On money and identity

Pro cycling has a somewhat unique challenge compared to other sports. Teams have limited means to raise finance themselves (no stadiums and gate receipts) and so are reliant completely on their sponsors. They are even named after their sponsors, which can often mean a name change for the team every year, or with even greater …

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April 12, 2012 – 10:38 pm | By Guy WR | Posted in Meanings | Comments (1)

Ultimate climbing guide, part 2: aerodynamics

If there is one non-cycling book worth reading this year, it should probably be Thinking, Fast and Slow by the Nobel Prize-winning behavioural psychologist Daniel Kahneman. To paraphrase the product description from the publisher: “Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains: System One is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System Two …

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April 9, 2012 – 11:52 am | By Guy WR | Posted in Climbing Skills | Tagged , , | Comments (3)

On hardness

At the top of the Ghisallo climb, in Bellagio on Lake Como in Italy, and outside the Madonna del Ghisallo chapel is a statue of two riders. The first is raising an arm in triumph, alongside the second rider who has fallen. Glory and suffering. Cycling epitomized, so much so that ‘glory and suffering’ is …

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March 30, 2012 – 7:35 am | By Guy WR | Posted in Classic Stages | Tagged , | Comments (3)

Winning La Primavera

The spring classics start this weekend with Milano-Sanremo on Saturday, March 17th. Your author has already tipped Daniele Bennati as a surprise winner from a bunch of possible Italian contenders. To which one might add Peter Sagan, not quite an Italian but riding for an Italian team. We shall see. There have been numerous famous …

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March 14, 2012 – 2:02 pm | By Guy WR | Posted in Classic Stages | Tagged | Comments (1)

Gearing for climbing: An afterthought

Paul Fournel’s book Need For The Bike has perhaps the worst cover ever to grace a book on cycling. This nearly pocket-sized tome has some absolutely fantastic writing from the “avant-garde writer” (who also makes regular contributions in Rouleur magazine). One can only lament that the University of Nebraska Press, who published the book in …

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March 8, 2012 – 10:13 pm | By Guy WR | Posted in Climbing Skills | Comments (3)

Spring, Italian style

Unlike other Grand Tour contenders, Bradley Wiggins being the obvious example, Ivan Basso seems content to keep a low profile in this spring’s edition of Paris-Nice. We will no doubt be seeing more of Basso at the Tour (perhaps the Giro as well) where he will perhaps put in a more spirited performance than last …

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March 8, 2012 – 9:31 pm | By Guy WR | Posted in Classic Stages | Tagged | Comments (3)

Climbing culture, Italian style

One of the pleasures of following European pro cycling, albeit from afar, is the exposure one gets to different cultural norms. Bike ‘culture’ is an ongoing debate and one might usefully divide it into three areas: hardware, software, and programming. Under hardware, we might as an example reference the debate over what constitutes a ‘race’ …

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March 1, 2012 – 10:49 am | By Guy WR | Posted in Climbers, Meanings | Comments (2)