“The roads are not only paralysed – they’re dirty”: Locals slam “disgraceful trail of rubbish” left by cyclists during Mallorca 312 event; Should the Giro d’Italia be moved to August?; Tadej Pogačar casually chats… at 420 watts + more on the live blog

You may have noticed that it’s Security and Storage Week on road.cc, during which we’ve been dolling out some useful (we hope) tips on how best to store your bike indoors, keeping your shed nice and sturdy, and what to do if the worst happens and your bike is stolen.

So, naturally, we also decided to put a wide array of bike locks, from £30 jobs to £300 heavy duty thief deterrents, properly to the test – and yes, that meant entrusting Dave with an angle grinder.

Wish us luck…

> Cheap vs expensive bike locks: Will spending more keep your pride and joy safe? We deployed an angle grinder to find out

Surely this isn’t the final stage surprise Red Bull were talking about yesterday? (I can practically see the wing-based marketing now…)

In any case, the Giro d’Italia has confirmed that it will pay homage to the late Pope Francis – a big cycling fan, remember, and former owner of bikes belonging to Egan Bernal and Peter Sagan – during the race’s final stage in Rome next month by passing through the Vatican gardens.

The neutralised zone of stage 21 of this year’s Giro was always set to take place in Vatican City, the peloton rolling out from St. Peter’s Basilica before passing the Casa Santa Marta, where Francis lived. But now, following his death last week at the age of 88, the start of the stage will instead serve as a tribute to the late Pope.

> Pope Francis ditches Dogma — Pinarello gifted by Egan Bernal put up for auction… if you’ve got a spare €30,000

“The original idea was to have Francis signal the start of the last stage to promote the Vatican and the Eternal City in the 2025 Holy Year,” Giro director Mauro Vegni said yesterday.

“We wanted to go right up to Casa Santa Marta because we knew the Pope was aging, so we thought he could come down and offer a blessing to start the final stage. Then unfortunately things turned out differently. But it will remain an homage to Francis.”

The stage will see the peloton enter the Vatican through the Petriano gate to the left of St. Peter’s, ride around the basilica, climbing towards the gardens before exiting near Santa Marta at the narrow Perugino gate, where the stage proper will commence.

Stage 21 will mark the third time the Giro has visited the Vatican, after starting the race there in 1974 and 2000, when the prologue finished in St Peter’s Square.

However, this year’s route is the deepest the race has ever ventured into the city-state, featuring areas rarely seen by the public. That means strict guidelines on what can and can’t be broadcast on television.

For instance, team cars laden with sponsors’ logos will not be allowed inside the Vatican – with neutral service on hand for any mechanicals – while the usual swarm of photography motorbikes will be reduced. TV images will also be produced by the Vatican’s own media team, while discussions are still ongoing over whether helicopters will be allowed to capture aerial coverage in what is usually heavily protected air space.

> A grand for each apostle? Pope Francis sells Dogma for £12,000

“It’s been a difficult negotiation,” Bishop Paul Tighe, part of the Vatican’s culture and education ministry, said.

“But it was the enthusiasm of the Pope for the project that opened doors. Otherwise, it would have been very easy to say, ‘it’s impossible, it can’t be done’. It’s not going to be a competitive moment. It’s more a moment symbolically that they’re there.

“And then, by coincidence, the area where they’re up in the higher end of the gardens is an area where there are all these statues of our Lady from all over the world, from various sanctuaries, so in a sense it’s a reminder of the international dimension of sport and the international dimension of faith.”

I’m not sure Ineos thought this one through when they picked up their team cars for 2025…

One shitty license plate there INEOS Grenadiers 🫣 #tourofromandie #epo

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— The Unrealistic Me (@theunrealisticme.bsky.social) April 30, 2025 at 8:18 AM

 Great spot.

Inspired by an active travel campaigner in Chicago, who juxtaposed lovely images of children playing on a traffic-free street with a selection of Facebook comments decrying the “disgusting chaos” being inflicted upon the local community, Owen McKnight from Oxford decided to get in on the act.

