For the last couple of weeks, Ive been testing the outlandish Factor One. It's an aero road machine that breaks not only the conventions of modern bike design, but bike fit and geometry too.Im not going to get into the Ones uniqueness just yet; Ill save that for my review good or bad. But what my time testing this aero bike reminded me was that in the three decades Ive been involved in reporting on bike design, its always, ultimately, been about the people.You can forget CFD, simulation, computation and, more recently, artificial intelligence. What has driven the biggest and best advancements in cycling is the designers and engineers, and Ive had the pleasure of meeting some of the best.Mike Burrows Chris Boardman riding the Lotus 108 designed by Mike Burrows. David Cannon / Getty Images Back when I was a young upstart, I had the pleasure of spending time with the late Mike Burrows. He was the visionary talent behind Chris Boardmans legendary Lotus bike. When I met Mike for the first time in his Norfolk workshop, he was vehemently pushing two design directions.Firstly, it was the wild world of recumbents. In Mike's mind, the melding of the man-based engine and the ultra-slimline recumbent bike shape resulted in the fastest bicycles on the planet. He wasnt wrong, but it was just too forward-thinking to gain any real traction. Mike Burrows and one of his beloved recumbent race machines. Plus, just as the UCI thwarted his radical design with the Lotus, theyd obviously never entertain anything as radical as a bike you effectively lie down to ride. The other project Burrows championed was cargo bikes. He saw them as a low-polluting urban solution, before the electric car, van or robotic Amazon delivery system existed. Now, cargo bikes are more commonly used to provide urban deliveries, ferry kids to and from school, or for me, take my dog to nicer walking spots.Graeme Obree Graeme Obree's superman position aboard 'old faithful', the bike he built himself. Mike Powell / Allsport / Getty Now, I dont think Mike Burrows would have delivered what he did with the Lotus without riders such as Chris Boardman driving him on, and that leads me to another icon of bike development I've met.I had the privilege of chaperoning the Flying Scotsman, Graeme Obree at one of BikeRadars live events at Brands Hatch back in 2010. Obree epitomised the kind of athlete who completely knew and sensed his own performance levels. He developed his time trial position through trial and error. He had the insight from his incredible cycling ability to feel what was faster.That all resulted in Obree's tuck position that emulated the stance of downhill skiers. Then, when the UCI banned his self-developed ride position, he came up with the superman position to stay within the rules and win the World Pursuit title. It was the same position Chris Boardman used to set his hour record.There was no CFD simulation or wind-tunnel investigation, just a rider who knew if he shifted his position hed go faster.Nick Larsen Nick Larsen worked with Airbus on the groundbreaking Fabric ALM saddle. Warren Rossiter/Future Publishing In more recent times, the designer Nick Larsen was so on top of the zeitgeist he changed the bike industry. Larsen worked as designer at the traditional British bike manufacturer Pashley, probably most famous for making Royal Mail delivery bikes. He also designed some very cool mountain bike trials bikes under the Pashley TV series banner.He then went on to create Charge Bikes, bringing the fixed-gear courier culture to the masses, and helping to make commuting by bike cool. Larsen then created Fabric with its advanced saddle designs from his talented team, incorporating 3D printing and tech from the likes of Airbus into cycling.He also has the uncanny ability to be both a progressive bike and component designer, and seriously good at marketing.Larsen's spell at Cannondale modernised the brand, and hes now doing great things at Leatt.Chris Dodman Cannondale's Hooligan: lots of Chris Dodman's enginnering skill on show here. Cannondale British engineer Chris Dodman is another figure who played a big role at Cannondale. Chris started out with the British engineering company Middleburn, masterminding its incredibly sought-after (and beautiful) cranksets. The 2014 Cannondale Synapse set the template for the racy endurance bike. Russell Burton / Immediate Media At Cannondale, he has been part of some very innovative designs. Those included the radical Saeco CAAD bikes through to the groundbreaking 2014 Synapse, and numerous mountain and urban bikes. Chris created the engineering solutions that made those bikes work.He holds more patents than he has fingers and has an almost unique ability to think outside the box to implement the dreams of designers and engineers.Szymon Kobyliski The Rondo Ruut was one of the most interesting gravel bikes of 2017. Ben Healey / Immediate Media Szymon Kobyliski was originally part of the Polish band Blenders, who notched up more than 100,000 album sales and had a huge following. While his fellow band members did the rock star thing, Kobyliski was a national mountain bike champion rider in his homeland. Kobyliski then started NS Bikes, and later 7Anna distribution. NS Bikes focused on the (then) small dirt/gravity market and ended up making some of the most successful jump frames of all time, which dominated slopestyle competitions for years.The company also produced downhill bikes that flew of the cliffs at Rampage and introduced the radical NS Synonym RC 1cross-country bike, with geometry numbers unheard of at that time but a standard in XC today. The Rondo HVRT CF01: a race bike, endurance bike and gravel bike in one. Robert Smith Later with Rondo, Kobyliski and his team decided to build a company focused only on gravel, which at that time (2016) was considered a 'niche of a niche' by most industry people.Rondo disregarded the norms of bike design and adopted a no-rules attitude, making whatever it wanted.An aero race bike that could become an endurance bike or gravel machine? Rondo did that with the HVRT. A gravel bike that could be both racer and endurance bikepacking bike? How about the RUUT? Want an off-road focused speedster for rough terrain, with geometry unlike anything on the market? I give you the MYLC.Szymon built Rondo around bikes he wanted to ride and I respect that. The brand may have faced financial woes after the pandemic, but Rondo is back and Im excited to see what Kobyliski and his team comes up with next.Graham Shrive The Bugatti edition of the Factor One: data-driven design, but formulated by a human idea. Factor This trip through some of cyclings most daring and innovating design engineers brings me back to the Factor One, and the man behind it: Graham Shrive.Graham started out as an ambitious engineer at Cervlo. I first encountered him at a launch way back in 2014. At the time, most of the Cervlo crew Id met had been knowledgeable, polite, mild-mannered Canadians. Graham was different. He was driven and extremely outspoken. At the time, I described him as the angriest man in cycling. Now I see how he had a vision to improve bicycle design and was committed to bringing that vision to life. On that launch, he presented the S5. It had increased stiffness, a lower weight, tweaked geometry and a radical integrated cockpit. It was an epically good bike: light, very fast and for an aero bike very easy to ride over longer distances especially on the climbs.Over the years, Ive seen Shrive present everything from the lightest bike in the peloton through to gravel race bikes, and even the most advanced triathlon bike of its era, the P5X.Now he is at Factor, and his ideas have been unleashed. Its a receptive brand, with an ambitious design team (which he leads), and that means hes been able to take radical ideas from sketches to production, with lots of research and of course development.Bike design has always been driven by visionaries, be it Tullio Campagnolo and his revolutionary quick-release or Ernesto Colnago and his drive to develop race bikes. There is also Bob Parlee and his vision in pushing carbon fibre forward. In a world where we are being told AI will solve all our problems, I still think visionary humans will drive the future of bicycle design. And maybe theres a lesson there for other creative fields, too.

