“Quite literally hanging on by a thread”: Bike mechanic stunned by cyclist who brought this terrifying brake cable into the shop “just in time”; Major London bridge closes to cyclists; Roubaix countdown + more on the live blog
SUMMARY
"Quite literally hanging on by a thread": Bike mechanic stunned by cyclist who brought this terrifying brake cable into the shop "just in time"
Yikes…
Guy came into the shop just in time hahaha
by
u/pizzaman1995 in
Justridingalong
That’s like something out of a cartoon, the final overworked brake cable straining all its strength to just about bring the rider to a stop. As the top comment joked under the post of the bike mechanic who shared it on Reddit (our favourite treasure trove for mechanical misfortune and questionable practices) they were hanging on by a thread… quite literally.
The mechanic explained a bit more detail about the context of this nightmare-inducing picture: “He actually owns two of these exact Amazon e-bikes. The front cable snapped at the same spot on his other one without warning a week ago. I’m assuming very poor quality cables used from the factory.”
A few couldn’t quite believe what they were looking at and questioned if there was any foul play involved. Had someone tried to cut the cable? Others suggested things might not be completely legit and questioned if brake cables do indeed fray there? However, taking the mechanic’s post at face value, they seem confident the whole thing can be explained simply by poor quality cables.
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Alex Aranburu wins at Itzulia Basque Country
Alex Aranburu adds the final kick to win an entertaining Stage 4 of Itzulia Basque Country — Paul Seixas continues to show his form in the GC battle! pic.twitter.com/JiFYLA4k4o
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) April 9, 2026
Another breakaway day in the Basque Country, this time home rider Alex Aranburu taking a popular victory. Spare a thought for Tobias Halland Johannessen, the UNO-X Mobility rider in yesterday’s successful break too. It was fifth yesterday and second today.
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Isaac Del Toro suffered tear to thigh muscle in Itzulia Basque Country crash
The moment Isaac Del Toro withdrew from Stage 3 of Itzulia Basque Country — we wish you a swift recovery, Isaac 🙏 pic.twitter.com/5fLgV2yJ2q
— Cycling on TNT Sports (@cyclingontnt) April 8, 2026
Not an injury you hear about too often in pro cycling, but UAE Team Emirates confirmed Isaac Del Toro’s Itzulia Basque Country withdrawal was due to a tear to his thigh muscle.
Team medical director Dr. Adrian Rotunno explained: “Unfortunately Isaac del Toro suffered a crash on stage 3 of Itzulia Basque Country and was forced to withdraw. He has a right thigh muscle tear, and several related abrasions. He will undergo further examination as a precaution under supervision of team medical staff.”
Meanwhile, in other Paris-Roubaix news...
With three days to go until Paris-Roubaix the UCI has announced the on-the-fly tyre pressure adjustment system used by Visma-Lease a Bike and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot to great effect at last year’s race will not be making a comeback on the cobbles.
The slight problem? Well, Gravaa, the Dutch company which pioneered a self-inflating and deflating tyre system allowing cyclists to adjust and monitor tyre pressure while riding, already filed for bankruptcy in January, after struggling to obtain enough orders.
On the ball as ever, UCI… Ryan’s got the full story…
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Loops are so last year... you should really be riding across entire countries without leaving a four-kilometre corridor...
View this post on Instagram
Chapeau to Fleury Roux who shared this on Insta, an east to west France-crossing epic that never leaves a 4km-wide corridor. It’s named the Western Cape track and the rules of the challenge also require using maps, not GPS, to navigate. You’ll obviously have to avoid motorised means of transport for the trip too, but that’s somewhat a given for readers of a cycling website’s live blog…
The entire route remains in a 4km-wide corridor and the challenge requires staying within it, even when going for food or resting your head for the night. Of course, there’s nothing to stop you doing the route without the challenge too, the individual pursuit-width narrow corridor simply as suggested by its founder.
“A very different adventure from the one lived a year earlier, because the diversity of the areas crossed was less impressive, which made the crossing more ‘monotonous’,” Fleury explained.
“But the adventure was just as beautiful, because the challenge of staying in a 4km corridor is never easy: Mentally, a constant focus to never go out and make the right decisions on the field! Physically, a body weakened by a virus that will have pushed me into my stretches from the early days… before regaining the energy needed from the 4th day to rally the arrival! Technically, a map preparation and sport versatility to move forward under the constraint of the corridor.”
