used to exist.Last week I punched myself in the face for the second time this year and decided that enough was enough. Down I went to the bottom of my kit drawer and found a couple of old long-sleeved jerseys. I put one on. In disbelief, I took it off and tried the other one. It was the same. They were so big I could have set myself up in there with a pair of binoculars and a packed lunch and used it as a bird-hide.That at least solved the mystery of why the sleeves used to fit better, but it left a lot of other questions - did I really race in one of these things?Both horrified and curious, I watched some old bike-racing videos. And, right enough, all jerseys used to be much, much baggier. I found some footage of Marco Pantani wearing a skinsuit so generous he could have turned around inside it and looked out of his own backside to see if Jan Ullrich was sneaking up on him, and no one would have noticed. Magnus Backstedt won Paris-Roubaix in a jersey he and both his daughters could wear at once.So, anyway, I went for a ride in my bird-hide. And it was just lovely. There was a delightful current of air that could drift through. A wasp that flew in just turned around and flew out again. I could get things in and out of my pockets so easily that at one point I fished out a gel just so I could read the recycling information on the packet. It was like going cycling in a dressing gown, in a good way.Ill admit there are downsides. Some bits of flapping feel like they add to the ventilation, but some bits are just irritating; I dont need the ability to assess the angle of a crosswind from the flags on my arms. And I remember that a baggy jersey stretches over time, so that the pockets gradually stop being on your lower back, and creep ever downwards to create the sort of lumpy-buttocked silhouette more normally associated with an iffy Turkish cosmetic surgeon.And of course its slower. Ultimately, thats why it all changed. Mark Cavendish won the Worlds in 2011 in a skinsuit, and suddenly jerseys got tight. They also got more expensive you can make a baggy jersey out of anything and be a bit slapdash about it. To make a good tight one, you need to buy better fabrics, make more sizes, maybe do some aero testing, and use some more-considered seam patterns.It's been a classic great-leap-sideways. Less comfortable, more expensive, slightly faster. It feels like an odd set of trade-offs for 99% of us, 99% of the time.If youve got a big old jersey sitting in a drawer, or you can find one second-hand, give it a go. You might like it.

Its Monday, Remco Evenepoels enjoying his day off in Montreal, and Ryan Mallons back to kick off another week of news and nonsense on your favourite cycling live blog

Paul Seixas is buoyed by his performance at the World Championships time trial on Sunday as he looks ahead to this weekend's big one. Making his intentions clear for the elite men's road race, the Frenchman hopes he'll come of age just days after his 20th birthday. From this Thursday, the Tour de F...

