“Disgraceful stupid little cupboards”: CyclingMikey left with “utter disgust” for UK trains’ dreaded upright bike storage; Tour de France Femmes gets underway; Remco’s victory tour (+ a golden S-Works Tarmac SL8) + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
The most expensive road bike wheels in the world — the most eye-wateringly expensive carbon upgrades you can make to your bike
Tour de France Femmes gets underway: Stage one sprint expected as peloton faces pan-flat Dutch stage in searing heat
Bridges and tunnels account for most of the roughly 200m of climbing the Tour de France Femmes peloton will cover today, the 123km stage from Rotterdam to The Hague almost certainly going to be one for the sprinters, Lorena Wiebes, Charlotte Kool, Elisa Balsamo and perhaps even (although she would have loved it to be a bit more punchy) home favourite Marianne Vos eyeing up the opening yellow jersey.
It’s going to be similar roasting conditions to those being ‘enjoyed’ in the south of England today, water and sun cream the order of the day. Oh, and yes, that fourth-category climb is a tunnel that’ll take the riders below sea level before giving them a nice relaxed gradient to ‘ascend’ out of and decide the first polka dot jersey wearer.
Remco's victory tour (+ a golden S-Works Tarmac SL8)
Meanwhile, in Belgium, Spesh wasted no time getting that Tarmac SL8 fit for a double Olympic champ…
[📷: Remco Evenepoel/Strava]
Evenepoel’s victory tour saw him appear (and ride, of course) his own sportive and then rock up at his former club Anderlecht’s match against OH Leuven to take the acclaim of the fans. Cycling’s on a different level over there… something tells us Tom Pidcock won’t be rocking up at Elland Road, but we’d love to be pleasantly surprised and proved wrong…
The Tour de France Femmes' history + all the bikes that'll be ridden to stage victory this week
Some further reading…
> The Tour de France Femmes’ Long and Winding Road: A brief history of the women’s Tour de France
Team dsm–firmenich PostNL announce base salary for men and women will be equal from 2025
[📷: Eltoromediadotcom]
Team dsm-firmenich PostNL has announced all base salaries for riders male and female will be the same from the start of next season.
“Steps to bridge the payment gap like this are crucial to further develop and professionalise the sport alongside its commercial growth, to give female athletes access to the same resources as their male counterparts and enable them to make a genuine and comfortable living from doing what they love the most,” the team said.
Will AI make the roads safer and more pleasant for cyclists?
Glasgow City Council and VivaCity (the “transport technology scaleup transforming cities into smarter and more efficient places to live and work”) got in touch to tell us about how new AI-powered sensor technology is being commissioned at two key intersections in the Scottish city, to “improve cycle and vehicle detection, enabling traffic signals to respond more effectively”.
One example given was that the tech could “anonymously count the number of pedestrians waiting to cross, providing larger groups with greater priority”.
“Buses are detected on the approaches to the crossing enabling Glasgow City Council to balance bus and pedestrian movements at the crossing using the VivaCity sensor capability to assess different classes, directions and volumes of road users, and feed that data into the traffic signal controller,” the press release continued.
“Besides collecting multimodal data to feed the traffic signals and therefore optimise the crossing, the sensors also gather accurate, detailed and anonymous data on other travel modes. This data is also being used to provide a clearer understanding of how these junctions are used to ensure that the new junction layouts meet the needs of all road users. This is completed while also providing real-time data for signal control.”
Not too much specific info on cycling there but a glimpse at the sort of things AI could be used for on the roads and at junctions. Thoughts?
Cofidis pro Rubén Fernández injured in collision with motorist who ran stop sign
Cofidis pro Rubén Fernández has shared pictures of cuts and brusing to his face after being hit by a motorist who ran a stop sign. The Spanish rider was training, the driver’s failure to stop at the sign “leaving me unable to react”.
“Fortunately, after undergoing all the medical tests, I can say that there are no serious injuries to regret, and this time it was just a scare,” he added.
