The advent of disc brakes in the peloton and the increasing use of aero bikes, aero clothing, and bigger gears, along the modern preference for individual training efforts which neglect group riding, are behind the recent spate of high-profile crashes in professional cycling, Sean Kelly has said.
The classics legend-turned-iconic Eurosport commentator’s claims come in the aftermath of the shocking high-speed crash at the Tour of the Basque Country earlier this month, which injured several leading riders including Jonas Vingegaard (potentially ending the Dane’s hopes of a third consecutive Tour de France title), Remco Evenepoel, Primož Roglič, Jay Vine, and Steff Cras.
And while the famously combative Kelly was himself no stranger to the rough and tumble of pro cycling, especially in the sprints and the cobbled classics, the Irishman has told Sticky Bottle that a number of modern trends and innovations within the sport have increased both the speed and therefore the danger for today’s crop of riders, and have contributed to the unusually high number of mass crashes we’ve seen over the past few years.
“There are these high speeds now,” Kelly told the Irish cycling site. “The bikes are so aero, and maybe more difficult to handle. They add a bit more speed to the riders, as does the aero clothing.
“Everything is all about speed now, and you can only go so fast in some of those corners. That’s the problem, they are arriving at too much speed.”
The former world number one also believes the use of much larger gears has had a massive effect on how descents are tackled – a key talking point following the crash in the Basque Country.
“Of course, they are using much bigger gears. We hear about this crazy gearing in different events like in time trials, especially. But also in the normal road races they are using these huge gears,” the Eurosport commentator said.
“So that means that on descents you can get higher speeds than before as you don’t run out of gearing. Previously you were spinning out and you couldn’t pedal anymore. So that adds to it.”
Kelly also reckons that the increased focus on riding to watts, and bespoke individual training plans, have led to a widening disparity between the best and worst bike handlers in the bunch.
“Some riders can calculate how fast they can go on a corner. Others maybe don’t have enough experience and they just crash out and slide off the road,” the double Paris-Roubaix winner said.
“There is a question if bike handling is perhaps not as good as before, there is talk about that as well, that when riders nowadays are junior they have a coach and they are told to go out and do X number of hours at X number of watts.
“This individual training. And they don’t get enough bike riding in groups. Whereas if you go back some years, a lot of riders trained together in groups of six or eight or 10 people. So perhaps with some riders, their bike handling is not as good as it should be.”
And of course, it wouldn’t have been a discussion about increased risk in the peloton without disc brakes rearing their sharp-stopping head.
“The disk brakes are so sensitive. When you go on them hard, somebody behind you does not have the reflexes to react quickly. Then they just crash into the back of you. That’s how a lot of the crashes are happening,” Kelly pointed out.
“It slows up suddenly front, there is a bit of a panic, and they seem to crash in from behind. Eddie Dunbar had that problem there when he crashed in the UAE Tour. He was hit by behind. If a big guy hits you like that, and particularly if you are a light like Dunbar, it is like being hit in a car with a truck coming from behind.
“I think the issues are a lot to do with the speed they are going now, the bikes, the riders, the level of fitness that is there. There are more riders at a higher level a long, long way into a race. They’re all able to be up there to a certain point until the vital where the race is blown apart.
“You have 70, 80, 100 riders fighting for 30, 40 positions. And that’s going to equal crashes because there’s not enough room on the road. It’s just a combination of all those things that are causing those crashes.”
Not a bike I’d be throwing my hand up in the air to review, if I’m honest…
Victoria Pendleton has revealed that she was “emotionally, psychologically” drained by the time she finished her illustrious cycling career at the 2012 London Olympics, and said that she was told by the people around her to focus purely on cycling if she wanted to be the best.
The double Olympic gold medal-winning track sprinter, who has spoken about her mental health struggles and her fractious relationship with the culture at British Cycling in the past, spoke about the stress she felt during her career as part of Sky Sports’ Real Talk podcast.
“I’d been very much led to believe by the people around me that you had to focus all your energy on this one thing if you wanted to be the best. And actually thinking about life after cycling, other career opportunities, was a distraction,” the nine-time world champion said.
