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Doug Report Daily Cycling News Archive

Jens Voigt: My Life After Retirement.

"I’ve been officially retired for three months, and it’s been interesting to say the least—but also challenging! Some things came easier than expected. Some things were harder to get used to.

When I knew—a full year ago—that I was going to stop racing after 2014, I agreed to do many of the charity rides, fondos, and other events people were setting up the off-season. When my career came to an end, I sat down and looked at the list of all the appointments I’d made. I had charity rides in England and Luxembourg, Trek Travel in California, gran fondos in Germany, a trip to Australia, a team camp in Spain, and more. Things were full gas!"

No firm comeback date yet for Taylor Phinney.

The comeback trail for Taylor Phinney is longer and more complicated than expected. The BMC Racing star admitted Wednesday it’s still too early to talk about a firm date to return to racing.

The 24-year-old is champing at the bit to get back in the races, but recovery and rehabilitation from his devastating crash at the USA Cycling road national championships last summer is forcing Phinney to be more patient than he’d like to be.

“I need a few more months of general strengthening to get to where I am pain-free,” Phinney said. “I need the leg to get back to 90-, 95-percent strength before I can start talking about other things.”

Cant and Van der Poel Win in Cyclocross Waasland, American Elle Anderson Lands Podium in Europe.

The phrase “yet another win” doesn’t do Sanne Cant’s result enough justice. The 24-year-old has not only established herself as the rider to beat this year, but she has won races with such consistency and versatility, it leaves us wondering if we are watching something magical play out in Europe right now.

In Waasland on Wednesday, Cant crossed the line 13 seconds ahead of Sophie de Boer, adding yet another feather in her cap, which must look like a venerable peacock at this stage of the season. The Belgian rider has left many of us waiting for the eventual epic battle that should take place between her and Marianne Vos by the end of the season. Already, Cant and Katie Compton has given us a good rivalry showing at Milton Keynes, with Cant edging Compton at the line despite being second at the final turn for the sprint.

Rohan Dennis to attempt the Hour Record in 2015.

Rohan Dennis has announced that he will attempt the Hour Record in 2015.

The Australian rider made the surprise announcement during the BMC media day at a training camp in Denia, Spain. The attempt will take place at the velodrome in Grenchen, Switzerland on February 8.

“When I look at my experience on the track and the numbers I have been doing on the track and road, it’s within reach,” Dennis said.

(cyclingnews.com)

Aru hopes to become a complete rider in 2015.

Italian sensation Fabio Aru is hoping to round off his raw talent in 2015 with the goal a first career Grand Tour victory at the Giro d'Italia.

Aru is targeting his home race, the Giro, in 2015, after pocketing a stage win and finishing third this year behind Nairo Quintana and Rigoberto Uran.

To do that the 24 year old has spent time fine-tuning his time trial position in anticipation of the Stage 14 59.2km ride against the clock in Trevesio.

"Improvement in the time trial is very important to me," Aru told Biciciclismo.com. "So I've been in the Specialized wind tunnel in California."

Szmyd saves career by signing deal with CCC.

After two disappointing years with the Movistar team, Sylwester Szmyd feared that his career had come to a premature end. Now he has signed a contract with the CCC Polsat team where he will be one of the leaders.

One of the most experienced Polish riders, Szmyd joins the Professional Cycling Team CCC. He has spent most of his professional career in the WorldTour and has finished all three Grand Tours.

"As a CCC rider I will have a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. I have a lot of fire and motivation and I still enjoy cycling greatly. It’s not time for me to end this great adventure."

2014-15 Races & Results.

Santos Tour Down Under 2015 - Jan 18-25 (Stages),

Dubai Tour 2015 - Feb 4-7 (Stages),

Giro d'Italia 2015 - May 9-31 (Stages),

Tour de France 2015 - July 4-26 (Stages),

UCI Road World Championship 2014 - Sept 20-27 (Results),

Vuelta a España 2014 - Aug 23-Sept 14 (Results),

Tour de France 2014  - July 5-27 (Results),

Giro d'Italia 2014 - May 9 - June 1 (Results),

More ...

 (cyclingnews.com)

Pauwels: I want to become world champion.

This season Kevin Pauwels has already won four races. The Sunweb rider now has set his sights on a fifth win. "My Sunweb jersey is nice but the rainbow jersey is even more beautiful," he says, revealing his main goal for the rest of the season.

"If I have to choose the fifth victory, it would be the Worlds in Tabor. I want to be world champion. The course suits me and I really want to also wear that jersey among the pros."

Quintana to defend title by beginning his season in Tour de San Luis.

Defending champion Nairo Quintana has been confirmed as starting the 2015 Tour de San Luis, with the Movistar rider deciding to once again begin his season in the Argentinean event.