Distracted, phone-using, uninsured driver jailed for six years after killing cyclist in hit-and-run collision
Charlotte Kool wins opening stage of Tour de France Femmes after Lorena Wiebes suffers mechanical
Dutch delight to kick off the Tour de France. Since the race returned in 2022 they’ve won more than half the stages and Lotte Kopecky remains the only rider not from the Netherlands to have worn yellow. This will be Charlotte Kool’s first trip to the podium however, the 25-year-old winning the stage and taking yellow as a result, compatriot and favourite Lorena Wiebes left to rue a dropped chain at the worst possible moment just as the sprint was hotting up.
Finnish national champion Anniina Ahtosalo took a career-best second place and will swap her nation’s jersey for white tomorrow. It wasn’t all positive however, a farcical situation occurring out the back of the peloton as the stage unfolded…
Four of the seven riders on the Uzbekistan-based Tashkent City team failed to finish having been dropped on day one. You’ve got to feel for the young, inexperienced riders clearly not yet at the level but who have been chucked in at the biggest race of the year because their team got an invite based off earning points at smaller, less competitive races in their region to get an automatic invitation, only to now realise that more than half the team can’t survive a 123km flat stage.
One team who didn’t get an invite was Lifeplus-Wahoo, the British squad last week revealing it was not continuing beyond 2024, their lack of place at the Tour de France Femmes not helping the troubled finances. All a bit of a mess…
"Why do cyclists believe that they have a right to endanger pedestrians?": Council promises to install anti-bike barriers in foot tunnel, as locals and politicians claim "speeding" cyclists are "almost hitting" families and "abusing" pedestrians
"I wouldn't say an era has ended... across all the British sports, it's tougher to win gold medals now than it has ever been": British Cycling performance director assesses Olympic performance
British Cycling ended up with the lowest number of track cycling gold medals since Athens two decades ago, finishing fifth in the velodrome medals table. Having said that the 11 total medals was more than any other nation and had Katie Archibald not suffered the misfortune of breaking her leg, ripping ligaments, and dislocating her ankle after tripping over a garden step back in June things could (and most probably would) have looked better.
Plus, with one silver turned to gold GB would have actually ended top of the track cycling medal table, so maybe not all quite so doom and gloom than the fifth in the table and least golds in 20 years line suggested.
“I wouldn’t say an era has ended, because it could easily have been quite different,” performance director Stephen Park commented on the Paris performance to PA. “If you look across all the British sports, it’s tougher to win gold medals now than it has ever been. The difference between first and fourth is smaller than it’s ever been.
“We’ll go back and analyse what we’ve done, we’ll rebuild as we go to LA. I think our performance is one we can be as proud – if not prouder – of than anything we’ve done before.”
What did you make of GB’s performance on the track this Games?
Five cool bits of cycling tech coming soon from Garmin, Trek, Insta360, Coros and Life360
> Five cool bits of cycling tech coming soon from Garmin, Trek, Insta360, Coros and Life360
"Disgraceful stupid little cupboards": CyclingMikey left with "utter disgust" for UK trains' dreaded upright bike storage
Ah, yes, a return to the road.cc live blog for the infamous bike storage cupboards…
[CyclingMikey/Twitter]
They’ll be familiar to any of you who’ve tried to take your bike on anything longer than a local UK train journey, the saga beginning way before you step foot on a station platform as you’ll need to book one of the inevitably very few spaces available. Then, on the day, locate your cupboard and begin the ‘fun’ game of hoisting your bike into the necessary upright position. Feeling relatively strong and travelling with a fairly light road bike with narrow tyres and bars? Fine, you might just escape this experience relatively hate-free. If not, then I wish you good luck.
Any of wider bars, wider tyres, bags, or just a heavier bike can turn this into a physical and mentally-testing exertion that’ll leave you feeling like you really should have got an Olympic medal for your efforts. Road safety campaigner and camera cyclist CyclingMikey found out the hard way, telling his followers online that he’d “like to express my utter disgust that some designer/planner thought that this was in any way acceptable bicycle storage”, going on to call them “disgraceful stupid little cupboards”.
One follower commented: “Utterly mad. I’m just back from a few weeks cycling in France and although their rail comes in for much criticism every TER carriage has ample bike parking, and space enough for touring bikes and adapted cycles.”
Paul Tutton added: “It’s almost like they designed them to put people off bringing bikes on trains whilst meeting their mandatory obligations to the absolute minimum.”
