Telegraph litter e-bikes to highlight “what companies really do to deter dangerous parking”; “A criminal f***ing offence”: Outrage as pro causes major injury; Doddie Weir’s widow joins epic ride; Evenepoel unstoppable + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
Telegraph litter bikes across London to highlight "what hire companies really do to deter dangerous parking"
When we see a Telegraph investigation on e-bikes, the heart sinks. Just last week we shared one column in the paper blasting “selfish cyclists” who “unload unspeakable tirades of invective, then pedal away out of earshot”.
And who can forget when they blasted allegations of cyclists speeding at 52mph across a front page? Thankfully, a vestige of press regulation came in to add some sanity…
Their latest story is an investigation into the responsibility of e-bike hire companies that manage the parking of their hire bikes and have a reputation for poor parking management. It’s a story we’re pretty familiar with…
This time round, for establishing a story centred on the clogging up of parked e-bikes in awkward and inappropriate locations, the paper’s investigation culmination involves… parking e-bikes in awkward and inappropriate locations, manufacturing disturbances and obstacles on all-important pavement space.
It’s an unexpected turn, one intended to highlight the lackadaisical approach of hire bike operators who approve e-bike parking with little scrutiny or oversight. The task of approving each submitted photo is typically reviewed by AI, the paper reports.
The Telegraph’s investigators set about clogging up zebra crossings, roads and pavements across four major e-bike providers in the capital – Lime, Bolt, Voi, and Forest. None of the operators prevented a bike from being parked and only Lime issued a subsequent warning for “egregious parking”. The Telegraph say that in the course of their investigation they “prioritised road safety: once the e-bike was parked badly, the mandatory photograph was sent in and if – or when – the ride officially ended and the vehicle was locked, the bike was immediately dragged to a more considerate location.
Cannondale updates SuperSix Evo: lighter, more aero, same race-everything brief
Bit of big tech news to sign off with today, more than fast enough to reach an ‘aero wobble’ (see our bottom post from today).
Christen apologises for causing "unfortunate crash"
We led this morning on the news of Jan Christen’s disqualification from the Clasica Jaen yesterday for causing Maxim van Gils to crash. Van Gils was sprinting with Christen for third place behind Tim Wellens and Tom Pidcock and sustained a fractured pelvis that has ruled him out of racing for the spring. We covered that news, along with the fall out that surrounded Christen a little further down the page. Now, Christen has made a statement on Instagram.
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“I’m very happy to be part of the amazing team victory of Tim Wellens but for me personally not the end I intended after the unfortunate crash close the finish.
“I wanna apologize to Maxime for today, I jumped for the slipstream of Tom when he startet [sic] the sprint and did not see him coming on my left inside.
“It was an unfortunate incident, which can unfortunately happen in races. What I know for myself is that I would never put any other rider in harm like that on purpose.
“There’s a lot of emotion in my head about the situation, and I just wish from my heart to Maxime a speedy recovery and hope I can compete with him for victory again in the future.”
Following yesterday’s crash, speculation abounded that Christen should be punished for his swerving yesterday, as it is not the first time he has appeared to act rashly. Such punishments are rare however. In 2020, Dylan Groenewegen was suspended for nine months by the UCI for his part in Fabio Jakobsen’s crash at the Tour de Pologne. Jakobsen was placed in a coma and underwent facial reconstruction surgery after being elbowed into the barriers by his compatriot.
Gianni Moscon was meanwhile handed a five-week suspensionin 2018 for attempting to hit Elie Gesbert when the two were fighting for position in the peloton. The lack of life-threatening injury or malicious intent in this incident means Christen, 21, will likely avoid further sanction.
British Cycling restores free YouTube coverage for National Track Championships
Good news for those of you who like free-to-air cycling…
"That was a criminal f***ing offence": Outrage after UAE rider causes serious crash in race finale
We like personalities in the peloton, riders who reassure you they’re not dullards beaten into the rhythm and routine of being a professional athletic robot. But what are we to say about Jan Christen?
