“Only makes sense on paths you DON’T want cyclists to use”: “Totally indefensible” slalom barriers on cycle lane; Lance Armstrong’s DS tells UCI boss to “stick to selfies & dubious deals”; “Canyon to Brompton” delivery nightmare + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
“These things only make sense on paths you DON’T want cyclists to use”: Terrible Italian cycle lane with slalom barriers branded “totally indefensible”
British cycling infrastructure: ‘Yeah, we’re pretty useless, most of us don’t have much in the way of protection, and a lot of our designs aren’t great and a bit half-arsed, if we’re honest.’
Italian cycling infrastructure: ‘Hold my limoncello.’
Yep, this slalom-style beauty – if we can call it that – comes courtesy of Vaiano, a Tuscan town just north of Florence. And where every single cyclist is a champion cyclocrosser, by the looks of things.
“These things only make sense on paths you DON’T want cyclists to use. Just totally indefensible,” wrote Chris on Facebook, seemingly baffled that the UK’s love of both barriers and making things as difficult as possible for people on bikes has emigrated to the continent.
“Any testing at all would have prevented this,” added Alex, while a number of people in the comments noted that the tightly-packed nature of the barriers (three sets of which I can easily make out in that photo) made the cycle lane essentially unusable for cargo bike or wheelchair users.
“Why don’t they do that with the car lane???” asked Oliver. Now there’s a question.
I’m heading to that part of Italy for the autumn classics this year, I’ll have to test out that cycle lane when I’m there. Might need to work on my bike handling skills before then…
“Trying to reinvent a sport he clearly doesn’t understand”: Lance Armstrong’s old boss tells UCI president to “stick to selfies and dubious deals” after call for smaller Tour de France teams to stop Pogačar domination
The Tour de France is nearly here and that means only one thing… It’s time for Johan Bruyneel and David Lappartient to reignite their long-running feud!
(And there was you thinking Thursday’s team presentation marked the start of the Grand Départ festivities. Not when the Hog still has access to social media and a burning desire to condemn cycling’s governing body on the eve of the sport’s biggest race.)
So, what has the UCI president done to piss off everyone’s favourite banned sports director this time? Well, in a recent interview with Warner Bros. Discovery, Lappartient suggested that the best way to prevent cycling’s superteams dominating the Tour de France (cough, UAE, cough) was to further reduce the number of riders in each squad.
In 2018, during the height of the Sky era, team sizes were reduced from nine to eight at the grand tours (and eight to seven in every other race), and Lappartient believes that a further cut to seven or even six riders per team would prevent the kind of suspense-killing strangleholds we’ve seen in recent years.
“Is it really wise to limit the number of teams in the Tour de France to 22 or 23, each with eight riders? That way, the strongest teams manage to stifle the action and completely dominate a 3,500-kilometre race,” the UCI president said, without pointing the finger at any team in particular.
“With 25 teams of six riders each, the race becomes less predictable and decidedly more spectacular.”
That suggestion hasn’t gone down too well with a certain Mr Bruyneel, who knows a thing or two about stifling a Tour de France with a super-strong, turbo-charged, dominant team.
“There has never been a president of cycling more disconnected from the sport than David Lappartient,” the former US Postal boss, the man behind the wheel of Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour wins, posted on X.
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“His latest idea? Three-week Grand Tours with six-rider teams. It’s another reminder that he has no real understanding of how professional cycling actually works.
“Instead of trying to reinvent a sport he clearly doesn’t understand, perhaps Mr. Teflon Lappartient should stick to what he’s best known for: taking selfies and doing dubious deals with heads of state.”
Ouch. Don’t peak too soon Johan, we’ve still got four weeks to go until Paris. There’ll be plenty of opportunities to launch a few more long-range attacks at the UCI before the Tour’s over.
