Welcome to your Wednesday live blog, with Jack Sexty, Simon MacMichael and the rest of the team.
Live blog: Peloton (who threatened to sue cycling fan over trademark) sued for copyright breach, bike shop staff assaulted in Brompton theft, people protected bike lane vid, nasty crash at Nokere Koerse + more
All today’s news from the site and beyond…
Wed, Mar 20, 2019 19:23
SUMMARY
20 March 2019, 19:23
Royal Mail e-trikes are on the road
We’re working with industry to reduce road danger, congestion and air pollution whilst keeping goods moving in London
A pioneering trial of zero emission e-trikes by @RoyalMail could reduce the number of vans on London’s streets and help to clean up the capital’s toxic air pic.twitter.com/vSTMLI0KC0
— Transport for London (@TfL) March 19, 2019
Eight have been deployed across three cities, and if successful Royal Mail will extend the scheme. Read more on eBikeTips.
20 March 2019, 19:23
It's officially the first day of spring...
…so what are you waiting for, get on yer bikes and ride!
20 March 2019, 19:23
Dvid Millar defends INEOS sponsorship, but cycling world is still divided on the ethics
This is the best news professional cycling could have right now – if they’d shut down it would’ve been back to the dark ages – and chapeau on losing the biggest sponsor in professional cycling and replacing it with the biggest sponsor in professional cycling @franmillar et al https://t.co/efqVMjzq0W
— David Millar (@millarmind) March 19, 2019
Millar says cycling would “return to the dark ages” if its biggest team ceased to exist, and congratulated them for scooping such a big sponsorship deal; however many commentators on social media can’t get over the irony of the team being backed by a chemicals company, especially as Team Sky back the Ocean Rescue movement that advocates a reduction in plastic waste. What do you think?
So Team Sky becomes Team Ineos now. Changing bad publicity to worse publicity, the controversial team is now financially supported by a petrochemical company owned by a Brexiteer, living in Monaco. You can’t script this. https://t.co/UjdqYpWbuS
— Roy (@RoyagonInfinity) March 19, 2019
BBC News – @TeamSky set to name new sponsor as (fracking company) #Ineos owned by Sir Jim Ratcliffe
This is such a bad decision
They really haven’t thought this through, have they?!https://t.co/Xz4yaf7OUc
— Craig Bennett (@CraigBennett3) March 18, 2019
“Fossil fuel pollution=largest killer of people cycling”
It’s hard to imagine a less appropriate owner of a cycling team than @INEOS. Air pollution, a lorry fleet. It’s like Katie Hopkins sponsoring the Refugee World Cup. https://t.co/wbXtYCpVMJ
— Simon Whitmore (@betterberunning) March 19, 2019
20 March 2019, 19:23
Still going strong...
“My Shimano cycling shoes are 27 years old. That’s right, I got them in 1992, trained for a year, did several years of triathlon (Olympic distance) while training 6 days a week, and have ridden three times a week since then.
Thanks to Aaron Burns for sharing this photo with us! pic.twitter.com/wN9xLqsIbJ
— RideShimano (@RideShimano) March 19, 2019
It seems Shimano’s triathlon shoes from the early 90’s were certainly built to last… if you like your shoes to look a little fresher then why not consider your choices by perusing our guide to performance road shoes.
20 March 2019, 19:23
Liam's head is 4,928 Skittle-sized
Hexo Helmets came into the office a few weeks ago to scan Liam’s head for one of their new 3D printed helmets which is coming in for testing.
The results are in and his head has a volume of 4,928 Skittles (that’s 308 fun-sized bags), a weight of 5.421kg (full of good ideas) and a roundness index of 1.2, whatever that means.
You can find out more here – hexohelmets.com
20 March 2019, 19:23
Toughest bike race in the World? Mike Cuming explains how he "obliged" after rider asked him to warm his hands during comfort break
It may not be the best-known race on the calendar but the Tour of Normandie certainly has some of the best stories from those tough enough to take it on.
Madison Genesis riders have been sharing their stories ahead of this year’s edition of the race and without doubt, the highlight comes from Mike Cuming:
If you want to check out tales from some other riders then you can read the whole thing here: https://www.madisongenesis.co.uk/tour-de-normandie-the-world-s-toughest-bike-race
Now, where is that meme about cyclists being tougher than footballers again??
20 March 2019, 19:23
Team Sky jerseys = vintage MAMIL
Spare a thought for the designers at @CastelliCycling today. They’ve come up with the best Sky kit since the team was launched 9 years ago… and it’s not going to worn outside Richmond Park from 1 May.
— Felix Lowe (@saddleblaze) March 19, 2019
20 March 2019, 19:23
Staff assaulted as thieves steal Brompton from London bike shop
20 March 2019, 19:23
Video: Take a look at yesterday's people protected bike lane on London's Old Street
Yesterday, campaigners from Cycle Islington and Active Travel Now formed a people protected bike lane on London’s Old Street calling for it to be made safer for cyclists – with Islington Council confirming only on Monday its plans to reduce the danger posed by motor vehicles, but work not beginning until 2021.
