road.cc live blog: Olympic BMX hopefuls wanted, hidden messages on Zwift, poll says cycling 8th most boring sport and much more
The news agenda is starting to pick up after the Christmas and New Year break …
Wed, Jan 10, 2018 14:54
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £1.99. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
7 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
GravelIsNothingNew 3 minutes ago
Agree re speed limiting. Why is there no mention of 25km/hr limit in the article?
GravelIsNothingNew 9 minutes ago
Does anyone know if ‘the police’ even read all these Roadcc road safety articles? Does anyone send them all to the relevant authorities on a daily basis? …if not we’re all wasting our breath.
Pub bike 2 hours ago
@KiwiMike The pannier carrying capacity is similar 18kg vs 15kg. The quote was about carrying panniers not the deck. That aside I agree they are not really comparable but for different reasons: - the Tubus Duo is made of chromoly steel which won't crack anywhere near as easily as an aluminium rack - and to demonstrate Tubus' belief in their products they offer a 30-year guarantee vs the Old Man Mountain's "reasonable lifetime of the product" warranty which is entirely up to OMM whatever that means.
KiwiMike 2 hours ago
If you crash, obvs. If a weld fails or a boss cracks five years hence, chances are they’ll warranty it.
KiwiMike 2 hours ago
That’s … really not even comparable. In therms of weight capacity, mounting, top stowage, light mounting, etc. As per article, you can get the mass a fair way rearward of the axle using the OMM rack.
Paul J 6 hours ago
@Rendel Harris Hmm.... I stand corrected. I still think Obree had a /lot/ more talent. And Jan-Willem today clearly has dropped in levels, relative to those he's racing against.
ianking 6 hours ago
I cycled a lot on the continent and have done fir many years. I've never been close passed, and only once had a scary overtake by an oncoming vehicle. Im close passed almost daily in the UK and dangerous overtakes are common. Some serious driver education is needed here, not to mention presumed liability legislation.
chrisonabike 7 hours ago
@TrainWalkWheel at least one person on here seems to have better understanding of these than I do but AFAICS the model is even less likely to lead to good outcomes than happened with eg. a certain UK bus company. The one notorious for moving into an area, putting the existing providers out of business by running more services for pence and losing money, then - having captured the market - jacking up the price and dropping services. At least in that case the intention was presumably to deliver a self-sustaining service in the end (albeit perhaps a worse, overpriced one). But AFAIK mass bike share itself has never made money directly. So one wonders what the end plan is if any one of these market-share-capture firms actually won? (Presumably that isn't important and it's all about trading / financial shenanigans in some way. I doubt they could hold the local authority to ransom for the extra cash...)
chrisonabike 7 hours ago
Alas it's another part of "because cars / 'change', we can't just copy a well-proven design eg. from NL" On top of this is the UK "not invented here" making it up / no expertise or standard designs AND a "we must fit cyclists in around existing road space" causing strange contorted layouts. So what happens is we get things like bi-directional cycle *lanes* (not separated cycle paths) because cheapest / easiest to patch in. So that means that pedestrians don't have a space to wait *after* crossing the cycle space and *before* they have to deal with the road. (It also puts another block in the way of cycling convenience at traffic lights - say at a T-junction - because unlike NL the lights then apply to cyclists going straight on, whereas in NL that would be an informal cycle path crossing for pedestrians with no lights applying to the cycle path part - so cyclists just keep rolling).
MaxiMinimalist 9 hours ago
In 2019, Shanghai and other Chinese major cities implemented strict regulations and clean-up operations tp remove millopns of abondoned dockless bicycles that had created public nuisances and blocked pavements. One can't blame local authorities for taking actions in order to stop a messy situation triggered by unruly users.
7 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: Olympic BMX hopefuls wanted, hidden messages on Zwift, poll says cycling 8th most boring sport and much more”
Quote:
WEell F1 can be interesting (note “can be”, not “is”) due to the technical aspects of it and certain (usually weather or crash-related) situations. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve turned off some proper bore-fest F1 events and if you asked me I’d struggle to even remember what happened at any one circuit or indeed which circuits were “best” but then I’d struggle to describe to you what happened in any given stage of this year’s Tour or Vuelta as well so maybe I just don’t concentrate.
