Welcome to Wednesday’s live blog, with Jack Sexty, Simon MacMichael and the rest of the team.
Today’s crazy Vuelta stage the fastest 200km+ bike race in history (+ highlights); US firm in a “Spin” over its claim to have trademarked the word; Doping – a Viz reader writes; Watchdog bans Deliveroo bike delivery + more on the live blog
All today’s news from the site and beyond…
Wed, Sep 11, 2019 18:50
11 September 2019, 18:50
Essential advice as ever from the Viz letters page
11 September 2019, 18:50
At 219.6km, today’s Stage 17 of the Vuelta was the longest of this year’s race – and at an average speed of 50.63kph is thought to have been ridden at a faster pace than any 200km-plus road stage or one-day race in the history of professional cycling.
It’s also the fastest stage in the Vuelta during the past 15 years, eclipsed only by Stage 9 of the 2001 Vuelta as shown in this list provided by Procycling Stats in their excellent livefeed of today’s stage.
https://www.procyclingstats.com/race/vuelta-a-espana/2019/stage-17/today/situation
As you’ll see from the list, stages ridden when EPO use was at its peak in the peloton dominate; there’s only one other stage from the past decade, from Andorra La Vella to Lleida in 2010, when there was a drop of 830 metres in altitude. Certainly, it’s well documented that the average speed of Grand Tours has dropped noticeably since the early 2000s.
A number of factors combined to make today’s stage so quick. As in that 2001 stage, there was a split in the peloton due to crosswinds and today that was followed by a tailwind.
With seven riders in the 45-strong front group, Deceuninck-Quick Step rode hard – and saw Philippe Gilbert take the win in Guadalajara and James Knox jump from 11th to 8th overall. Other teams in the front group had numbers too and an interest in distancing the other GC contenders – not least Movistar, whose quartet of riders included Nairo Quintana who leaps from sixth to second overall.
What we can say with certainty is that today’s stage was quicker than the fastest road stage ever at the Tour de France, which also came around the turn of the millennium, when Mario Cipollini won a 194.5km stage from Laval to Blois at an average speed of 50.4kph.
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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).
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Latest Comments
chrisonabike 7 hours ago
"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.
chrisonabike 7 hours ago
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.)
wtjs 9 hours ago
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.
HoarseMann 10 hours ago
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.
AidanR 11 hours ago
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.
Sredlums 11 hours ago
@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?
mdavidford 12 hours ago
They may have looked, but did they see?
jackcycles 12 hours ago
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.
Rod Marton 12 hours ago
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.
eburtthebike 12 hours ago
“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.
16 thoughts on “Today’s crazy Vuelta stage the fastest 200km+ bike race in history (+ highlights); US firm in a “Spin” over its claim to have trademarked the word; Doping – a Viz reader writes; Watchdog bans Deliveroo bike delivery + more on the live blog”
I wonder if the cyclist being
I wonder if the cyclist being deliberately run over with life changing injuries will generate the same level of outrage as the cyclist head butting the pedestrian?
burtthebike wrote:
It definitely won’t. And it’ll be more to do with gang warfare than hatred for cyclists.
Obligatory call for cars to be fitted with number plates to allow them to be traced when they leave the scene of an acc… oh wait! Not that having number plates is a requirement for car drivers anymore. I often see cars driving around London without plates fitted.
srchar wrote:
My first thought, too.
Hey – maybe we’re looking at ‘headbutting cyclist’ incident all wrong… Maybe there was a previous conflict at a bridge club or something, rather than their being total strangers
brooksby wrote:
My thought too. There was clearly a close passing of the cyclist & pedestrian. Did the cyclist have right of way? Did the pedestrian say something highly offensive to the cyclist? I have no idea but there is more to this than the video shows.
burtthebike wrote:
Tricky one, it might because it was a 17 year-old, but then maybe not because it was only a cyclist… or maybe it will because perpertrator was a yoof… or maybe not because he was in a car… or maybe it will because he fled the scene.
Or the 4×4/little shit story
Or the 4×4/little shit story from yesterday.
So an American corporation
So an American corporation “owns” the rights to an English word? What’s next, no more spin cycle for washing machines?
Philh68 wrote:
the whole , spinning, is only ‘spinning’ if you are ‘spinning’ with a trainer, trained in ‘spinning’ who’s paying the American corporation, for the privellege of calling his ‘spin class’ a ‘spin class’ thing, has been going on for many years. It’s nuts, but that seems to be the way of the world now. Soon, you won’t be able to go for a ‘shit’ without someone claiming a copyright infringement, if this carries on.
Judge dreadful wrote:
they could market a toilet under the brand name Pooloton which bland beautiful people could sit on in their vast apartments in front of the landscape windows, laying some massive cable without even their t-shirt getting sweaty.
Philh68 wrote:
No, in broad terms an American corporation has the right to use an English word to sell goods or services in specified classes in a particular geography for a limited period of time. I assume their registration doesn’t cover washing machines. What I don’t understand is why the owner of the “spinning” trademark is taking action for use of the word “spin”, which they don’t appear to have a registration for. Maybe this will turn out like the Roubaix debacle, where Specialized got heavy handed over a cafe using the name until Fuji bikes pointed out that actually Specialized didn’t own that, they did.
I’m not sure what I think
I’m not sure what I think about the Deliveroo judgement.
I never actually believed that a kid on a MTB could deliver to a fleeing bank robber or to the ISS – I’d assumed it’s what used to be called “artistic licence” – so I wouldn’t have taken on face value that they could deliver “anywhere”…
I mean – Domino’s don’t deliver to my village even though there’s a branch in the next town 4 miles away, so I wouldn’t imagine Deliveroo would either.
brooksby wrote:
Dont assume anything with advertising… Red Bull lost a case based on someone who said that he was not given wings as promised.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/29550003/so-red-bull-doesnt-actually-give-you-wings.
Oh, and the rolling bib shorts into the jersey video… genius!
PRSboy wrote:
+1 on that!
CygnusX1 wrote:
That’s the way I’ve been doing my t-shirts when I go on holiday for the last few years, takes up less space than folding and gives a nice tight bundle. I bought a couple of t-shirts when I was away recently and folded them like this on the shop counter.
Redvee wrote:
I’ve recently started using fold and roll for most of my tshirts etc that go away into a drawer, avoids getting creases that get compressed by the weight of others above, and it’s much easier to find the one you want when they’re layed out visibly rather than in a stack. Keeping the bib shorts inside the jersey is a minor stroke of genius though.
I’d be most happy if they
I’d be most happy if they change their name to “America corporate fitness giants are a bunch of c*nts”