The one he REALLY wants to win… Tadej Pogačar uploads Milan-San Remo recon to Strava; Horror crash footage; Visma-Lease a Bike boss admits Simon Yates retirement not ideal; Bike lock nightmare; Four minutes of cyclocross carnage + more on the live blog

Pain.

Was it a rock? Was it a bit of metal? Either way, the rider who hit it will wish someone in front had pointed it out before he did. Within seconds he’s gone from flying along to battered, bruised and presumably facing many a sleepless night with some god-awful road rash sticking to the sheets.

The rider at the front moves slightly to their right and some have suggested a point with their left hand (or a shout, given the speed) could have alerted those behind of the danger, although this is all easy to say sat behind a desk and not while hurtling along at what looks like 40km/h+. Also that hard shoulder looks far from ideal for riding along, the close-up showing just how much gravel and smaller stones were dotted along it waiting for the opportunity to puncture, or fully blow out a tyre.

Given the high-speed nature of the road, the reaction of many who saw it online was simply to be grateful there was no further collision, and the rider was able to hobble away from the crash, admittedly looking extremely uncomfortable.

“That looks painful. I’ve encountered windscreen glass that has been swept into the cycle lane after a car accident, and ended up the same as you. Ouch,” Tony Erik wrote.

David Christopher Beckley added: “June 27th last year I had similar on a junction, running through as the light was still green, banked in and hit a pothole, pinched my front tyre and send me into a kerb. Lot of road rash and a part torn ligament in my wrist. Six months off.”

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Race Yourself (@raceyourself.app)

Fingers crossed the rider in today’s video wasn’t so unlucky on the injury front.

Simon Yates announcing his retirement out of the blue didn’t just catch us by surprise, Visma-Lease a Bike boss Richard Plugge admitting the team didn’t have a clue either.

Speaking at the team’s January training camp, and reported by Cyclinguptodate, Plugge said: “Of course it would have been better if he had called us in September.” However, the team boss did also accept that “it was a good talk and it was a clear message” and retirement is a decision for the individual rider.

> OPINION: You can keep your yellow jerseys, SPOTY prizes, and podcasts – Simon Yates was a proper old-school British bike racer

“It is what it is, and we have to accept it,” Plugge said. “If someone calls you and says, ‘I want to leave’, then he has thought about it. And he did. We also know him as someone who thinks a lot about things and then comes with his own idea.”

Live blog filler from LinkedIn? What’s the world coming to? Anyway, better than Twitter, but the less said about that the better. Here’s TNT Sports commentator Jez Cox doing his homework ahead of time and creating some very visually satisfyingly cheat sheets for the Tour Down Under.

What do you mean they don’t just rock up and incoherently unload the first thing that pops into their head? Maybe my podcast appearances could learn a thing or two about this ‘preparation’ thing…

Managed to lock my bike like this and the key refuses to turn, any way to get it off?
byu/BarFamiliar5892 inbicycling

Thankfully the owner of this lock has now managed to remove it via plenty of WD40, a rubber mallet and “lots of jiggling”. Again, luckily, it was just in their garage, so no stress about leaving the bike/lock in public in the meantime, but a whole load of faff. I’ve had a couple of instances where a key hasn’t unlocked instantly, but it’s never taken more than a couple of tries.

“I got it off eventually,” the rider explained. “It was in my garage, I had to deconstruct the thing it was locked to to get the bike free and a better angle to work at, then a combo of WD40, a rubber mallet, and lots of jiggling the key finally did it.”

Any lock horror tales for the comments section?

A new study by an HR group Acerta suggests there has been an increase of more than 40 per cent in people cycling to work in Brussels over the last four years. The research also suggests that as many as one in five commutes may now be made by bike in the Belgian capital.

Interestingly, given the fact those numbers instinctively appeared high when we read the info for the first time, Acerta suggests it’s actually still low compared with the rest of the country, with 43 per cent of Belgian’s apparently commuting by bike.

