Welcome to Friday’s live blog, with Jack Sexty, Simon MacMichael and the rest of the team.
Live blog: Chris Froome shares photo from training camp; Someone is trying to sell this ‘bike stand’ on Facebook Marketplace; Derry judge says some roundabouts “too big and complicated” to man who hit cyclist; Gino D’Acampo rides Bianchi e-road bike +more
All today’s news from the site and beyond…
Fri, Jan 10, 2020 22:55
SUMMARY
10 January 2020, 22:55
Unfortunate...
Another cyclist with their eyes closed pic.twitter.com/EXEALJDKzG
— Thos Major (@ThosMajor) January 9, 2020
10 January 2020, 22:55
That pontoon might need extending a bit?
Here’s the map of the Belgian #CXNATS venue and track. pic.twitter.com/H9M70NiPMv
— Bill Schieken | CXHAIRS Media (@CXHairs) January 9, 2020
Unless the Belgian national cyclocross championships have now introduced a swim section, either the course or this map may need a redesign…
10 January 2020, 22:55
Mud biker?
Why do we call ourselves mountain bikers when the majority of us have never been down a mountain….I’m going to call myself a gentle slope biker from now on. #mtb #mtbtalk
— Andy (@Andyfragglemtb) January 9, 2020
It’s true that ‘road cyclist’ is largely a more accurate description, unless you’re a mountain biker who genuinely rides up and down mountains. As a regular Bristol and Bath railway path commuter, I am now a proud path biker…
10 January 2020, 22:55
Gino D'Acampagnolo?
Well actually, Gino was probably the only one not using the famous Italian groupset as he headed out with Treviglio locals who were kitted out in vintage kit and Bianchi bikes, while he rode one of their new Aria e-bike models in jeans and a shirt.
Treviglio is the location of Bianchi’s famous headquarters, and the convicted house burglar-turned TV chef paid a visit to the factory as part of his new ITV series, ‘Gino’s Italian Escape’. He also stopped by Milan to check out some cocktail bars, and we were also treated to footage of D’Acampo licking a huge wooden stirring spoon used to whip up fresh Stracciatella gelato in Bergamo.
10 January 2020, 22:55
Definitely true...
‘The consensus of opinion is increasing overwhelmingly day by day that bicycle riding produces in the female a distinct orgasm’.
– from an editorial in the Canadian journal, The Dominion Medical Monthly (1896). pic.twitter.com/elDymAHDYN
— Whores of Yore (@WhoresofYore) August 11, 2018
10 January 2020, 22:55
Cyclist settles for $500,000 with San Diego County after suffering brain injury due to pothole
NBC San Diego reports that the woman suffered ‘a traumatic brain injury’ after being thrown from her bike while riding on U.S Highway 8 in August 2017. The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, hit a broken section of tarmac that had risen from a tree root, creating a large pothole in the road.
According to public documents, the road near the city of El Cajon had been in disrepair for years, and this particular section was only fixed after the incident; some potholes were filled on the road following complaints from motorists, but the bike lane was left in disrepair.
Records now obtained by NBC show that the woman settled the case for $500,000 in October 2019. Her attorney Daniel Petrov said: “The County worked diligently to repair the rise in the concrete in the bicycle lane after the fall.
“Unfortunately, it took my client suffering a traumatic brain injury before the repair was complete. Our hope is that the county continues looking for the rises or potholes on public streets, and especially bicycle lanes, so that bicycle riders can feel safe riding in San Diego County.”
10 January 2020, 22:55
That's not a pothole... THIS is a pothole
Although the crater that caused injuries to the unfortunate cyclist in San Diego reported on below (see it on the NBC News San Diego website) was a bad one, over on our Facebook page Shaun Wyllie appears to have topped it with this absolute beast he happened across on a ride recently.
10 January 2020, 22:55
Sad but true
Cycling outside a school in the UK Vs Cycling outside a school in the Netherlands. pic.twitter.com/DR1YPBwWdp
— Adam Tranter (@adamtranter) January 10, 2020
The reality of cycling outside a school in the UK too often looks like the scene on the left; but it should be far more like the journey Dutch children used to making on the right.
10 January 2020, 22:55
Judge in Derry says some roundabouts "are too big and too complicated" as man charged with careless driving for hitting cyclist
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Derry’s district judge made the comments as 42-year-old Matthew Horner admitted the charge of careless driving, for knocking a woman off her bike on 15th June last year. She told ambulance staff when they arrived that she was on the roundabout when Horner’s car entered and hit her.