You might need to call Dr Ferrari for a social media performance-enhancing top-up at this rate though…
Couple more TDF tidbits
Derek Gee-West has been called up to ride the Tour de France by Lidl-Trek. The team, which is fronted by Juan Ayuso and Mads Pedersen wasn’t initially due to include the Canadian who finished ninth overall at the race in 2023, and will be coming in having just finished fifth at the Giro d’Italia, 1’30” from the podium. What role he’ll play in the race alongside the likes of Mat(t/h)ias’ Vacek and Skjelmose will be fascinating but will no doubt be an asset for the opening day Team Time Trial. Meanwhile, this twitter thread is well worth the scroll for the quite lovely and amusing illustrations…
We spotted some familiar faces on our big pre-Tour de France shop 👀
Follow the thread below to meet the eight riders in our Barcelona basket 🛒
✍️ all hand drawn by Fette #TDF2026 pic.twitter.com/mBnZDWshHu
— Lidl-Trek (@LidlTrek) June 29, 2026
Another team targeting the TTT are Netcompany-Ineos who have yet to confirm their team but are rumoured to be considering Josh Tarling and Egan Bernal, alongside Kevin Vauquelin providing he’s sufficiently recovered from illness.
Tarling’s return would be welcomed by the team, and also fans of British Cycling. Including Tarling, we’re currently looking at the lowest number of British riders on the start line since the Covid-impacted 2020 edition – assuming Tom Pidcock and Fred Wright are selected by Pinarello-Q36.5 when they announce their team tomorrow.
If any of you can name all four Brits who started and finished that Covid edition of the race without looking it up, my eternal respect to you. A hint: two of the names have already been mentioned on today’s blog!
Mathieu van der Poel expecting child with partner Roxanne
*To the tune of a famous song by the Police*
They might have to put up a baby light!
View this post on Instagram
Comfortably the worst attempt of trying to cram a cultural reference into otherwise banal content I (Callum) have ever done. Still, congratulations to the happy couple!
MASS TRESPASS ALERT
Critical Mass, that is…
“Canyon to Brompton in one easy step”: Bike delivery nightmares
If you’re currently waiting on a new bike to be delivered, it’s probably best if you look away now:
UPS tracking stated “damage reported”
by
u/Holiday-Strawberry25 in
CanyonBikes
Yikes. That’s nightmare fuel, that is.
Unsurprisingly, US-based cyclist and Reddit user Holiday-Strawberry25 wasn’t too happy with the state of their new Canyon when it finally got delivered a week late.
“The delivery driver said other drivers had refused to deliver because the state of the damage,” they posted.
“He said they had to tape up the box in order to move it. I refused to sign (obviously). I can only imagine how bad the damage is inside of the box.
“I’m sure I am not the only one who’s received their bike in similar condition, just hoping the exchange process is quick and I won’t have to pay import duties on the replacement.”
When someone asked the obvious question (‘how’s the bike?’), they replied: “No idea. I didn’t sign for it. I didn’t have the patience to unpack, document, pack it up, and arrange a return pickup.”
Fair enough. That’s what we call in the business, Schrödinger’s Bike. And it’s fair to say UPS’s Ace Ventura-inspired bike delivery method has baffled quite a few cyclists in the comments.
“Honestly almost comical at that point. Looks like they played soccer with the damn thing,” wrote dolpsc. Ahem, it’s football.
“I don’t think I could’ve damaged the box even further even if I wanted to,” Adostein added.
Another Canyon customer shared their own delivery horror story:
Not too sure the bike enjoyed the ride, if I’m honest.
“Seems normal. $15k bike, $.25 treatment,” wrote zombie9393. “In this case the bike was fine, but it was more luck than anything there wasn’t damage.”
Meanwhile, others speculated about the type of delivery method favoured by the couriers, with suggestions ranging from “ocean” to “Amazon drone delivery from 100 feet”.
Or maybe, as some noted, we’re all actually just looking at the accidental birth of Canyon’s first ever folding bike.
“Canyon to Brampton in one easy step,” ZennerBlue wrote. Or not so easy, if it was supposed to be your bike.
Paul Seixas on lead-out duty?
We’ve had a flurry of teams race to outdo one another with their Tour de France rider announcements today. Well except for XDS-Astana who went quite route one with a poster containing eight riders with the Sagrada Familia poking through a gap.
