In February this year, Brompton announced it will be building a new factory at Ashford in Kent, which is expected to open in 2027.

Brompton is currently the largest manufacturer of bikes in the UK, producing roughly 80,000 per year across its current factory in Greenford, west London, and its specialist titanium facility in Sheffield, in the north of England.

The new factory in Ashford will increase production capacity to approximately 200,000 bikes per year, with staff numbers rising from 850 to 1,500.

The project isn’t just about upping the scale of production, however. Speaking to BikeRadar, Will Butler-Adams, Brompton’s chief executive, is keen to express that Brompton’s vision is much larger than that.

“We want to deliver something that redefines the perception of manufacturing,” he says.

Brompton hopes the factory will change the image of manufacturing away from a remote industry to one more entwined with the local community and ready to find solutions to the world’s problems.

Designed by Kent and London-based architecture practice Hollaway studio, and in collaboration with Ashford Borough Council, which will provide financial support, the round factory building will stand on stilts in a 100-acre floodplain next to Ashford’s retail park. Sixty acres of the floodplain will remain untouched and rewilded into a public nature reserve, with the aim of increasing biodiversity in the process.

The plan, for Butler-Adams, also has a great deal to do with the role he sees Brompton playing in the future from educating consumers to helping reduce emissions through sustainable transport.

Why build a factory in Ashford?

Brompton moved into its current factory in Greenford six years ago. According to Butler-Adams, the building “was basically an empty grey box” originally intended for logistics rather than manufacturing.

As a result, Brompton has spent close to £5 million over six years making the building suitable for its needs, from upping power supply capacity to installing extraction and developing research facilities.

Over this time, Brompton has also expanded to take on six units on the site, and Butler-Adams says the company has effectively already outgrown the location.

Part of the reason for finding a new site was to ensure Brompton has enough space to grow in the future, Butler-Adams says.

He points to Frank Williams, founder of the Williams Formula 1 team, who Brompton has collaborated with in the past, as an example of someone who got this right.

“Frank Williams was very smart,” Butler-Adams explains. “He bought a plot of land outside Oxford that was way too big. But over the last 30 to 40 years he’s built out. And that is phenomenal because [while] you might not know what’s going to happen with a business, if you do need to grow, it’s right there.”

Butler-Adams says that despite having looked across the whole country for a new location, being close to London was ultimately paramount. This is because the brand creates a product designed specifically for use in cities and having a workforce that can commute to work using a Brompton will help the brand refine its product further, according to Butler-Adams.

The problem, however, with trying to secure a location near London is space is in high demand – and cost.

“We moved into Greenford on £11 a square foot. The most recent space we’ve taken is £30 a square foot,” Butler-Adams says.

The fact that real estate in and around London is expensive will come as a shock to few. But Butler-Adams says the problem has become even more acute since Covid. The demand for grey logistics spaces near cities has increased as people have relied more on online shopping and delivery, he says.

Ashford wasn’t initially on Brompton’s radar as a possible location, but proximity to London and the local council’s enthusiasm both increased its draw.

Brompton was initially offered a traditional industrial space. This was eventually bought by the UK government to be a lorry park to deal with the overflow of customs checks caused by Brexit. In any case though, Butler-Adams thought the site was boring and wasn’t in line with Brompton’s ambitions.

Guy Hollaway, principal partner at architectural practice Hollaway Studio, suggested the floodplain site and Butler-Adams felt it matched Brompton’s desire to have a park around its site and be part of a community.

Alongside creating a nature reserve and developing a park with trails and cycle paths for the public, there will be enough space at the site to ensure Frank Williams-style growth can take place. This will allow Brompton to expand without having to find another site in the coming decades.

The initial factory will take up 200,000 square feet but Butler-Adams says Brompton has put in planning outlines for up to 500,000 square feet.

The factory itself will be open to the general public with a cafe, museum and visitor centre. This will potentially help integrate Brompton into the community, but will also serve another purpose.

“My belief is we have a serious problem with our environment and we need to consume less,” he explains.

By drawing people from the neighbouring retail park into the building, where they will be able to see into the factory itself, Butler-Adams hopes to help change people’s attitudes toward what they consume.

“If we can drag some of them who are getting a bit bored with a fifth shop to come and see stuff being made, and tell our story about maybe buying a bit less,” Butler-Adams says, “that’s really important to us.”