They completed it in seven days, with 64 hours of activity, so an average of nine hours a day. In total it’s 1,141km and 12,600m of climbing. Oh, and it required 97 maps and plenty of planning…
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Your thoughts on yesterday's big live blog discussion: is change needed to how racing crashes are broadcast on TV?
One quick dip back onto yesterday’s live blog for a second. We got plenty of comments in from readers giving their thoughts on the discussion around how crashes are broadcast. We thought we’d share a few this morning…
Kapelmuur: “The aftermath of a crash shouldn’t be shown, we have all experienced the shock and pain of a crash and know the risks involved in cycling. I even feel uneasy at the dismissive description ‘just a little road rash’.”
Rendel Harris: “My first instinct is to say absolutely they shouldn’t show this, but then part of me also thinks that maybe it’s good for us as fans to be reminded just what risks these women and men take for our entertainment every time they go to the start line.
“I don’t doubt that when people say we must respect the rider’s privacy by not showing them in agony they are being sincere, but is there an element also of not wanting to acknowledge that there is a price, sometimes a heavy one, sometimes the ultimate one, to be paid for their livelihood and our viewing pleasure?”
ROOTminus1: “I can understand the editorialist draw of appealing to the voyeurism of showing crash footage, but I don’t want to see it. I certainly don’t agree with the practice when there are serious injuries involved.
“If a compromise has to be made, the media recording company should at least hold back the footage from the broadcast feed until the status of riders is confirmed. A single rider sliding out on a wet corner, gets up and kicks the bike, fine, show it. A multi rider crash with people screaming out in agony; acknowledge it happened and cut away, report back when more information is available.”
MaxiMinimalist: “Pro cycling broadcasted live on TV is a show that attracts large audiences and generates fat advertising revenues. This is a business that sometimes includes cries and swearing, broken bones and blood. Showing injured racers in agony is an editorial choice made by the TV channel. The TV viewer has the freedom to watch the show, mute the sound, change channel or switch off their telly.”
Rome73: “I worked in outside broadcast for 20 years. I wasn’t a vision mixer or a sound mixer but I know that it was very easy for the director to cut away from the host broadcaster. I remember one year at the Monaco Grand Prix, during the warm up or something equally boring, the host broadcaster was sending us lots of shots of scantily clad women standing on balconies or sat in cafes. Needless to say, our director took those out.”
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Fire at Rio de Janeiro's Olympic Park velodrome
The roof of the velodrome in Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Park caught fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning. No injuries have been reported and it has been confirmed the track is undamaged.
Bizarrely, it is the third time since 2017 that the roof of the building has caught fire, both previous cases linked to falling sky lanterns. The cause of the latest blaze is not yet known.
It is the venue where, at the 2016 Games, Great Britain won six Olympic and eight Paralympic gold medals.
‘Most expensive bike hangars in the UK an injustice’, argues cycling campaigner disgusted by charge almost double the standard rate
Major London bridge closed to motor traffic now also closed to cyclists and pedestrians, after engineering inspection detects "slight movement"
The 153-year-old Grade II-listed bridge which crosses the River Thames between Chelsea and Battersea, Albert Bridge, is now closed to pedestrians and cyclists too.
The crossing had been closed to motor traffic since February, after a crack was found on a cast-iron component on one of the bridge abutments. In the meantime it was open to those on foot or travelling by bike, however Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council has now closed it completely after “slight movement” was detected during an engineering inspection.
The council’s highways director Andrew Burton told the BBC: “Our contractors are on site but the closure will remain in place while we continue to monitor the bridge’s movements over the next 24 hours.”
It is expected repairs could cost around £8.5m and may take a year.
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Latest Comments
@chrisonabike exactly, words are cheap. They can safely bang the drum knowing that little will or can be done. OK, some things could be done, but the chance of nobody cocking something up . . ? Realist or pessimist, take your pick; but still optimistic enough to hope that things will work out :-)
@ChrisA isn't this story more along the lines of "tobacco company is demanding government crackdown on nasty rolling papers and dangerous pipes?" Silly of me! How could there be any conflict between and "improving things for their ... definitely not employees ... and the public at large" and these companies' entire business model...?
"Deliveroo has announced a crackdown on modified and ‘dangerous’ e-bikes . . . . . company is calling on the Government to prohibit the sale of unsafe e-bike conversion kits." Really? Do they not know how difficult it is to legislate for such things, the politicians inability to understand details, the competence of the DoJ in drafting such legislation and what seems to be a widespread disregard of those rules; not to mention the total lack of enforcement. Just saying.