🇪🇸 🇫🇷 ROSTER: @LeTour
Hola 👋, Barcelona!@ballero_94 🇮🇹 @aarongate 🇳🇿 @HiguitSergio 🇨🇴 @MaxKanter97 🇩🇪 @haroldtejada1 🇨🇴 @MikeTeunissen 🇳🇱 @simovelasco 🇮🇹 @NicoVino13 🇰🇿 #XDSAstanaTeam #TDF2026 pic.twitter.com/QZnY7CnE7Z
— XDS Astana Team (@XDSAstanaTeam) June 29, 2026
But, the best announcement I’ve seen so far is undoubtedly Decathlon CMA-CGM, making full use of both sponsors strengths as sports retailers and shipping magnates…
🇫🇷 @LeTour
🔔 @seixas_paul, @KooijOlav, Matthew, @TiesjBenoot, Daan, @NicoProdhomme , @AurelienParetP, Cees :
➡️ direction @LeTour#DECATHLONCMACGMTEAM – © DCT / KBLB @Decathlon @cmacgm @van_rysel pic.twitter.com/4nTdCn2pjN
— DECATHLON CMA CGM TEAM (@decathloncmacgm) June 29, 2026
Besides the excellent video, it actually contains some news: that Olav Kooij shall go to the ball after all! Having been the team’s star signing over the winter, it was widely expected that Kooij would finally make his debut at the biggest race of all, only for his spring to be completely derailed by illness. That, coupled with the growing speculation that Paul Seixas would ride the Tour, inserted doubt into proceedings.
When Decathlon broke the news that Seixas would not only ride the Tour but aim for a GC result, many feared it was the death knell for the Dutchman’s chances. He responded in the best possible way, by winning!
Two stages at the Boucles de la Mayenne is one thing, but outsprinting Tim Merlier and Jasper Philipsen at the Baloise Belgium Tour was enough to get the nod. He’ll only have Cees Bol – former lead-out for Mark Cavendish at Astana as specialist support, whilst rouleurs Daan Hoole and Tiesj Benoot will be asked to double up supporting both their sprinter and their 19 (NINETEEN!) year old leader. Good luck to them I guess…
Not Another Gaudí Special Kit
Visma-Lease a Bike may have got there first, but we all knew Movistar weren’t going to make it through the Barcelona Grand Départ without releasing their own Gaudí-inspired jersey:
View this post on Instagram
According to Movistar’s press release, the kit draws inspiration from the “shapes, textures, and geometries” of the Sagrada Família, which was finally completed this month. On first impressions, I’m not sure 144 years of design and labour went into Movistar’s aero tribute, however.
In any case, Movistar says the kit, which marks the centenary of Antoni Gaudí’s passing, “celebrates the values of creativity, innovation, and the pursuit of excellence that define the work of the Catalan architect and are also part of Movistar’s identity”. No comment.
Car ownership and cyclist and pedestrian collisions on the rise in borough accused of “lagging behind” on safe cycling and walking measures
UAE Team Emirates announce Tadej Pogačar’s Tour de France support squad… and it’s frighteningly strong
Speaking of excessively dominant eight-rider Tour de France squads, UAE Team Emirates have just unveiled their line-up for this year’s race. And it’s every bit as stupidly strong as you’d expect.
As Tadej Pogačar aims for a record-equalling (if you dismiss ol’ LA, of course) fifth Tour win, the world champion will be supported by what look like, on paper, one of the strongest teams ever assembled for three weeks of racing around France.
On the flat, Pogačar will be shepherded by front-of-the-bunch veteran Nils Politt, Tim Wellens, and Florian Vermeersch, while in the mountains he’ll have Felix Großschartner, Brandon McNulty, Adam Yates, and Mexican wonderkid and Dauphiné winner Isaac del Toro at his disposal.
You know what, I can see where Lappartient is coming from.
View this post on Instagram
“The Tour de France is always the biggest challenge of the season and also the race that motivates us the most,” Pogačar said in a statement published by his team.