The difficulty of hitting net-zero

Calling for people to change what and how much they buy for the sake of the environment, while simultaneously announcing your business will potentially increase production by more than double, might strike some as contradictory. It could be argued that this responsibility should fall on the manufacturer, rather than the consumer.

But Brompton says it is taking steps to be more sustainable and reduce emissions. A press release from the company said the amount of embodied carbon in the new factory will be minimised and the development will “support Brompton in delivering 1.5°C-aligned emission reduction targets as part of Net Zero ambitions.”

Butler-Adams echoes these sustainability and emissions reduction aims, saying the brand is “going to try and be smart.”

He cites as an example of this the integration of ground-sourced heating and cooling into the pylons the factory building will be built upon.

The massive roof of the factory will also be fitted with photovoltaic solar cells, helping Brompton produce its own green electricity.

The factory will also have no new car parking. Instead, it will only be accessible via foot and pedal power.

However, Butler-Adams is under no illusions about the significant energy consumption of the new factory.

“The first thing that’s going to happen at Brompton is we are not going to reduce emissions – if you’re being truthful – because we’re trying to grow,” he says.

Butler-Adams is confident that the emissions per bike will drop, but Brompton will not be able to cut its overall carbon footprint if it is increasing the number of bikes it produces at the same time. This, he says, is where factory work differs from other industries.

“That building will not be net-zero. It would generate power if all we did was go in and fiddle around on computers all day. But if you’re talking about robots, CNC machines, annealing of materials, paint plants, forget it.”

This hasn’t stopped Brompton from signing the Shift Cycling Culture’s Climate Commitment letter, which includes the commitment to reduce C02 emissions by 55 per cent by 2030, among others.

But Butler-Adams says he signs such commitments to force the conversation around environmental responsibility and bring the conversation to the board level, even if he believes “we haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance of delivering net-zero in this industry.”

When it comes to cutting emissions Butler-Adams says the biggest problem in its current bikes is the steel, and he isn’t hopeful we will see green steel in the immediate future.

“That is a massive, industrial, heavy industry. It’s going to take 15 to 20 years to turn it around,” he says.

Scale that problem up to industries significantly larger than cycling, such as construction, which consumes the majority of the world’s steel, and if Butler-Adams is to be believed, it’s hard to feel hopeful.

After all, cycling is just as enmeshed in global supply chains and resource extraction as any other industry, regardless of its comparatively small size. So if steel is a stumbling block for cycling, what chance do other manufacturing industries face?

‘Cities need to change’

Butler-Adams is conscious of the role bicycles – which have the lowest carbon footprint of any mode of transport – can play in reducing emissions.

“What we are trying to do is move people out of cars and move people out of motor transport, onto a far more efficient mode of transport. So the product itself has a role to play in diminishing the carbon footprint and ongoing emissions from other forms of transport,” he says.

Butler-Adams sees Brompton’s main job as developing the products that enable a change in how people travel. But the brand’s Campaign for Movement, launched in 2019, was intended to show the potential of cycling to help solve issues from pollution to wellbeing, a sentiment shared by many including Chris Boardman at COP26.

Butler-Adams says one of the areas Brompton wants to work on is street parking. Like the problem of where to place a factory, he sees this issue in terms of space and its cost.

“For some reason, in the last 50 years, car owners believe they have a right to park their car for free in the public realm”, he says, explaining that this is at odds with how precious a commodity space in a city is.

“Having a metal box, electric or non-electric, rusting, and taking up precious space, which is community space, is outrageous,” he says.

While Butler-Adams by no means thinks urban space should be used solely for cycling, he does see the prevalence of cars in cities and drivers’ assumed right to space as things that need to change.

“If you want a car, you ought to be responsible for where it lives and it should not take precious space away from the community that lives there.”

An enormous journey

We’ll have to wait and see whether Brompton begins trying to tackle the use of urban space and community. In the meantime, the new factory offers one vision of what ‘community’ in the eyes of Butler-Adams can be.

It also expresses Brompton’s vision for how manufacturing can play a role in the climate crisis, at least in terms of raising awareness. But Butler-Adams’ assertion that the cycling industry hasn’t a cat in hell’s chance of reaching net-zero might knock the optimism off this vision.

Do Butler-Adams’ comments fall into a familiar pattern of cycling companies asserting the green credentials of their products over actually tackling the issues at the point of production? Possibly. Assessing whether the increased emissions of Brompton will be offset by more people trading cars for its bikes will have to be left to more capable hands.