The 21-year old Swiss prodigy has established a reputation as something of a firebrand. He came to my attention for disobeying team orders, if they even exist, at the Clásica San Sebastián. There he disobeyed team orders to chase down his teammate Isaac Del Toro, enabling Giulio Ciccone to take the first World Tour one-day win of his career.
Then at the AlUla Tour a couple of weeks ago where he was penalised for some very sticky bottles…
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Still, to be a pain in the peloton’s behind, it helps if you win races, which Christen did by winning the final stage and overall. Now it’s gone too far however.
Contesting the podium places at the Clasica Jaen behind solo winner (and UAE teammate) Tim Wellens, Christen launched his sprint for third with Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe’s Maxim Van Gils trying to come past on the inside. Christen’s tactic? Shut the lane off. Have a look at the full incident here.
wtf Jan Christen #ClasicaJaen pic.twitter.com/rQv9mWemeq
— Eemeli (@LosBrolin) February 16, 2026
Van Gils, one of Red Bull’s star riders in punchy one-day races, suffered a pelvic fracture that the team says ensure “he will miss the upcoming months of racing”. No classics campaign after all.
Christen was disqualified for his manoeuvre, promoting his new teammate Benoit Cosnefroy onto the podium behind Tom Pidcock. But that wasn’t enough for the cycling internet. Here are some Bluesky highlights
“Jan Christen has become my number 1 most hated rider in no time. And that means something in a peloton where Quinn Simmons and Gianni Moscon exist.”
“Jan Christen should be suspended as long as it takes for Van Gils to get healthy again. in cycling terms that was a criminal f***ing offence.”
You get the idea. Perhaps the most bizarre bit of all this was UAE Team Emirates XRG’s own social media output on the day’s events.
As you might expect, the description of a “perfect day” was enough to set off alarm bells for the screenshotting supremos, who captured the image incase the tweet was deleted (somehow it hasn’t been yet). Thanks to them for their services, best wishes to Maxim van Gils for what could be quite a painful period of recovery, and hopeully Jan Christen can have a long sit down and think about what he’s done. What do the road.cc panel think? Should Christen receive any further punishment? Let us know in the comments…
Mercian bikes customise tandem for Greg James' Comic Relief challenge
I didn’t expect to be double posting cycling themed charity stories today but we like a classic Mercian…
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In case you missed it, the Derbyshire frame-builders are back under new ownership, and back producing new models!
New report slams “shocking inaction” on bike theft, with just 2% of stolen cycles likely to be recovered
Anyone else think two percent is higher than they expected?
Doddie Weir's widow takes on 750 mile charity cycle ride
Following former Scottish Rugby legend Doddie Weir’s announcement of his MND diagnosis in 2017, the charity set up in his honour has been nothing short of phenomenal in its fundraising endeavours, raising millions of pounds supporting research into Motor Neurone Disease. Cycling has played a key part in that…
Since 2020, the charity has organised several endurance cycle rides. Last year’s route from Dublin to Edinburgh raised more than £1 million. This year’s four-day challenge, dubbed Doddie’s Triple Crown, will travel through all three home nations before catching a ferry to finish in the Irish capital. And, for the first time, Doddie’s wife Kathy will be taking part.
“This is probably the first year I’ve felt mentally ready to take on something like this. I don’t know about physically – but mentally, yes. After Doddie died, I probably wasn’t in a great place. I’d tell everyone I was fine, but I was exhausted, mentally and physically. It was emotional, and it was public. It’s taken time.
“Last year I joined for the final stage and that helped. Now I’m at a place where I’m happy to do anything I can.”
The charity ride won’t start until the 10th March but has already raised more than half a million pounds. All that’s left to say is to wish Kathy, and everyone taking part, the very best of luck!