“I was discouraged from having anything else other than a cycling focus. I thought I’d cross that bridge when I come to it. Even as I was nearing the end of my career, I didn’t allow myself to think beyond London 2012. When I took off my shoes and that was it, it felt like a sudden deadline to my career – it was finished.”
> Victoria Pendleton says she could be at Rio if not for Shane Sutton
She continued: “By the end of my career, I felt like I had no choice but to leave. Emotionally, psychologically, I’d had enough. I thought, ‘I can’t exist in this system anymore’.
“And the only way I could justify that to myself and manage that feeling, was telling myself it was only a stepping stone – I was putting my whole cycling career into a tiny little stepping stone.
“It was a really fantastic stepping stone and it supported me for a long time, but it was only a stepping stone for what I’m going to do next.”
‘Good job your blisters have healed from Roubaix. And that descent on the Galibier was something else. Hopefully Ineos allow you to continue to focus on the classics, instead of trying to turn you into a Wiggins clone for the grand tours,’ Princess Anne is (probably) saying here…
road.cc chief Tony’s thoughtful piece on the necessity (or otherwise) of flying a load of journos across Europe to cover the launch of a shiny new bike has opened up quite an interesting discussion for the cycling industry as a whole, and seems to have generated quite a lot of positive feedback.
What do you reckon? (Yes, I’m fully aware that we’re gazing upon our belly buttons rather intently with this one, but it does have wider implications).
> The problem with bike industry launches… and how to fix it
Alright, back to potholes and bike lanes…
London is the most popular city in the UK to commute by bike – well, if you have Strava anyway – according to recent research by the ride-sharing platform.
According to the findings from Strava Metro, collated to mark Earth Week, 63 per cent of cyclists in Greater London have uploaded a bike commute.
Second on the list of cities with the highest cyclists to bike commuters ratio was Bristol (55 per cent), followed by Edinburgh (50 per cent), Cambridge (43 per cent), and Manchester (42 per cent).
The research also, notably, found that women are more likely to upload commutes to Strava than men.
In Bristol, 47 per cent of male Strava users uploaded a commute, compared to 50 per cent of women. In London, the figure was 53 per cent for women and 52 per cent for men, and in Edinburgh 44 per cent of women uploaded a commute compared to 42 per cent of their male counterparts.
Millennials were also found to be most likely to travel to work by bike, with 56 per cent of those aged 30-39 uploading cycle commutes.
And new post-pandemic working trends have also been flagged by Strava’s research. Tuesday was the most popular day to log a cycle commute on Strava, with 7am the most popular time to start a journey across all the big UK cities.
The average median commute distance in London was 9.2km, with Manchester close behind at 8.8 km, while Bristol and Edinburgh were 6.9km.
In total, bike commutes uploaded to Strava in the UK as a whole have saved 52,993,433 kg of CO2 (compared to if these journeys had been taken by car). Londoners, unsurprisingly, made the most savings, with 17,438,800 kg of CO2 saved – equal to the annual emissions of 10,365 cars.
Findings from Strava Metro’s survey also found that 87 per cent of cyclists commute because it allows them to exercise at the same time, while 56 per cent said they were motivated to commute by bike to positively impact the environment.
Ah, is it that time of the day already, when the local press decides to focus in on the terribly neglected nature of our roads and streets – by comparing it to newly installed, apparently “pointless”, cycling infrastructure.
Yes, because that’s the problem, bike boxes.
But that’s the argument that was put forth by the Manchester Evening News’ chief reporter Neal Keeling this week – under the catchy headline “We’re spending cash on posh streets and cycle lanes... not on dangerous potholes” – who described a “notorious crossroads” in Bury which, according to Keeling, is a “cluster of twenty craters, cracks, and holes”.
“The state of the road has been an issue for many locals but their, and my patience, has become volcanic overnight,” Keeling wrote.
That volcanic eruption (which surely wouldn’t be good for the state of the road) occurred because Bury Council “finally sent out a highway repairs gang in the last week or so to the junction”.