But at least the frankness is a starting point from which to move forward, something Brompton’s CEO is keen to do.

“There are lots of things we’re doing, but we’ve still got an enormous, enormous journey,” he says.

The increase in popularity and availability of high-pivot bikes isn’t a coincidence, with success at Downhill World Cup events highlighting the benefits of a rearward wheel axle path – such as improved grip and better bump absorption on rough terrain – for all to see.

Alongside big-rig downhill bikes, brands have been developing trail bikes, enduro bikes and freeride high-pivot bikes that make sense for the everyday rider, but questions still linger about their suitability outside of the downhill setting.

To find out whether high-pivot bikes live up to the hype, I pitted two very different bikes – the Norco Shore 2 high-pivot bike and Orange Alpine Evo LE low-pivot bike – against one another.

These two test bikes might seem a bit ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ at first glance – but they encapsulate the archetypal design and qualities of each suspension type.

In this test, I’ve concentrated on how the two different suspension systems ride against one another.

However, you can also read my individual reviews of the Norco Shore 2 and Orange Alpine Evo LE to see how they fare on their own. And before we get started, you can also read BikeRadar’s full explainer on high-pivot bikes.

Introducing the bikes

Right then, let me introduce the two bikes.

On one hand, the Orange Alpine Evo, a reworked version of one of the brand’s most popular models, dating back more than 10 years, has a traditional single low pivot with 155mm of suspension travel.

Although it’s not a thoroughbred enduro race bike, the Orange EWS team have raced it at certain events in the 2021 calendar, and its geometry figures wouldn’t look out of place on a bike with significantly more travel.

This mash-up makes the Orange a worthy one-bike quiver, and certainly up to the challenge of taking on the high-pivot big-hitter in this test.

The Jekyll to our Hyde is Norco’s Shore 2. Although the Shore is another remake, this time of an old Norco model, the latest iteration is nothing but forward-thinking in terms of its suspension, geometry and spec.

With a high-pivot placement built around a multi-pivot Horst-link suspension design giving 180mm of rear-wheel travel, it’s at the more extreme end of what you could ride day in, day out.

The Norco is clearly designed for big-mountain riding, but then so is the Orange, especially when you consider its namesake Alpine mountain terrain.

There are plenty of similarities between the two bikes – both run on 650b wheels with Maxxis rubber, are damped by RockShox suspension, and use Shimano’s 12-speed drivetrains and 4-pot brakes.

To truly discover the benefits and disadvantages of both suspension systems, I rode these bikes on the widest range of terrain in the Scottish Borders to find out where they excel and, just as importantly, where they don’t.

Frame, suspension and component specifications

Orange Alpine Evo LE

The Alpine Evo LE (Launch Edition) doesn’t deviate from Orange’s iconic single-pivot suspension, aluminium monocoque frame design. But this model has seen under-the-hood updates, with an increase in suspension progression, and the use of thinner and lighter tubes with a new swingarm, all said to improve its ride.

It’s fitted with top-tier parts, including RockShox’s Ultimate Lyrik and Super Deluxe dampers, plus Shimano’s M8100 XT drivetrain and four-pot brakes. It runs on e.13 TRS rims, wrapped in Maxxis rubber. It’s got a slack 63-degree head angle, steep 76-degree seat tube angle, a long 495mm reach, and generous 445mm chainstays and 1,280mm wheelbase.

Norco Shore 2

Based around a high-pivot point Horst-link suspension system with 180mm of travel, Norco’s Shore uses an idler wheel to reduce pedal kickback and pedal bob in a bid to make it pedal-friendly.

Its frame is built from aluminium and uses the brand’s Ride Aligned technology, where an online calculator should help you get the perfect setup.

It’s specced with a wide-ranging 12-speed Shimano drivetrain and has a dropper post, along with an impressively steep 77.3-degree seat tube angle that suggests it has better all-day ride capabilities than its travel figure would indicate. Elsewhere, there’s a slack 63-degree head angle and a comfortable 480mm reach.

Which is better, a high-pivot or low-pivot mountain bike?

In the automotive world, an age-long debate rages on about what’s better: an automatic or manual gearbox.

Both have many advantages and disadvantages, but proponents of automatic gearboxes are often heard uttering to traditionalists something along the lines of: “If you own a dog, you don’t want to have to wag its tail,” likening the physical movement required to shift with a manual gear stick to doing the dog’s job for it. Though, arguably in shifting the car’s gears yourself, you’re more engaged with the drive. But is doing so distracting you from focusing on driving fast?