Although the Colombian’s main goal of the Tour de France will take place over five months later, team manager Eusebio Unzue isn’t ruling out the possibility that his rider could win the race.

Home Wrench: Maintenance misconceptions.

"This isn’t a ‘how to’ guide – those can be found elsewhere – but a series of reflections on our love of the items that help keep our treasured rides running sweetly.

In this edition, I'm covering the most common maintenance misconceptions that I see and hear riders – and some mechanics – doing all the time. While none of these are a cycle crime on a par with wearing socks with SPD sandals, they are easy enough to stop doing."

Elite Turbo Muin trainer.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "A superbly silent and simple route to efficient direct-drive training."

Kappius Components previews ultra-accurate tire pressure gauge.

Fat bike riders and cyclocross racers are often fanatical about tire pressure – and for good reason, as it's arguably the single most important determinant in how those bikes perform in their respective fields. Handheld gauges often offer better accuracy than the ones usually found on floor pumps but Kappius Components has just launched a new hyper-accurate gauge that should get the tech-heads all hot and bothered.

Molly Shaffer Van Houweling sets U.S. hour record.

"Donnons des Elle au velo" - Cyclingfans.com (CF LIVE) Sponsors Women's Cycling Team.

Roche to form part of Team Sky's Grand Tour squad.

Things that make you go hmmmmmmm…

News shorts: Paris-Nice mountain finish revealed, fake Madiot Twitter account.

UCI still waiting for Padova file from CONI, want to see any relevant Astana information.

One week after the UCI announced that its License Commission had decided to give a probational WorldTour license to the Astana team but that it might yet be stripped away if further evidence emerged against the team, the governing body has said that it is still awaiting what could be crucial information in the matter.

Astana came under scrutiny when five riders across two teams tested positive in recent months. In August the brothers Maxim and Valentin Iglinskiy of the WorldTour team were nabbed for EPO, while since then three riders from the Continental team were snared for anabolic androgenic steroids.

They are Kazakhstan’s national champion Ilya Davidenok, Artur Fedosseyev and Victor Okishev. Davidenok had become a stagiaire with the WorldTour team in August.

Van Garderen laments lack of Tour de France time trials.

Despite the lack of a "proper" time trial in next year's Tour de France, BMC Racing's Tejay van Garderen said Wednesday that he believes he can equal or improve his two previous fifth-place finishes in 2015.

"Last year I really felt like I was on the cusp of a real breakthrough of being one of the main riders," the 26-year-old American said from the team's training camp in Denia, Spain.

A Look Back at a Year of Transition on the World Tour.

Team Sky had in many eyes taken the drama out of the Tour de France by guiding Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome to dominant victories in 2012 and 2013 respectively. But the British outfit’s inability to maintain that level of performance in 2014 helped to make it a thrilling year in cycling.

Vincenzo Nibali was the main beneficiary as he emerged from the chaos of crashes during the Grand Boucle — that saw three former winners in Froome, Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck hit the deck and leave the race during the first 10 days — to streak away to victory.

Absalon: I’ve never considered switching to road.

World MTB cross-country champion Julien Absalon has won every title on offer in his sport, but the two-time Olympic champion revealed he has never given a thought to following his former off-road rival Jean-Christophe Péraud into the road scene when the French stars’ paths crossed at the Alpine resort of La Plagne on Tuesday.

Asked if he had ever been tempted to switch disciplines, Absalon told L’Équipe, “Many have done it, but it will never be the case for me. I would lose some of my pleasure if I did.” The five-time world champion added: “In road racing you often have to be patient for six hours before the big guns start to fire. Mountain biking is explosive, it lasts an hour and a half. There’s no dead time.”

Off Season Travels and Adventures.

"This past year I made my debut as a professional road cyclist racing for Team TIBCO. It was a whirlwind year full of new experiences, places, and people and more often than not it still seems totally surreal. I feel as though I have packed 10 years of living into the last 12 months, which gives me a difficult to describe sense of overwhelming gratitude and barely surmountable exhaustion.

While I would not trade the past year for anything, it does feel larger than life. It was time for a break and so, after World Championships in Ponferrada, I packed up my bike and put it away for the first time since I started training in January of 2013.

Aside from a few days here and there that were rest or travel days, and a week of recovery after getting hit by a car, I had not had a day without a bike in 21 months. For almost two years my life had been 100% devoted to racing bikes. There was no balance; just bikes. That was all about to change: six weeks completely free – no bike, no fixed address, no responsibility. Six weeks to reflect, regroup, reconnect and relax."

McQuaid set for key role with new Bradley Wiggins pro team.

Irish cycling agent Andrew McQuaid is set for a management role with the new development team being launched by Bradley Wiggins.

