“How could a human being write that to another person?”: Politician in New Zealand knocked off bike and suffers broken leg, only to face “cruel” abuse on social media; Kittel: Cycling absolutely not clean; Bizarre bike damage + more on the live blog

Have you ever seen anything like this? And don’t say ‘a unicycle’…

[MandrakeSCL/Reddit]

It’s the bizarre scene one rider spotted at a bike rack near them, a frame cut in half at the top tube and down tube, just the rear wheel, back half and most of the drivetrain still intact (although, zooming in, it looks like the chainrings might have been pinched too).

Given the poor bike’s position, locked right next to a road, plus the fact the ex-front of the bike would have seemingly been overhanging the kerb, the smart money is probably on this heinous bicycle abuse having been the result of an inattentive driver removing half the frame from the other, a theory shared by the person who put the pics (and Google Maps images from last year) online.

[Google Maps images from 2024]

Although, that other parked bike missing a saddle perhaps suggests there have been some rather thorough thieves at that rack previously… but surely we’re not talking about the criminals who steal bikes now opting to cut through frames for components?

> “Welcome to London” where thieves cut through bike racks

“Looks too clean. Must have had some good front end parts on it,” one person suggested online, backing the theft theory. We’re not convinced though, and neither were many who replied…

“The ends of the top tube and down tube are kinked and curled. Signs of twisting and tearing. If it were cut, they’d be significantly cleaner. Additionally, the parts remaining, plus the reflector in the wheel make me think this was never anything nice. Nobody’s come along to salvage those parts either,” one detective wrote.

“Additionally, the front end would be poking into the street. An inattentive driver could easily hit it. So I’m voting for this as well,” someone else added.

> “They even took the grips off the handlebars”: Cyclist locks new bike to railing… thieves steal wheels, drivetrain and just about anything else that could be stripped

We reckon that’s the most likely scenario too, after all we’ve been here before…

We’ll leave the last word to the commenter who pondered if we could see such “weight reduction modifications” at a hill climb before long? Over to you, Harry MacFarlane…

The opening cyclocross World Cup round brought wins for Thibau Nys and Lucinda Brand in Tábor. Brand has won eight of her ten cyclocross starts so far this season and held off a determined Sara Casasola to take her fourth Tábor victory.

Last year’s World Cup winner delivers again ?

Lucinda Brand takes her 76th career win and triumphs at the Women’s Cyclo-cross World Cup in Tabor ? pic.twitter.com/mVKugyJfzN

— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) November 23, 2025

Nys’s win was a bit more straightforward, the 23-year-old by far the strongest and looking as though he’ll enjoy a big winter. Down the pack in the men’s race was Brit Cameron Mason and while, on the results sheet, a ninth-place finish might not look like anything to write home about, he had no shortage of “frustrating” problems on the day.

Having sliced his tyre open on the bottom of a metal barrier in the start straight, Mason rode to the first pit to change bike. He could then start his race proper, from dead last, picking off the field as he went, but having lost plenty of time and energy. In the end, ninth was more than a respectable effort… oh, and to make matters worse, the cold weather got to his facial hair too.

Rimbrakes would’ve saved him
byu/Civil_Western_9350 inBicyclingCirclejerk

The weekend that was started with a new Kickstarter cycling computer… (don’t roll your eyes just yet)… 

> “Why can’t one device do it all?”: Kickstarter bike computer has built-in electric pump, front light and week-long battery life (apparently)

Megan brought us news of a study about the impact of bike lanes on car use, while one active travel project up in Scotland made headlines after police were called and contractors walked out amid protests and claims the project is “an absolute shambles”.

That story came in contrast to the latest from the Netherlands where the government has committed €1 billion to building cycling infrastructure that connects new homes. Something tells me we shouldn’t be holding our breath for similar in this week’s Budget…

> The future of practical, do-it-all adventure bikes? Check out the Exposure Primitiva Concept with a steel frame, suspension fork and full internal cable routing

And finally, a review I’ve been awaiting with interest is the new(ish) Shimano Cues groupset, something Stu’s been getting to grips with and has penned some thoughts.

Tadej Pogačar says it “will be interesting” to see how Remco Evenepoel does at new team Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe, the four-time Tour de France winner stating he hopes any improvement will be minimal as “it would be scary to see him even better”.