The same thing applies to the two very different bikes I have on test where, in car terms, the Orange is a manual-gearbox, open-top sports car without driver aids such as ABS and traction control, and the Norco is a modern high-speed cruiser with an automatic gearbox and plenty of technology to keep you on the right line, at the right speed.

Whether a high- or low-pivot bike will suit your needs, riding style or even terrain type will depend on a lot of factors, and one of the biggest is likely to be your personal preference for how much you want the bike to do for you in any given scenario.

Some of you may already know what you want, but quite a few probably won’t, so we’re going to explain how each of these bikes rides on different types of trail, to help you make up your mind, or reinforce what you already know.

Kinematics kaleidoscope

Orange claims the Alpine Evo is the most progressive Alpine model it has made to date, with a leverage rate that offers around five percent progression (calculated using BikeChecker’s linkage application) from uncompressed to bottomed out.

In real terms, this is still quite linear and makes the Alpine Evo’s design best suited to air shocks with adjustable air volumes. Volume reducers can be used to increase the spring force required to compress the shock towards the end of its stroke, and I ended up fitting the maximum number in the Orange’s shock to increase progressivity.

Notably, the Orange’s main, and only, pivot is now just above the bike’s 32t chainring. This should create a neutral pedalling feel with little chain growth, potentially causing the pedals to kick back and minimal bob (anti-squat values over 100 per cent) under power. Its axle path is almost entirely vertical, with a small amount of forward arcing as it enters the last half of its travel.

This suspension design is very typical of a low-position, single-pivot system in terms of how it feels on the gas and over rough, chattery terrain. Other brands use various types of linkages to increase the design’s inherent progression, but this in the case of the Orange, is also doable by tuning the air spring.

The Norco, however, comes fitted with a coil shock from the factory. Its suspension is 26.5 percent progressive (also calculated using the linkage application) from fully extended to fully compressed, making it one of the more progressive bikes on the market.

Unlike the Orange, the Norco has a high main-pivot Horst-link design. This high pivot gives its back wheel 13mm of rearward axle movement up to 105mm into its travel, and then the axle starts to travel up and forwards towards bottom-out, finishing -7mm from its starting point at full extension.

Such changes in effective chainstay length can, some argue, make the bike feel strange as it cycles through its rear travel, requiring rider input to mitigate the change. Some people will be more sensitive to these changes than others, making it worth trying out a high-pivot bike on trails you know before committing to a purchase.

Without an idler wheel to route the chain close to or directly on the main pivot’s location, the Norco would suffer from pedal kickback (as the upper chain line tries to extend), and plenty of pedal bob caused by low anti-squat figures.

To mitigate this, Norco has fitted an idler wheel mounted concentrically to the bike’s main pivot, with the chain running over this idler. This means the Orange and Norco should have similar anti-squat figures, with both bikes’ chains running on or close to the main pivot’s location.

On the gas

What does all this mean out on the trail? In reality, and true to the theory behind each bike’s suspension system, there’s little to differentiate them on smooth fireroad-style climbs or flat sections. The Orange is not only sprightly on the pedals, where it’s quick to accelerate, but it also does so without any real losses through unwanted suspension movement.

The same is true for the Norco and, given the firepower it brandishes in terms of suspension travel, we were very impressed with how well behaved the suspension was when making progress. In fact, the lack of suspension bob is almost uncanny and feels out of place on a bike with such a luxurious-feeling rear end.

Add a few bumps in to the mix, such as man-made but well-worn trail centres, and suddenly the Norco’s rearward axle path and total drivetrain-to-suspension decoupling – thanks to the idler – pays dividends.

The rear wheel’s ability to track the trail is significant and impressive, providing a traction-rich ride, where scaling almost-impossible climbs becomes a reality as the rear wheel spends its time conforming to bumps and staying in contact with the ground.

It creates supreme levels of comfort, too, because the rider is essentially insulated from any harshness or chatter, and all of this translates to cool, calm and collected pace requiring the absolute minimum of rider inputs.

The Orange, on the other hand, feels rawer to ride. Yes, it accelerates like a scalded cat, but instead of rewarding a passive laissez-faire attitude to bump absorption, it responds well to hops and skips down the trail, interlinked with well-timed pedal strokes to top up any speed lost to harsher or bigger bumps.