“Every year, you arrive at the start knowing that anything can happen over three weeks, and that’s what makes it so special.
“We’ve prepared really well as a team, everyone has worked incredibly hard, and now we’re excited to finally get started in Barcelona.
“I feel good, I’m looking forward to racing, and I know I’ll have a fantastic group of teammates and staff around me. We have a lot of confidence in each other and have built up a lot of experience together over the years.”
Be afraid, be very afraid.
“To keep the sport attractive and balanced, it’s essential to prevent the best riders from all ending up on the same team”
A move to ever-smaller grand tour squads isn’t the only democratising method David Lappartient has suggested in recent days.
The UCI president has also renewed his call for a salary cap to be implemented in professional cycling, in a bid to prevent the biggest, wealthiest teams from stockpiling talent (a tale as old as time, just look at La Vie Claire).
“To keep the sport attractive and balanced, it’s essential to prevent the best riders from all ending up on the same team,” Lappartient said.
The UCI attempted to introduce a budget cap last year, but the plan was rejected by the teams, including some smaller outfits Lappartient said were acting against their own interests.
“We worked intensively on this for a year and a half alongside the teams, and specifically with the AIGCP investing significant sums in external consultancy,” he said.
“The budget cap system was ready for launch, but at the time, the teams spoke out against it. We were very surprised that it was the smaller teams that voted against it.”
Pointing to Arkéa-B&B Hotels, Lappartient claimed Arkéa’s owner was forced to put more and more money into the team every year, only for results to decline, leading to him withdrawing his funding and the team stopping. The UCI president says he now believes similar smaller squads, faced with the same threat of extinction, have now changed their minds on the reality of the budget cap.
“Despite the initial rejection by the smaller teams, who, in my opinion, acted against their own interests, there is now a global consensus on the need for a budget cap,” he said,
“Although the final mechanism still needs to be defined, the work done two years ago provides an excellent foundation.
“My position is clear: without a budget cap, the wealthiest teams will progressively increase their revenues and monopolise the best riders, making survival even harder for smaller teams. Such a scenario is detrimental to the sport.”
How do you solve a problem like Pogačar?
David Lappartient may believe, when it comes to team size at the Tour de France, that ‘more and smaller’ is the answer to the UAE and Visma-led dominance we’ve seen in recent years.
But road.cc reader Rendel Harris has spotted a flaw in the UCI president’s theory – and reckons he has an even better idea to stop future Tours becoming Pog-athons.
“Smaller teams in order to rein in the winning capacity of the only rider capable of making and sticking solo attacks from 80 km plus, not sure we’ve thought this one through, have we sir?” Rendel wrote in today’s live blog comments.
“The only way at the moment the team size could affect Pogačar is if you reduce the size of his team and let everyone else keep the status quo.”
Now, there’s an idea.
Meanwhile, mdavidford wasn’t impressed with the Hog sticking his snout in: “Bruyneel calls for UCI to stick to doing dubious deals – like the good old days, eh Johan?”
I’ll just leave that photo of Johan and former UCI chief Pat McQuaid here…
It’s the most wonderful time of the year… for gawping at very expensive bikes (and referring to a £6,000 bike as ‘cheap’)
Nationals round-up: The Wright Stuff returns as Zoe puts rivals to zzz
It was an action-packed weekend in West Wales (west Wales? Definitely not West wales in any event) as the British national championships came to a conclusion with the men’s and women’s road races.
The women’s race was characterised by Josie Knight going long. And I mean really long. With 64km remaining, the track specialist had an 8 (eight) minute lead over the peloton. For a while it looked like we might have had a worthy successor to Anna Kiesenhofer and Lotte Claes in the category of unexpected breakaway triumphs.
But, on the closing punchy circuit in and around Aberystwyth, the gap started to come down, and it was Zoe Bäckstedt who made the definitive attack with 55km remaining that slowly reeled in Knight, eventually catching and dropping Knight to take a TT-Road double. Knight valiantly hung on for second whilst defending champion Millie Couzens outsprinted Pfeiffer Georgi for the final spot of the podium.