If you had half as much data and camera angles available in road racing as you do in F1, it might liven things up a bit. Some of it comes down to the commentary as well; the F1 commentary onf Sky SPorts F1 is generally excellent and knowledgeable but there are some dire cycle race commentators. Millar and Boulting are excellent but even they can struggle through a 6hr TdF stage.
Cycling is the new golf. Or
Cycling is the new golf. Or is it the other way round?
Why isn’t buzkashi on the list?
Obviously an insular list to
Obviously an insular list to UK. That said, the big issue with cycling is the incredibly long and boring flat stages…sometimes there’s four or five hours of absolutely nothing before the final sprint. I can start the feed, go to the gym, do grocery shopping, and still make it back home before it’s over. It’s just hard to make cycling spectator friendly for people who haven’t participated and know what it’s like. This is where cyclocross and mountain biking have the leg-up. Unfortunately, every time there is discussion about whether there’s need for 200km long stages, everyone acts like their cereal just got pissed in.
There is a need for 125+mile
There is a need for 125+mile ‘boring’ days because if you try to have balls out racing over three weeks then you don’t have a three week race. Unless you want to bring in blood doping and all that. There has to be something in it for all teams who prioritise different things.
A flat stage can often turn out to be a deciding factor, just look at what happened in the TDF a couple of years ago when the time gained on a flat stage that was meant to be a ‘boring’ stage. The time gained by Froome was virtually the difference over Quintana at the end of three weeks.
As for F1, used to love it, now it’s an utter snoozefest. Gone the way of soccer in that it’s purely about business and is corrupt as fuck, at least F1 doesn’t steal as much money out of the UK as soccer does.
American Football is tedious for the most part, 8minutes of highlights includes multiple replays, test match cricket must be up there though and I did used to play limited overs BITD alongside playing rugby league and squeezing a bit of cycling in too.
I guess followers of each sport like parts of it and loathe some of it also.
I think one of the worst sports is beach volleyball but watching a 10,000m, 20/50k walk or marathon is about the most boring at the olympics.
The problem with cycling is
The problem with cycling is you mostly only get stage racing on terrestial TV and this is really only appreciated by the hardened follower – like test match cricket. I bet if there was more crit and track racing people would change their view. My wife hates TdF when its on but loves coming to the velodrome when I go.
Track racing is boring, just
Track racing is boring, just going round and round the same oval. But I realise I’m not typical, because I think athletics is boring, and this surveys shows most people disagree with me.
Stage racing is very much like test match cricket, in that if you follow it closely the tactics make it interesting, and sometimes exciting, but it demands a certain amount of commitment to follow the whole thing. Otherwise you’re just watching people on bikes. Which, don’t get me wrong, I could happily do all day, but I understand why not everyone would want that.
Mark B wrote:
Maybe you’ve been watching the wrong kind of track racing. Us BMX racers ride on a track and in no way can BMX racing be descrcibed as boring. Maybe we need more BMX or MTB racing instead of other cycling sports to show that being on two wheels really is pretty special.
I note that British Cycling is now reaching out to more people to ride BMX so as to be ready for the 2020 Olympics. Well that makes a change, seeing as how BC deliberately blocked some top UK riders from competing before. Perhaps it’s part of the change underway within BC but I do wonder why Tre Whyte in particular was blocked from attending the BMX Worlds at his own (sponsor’s) expense prior to the last Olympics. By blocking him from the BMX Worlds, it meant Tre was not eligible for the Olympics. The British Olympic squad was allowed to take more BMX riders than it did to Brazil, despite having some quality, world class riders who ended up sitting at home.
There have been allegations of sexism and racism aimed at the previous BC management. I could be more specific, but I’d rather avoid the risk of a libel case thanks. I’ll leave that investigation/reporting to a cycle specific news organisation to dig into some of the back room conversations within BC that have seen some riders being prevented from competing, despite having the skills and ability. I’ll also not go into detail why there is a massive schism between BC’s treatment of BMX racing (as being secondary to track and road) and the BMX racing fraternity in the UK. There are questions in the UK’s BMX fraternity as to why young riders are now blocked from competing properly with rankings in the UK. There are also questions about how the Olympic BMX hopefuls are blocked from racing in favour of training, despite racing being one of the most important factors in training for BMX.
I could go on. But I’ll leave it to the Road CC team to investigate further.