Much of Timo Roosen's professional career was one with the growth story of Visma | Lease a Bike. Over his nine seasons with the Dutch team, Roosen saw its rise from bottom to a winner of all three Grand Tours in the same year his spell came to an end. Roosen moved over to Picnic PostNL. But after th...

Peter Grandiek toasted his 95th birthday this week by shattering the Hour Record in his 95-99 age category. The Dutchman, who has lived most of his life in New Zealand, completed more than 91 laps of his home velodrome in Invercargill on Wednesday for a distance of 22.948km. He beat the previous benchmark 20.151km, set by New Zealander Reg Rye in 2019 by almost 3km. I was expecting to do a little bit more, Grandiek told Cycling Weekly. Something went wrong with my seat, because I was sitting far too far forward. I thought I was going to slip off. Its never happened before, but these things happen sometimes. What helped me was that they put the lap recorder on, so I could see how many laps I was getting. The previous record, the guy rode 80 laps. I probably gave a sigh of relief when I got to the 80 laps and still had about 10 minutes to go. That was pretty good. You just concentrate on going forward.Grandiek once held the 80-84 record 11 years ago, but was bettered three weeks later by then 81-year-old Briton Walter Fowler. Asked what motivated him to attempt the Hour Record again in his mid-90s, he said he simply thought it might be something I might be capable of.Im twice a week at the velodrome, and I dont always really push myself. But I seemed to be quite comfortable being able to do over 20[kph], so I thought, Well, why not have a go?, he said. I talk to people who are probably 40 years younger than me, and they think theyre old, and they say, Oh, I cant do this. I cant do that. Its a matter sometimes of mind over matter. Youve got to challenge yourself. In order for his record to be official with the UCI, Grandiek had to undergo anti-doping testing following his effort. He said he drank three large bottles of water to help things come along, but found his celebrations thwarted as the process drew on longer than the record itself. I got into the doping control room, and it took ages, he laughed. Theyve got to have a certain volume [of urine], and it took hours. We finished [the record] just after 7pm, and I didnt get home until quarter past 10. A post shared by ILT Stadium Southland (@iltstadiumsouthland)A photo posted by Born and raised in a province north of Amsterdam, Grandiek emigrated to New Zealand on a six-week passenger ship in the early 1950s, when he was 22. He worked on the railways in the South Island, before becoming a house painter and later ran a deer farm. It was only in 2007, then in his mid-70s, that he took up cycling. Thats after I finished all my sporting activities, because I played rugby, I was running, ran some half marathons, and that got too hard on the bones, he said. When he was 78, he had a sudden heart attack, and had to have triple bypass surgery. Almost two decades on, he says, he continues to do contrary things to what the cardiologist would tell you Ive basically always ignored their advice and did what I wanted to do.Its in that vein that Grandiek plans to keep challenging himself on the bike. Typically he has spent his birthday doing charity rides; his Hour Record was in support of a local hospice, Hospice South. The benchmark in the next age category, 100-104, is 26.925km, held since 2014 by Frenchman Robert Marchand. Might Grandiek now target that? You can only do these things if youre capable, he said. Theres no doubt that as you get older, you slow down. Ive lost speed compared to 10 years ago. You cant help that. Its a natural thing, he continued. As soon as I got off the bike on Wednesday night, people said, What are you going to do next year? and I said, Ill come up with something. Ive done it for the last 10 years. Grandiek's 95-99 Hour Record is still subject to ratification by the UCI. Donations can be made directly to Hospice South via the charity's website.

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