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Live blog: Kittel back on the bike (and cake and beer) – but not shaving his legs; Giro rider asks how much beer he must drink to replenish calories after monster stage (answer – A LOT); James Hayden makes a splash – inadvertently (video) + more
SUMMARY

Some stories you may have missed at the weekend
Richard Carapaz wins the Giro d’Italia
He’s the first rider from Ecuador to win a Grand Tour – and a national hero now.
It was all happening on Stage 20.
HSBC UK is cutting nine in ten of its staff car-parking spaces – it wants employees to cycle instead
Let’s hope other companies follow British Cycling’s sponsor’s lead.
David Millar and Martin Johnson ride Vélo North route
“Breath-taking is the only way I can describe it,” says Millar
MP suffers broken hand after getting doored while cycling in Bournemouth
And Chris Grayling was nowhere in sight.
“I’ve put 10kg on because I was severely underweight” says Wiggins
They didn’t call him Twiggo for nothing.
... but this one from tthe US involving an axle lever is even more wince-inducing
Ouchee. Click through on the tweet for more pictures and the full story.
so i know we were all worried about disc brakes being unsafe, but can we talk about sharp thru axle levers? pic.twitter.com/Qa8QIZ5cM7
— Colin Reuter (@resultsboy) June 3, 2019
A very nasty injury at Paris-Rounbaix U23 due to a disc brake rotor ....
It happened to AG2R U23 rider Matteo Jorgenson during yeterday’s race (which was won by the Team Wiggins-Le Col rider, Tom Pidcock).
Roubaix Espoir for me You can be third wheel and still get crashed. Waiting for surgery due to someone disc rotor Didn’t believe they could do this until it happened to me. Thankful for my parents being here pic.twitter.com/K1kBxLwP6J
— Matteo Jorgenson (@matteojorg) June 2, 2019
How to be vegan at the Giro
Lotto-Soudal’s Adam Hansen explains …
Over on our socials
Make sure you follow us on all the social media platforms to see what we’re reviewing and some general road .cc nonsense. As a little taster, his is a look at one of the latest review bikes.
Giro 2019 - That's a Wrap
The final episode of Mitchelton Scott’s Grio d’Italia.
The team missed their big goals with Simon Yates finishing 8th, 7’49” down on a very impressive Richard Carapaz of Movistar.
But it wasn’t all bad news. The race saw fan-favourite Esteban Chavez returning close to the form of a few years ago. He took an emotional stage win late in the race.
DealClincher - Time for some new sunnies?


If you’re looking for a new pair of sunnies then we’d highly recommend Oakley’s Radar EV. They’re secure on the face and the lens offers great clarity.
Elllen van Dijk's bike stolen - and she has suspicions about the culprit
Are you kidding me?! Woke up this morning to find out my @TrekBikes Madone is stolen! It was in the team bike room @LottoLadiesTour in the middle of a row of bikes from @knwu. Please RT or let me know when you saw anything pic.twitter.com/MSU7Ga7jQY
— Ellen van Dijk (@ellenvdijk) June 2, 2019
Thanks for all the retweets about my stolen @TrekBikes Madone. Most likely somebody from another team in the hotel stole it, as only these people had access to the room. Somebody surely knew what he/she was looking for. Cheers to all the sympathy on twitter! pic.twitter.com/H15i4uZ1hz
— Ellen van Dijk (@ellenvdijk) June 2, 2019
"On your bike!" says Peter Sagan - for World Bicycle Day
Sound advice from the three-time world champ.
It's #WorldBicycleDay today! Go out for a ride, it's good for you and the planet! @UN @UNEnvironment @c40cities pic.twitter.com/ckUqzYEH4w
— Peter Sagan (@petosagan) June 3, 2019
Video: James Hayden takes an unplanned dip
The ultracyclist has been dipping his toe in the water with mountain biking, riding the Highland Trail 550 last week – and he made a splash, though not in the way he intended …
When you've only been riding a mountain bike for an hour, but you're one to always jump in at the deep end… I saw Dustin nail the river crossing and thought I'd have a go! #ht550 @HT_550 #mycanyon pic.twitter.com/pQ8wW81csq
— James Hayden (@JamesMarkHayden) June 1, 2019
Marcel Kittel back on the bike (and beer and cake) - but not shaving his legs
Marcel Kittel, who recently announced he was taking an indefinite break from pro cycling, is back on his bike, plus the beer and cake … but he’s not shaving his legs. (As spotted on the German rider’s Instagram account by road.cc reader Josh Owen Morris, though the pictures in question seem to have disappeared now).