The low-pivot design means a rider can’t be complacent towards bumps, and instead must pick and choose where to lift the back wheel and pump backsides. Grip isn’t as abundant, especially when trying to scale slippery, rock-ridden climbs, but the Orange is no less capable, it just requires a totally different approach to the Norco.

Bashing into, or through, a bumpy or technical section of flat or uphill trail isn’t met with the same eagerness to please as the Norco’s high pivot, but work with the Orange and just as much fun can be had if you’re willing to put in the effort.

A frequently asked question about high-pivot bikes is how much pedalling energy are you losing to the idler wheel? Although testing this is possible, it requires specialist equipment to accurately and scientifically work out precisely how much power is lost to drivetrain inefficiencies.

Less scientific testing reveals those losses aren’t more than between one and five per cent. Once the drivetrain has got dirty or is running dry, it’s possible to feel a lumpiness or grittiness through the pedals, but how much of that is an increase in resistance remains to be scientifically answered.

If you like your bike to pedal smoothly regardless of how much mud the drivetrain is covered in, a bike without an idler wheel is currently the only answer.

Pushing the limits

Both bikes’ geometry figures are remarkably similar. They share a 63-degree head tube angle and 445mm chainstays. Wheelbases are similar at 1,280mm (Alpine Evo) and 1,286mm (Shore 2), while reach figures are close too, with the Orange at 495mm length and the Norco 480mm.

Seat tube angles are also comparable. The Orange boasts a 76-degree angle and the Norco a 77.7-degree figure. Arguably, both bikes are at the sharp end of modern geometry and, on paper, should have reasonably similar demeanours out on the trail, were it not for the decidedly different approaches to their rear-suspension systems.

Drop in to smoother, faster trails, even with the gradient on the steep side, and both bikes have an aura of calm about them, where the lengthy reaches, long wheelbases and chainstay figures all combine in a coherent modern package.

Both bikes are massively well mannered, not easily upset by poor line choice or erroneous weight shifts, their chassis remaining stable and true to where you want them to go.

It’s when the trails get bumpier that the differences start to become noticeable. The Norco does an impressive job of neutralising trail chatter, feeling bewitchingly smooth and composed.

Riding it over repetitive square-edged hits with little to no sympathy reveals just how supple, absorbent and forgiving the rear suspension is, where the bike is doing a massive portion of the work required to keep things on track.

It feels as though its suspension is working overtime to keep the chassis level with the horizon, insulating the rider from having to compensate for instability with energy-sapping weight shifts. This, in turn, creates plenty of extra, easy-to-access speed, because the bike feels keen to accelerate over bumps, rather than its rear wheel getting caught up on them and slowing you down.

The Orange, however, requires a more proactive riding style to keep its speed up and chassis stable. Firing yourself into a mess of roots and rocks can’t be done with a brazen disregard for your wellbeing, but instead needs to be approached with soft, bent arms and legs to ensure control.

Although the suspension does some of the work of ironing out bumps, quite a bit more of the slack is taken up by your body. When ridden with straighter legs, the low-pivot design tends to crash and bang the rear wheel into bumps much sooner and quite a bit harder than the high-pivot bike.

But if you tackle the same bit of track with lighter wheels, speed can be increased. It’s possible to pick up and pump through chosen sections of trail to generate exhilarating increases in forward momentum without any speed getting lost to the rear wheel with an overzealous willingness to compress.

Get out of jail free card

It’s when you get it wrong that the differences become most stark. Hopping over obstacles on trails can be done on both bikes with ease, but depending on your skill level, accuracy, or the technicality of the trail, the chances of something going wrong can be increased on the Orange.

This is when the high-pivot Norco comes into its own. Tag the back wheel on a root, rock or jump landing, and it does its best to absorb the impact, helping maintain both the bike’s and rider’s composure. This means that a loss of traction or control are a long way down the line of successive, significant errors.

Imagine you’re heading down a soft, muddy, steep off-camber section interspersed with large tree roots that need to be jumped to maintain traction, and you tag the back wheel on a root as you come in for touchdown. The Norco’s rear wheel moves rearward and up out of the way, conforming to the bump’s shape and maintaining contact with the ground.

We found that in scenarios like this, if we resisted touching the brakes and locking the back wheel, the high-pivot system did an incredible job of providing the much-needed traction and stability to continue riding the bike as if we hadn’t made any mistakes at all.

Stick the low-pivot Orange in the same scenario and the chances of it all going wrong are higher. Tagging the back wheel on a similar root isn’t met with the same eagerness to compress or the abundantly forgiving traction provided by that high-pivot suspension movement.