Owen’s take on this new trend of ironic active travel artwork, posted this morning on BlueSky, depicts some of Oxford’s safe streets, used by elderly pedestrians and young cyclists alike, accompanied by complaints of “devastation and misery” from pro-car councillor Anna Stares:

The devastation, the misery…

Brilliant.

I’m sure we could knock up a few of these for every cycle lane and low-traffic initiative across the UK – I’ll start digging through the live blog archive…

Poor Julian Vermote (and his space-age aero helmet) demonstrating here how not to take a fast downhill corner during a prologue at the Tour de Romandie yesterday:

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by TNT Sports Cycling (@tntsportscycling)

Thankfully, despite being tangled up in the barriers for what felt like an age, Vermote escaped with just bruises and starts today’s first road stage to Fribourg.

> Former British para-cycling champion raises £11,600 for charity in final ride before voluntary double leg amputation

Speaking of terrible weather conditions at bike races, today’s queen stage of the Tour of Turkey – featuring a 9km, 10 per cent summit finish at Akyaka – has been hit by heavy rain, leading to several crashes on the sketchy, slippery descent towards the final climb.

A number of riders have already abandoned after crashing in the sodden conditions, including New Zealander Josh Burnett, one of four Burgos BH riders to hit the deck.

Wout Poels’ bid to complete the grand tour stage hat-trick at next month’s Giro d’Italia appears to be going to plan, as the Dutch veteran soloed to an impressive victory on the queen stage of the Tour of Turkey this afternoon, effectively wrapping up the GC win in the process.

 

 

 

 

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In grisly conditions on the final, 9km-long, 10 per cent climb to the finish at Akyaka – which came after a treacherous, crash-filled descent – the 37-year-old former Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner was the first of the big contenders to launch a move, eventually dragging clear a select group containing his teammate Harold Martín López and the young Picnic PostNL duo Guillermo Juan Martinez and Frank van den Broek.

With 2km to go, Poels took off for good, riding clear through the fog to win by 19 seconds ahead of López, who had dispatched the Picnic pair in the final kilometre, ensuring another job well done for XDS Astana in their currently successful quest to fend off relegation from the WorldTour.

Julian Alaphilippe precisely 5 minutes after launching his one (1) thermonuclear attack

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— Matthias (@nairoingreen.bsky.social) April 30, 2025 at 2:24 PM

But at least it’s entertaining, right?

> Shimano scraps custom clothing line due to “increasing competition, shifting retailer priorities, and supply chain challenges”, leading to 13 job losses

Matthew Brennan is the real deal.

The teenager from Darlington has enjoyed a dream start to life in the WorldTour with Visma-Lease a Bike, building on his first pro win at the GP Denain last month by winning two stages of the Volta a Catalunya, in storming fashion, and having a spirited first crack at Paris-Roubaix.

And he shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by TNT Sports Cycling (@tntsportscycling)

At this afternoon’s opening road stage of the Tour de Romandie into Fribourg, Brennan proved he’s a master of gently uphill sprints, utilising the Geraint Thomas-led Ineos lead-out train to perfection before bursting clear inside the last 200 metres to take a comfortable win.

By the line, Brennan was bike lengths clear of runner-up Aurélien Paret-Peintre, his fourth pro victory in the bag, and with it his second leader’s jersey at a WorldTour stage race, the 10 bonus seconds enough to propel him above fellow promising young Brit Sam Watson.

And he still doesn’t turn 20 for another three months. Everyone else in the peloton, be very afraid.

Forget swapping the Giro and Vuelta around, road.cc reader mdavidford has the answer to cycling’s long-running calendar debate (and no, it doesn’t involve making the sport ‘more like Formula 1’).

“Just combine the grand tours into one nine-week-long Girouruelta, thereby opening up the rest of the calendar to fit everything else in – sorted!” he wrote in the comments.