The whole rubbish bike storage on trains thing has been going on for a while, Cycling UK in 2019 speaking out about the “awful” cycle storage on GWR’s high-speed trains.
> Trying to take a very expensive bike on a GWR train is hard work
Last year we spoke to rail engineer Gareth Dennis on the road.cc Podcast, an episode which turned into him telling us why taking your bike on the train is such a faff…
“Vertical storage should be outright banned,” he argued unequivocally. “For the middle-aged men in Lycra with their very expensive road bikes – which is basically all vertical storage is designed for – the vertical storage wrecks their bike.
“For everyone else, and we shouldn’t be designing for that narrow case anyway, how does it work for most people who can’t lift their bikes up? What about people who rely on their bikes as a mobility aid? What about less confident cyclists who want a bigger, sturdier bike? What about people with non-standard cycles, trikes, those with attachment to wheelchairs, longer bikes, tandems?
“How are any of those people able to use vertical storage? They can’t. It’s excluding people from using the railway. They are being denied the freedom of movement by the structure of our railways and, ultimately, the Secretary of State for Transport.”
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Latest Comments
If the man can't turn his head to check his blind spot he shouldn't be on the road
Follow the road rules. Why is this even a discussion? Because the road rules are not adequately policed. …Solution: how about £100 fines for everyone flouting the road rules / risking cyclists lives on social media and in council chambers, as well as on the roads? That should stop this ongoing waste of time.
@Rendel Harris you've painted a rather alluring picture of social harmony there, but unfortunately you've got my name wrong. I'm Jack, not Nigel. However, to return the compliment, I must think of a story for you. I imagine you sat outside a pub, real ale and pipe propped on the adjacent table, in a similar fashion to Nigel Farage at his populist best. You turn to your wife. "You know what dear? I think I've been a bit harsh in my time. I've shunned the politeness and wisdom of others for too long and want to change my ways.* "There there Rendel", says Mrs Harris. "You're not a bad old stick, it's just living in London that's emptied your soul of kindness and compassion. I've found a lovely new place where we can settle down in our later years. It's on a leafy cul de sac, surrounded by friendly neighbours and smiling faces. There's a guy a couple of doors down, a remarkable man. As well as his towering intellect and rapier wit, he's also a keen cyclist, holding severa local KOMs. Don't be perturbed dear - he'll ride with anyone provided they show other road users the kindness and courtesy they deserve." Rendel turned emotionally, voice shaking. "Oh my dear, thank you for this second chance", and with that the rest of the pub goers turned and applauded the couple, throwing garlands of petals in their wake. The end.
As a Councillor, Edward needs to be paying some attention to all that parking obstructing visibility and manoeuvres at the junction, and sorting out those radii.
Ed Hill was chucked out by Reform in 2025, though TBF to him it was about how to run it rather than ideology I think. He is now reportedly closer to Advance UK, which is distinctly more extreme than Reform. I'd call this Alan Amos style attention seeking.
Emily, thank you for such an insightful piece. I’m a man, but I enjoy watching the women’s races, possibly more than the men’s. The racing is so much closer, we rarely know who’s going to win. You painted a wonderful picture of how a true champion is able to ‘rise above’ setbacks and distractions, and focus their energy on the task in hand. ‘All’s fair in live and war -and sport, but always good to hear riders expressing their admiration for their competitors
@Nigel Garage ...and then everyone applauded my courtesy and I waved courteously to all the people who were courteously throwing flowers and cheering and courteously waving flags that said "Nigel is the best!"
The picture from street view clearly shows give way lines from the roads to the green painted cycle/pedestrian lane. The road user should give way (or must...) to the user of the green lane. This would of course apply to any cyclist on the roadway.
If I recall there is a cave or two along the route - perhaps they were sheltering from the heat in one of those having taken it for a Golf bunker?
“So if there’s a cyclist travelling down the cycle path at the moment, from this position I can’t see them because my blind spots are too big on the left hand side of the vehicle”, claims Hill. Well, there's your problem, right there...🙄
32 thoughts on ““Disgraceful stupid little cupboards”: CyclingMikey left with “utter disgust” for UK trains’ dreaded upright bike storage; Tour de France Femmes gets underway; Remco’s victory tour (+ a golden S-Works Tarmac SL8) + more on the live blog”
It’s almost as if having a
It’s almost as if having a profit motive for one thing (selling rail tickets) and no profit motive but a loose regulation for something else (bike spaces) is a bad idea.