While Pogačar has continued to dominate the biggest stage races and one-day prizes in the sport, Evenepoel has maintained supremacy in time trialling, comfortably beating the Slovenian star against the clock at the Critérium du Dauphiné, Tour de France (in the flat TT at least) and World Championships. 

> Is Tadej Pogačar the most naturally gifted Tour de France winner of all time? Move over Greg LeMond, there’s a new VO2 max sheriff in town

Will a new team, new environment and new ideas get Remco closer to Pogačar everywhere else? 

“For him, change can be good, changes can sometimes be really good,” Pogačar told Sporza. “He goes from one super team to another super team. It will be interesting to see if he can make another step. I hope not, because he’s already so good and so dominant sometimes. It would be scary to see him even better.

“But I think he can do really good and I think the whole world is interested [to see] how he’s going to be at Red Bull.”

The rumours are that Evenepoel is strongly considering a return to the Giro d’Italia next year, having finished third at the Tour in 2024 and abandoned while struggling at this year’s race, the Italian Grand Tour expected to have a long, flat time trial in its route. It’s also been suggested we’ll see the Belgian’s debut at Milan-San Remo in 2026, and could the Tour of Flanders be on the cards too?

I’m all for it and, in many ways, see it as a similar situation to Tom Pidcock. I want to see them racing for wins at the biggest one-day races, not just going all in for GC campaigns to probably still get beaten by Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard at the Grand Tours. Imagine adding Remco to this and pray Pidcock can stick around for the Poggio descent… March can’t come soon enough…

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by MVDP (@mathieuvanderpoel)

Cobbles and fancy dress, what could possibly go wrong? Dave was at The Cobble Wobble in Frome yesterday, giving it some welly in a suitably festive get-up. You can leave your weight weenie-ing and gramme-saving at home for this particular hill climb…

Dave and the rest of the field tackled the 179-metre steep cobbled climb up the centre of Frome, in Somerset. It’s an amusing sight, fancy dress-adorned riders flogging themselves up the narrow, historic hill, flanked by 17th-century buildings. Top marks to all involved, not least organiser Andrew Denham, those cobbles far from the easiest surface to negotiate. It looked like a cracking turnout for a brilliant community cycling event.

Oh, and it even made the ITV local news.

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by When In Frome Podcast (@when_in_frome)

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by JESS STOR ?? (@jess__stor)

> Cyclist killed after crashing into sign blocking bike lane, as family questions why warning to drivers about malfunctioning traffic lights wasn’t placed on ‘no parking’ zone

Marcel Kittel is back in pro cycling, not as a rider but as the sprint coach of the Unibet Rose Rockets (as they’ll be known next season), the team formed out of the Tour de Tietema YouTube channel that have made some eye-catching signings for 2026, including Dylan Groenewegen, Wout Poels and Victor Lafay.

The 14-time Tour de France stage winner has also been in the news after an interview with Domestique, the German sprinter suggesting it would be “very ignorant about the facts” to assume cycling is a clean sport.

“I don’t believe that cycling is clean now,” he said. “Absolutely not. You would be very ignorant about the facts. There will always be people who are trying to cheat the system. We just have to be sure that we really safeguard what we have and the progress that we made and make sure that these are single cases and not a widespread doping system that we had in the 90s.”

That’s probably the key here, Kittel hinting there that he doesn’t think we’re talking about widespread doping programmes, just individual cases. The regularity of UCI press releases dropping into our inbox about such cases means Kittel is probably right that it would be ignorant to think cycling is completely clean.

“Look at the budgets, how they have gone up, the salaries that riders can earn. There are riders who see an opportunity and who see also an opportunity not to cheat someone, but to end up with a better life. And I think that is also a fact. It is probably in the first instance very human.”

Kittel, who despite retiring in 2019 is still only 37, added that he doesn’t think that every exceptional performance should be disbelieved, and he was quick to point out how much training and other parts of the sport have improved in the past couple of decades.

“Journalists and fans absolutely have a right to say if they feel like, ‘I am not sure if I can trust it’. Then we should see this as a sign, ‘Okay, we have to check it and make sure this is really a valid result and we can really trust it’.