The Orange does provide an element of forgiveness, and its back wheel moves up as obstacles are tagged, but not losing control is more heavily weighted to the rider’s skill, confidence and commitment rather than relying on the bike to take over and save your bacon.

In that respect, the margin for error is much broader on the Norco than the Orange, especially on high-speed, ultra-technical trails. One wrong weight shift can end in a hair-raising off-line experience on the low-pivot bike, while on the high-pivot system, there are enough safeguards in place to keep things on track.

Whether or not that’s a problem for you depends on your preferences. High-pivot bikes are suited to outright speed and won’t punish a lack of finesse. While low-pivot bikes aren’t any less slow, they require a higher attention to detail to eke out the last little bit of pace on gnarly trails. That can feel exhilarating, though, and is something the Alpine Evo rewards wonderfully.

Going deep

Get both bikes towards bottom-out, say through a compression or in a berm littered with square-edged hits, and there’s little to distinguish them from one another. Both their rear-wheel axle paths start to arc forwards as they get towards the end of their travel, which means the rear wheel is compressing towards, and into, bumps rather than vertically up or rearward out of the way.

This leads to some harshness transmitted through the wheels into the frame and can result in dinged rims or punctured tyres. Both the Norco and Orange were guilty of this, especially in high-loading stations. If you’re riding hard like this, we recommend looking into running thicker-casing rear tyres to help protect your rims and reduce the chances of punctures.

The same is also true for absorbing jumps or drops to flat. There was little to differentiate the two suspension systems in terms of how well or smoothly they handled the impacts. The biggest factor dictating landing smoothness is how progressive the suspension is, and how much travel a bike has, rather than whether its pivot is high or low.

Should you buy a high-pivot or low-pivot mountain bike?

Riding these bikes back-to-back was a surprisingly educational experience. While the differences were stark in places, they were less obvious than you might expect in an equal number of other riding scenarios.

The chunky, high-pivot Norco is certainly smoother over trail chatter, whether ascending, on the flat or descending, and you don’t really notice its hefty weight. Grip is more abundant, too. It’s still exhilarating to ride fast, though, and it reaches high speeds more easily than the Orange.

At that point, how much help the more rearward axle path provides is maybe down to personal perception – the high-pivot, Horst-link design isn’t a ‘silver bullet’ solution to every trail obstacle, technique weakness or terrain type you’re likely to come across.

The Shore 2 is one of the best bikes we’ve tested in recent times.There’s still plenty of life left in low-pivot bikes, as the raw, hyper-connected ride feel of the Alpine LE proves.

The rewards of nailing a section to perfection, earning the associated speed increase and knowing that’s down to the rider, not the machine, makes them an appealing prospect. The connection between rider, bike and trail isn’t dumbed down, and the work required to get from A to B is mostly your own. That’s massively gratifying.

To come back to our original analogy, riding a high-pivot, multi-link bike is like driving a capable modern car with an automatic gearbox, traction control, ABS or a ‘drift mode’, at its limits.

The Alpine Evo LE is the Launch Edition of the brand’s newest Alpine model. Accessing higher speeds requires less finesse than on a low-pivot bike – and especially one with a single pivot, like the Orange – because the rear suspension is augmenting rider skill and making up for errors, in the same way that those neat technological advances do in a car.

A bike with a low single-pivot on the other hand, is more like a stripped-back, open-top classic sports car, where putting a wheel wrong increases the potential for disaster exponentially. But the visceral connection with the machine is still appealing, and makes deciding between these two types of design tricky.

Then, of course, there are bikes that sit somewhere between these extremes, with lower main pivots but a linkage to control the axle path, and some of the traits of both designs. Each will suit a certain type of rider. Unfortunately, that means the question of ‘which system is better?’ is truly unanswerable.

Former Slovenian pro Janez ‘Jani’ Brajkovič raced in the Tour de France, the Vuelta and the Giro, but in private he was battling a series of harrowing eating disorders. As a bulimic, Brajkovič would routinely make himself sick after eating.

He also suffered with orthorexia – an obsession with healthy food, which meant he couldn’t permit himself even a crumb of cake.

But Brajkovič is not alone: a recent study in the Journal of Eating Disorders found that a significant 17.1 per cent of cyclists experience disordered eating.

