Cycling News & Blog Articles

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CyclingTips Podcast: Tinkoff’s naked tax evasion

This week on the CyclingTips podcast…

There was some excellent cyclocross over the weekend. Oleg Tinkoff is back in the news. We really want to know what is going on at Team DSM. And industry leaders’ sign the Shift Cycling Culture climate commitment. 

In the Nerd Nugget James has some thoughts on the dominance of Rad Power electric bikes outside the cycling-crazy bubble. 

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Nerd Alert podcast: All of our bikes and parts should be repairable

The Right to Repair movement primarily targets the electronics industry, but the concepts behind it strike at the heart of cycling, too: Products should be designed to be repairable, all small parts should be made available — and stay available — manuals, tools, service procedures should be accessible to everyone, and it shouldn’t cost more to repair something than it costs to replace it. In fairness, it’s not all that bad in this respect as far as the bike industry is concerned, but it could be better.

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Freewheeling Podcast: A Canadian in Europe

Abby chatted with Tokyo 2020 Olympian and double Canadian National Champion Alison Jackson about her 2021 “bucket list” season, how she got there, and what she hopes to accomplish in the future.

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CyclingTips Podcast: What is your water bottle count?

This week on the CyclingTips podcast…

There’s a little bit of transfer news, a little bit of racing, and a whole lot of Nerding about. 

James poses the question: how many water bottles do you have at home?

Plus a snippet from last weeks Nerd Alert podcast where the Nerds dreamed of running the cycling industry. 

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Nerd Alert podcast: If we ran the bike industry…

The Nerds make a living nitpicking and critiquing, instead of designing and creating. So what would we change if we could? What products and features would we keep, and what would we get rid of? What would the bikes look like?

Be warned: the crew might have gotten a little more animated than usual on this one.

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Freewheeling Podcast: We can't compare the Tour de France to the Tour de France Femmes

Abby, Loren and Amy chat Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift route and debate the dangers of comparing the new women’s race to the most popular cycling event in the world.

Abby also caught up with Kate Veronneau, the Director of Women’s Strategy and Content at Zwift, to talk about Zwift’s four year deal with the ASO to support the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and the growth of women’s cycling. 

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CyclingTips Podcast: Tour routes and an American crit fiasco

Dane and Abby break down the men’s and women’s Tour de France routes. Caley puts the USA Crits fiasco into context. Plus, there have been some WorldTour team developments. 

For the Nerd Nugget, James has an important question for CyclingTips Podcast listeners…

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Nerd Alert podcast: Risks vs. rewards of internal cable routing

After several weeks on the road, the Nerds are finally back in the studio!

We’ve got a lot to talk about this week, too, like why the same kinds of fork recalls seem to be happening over and over again, what Pon’s recent takeover of Dorel Sports means for consumers and retail, and a recap of the cool stuff James saw at the recent Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, California.

We also start digging through the giant pile of Ask a Mechanic questions we’ve accumulated, like if you can run road tubeless tires without sealant, what chain lube to use if you’re lazy, and whether you should grease your freehub body before installing a cassette. Make sure to have some popcorn handy!

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From the Top: Building jmX0.5 Trainer Coach - A.K.A Zwift

Indoor training has been around for longer than I can remember, but it was in 2014 when Zwift came along that it changed this market forever. It came into the world with bold ambitions, reimagined the space and what it could become, and has grown the market to a size that nobody could have imagined.

Some of the earliest pioneers in the indoor virtual world space were the likes of Computrainer and Tacx back in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. But they never really delivered on the promise making indoor training much more enjoyable. They can’t be blamed for lack of vision or not trying – the technology wasn’t even there at the time. Social networks didn’t exist, multi player online games weren’t around, broadband speeds were slow and wireless protocols such as ANT+ and BTLE hadn’t been invented yet. 

But, in 2010 when a gaming software developer in Southern California named Jon Mayfield began tinkering with his kinetic trainer and finding ways for it to communicate with a virtual world he built, he had no idea how big this would become.

Thank you to Malcolm Bloedel for producing this episode and Ashley de Neef for composing the music.

Show notes:

Jon Mayfield’s first post on Slowtwitch:

“Being in SoCal I don’t get to use my trainer that much, but when I do it sucks. Over the last 2 winters I spent a little time writing a 3d program to make training less dull, and I’ve logged quite a few hours on it over the last 2 winters. I figured it’d be worth showing, since it’s kinda neat and I think this crowd would get a kick out of it.

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Freewheeling Podcast: If a race happens and there is no coverage, did it really happen?

