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Live blog: Chris Froome shares photo from training camp; Someone is trying to sell this ‘bike stand’ on Facebook Marketplace; Derry judge says some roundabouts “too big and complicated” to man who hit cyclist; Gino D’Acampo rides Bianchi e-road bike +more
SUMMARY

Unfortunate...
Another cyclist with their eyes closed pic.twitter.com/EXEALJDKzG
— Thos Major (@ThosMajor) January 9, 2020
That pontoon might need extending a bit?
Here’s the map of the Belgian #CXNATS venue and track. pic.twitter.com/H9M70NiPMv
— Bill Schieken | CXHAIRS Media (@CXHairs) January 9, 2020
Unless the Belgian national cyclocross championships have now introduced a swim section, either the course or this map may need a redesign…
Mud biker?
Why do we call ourselves mountain bikers when the majority of us have never been down a mountain….I’m going to call myself a gentle slope biker from now on. #mtb #mtbtalk
— Andy (@Andyfragglemtb) January 9, 2020
It’s true that ‘road cyclist’ is largely a more accurate description, unless you’re a mountain biker who genuinely rides up and down mountains. As a regular Bristol and Bath railway path commuter, I am now a proud path biker…
Gino D'Acampagnolo?


Well actually, Gino was probably the only one not using the famous Italian groupset as he headed out with Treviglio locals who were kitted out in vintage kit and Bianchi bikes, while he rode one of their new Aria e-bike models in jeans and a shirt.


Treviglio is the location of Bianchi’s famous headquarters, and the convicted house burglar-turned TV chef paid a visit to the factory as part of his new ITV series, ‘Gino’s Italian Escape’. He also stopped by Milan to check out some cocktail bars, and we were also treated to footage of D’Acampo licking a huge wooden stirring spoon used to whip up fresh Stracciatella gelato in Bergamo.
Definitely true...
‘The consensus of opinion is increasing overwhelmingly day by day that bicycle riding produces in the female a distinct orgasm’.
– from an editorial in the Canadian journal, The Dominion Medical Monthly (1896). pic.twitter.com/elDymAHDYN
— Whores of Yore (@WhoresofYore) August 11, 2018
Cyclist settles for $500,000 with San Diego County after suffering brain injury due to pothole


NBC San Diego reports that the woman suffered ‘a traumatic brain injury’ after being thrown from her bike while riding on U.S Highway 8 in August 2017. The woman, who wished to remain anonymous, hit a broken section of tarmac that had risen from a tree root, creating a large pothole in the road.
According to public documents, the road near the city of El Cajon had been in disrepair for years, and this particular section was only fixed after the incident; some potholes were filled on the road following complaints from motorists, but the bike lane was left in disrepair.
Records now obtained by NBC show that the woman settled the case for $500,000 in October 2019. Her attorney Daniel Petrov said: “The County worked diligently to repair the rise in the concrete in the bicycle lane after the fall.
“Unfortunately, it took my client suffering a traumatic brain injury before the repair was complete. Our hope is that the county continues looking for the rises or potholes on public streets, and especially bicycle lanes, so that bicycle riders can feel safe riding in San Diego County.”
That's not a pothole... THIS is a pothole
Although the crater that caused injuries to the unfortunate cyclist in San Diego reported on below (see it on the NBC News San Diego website) was a bad one, over on our Facebook page Shaun Wyllie appears to have topped it with this absolute beast he happened across on a ride recently.
Sad but true
Cycling outside a school in the UK Vs Cycling outside a school in the Netherlands. pic.twitter.com/DR1YPBwWdp
— Adam Tranter (@adamtranter) January 10, 2020
The reality of cycling outside a school in the UK too often looks like the scene on the left; but it should be far more like the journey Dutch children used to making on the right.
Judge in Derry says some roundabouts "are too big and too complicated" as man charged with careless driving for hitting cyclist
Derry’s district judge made the comments as 42-year-old Matthew Horner admitted the charge of careless driving, for knocking a woman off her bike on 15th June last year. She told ambulance staff when they arrived that she was on the roundabout when Horner’s car entered and hit her.
Horner’s defence said that he “did not see” the cyclist and tried to avoid hitting her when he eventually did. The judge Barney McElholm said that some roundabouts with “too many exits” could cause problems for drivers, noting that Horner offered to stay and help the woman and appeared “very remorseful”. Horner was £175 and given three penalty points on his driving licence.
The future of e-bike batteries? Scientists claim they've created a battery that offers five times more energy than a lithium-ion battery