“It might sound unreal, but during my career I was with the best teams – Discovery Channel, RadioShack, Astana, Bahrain and UHC (United Healthcare), and in every team, if there are 30 riders, there are at least five or six riders that have the same problem,” reveals 37-year-old Brajkovič.

“After spending a few hours with them, or doing your first race, you figure it out. When you’re suffering yourself, you can smell them. And the really bad thing is that you know they know about you too. And that’s a very uncomfortable situation.”

In his youth, Brajkovič had spells during which he would eat only one type of food, such as bread and Nutella, but his problems exploded during his first years in the high-pressure arena of pro cycling, around 2004 to 2006.

“When I started to have expectations from the outside world – and from myself – things went really sideways,” he says. “Food is important for performance, so you’re walking a thin line. It’s soon hard to say whether you are eating for performance or you have an eating disorder.”

Quest for control

Brajkovič’s bulimia was driven by a desperate search for control over his body. “Ice cream is a sort of liquid and therefore easy to throw up, so I would eat a litre of ice cream and then throw up,” he says.

“In the beginning, you’re excited because you think: ‘I can control my food. I can eat what I want and then I can throw up’. But with time you realise you’re not in control. The food controls you.”

Brajkovič won the 2010 Critérium du Dauphiné and finished ninth at the 2012 Tour de France, but for years he was fraying at the seams.

“At the 2012 Tour de France, I was fine for a month but I was anxious and suffering. When I got home, I threw up. Your family is suffering because your day is structured around food: I have to eat this much and then go to the toilet and do my thing.

“I always prolonged training, so instead of three hours, I would do six, just to stay away from food. You finish training, you eat and you throw up. Every day is the same. It’s misery. I tried everything and nothing worked. A few years ago, I realised this is probably going to kill me.”

An eating disorder cost Italian pro Davide Cimolai, who now races for Israel Start-Up Nation, the first few years of his career. The 32-year-old blames the ignorant advice of old-fashioned coaches and the grim culture of self-starvation in the pro peloton.

“At an amateur level, I won races easily, but when I tried to follow my teammates, to eat the same food as them, I had no energy,” Cimolai explains.

“Every day, I felt tired. I knew this was not good. I needed one person with experience to explain to me: ‘Hey Davide, this is wrong, it is better to do it like this’. But I had to learn what I know now by myself. At amateur level, the mentality is old and what I see is crazy. You can’t do long training then eat only jam or salad.”

Molly Weaver, a former British pro who raced for Team Liv-Plantur and Trek-Drops, also suffered with bulimia. “When I moved to a new team, the pressure to be light was a lot greater,” explains the 27-year-old, who is now retraining as a paramedic but still races at amateur level for Epic Cycles.

“I’d been pigeon-holed as a climber, which I didn’t really see myself as. I was more of a classics rider build but, if I lost weight, I could climb with the best. So that’s what they wanted me to do. But the problem is that weight is an incredibly measurable thing. You can weigh yourself every day, and if you think lighter is better, it’s very black and white. If you lost weight, you’d get instant gratification. And it very quickly spirals into a fixation.”

Weaver believes that cycling has a serious cultural problem, with skinniness celebrated by coaches, in clothing adverts, on social media and among fellow cyclists. “I’ve never been on a team where there haven’t been others with an eating disorder and, even with the blatantly obvious ones, it was almost seen as success,” she explains.

“And you are also celebrating them because that is the culture. Even that feeling of going to bed hungry, and somehow getting to sleep, is something you would feel really proud of.”

The thin RED-S line

But the consequences of eating disorders are grave. RED-S (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport) is a dangerous condition in which low calorie intake leads to menstrual-cycle disruption, low bone density, impaired immunity and heart issues.

“A lot of female riders don’t have their period and that’s not even mentioned, and almost seen as good,” says Weaver. “And because you’re under-fuelling, you’re just hungry all the time.”

Dietitian Renee McGregor – an expert in eating disorders – says that under-fuelling is a serious issue. “When there is not enough energy in the system, the body will prioritise movement and down-regulate the metabolic response,” she explains.

“This means processes like digestion, immune and bone health, and hormones all get depressed and in some cases completely supressed. And when hormones get down-regulated, this has a direct effect on adaptation from training. Less serotonin is also absorbed into the brain, so this starts to impact mood.”

Women face additional problems. “The effects are the same as with a male cyclist, but will probably show up a lot earlier as the female body is much more sensitive due to its role in reproduction,” explains McGregor.

