The only man who can beat Pogačar? Remco returns to Strava with Tenerife KOM spree ahead of Liège–Bastogne–Liège; Royal Mail delivers bike lane parking classic; Tadej and Vollering win Flèche Wallonne (+ Lizzie Deignan returns) + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Lizzie Deignan returns to racing at Flèche Wallonne
The queen of British racing is back on the road today…
The comeback is now a fact!
Enjoy your day, @lizziedeignan ❤️💪#FWwomen @flechewallonne pic.twitter.com/CHzF1COihe— Trek-Segafredo (@TrekSegafredo) April 19, 2023
Deignan had initially targeted La Vuelta in the first week of May for her comeback, having given birth to her second child in, late September. “Where did that 6 months go? I actually can’t put it all into words, Flèche Wallone here I come,” she wrote on Instagram.
The Trek-Segafredo rider has twice finished second at Flèche and the interrupted sleeping pattern will be great preparation for the crack of dawn start required by the race organisers sending the women’s race off before 9am local time… yes, yes, I know that’s a lie in by sportive standards…
Pro riders and F1's Valtteri Bottas back Tom Pidcock's social cycling app
Link My Ride, the social cycling app created by Tom Pidcock and Jacques Sauvagnargues, has now received investment from F1 star Valtteri Bottas and pro racers Daryl Impey, Tiffany Cromwell and Ryan Gibbons. The app allows users to create, explore and share group rides and has attracted nearly 20,000 downloads in four months.
Ten-time Grand Prix winner Bottas, who has participated in a number of high-profile gravel cycling events over the past few years, is the latest investor, following on from Dutch Sport Tech Fund and William Powell of Black Lab Sports, and said the app’s potential is “huge”.
“The potential of Link My Ride is huge and when I first learnt about the app I wanted to find out more as I’m keen to explore business opportunities that excite me personally,” Bottas said. “It connects people on the bike in such a simple way, saving time when organising rides and finding new routes. I’ve organised several rides on the app now, both public and private, and everyone’s always really happy to ride together.”
Fellow investor, and Bottas’ partner, Canyon-SRAM rider Cromwell said it’s an app she “can use on all my travels” and can “allow local communities to be more connected through cycling”.
Demi Vollering continues incredible classics run, wins Flèche Wallonne
1,1,2,2,1,1 — those are Demi Vollering’s race results since the start of March… a quite incredible classics campaign by anyone’s standards. Not just any classics either, Strade Bianche (win), Dwars door Vlaanderen (win), Flanders (second), Brabantse Pijl (second), Amstel Gold Race (win), Flèche Wallonne (win), the SD Worx rider inserting herself as strong favourite for an Ardennes clean sweep at Liège–Bastogne–Liège this weekend.
🏆It’s a win for @demivollering!
🏆 Succès pour @demivollering ! #FWWomen pic.twitter.com/E1nML3WdWM
— La Flèche Wallonne (@flechewallonne) April 19, 2023
Behind Lizzie Deignan’s teammate Gai Realini took an impressive third, just behind Lianne Lippert. Deignan herself dropped out the peloton in the final hour of racing, her first race back since giving birth in September.
"We are proud to design and build our bikes in Britain": road.cc goes behind the scenes at Orro
Comment of the day
"Great initiative": Reaction to Cycling Time Trials road bike category announcement
Some reaction to Cycling Time Trials, the national governing body for time trials in England, Wales and Scotland, announcing that there is to soon be a separate category for road bikes, opening the discipline up to those who don’t have a TT machine.
The move has attracted praise from many, road.cc readers in the comments calling it “excellent” and “commendable”.
Let’s hope that it gets more people out there
— Gareth (@Gareth05275440) April 18, 2023
Of course road bikes have been welcome before, if you’re happy to see your time demolished by someone with a flash aero rig and a disc wheel, this change just means there’ll be a separate category for those on road bikes.
Some have suggested the rules could go further, however, the rim depth of wheels a particular talking point as CTT has set the limit at 90mm, PRSboy commenting that “I think 50mm wheels are big enough for a road bike TT rig, if they want to keep it more accessible.
“That said, I’ve always been very happy just turning up and having a go — I regard TT as a competition against oneself rather than others (particularly at my level!)” they added.
On the official announcement on Facebook, Alice Lethbridge added: “Great initiative. Would have liked to see more restriction on the rim depth though to make it more friendly to beginners. 80-90mm wheels are definitely in the specialist aero category and will make a big difference against 30-50mm wheels which are much more common place.”