Causing quite a stir over on our sister site eBikeTips is the news that a team of scientists say their lithium-sulfur rechargeable battery design is far superior to lithium-ion. If you’re not an e-biker, they also say it could power a smartphone for five days or allow an electric car to drive over 1,000km on a single charge – full story here.
New £1 million cycling and walking route to be built in Northern Ireland
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Derry City and Strabane District Council have approved the new route in Strabane, a 3.5km route constructed in the town, connecting the A5, Derry Road, Canal Basin, River Mourne Flood Wall and Strabane Retail Park.
Further proposals include changes to exisiting kerb alignments, new road markings and new path lighting.
Not a bike stand
Who’s going to tell him? pic.twitter.com/bBymHcvr8n
— Andy Lulham (@LulhAndy) January 10, 2020
To be fair it’s an absolute bargain, and anyone who manages to pick up what is actually a Tacx turbo trainer for a tenner will probably be very pleased so long as it works.
As Real Gaz points out on Twitter, as an item that you a secure your bike to, technically a turbo trainer is sort of a bike stand…
Behind the scenes of 'that' Danny MacAskill video
I’ve always wanted to transfer between 2 slacklines on my bike. After 199 goes I didn’t even come close to landing both tires on the line. Then in the 200th go it worked perfect haha!
Full film https://t.co/CWIBLBYaG1
#gymnasium #slackline #trials pic.twitter.com/1fGYr1h3tm
— Danny MacAskill (@danny_macaskill) January 9, 2020
Remarkably the Scot said he’d never came close to landing this trick before nailing it perfectly in his epic Gymnasium vid – watch the full thing here.
Can we just talk about that training kit...