Horner’s defence said that he “did not see” the cyclist and tried to avoid hitting her when he eventually did. The judge Barney McElholm said that some roundabouts with “too many exits” could cause problems for drivers, noting that Horner offered to stay and help the woman and appeared “very remorseful”. Horner was £175 and given three penalty points on his driving licence.
10 January 2020, 22:55
The future of e-bike batteries? Scientists claim they've created a battery that offers five times more energy than a lithium-ion battery
Causing quite a stir over on our sister site eBikeTips is the news that a team of scientists say their lithium-sulfur rechargeable battery design is far superior to lithium-ion. If you’re not an e-biker, they also say it could power a smartphone for five days or allow an electric car to drive over 1,000km on a single charge – full story here.
10 January 2020, 22:55
New £1 million cycling and walking route to be built in Northern Ireland
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Derry City and Strabane District Council have approved the new route in Strabane, a 3.5km route constructed in the town, connecting the A5, Derry Road, Canal Basin, River Mourne Flood Wall and Strabane Retail Park.
Further proposals include changes to exisiting kerb alignments, new road markings and new path lighting.
10 January 2020, 22:55
Not a bike stand
Who’s going to tell him? pic.twitter.com/bBymHcvr8n
— Andy Lulham (@LulhAndy) January 10, 2020
To be fair it’s an absolute bargain, and anyone who manages to pick up what is actually a Tacx turbo trainer for a tenner will probably be very pleased so long as it works.
As Real Gaz points out on Twitter, as an item that you a secure your bike to, technically a turbo trainer is sort of a bike stand…
10 January 2020, 22:55
Behind the scenes of 'that' Danny MacAskill video
I’ve always wanted to transfer between 2 slacklines on my bike. After 199 goes I didn’t even come close to landing both tires on the line. Then in the 200th go it worked perfect haha!
Full film https://t.co/CWIBLBYaG1
#gymnasium #slackline #trials pic.twitter.com/1fGYr1h3tm
— Danny MacAskill (@danny_macaskill) January 9, 2020
Remarkably the Scot said he’d never came close to landing this trick before nailing it perfectly in his epic Gymnasium vid – watch the full thing here.
10 January 2020, 22:55
Can we just talk about that training kit...
10 January 2020, 22:55
Chris Froome (appears to be) on a training camp... and what's going on with that kit??
On training camp… or maybe not No really, I am pic.twitter.com/HpvyFik1W6
— Chris Froome (@chrisfroome) January 10, 2020
His tweet doesn’t exactly settle the matter, but it looks like Froome has joined his teammates on a new training camp, less than a week after reports from Italy claimed he had left another camp early.
The report in Bicisport magazine quoted Team Ineos’ sports director Dario Cioni as saying, ““He is not well and who knows if he will recover?”; however Froome responded via his Twitter account saying that his recovery is in fact going well.
Whether he will make it to the Tour de France in 2020 remains to be seen, but this photo is certainly promising. On another note, is this the Ineos away strip or does this indicate a complete departure from the blood red and black kit of 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).
20 Comments
Latest Comments
yodhrin 4 hours ago
@robgodd The poor guy himself suffered a traumatic brain injury and his skull was so badly shattered a significant portion of it had to be removed - do me a favour, have a look around cycling helmet manufacturers and see if any of them claim the foam hats they produce will protect against or even mitigate that level of injury. I'll wait if you like, but I can save us both the time and tell you what you'll find: none of them. Not a single one of them will. Because they don't, and they *can't* based on simple physics. Once the point of failure in a material is reached all(or as near as makes no odds) of the additional force beyond that necessary threshhold transfers through to the object beneath. Since bicycle helmets are rated for forces roughly equivalent to being dropped straight down from a stationary start 1.5m above a hard surface. Now, I'm not an expert in vehicle crash investigation, but I'm *fairly* sure that any impact or series of impacts powerful enough to render a quarder of your skull into gravel, put you in a weeks-long coma, give you massive amnesia, and leave you with ongoing symptoms of traumatic brain injury are a little bit, a teeny-weeny amount, a little smidgeon-widgeon more than what bike helmets are rated for. That's why none of the companies that make them claim they will help in such circumstances: because they know it would be a lie, and that unlike uninformed punters, carbrained journalists, or "medical professionals" who think wearing a helmet would save you from a broken arm(an actual scenario encountered by a mate, who's nurse at the A&E tutted and harrumphed her way through his whole treatment due to his lack of helmet despite his bonce having come through *being hit by a car* - another scenario bike helmets are worthless in - completely unscathed), the lawyers for those companies know their business and understand that if you lie in advertising you will get sued into the ground.