Thoughts?
The award for most unsubtle sponsor mention during the Ardennes classics goes to...
Bring your climbing legs: "Challenging" British National Road Championships routes announced
British Cycling has released the route details for this year’s national championships, to be hosted in North Yorkshire, with the men’s and women’s events to be decided on the climb of Saltburn Bank…
Great Britain Cycling Team rider Charlie Tanfield, who also rides for Saint Piran, said: “I’m so excited to be racing on home roads in Redcar and Cleveland. My first memories of riding on these roads were from when I was a young lad on the local club run, climbing up the local hills and trying to hang onto the older, quicker climbers in the group. I guess it hasn’t changed too much since and it’s a similar story in hilly races, I’m just the older rider now!
“Saltburn Bank is steep and it’s over pretty quickly, but the drag out of Saltburn actually hurts me more.”
The men’s and women’s events will be contested over the exact same 18.8km loop, the women completing 132km and 2,826m of climbing via seven laps, the men climbing 4,073m of ascent over 189km.
Tadej Pogačar wins Flèche Wallonne
Just as Demi Vollering did earlier, Tadej Pogačar added Flèche Wallonne to his Amstel Gold Race win from Sunday, meaning we’ve got two shots at an Ardennes clean sweep this weekend. How did he do it? Well, considering it’s Flèche you probably already know exactly how the race was won…
🔥🔥 ¡¡¡NADIE PUEDE CON TADEJ POGACAR!!
✅✅❓ Se hace con la Flecha Valona: Dos de dos en el Tríptico de las Ardenas y le falta la Lieja.
¡¡¡Y DON MIKEL LANDA MEANA, TERCERO!!! 👏👏#LaCasadelCiclismo pic.twitter.com/EfPUIFya1E
— Eurosport.es (@Eurosport_ES) April 19, 2023
Just as we did with Vollering’s classics campaign, here’s an overview of Tadej’s season to date… 1, 1, 1, 21, 1, 14, 27, 55, 5, 1, 21, 1, 1, 4, 3, 1, 1… someone was slacking during the Paris-Nice sprint stages…
Oh, and did I mention he’s the first rider ever to win Flanders, Amstel and Flèche in the same season?
Royal Mail delivers bike lane parking classic — apologises, says "relevant steps" taken to prevent repeat
Can’t be long before the courier providers add a ‘Your parcel is out for delivery, it has just arrived in your nearest cycling infrastructure’ text to the process. Our live blog has, in recent times, told the story of the ongoing issue in Edinburgh of Amazon vans — sorry, Amazon-branded vans blocking the Scottish capital’s bike lanes… (the company was very quick to point out the van below is not driven by an Amazon employee, so it would be wrong to attribute them to Amazon)…
On Friday there was an unwanted sequel too…
> The sequel nobody asked for — bike lane Amazon van is back
Well, the blogging prompted road.cc reader Daniel to get in touch with his own case of delivery parking pain where he rides in Doncaster, this time at the hands of the Royal Mail…
Interestingly, Daniel contacted the council’s civil enforcement officer and was told:
Unfortunately we are unable to issue to the postal service as they are exempt. When we started in 2005 this came about as it’s classed as interfering with His Majesty’s Mail. Sounds silly but that is what we were instructed. I would suggest you contact the postal service to complain.
We are aware of the issues in this area and endeavour to have a presence here as much as possible.
“I noticed it cycling to work,” Daniel told us. “They’ve just installed the lanes in the city centre as part of a huge active travel scheme.
“Never expected a senior enforcement manager at a city council to essentially say a royal mail van is allowed to park anywhere they want including over cycle lanes next to double yellow lines, be there it is — written permission!”
Daniel got in touch with Royal Mail… who apologised and said the issue had been raised with the relevant manager who will “stop this happening again”…
I’m sorry one of our vans was recently parked in a way that caused you concern. The safety of the public and our employees is something we take very seriously, so thank you for making us aware of this.
From the details you’ve provided I’ve been able to identify where the vehicle is based and report the issue to the manager. The manager will take the relevant steps to stop this happening again.
All our drivers receive ongoing training and monitoring, and incidents of bad driving/parking are rare. I’m very sorry you’ve had to report this to us and I hope this issue is now resolved.
"On active travel, however you look at the figures they are woeful"
The Government claim they want to make it easier to cycle & walk across England.
