“Are there any bearings left?”: Bike mechanic doesn’t recommend “novel lubricant” found in cyclist’s Cervélo… after half a beach’s worth of grit and sand falls from headset; Strava crackdown on segment cheats; Giro sprint stage + more on the live blog

Strava says its attempts to crack down on segment cheats and inaccurate data are “ongoing” (no mention if helping Telegraph journos to avoid making fools of themselves is one of the reasons why).

The ride-sharing app says it is continuing to use its machine learning model, first launched in February, to reprocess the top 10 spots on ride and run leaderboards.

A spokesperson said this effort has removed 4.45 million activities with the wrong sport type or recorded in vehicles so far, and has helped to rightfully restore KOMs and QOMs to reflect true performances.

Sorry ‘Marco Pantani’, your ride has been flagged…

No, guys, not that one…

Only joking, that wasn’t the work of the Strava model, presumably just some jealous amateur from Bergamo who lost their KOM…

The internet’s weird sometimes…

 

 

 

 

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Richard Carapaz might be one of the more underrated riders of the current generation. He’s often flown slightly under the radar in the era of Pog, Vingegaard, Remco, Van der Poel and Van Aert — but the Ecuadorian’s wins now stand at one Olympic gold medal, one Giro d’Italia, three Grand Tour podiums including a third-place at the Tour, eight Grand Tour stages (four Giro, one Tour, three Vuelta) and a Tour de France mountains jersey.

Yesterday’s latest victory was a typical Carapaz raid, the climber’s determination to make something work seeing him fly up the final five per cent slopes at 30km/h+ before gritting his teeth and getting it done as the group got closer behind. 

“We left it very late to make the move today,” he admitted. “It was a very, very tough stage. And from the very first climb, I saw that so many people were suffering and I knew that I didn’t have good legs but I chose the right moment because I knew that I could select the group and I could also make it to the finish. And it was almost like a time trial to make it all the way home today.”

Reflecting on the day, EF Education EasyPost sports director Juanma Gárate praised Carapaz’s mental strength.

“Obviously after yesterday’s TT, we lost a little bit more time than we expected but the determination he has is amazing and we didn’t have any doubts that he would keep on fighting,” Gárate said.

“He takes everything very seriously. He does everything in a very professional way. We started talking about the Giro already in September last year right after the Vuelta. The spring was not very good but he raised his hand and said, ‘I’m going to prepare for the Giro. I’m going to be good, so believe I’m going to be there’.” 

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called on world leaders to prioritise making walking and cycling safe to “unlock huge health, life and green gains”. To mark the 8th UN Global Road Safety Week the organisation has demanded “urgent action to reduce road deaths and boost road safety”.

“More than a quarter of the nearly 1.2 million annual road deaths occur among people moving on foot or by bicycle,” the WHO said. “The risk is remarkably high in low and middle-income countries, where millions face huge risks each day as they walk to work or school on streets with no sidewalks, and no safe places to cross busy roads. Just a tiny fraction of the world’s roads — far less than one per cent — have safe cycle lanes.”

The WHO says the danger to vulnerable road users is rising in many regions and cited stats showing that between 2011 and 2021 pedestrian deaths increased by 42 per cent in the WHO South-East Asia Region, while fatalities among cyclists rose by 50 per cent in the European Region and surged by 88 per cent in the WHO Western Pacific Region.

“We need urgent action to make walking and cycling safe, and to succeed our efforts must be part of the tried, tested and proven ‘safe system’ approach to road safety. This takes a holistic approach to designing transport systems and makes human life — and human safety — the priority.”

The WHO has called for governments to follow its Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2021-2030 and says “if we walk this path, we will prevent millions of deaths and injuries”.

“We will also unlock a treasure trove of knock-on benefits for health, life and sustainable development around the world,” the organisation added.

The city of Zurich in Switzerland is later today opening its new cycling tunnel and bike parking facility. No dodgy shared-use infra and painted cycle lanes here…

Originally the shell of the tunnel was formed with the intention of building three new highways that would lead into the heart of Zurich, however that project was never implemented and policy makers decided to turn the tunnel shell into a major new cycling connection instead.