Chris Froome (appears to be) on a training camp... and what's going on with that kit??
On training camp… or maybe not No really, I am pic.twitter.com/HpvyFik1W6
— Chris Froome (@chrisfroome) January 10, 2020
His tweet doesn’t exactly settle the matter, but it looks like Froome has joined his teammates on a new training camp, less than a week after reports from Italy claimed he had left another camp early.
The report in Bicisport magazine quoted Team Ineos’ sports director Dario Cioni as saying, ““He is not well and who knows if he will recover?”; however Froome responded via his Twitter account saying that his recovery is in fact going well.
Whether he will make it to the Tour de France in 2020 remains to be seen, but this photo is certainly promising. On another note, is this the Ineos away strip or does this indicate a complete departure from the blood red and black kit of 2019?
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Latest Comments
Finally some proper Gravel for the UCI World Championships! …no dates in the article. Racing starts today 10/11 Oct. Watch it free on SBS 6pm Go well Matt…
@Aluminium can - as an alternative to vans, yes cargo bikes (plenty in Cambridge), and I've been wondering whether supplies could be delivered from retailers - using delivery robots. and it's possible I suppose that ladders could fall in the same category - you could, instead of just hiring a bicycle, hire a ladder and it would arrive of its own accord.
... and we still had apostrophe rationing.
@Rendel Harris There was a bit in the bicycle hating Guardian, a nice little read, part of his justification was to acclimatise to the heat and humidity, which if he was in a better car might have been worth it. Good luck to him, chapeau.
@SecretSam That's not really fair, in fact not fair at all. It wasn't his fault that the last two mountain stages were shortened and on the first one he had dropped everyone and was a minute clear as he summitted the Iseran when the stage was neutralised, and on the second he stayed with or dropped all the other GC contenders. You seem to have forgotten his Giro win as well as Paris Nice and the Tour de Suisse. Only the fourth rider to have won the Tour and Giro before the age of twenty-five. Yes he probably couldn't have stayed with Pogacar even if he hadn't had the awful crash, and probably nor could any other rider in history except perhaps Merckx.
@lesterama Bernal has had two whammys. His crash, which he has probably never fully recovered from and Ineos taking a nosedive. They have no focus and no identity.
@Zermattjohn Read the comment I posted about my experience
I bought some Challenge Strada tyres. After a while the sidewalls began to detach from the tyre and the tread became rippled making them unsafe to use. The shop I bought them from asked me to drop them in and he would show the Challenge rep as he was due in the following week. The rep bizarrely firstly claimed that the tyres had failed because they may have been punctured (they hadn’t), then immediately claimed that they had failed because the rear tyre was more worn than the front! I emailed pictures to Challenge and was told they had failed because they had been fitted incorrectly. The black strip they had introduced to stop the issue I had was supposed to be above the rim. Which it clearly was shown to be correct on the pictures I sent to them which proved that the tyres were correctly fitted. This seems to be the norm now in the cycle industry, if there is an issue with a product, the company automatically blames the end user rather than look to address the issue, thereby pissing the customer off. A pissed off customer rarely returns.
@kingleo And there are hundreds, if not thousands of people holding up a shattered helmet saying it saved their life, the doctor/policeman told me.
I spend a month most years in China because of family, and a cargo bike there with an electric motorbike style front end and either LFP or advanced lead acid batteries, costs under £100 and is the backbone of every trade. There are a hundred different kinds but what they share in common is functionality and cheapness. Even the ancient pedal pulled wooden wagons with literally welded spokes from the sixties have been electrified with e-motors attached to the underside - and they cost sod all. In China cheap transport for business is a public good like drinking water. Because to get people to work you have to make work affordable. That's a secret of capitalism we in the UK could do better to learn.
20 thoughts on “Live blog: Chris Froome shares photo from training camp; Someone is trying to sell this ‘bike stand’ on Facebook Marketplace; Derry judge says some roundabouts “too big and complicated” to man who hit cyclist; Gino D’Acampo rides Bianchi e-road bike +more”
…and not a helmet in sight.
…and not a helmet in sight. The ‘real’ cyclists were all kitted out in vintage style, to be fair, as if they were heading straight off to L’Eroica.
Here’s that missing part of
Here’s that missing part of the Belgian CX Championship course…
dgmtc wrote:
I like how they’ve got someboy in the water waving their arms about just after the corner. Presumably their bike is now on the bottom of the canal?
CygnusX1 wrote:
So there’s some bike riding. And some running. And now they’ve got to go swimming.
Kick your socks off and Sharpie some numbers on your arms, we’ve got a triathlon, people!
Unfortunate…
Unfortunate…
To be fair, I have seen worse cycle parking infrastructure.
Perhaps these drivers that
Perhaps these drivers that find roundabouts a bit too complicated might want to avoid them. Perhaps, and maybe going a bit too far, get on a bike, I’ve never found a roundabout “too complicated, and of course better vision, no need for a blind spot warning on my arse, or find a different route that avoids them.
ktache wrote:
You can get poor infrastructure that does lead to increased risk and needs to be redesigned. Can’t say I have ever found a roundabout too complicated. Even if you have roundabouts around a roundabout, you just treat each one as you come to it and ignore the rest.
Perhaps the driver was one of these people who can’t lose face by going around a roundabout more than once due to missing the turn or being in the wrong lane and instead have to force their way into the lane they want.
hirsute wrote:
I know the roundabout in question (https://www.google.fr/maps/@55.0229519,-7.3388255,229m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en) and it’s an odd one TBH. It’s not the number of exits, which isn’t excessive at 5, It’s more the shape/orientation – sort of elongated/egg shaped as can be seen in the satellite view in the link above. It’s a busy roundabout, and when coming on to it from the main approaches (Buncrana Rd either direction in the link above) it seems to have a fairly gradual bend which gets then gets suddenly and appreciably sharper at the apexes to the east and west and can come as a surprise to the unwary. I’ve no idea why it’s not just round – it’s not like it the don’t have the space (could even do so in the current space it occupies)
I’ve never had the pleasure of going round it on the bike, but it doesn’t strike me as a pleasant piece of infrastructure to negotiate at busy times
I’d never consider my driving
I’d never consider my driving to be that perfect enough never to have found myself confused by a road layout,try driving on the new A14 section that opened before Christmas for instance,and some of the roundabouts here about rely on familiarity to use properly,rather than road common sense, and some just seem to be badly designed to begin with
https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/motoring/norwich-northern-distributor-road-wroxham-road-roundabout-video-1-6457416
That aside theres no excuse for hitting anything that you should be able to see, even if you are confused by the layout
There’s nothing wrong with
There’s nothing wrong with being momentarily confused by a road layout – it’s the driver’s response to it that matters. Slow down, pay more attention to one’s surroundings? Fine. Sail on through that confusing junction at 40mph without a thought for other road users? Not fine.
There’s just as much, if not more, badly designed motor vehicle infrastructure as bike lanes.
That Ineos kit, did they just
That Ineos kit, did they just copy and paste from CCC?
Cyclolotl wrote:
Maybe, but it’s just training ride kit, Trek Segafredo do similarly with their dayglo yellow training version of their normal road kit.Ineos announced last year their main team coloured kit wasnt changing for 2020 except for the addition of the new uci world tour logo
I think it’s a lovely shade
I think it’s a lovely shade of a very striking orange. Any slight reduction in the chances of being hit by incompetent motorists to their significant investments would seem worthwhile.
Marginal gains…
“It’s true that ‘road cyclist
“It’s true that ‘road cyclist’ is largely a more accurate description, unless you’re a mountain biker who genuinely rides up and down mountains. As a regular Bristol and Bath railway path commuter, I am now a proud path biker…”
The French have a more apt description, VTT: Velo a tout terrain (All terrain bike).
judda6610 wrote:
A stroke in MTB (mountain/trail bike) would also do, I reckon, unless you are being particular about what a trail is.
judda6610 wrote:
A stroke in MTB (mountain/trail bike) would also do, I reckon, unless you are being particular about what a trail is.
Could be good for Nottingham.
Could be good for Nottingham.
https://westbridgfordwire.com/almost-1-million-to-be-spent-on-part-of-nottinghams-cycle-path-network/
One less psychopathic BMW
One less psychopathic BMW driver on the road.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-51065720
A proper ban when he finally gets out too. Shame it couldn’t be lifetime
Odd that the BBC news website said that [the victim] “was hit by the car and thrown into the air.”
Not that the perpetrator deliberately drove his car at the victim, as the judge said (which the BBC website doesn’t mention) “You drove at him, in effect using your car as a weapon, causing him to suffer the injuries that led to his death, all in the sight of his family.”
South Today managed to include the weapon thing and show cctv evidence of the car starting the fateful acceleration towards the victim.
Admitted manslaugher too, tried for murder, not causing death by dangerous.
ktache wrote:
A shame also that he was still on the road to do this after 13 [courtroom vidiprinter: THIRTEEN] previous offences.
mdavidford wrote:
Sorry – my mistake – 13 convictions – 28 [TWENTY-EIGHT] offences.