Bolt claims rival companies deliberately moving e-bikes to get them seized for bad parking
And I thought the vigilante operation in the Swedish curling set-up was the biggest story of its sort this week…
Evenepoel unstoppable in UAE
As Time Trials go, an out-and-back along a big, empty road is about as British as it gets. No wonder Josh Tarling won the UAE’s sole Time Trial last year. Unfortunately for him, Remco Evenepoel was in town.
With yesterday’s timings neutralised due to strong winds. Every team could choose when to send off their strongest riders, with the exception of race leader Isaac Del Toro. That meant most stage favourites went early before the heat became… well, hot.
Three-time World Champion Evenepoel was fifth out of the blocks and completed the 12.2km course in a tad over 13 minutes, besting Josh Tarling by six seconds. Remi Cavagna was third ahead of another strong TT performance by Ethan Hayter.
The result gives Evenepoel the lead ahead of Del Toro who are expected to fight for the honours when the race climaxes at the weekend. Tomorrow’s summit finish to Jebel Mobrah should set the scene before a showdown on Saturday at Jebel Hafeet.
There will also be several sprint opportunities between now and then, and could include Jonathan Milan. Despite crashing heavily in the finale yesterday, the Italian fast man avoided sustaining any fractures and has stayed in the race. He finished 36th in today’s TT.
Visma-Lease a Bike seek new sponsors
It’s just as well we never really used to calling Jumbo-Visma Visma-Lease a Bike. It took me far too long to stop calling them LottoNL-Jumbo. Why do I mention this? Well Wielerflits reporter Raymond Kerckhoffs has a story this morning that Norwegian software company Visma are unable (or unwilling) to meet the required sponsorship to compete against the oil-rich nation state of UAE. Frankly who can blame them?
Kerckhoffs’ reporting, which helpfully comes with an English translation, says that Visma (the company) do want to stay involved in the sport, having sponsored the team since 2019, but that the company is unable to make the financial commitments of other major teams. Some, like Ineos, Lidl-Trek and Red Bull Bora Hansgrohe have seen their sponsors take on ownership and responsibility for their teams as well as plastering their name across the kit.
Thankfully, the team have retained the support of other key sponsors (notably Rabobank) and the team’s existence is not threatened, even if it’s long-term competitiveness is coming under question.
Very speedy wobblies
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One day I will go fast enough to experience this adrenaline (I won’t)
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@Mr Blackbird where can I find photos of this study? Asking for a friend.
@Gd29 I was waiting for the classic "why don't we just ban driving completely by reducing the speed limit to 5mph or 0!" argument and here it is. The statistics are very clear on the benefits of reducing the speed limit from 30-20mph. It doesn't remove bad driving but it mitigates the damage. It also makes fuck all difference to journey times. Everything with driving is risk vs reward. Sure, dropping it to 10mph would save a lot more people but it would make travel by car ridiculous and have minimal benefit vs 20mph. The reward wouldn't be worth the cost.
@Gd29 "Speed limits are an ineffective tool when the problem is drivers not driving in an appropriate manner for the conditions and environment. Those drivers weren’t following the speed limit and/or paying sufficient attention anyway!" That is a question, not an assertion. What are the relative numbers of drivers who are eg. "don't care" criminals who may never have taken a test or are happy to take life, how many are "criminally negligent" eg. may have a licence and not intend to break the law regardless, but just aren't fussed about basic safe driving (maybe regularly drive while tired, never slow down when conditions require), how many are just normal humans (who occasionally make unfathomable mistakes)? What are the relative rates of collisions? What are the casualty outcomes? What effect does simply changing a number on a sign have? If any, why? (There's the psychological "anchoring effect", if 70% of people *are* below the limit does that slow down others, do the "don't cares" maybe just overtake dangerously (but would they anyway? ) ) etc. Reduced speed is a mitigation in that it leads to better outcomes in collisions, that's a known I believe. IIRC there's also agreement that it can mean that fewer collisions happen as there's more time to react. "If that is the problem and you don’t deal with it, but you want to keep reducing injuries/fatalities, you have to keep dropping speed limits until you prohibit road use entirely" "If" (plus as noted other safety measures are available)
@Rendel Harris - I think that driver must live near me.