“But their handiwork did not stretch to tackling the craters,” Keeling notes. “Instead at the bottom of Church Lane we now have a beautifully sea green buffer zone for cyclists waiting for the traffic lights to change. We also have extra road signage for cyclists.
“The closeness of cracked, wrecked road next to spanking new – and pointless – road markings has not gone down well with Whitefield residents.”
New bicycle lane markings at the bottom of Church Lane Whitefield .. juxtapositioned with the old worn out road surface on the junction ..
This has to be one of the most damaged section of road in the Borough pic.twitter.com/JHn7xhBzch
— Love Whitefield (@LoveWhitefield) April 20, 2024
One of those residents posted a photo of the junction, and the new bike box, with the caption: “New bicycle lane markings at the bottom of Church Lane Whitefield... juxtapositioned with the old worn-out road surface on the junction. This has to be one of the most damaged sections of road in the Borough.”
Another wrote: “The irony is that they’ve made it safe for cyclists at the lights who then have to weave through the potholes at a very busy junction.”
Keeling then added that the new splash of paint and some cycle markings proves hat “priority appears to have gone out of the town hall window”.
“If it was in Bavaria where Audis purr over perfect roads you could imagine in one night Germanic engineering and floodlights would arrive and leave the road pristine the next morning. But the bumpy ride in Whitefield town centre looks set to continue,” the chief news reporter wrote.
But how about fixing both the potholes and installing safe cycling infrastructure, rather than pitting them against each other, eh Neal?
A shopping street that has banned cycling for three decades will be opened up to those riding bicycles, as a cycling campaign group argued that the move could be a “great boost to the struggling high street” with “space for all users to circulate in safety”.
However, the decision concerning Bicester’s Sheep Street, in Oxfordshire, expected to be approved tomorrow, has not been universally popular, with Thames Valley Police weighing in with the comment that the proposal will “split public opinion” and Conservative councillors expressing concerns.
Read more: > Cyclists to be allowed to ride on popular shopping street pedestrianised for 30 years as police say it will “split opinion”... and Conservative councillor concerned about “abuse by vehicles”
All staff at Stages Cycling, the well-known US-based power meter and indoor bike company, have been laid off as the brand prepares to cease operations, seemingly the latest casualty of the cycling industry’s ongoing troubles.
According to Escape Collective, supply chain and cashflow problems, an over-reliance on the struggling health club industry (which, one source claimed, comprised up to 80 per cent of the business), and the late collapse of a deal with Giant to acquire a minority stake in the company all contributed to Stages’ apparent demise last week.
Initially starting as a single brand under the Foundation Fitness umbrella, Stages Cycling quickly grew into a successful standalone company, becoming a household name in the cycling world with its revolutionary – and most importantly, affordable and accessible – single-sided power meter in 2012, which helped Team Sky on their way to several grand tours during the 2010s.
However, the company’s reliance on health clubs (it supplied the likes of David Lloyd and Soul Bikes) left Stages in a precarious position during the pandemic, while an “unprecedented global shortage” of microprocessor chips and a massive fall in the supply of Shimano cranks resulted in a lack of inventory right at the point when the bike industry was enjoying the Covid boom.
In January 2023 things started to look up, however, as Giant reportedly acquired a 33 per cent stake in the brand, with a $20 million investment – a deal which quickly collapsed four months later, and which seems to have ushered in this week’s bleak news.
According to anonymous sources who spoke to Escape Collective, the Oregon-based company had initially ceased orders with suppliers and then ceased shipping to customers, before laying off its entire workforce last week, while most products on its website are now unavailable.
We’ll have more on this story as we get it.
In case you missed it last night, Colnago’s CEO Nicola Rosin says the legendary Italian bike manufacturer is on the “right track” to becoming “the most desirable bicycle brand in the world”, after sales “more than tripled in three years” since the company was bought by an Abu Dhabi investment firm.
In a press release containing a few selected financial figures, Colnago said that its sales for 2023 were €55,715,101 (£48 million) and its EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) were €14,015,100, or 25.15 per cent of turnover.