I know one rider who would be up for that…

Meanwhile, Clem Fandango had an even more revolutionary idea.

“Or just scrap them and we can have the Spring Classics and then the Summer Classics. Like Flanders and Roubaix but with potentially better weather (not that it’s been a problem in recent times) and slightly wider bergs.

“Then again, that might require laying pavé up Alpe d’Huez and removing road surfaces on various Italian mountains for that Strade Bianche feel.”

Quick, someone get OneCycling on the phone…

Some interesting observations here on the Mallorca 312 littering debate from road.cc reader panda, who’s currently on the island and noted the extent of the rubbish left on the roads has been somewhat exaggerated – while also siding with locals who are fed up with Mallorca’s cyclo-tourism industry:

I’m in Mallorca now (we have a place here so I’m here a lot). The littering was only in a few places. I’m going to charitably suggest that it was after the obvious feeding spots where people didn’t put the empty sachet back in their pocket properly and it fell out. 

I walked some of the route near Alaro and I only saw one 226ers gel packet which looked like it had been there a while and, weirdly, one plastic tyre lever.  The photos published are a bit like the long-lens ‘aren’t there a lot of cyclists in bunches’ photos in Regent’s Park during Covid.

Also, the 312 organisation have swept the course so it only looked like that for a few hours.

All that said, cyclists have massively overstayed their welcome on the island; there are just far too many for them to coexist with locals trying to get on with their day.  When I see the way the groups ride and behave in the villages it makes me embarrassed to be associated with them (obviously my neighbours see me going out on the bike most days).

However, not everyone in the comments agreed that cyclists have overstayed their welcome in Mallorca.

“What will the locals do when they stop tourism and the island falls into disrepair because there is no money?” asked dubwise.

When it came to the rubbish left on the roads, however, there was a general consensus in the comments (for a change), dubwise describing the “clowns” scattering gel wrappers everywhere as “pathetic”, a description echoed by Rendel Harris.

“Truly pathetic, I’ve seen this happening many places (and remonstrated with the perpetrators, in the unlikely event that I can catch up with them),” he said.

“It’s basically wannabe racers who like to act as if they are going so hard they just have time to bite the top off a gel, glug it and throw it down like the pros do (they obviously haven’t got the memo that pros have quite rightly been banned from doing it for quite a few years now).

“One would hope, perhaps romantically, that cyclists with their greater connection to their environment and their love of spectacular unspoiled countryside to ride in would take more care of it than motorists in insulated boxes throwing their wrappers out of the window; obviously not the case for a substantial number.

“I’d fully support the Council of Mallorca putting a €10 levy, or whatever they deem appropriate, on every entry fee next year to pay for the cleanup costs.”

If you thought Tadej Pogačar’s victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège looked easy from the sofa, from within the peloton… the view was pretty much the same, actually.

Speaking to former Ineos teammate and Decathlon AG2R DS Luke Rowe on the latest edition of his podcast, Geraint Thomas offered up another example of why the world champion is, in his words, “on another level”.

According to the 2018 Tour de France winner, during the bitter fight for the breakaway at La Doyenne, with speeds sky high during the difficult opening section of cycling’s oldest monument, Pogačar rode up alongside a struggling Thomas – and started casually chatting about his upcoming visit to the Richard Mille watch factory in Switzerland (presumably to replace his blood-soaked model from Paris-Roubaix).

Zac Williams/SWpix.com

“Liège starts uphill, it’s pretty hard at the start,” Thomas said on the podcast. “And there was a bit of a fight at the start, and I was doing 400 watts. And I hear, ‘Ah, G Thomas!’ And I look behind and it’s Pog, just riding along, so I say ‘alright mate’.

“And he comes up and he just starts talking to me, about going to bloody Richard Mille tomorrow to get a new watch or something.

“And I didn’t say it, but I was thinking, we’re doing 420 watts here, I don’t really want to have a conversation! I feel okay, but I just want to focus on breathing!

