Monday, April 21, 2025

Roadside at the Tour of Britain 2022; Stage One

-

HomeRaceRace ReviewsRoadside at the Tour of Britain 2022; Stage One

It’s not every day you get the chance to see some of the sport’s greatest names just up the road from your home, competing in the Tour of Britain 2022.

However, as we crawled through a monsoon north of Laurencekirk the question was; ‘will it be worthwhile getting out of the car?’

Fortunately, by the time we got to Union Street it was just drizzle, not cold but grey and understandably not conducive to riders wanting to stand and chat…

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

First stop was the Trinity team, we had wanted a chat with US Criterium Champion and Lincoln GP winner, Luke Lamperti but like most, he was keeping cosy in the camper until the last moment.

Now, those Trinity Specializeds with the pink seat posts and green lettering – a tad, ‘too Rapha’ for old hands like us. 

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

None of that trendy stuff for those Bingoal-Pauwels-Sauces WB ProTeam boys; nice machines though from cult Italian company, De Rosa – Ugo De Rosa was the man who taught Eddy Merckx about frame building after the Baron had retired as a rider and was staring his bike business.

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

‘Punching above their weight’ ProTeam, Uno X ride Taiwanese ‘DARE’ frames, they’re your typical Far Eastern proposition but claim to offer excellent value by cutting out the middle men and selling direct from the factory.

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

We liked the understated paint job on BORA hansgrohe’s Specialized, no pink there…

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

Equipe continentale Groupama-FDJ man, Sam Watson steps up to the World Tour next year; this year he’s the won the u23 Gent-Wevelgem, stages in the Course de Paix and Tour Alsace as well as a raft of podiums – he’s riding here at the Tour of Britain for the GB team.

His Lapierre displays their ‘triple triangle’ design frame, it’s not new, Lotto rode GT frames to this design some 20 years ago – and even before that English builder, Hetchins  produced a frame to the same configuration, the idea being that it gives a much stiffer frame than the traditional twin triangle design. 

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

Long term Campagnolo adherents, Movistar have jumped ship to SRAM, probably because SRAM supply components to the big teams on a free of charge basis whilst Campagnolo and Shimano require the groupsets to be bought at ‘cost’ price – unless you’re INEOS, that is…

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

US team Human Powered Health, formerly Rally Cycling, ride Felts; Jim Felt started the company back in 1994 and they’re one of the original ‘aero’ bike pioneers – and we do like a bit of orange on a machine.

The front thru axle doesn’t require an Allen key, you just twist the lever – like those 60’s ‘butterfly’ wing nuts.

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

Calum Johnston’s Caja Rural team ride Spanish [naturally] MMR frames, we love the paint jobs.

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

ProTeam Bardiani-CSF-Faizane caused a huge upset back in June when their 23 years-old Filippo Zana took the Italian Elite Road Race Championship ahead of the World Tour favourites – Team BikeExchange have snapped him up for the next three years.

We liked his Cipollini, not ‘overly blinged.’

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

Ribble supplied any of their riders who were competing in the Commonwealth Games with ‘trick’ silver paint job specials, this one belongs to Grenada road race and time trial champion, Red Walters.

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

Ribble are far from out of their depth in terms of bike design, even in the presence of the World Tour teams – their ‘direct mount’ brake levers are cutting edge aero.

Tour of Britain
Photo©Ed Hood

Perennial Sport Vlaanderen-Baloise are backed by the Flanders Government so that young riders can learn their trade then move up to a higher level; breakaway king Thomas De Gendt just one of the top riders who came up through their ranks.

An as you might expect, ‘no bling’ – those black Merckx machines are just tools to do a job.  

Photo©Ed Hood

As I said, it wasn’t a day for chatting but we managed a brief word with Ribble Weldtite’s Commonwealth Games Road race medallist, Finn Crockett – looking focused on what wasn’t going to be a day for his characteristics.

Photo©Ed Hood

I’ve shed a bit of timber recently, you feel quite pleased with yourself and then you look at Filippo Zana’s waistline…

Photo©Ed Hood

It’s been a great year for Oscar Onley; today he rides with their World Tour team alongside the likes of their big finisher, Cees Bol.

Oscar took a stage win in the ‘shop window’ Valle d’Aosta stage race in Italy, also winning the points jersey and was second on a stage and top 10 on GC in the Sazka Tour against top opposition.

He finished eighth up on Glenshee, today – CHAPEAU!

Photo©Ed Hood

We weren’t ‘ear wigging’ but couldn’t help but hear Calum Johnston chatting away in fluent Spanish with his team personnel – nice job, young man.

Photo©Ed Hood

The rollout was WET.

We headed up out along Deeside to see the race on the road; those with long memories will remember that back in 1974, TI Raleigh pro, Dave Lloyd broke the British ‘straight out’ 50 mile time trial record heading along towards Aberdeen on this road after starting up where the race finished today.