@Nigel Garage The Mercedes driver drove through the light three seconds after it turned amber. Official government text: "AMBER means STOP. You may go on only if the amber appears after you have crossed the stop line or are so close to it that to pull up might cause an accident." Three seconds is more than enough time to stop safely at the speed the Mercedes was going so the driver was breaking the law and therefore committing a prosecutable offence. Deliberately putting others at risk and breaking the law is not "acceptable" and if you saw a cyclist running a red in those circumstances you would rightly condemn it. Is there anything you can't be completely wrong about?
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.
15 thoughts on ““Quite literally hanging on by a thread”: Bike mechanic stunned by cyclist who brought this terrifying brake cable into the shop “just in time”; Major London bridge closes to cyclists; Roubaix countdown + more on the live blog”
Re the brake cable.
A bit over dramatic in my view. That cable was probably good for at least another 1000 miles.
Either done for x-com effect or sabotage.
It was definitely cut, though.
Yes, it’s a fake!
A cyclist with Munchausen’s Syndrome.
Look out for :
“My front wheel only has one spoke because all the others snapped (after I cut through them with a junior hacksaw) while descending at 40mph! I’m lucky to be alive.”
Is this an interactive feature? OK – I’ll get us started: 250,500…
RE: Albert Bridge – “Our contractors are on site but the closure will remain in place while we continue to monitor the bridge’s movements over the next 24 hours.”
Hopefully they’re better at this than the Met, otherwise it’s likely the bridge will give them the slip or worse they might confuse it with some other entirely innocent infra.
Given that they’re trying to ascertain whether it’s stable, I’m envisaging something more along these lines:
Fleury Roux: 4km corridor
GeoWizrd: Hold my GPS
No bikes involved, but thought the crowd here would be interested in this story. Man crashes whilst driving dangerously and kills passenger. The driver is found medically unfit (due to injuries sustained in the crash) to stand trial and therefore no punishment. But he is apparently fit to continue driving, and appears not to have learnt nothing from the incident.
And, as ever, no evidence that the police have any inclination to do anything about the ongoing dangerous driving. Will almost certainly stay that way until he kills someone else, at which point the police might at least feign an interest.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy51e25xyr9o
100% agree with the question in the article:
“If he isn’t capable to stand trial, how is he capable to drive a car?”
Fingers crossed the law is updated soon.
And if it is involved in another KSI, hopefully there will be a major review and repercussions for why more was not done by the relevant parties (police/DVLA etc) in keeping it off the road.
Well he can sit (or apparently lie) down while doing that.
And if it is involved in another KSI, hopefully there will be a major review and repercussions for why more was not done by the relevant parties (police/DVLA etc)
More likely a major police cover-up in those circumstances, just like in Hillsborough and this case below:
Hmm… seems like catch22 again – he drives without any thought for others … because he’s medically not capable of doing that! So therefor can’t be tried, and apparently thus can’t be given any sanction that prevents him from driving?
(They’ve asked the DVLA … good luck with that…)
At this point I’m wondering why more children and completely blind people don’t feature in the news having crashed vehicles. I can only assume they either have more sense, or don’t have enough eg. that they probably won’t be too badly damaged themselves and that they have a good chance of little or no consequences… (“Yes, my client cannot see where he is going – but the sun was low on the horizon at the time, the cyclist wasn’t wearing hi-vis or a helmet, and came out of nowhere”).
They’ve asked the DVLA … good luck with that…
DVLA is fighting to supplant the Home Office as Most Duff Governmental Entity, and they have made a flying start with a masterstroke: Lilian Greenwood is Minister in Charge and was the one chosen to answer my MP’s letter about BF64 TGE whose keeper has now managed 4 years 4 months without VED despite me knowing and telling about the Garstang address where it’s parked every night. Her response was “DVLA makes VED easy to pay and difficult to avoid” while deploying the Data Protection dodge “I can’t discuss individual cases”. Rather less hilarious is that she has assumed responsibility for implementation of the government’s January 2026 Road Safety Strategy. She was presumably appointed in order to ensure it isn’t implemented.
Incredibly, the person he was racing got 8 years and banned.
“In 2019, a court was told the impromptu race that led to the crash was instigated by Bayliss’ friend, Neil Brooks, who was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.
He was jailed for eight years and given a nine-year driving ban.”
But at least the police are trying.
“The force has now submitted an application to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) for Bayliss to have his driving licence revoked, echoed by a plea from Sophie’s family to “take his licence off him”.