- News

Live blog: Beer can (and phone) throwing van passenger “hit by the karma train; Look launch Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic pedal, Greg Van Avermaet’s golden Giant; Know your Yates brother; Jess Varnish to appeal employment tribunal ruling + more
SUMMARY

Jess Varnish to appeal employment tribunal ruling
Back in January, Jess Varnish failed in her attempt to prove she was an employee of British Cycling and UK Sport. The judge concluded that her funding was more akin to a university grant.
The BBC reports that she is now challenging the ruling relating to British Cycling. A judge will decide whether the appeal can proceed.
Varnish’s lawyer, Simon Fenton, said: “The appeal tribunal has been asked to overturn the original judgment and to decide that Ms Varnish was an employee.”
Fenton will argue that the tribunal was wrong that the services and benefits Varnish received from British Cycling were not remuneration; and says the organisation “failed to explain how the work performed by a professional football player is different from the work performed by Jess for British Cycling”.
FiftyOne to supply bikes to Cycling Ireland
Irish custom carbon bike brand FiftyOne has revealed it will be supplying bikes to Cycling Ireland for the next two seasons, and we reckon they’ll be the envy of the peloton with these beautifully painted bikes.
The colour scheme is very much a celebration of Ireland with the lovely green to white fade and shamrocks decorating the colour-matched stem and rear stays. And if anyone needs reminding, Ireland is printed big and bold on the inside of the fork blades.






























They’ll have a choice of rim or disc brake bikes and be equipped with SRAM Red eTap groupsets with Enve wheels.
Simon Yates won the Paris-Nice time trial
Bit bizarre, but he says he’s been doing a lot of work on his time trialling and he also had the best of the conditions having lost 20 minutes in the crosswinds earlier in the race.
@SimonYatess for the win , @kwiato still in , here is the best of stage 5#ParisNice pic.twitter.com/jHsolZGER1
— Paris-Nice (@ParisNice) March 14, 2019
Motorist who "inadvertently" hit cyclist while trying to hurl abuse at him avoids jail sentence
One of the officers said "this guy just got hit by the karma train"
PSA: Don’t drink beer in a car.
But if you do, don’t throw it at a #bikedc cyclist with @Cycliq cams front & rear.
But if you do, don’t drop your phone.
But if you do, don’t come back for it.
But if you do, don’t pull out a knife, even just to show you don’t intend to use it. pic.twitter.com/8zQ6HmR7kr— Andrew Heining (@andrewjh) March 13, 2019
'Chateau' for pollution...
Great to see that Team Sky Pro Cycling Team’s new sponsors Ineos are already well ahead in one GC (general contest)!!! They’ve got the best CO2 Max Test results in Britain!!!! Chateau!!! pic.twitter.com/BkFJfViXOr
— UK Cycling Expert (@ukcyclingexpert) March 15, 2019
Glorious work by UK Cycling Expert, although this time not in any way a parody unfortunately…
Greg Van Avermaet's new gold aero bike
Greg Van Avermaet is riding this new bike at the Tirreno Adriatico and it’s fair to say we’re just a bit jealous!
It’s a custom painted Giant Propel Advanced SL with the gold colour obviously in honour of his Olympic success.
Paris-Roubaix pave get some TLC
We reported the other day about how muddy the Paris-Roubaix pave was, but it looks like they’ve been getting a bit of TLC this week.
Tirreno-Adriatico a bit shaky on which Yates is leading the race
It’s actually Adam in the lead. Simon’s riding Paris-Nice.
La Maglia Azzurra @SimonYatess #TirrenoAdriatico @NamedSport pic.twitter.com/EbJmzg0HWG
— Tirreno Adriatico (@TirrenAdriatico) March 15, 2019
15-year-old sentenced for three bike thefts on the Bristol to Bath cycle path
Look launches Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic Pedal


Look has unveiled its new Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic pedals which Romain Bardet will use for the first time on Stage 7 of Paris-Nice tomorrow.
The new model, made in France, sees ceramic bearings used for the first time in a production pedal, according to Look. Ceramic bearings are designed to reduce friction and increase power transfer and reliability.