Yet they imposed sweeping cuts to their own active travel budget.
This morning at Transport Committee I questioned the Secretary of State for Transport about these cuts. pic.twitter.com/UrRw8MSgYK
— Ruth Cadbury MP 💙🇺🇦 (@RuthCadbury) April 19, 2023
Yesterday we heard from Ruth Cadbury at the All Party Parliamentary Group for Cycling and Walking’s annual showcase event…
The only man who can beat Pogačar? Remco returns to Strava with Tenerife KOM spree ahead of Liège–Bastogne–Liège showdown
Having gone dark from uploading to Strava for two weeks Remco is back with a bang, sharing his final Tenerife training camp ride… complete with eight KOMs on one climb, putting three minutes into the best times of fellow WorldTour stars such as Thibaut Pinot…
Last week, Soudal-Quickstep directeur sportif Klaas Lodewyck said the Strava inactivity was deliberate… “People already know enough. I don’t think you should put everything online, either. The opposition reads along. If I were a rider now, I wouldn’t do it either.”
So is this as close as cycling gets to a boxer uploading menacing pre-fight training footage to social media? ‘Watch out, mate, I’m smashing KOMs over here’… let’s just hope Tadej doesn’t follow up that rapping video with an Ardennes diss track… (actually, on second thought, that’s live blog gold… go for it)…
As Pogačar was powering up the vicious Mur de Huy slopes, Evenepoel was climbing 3,388m over 126km at an average speed of 31km/h… snaffling HC and first-category Strava segment KOMs as he went.
Up the eight per cent average, 12km-long, climb out of Machado, Remco took the KOM by five minutes, adding the description ‘adios’ to his ride, signalling his cue to head for the airport, get back to Belgium, the peloton’s last hope of halting Pogačar’s Ardennes clean sweep.
World champ and defending champion vs all-conquering twice Tour de France winner and four-time Monument victor. I hope you don’t have plans elsewhere for Sunday afternoon…
19 April 2023, 08:13
19 April 2023, 08:13
19 April 2023, 08:13
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Latest Comments
I see quite a few MAAP items out in the Surrey Hills. The new shop has a cafe and they're from Melbourne so the coffee should be good: I'm looking forward to visiting.
@chrisonabike Mercedes was acceptable, but the second one (old Toyota people carrier/ex-taxi) was a prosecutable offence.
I wasn't saying that nor talking about people who say that. I said it was silly to claim that wearing a helmet indicates acceptance of dangerous driving and poor infrastructure. I choose to wear a helmet; I also regularly report dangerous driving to the police and correspond with councils and road authorities about ways infrastructure could be improved for cyclists. I rather doubt I'm the only helmet wearer who does so.
@JamieT (a pedant writes) she's a London Assembly member, not an MP.
@Rendel Harris ".....but the claim that wearing one is somehow to be accepting dangerous driving and poor infrastructure is silly." Not that silly. Demanding that cyclists wear a helmet is seen by many people as 'the answer' to cycling safety, so there's no need to put in infrastructure. The difference between infrastructure and helmets is that infrastructure works. Helmets are a distraction from what really works, and the more time we spend talking about them, the less time we spend on things that do work. Helmets should be consigned to the dustbin of history as a failed experiment, and we should cease even mentioning them.
@Mr Blackbird Hats off to George Hall My hat's not coming off- despite this touch of cycleway-washing, Hall still bears the Mark of Cain, until he repudiates his party altogether
Perhaps an article showing a) what is available in the uk as cargo bikes and) comments from real life scenarios from those already using bikes or cargo bikes as one gentleman has done in the comments. Perhaps road.cc could follow up with this. Even the London Assembly member said not every business should use cargo bikes but suggested a more nuanced approach suitable for certain trades or companies....
16 thoughts on “The only man who can beat Pogačar? Remco returns to Strava with Tenerife KOM spree ahead of Liège–Bastogne–Liège; Royal Mail delivers bike lane parking classic; Tadej and Vollering win Flèche Wallonne (+ Lizzie Deignan returns) + more on the live blog”
Did anyone check it was a
Did anyone check it was a cycle lane and not a cycle-lane-branded parking space?
Can we get a road.cc review
Can we get a road.cc review of Link My Ride?
“Unfortunately we are unable
“Unfortunately we are unable to issue to the postal service as they are exempt. When we started in 2005 this came about as it’s classed as interfering with His Majesty’s Mail. Sounds silly but that is what we were instructed. I would suggest you contact the postal service to complain.