“People are doing amazing things on the bike. Because the periodisation of the training and racing planning, everything around it, the innovation, it all just comes into place on that day.”

Looking back at his career, which spanned from the mid-noughties to midway through the 2019 season, Kittel reflected that the sport needed a reset following the high-profile doping scandals of the era he began his career in and those before.

“There were already like a lot of disappointed fans who were yelling at us, spitting at us. And I was there as a youth rider, like, what’s going on? What does this have to do with me?” he recalled.

“I think it was not a black eye. I think that actually took a leg off of the body of cycling… because it will never go away. It will always be there as a topic. I absolutely think this was necessary. It gave the opportunity to talk about it and really to analyse where this came from.”

Saw this lad on my way to work
byu/jakobolobo incarryshitolympics

A local news report from the North East has put the final cost of the Tyne Pedestrian and Cyclist Tunnel at £18.2m, around £11.3m more than the expected cost of £6.9m. Chronicle Live got the figures off transport bosses, the extra cost perhaps unsurprising considering the long and repeated delays that the refurbishment project experienced, as well as setbacks such the discovery of asbestos and the main contractor going bust.

The tunnels connecting Jarrow and Howdon are now owned and managed by the North East Combined Authority and a spokesperson said it had been a “long and complex project”. The tunnels first opened in 1951 for the Festival of Britain and were granted Grade II status in 2002. However, they required full restoration due to their condition in the early 2000s.

[Before the refurbishment]

“They closed in May 2013 and reopened in August 2019 following an extensive programme of works,” a spokesperson explained. “The project faced significant challenges, including the administration of the original lift contractor and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, both of which contributed to delays and increased costs.

“The final cost of the refurbishment is £18.2 million. This includes £2 million for the installation of the inclined lifts which opened on 25 November 2024. These lifts can carry up to 21 visitors at a time and are designed to accommodate non-standard cycles, making them fully accessible for a wide range of users.

“We’re pleased that the tunnels have now been fully preserved and upgraded, providing improved walking and cycling infrastructure that continues to connect communities across North and South Tyneside. This vital link supports access to work, education, family, and friends and continues to serve the public as a safe, accessible, and sustainable transport route for the region.”

> “I’m in a pretty bad way”: Pro cyclist struck head-on by driver says he came “within a hair’s breadth of being in a wheelchair” after breaking back in 30mph training crash

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by EF Education–EasyPost (@efprocycling)

EF Education-EasyPost have confirmed the retirement of Esteban Chaves. The Colombian climber won Il Lombardia, three stages of the Giro, two Vuelta stages and came so close to winning the maglia rosa when denied by Vincenzo Nibali in 2016.

Calling the decision “the right one”, Chaves said he is “very happy” call time on a career he is “very proud of”.

“I’m very happy to close this chapter in the way we are closing it,” he said through his team, who have also released a film to celebrate Chaves’s career. Happy retirement, Esteban.

> RideLondon cycling event boss resigns from board after careless driving conviction for seriously injuring cyclist

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Julie Fairey (@juliefairey)

A politician in New Zealand, Julie Fairey, is back out on the bike after months of recovery from a broken leg suffered in a collision involving a driver earlier this year. Interestingly, Fairey says she’s used to getting her share of abuse on social media but reported things got way worse in the aftermath of the collision.

“People were basically one step on from blaming me,” she told RNZ. “It was like I deserved it and that it would be nice if they finished the job or if it happened again, and that’s hard to read.

“How could another human being write that to another person? You’re making this comment about someone, an actual person. How could you wish such ill on anybody? To me, it just seems cruel, and I don’t understand it. I’ve been doing this a long time, and a lot of it doesn’t bother me, although probably it should. But what bothers me is the idea that my kids or my mother might see it, and that would be upsetting for them, and that’s not okay.”

Last year, Northern Irish MP Claire Hanna made headlines on this website by revealing she “gets more abuse on my bike than in my work”, the politician calling out “irrational attitudes” of some road users towards cyclists.

“People talk about the abuse politicians get. I get more abuse, week in, week out, on my bike than I do in my work,” she said. “I don’t know whether people are jealous that the cyclist is moving faster than them but I have taken really serious abuse from people for what they perceive as minor infractions.”