@Gd29 it's good to "point out potential abuse of stats - and for "keeping it concise for the public" no doubt some measure of "lies, damn lies and statistics" applies. But unless you have your own analysis / evidence, this may sound like a "just asking questions!" rhetorical tactic.
@Gd29 exactly what variables / controlled experiments would suffice to convince you, and then how would you believe that would still hold in "real world" situations? We all know there are excellent ways to stop motoring-related KSIs - one being stop humans operating vehicles) but that isn't normally seen as realistic. Then there's another "remove the hazard" approach eg. completely isolate motorists from vulnerable road users (and "footways" alone might not be sufficient, as more people are killed there most years by drivers than eg. by cyclists in total, although that fact doesn't say much ). Though that by itself doesn't address motorists killing themselves / other motorists. Currently the UK - like many countries - is mostly doing a "remove the vulnerable road users" approach, partly by design but mostly indirectly by prioritising convenience for motoring (including journey time, which is seen to involve higher speeds).
Do you really need an AI tool to tell you that 80% of a cyclist's drag is the rider or that getting in a more streamlined position you'll reduce drag etc.? Fabulous for the professional riders who use this site but for the rest of us our money would be better spent on yoga or pilates classes to help you hold a more streamlined position in the first place.
Of course drivers need to be responsible and take care but we are in danger of getting a bit high and mighty when police raise issues like this. Since the clocks went back last weekend, I have been commuting home this week in the dark for the first time this year. I am gobsmacked by the number of cyclists I see who have no lights and no reflective gear, often with no helmets either. It's common sense to take precautions and we've got our head in the sand if we pretend all cyclists are taking appropriate steps to protect themselves and others.
@mdavidford was about to ask them if they thought the law should also been changed to ban the LAs from doing that, so as to save money...
@Rendel Harris sentencing is Monday. 15 yrs minimum (not premeditated) but multiple aggravating factors. 20+ feels appropriate
34 thoughts on “Telegraph litter e-bikes to highlight “what companies really do to deter dangerous parking”; “A criminal f***ing offence”: Outrage as pro causes major injury; Doddie Weir’s widow joins epic ride; Evenepoel unstoppable + more on the live blog”
Difficult for the “road.cc panel” to offer an opinion when there’s no embedded or linked video of the incident to view, just a screenshot.
Ah tech gremlins! Replaced it with a hyperlink for now 🙂
Thanks, seen it now. To be honest I don’t regard that as particularly heinous, both riders were moving laterally across the road to try and grab the rear wheel of the leader, van Gils decided to keep on pushing into the gap even as it was closed by the barriers. If Christen (who does appear to be a complete bellend) had gone down and van Gils stayed up quite possibly the latter would be castigated for trying to make a gap that wasn’t there. Worthy of a demotion on the stage but not of any further sanction, in my opinion.
I have to disagree, van Gils was far enough up to have earned space on the road, closing him down was a dick move that needs discouraging before more riders are injured.
Well, agree to differ – to me they were both moving across the road at the same rate, both trying for the leader’s wheel, and the barrier came up on them. From the head-on I’ve seen it looks as though VG crashes more trying to avoid the barrier than Christen. Christen could have not carried on moving to the barrier but equally VG could not have kept on pressing to try and get through an ever-decreasing gap.
Even now, the link that’s been provided isn’t particularly helpful to judge by, given that it’s been slowed down to about half speed, which makes it look a lot more planned and deliberate.