McQuaid, from Co Wicklow, will be a member of a small group that makes up the management of the UCI Continental-ranked team.

Wiggins will be another member of the management set-up as will Robert Dodds, president of the XIX Entertainment company that handles Wiggins affairs.

Be Good to Your Bones.

"A few years back I was in Colorado at Dr. Allen Lim’s Human Cardio Research Laboratory undergoing a battery of tests salient to me as a cyclist. We did Wingates, V02 max, lactate threshold, and pedal-stroke analysis before he had me hop up onto the big white table for what he called “one of the most important tests of all," a bone-density scan.

As the glowing white image of my skeleton flashed up on the monitor, Lim exclaimed, “Man, you have a really thick skull!” It’s an obvious joke, but he wasn’t kidding. My skull is ridiculously thick. Thankfully, so were the rest of my bones, especially my femurs, which glowed white like my skull. Everything but my ribs and collarbone were above average for my age. Those were average. “Keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing,” he said as he handed me a printout of my results. “Many cyclists' bones don’t look this good.”'

Gilbert: My goals are Milan-Sanremo and the Ardennes.

A month ago, the message of Philippe Gilbert was clear: "I want to go back to the Flemish classics. I would also like to do the Omloop and Kuurne again. I missed those races. When you are not there, you think: "Shit! I am not there."" he said back then.
 
Gilbert's teammate Greg Van Avermaet was not excited by the Gilbert's plans. "It's not nice to hear that he wants to be back in Flanders. We will have to find a good solution but I think that the first training camp with the team in December will make things clear," Van Avermaet said earlier this month.

Van Avermaet can make a sigh of relief. At the camp in Spain, Philippe Gilbert has announced that he will again skip the Flemish spring season.

SoCalCross Championships Decided At Santa Cross 2014, Moak and Pacheco Take Series Win.

Despite a late-week pummelling from a hand-wringing Pacific storm that spawned drama throughout California (and caused at least one CX event to be postponed), the final round of the SoCalCross Prestige Series went off as planned. Sort of. Santa Cross was intended to be a doubleheader race weekend, but a sunny Saturday was instead spent draining puddles and rerouting sections of the course to avoid the stickiest situations.

When participants arrived the next day, many wondered what the fuss was all about. The SoCalCross crew had done a yeoman’s job of cleaning things up and keeping it real. Very little mud was to be found, in fact, and after the first couple of races the surface was more akin to Velcro.

Litespeed Ci2.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "Like a tumbler of fine Tennessee whiskey, the Ci2 offers a strong kick and a smooth finish."

Review: The Scott SOLACE 10.

The Scott Solace 10 road bike offers in impressive mix of performance and comfort – two traits that used to be impossible to find together in one bike.   But mix in some technology and smart thinking, and they’re no longer mutually exclusive.  The Solace 10 is a distinct addition to the brand’s line-up alongside its FOIL, Addict, and CR-1.

Europcar’s Difficult Ride.

(pezcyclingnews.com)

In the News: Mexican U23 rider caught with EPO, HGH.

Oleg Tinkov has been having rather a tough time of late. What with the Russian rouble crisis, shares in the colourful Tinkoff-Saxo owner’s bank have, he admits candidly, “gone down the toilet”. Fortunately for cycling’s most redoubtable tycoon, he can still find solace in one of his favorite pastimes; goading Dave Brailsford.

Over the course of the hour or so that we are together, Tinkov variously refers to Team Sky’s general manager as a “hypocrite”, “shallow” and “not the best sport director”, although he is quick to add that he also has huge respect for Brailsford and what he has achieved. What is clear is that Tinkov sees Team Sky as the benchmark by which his own team will be judged. And the conclusion is that they are vulnerable, there for the taking by what he calls his “superteam”.

Riccò describes the Cycling Reform Commission as a joke.

Riccardo Riccò has described the UCI-funded Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC) as a joke after speaking to the doping investigators for seven hours but failing to get a reduction to his 12-year ban.

Riccò revealed that he spoke to the CIRC investigators during the presentation of the Italian version of his biography called Funerale in Giallo – Le Confessioni del Cobra (A Funeral in Yellow - the Confessions of the Cobra) in Milan on Tuesday afternoon.

“I got in touch with the CIRC and went to Lausanne to speak to them early this year. I paid my own way to go there. I told them everything I knew; I gave them names of doctors, directeur sportif and riders who are still involved in the sport. I was led to believe I'd get a 50% cut in my ban because I want to make a comeback as a professional rider. But any reduction was stopped by the Italians. The whole thing was a joke. It seems the rules are applied and interpreted depending on who you are.”

Executive’s Ride Into Sunset Signals Brighter Day for U.S.A. Cycling.