Our news editor Simon MacMichael went along yesterday and rode through the people protected bike lane, together with miniature schnauzer Elodie in the basket of their Elephant Bike – the sight of all that hi-vis making her a little bit excited, as you can hear.
Make the lane – #MakeTheLane pic.twitter.com/1jFPT2qXiZ
— filter more streets (@iambrianjones) March 20, 2019
And here’s what it looked like from their point of view – thanks to Sean Howes of Cycle Islington for the action camera loan.
20 March 2019, 19:23
The fastest bike for an hour?
This is the bike of Victor Campenaerts who is taking on the hour record next month.
The Ridley track frame is paired with double Campagnolo Ghibli Pista wheels, Vittoria tyres and what looks to be a 3D printed cockpit.
The gear looks huge so it’ll be interesting to see what setup he uses in the thin air at the Aguascalientes velodrome in Mexico. Campenaerts is currently on fine form having just won the TT at Tirreno-Adriatico.
The question is, can he beat the 54.526km set by Wiggins in 2015? Time will tell.
20 March 2019, 19:23
Thank god Eddie's wearing a helmet (to prevent damage to the tarmac)
Hopefully no drivers will take issue with 2018’s world’s strongest man Eddie Hall commandeering the road either, they will most likely come off worse! Hall was an elite swimmer before he started competing in strongman, but looks like he now turns to cycling when he needs to shift some pounds.
20 March 2019, 19:23
Nasty Crash in Nokere Koerse Sprint Finish
Chaos on the #NokereKoerse cobbles as Cees Bol takes a much-needed victory for @TeamSunweb pic.twitter.com/I7TtA1niXp
— Eurosport UK (@Eurosport_UK) March 20, 2019
Today’s race in Belgium, that ends with an uphill cobbled sprint to the line ended with several riders hitting the cobbles hard.
Mathieu van der Poel looked to be in the worst state with concerned teammates staying with him before he was loaded into an ambulance. It wasn’t the ideal start to his cobbled campaign, but thankfully initial reports suggest there are no broken bones.
The other riders that came down included Trek-Segafredo’s Matteo Moschetti who has a badly pulled calf while Floris Gerts was taken away in a neck brace.
20 March 2019, 19:23
Whodathunkit?
Building cycling infrastructure in “Building cycling infrastructure gets more people cycling” shock https://t.co/XfINuAHcNA
— Mark Treasure (@AsEasyAsRiding) March 20, 2019
20 March 2019, 19:23
Peloton, who threatened to sue cycling fan over trademark ... get sued for $150m over breaching copyright
The at-home cycling studio brand’s intellectual property lawyers must be trousering lots of the green folding stuff at the moment …
— Sherine (@SherineUnk) March 20, 2019
Twitter user @Trudgin spotted the inconsistency …
Are these the dudes that tried to trademark the word “Peloton”? You’d have thought they understood copyright?
— Trudgin (@Trudgin) March 20, 2019
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Jack is group editor across road.cc, off.road.cc and ebiketips, overseeing all three sites in the F-At Digital group to make sure everything’s up to scratch. He’s been writing about cycling and multisport for over a decade, arriving at road.cc via 220 Triathlon Magazine in 2017. He worked across all areas of road.cc including tech, news and video, and also contributed to eBikeTips before being named editor of road.cc in 2021 (much to his surprise). Jack has been hooked on cycling since his student days, and currently has a Trek 1.2 for winter riding, a beloved Bickerton folding bike for getting around town, and an extra beloved custom Ridley Helium SLX for fantasising about going fast in his stable. Jack has never won a bike race, but does have a master’s degree in print journalism, and two Guinness World Records for pogo sticking (it’s a long story).
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Latest Comments
mark1a 8 minutes ago
@Backladder Oh I think I can guess - the nearest indoor velodrome to road.cc HQ looks to be some distance away in Wales, whereas Odd Down Cycle Track (where this test was conducted) is just 2 miles away.
Cugel 11 minutes ago
There are a number of causes of "the divide between motorists and cyclists". Only one is to do with the technology (of bicycles and cars) and that's the nature of the car, which is designed to induce the sort of dangerous and careless behaviours that providing humans with a lot of power and glamour fetches out of us. Other causes are much more insidious - A culture of hyper-individualism bordering on solipsism, with violently ultra-selfish and aggressive anti-heroes being promoted in every mass media channel as the ideal. A "news" media that overwhelmingly seeks, creates and offers pariahs and scapegoats to the rabid individualists, which pariahs and scapegoats includes all kinds of those perceived as less powerful and therefore easy victims, including cyclists. The near complete lack of any curb upon the dangerous antics of vast numbers of media-maddened motorists by the forces of law and order, many of whom are actually members themselves of the mass media maddened motorist ilk. ******** No amount of a more rational discourse about active travel or the means of making it safer will change these root causes of the vast numbers of deaths and maiming due to inept, incompetent and deliberately violent antics of vast numbers of motorists allowed their dangerous "weapons of choice". Yet many other highly damaging aspects of modern societies would be solved by a much more effective curbing of mass media mob-building and goading along with a serious attempt to prevent motorists and a whole range of other damagers from behaving as badly as so many do. It'll not happen, of course. Large and powerful elements of the modern world obtain far too much ultra-riches and power from current conditions for them to allow any significant change. And vast numbers of the population have long had their minds, attitudes and behaviours captured and directed by various oligarchical monsters and their mass media propaganda horns. About the only chance of safe active travel becoming extant is for the population at large to become mostly too poor to afford a car, ironically one other likely outcome of the machinations of those same power and money-mad monsters that have created the car-issue in the first place. Their need for zero-sum socio-economic arrangements degrades everything, including the wallet-contents of the masses.