A mobility expert from the company behind the study suggested the “rapid rise” of e-bikes had helped bring cycling to new audiences in Brussels. “Public spaces are also becoming more bicycle-friendly with the construction of additional cycle highways and wider cycle paths,” Charlotte Thijs added, a story we’ve also seen in otehr European capitals such as Paris and London.

No, this isn’t the British Cycling live stream they wanted you to pay £2.99 for, it’s much more entertaining…

Apparently riders were tasked with finding out how many undignified ways you can possibly get down a steep, muddy bank on/off a bike. The answer? A lot…

> “I didn’t want to use Gaza as a scapegoat to get out of my contract”: Derek Gee-West’s €30 million legal dispute over Israel-Premier Tech exit resolved, as Canadian star says controversy “best left in the past”

Two-time Il Lombardia winner and 14-time Grand Tour stage winner Joaquim Rodríguez insists he has no regrets that interest from Team Sky during his career never materialised into a transfer. Speaking on the Puro Ciclismo podcast, Rodríguez said he didn’t think he would have been a very good fit at the then all-conquering team, especially with Chris Froome already showing himself to be the main GC rider of his generation.

“Sky did things very well, that’s why they won so much, but not every rider fits every team,” Rodríguez said. “I knew I wouldn’t be the outright leader there. And at that point in my career, I needed to feel important, to feel the team fully trusted me.

“Sky was a very structured, very mathematical team, and I didn’t see myself there. It wasn’t about money or results, it was about feel. I’ve always been a very instinctive rider, racing on sensations, and at Sky everything was too controlled.”

What do you mean you want to attack, Purito? Get back in line, read your power meter and wait for your ten minutes on the front… 

> “You’re far more likely to see a car and predict how they move”: One in 12 cyclists fear illegal e-bikes more than motorists, new survey claims – as just 18% say they feel safe on UK roads

Here’s a neat new service for cyclists in Worcester. Bike Worcester has launched a new Worcester Cycling Flooding App which gives local riders live updates about when shared-use riverside paths are inaccessible due to flooding.

The app uses publicly available information regarding the current levels of the river
looking at the Environment Agency level monitors at Barbourne and Diglis, and
compares this with hundreds of crowd sourced observations made by Bike
Worcester volunteers over the last year to provide a status for each of the paths.

Users of the app can also continue to submit observations as to whether the paths are flooded, and also when the Council have removed mud from the paths after the
water has subsided.

Dan Brothwell, Chair of Bike Worcester said: “The app came out of a need from the
cycling community to know whether the paths were flooded or not so they could
plan their route accordingly. When the river level starts to rise there’s usually a flurry
of messages asking if certain routes are still open, and in reality you only know if
you go and take a look.

“One of the best things about travelling by bike is that the journey time is predictable, however this isn’t the case if you get to the river and have to turn back due to flooding.”

You can access it here.

View on Threads

> Multiple redundancies confirmed at Endura, as troubled cycling apparel brand set to leave Scotland for London 

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

170km and a look at some of the finish of Milan-San Remo for Tadej Pogačar this morning, the world champion taking his latest visit to the roads of one of the few bike races he hasn’t yet managed to win. Eagle-eyed cycling fans spotted Pogačar on the Poggio at the back end of 2025, this trip curiously missing out the ascent used in the opening Monument of the season. Instead, the UAE Team Emirates star ascended the side of the Poggio that he’ll descend in March, before heading back down to go through San Remo the same way he’d gone up.

Given how infrequently Pogačar uploads to Strava these days, you can be certain he’s more than happy to let the world know he’s got his eye on another tilt at the race in two months time. 

Pogačar has joked before he thinks it could be the race that kills him, the course giving riders, such as Mathieu van der Poel and Filippo Ganna last year, the chance to follow his accelerations and beat him in the sprint. Can he do it or, like Peter Sagan, will La Primavera be the one that got away… again and again and again and again and again?

Poll Maker