In the men’s race the action was cagier after the day’s early break, comprising Owain Doull and new under-23 champ Ben Wiggins was caught. The decisive move came with 70km to go when Connor Swift, Lewis Askey, Fred Wright, Mattie Dodd and Elliot Rowe broke free. The latter two were in a battle for the under-23 victory and were left to it on the final lap as the other three broke clear for a sprint a trois.
There, Fred Wright outkicked Biniam Girmay’s lead-out man Askey to take the second national championships of his career, having previously won the jersey in 2023. In fact, the national championships remain Wright’s only victories since turning professional. Whether the national champs count as a ‘pro win’ is, of course, another matter of pedantry altogether…
(Image Credit: SWPix.com via British Cycling)
As an antidote to that Italian monstrosity, here’s some successful cycling infrastructure
Cycle counter CS3Count on the Embankment cycle lane in London at 2,835 cycle journeys for the day at 08:32 this morning. @cs3cs6count.bsky.social
— Timothy (@westcountrytim.bsky.social) June 29, 2026 at 10:10 AM
“Who wouldn’t want to go out for a bike ride and get cheered on as they’re riding, you know?”
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Latest Comments
“People who are wearing body armour get used to being shot at, when it’s the getting shot at that’s the problem.” People who are wearing body armour get used to being shot at because they survive. People not wearing it die the first time they are shot. So they don't really have much chance to get used to being shot at, do they? But seriously if you don't want to wear a helmet and you're an adult, no-one should have the right to make you wear one.
@lawrence18uk Occasionally I see tradies travelling with some tools on the train, compact tool bags, rucksacks and wheelie luggage, often carrying long spirit levels separately, but on a couple of occasions collapsible ladders.
Finally some proper Gravel for the UCI World Championships! …no dates in the article. Racing starts today 10/11 Oct. Watch it free on SBS. … Go well Matt…
@Aluminium can - as an alternative to vans, yes cargo bikes (plenty in Cambridge), and I've been wondering whether supplies could be delivered from retailers - using delivery robots. and it's possible I suppose that ladders could fall in the same category - you could, instead of just hiring a bicycle, hire a ladder and it would arrive of its own accord.
... and we still had apostrophe rationing.
@Rendel Harris There was a bit in the bicycle hating Guardian, a nice little read, part of his justification was to acclimatise to the heat and humidity, which if he was in a better car might have been worth it. Good luck to him, chapeau.
@SecretSam That's not really fair, in fact not fair at all. It wasn't his fault that the last two mountain stages were shortened and on the first one he had dropped everyone and was a minute clear as he summitted the Iseran when the stage was neutralised, and on the second he stayed with or dropped all the other GC contenders. You seem to have forgotten his Giro win as well as Paris Nice and the Tour de Suisse. Only the fourth rider to have won the Tour and Giro before the age of twenty-five. Yes he probably couldn't have stayed with Pogacar even if he hadn't had the awful crash, and probably nor could any other rider in history except perhaps Merckx.
@lesterama Bernal has had two whammys. His crash, which he has probably never fully recovered from and Ineos taking a nosedive. They have no focus and no identity.
@Zermattjohn Read the comment I posted about my experience
I bought some Challenge Strada tyres. After a while the sidewalls began to detach from the tyre and the tread became rippled making them unsafe to use. The shop I bought them from asked me to drop them in and he would show the Challenge rep as he was due in the following week. The rep bizarrely firstly claimed that the tyres had failed because they may have been punctured (they hadn’t), then immediately claimed that they had failed because the rear tyre was more worn than the front! I emailed pictures to Challenge and was told they had failed because they had been fitted incorrectly. The black strip they had introduced to stop the issue I had was supposed to be above the rim. Which it clearly was shown to be correct on the pictures I sent to them which proved that the tyres were correctly fitted. This seems to be the norm now in the cycle industry, if there is an issue with a product, the company automatically blames the end user rather than look to address the issue, thereby pissing the customer off. A pissed off customer rarely returns.
