Tag: Tour Féminin

To paraphrase the late, great Donna Summer; ‘they work hard for the money.’ Those Sky boys. Perhaps Henao had a few mountain days where Sir David and Le Chien Froomey didn’t think the Columbian did enough graft – he made up for it on Stage 19 though, riding tempo remorselessly on the front of the peloton. Spectacular? No. Damn hard work? For sure.

SRAM Force Groupset; it’s been tried before - trying to grab a slice of that top-end equipment pie from those greedy Campagnolo and Shimano dudes who want to keep gobbling it all up between them. In the 70’s a French union of Stronglight, Simplex and Mafac failed, despite Bernard Thevenet winning two Tours on the kit. Shimano’s Japanese rivals Sugino and Sun Tour tried to get in on the act and despite the neat Sun Tour groupset being ridden by Jan Raas-managed Dutch pro teams in the 80’s, it never made the breakthrough.

When we spoke to Britain’s Joss Lowden back in July she told us about her intention of attacking the world hour record. She’d already exceeded Bussi’s 48.007 kilometres in a ‘test’ ride. She turned intent into action on the boards of the Grenchen Velodrome in Switzerland with 48.405 kilometres on 30th September, well in excess of her own ‘test’ ride distance and Bussi’s record.

Yes, we know, it’s been done to death but it is the Festive Season so it’s time for this kind of thing, the ‘VeloVeritas 2021 Awards.’ 

Good Times Bad Times - CIAO! The Giro d’Italia version 2010 has begun. We started racing up in Amsterdam (which, while not technically* part of Italy, was a cool place to start racing from) with a time trial, followed by two road stages. The start of a Grand Tour is always cool — the whole team starts to find extra gears, and the organisation is singing by start time.

We can’t keep up with that man Matt Bottrill – but then not many can - no sooner had the ink gone dry on this interview we did with him after he won the 25 champs than he’d won the 10 mile champs in the second fastest time ever (17:40) and then added the ‘blue riband’ - the 25 record with 45:43 to join Bonner, Engers, Boardman and Hutchinson as a TT ‘legend.’