Marcel Kittel has come back to the surface over on Instagram. Clearly loving life, he's gone cycle touring on the old East/West German border, eaten cake and er grown his leg hair. pic.twitter.com/mSA76ugn3g
— Josh Owen Morris (@JoshOwenMorris) June 2, 2019
Giro rider asks how many beers needed to replenish Calories after Saturday’s monster stage … a LOT is the answer
A Giro d’Italia rider asked on Twitter how any beers he needed to down to replace the Calories burnt in Saturday’s monster stage in the Dolomites … and the answer was one that would leave even the most hollow-legged of beer aficionados legless, never mind a cyclist at the end of a three-week Grand Tour.
“Today at the Giro I consumed 6,300 Calories,” wrote Groupama-FDJ rider, Jacopo Guarnieri.
“Can anyone tell me how many beers I need to drink to replenish?“
Oggi al #giro ho consumato 6300kcal. Chi mi sa dire quante birre devo bere per una corretta reintegrazione?
— Jacopo Guarnieri (@jacopoguarnieri) June 1, 2019
Eurosport commentator Rob Hatch suggested that Daniel Lloyd, who has been working for the channel during the race, might “know something about that.”
“14 x 330ml Duvels,” Lloyd shot back. “Then you’d have enough left over for a Bud Light, but I wouldn’t bother with that bit.”
14 x 330ml Duvels.
Then you’d have enough left over for a Bud Light, but I wouldn’t bother with that bit.
— Daniel Lloyd (@daniellloyd1) June 1, 2019
“I’m gonna have a funny night, then,” replied Guarnieri.
Another response came from his former Astana team-mate Enrico Gasparotto, now riding for Dimension Data.
“More than you could manage, no doubt,” he said.
Più che riesci senza dubbi!
— Enrico Gasparotto (@enrigasparotto) June 1, 2019
We’re not sure whether he took up Lloyd’s advice of downing a baker’s dozen plus one bottles of the 8.5 per cent ABV Belgian beer … but he finished 117th out of 142 riders in yesterday’s concluding individual time trial in Verona.
Uber's Jump bikes are now out in the wild in London
They launched in the capital last week … we spotted this one at Acton Central Overground on Friday evening. We also saw a couple being ridden past the Houses of Parliament yesterday … it’s difficult to miss them.
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Latest Comments
@wtjs And the death penalty. So many wrongly convicted people would have been killed if it still existed, including the almost certainly wrongly convicted Lucy Letby.
@mdavidford Fair point, I withdraw the cricket ball analogy, I'll just stick with the being dropped out of a train one.
@Rendel Harris Without disputing the broader point that horizontal speeds matter in an impact, I'm not sure your cricket ball example really works. When a ball is bowled at 90mph it's not released horizontally - if it was it would end up a beamer and you'd be no balled. It's thrown down as well as along, so its vertical speed is significantly higher to start with than a ball simply dropped from the same height.
Physics would appear to disagree with you:
It's astonishing that without knowing anything about me beyond our interactions on here you know the exact circumstances of the incident described and, presumably psychically, my state of mind at the time as regards my willingness to take risks. I wasn't taking risks, I was taking a long sweeping bend on an NSL road that I had taken many times before, with all due caution, but unfortunately hit a diesel spill on the apex. So you admit that motorcycle helmets can reduce damage. Good, because it did. For a clearly intelligent man you don't half come out with some nonsense sometimes. Marquez was thrown forward from his bike at a speed that I would estimate as being somewhere between 80 to 100 mph and came down on his head, and you are claiming that the only force acting upon his head/helmet is the gravitational force of dropping from 1.5 m? The fact that his head was moving forward at 80mph plus at the time would have exerted no influence on the level of force experienced? That is patently absurd. Consider a cricket ball bowled at 90 mph. If you drop a cricket ball from 2.5 m it will experience a force sufficient to make it bounce about 10cm, and yet somehow, even though according to you horizontal speed is irrelevant to the force of impact, a ball bowled at 90 mph manages to bounce up to head height or higher. How does it do that if "the horizontal speed is irrelevant to the impact"? If I hold you upside down out of the window of a train going at 100 mph and drop you 1.5 m to the ground, will your head only experience the same level of impact force that it would if I had dropped you 1.5 m from the ground when the train was stationary? Seriously?