World Bicycle Relief (WBR), the charity that provides sturdy bicycles to rural communities across the globe, has announced the first upgrade to its two-chain Buffalo bike. The Buffalo Pro is the newest iteration of the Utility S2 bike that was released in July 2024 and bore an innovative drivetrain with two chains. The system, described as an engineering feat, allows riders to backpedal shift across two chain tensions to swap between two gears.This week, WBR announced the release of two updated bike models: the two-chain Buffalo Pro and single-speed Buffalo One. The new versions build on two decades of design for the charitys flagship bike, of which more than a million have now been distributed around the world. Speaking to Cycling Weekly, Andy Samways, WBRs VP of product development, explained the latest updates focused on the bike as a whole, rather than the just dual drivetrain. We were broadly happy with our bike. Its been doing really well, Samways said. We hit a million last year, and so in that time, I think wed amassed a bunch of observations and things wed seen, some things we wanted to tackle, and so we just took a pass through all of those issues.The updated Buffalo Pro bike, with two chains. (Image credit: World Bicycle Relief)The changes include front and back disc brakes on the Pro model, an updated stand to make loading and unloading cargo more stable, and the introduction of two frame sizes: standard and large. The previous model was one size fits all. Although its not a huge technical innovation for us, it does mean that more people can ride the bike, said Samways of the size options. Taller riders never complained about the bike, but it was clear to us from watching how they use it and how they ride that there was an opportunity to make the bike more comfortable and functional for them. Similarly, when we were testing our very early prototypes of this generation in Kenya, a woman came to us and asked if we sold childrens bikes, and we dont. Rather than produce a kids bike, we want to make sure that a much younger rider can get on our bikes, and so the geometry changes for our standard-sized bike allow us to get a much shorter, much younger rider on that bike. Riders shift between the two gears by performing a sharp backpedal. (Image credit: World Bicycle Relief)WBR runs bike distribution programmes in seven countries Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Colombia although its bikes are present in at least 28. The latest iteration of Buffalo bikes took three years to design and develop, and are already being rolled out into communities. The cost to donate a single-speed Buffalo One is 138 ($185), which covers the price of materials, manufacturing and distribution. A two-speed Buffalo Pro is around 20 ($27) more.That two-speed drivetrain is still the start of the show, said Samways, adding that the system underwent no major changes in the update. Its a product that, because its so unique, its very much at the beginning of its life, he said.If you look at a derailleur, for example, thats had like 100 years of innovations and improvements and refinements, and this is a very new thing. We know theres plenty of room to keep improving that, so weve been working on bearings and material processes, and just trying to refine it as we learn about how it behaves in the field. Only the updated Buffalo Pro model, which replaced the Utility S2, has two chains. (Image credit: World Bicycle Relief)As it stands, the single-speed Buffalo One is best for users on flat terrain, while the two-chain Buffalo Pro was built to withstand hillier regions, as well as cargo loads sometimes exceeding 100kg. Samways, who has been working with WBR since 2010 and was previously employed by parts manufacturer SRAM to develop drivetrain solutions for the charity, hopes one day to have the two-chain technology on all Buffalo bikes. Thatll be something well look at in the future, he said. But it does take time for us to work the manufacturing, find the efficiencies, and bring it down to a price where we can make it a standard feature. It's all part of WBR's commitment to keep developing. As the charity's bikes reach more people, and are ridden to their limits on hard-wearing terrain, Samways and his team of around 17 developers are always looking for ways to make the design more durable and accessible. Were never done [innovating], he said. Our bikes are used so hard for so long. We will work on one set of problems, and then well move on to the next. Well just keep chipping away at whatever presents itself as the next big problem.

Visma | Lease a Bike'sHead of Sport Management Team Jacco Verhaeren has decided to leave the team at the end of the season, just over three years after joining the Dutch team. Verhaeren will not renew his contract, which ends at the end of 2026 as the team confirmed that they will use the coming w...

British cyclist Matthew Brennan has called for the creation of an independent safety body in cycling, saying it is disgraceful that nothing has changed following the death of Finlay Tarling. Nineteen-year-old Tarling died on 14 August after he collided with a non-race vehicle driver that had entered the race course at the Volta a Portugal. In an interview with BBC Sport published after Brennan won five stages of the Vuelta a Espaa, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider said it was unbelievable and shocking that bigger measures hadnt been introduced to road racing. It was very sad what happened with Fin. We were watching his funeral yesterday and I said to my friend, Its so sad weve lost someone so special and also nothing has changed, Brennan said."I really think that is disgraceful. Instead of someone somewhere in these organisations saying, OK, this should never ever happen again, it feels the world has moved on, nothing has changed and theres events where cars have been on the course still. Less than three weeks after Tarlings death, a rider had to swerve to avoid a public car on the barriered individual time trial course at the Sauerlandrundfahrt stage race in Germany. In my personal opinion, there should be an independent organisation that holds the organisations, the UCI and everything accountable to some very strict rules that makes sure the safety of the riders is held as a priority, Brennan told BBC Sport. In 2023, the UCI announced the creation of a safety body called SafeR, which is funded by the governing body, race organisers, riders and teams. The body has been responsible for recommending safety measures including the yellow card system, handlebar width restrictions and rider airbags. Earlier this month, and in light of Tarling's death, the UCI called for safety tracking systems to be put in place across all professional road races as quickly as possible. Finlay Tarling joined NSN Cycling's development team, then called Israel Premier Tech Academy, in 2025. (Image credit: Getty Images)Tarlings funeral took place last Thursday in Aberystwyth, Wales. The teenagers team, NSN Cycling, announced today that it has created an annual scholarship in the Welshmans name, the Finlay Tarling Talent Development Scholarship, through which it will support one young Welsh cyclist every year for at least the next five years. The scholarship comes in addition to a GoFundMe page set up by Tarlings agent, Jamie Barlow, which has already surpassed 100,000 in donations. The funds will go towards helping future generations of Welsh cyclists.