“Phwoar, help me out mate! He’s just riding at another level.”

Zac Williams/SWpix.com

Elsewhere in the episode, Thomas chatted about Ineos’ attacking, if ill-fated tactics, noting that the British team perhaps should have targeted a podium place instead of being so aggressive, while also discussing the crushing inevitability of Pogačar’s current dominance.

“If you were watching it on TV, it probably wasn’t that exciting. Like what happened?” Thomas asked. “The breakaway went, two of our guys went, they got caught, the break got caught, and Pogačar attacked in the saddle and rode away.”

“See you later,” added Rowe.

See you later, indeed.

The spring classics are over, May is just around the corner, and the grand tour season is looming – which means only one thing.

It’s time for that much-loved, annual cycling tradition: anxiously fretting about the possibility of snow on the mountains of the Giro d’Italia and the threat of altered or cancelled stages. Exciting times, I know.

According to reports in the Italian press, the Giro’s penultimate, and potentially decisive stage, through the Alps to Sestrière could already be in danger after recent heavy snowfall on the Colle delle Finestre, the partially gravel-surfaced climb that provided the scene for Chris Froome’s spectacular race-winning move in 2018.

The 18.5km, the final major climb of the entire Giro before the drag to the finish in Sestrière, tops out at 2,178m above sea level, the highest point – and therefore the Cima Coppi – of this year’s race, and one which will almost certainly prove crucial to determining who will be wearing pink in Rome the following day.

But ilmeteo has reported that 30 to 40cm of fresh snow has fallen on the climb in recent days, adding to the thick snow already covering the mountain. 150-160cm of snow has been recorded at 2,000m altitude, with up to 230-290cm higher up.

According to ilmeteo, with temperatures dropping to -2°C at night, making the melting process a particularly slow one, this means that the snow could still be blocking the route when the Giro visits in five weeks’ time, making the gravel sections extremely dangerous and forcing organisers RCS into a difficult decision.

Of course, if the plug is pulled on the Finestre, this wouldn’t be the first time the Giro has fallen foul of the weather gods. While heavy snowfall has provided some of the Italian grand tour’s most iconic imagery – Andy Hampsten on the Gavia in ’88 and all that – it’s also forced the cancellation and re-routing of several stages over the years.

In 2013, the Stelvio and Gavia were scrapped due to snow, while the last two editions have seen weather-related alterations and shortened stages in the Alps and Dolomites.

But while any decision on the future of stage 20 won’t be taken for a while yet, the prospect of a Finestre-less Giro has already prompted some debate about the race’s placement on the cycling calendar – with some fans even suggesting a new late summer slot, swapping with the Vuelta a España, for the grand tour most affected by the weather.

“How about having the Vuelta in May and the Giro in August/September?” asked Ellyce, a proposal that would see the Spanish grand tour move back to the late spring slot it occupied before 1995.

“There’s still too much snow in Italy in spring and it’s brutally hot in Spain in late summer.”

“It’s that time of the year that we should remind UCI to swap the Giro and the Vuelta on the calendar. Would be a win-win situation,” agreed Paulo, while Tobby also asked: “Can we already switch Vuelta and Giro, timing wise?”

> Why pro cycling needs to ditch its ‘hardness’ obsession

“Why can’t we just change Giro and Vuelta?” asked Lukáš. “No more problems like this at Giro in August and no more extreme heat at Vuelta in May. Sounds like a win-win situation.”

“Even moving everything back a week or even two would help,” added Stephen, again calling for the Giro to potentially revert to its pre-1990s mid-May to mid-June slot.

“That would mean the TdF finishing in the French holidays. Or have any stages with a climb over 2000m provide an alternative route? There’s something iconic about climbing through snow banks though.”

Zac Williams/SWpix.com

However, not everyone was in agreement about moving the traditional curtain raiser of the grand tour season to the Vuelta’s relative graveyard slot.