@chrisonabike Ah yes, the Monmouth Pl pump track. Apparently there is a bingo card of annoying bike infra features and someone was keen to get a full house. The good planners of Bristol were clearly envious and copied the design on Whiteladies Road this year
Also "if there is going to be cycle infra anywhere, it should be in the park". Having cycled in Bath a couple of times I can see where he's coming from (thinking about child and elderly relatives). I understand this as "this town's motor traffic is so out of control that even proper cycle infra (the whole raison d'être of which is 'motor traffic') doesn't make me think my relatives would be safe". That's pretty sad.
@slc when I last visited, it was more like humps - for the cyclists that is! Up and down at the "creative" bus stop "bypasses" (eg. on Monmouth Place). Edinburgh might be jealous with their "trap you in a "protected" bike lane when the bus pulls into it" efforts. Both are pretty hopeless.
Even Uk efforts to *improve* safety for all vulnerable road users neatly feed back to also dissuade vulnerable road users. Again improves those safety numbers... This happens because these are never allowed to "inconvenience" motoring (or - can't allocate too many thousands for that because this big road already costs millions). So rather than reduce and/or move the motor traffic, the "safer infra" becomes uninviting and inconvenient (see "wait 5 minutes at the lights", "dodgy underpass" and "concrete trenches in the sky" overpasses).
@belugabob seems the threads have got out of sync (as my browser shows 'em), but yes. A great way to improve the cycling KSI stats is to have no cyclists. Guaranteed zero cyclist KSIs! The UK hasn't got there (yet) of course, but along with reducing cyclist numbers another proven way is to reduce the interactions between cyclists and motorists. That has happened both in NL and also in most of the UK - but ... a bit differently here. The roads have become so uninviting to most that what cycling there is increasingly takes place in parks, along canals, or in people's garages. Good for those road safety figures though. And as long as we keep pointing at them (to the exclusion of anything else), we could keep "winning the argument"... all the way to having nobody travelling outside a motor vehicle - or outside at all. And think how many lives will be saved!
5 thoughts on “Live blog: Kittel back on the bike (and cake and beer) – but not shaving his legs; Giro rider asks how much beer he must drink to replenish calories after monster stage (answer – A LOT); James Hayden makes a splash – inadvertently (video) + more”
I wonder what the ‘disc
I wonder what the ‘disc brakes don’t cut through skin’ brigade are going to say about this incident?
Pretty shitty for van Dijk, if she has her suspicions then surely the team would be getting the police involved and checking all the other teams for the bike no given her accusation?
As for the 14 beers, I would think post race a couple of shandies would put many pro cyclists on the floor, 14 bottles would be enough for the whole team to get pissed
At last we have definitive
At last we have definitive proof on one debate. No discs please.
I don’t understand these disc
I don’t understand these disc injuries. Were they not on the wheel at the time? How can the edge of the disc come into contact with a leg this way? The rim and spokes will get in the way.
flat4 wrote:
That is a really nasty looking injury
– it looks like a special effect!
(Disclaimer: *my* bike has v-brakes…).
flat4 wrote:
It’s possible, particularly if the disc has a sharp edge – e.g. if the wheel is effectively sliding it’s spokes across the top of your leg, then you potentially cut the inside of your thigh, or you can knock your knee against them from a number of angles – but it’s actually difficult to make big cuts with them. This, I think, has been the main point of those who didn’t subscribe to the ‘pro peloton to be instantly reduced into pile of quivering mince-meat’ frame of mind, rather than it’s impossible. This may well turn out to be caused by a disc – who knows – but as seen further up this news segment and elsewhere, you can get slashed by any number of parts of a bike.
That said, i’ve not actually seen a large gash caused by a rotor on the road yet – the two hyped cuts in recent memory turned out to be almost certainly caused by a chainring and protruding part of a barrier.