17 thoughts on ““Only makes sense on paths you DON’T want cyclists to use”: “Totally indefensible” slalom barriers on cycle lane; Lance Armstrong’s DS tells UCI boss to “stick to selfies & dubious deals”; “Canyon to Brompton” delivery nightmare + more on the live blog”
Smaller teams in order to rein in the winning capacity of the only rider capable of making and sticking solo attacks from 80 km plus, not sure we’ve thought this one through, have we sir? The only way at the moment the team size could affect Pogacar is if you reduce the size of his team and let everyone else keep the status quo.
Could always reduce the size of Pogačar – shrink him down by about half – that might level things up a bit.
Bruyneel calls for UCI to stick to doing dubious deals – like the good old days, eh Johan?
Awful human slags off Machiavellian politician -shock horror.
JB may not bé Mr Nice but in this case he’s 100% right. I thought when Lappartient was elected he knew sod all about pro cycling and his real ambitions were related to running thé Olympics.
Surely Fred Wright’s going to win a race in his career that isn’t the national champs. He’s been close so many times now.
A lot of pro sports leagues have team salary caps. Curious that hasn’t been mooted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_cap
Erm – it has – as per the item above:
(Technically, a ‘budget cap’ and a ‘team salary cap’ aren’t quite the same thing, but given how much of the costs are paying riders, it would have a similar effect.)
@mdavidford Curious if the distinction between a budget cap and a salary cap is more important for cycling than other sports. Maybe I don’t follow other sports closely enough to know what’s going on behind the scenes, but it feels like for the sports with a salary cap (NBA, NFL, NHL etc.) it’s all about the players, whilst for cycling the rider is of course very important, but a lot of money goes on other things – most obviously the equipment, but also things like support staff (chefs/mechanics etc.), training camps, wind tunnel testing etc.
I note F1 has done the opposite and has a cost cap that specifically excludes driver’s salaries (i.e. aiming to level the playing field mechanically speaking, but teams can still chuck money at getting the best drivers).
Difficult to know as (a) most teams don’t publish accounts, (b) even if they did, riders may be treated as contractors and buried in with other things, and (c) what gets counted is complicated (there are sponsors paying riders directly, sponsorship in kind, release payments to other teams, etc. etc.). Seems to be about 70-80% (and growing) of costs related to paying riders in some way, though.
Don’t know what the picture looks like in those other sports for comparison, though. Most of them do tend to have stadium costs to factor in, which may be not inconsiderable (though also a source of income, especially if they own them and can host other events there).
One may wonder why bureaucrat Lappartient wants to reinvent the wheel with a massive injection of DEI and drastic reduction of money. Let the best cyclists win, period. Meanwhile, women’s pro peloton needs means and support to attract new sponsors, increase TV coverage, improve salaries and prize money.
One may wonder why you’ve brought up DEI when it has nothing at all to do with anything in what Lappartient said. Or why you care about the state of the women’s sport if you’re so down on diversity, equity and inclusion. 🤷♂️
@mdavidford Funny, as soon as I saw your comment on the ticker on another article I knew to whom you must be replying.
@mdavidford I appreciate there’s been a sincere effort over many years by people with certain opinions to conflate being against specific policies with just flat out being a bigot(admittedly helped along by some of the people who’re against those certain policies), but it is actually possible to have a completely logically consistent point of view that is both left-progressive *and* against the specific sub-strand of left-progressive thinking that underpins DEI and other affirmative action policies.
Except that there isn’t a ‘specific sub-strand of left-progressive thinking that underpins DEI’. ‘DEI’ is literally just an initialisation of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and covers any policies and practices intended to enhance those. Those can come from all kinds of viewpoints, and there may be strong disagreement on what they ought to be. It certainly isn’t a a subset of affirmative action – rather the reverse.
They’re not slalom barriers, they’re Sheffield stands for parking your bike.
@Backladder you think you’re joking, but sadly I _have_ met bikes locked to these! Tends to make an almost impassable obstacle even more ridiculous
Definitely lawyers at work, they’re obsessed about not having cyclists ride out in front of cars on the cross streets