"Disgraceful stupid little cupboards": CyclingMikey left with "utter disgust" for UK trains' dreaded upright bike storage; Tour de France Femmes gets underway; Remco's victory tour (+ a golden S-Works Tarmac SL8) + more on the live blog

Ah, yes, a return to the road.cc live blog for the infamous bike storage cupboards...

[CyclingMikey/Twitter]

They'll be familiar to any of you who've tried to take your bike on anything longer than a local UK train journey, the saga beginning way before you step foot on a station platform as you'll need to book one of the inevitably very few spaces available. Then, on the day, locate your cupboard and begin the 'fun' game of hoisting your bike into the necessary upright position. Feeling relatively strong and travelling with a fairly light road bike with narrow tyres and bars? Fine, you might just escape this experience relatively hate-free. If not, then I wish you good luck.

Any of wider bars, wider tyres, bags, or just a heavier bike can turn this into a physical and mentally-testing exertion that'll leave you feeling like you really should have got an Olympic medal for your efforts. Road safety campaigner and camera cyclist CyclingMikey found out the hard way, telling his followers online that he'd "like to express my utter disgust that some designer/planner thought that this was in any way acceptable bicycle storage", going on to call them "disgraceful stupid little cupboards".

> "If you want to get more people out of cars, you need to offer more": Rail company slammed for banning bikes on trains at peak times, as cyclists brand policy "a step backwards"

One follower commented: "Utterly mad. I'm just back from a few weeks cycling in France and although their rail comes in for much criticism every TER carriage has ample bike parking, and space enough for touring bikes and adapted cycles."

Paul Tutton added: "It's almost like they designed them to put people off bringing bikes on trains whilst meeting their mandatory obligations to the absolute minimum."

The whole rubbish bike storage on trains thing has been going on for a while, Cycling UK in 2019 speaking out about the "awful" cycle storage on GWR's high-speed trains.

> Trying to take a very expensive bike on a GWR train is hard work

Last year we spoke to rail engineer Gareth Dennis on the road.cc Podcast, an episode which turned into him telling us why taking your bike on the train is such a faff...

"Vertical storage should be outright banned," he argued unequivocally. "For the middle-aged men in Lycra with their very expensive road bikes – which is basically all vertical storage is designed for – the vertical storage wrecks their bike.

"For everyone else, and we shouldn't be designing for that narrow case anyway, how does it work for most people who can't lift their bikes up? What about people who rely on their bikes as a mobility aid? What about less confident cyclists who want a bigger, sturdier bike? What about people with non-standard cycles, trikes, those with attachment to wheelchairs, longer bikes, tandems?

"How are any of those people able to use vertical storage? They can't. It's excluding people from using the railway. They are being denied the freedom of movement by the structure of our railways and, ultimately, the Secretary of State for Transport."

British Cycling ended up with the lowest number of track cycling gold medals since Athens two decades ago, finishing fifth in the velodrome medals table. Having said that the 11 total medals was more than any other nation and had Katie Archibald not suffered the misfortune of breaking her leg, ripping ligaments, and dislocating her ankle after tripping over a garden step back in June things could (and most probably would) have looked better.

Plus, with one silver turned to gold GB would have actually ended top of the track cycling medal table, so maybe not all quite so doom and gloom than the fifth in the table and least golds in 20 years line suggested.

"I wouldn't say an era has ended, because it could easily have been quite different," performance director Stephen Park commented on the Paris performance to PA. "If you look across all the British sports, it's tougher to win gold medals now than it has ever been. The difference between first and fourth is smaller than it's ever been.

"We'll go back and analyse what we've done, we'll rebuild as we go to LA. I think our performance is one we can be as proud – if not prouder – of than anything we've done before."

What did you make of GB's performance on the track this Games? 

Dutch delight to kick off the Tour de France. Since the race returned in 2022 they've won more than half the stages and Lotte Kopecky remains the only rider not from the Netherlands to have worn yellow. This will be Charlotte Kool's first trip to the podium however, the 25-year-old winning the stage and taking yellow as a result, compatriot and favourite Lorena Wiebes left to rue a dropped chain at the worst possible moment just as the sprint was hotting up.

Finnish national champion Anniina Ahtosalo took a career-best second place and will swap her nation's jersey for white tomorrow. It wasn't all positive however, a farcical situation occurring out the back of the peloton as the stage unfolded...

Four of the seven riders on the Uzbekistan-based Tashkent City team failed to finish having been dropped on day one. You've got to feel for the young, inexperienced riders clearly not yet at the level but who have been chucked in at the biggest race of the year because their team got an invite based off earning points at smaller, less competitive races in their region to get an automatic invitation, only to now realise that more than half the team can't survive a 123km flat stage.

One team who didn't get an invite was Lifeplus-Wahoo, the British squad last week revealing it was not continuing beyond 2024, their lack of place at the Tour de France Femmes not helping the troubled finances. All a bit of a mess...

Cofidis pro Rubén Fernández has shared pictures of cuts and brusing to his face after being hit by a motorist who ran a stop sign. The Spanish rider was training, the driver's failure to stop at the sign "leaving me unable to react".

"Fortunately, after undergoing all the medical tests, I can say that there are no serious injuries to regret, and this time it was just a scare," he added.

[📷: Eltoromediadotcom]

Team dsm-firmenich PostNL has announced all base salaries for riders male and female will be the same from the start of next season.

"Steps to bridge the payment gap like this are crucial to further develop and professionalise the sport alongside its commercial growth, to give female athletes access to the same resources as their male counterparts and enable them to make a genuine and comfortable living from doing what they love the most," the team said.

Meanwhile, in Belgium, Spesh wasted no time getting that Tarmac SL8 fit for a double Olympic champ... 

[📷: Remco Evenepoel/Strava]

Evenepoel's victory tour saw him appear (and ride, of course) his own sportive and then rock up at his former club Anderlecht's match against OH Leuven to take the acclaim of the fans. Cycling's on a different level over there... something tells us Tom Pidcock won't be rocking up at Elland Road, but we'd love to be pleasantly surprised and proved wrong...

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