Rendel Harris 29 minutes ago
@Astralstroll The hierarchy of road users does not mean priority of road users except in certain circumstances, e.g. stopping to let pedestrians cross junctions before turning. It doesn't mean that cyclists have priority over motor vehicles at all times any more than the pedestrians have priority over cyclists at all times. It certainly doesn't mean that you have priority in the circumstances you describe; personally, unless the driver is being a complete dick, on a narrow country lane I accept that it is easier for me to turn around and go back to the nearest passing place, which is never that far if you're on a bike, than for a tractor or other large vehicle to reverse back down the road for my benefit.
Backladder 30 minutes ago
If you were spending that much money on the device the obvious thing to do is to book a couple of hours in a velodrome for testing in a stable environment, I can't understand why Road.cc tried to do it outdoors.
kinderje 32 minutes ago
@chrisonabike 'Minimisation' please!
wtjs 52 minutes ago
@Astralstroll The Hierarchy of Road Users, announced with great fanfares in 2022, has been rendered into complete fiction by the attitude of the police: there is this hierarchy/ priority list but we don't take it seriously and if drivers ignore it we don't care! The same applies to the ludicrous notice of close-passing - No KSI'd cyclist = No Offence ttps://upride.cc/incident/lwa190_minicooper_hierarchy/
chrisonabike 1 hour ago
Hope Barcelona keep the transport improvements (they've been making for a while) coming! Better streets, more infra to help active travel where necessary. And while it's a major investment (though can be lower operating cost than busses) maybe more trams where they can. That may be more effective in making places active travel friendly and replacing taxis than mass public bike hire. They've a good start with 6 lines already.
chrisonabike 1 hour ago
I think this is a positive story. They're not getting rid of public hire bikes - they're expanding their in-house one. They're merely kicking out cowboys who've shown they've a lack of interest in the game they claim to be playing. It seems logical that companies whose business model is to extract (venture capital) money by invading public space are even less likely to make the efforts to keep things in order than a local "in house" scheme. (After all the "bikes and riding" part of these schemes always *costs* money, they don't generate it.) So not surprising their experience shows those firms are not particularly motivated to follow the rules - especially when scrapping for "market share". It's nice the European Cyclists’ Federation is thinking about tourists also (i hesitate to say "follow the money...") - as they note, where it's safe to cycle locals will largely get their own bikes. Tourists aren't going to stop coming because lack of public bike share - I think this is mostly a "nice to have" ("hey - why don't we go on one of those bikes there? ").
chrisonabike 2 hours ago
Harm minimization - at least they're not driving...
Gm_Crop 10 hours ago
I'll counter that by saying the Bryton 750se I have drives me nuts at times. Inconsistantly picks up on routes created on Komoot and the app re-syncs every few seconds when trying to set up the device and sends me back to the home screen. The most infuriating one is that I turned live track on. Once. It now won't turn off and repeatedly flags up the live track is starting, and then disconnecting every few seconds whilst riding. I haven't timed it but it wouldn't suprise me if 10-20% of the time the the screen is covered with an error message. That's been about 6 weeks now. Other than that it's great :/
6 thoughts on “Live blog: Peloton (who threatened to sue cycling fan over trademark) sued for copyright breach, bike shop staff assaulted in Brompton theft, people protected bike lane vid, nasty crash at Nokere Koerse + more”
Congratulations to Team Ineos
Congratulations to Team Ineos, I wish it well representing Monaco, with the best riders from Monaco and now a local owner too. I just wish we had something similar in the UK.
@ madison genises……..
@ madison genesis………seriously dudes its not hard or tough to piss on someones hands.Buy your riders some decent gloves.
john1967 wrote:
either that or design the domestiques’ bib shorts with a rear flap so the lead rider can at least stick his cold hands between their butt-cheeks.
Eddie Hall,
Eddie Hall,
doing his bit to make car drivers hate us even more…
PP
Eddie Hall,
Eddie Hall,
doing his bit to make car drivers hate us even more…
PP
Who’s going to tell that
Who’s going to tell that Eddie Hall that he’s a woos for riding an ebike?? A beast indeed!