Modern aerodynamic improvements mean that his time is now minutes slower than Marcin Bialoblocki’s 1:30:31 ‘out and home’ competition record. 

Photo©Ed Hood

There were five away in the break, two Human Powered Health, two SunGods and an Uno X.

The lead was around a minute on a peloton lead by Israel – we’d see why that was at the finish but displaying no particular sense of urgency.

Photo©Ed Hood
Photo©Ed Hood

Uno X were keeping well out of the way, having a man in the break and Norwegian Champion, Rasmus Tiller was way back.

The team will be stronger next year with the addition of ‘old warhorse’ but still winning, Alex Kristoff.  

Photo©Ed Hood

Richie Porte was coming back up through the cars in his last ever race after a good career which perhaps promised more than it delivered.

Photo©Ed Hood

Zana too was coming back through the cars looking COOL.

It was time for us to head over the Cairn o’ Mount and home, the Glenshee road being closed until 6:00 pm; checking the result on the phone we saw the reason for the Israel chase – we’d hear later that Alex Dowsett did a particularly good job – their Kiwi, Corbin Strong took the honours, you’d have got good odds that one…

Corbin wins Stage One of the Tour of Britain. Photo©SWpix

The Borders and Stage Two of the Tour of Britain tomorrow

Ed Hood
Ed Hood
Ed was involved in cycling for over 50 years. In that time he was a successful time triallist, a team manager and a sponsor of several teams and clubs. He was also a respected and successful coach and during the winter months often worked in the cabins at the Six Days for some of the world's top riders. Ed was a highly respected journalist, his tales of chasing the Giro, Tour, Vuelta, Classics and World Championships - and his much-loved winter Six Days - are legendary, never the same twice, they gave our site an edge other cycling media could never duplicate or challenge. Sadly Ed passed away in January 2025, two years after suffering a devastating stroke.

Related Articles

Super 6 – Round 3, The Sam Robinson Memorial Road Race 2009

The Trossachs in spring, a nice cup of coffee in Aberfoyle, the weather forecast is good, the Sam Robinson Memorial Road Race is always a good race to watch and...

La Vuelta a España 2014 – Stage 14; Santander – La Camperona, 199 km. Ryder Hesjedal Stays Clear

A good day for big Ryder Hesjedal – it looked for all the world like Zaugg was going to double his career wins with only one, the Tour of Lombardy.

Il Giro d’Italia 2014 – Stage 9; Lugo – Sestola, 174 km. Pieter Weening Winning

Boring this Giro is not - Pieter Weening won ORICA-GreenEDGE's third stage of the race in a two-up sprint against Davide Malacarne (Team Europcar) both having survived from the break of the day. It took an hour of savage racing before a big break of 14 was finally allowed to go - once the correct recipe passed the test of the ‘Bigs’ dipping their finger in the mixing bowl. But there were just two left come the mountain top tactical finish where Weening was too strong for Malacarne – I did enjoy the high altitude track stand...

Le Tour de France 2009 – Stage 17: Bourg-Saint-Maurice > Le Grand-Bornand, 169.5km

It had to be an early start, today for Le Grand-Bornand. To get down to the Bourg-Saint-Maurice start, we had to drive against a section of race route and decided to get away early to beat the closures.

At Random

A Hard “Easy” Day: TdF Stage 10 (breakaway)

A Hard "Easy" Day. Yesterday was always going to be the day that the breakaway succeeded. The profile of the course and the stages on the days either side of it meant that neither the GC nor the sprinter teams would be interested. It wasn’t hard enough to separate the GC lads, but wasn’t easy enough for the sprinters to make it to the finish with the main bunch.

E.V. (Ernie) Mitchell – Scottish Star of the 50’s

Sometimes it’s strange how you pick up on a story; take this one. My friend, former colleague and owner of a rather nice Look, Kenny Burrell sent me a text about a gentleman he’d been chatting to – a certain Mr E.V. (Ernie) Mitchell by name. "The first man to break two hours for a 50 mile TT in Scotland, back in the 1950’s" said Ken. "I’ll check that out, Ken" I texted back. And that was the first step on my journey to E.V.’s (although he prefers Ernie, these days) front door.

UCI Track World Cup 2012, Glasgow – Friday

The first major competition on the brand new Sir Chris Hoy velodrome in Glasgow was the three-day UCI Track World Cup. We've been racing the Wednesday night Track League here since early October, and the Scottish Championships were held a few weeks ago, with the invitational two hour 'Thunderdrome' event taking up an afternoon and covered live on Radio Scotland, but this was something else.

Scottish Road Race Championships 2018

Mark Robertson (Army CU) who successfully defended his 2017 title, confirming that he’s ‘not just a sprinter’ and giving lie to suggestions that his win last season was a ‘fluke.’ VeloVeritas hasn’t been to the Scottish Road Race Championship for a year or two but when we heard it was in Cromarty, one of favourite places on the globe there could be no excuse for absence.