Mr Blackbird 5 hours ago
The Battle of Ypres April 1915. The German infantry division advanced using das Brumptstadt Fahrarden. The slow speed kept them behind the cloud of chlorine gas as it drifted towards the Commonwealth trenches. The offensive cleaved a two mile gap in the Western Front. The use of cycles was copied by the Japanese as they invaded Singapore and Burmah. By then war technology had embraced wider low pressure tyres, carbon frames and hydration gels. The German forces decided not to incorporate cycling as part of Operation Session, as bike theft in London and the South East was rife and would have caused huge casualties. Ironically superior advancement of tyre technology led to a British victory at El Alamein. This technology played a key part in the US Marines victory at Iwo Jima.
ROOTminus1 5 hours ago
The appropriate response to Google pissing on your cereal is not a fancy new sugar that removes the taste of urine. Stop using Google products where you can. Firefox browser and DuckDuckGo search engine have had noticeable upticks in market share by explicitly NOT pushing AI.
belugabob 6 hours ago
my thoughts exactly...I wonder how that approach is working, with motor vehicle drivers...🤔
Anonymousattorney 6 hours ago
I do not wish to diminish the personal tragedy, but one never hear calls for pedestrians or even hikers to wear clothing with integrated lightening rods.
chrisonabike 6 hours ago
RE Andy Burnam / Heidi Alexander - this is the best thing in many ways - set an example (even if currently it leads to lots of online name-calling). And imagine some of the political alternatives! The folks in the apparently second-placed party seem incredibly unlikely to be doing so. And even the current "new Greens" seem less interested in ... y'know, environmental things. OTOH I wish Heidi could be bolder. And I fear that like anyone ambitious enough to get to the top (exception B Johnson - well, I guess there was the Corbyn bicycle...) Burnam will be trimming his transport policy sails to fit the wind (should that be "bunker-fuel-burning engines"?)
Rendel Harris 6 hours ago
@mattsccm Bull bars aren't banned, they just have to conform to regulations so they are deformable or have plates that allow crumple give on contact, rather than rigid steel bars that can smash into pedestrians and cyclists with no give at all, catch them and drag them under the wheels. If you think that's a problem, do one. Why should who is responsible for a collision remove the responsibility of people driving a tonne of machinery on the road from having safety features to at least mitigate some of the effects of a collision?
AidanR 6 hours ago
I'd be willing to bet that's lazy use of stock photography rather than deliberate misinformation, but the result is still the same.
Backladder 6 hours ago
@smallbeer You obviously don't realise how many bulls there are wandering around Chelsea, in and out of the china shops, that he needs to protect his Range Rover from.
chrisonabike 6 hours ago
I agree, it's bloody 'elf and safety overreach, can't help some people, I put some meat, sorry, neat decoration on the front of mine and the polis were round poking their noses in like that (mind you, that was a mistake...) (etc)
20 thoughts on “Live blog: Chris Froome shares photo from training camp; Someone is trying to sell this ‘bike stand’ on Facebook Marketplace; Derry judge says some roundabouts “too big and complicated” to man who hit cyclist; Gino D’Acampo rides Bianchi e-road bike +more”
…and not a helmet in sight.
…and not a helmet in sight. The ‘real’ cyclists were all kitted out in vintage style, to be fair, as if they were heading straight off to L’Eroica.
Here’s that missing part of
Here’s that missing part of the Belgian CX Championship course…
dgmtc wrote:
I like how they’ve got someboy in the water waving their arms about just after the corner. Presumably their bike is now on the bottom of the canal?
CygnusX1 wrote:
So there’s some bike riding. And some running. And now they’ve got to go swimming.
Kick your socks off and Sharpie some numbers on your arms, we’ve got a triathlon, people!
Unfortunate…
Unfortunate…
To be fair, I have seen worse cycle parking infrastructure.