An early holiday gift landed on the doorstep of the sport of cycling last week. It didn’t come wrapped in shiny paper, or decorated with a bow. But a note said it was from Bob Stapleton, the new chairman of U.S.A. Cycling, and now every single clean American cyclist has reason to celebrate.

That gift was the news that Steve Johnson, the president and chief executive of U.S.A. Cycling, will leave his job after the world road cycling championships next fall, concluding nearly a decade as the leader of cycling in the United States. It means that, finally, the man who has been entrenched in the top level of the sport since joining U.S.A. Cycling in 1999 will hop on his bike and ride off into the sunset.

I say finally — and hooray — because it is high time for Johnson to exit the national federation, stage left. Really, he missed his cue a few years ago.

The Secret Pro: Team Bonding, Astana, Unions, and the season.

"The season hasn’t officially started yet but all the riders are attending their team training camps across the globe. Our team has been doing the same and we’ve already spent time getting in big training miles, though we’ve managed to squeeze in a few sneaky beers too.

The days at pre-season training camp are crammed pretty full. We’ll get up and start with core training, then breakfast, followed by cranking out four, five and six hour rides. We’ll get back, have a late lunch and a massage, then do core and stretching work."

What you read on Cycling Central in 2014.

"At Cycling Central we cover all sorts of stories throughout the year. In 2014 we’ve been experimenting with an even greater variety, straying further from professional road cycling than we have in previous years, and we’ve been pleased with the overall results. It’s proved that the interest of our audience is broad.

Professional road cycling still rates, undeniably it’s our bread and butter, but issues closer to your day to day lives; things like cycling safety, helmets, registration, and community have significantly out-performed any of our coverage outside of the Tour de France.

This is what you read in 2014."

All roads lead to Tour de France debut for Wilco Kelderman.

For riders from northern Europe, there is perhaps just one drawback to training in southern Spain in the depths of mid-December. No matter how clear the blue skies above them, their knowledge of the local roads will inevitably be a little hazy.

Wilco Kelderman is one of 11 LottoNL-Jumbo riders who have opted to stay on near Alicante for an extra week after the team’s formal training camp ended at the weekend, and on Tuesday afternoon, he and his cohorts ended up seeing a little more of the Costa Blanca than they had anticipated.

"I meant to do six hours but it ended up being nearer seven, We thought the road was going to be a little bit shorter but it was longer to the last climb than we expected.”

Book excerpt: The first ‘MountainBike’.

"A few weeks after we returned to San Francisco from the race in Crested Butte, Gary Fisher called me up and asked me to come over to his cottage in Fairfax. He told me that Tom Ritchey had made some more frames like the one he was riding, and he wanted to show them to me. When I got there, Gary opened the trunk of his battered BMW and showed me the frames. There were nine of them nestled in there and they were as beautifully made as my Colnago. Gary explained that Tom had become very interested in this new kind of bike and had made a few more."

Best GPS devices for cycling.

"GPS-equipped cycle computers are becoming increasingly popular, with both road cyclists and mountain bikers using them for social media applications as much as for navigation and training purposes.

Brands such as Garmin, Magellan (Mio in the UK), Cateye and Bryton offer a wide range of bike GPS units, across a range of price points. BikeRadar has tested many units from these brands and more, but we've collated the best of the bunch."

Scott Addict Team and Solace 10, Part I.

"Carbon fiber has re-ordered our expectations for bicycle frames and forks. Today we have frames that weigh what some steel forks used to weigh. It has given brands a palette from which to create visually striking bikes, bikes that trumpet their brand even at a distance. And we’ve learned that what we used to think was stiff for a steel bicycle frame wouldn’t be considered acceptable in carbon.

Many of these changes in our idea about what’s possible, what is achievable, what we as consumers have even come to expect can be traced back to a significant engineering milestone."

(redkiteprayer.com)

12 Days of Dig: Day 4.

"And you thought the only good beer was from Belgium? Think again. Go East for a change with your beer choices. We sampled a compact Nissan truckload of Asian beer and picked our favorite six. Broaden some holiday horizons this season and mix some of these beauties in with the Duvel, Palm and egg nog."

Bottom's Up: Best $120 Bib Shorts.

Because of its impeccable tailoring, Giordana is among those apparel companies sought by cyclists willing to pay top dollar for the best. With the Fusion bibs, the Italian brand delivers its usual quality in a package that more of us can afford. Our testers praised the snug-but-not-restrictive fit, comfortable chamois, and lightweight fabric.

"These shorts were tight and compressive," said one. "Everything is in the right place when you're riding." Aiding the fit are the excellent leg grippers, which kept the shorts glued to our quads without pinching—just one of many details that made it harder to distinguish the Fusion from Giordana's pricier models. (bicycling.com)

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