The Guardian has a touch of BBC disease this morning, referring to the new police Surrons as ebikes rather than electric motorcycles:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/17/met-police-drones-ebikes-phone-thieves-gangs-recruit-children-london?fbclid=IwY2xjawQBGyFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETBmUzFFbVp4Qld1ZGNsNnBSc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHt3529CstxvGMBEmZt1H-cCL3Reh_J1ErlFE3diEWW8p2hvMJQN40lA4IUq5_aem_-o09wo-rE93EAGFJy99DEQ
On a sidenote, interesting to see that the gangs are offering “as little as £20” for an iPhone 12; as I’m still perfectly happy with my trusty 6s (it’s a bit grandfather’s axe having had two new batteries and a new screen but it does me just fine) presumably when the muggers get round to me they will give me a fiver for a cup of tea and a sandwich in sympathy?
The BBC didn’t learn from their Panorama mistakes either, so I wonder if it’s the Police themselves who have ignored their own guidance and the terminology in the law, in this press release?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdx4762znr6o
About 12-15 years ago, a friend had his mobile snatched when sitting outside a café. The scoundrel made off at speed – but after just a few metres realised he’d what he’d snatched and returned it to its owner.
Reminder, the worst thing to do is to grip your bars tightly with your arms rigid.
That is what *causes* speed wobbles, and what the rider above appears to be doing – and apparently this is a recurrent problem for them.
The speed wobble is an interaction between patterns of bumps in the road, and the rigidity of the combined system of the front end of the bike and your body – in a sense – the Young modulus of your arms. Remember: You control the rigidity of your arms. Keeping your hands and arms a bit relaxed – NOT hard rigid – and able to keep control of the bike, while also *absorbing* bumps, will PREVENT speed wobbles. Rigid arms help *INDUCE* speed wobbles. You want your hands and arms to act as _dampers_, and not become a fundamental part of a system in harmonic resonance.
I find a better solution is just not to go that fast in the first place.
Where’s the fun in that?
I prefer my ‘fun’ to be of the fun kind.
There’s a chance you may be on the wrong website 😉
It isn’t high speed as such.
It’s a combination of /some/ speed, the road conditions and the rider’s rigidity.
Well, exactly. Not something I’m ever going to have to worry about.
When I first started cycling I got speed wobbles at only 20mph going down Broomfield Hill in Richmond Park. I probably was gripping the bars too tight (still have to remind myself to relax whenever I’m on a descent) but then started getting speed wobbles when riding no handed!
Since changing stem length and fixing all sorts of various gubbins on the bike I haven’t had a wobble in years riding at much higher speeds.
Yes, riding no handed you can also get speed wobbles – you have 0 damping, so the front-end obviously resonate. The resonance frequency likely being very different to the “fast descent with rigid arms” case.
You want to use your arms as dampers.
Rigid arms and no arms both have the same problem: Not providing required damping in the range of critical frequencies.
You can get wobbles riding no wheeled too, if you’ve had a heavy night before. Relaxing your arms doesn’t help much with that though.
If you get speed wobble, bring your knees in to grip the top tube. The wobble will cease instantly.
Good advice. Adding a damper basically.
But.. don’t ride with a death-grip and rigid arms to begin with, like this rider was doing, and they’ll never start (in any significant way) to begin with.
a few weeks ago I went down a rabbit hole on the history of motorbike fairings(!) kind of fascinating if anyone feels like indulging their inner geek. from what I remember, the issue seems to be the relationship between centre of gravity and centre of pressure. basically at high speed (or high wind speed) the wind resistance makes the front end lift. this can be exacerbated by leaning back in the saddle on descents, which is a natural tendency for many people. keeping a good amount of weight over the front wheel esp. downhill seems to be key to preventing wobbles from starting
This reminds me of Jobst Brandt’s definitive article on shimmy, which largely concur with your comments.
https://sheldonbrown.com/brandt/shimmy.html
It was a pleasure to read it again. Analytical and educational. Jobst solved or identified many of the technical problems in cycling, but nonetheless back they keep coming.