“As things stand the top riders participating in the Tour are more likely to opt for the Vuelta than the Giro as a second grand tour. So why would ASO agree to a swap with RCS?” noted Dave.

“Italy can be very hot too in August,” CyclingBottle pointed out. “Sierra Nevada and others can also still be snowy in May too. La Vuelta usually finishes around the end of Spanish school vacation. So their date also has a big economic reason. A change would improve little.”

“I don’t have a strong view one way or the other but the Vuelta used to be run late April to mid-May (until 1994) and the weather was often atrocious,” added Grant. Good point.

And finally, Kuyashii came up with a rather more aesthetic counterpoint: “The mountain stages are good in the snow and it is why Hampsten is still celebrated as a titan of the Giro.”

What do you reckon? Is moving the Giro d’Italia to August and September a viable alternative to snowed-off stages? Or should we just leave the cycling calendar alone?

Last month we reported that the Mallorca 312, the Spanish island’s flagship cycling event, was facing calls for its cancellation from local campaigners, angry at the sportive’s extensive road closures, its links to tourist overcrowding, and its impact on the environment.

First held in 2010, the Mallorca 312 gran fondo offers three routes on completely closed roads through the island’s Serra de Tramuntana mountain range, long a popular haven for cyclo-tourists. 8,500 cyclists from all over the world signed up to take part in last week’s 15th edition, which sold out in minutes according to the organisers.

> Calls for Mallorca 312 cycling event to be cancelled over “abusive” road closures which “violate” locals’ rights to “enter or leave their homes” and turn island into a “theme park”

However, in a joint statement issued to the Council of Mallorca and the Spanish government, a dozen groups, ranging from environmental activists to anti-tourism campaigners, argued that the event’s “abusive” road closures violate the “fundamental rights” of locals to leave their homes.

“Once again, many residents will be seriously affected, with travel restricted for several hours – up to seven in some cases – if these coincide with the race route,” the groups said, calling for a government review of the event to be carried out to assess its “public interest”.

“In addition, as has happened in previous editions, there will be residents who will find themselves faced with the violation of a fundamental right: that of entering or leaving their homes due to the road closures imposed for this event.”

And now, in the wake of the event taking place on Saturday, local attention has now turned to another pressing issue: littering.

Despite the Mallorca 312 organisers instructing participants to keep hold of their rubbish, including energy bar and gel wrappers, before depositing them in containers at feed stations along the route, images have been posted on social media showing the sheer scale of the litter left behind on the route.

“This is how the roads look after the passage of the Mallorca 312,” Juan Astorga posted on social media.

“Mallorca is not only paralysed, but also dirty.”

“It’s a disgrace,” another local agreed. “It’s incredible that sports fans have so little concern for the environment and consider cycling to be above respect for nature, believing they have the right to litter it.”

One social media user added: “It seems that these cyclists watch professionals throw gels and bars into the ditches on television and do the same.

“If the 312 doesn’t want to fall into total disrepute, they should set up a collection service along the entire route.”

“The inconvenience caused by the road closures is already enough without having to endure a trail of garbage stretching for miles across the Tramuntana,” said another local.

“It is also questionable that a sporting event, even one primarily aimed at amateurs, should need to have more than 8,000 participants. We doubt that Mallorca in general and the Tramuntana in particular have the capacity to deal with these massive and disproportionate loads.”

Responding to the complaints, the organisers noted that they have cleaned up two points along the route where rubbish was strewn away from the feed stations.

“We assume responsibility, apologise, and appreciate feedback received via email and social media,” they said in a statement.

Unfortunately, the Mallorca 312 was also the scene of tragedy on Saturday, following the death of British rider Phil Williams in an incident during the gran fondo.

Riding for Team Bottrill, Williams won the RTTC national 25-mile road bike championship in 2022. His club Liverpool Braveheart BC said he would be “deeply missed” and was “an exceptional bike rider and a wonderful person too”.