Cyclist Australia

Everyone knows the n+1 rule. The correct number of bikes to own is one more than the number you currently have – but that only works up to a point. Eventually, the equation needs to be reset. Once you have a climber’s bike, an aero bike, an endurance

These days it’s rare for a company to produce a completely new bike. Even rarer for that company to unveil something altogether unseen before. The launch of the Specialized Aethos comes with two striking surprises: it weighs less than 6kg for a compl

RRP $124.95, cadex-cycling.com/au Cadex… Cadex… Cadex. Sound familiar but you just can’t place it? What if we said ‘Giant Cadex’? Released in the 1980s, Giant’s Cadex was one of the first mass-produced carbon fibre frames. And while you won’t see Gia

RRP $249, fesports.com.au Aftershokz was founded in 2011 pioneering headphones that utilise ‘bone conduction technology,’ where the headphones rest directly on the listener’s cheekbones, transmitting sound to the inner ear (cochlea) via this path ins

$250, met-helmets.com When it comes to updating mid-range helmets, Italian companies must think alike. Perhaps it’s due to how well protected their brains are. Hot on the heels of Kask’s updated Mojito, Met has redesigned its Rivale. The helmet sits

$239 (140ml), fesports.com.au We’ve had graphene in tyres, jerseys… and now lubes! According to AbsoluteBlack, its lubricant is ‘the world’s first hydrocarbon-based water emulsion’ containing ‘high-purity graphene’. As is typical with products contai

RRP $300, sciconsports.com.au Traditionally known for its cycling travel products, including bike travel bags, Scicon Sports has recently expanded its range to include cycling eyewear, and you may well have spotted the results at the Tour de France o

Ever since writer and cycling promoter Paul de Vivie invented the two-speed derailleur in 1905, the cycling world has had an appetite for sprockets that has become insatiable. A ‘cogset’ with four sprockets appeared in the years before World War II.

In this topsy-turvy year practically the only race not to shift seasons was the World Championships, which maintained its September slot, although COVID did force a venue change from Switzerland to Italy. An outstanding Anna van der Breggen did the d

Due to disruptions to the 2020 racing calendar, fans were treated to a flurry of activity late in the season. You had to feel for riders who went from the Tour de France into the World Championships and then into either the ‘Spring Classics’ (read: A

With 30km to go in the World Championships Road Race, after 225km of racing around the Imola circuit in Italy, a figure in pale yellow and blue shot out of the leading group. It was Tadej Pogačar, whose reign as Tour de France champion was only in it

Cyclist: How many Peaks Challenges have you undertaken and what are your most memorable moments? Prita Jobling-Baker: I’ve done three Falls Creek, two Cradle Mountain and one Gold Coast; sadly I had to miss a couple of years for various reasons. I’ve

The opening day of the 1981 Tour de France didn’t go the way Freddy Maertens would have wanted. For just the third time in its history the race had headed to southern France for its Grand Depart, with Nice having the honour of hosting the big send-of

Eating less than 50g of carbs per day and getting most of your calories from fat has been shown to make the body burn more fat for energy. Great news for endurance athletes: simply create this fat-adapted state in the leadup to an event then ramp the

One of the most infuriating responses a coach can give to an athlete in any sport is ‘it depends’. But unfortunately that is very much the situation in this case. Bear with me here. Let’s say you’re training to participate in a sportive of 150–plus k

Cookies in the US, biscuits in the UK. And for us in Oz? Well, we get stuck somewhere in between. For what it’s worth, ‘biscuit’ comes from the Latin bis meaning twice, and coctus meaning cooked. By contrast, ‘cookie’ is rooted in the early Dutch wor

Ί used to work in a national high performance cycling program. We once had a workshop about human movement patterns. My entire department was in there and I think there was one guy who could squat. Everyone else had a version of a squat that wasn’t r

Not all rides go according to plan. I found myself reflecting on this fact halfway up a remote mountain fire trail, ski-slope steep, pushing more than 20kg of bike and cargo up a punishing 35% gradient. Moments previously, we’d been intercepted by a