It cost 38.6 million Swiss francs (around £35m) and takes cyclists 440 metres from Kasernenstrasse to Sihlquai, creating an underground route between the city’s 4th and 5th districts. There will be 1,240 secure and free bike parking spaces and some of that parking connects directly to the Sihlquai passage at the main train station in Zurich to “provide cyclists with even faster access to public transport”.

> I’ve just completed my longest bike rides ever — here are 10 things I wish I knew before starting them

Not only does Jo like his Insta feed to be full of mechanical problems and despairing mechanics, he also enjoys a bit of Facebook Marketplace browsing, so it wasn’t really a surprise to see him forward this on for the blog…

My body’s in bits just looking at that. The London seller is after £1,099 for this, but says they’re open to offers. It comes “like new”.

“Hello, this is my very rare lo pro bike that was made by a very well known frame builder N. Cowley,” the seller says. “This was the bike that has broken the 100-mile record thus has fun history behind it. I am the third owner of the bike so it hasn’t been moved around much and has been looked after with a lot of care. YES it is expensive as it has very rare and ‘museum worthy’ components and the frame itself is very rare.”

It’s a 56cm Columbus Midas Special lo pro frame with a Mavic Challenger aluminium disc wheel. The original tri bars are still attached and it’s got 105 cranks, carbon Look pedals, Fizik saddle and Vittoria tyres. Any takers? The full listing’s here…

As Joe put it: “When TT bikes were TT bikes and you had to do a week of stretching and core work just to climb on…”

> Best value bike upgrades we’d actually spend money on — from cassettes, to handlebars, to simply swapping your inner tubes

🏆 The riders saw Tottenham win the #UEL yesterday, and now, everybody thinks that this could be their day! #GirodItalia pic.twitter.com/LwUZRaVrQN

— Giro d’Italia (@giroditalia) May 22, 2025

Tough day to be a Manchester United-backing Ineos Grenadiers boss. We’re heading for a sprint in Viadana, a three-man break of Italian riders from VF Group – Bardiani CSF – Faizanè, Arkéa – B&B Hotels, and Team Polti VisitMalta being kept within two minutes by the peloton. The next 100km shouldn’t be too eventful, although the roads are damp, so let’s hope there aren’t any spills when the pace ramps up in a couple of hours.

Scenes like these can be expected on the final stage of the Tour de France this summer, the race opting to include the Montmartre climb that lit up last summer’s Olympic road races. As we told you the other day, there’ll be three ascents, the final of which will top out with six kilometres until the finish, which will remain on the Champs-Élysées.

Some have been critical of the climb’s inclusion, Wout van Aert calling it “dangerous”, even if it would suit a rider of his abilities.

“I’m not really a fan of it. I think it’s going to be a dangerous stage,” Van Aert told Sporza. “We arrived there during the Games with a peloton of 50 riders and now with an entire Tour peloton, where many classification riders still have something to defend. I expect chaos, I think it’s a shame that we’re going to seek that out.

“I understand that the organisation thought ‘That looks cool, we should try to use that’, but in recent years, safety has increasingly become an issue, and this choice for Montmartre ignores this.”

Van Aert’s teammate Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel have also raised concerns about its inclusion, that despite the climb acting as the launch pad for the Belgian’s gold medal-winning attack at the Olympics. He says its use at the Tour de France is “unnecessary”.

However, race director Christian Prudhomme disagrees and told Sporza, “What is good for the Tour, is also good for the champions of the Tour.” It isn’t clear, in fact it’s quite obvious from the champions’ views that they don’t believe it is good for the race, but Prudhomme insists it will, essentially telling the peloton ‘I get the final say’.

“This will further increase the prestige of the Tour all over the world,” he said. “It will allow cycling to further build its legend. It was obvious to us that we wanted to do something big for the 50th anniversary of the first arrival on the Champs-Elysées. I have a crazy dream: the only rider who has ever been able to win in yellow is Bernard Hinault, in 1979 and 1982. This course opens the door to that again.

