“Cask strength stupid”: Fans react to suggestion Tour de France riders “lack the strength to race a proper bicyclist” on a normal bike; Egan Bernal reportedly mulling retirement + more on the live blog
Straw man arguments
What would Valtteri Bottas have to say about this? Comfortably the most absurd opinion we’ve seen in months…
Maybe this person’s experience of cycling is solely on an e-bike, where they’ve become accustomed to a motor doing most of the work and neutralising the differential of physical human capacity.
I would link to the post only it’s been deleted. Thankfully, the replies remain, some earnest, some silly…
“I was a pretty decent amateur cyclist. Reached the highest pinnacle of amateur road cycling – USAC cat 1. I’ve finished on the podium at an age-based national championship. I’ve raced UCI races. And in my prime, the power (watts/kg) that Tadej holds for an hour …. I could hold for exactly 4 minutes. Tadej, Remco, Demi, etc are utter freaks of nature.”
“Great news! You can literally go buy the exact bike the fastest rider in the world rides, and the historical times for all the courses are easily available, so you can test this theory yourself. Let us know how it goes!”
“That’s industrial-grade dumb and reflects almost zero knowledge of pro cycling. Or exercise science.”
“Clearly, you haven’t seen what happens when a world tour pro shows up on a random Strava segment.”
“Bradley Wiggins did a documentary about training on Mount Teide in Tenerife. Two chaps on his crew were pretty good club cyclists and did the climb in 58 and 59 minutes. Wiggins did it in 35, which is about how long it took me to drive up. TdF riders are supermen.”
“Can you show me on the doll where the professional cyclist hurt you?”
And on it goes, our Monday morning chuckle sorted!
Incidentally, Valtteri Bottas finished his ‘commute’ from Kuala Lumpa to Singapore yesterday. I’m aware when we first posted this there was a suggestion in the comments that I was deploying some hyperbole. But I maintain that riding more than 400km off-road in four days between Grand Prixes is insane.
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Pity the Grand Prix clashes with the Gravel World Championships being held this weekend, otherwise you’d count on the Finn making another appearance with partner Tiffany Cromwell…
Transfer talk: Hayter's new deal, Bernal on the way out?
It’s the time of the season where we talk about jerseys, riders and the interchanging of the two. We’ll start with a British transfer that was confirmed yesterday. Ethan Hayter, after two seasons at Soudal Quick-Step, has signed a contract with Pinarello Q36.5.
Now 28, the Brit has refined his reputation as a time trial specialist, winning British national titles and coming within a second of winning the opening time trial of this year’s Vuelta a Espana. He’s also a four-time world champion on the track and brings a decent kick in a reduced bunch finish.
“I’d describe myself as a bit of an all-rounder. The last couple of years have been more focused on time trials, but I’ve also sprinted from small groups and I really enjoy harder races and stage races.
“At the Vuelta, after coming so close in the time trial, it was nice just to get stuck into the racing and go for it. That’s something I want to keep doing.
“Pinarello Q36.5 was one of the teams I really wanted to join. From the outside, it looked very well organised and like a team that was progressing really nicely. I know a few of the riders already and I felt it would be a really good fit for me.”
Best of luck to him. Moving into the speculation side of things, there are reports suggesting Filippo Ganna could leave Netcompany-Ineos for Lidl-Trek, despite having a contract for next season.
The German team have brought forward the retirement of a couple of their riders to create space on their roster, and Daniel Benson says the move is more likely than unlikely at this point. Potentially aiding that move is the similar mid-contract transfer of Giulio Ciccone, he of “photo-finish-gate” from Lidl-Trek to Pinarello-Q36.5. Quite a knot to untangle there.
But by far and away Benson’s biggest scoop is the suggestion that Egan Bernal is considering retirement. The Colombian Giro and Tour winner has a contract offer from Netcompany-Ineos, but has not been able to recapture his best results since sustaining life-threatening injuries when he crashed into a stationary bus in 2022.
> Egan Bernal’s recovery from life-threatening horror crash detailed in medical research paper
Still, the Colombian did eventually make a full recovery and has top-10’d Grand Tours whilst winning the occasional stage. But retirement at 29 was not something many people were expecting. One to watch!
Good infrastructure, bad infrastructure
Active travel giveth…
The South Leytonstone Low Traffic Neighbourhood in Waltham Forest looks excellent.
Early benefits show:
🚗🚗76% reduction in traffic
🚲🚲172% increase in cycling
🚸🚸safer speedsAnd I love the sustainable drainage & planting 💚☘️🌱🌳🌹🌻🌷
— Will Norman (@willnorman.co.uk) 8 October 2026 at 10:20
Active travel taketh away…
In case you missed it!
Cor what’s Jack like eh! So swept up in a world of number plates and horrific AI memes he neglected to share the big news of yesterday… that Primoz Roglic won a bike race!
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Roglic claimed his first European championships in the time trial by beating Bruno Armirail by six seconds in his native Slovenia. Coupled with a Vuelta podium, it’s not bad going for a 36-year-old who was hit by a driver two months ago.