Either add a profit motive for bike spaces or remove the profit motive entirely, I know which I prefer but either would solve the issue…you know, once these trains get replaced in a decade or two ?
You’re right that it’s all
You’re right that it’s all about incentives and directions. The government wanted as many seats crammed in as possible, hence these dreadful cupboards. Whether it was deliberate or just negligent, I don’t know but I’m surprised it hasn’t been challenged under the Equalities Act.
Worse, even weaker (or no) direction can lead to still-poorer outcomes: ‘open access’ operator, Lumo, realised they weren’t required to make any provisions for bikes, so we now have trains from London to Edinburgh where no bikes are accepted.
“It’s almost like they
“It’s almost like they designed them to put people off bringing bikes on trains……”
That’s because they did.
Nah – that wasn’t designed –
Nah – that wasn’t designed – it was someone’s fever dream.
If I could, I’d have given
If I could, I’d have given that multiple ‘likes’. All the more reason to yet again sing the praises of Merseyrail from Chester to Southport. Absolutely excellent, and saves the death-cycling through Liverpool for little more than you’d have to pay to just get across the Mersey.
Judged purely in terms of a
Judged purely in terms of a design meeting its goal, someone at Hitachi should win an award for this masterpiece of maliciously complying with a statutory requirement. As a human being, for their contribution to making the world worse for other human beings, they should be ostracized.
Cobblers. Hitachi don’t
Cobblers. Hitachi don’t specify the interior of their trains. The customer does. In the case of the UK it’s the DfT.
Train OpCo’s don’t get a choice, except between available/planned rolling stock.
Also, who’s going to be happy
Also, who’s going to be happy if they’ve booked a seat next to that person standing in the doorway in the background!
I hate those train cupboards
I hate those train cupboards with a vengeance. Wide rim wheels just don’t fit onto the hooks, so I have to put my bike half in and half out of the cupboard and stand next to it. Usually the train personnel come along at some point and complain about bikes blocking the doorway/aisle which is a problem that they’ve created for themselves.
Far more crazy is the fact
Far more crazy is the fact that Lumo are allowed to refuse bikes.
Cherry picking type trains are also anti consumer.
Nothing at all to be with
Nothing at all to be with cycling, but an interesting argument:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/aug/12/pro-foxhunting-group-says-uk-hunters-protected-ethnic-minority
Annoyingly, the article doesn’t say what those ethnic criteria are, that a hobbyist group like fox hunters can claim them.
brooksby wrote:
Law Society website:
So this would appear to be a claim about traditions and shared cultural experiences. Seems like a bit of a stretch, although I’m not a lawyer (lefty or otherwise).
Interesting indeed.
Interesting indeed.
Chambers says “ethnic” can mean “relating to or having a common race or cultural tradition”, and Webster says “of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background”. So if you can argue that you share a common cultural tradition, origin or background with some other person, you can arguably claim the two of you constitute or belong to an ethnic minority.
Agree it’s a pity the article doesn’t say what the criteria in question were though.
Generations of inbreeding
Generations of inbreeding amongst the gentry and aristocracy have left the toffs genetically different to qualify themselves as a distinct ethnic group
ROOTminus1 wrote:
Quite like middle-class metropolitans who live in say some London boroughs?
Stephankernow wrote:
Do the “chattering classes” make a point of it though? Is Facebook the new Debretts?
This is the podcast mentioned
This is the podcast mentioned. I’ve read the (auto-generated) transcript, I’m still not entirely clear. It talks about hunting being a protected belief (which would seem to have very little to do with ethnicity), and as it happens there are 5 tests for that (Grainger Criteria):
I doubt being pro-hunting satisfies all those criteria, although there is a court ruling that being anti-hunting can be a protected belief, in that case “The claimant here went to some lengths to attempt to live by his belief in the sanctity of all life”.