I was into motorbikes, and racing / track riding before getting back to cycling. Speed wobbles and the solution are much better understood there. As is the solution: Damping. I’m just transferring knowledge from a brethren field. 😉
Had a speed wobble once at about 150 to 170 km/h.
(In motorbikes, another critical bit of advice is *DONT KNOCK OFF THE THROTTLE* – keep your speed and ideally, accelerate. Shutting off the power will almost certainly exacerbate the wobble, the weight transfer onto the front end will increase the forces, making it even harder to damp. Accelerating (if possible) transfers weight off the front, lightens the forces, and makes it easier for your arms to provide the damping. This isn’t really that applicable to bikes – you just don’t have anything like the ability to add power to accelerate out of a wobble, but… you almost certainly don’t want to hit the brakes, and pedalling a bit harder if possible is probably a good idea; above all let your hands and arms act like a damper – be a sponge that absorbs forces NOT resonate with them!).
Oh, there is an old road safety video on Yt, from the 70s about speed wobbles on motorbikes. It’s worth a watch. As the instructor in that says, *every* motorbike has some set of speeds and conditions where it will speed wobble. The same is true of bicycles.
“Christen’s tactic? Shut the lane off.”
Just like any normal day in Richmond Park.
The Telegraph is collapsing towards the gutter faster than a ski-jumper with penile hyaluronic acid injections.
Also they fundamentally do not seem to understand how the system works. You photograph the bike and then it will require a human to review how you’ve parked it. Surely, with the volume of bikes being parked this cannot be instantanious. Yes, as they saw Lime subsequently warned them of bad parking – so the system did work.
There’s a poster on here who is on bluesky as azb. He posted a video of a pedestrian kicking a hire bike over to make it a hazard !
Bit of a concerning court case outcome here. The judge completely threw out the case, but when you read the reasons why, they seem tenuous to say the least.
From my understanding reading the court ruling, the two main reasons for dismissal of the case were:
– none of the jury have probably driven a ‘golf’ cart style vehicle
– the POV police reconstruction video was positioned slightly above where the driver’s line of sight might have been
This is surprising because not all prosecution evidence would include a POV video and surely there are cases involving exotic motor cars that jury members are unlikely to have direct experience of driving? Free pass to Koenigsegg drivers?? 😡
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg1955pz85o
I think that’s a slight misreading. I think what the judge was saying was that the fact the it was an unusual vehicle/set of circumstances meant that the jury would be more than usually reliant on the expert witness and reconstruction, and *given that the expert witness had effectively admitted a lack of confidence* in the reconstruction and evidence given, that wasn’t enough of a case to answer. Had the witness maintained confidence in their evidence they could have proceeded.
The slightly more depressing aspect for me is the “Must Make Progress”-ism of the comments about it ‘not being reasonable’ to expect him to slow down to adjust for the conditions, because he was already only going ~10mph.
It appeared to me like an exercise in excusing the driver. As you say, the judge’s immediate position was that 10mph was ‘slow’ and there was no question as to whether that was appropriate for emerging from a ‘give way’ junction. The rest of the questioning of the expert evidence hinged on this point and all the ‘seconds to react’ etc. were based upon this.
Throw in a ‘sun was in their eyes’ and a ‘cyclist blended in with the background’ for good measure. 🤨
It’s all pretty simple: the ‘expert witness’ is a PC and not an expert at anything at all, and especially not anything to do with cycling and cyclists. He, and the court, think that a motorised vehicle driver is bound to KSI the odd cyclist, so it’s not a real offence, so no punishment indicated. End of story, end of cyclist. They don’t know, they don’t care.
“none of the jury have probably driven a ‘golf’ cart style vehicle”
In which case, all gun/knife related murder/assault trials should be cancelled as most people won’t have experience of using the items in question.
Not to mention, if someone KSIs when driving an high end/expensive car which is out of reach of most people’s wallets, then would those trials be cancelled too?