Amy, Loren, and Abby break down all six stages and the major talking points from the AJ Bell Women’s Tour. Marianne Vos is back on the cyclocross scene and back on the top step. And UAE Team Emirates is picking up a top women’s team, but is that a good thing?

In September, José Been spoke with Olympic Champion Anna Kiesenhofer about her gold medal ride and how she got there.

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CyclingTips Podcast: Why was Nairo in a chameleon suit?

Dane fills us in on why Nairo Quintana wore a chameleon costume.

Il Lombardia provided some interesting talking points regarding Deceuninck-Quick Step’s tactics and Tadej Pogacar’s season as a whole. 

The Women’s Tour was a sprinters delight, and Demi Vollering took another step up as the future of Dutch cycling. 

And for Nerd Nugget, Specialized will recall their Tarmac SL7 bikes.

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Freewheeling Podcast: Hats off to Trek-Segafredo

The women of Freewheeling get together to talk about the first-ever Paris-Roubaix Femmes, what made the race special, and what they hope to see in the future. They also briefly look ahead to the AJ Bell Women’s Tour, the final WorldTour stage race of the season taking place in Great Britain this week. 

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CyclingTips Podcast: The tactics (and mistakes) of Roubaix

Did Mathieu van der Poel pull too much? Were Deceuninck fools to run clincher tires? Caley, Abby, Dane, Ronan, and James break down the tactics and tech of Paris-Roubaix, from big wins to silly mistakes. 

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Freewheeling Podcast: The way Italy rode at the World Championships was *chef's kiss*

Loren, Abby, and Gracie dissect the road race at the World Championships in Belgium and look ahead to the inaugural Paris-Roubaix Femmes on October 2nd! 

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Nerd Alert podcast: It turns out even pro teams can’t get bikes or parts, either

Sorry, folks, we know our usual Nerd Alert schedule has been a little off-kilter, but we figured it’d be better to shuffle things around to accommodate the World Championships — and next week, Paris-Roubaix! Thanks for your patience, and rest assured, there’s more Nerd Alert to come sooner than later!

This week’s episode takes The Nerds to the UCI Road World Championships in Belgium!

Caley, Ronan, and Shoddy scoured the team pit areas for all the shiny new bits, and they found what looks to be new hookless-compatible GP5000 tubeless tires from Continental and some interesting new rollers from Wahoo Fitness.

Worlds is always a weird one for the mechanics given the mix of national and trade teams, and it’s even weirder this time around. We’ve all grown accustomed at this point to not being able to find bikes or parts, but if it makes you feel any better, it turns out that even top pro riders and teams can’t get them, either. A Roubaix win on Shimano 105??? Stranger things have happened.

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CyclingTips Podcast: Dissecting two stunning world championships

The CyclingTips Podcast break down the men’s and women’s elite World Championship time trials and look ahead to the road races next weekend.

Elisa Balsamo and Julian Alaphilippe capped a wild Worlds week and Caley, Abby, Ronan, and Shoddy are in Flanders to dissect two stunning world championship races. 

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Freewheeling Podcast: It's a wide-open Worlds

Gracie, Loren, Amy and Abby get together to chat about the recent World Championship time trial and the upcoming road race. 

There’s been a number of transfers lately that look promising new homes for some riders. 

Wade Wallace spoke with Farid Noori about the crisis in Afghanistan. If you would like to donate more information can be found here.

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CyclingTips Podcast: From Bruges

The CyclingTips Podcast break down the men’s and women’s elite World Championship time trials and look ahead to the road races next weekend.

Wade Wallace spoke with Farid Noori about the crisis in Afghanistan. If you would like to donate more information can be found here.

Ronan was on the ground at the time trial and noticed a few things viewers at home may have missed.

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Nerd Alert podcast: 3T’s homegrown Italian robots and the future of carbon fiber

3T recently wound down its carbon fiber frame production in Asia and brought it in-house to Italy. Manufacturing frames the same way would have prohibitory expensive with Italian labor costs, though, so 3T instead developed an entirely new, and highly automated, process that not only dramatically slashes the amount of manual labor required, but also supposedly makes the frames better. 

What’s the secret sauce in 3T’s new frame building technology, and what are the company’s plans for it moving forward? In this episode of the CyclingTips Nerd Alert podcast, we sit down — virtually, of course — with 3T co-owner Gerard Vroomen, who gives us the full scoop on what this technology is, how it’s different, and what its future might look like.

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Freewheeling Podcast: The women's WT peloton needs more development pathways

Lauren Kitchen joins Abby for some pancakes and a conversation about her career, retirement, and what the peloton is lacking while simultaniously growing rapidly. 

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