Follow in Cyclist’s wheel tracks To download this route, go to strava.com/routes/2764067449239368574. Starting Canberra at the Big Trout in Adaminaby (you can’t miss it), head east on the Snowy Mountains Highway for a bit over a kilometre, then turn

Giorgia Bronzini is struggling to find the right words. Just moments earlier the 37-year-old had been talking full-gas (to borrow a phrase she uses frequently) while telling Cyclist the story of a 2015 race in Belgium that involved wind, rain, shatte

Without wishing to denigrate the achievements of Jani Brajkovič, Simon Špilak and Borut Božič, Slovenia has only recently come to the fore in professional cycling. But now, with Primož Roglič and Tadej Pogačar battling it out for supremacy at the poi

There was Francesco Moser’s 1984 Hour record bike, all cutting edge disc wheels and wildly sloping frame. There was Alf Engers’ 1978 time-trial bike, with its one-piece bar-stem, reversed levers and filed down cranks. In fact, as far back as 1891 rid

Few bikes have been as controversial in recent times as 3T’s Strada. Designed by ex-Cervelo founder Gerard Vroomen to be used with wider tyres and a single chainring, the Strada immediately divided opinion. In fact it is still the cause of debate now

Since the advent of the aero road bike, tradition has dictated that speed and comfort are acrimoniously opposed. Either you had an unyielding bike shaped like a blade that rattled along the tarmac, or you had a comfortable cruiser with thin tubes tha

Why does the Cervelo S5 stand out for me as my favourite aero bike ever? Simple. I’ve categorically never ridden as fast as I did on this bike and, until it mysteriously got deleted, I had the Strava KoM to prove it. It happens the world over, I’m su

It was January 2013, I was still wet behind the ears and we had just come back to the office from our Christmas holidays. ‘Stu!’ I exclaimed to then-deputy editor Stu Bowers. ‘You’re not going to like this, the Bianchi must have gotten a double punct

We were never going to agree easily, so in a fit of proportional representation, we asked each of our testers to nominate a first and a second choice, and based on those results we arrived at… a tie. That wasn’t supposed to happen. With a first place

The shadows are lengthening as we approach the cream-coloured concrete struts of an arched bridge across a dried-up riverbed. Despite being in the middle of nowhere and carrying nothing more significant than a farm track, the bridge is a local landma

To download this route, head on over to komoot.com/tour/99422677. From Masari on the east coast follow the mountain road towards Platania and then Eleousa. Turn left at the village square to Soroni, then left to Kalavarda. Once there, turn right and

140 Distance of route in kilometres 1,967 Total height climbed in metres 4 Number of examples of Italian colonial architecture passed 7 Number of ‘10% gradient’ signs 11 How painful metatarsalgia is on a scale of 1 to 10 2 Times Fabian Cancellara won

This Genesis Zero Team harks back to the days when the manufacturer had its very own pro team, the British Continental squad Madison-Genesis, and it proudly displays the team colours on the frame. Sadly, the team is no more, having folded at the end

Photography Mike Massaro, Peter Stuart, Stu Bowers ■

It was perhaps inevitable we would end up here. The writing was on the wall two years ago when Specialized launched a new Venge that looked and rode, well… a lot like a Tarmac. At the same time, the Tarmac SL6 was also displaying a number of design c

Bike building is a lot like baking. As much art as it is science, experience is everything and the slightest deviation from a trusted recipe can have quite catastrophic results. A soggy bottom is just as undesirable on a race bike as it is on a roula

Bikes are great. I love their simplicity, their democracy, their freedom. However, sometimes I find myself less than enamoured with their longevity. I mean, after all, if you bought a $15,000 car and the accelerator started squeaking, the gears slipp

It’s a little-known fact that a legalised brothel in Holland played a small but significant part in cycling history. The full details are recounted on the official web page of Club Diana, just beneath the section entitled ‘Our Mission: Seduce and Pam