Of course they’ve not done
Of course they’ve not done any pest control (very inefficiently) for a couple of decades as it’s been illegal…
“Cofidis pro Rubén Fernández
“Cofidis pro Rubén Fernández injured in collision with motorist who ran stop sign”
then
“Will AI make the roads safer and more pleasant for cyclists?”
Answer: “Not when we still have idiots behind the wheel.”
I don’t have any confidence
I don’t have any confidence in machine vision traffic control. As you illustrate, some drivers already don’t pay attention, and on the other hand, if the ability for computers to accurately classify cyclists as such was good enough, autonomous vehicles wouldn’t be as awful as they currently are
Try putting a Pashley type
Try putting a Pashley type bike in one it’s mission impossible.
These racks are a disgrace, Tbey don’t want bikes on trains
Stephankernow wrote:
Presumably any bike with full mudguards wouldn’t fit either, unless you wanted to crush the mudguards?
I often see a bike and gold
I often see a bike and gold helmet locked up together in the town centre and think ‘ah, Greg van Avermaet’.
From now on I’ll look out for Remco’s gaudy gold steed.
As I said last Friday
As I said last Friday
–
“Driver jailed for death of Ecuador politician’s daughter”
I wonder if the sentence would have been less if the victim was a cyclist or not related to a politician.
–
Victim pedestrian:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgl2klz0gw9o
“A speeding Mercedes driver has been jailed for 10 years”
Victim cyclist:
“…jailed for six years…”
“…jailed for three years and nine months…”
Over many years of reading
Over many years of reading these reports, the impression I now have is that: Generally, a significant proportion of society regards road cycling as a risky activity, therefore, we have to share some culpability for what happens for choosing to undertake this activity. I have read reports in the past, where the driver’s culpability has been reduced, because the cyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet, or wearing hiviz, and therefore, shared responsibility for their death.
A few decades ago, I read a report of a court (coroner?) case, where the cyclist was killed in a “dooring” collision. The cyclist was a well known club cyclist in SE London. Either the Judge (or coroner) concluded that the cyclist was riding a “racing cycle”, therefore, he must have been riding too fast, so the driver was exonerated.
Over the thirty or so years sice reading this, I still keep on reading this SH*T, the latest being the fatal collision in Hampshire recently.
road.cc wrote:
Which just goes to show how silly a way of ranking things this is in the first place.
Will we ever get a question
Will we ever get a question (from a non-cyclist) such as:
“Why do drivers believe that they have a right to endanger people and waste millions in taxes due to NHS, disruption/economic and police investigation costs?”
Lots of people do things that
Lots of people do things that endanger people every day. If they didn’t, life would be rather difficult, and the benefits are therefore generally considered to outweigh the risks. Likewise, the benefits are generally considered to outweigh the costs.
What if the benefits are
What if the benefits are mostly felt by one group of people and the costs mostly by another set though?
Or if we all pay (“road tax”, pollution, noise pollution, crashes into people and buildings, vast areas of public space covered in tarmac and given over to a particular activity, effects of government sucking to dodgy regimes to keep the resources coming…) … but some benefit much more than others (those in the road and motor industries, politicians kept sweet by same …)?
There will always be winners
There will always be winners and losers, but I suppose you might hope that in a functioning democracy people with a functioning rule of law people will be treated more or less fairly and that no one will be expected to bear an unacceptable burden.
If you spend too much time worrying that someone else might be getting too big a share of some cake or other I don’t think you’re going to have a very happy life.
john_smith wrote:
But it’s who are the winners and losers – that’s rather important, no? And does the system work by creating a larger proportion of losers, and how bad is it for them?
Our current system may not be very good at dealing with our longer-term “problems of success”. In effect – to avoid those in power losing it, are we all being encouraged to warm ourselves by burning our boats?
As for “fair” – that would be a maximal hope!
I completely agree. That is my philosophy – but we are humans in a world full of humans, not buddhas. Preaching self-restraint while a few are running off with all the cake may be … tricky. To leave the metaphor – depends how much you want to pay in tax, reduction in health etc. all to be excluded from the roads by others.
Or, tragedy of the commons –
Or, tragedy of the commons – the benefits outweigh the costs at any point for any individual, but when everybody does it, most of you end up worse off than if no-one had.