Fast men on two wheels also like going fast on four wheels, and if not fast, with a certain style. Ed Hood has had a look at the top riders and their 'other' choice of transport.
The strange bike racing year that is 2020 has seen some confusing things like races with no spectators and Spring Classics in autumn but the weirdest is the overlapping of two Grand Tours as the Giro's final week coincides with the Vuelta's first. But in 1981 only three days separated the two races and Giovanni Battaglin, in the new book “48 Days,” tells the astonishing story of how he won both.
The oldest and possibly the hilliest Monument on the WorldTour calendar will roll out of Liège this Sunday and, via Bastogne, will return to the Walloon city 256 tough kilometres later. Ed Hood previews the 2020 Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
Sports fans love comparisons. Baseball is famous for its obsession with statistics (“The most successful left-handed pitcher throwing against a Chicago team on a Tuesday evening...”) and certainly all sports have record-holders. Pro cycling defies easy comparison of its stars. Can we figure out who was truly The Greatest of All Time?
Eddy Merckx; the best cyclist ever. Also the bike frames that carry his name have a fine race winning pedigree. Jacob, in Utah, has a disk EM525 Merckx built up with Sram, FFWD, Speedplay and San Marco. A Belgian Beauty.
The late 70s and early 80s was a great time for cycling, there were many 'heroes of the road', not just Eddy Merckx, but a load of Belgians and Italians. Johan De Muynck was a classy rider, but he was up against the system that kept the top men... at the top. Ed Hood finds out more.
How would today’s pro cyclists compare to the generations of Fausto Coppi, Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, or Miguel Indurain? And how would those great cyclists fare in the modern peloton? We look to a study done on speed skaters to help find some answers.
We should now be halfway through the first week of the 2020 Tour de France, but we all know about COVID-19. To keep our spirits up we've picked some of the coolest images of last year's French Grand Tour to present in our 'Tour First Week Gallery'.
There is an old joke that the only famous Belgians anyone can name are Hercule Poirot and Tintin and both are fictitious but not only has Belgium produced celebrated cyclists, but it has given us the best one of all: Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx. “Merckx 525” is a particularly good book published by Velopress nearly a decade ago that gives us his accomplishments in visual form and is well worth seeking out.