In the women’s race there was distinctly less jeopardy, with two-time reigning world champion Marlen Reusser triumphing over Demi Vollering by 23 seconds despite a hilly course.
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Reusser’s win however, coupled with Vollering’s triumph in the road race, means the European Champion’s jersey will be entirely invisible in the women’s peloton next year. Not sure that’s quite what the race organisers would have wanted.
Today there’s just one bit of racing, the Gran Piemonte. Defending champion Isaac del Toro returns as favourite with World Champion Brandon McNulty on his team, with Romain Gregoire and Giulio Pellizzari among his rivals, or Michael Matthews if he can hang on.
One final bit of racing housekeeping, today’s race is organised by RCS, who also organise the Giro d’Italia and Il Lombardia, so hopefully we won’t be seeing scenes similar to earlier in the week…
Aero MTB is here!
No one ask a Surrey-based rider what they think of this…
It’s a brave new world, and I don’t know if I like it.
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@mdavidford exactly, looks pretty spacious - why look, you can fit a bike through sideways.
Is it just me or is Roglic riding an invisible unicycle in that podium pic?
@OnYerBike But that would be to forget that that person may have built the company up themselves in the first place and provided jobs for all those people in this case for many tears even while making a loss for some of the time up until that point likely paid out of previous profits or their own money. And hopefully they will go on to continue providing some employment. Alternatively they could have not bothered and lived off the income from their previous venture. I think the former is better.
Don't know what that reddit user's complaining about - at least it isn't a puddle full of leaf mulch with a bush growing halfway across it, like it would be round here.
@NickSprink 30 seconds! is that all, I can do it for nearly 3 minutes on one of our local descents ;-)
World tour races are averaging around 42 - 44 kph. I too can cycle that fast. For about 30 seconds...
Erm, it was 300km a couple of days ago. I know inflation is persistently high, but I didn't realise it was that bad.
Re the TDF Vs ordinary cyclist claim. This sort of thing happens a lot. Probably because elite sports people often make it look so easy. It is impossible to appreciate the talent and skill required until you try it yourself. A few weeks ago a supporter of my local div 1 football club commented on BBC Sports HYS that their new winger was fast enough to win an Olympic 200m medal. He was making this judgement by comparing the winger to other div 1 footballers. In reality he would probably not make the GB women's team. About 10 years ago I took part in a club group turbo training session. Part of this entailed a 12 minute sustained effort. Afterwards the fastest time triallist of us said how pleased he was with his average power (I can't remember the figure, but I think it was in the range 325 - 350 watts), to which the coach replied "Excellent. An average TDF rider would only be able to sustain that for 3- 4 hours!"
It always rankles when a company goes into administration, staff lose their jobs, creditors go unpaid, but then the CEO/managing director (the very person who led the company into that position) always seems to be the one person who emerges have done very well for themselves out of the whole affair.
I had the misfortune of hearing some of Iain Dale's absurd item on cargo bikes. The level of disdain, ridicule and mockery was off the scale, with any counter views being dismissed out of hand. Of course Hina Bokhari was right, cargo bikes are an option, but in our car obsessed society, being right is worth nothing when talking to petrolheads, and little things like facts won't change their minds. I was tempted to ring in myself, having done my job using a backfiets for seven years, but experience has taught me that LBC don't want to hear from the likes of me. I'm not sure, but I think they make money from keeping people hanging on, which is all that's ever happened to me. As for cyclists being entitled and smug, all I can say is how fortunate it is that those two characteristics never affect drivers: or Jeremy Vine's guests.
7 thoughts on ““Cask strength stupid”: Fans react to suggestion Tour de France riders “lack the strength to race a proper bicyclist” on a normal bike; Egan Bernal reportedly mulling retirement + more on the live blog”
Re the TDF Vs ordinary cyclist claim.
This sort of thing happens a lot. Probably because elite sports people often make it look so easy. It is impossible to appreciate the talent and skill required until you try it yourself.
A few weeks ago a supporter of my local div 1 football club commented on BBC Sports HYS that their new winger was fast enough to win an Olympic 200m medal. He was making this judgement by comparing the winger to other div 1 footballers. In reality he would probably not make the GB women’s team.
About 10 years ago I took part in a club group turbo training session. Part of this entailed a 12 minute sustained effort. Afterwards the fastest time triallist of us said how pleased he was with his average power (I can’t remember the figure, but I think it was in the range 325 – 350 watts), to which the coach replied “Excellent. An average TDF rider would only be able to sustain that for 3- 4 hours!”
Erm, it was 300km a couple of days ago. I know inflation is persistently high, but I didn’t realise it was that bad.
World tour races are averaging around 42 – 44 kph. I too can cycle that fast. For about 30 seconds…
@NickSprink 30 seconds! is that all, I can do it for nearly 3 minutes on one of our local descents 😉
Don’t know what that reddit user’s complaining about – at least it isn’t a puddle full of leaf mulch with a bush growing halfway across it, like it would be round here.
@mdavidford exactly, looks pretty spacious – why look, you can fit a bike through sideways.
Is it just me or is Roglic riding an invisible unicycle in that podium pic?