Look claims an 18% reduction in friction on the bearing, and a bearing life that’s four to six times longer than that of steel bearings.
The Look Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic is fitted with a chromoly axle and weighs a claimed 110g. The RRP is €189.90. We’ve asked for a UK price.
"Strade Bianche is the coolest professional bike race in the world"
Cool video from last weekend’s Strade Bianche to end the working week with.
Where's today's Leave V Remain poll?
In case you’re wondering, after a lengthy debate the road.cc team held a non binding indicative vote and decided to extend today’s deadline for coming up with a Leave V Remain question until next week. When it may return as the People’s Extend or Revoke poll… depending on how negotiations go.
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.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn’t especially like cake.
3 Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
"All that's required is an to roads policing" - that's a big all... Although no doubt the "idiots just keep coming" aspect does apply: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9lel2wz93o "Man charged after car crashes through bowling alley" - luckily they only skittled over skittles.
Almost any change to roads and streets is accompanied by a period of heightened danger, and in the UK "look out for cyclists" will need to be learned... practically. And over the time it takes for cyclists to become a regular feature. OTOH once (if...) good designs are in and frequent enough such that drivers encounter them AND the cyclists on them regularly (another big if) I don't think they should be much more difficult than a footway to deal with. These things are all over NL - don't have the collision stats but they should. (NL isn't perfect but collecting info on the safety of designs to feed back into better designs as required is part of the "sustainable safety" philosophy - if they're really a killer I think they'd be altering these.)
I'm in the happy position of agreeing with everybody here! I've never considered a bike with a stand, yet I'm impressed by the ingenuity and adaptability of this axle. I tow a Yak Bob with a Robert Axle, employing my El Cheapo Vitus gravel bike and I just have to be very careful where I stop. Hedges are generally a dead loss, and I seek walls, telegraph poles and signposts and generally lean the widest part of the Bob against it. One very awkward task is removing the two steel pins which lock the trailer arms onto the special mounting slots on the Robert axle, and when you have one out, the sodding weight in the trailer can twist the whole caboodle and bend the Bob fitting before you can get the other out and unhitch. I doubt if a stand would help with that. You can imagine that this combo is a real pain when you have to get it over the bridge at railway stations, and it nearly resulted in Merseyrail nearly parting me and the trailer on the platform from the bike on the train. It's a long story for another time. Another axle example recently featured on here, with a 12mm front axle bearing the Herculean weight limit of a monster American front rack.
This has nothing to do with the type of bike - it's the type of behaviour that's the problem. Banning the sale of such bikes will not curtail the behaviour. They'll just find another type of vehicle and continue to drive dangerously as there's such a lack of enforcement. I'd sooner see them ban the bally. But really, all that's required is an improvement to roads policing.
The EAPC Bill is welcome, but full of holes. What's to stop an overpowered but temporarily limited e-bike being sold and subsequently delimited? This is often a trivial process.
@KiwiMike Yeah, in my over four decades of riding all over Europe I've never 'been for a ride in the countryside'. That must be it. Or, and I know this is a wild concept, you just accept that I just voiced my personal experiences and never missed a kickstand, like I wrote. Anyway, what's the big horror of laying your bike on its side for the very few occasions where there is nothing to lean your bike against?
They may have looked, but did they see?
Ds2025: where they are going wrong is that they are crushing the motorbike rather than the person sat on top of it. If they did the latter this issue would be solved in less than 24 hours.
I came this way today with the car boot sale in operation. There was a marshal at the entrance, who stopped a car turning right across the cycleway as I was approaching. So that certainly works. I think it necessary for the marshal to be there, I couldn't say if the driver would have turned if he hadn't been there but you always have to suspect the worst. Unfortunately there is no marshal at the exit, and there was certainly a car stopped across the cycleway as I was approaching it. But he pulled onto the road before I reached it, and the following car stayed off the cycleway as I went through. Ideally there should have been a marshal there too. On the whole, though, it's a really high standard piece of infrastructure. Just a pity it doesn't extend a bit further.
“absolute carnage” So right! Just look at the bodies piled up, blood running in the gutters and injured people limping away. It's a bit of a problem with a road, delaying some people for minutes at a time: it isn't carnage, let alone 'absolute carnage'. Anyone who exaggerates so ridiculously really shouldn't be allowed to comment in public, unless they want to demonstrate their idiocy to all and sundry.
3 thoughts on “Live blog: Beer can (and phone) throwing van passenger “hit by the karma train; Look launch Keo Blade Carbon Ceramic pedal, Greg Van Avermaet’s golden Giant; Know your Yates brother; Jess Varnish to appeal employment tribunal ruling + more”
CO2 Max? If they release
CO2 Max? If they release more CO2 than any other company, perhaps they deserve to have a chateau dropped on them. Chateau!
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/1714736.INEOS_under_fire_for_its_carbon_footprint_/
Seems like Brailsford doesn’t
Seems like Brailsford doesn’t care who he tries to sell his soul to, so long as the spondolicks support his master plan.
EDF may make a better bedfellow as that may confuse his French “supporters”.
Butty wrote:
Sports sponsorship is invariably provided by organisations who need to improve their image. Drug, oil, mining or (in days gone by) tobacco companies…
It could be worse, he could have to arse-lick a repressive Middle Eastern regime for dollars. A big cash injection is the sole reason the 2016 Worlds were held in the spectatorless, flat desert of Qatar.