“When we included the gravel stage in the Tour route last year, we also failed to impress the riders. It was the same story when we made the cobblestones popular again. When Henri Desgrange (the driving force behind the first Tour, ed.) first included the Tourmalet and the Pyrenees in the route in 1910, not everyone was thrilled. Now they are part of the legend of the Tour. We must continue to build on that legend.”

Edinburgh is set to get a cycle hire scheme back in the city as councillors have unanimously backed plans to have hire bikes back on the Scottish capital’s streets by August. The Edinburgh Reporter says Lime and Dott are in contention to run the scheme.

The city previously had a cycle hire scheme run by Just Eat, however “wanton destruction” was blamed for its closure, hundreds of bikes suffering vandalism, as well as being hit by locals’ unwillingness to ride the non-electric bikes back up Edinburgh’s hills.

> Edinburgh cycle hire scheme is going downhill — literally, as users coast down city’s hills but avoid riding up them

The city’s councillors have unanimously backed the reintroduction of a hire scheme, this time offering e-bikes to residents and visitors. It is hoped it will be up and running by August.

OLAV KOOIJ WINS A SPRINT ROYALE 👑

And what about that leadout from Wout van Aert? 😍 pic.twitter.com/r8ieiUvypV

— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) May 22, 2025

In recent years it’s been Mathieu van der Poel impressing the world with his dominant leadouts for Jasper Philipsen, today his great rival Wout van Aert had a go for Olav Kooij and the outcome was exactly the same, the sprinter getting the victory and his more illustrious teammate most of the plaudits.

The TNT pundits were purring at that leadout, in fact Rob Hatch on comms went as far as to call Kooij the winner before the final bend. There were probably a few nervy moments when stage four hero Casper van Uden loomed outside Kooij, but at the line it was the man in yellow with his arms raised to give Visma-Lease a Bike their second victory of this year’s race. 

No major changes on GC to report, although maglia rosa Isaac del Torro took two bonus seconds at the Red Bull Kilometre, extending his advantage to 33 seconds over teammate Juan Ayuso.

‘Yeah, not sure, the steering feels a bit grippy… might need new headset bearings, can’t remember when they last got done…’

 

 

 

 

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I’ve got a lot of admiration for VecchioJo carefully curating his Insta feed to see exactly this sort of thing, so you’ve got him to thank for today’s live blog. Click the video above for the full clip of what fell out this poor bike. The mechanic reported being unable to recommend this “novel headset lubricant”, that appears to have turned the headtube of this Cervélo into a bucket for sandcastles. Light, stiff and aero sandcastles, of course.

“Not recommended,” the mechanic confirmed. “Are there any bearings left?”

It’s been a dry spring here in the UK so less of the usual muck, filth and mud, more grit and dust… although this surely can’t just be the work of a single spring. The comment from one of you lot on the live blog the other week springs to mind… something about being locked to the front deck of the Titanic…(then again that would be wet and rusty, hmmm)… perhaps dug up on a desert island by Captain Jack Sparrow?

There’s not even internal cables routed through the headtube to blame for putting off replacing this, something we discovered on yesterday’s live blog that plenty of people aren’t the biggest fan of…

> “A solution to a problem that didn’t exist”: Bike mechanics united in hatred for “infuriating” internal cable routing ask “should we all start charging more to repair it?”

One thing I will say to finish, to continue the ranty feel of the live blog this week, the seemingly endless range of sizes of headset bearings can be a right pain in the arse the first time you’ve got to change them. Luckily I recently replaced mine and got hold of what I needed fairly stress-free.

Just sized up the old one, found it online, it arrived, it matched the old one, it fit, and I will now know for future, but god it can be a faff, especially if you’re relatively new to fixing bikes and confronted with an internet’s worth of outer diameter, internal diameter, height, angles… it’s enough to make you never want to see anything measured in millimetres ever again. Or you could just go to your friendly local bike shop who’ll be happy to help (even if you turned your old one to dust). Anyway, rant over, maybe that’s just me…