We are aware of the issues in this area and endeavour to have a presence here as much as possible.”
Another privatised company allowed to keep the protection it had before privatisation. Totally inappropriate
Gus T wrote:
I’m still astonished that no-one seems to be prosecuted over the Horizon scandal. They presented the software as being infallible despite clear evidence of bugs and ruined the lives of hundreds of postmasters with their false evidence. Why is that evidence not considered perjury, considering that they used it to send people to prison?
Post Office case is possibly
Post Office case is possibly muddied by the fact it crossed from public to private (2011 – 2013). I guess there’s a human factor of “it involved decisions made by my office, but before my time”. On all sides but particularly the government people calculate that by digging up the past they’re only going to make themselves look bad and waste their time. The last incumbent has moved on – just say “we’ve made improvements since” and everyone can get on with their lives.
You don’t need to read e.g. Private Eye to know we are extremely reluctant to involve large businesses in the legal system. Apart from “because the directors are my friends / they took me to some very nice dinners” there is sometimes the leverage of “we’ll take our tax / jobs elsewhere then”.
The inconvenient fact is many of these concerns can muster more resources to defend / lobby than the state can. Presumably that’s behind the “deferred prosecution agreement” settlements – we could have a fight (which the government would probably lose) OR the state can get *some* compensation and the company gets to save itself some drama. Easy choice all round.
It is possible to do things somewhat differently however. For example in the US in some cases of some kinds of corporate crime they are quite happy to prosecute and actually jail managers and directors. I’ve no idea about how their regulation of companies looks overall though.
chrisonatrike wrote:
To my mind, it should be a simple case of charging the people that presented the false evidence in the courts. If you make a statement in court that the software is infallible and it turns out to be wrong, then you should be sent to prison in much the same way that the false evidence was used to imprison innocent postmasters.
It’s bound up in lots of
It’s bound up in lots of ancient laws and monarchy, where halting the delivery of the King/Queens mail was something the likes of Dick Turpin did.
They maybe private company but still have the same service obligations and I mentioned probably last time the Amazon van came up, the Royal Mail are exempt from any parking restrictions so people shouldnt get as excised about them. They are of course reminded not to cause obstacles themselves, most posties are alot more tolerant of cyclists, being often cyclists themselves so it’s rare to see one block a cycle lane, whereas the DPDs,Amazon’s,Evris,Yodels of the world who aren’t exempt just leave the Bolas going.
Link my ride clubs….. Oh
Link my ride clubs….. Oh good, another company looking for $20 a month.
No thanks.
How come the screenshot of
How come the screenshot of the comment of the day has the ‘delete’ and ‘edit’ options underneath?
NotNigel wrote:
I would imagine site admin users have the ability to edit and/or delete any post.
Thanks, thought that as soon
Thanks, thought that as soon as I posted it, but I don’t have a delete option myself!
I believe the Royal Mail
I believe the Royal Mail exemption is termed “Universal Service Provider”, so could cover a multitude of sins. Another f*cking loophole.
Here’s the NI version:
Universal service provider
Vehicles being used for postal deliveries are exempt from certain restrictions. These vehicles should be liveried, but may include companies other than Royal Mail, for example DHL, Parcel Force, and the like.
https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/exemptions-parking-restrictions
Will something change, or will direct action be required?
No mention whether they are exempt from a Parking in a Cycle Track chargem though.
Regarding the TT open to road
Regarding the TT open to road bikes, from what I can see you still need to be a member of an affiliated club, so not really open to everyone. Otherwise a great idea to encourage more entries.
The club affiliation is
The club affiliation is merely a paperwork exercise for the event insurance, to make sure all entrants are covered in the event of any accident. Many club’s annual membership is around £20 for a whole year, and you get access to the club’s other services, so the outlay for that is a pittance.
NickSprink wrote:
Jeez, what a killjoy. Club life is the bedrock of sport cycling.
Actually the transport
Actually the transport committees Q&A of the secretary of State at Department for Transport exchanges werent the most enlightening, especially as it became clear he was just going to keep repeating 3billion to any question, and claim no knowledge of any other numbers, to any question on active travel.
It was this exchange that was more interesting when they moved on to rail & HS2 funding, and Mark Harper trying to make a point he wasnt from the Deparment for Trains, but for Transport.
There I think encapsulates perfectly the current mindset of the DfT.