Perhaps these drivers that
Perhaps these drivers that find roundabouts a bit too complicated might want to avoid them. Perhaps, and maybe going a bit too far, get on a bike, I’ve never found a roundabout “too complicated, and of course better vision, no need for a blind spot warning on my arse, or find a different route that avoids them.
ktache wrote:
You can get poor infrastructure that does lead to increased risk and needs to be redesigned. Can’t say I have ever found a roundabout too complicated. Even if you have roundabouts around a roundabout, you just treat each one as you come to it and ignore the rest.
Perhaps the driver was one of these people who can’t lose face by going around a roundabout more than once due to missing the turn or being in the wrong lane and instead have to force their way into the lane they want.
hirsute wrote:
I know the roundabout in question (https://www.google.fr/maps/@55.0229519,-7.3388255,229m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en) and it’s an odd one TBH. It’s not the number of exits, which isn’t excessive at 5, It’s more the shape/orientation – sort of elongated/egg shaped as can be seen in the satellite view in the link above. It’s a busy roundabout, and when coming on to it from the main approaches (Buncrana Rd either direction in the link above) it seems to have a fairly gradual bend which gets then gets suddenly and appreciably sharper at the apexes to the east and west and can come as a surprise to the unwary. I’ve no idea why it’s not just round – it’s not like it the don’t have the space (could even do so in the current space it occupies)
I’ve never had the pleasure of going round it on the bike, but it doesn’t strike me as a pleasant piece of infrastructure to negotiate at busy times
I’d never consider my driving
I’d never consider my driving to be that perfect enough never to have found myself confused by a road layout,try driving on the new A14 section that opened before Christmas for instance,and some of the roundabouts here about rely on familiarity to use properly,rather than road common sense, and some just seem to be badly designed to begin with
https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/motoring/norwich-northern-distributor-road-wroxham-road-roundabout-video-1-6457416
That aside theres no excuse for hitting anything that you should be able to see, even if you are confused by the layout
There’s nothing wrong with
There’s nothing wrong with being momentarily confused by a road layout – it’s the driver’s response to it that matters. Slow down, pay more attention to one’s surroundings? Fine. Sail on through that confusing junction at 40mph without a thought for other road users? Not fine.
There’s just as much, if not more, badly designed motor vehicle infrastructure as bike lanes.
That Ineos kit, did they just
That Ineos kit, did they just copy and paste from CCC?
Cyclolotl wrote:
Maybe, but it’s just training ride kit, Trek Segafredo do similarly with their dayglo yellow training version of their normal road kit.Ineos announced last year their main team coloured kit wasnt changing for 2020 except for the addition of the new uci world tour logo
I think it’s a lovely shade
I think it’s a lovely shade of a very striking orange. Any slight reduction in the chances of being hit by incompetent motorists to their significant investments would seem worthwhile.
Marginal gains…
“It’s true that ‘road cyclist
“It’s true that ‘road cyclist’ is largely a more accurate description, unless you’re a mountain biker who genuinely rides up and down mountains. As a regular Bristol and Bath railway path commuter, I am now a proud path biker…”
The French have a more apt description, VTT: Velo a tout terrain (All terrain bike).
judda6610 wrote:
A stroke in MTB (mountain/trail bike) would also do, I reckon, unless you are being particular about what a trail is.
judda6610 wrote:
A stroke in MTB (mountain/trail bike) would also do, I reckon, unless you are being particular about what a trail is.
Could be good for Nottingham.
Could be good for Nottingham.
https://westbridgfordwire.com/almost-1-million-to-be-spent-on-part-of-nottinghams-cycle-path-network/
One less psychopathic BMW
One less psychopathic BMW driver on the road.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-51065720
A proper ban when he finally gets out too. Shame it couldn’t be lifetime
Odd that the BBC news website said that [the victim] “was hit by the car and thrown into the air.”
Not that the perpetrator deliberately drove his car at the victim, as the judge said (which the BBC website doesn’t mention) “You drove at him, in effect using your car as a weapon, causing him to suffer the injuries that led to his death, all in the sight of his family.”
South Today managed to include the weapon thing and show cctv evidence of the car starting the fateful acceleration towards the victim.
Admitted manslaugher too, tried for murder, not causing death by dangerous.
ktache wrote:
A shame also that he was still on the road to do this after 13 [courtroom vidiprinter: THIRTEEN] previous offences.
mdavidford wrote:
Sorry – my mistake – 13 convictions – 28 [TWENTY-EIGHT] offences.