“Menstruation gets affected fairly early on. Initially, it might just become lighter or a bit erratic, but eventually it will stop. This is a sign the body is under stress and won’t benefit from training. But more importantly, it is hugely vulnerable to injury, low mood, poor digestion and lowered immunity.”

But eating disorders are not limited to the pro cycling arena. McGregor has noticed an increasing number of amateur riders approaching her for help. “There has probably been an increase in awareness regarding eating disorders, in both professional and amateur cyclists, which means more are becoming aware that their behaviours are dysfunctional,” she says.

Whether competing in category races or just striving to excel on club runs, amateur cyclists can quickly become obsessed with their power-to-weight ratio. “I’ve seen a lot of amateur riders where it starts as a hobby, but all the joy gets sucked out of it because they are so obsessed with their weight and numbers,” says Weaver.

Sam Woodfield was one of those riders. A muscular personal trainer, Woodfield caught the cycling bug in 2015 and was soon chiselling off every unwanted kilo. Within a year, he had moved to Thailand and was competing in high-profile races.

“I was told: ‘you’ve got an engine but you need to lose weight’,” recalls Woodfield, 30. “It was all about getting the weight down because the power will rise. I remember lots of long, fasted rides for three to four hours. I’d ride until I bonked.

“And I’d try to push the day out as long as possible without eating. That was the anorexia. Then the orthorexia started. I had to eat super-clean food, gluten-free and dairy-free, and cut out food groups. If I ‘failed’ a session, I wouldn’t eat, or I’d just have a protein shake or salad because I didn’t deserve food.”

The power of the mind

Woodfield, who has now regained his optimal weight, is concerned about the way amateur riders try to ape pro riders’ habits, whether real or exaggerated. “I see a rider put a photo of two eggs, an avocado and salad on an Instagram photo from a Tour de France rest day, but you don’t see his bowl of pasta or porridge at the side because it is just mind games (with their rivals),” he says.

“Or you see photos of Bradley Wiggins looking miniscule at the Tour. He had to work so hard. He had no life. These guys are only at that weight for four to five weeks. They are lifted onto the team bus. Their protein shakes are shaken for them. They are genetically insane and have everything done for them. You can try and live like that, but it will be horrible because you don’t have all the support, the blood tests and the doctors looking after you.”

Woodfield’s own eating disorder cost him his job and his relationship of four years. “Essentially, the eating disorder broke up the relationship,” he admits. “And I had to stop work because I got so ill. I couldn’t walk upstairs.”

Might there be something in the mindset of athletes – both amateur and professional – that makes them vulnerable to eating disorders? Studies suggest athletes have a 20 per cent higher risk of eating disorders than the wider population. “Athletes do tend to be a certain type of personality,” says McGregor.

“They are usually focused, determined, motivated, perfectionist, compulsive, obsessive and self-critical. While some of these traits are helpful, many are not, and they have to be managed.

“When you put this personality type into a competitive environment, without any support or understanding on how to manage expectations, these traits can become dysfunctional.”

Education, education, education

If performance pressures, body-image issues, cultural ‘norms’, misinformation and personality traits can be potential triggers for eating disorders, what are the solutions? McGregor believes that the key is self-education. “Healthy eating for a cyclist means that you eat enough to meet your energy needs,” she insists.

“Our society is obsessed with moving more and eating less, but this doesn’t fit with how the body physiologically works. Humans are hard-wired to prefer to achieve energy balance and to be in a slight positive energy balance.”

It is also vital to zero in on the underlying issues. “An eating disorder is a mental illness with biological consequences,” she explains. “It isn’t about food or body weight. But these are the media that people use to deny uncomfortable and difficult emotions. A common notion is that they are not enough or doing enough. Food becomes the focus because it is something they can project onto and use to contain their difficult emotions.”

Jani Brajkovič, who says he is now in a “good place” after years of self-education and therapy, agrees that the issue usually stems from childhood trauma, external pressure or a lack of self-worth.

“A lot of cyclists have been told that they’re never going to have success, that they are not working hard enough, and it makes you think: I am nothing,” he says. “So we always try to prove ourselves.”

Brajkovič also wants to see a cultural shift within cycling. In 2019, he tested positive for the stimulant methylhexanamine, which he says came from a contaminated meal replacement shake he took to help with his bulimia. The UCI accepted his use was unintentional and reduced his ban to 10 months. But he remains angry at the lack of support.

He says team nutritionists are often badly informed, team doctors do not always respect a rider’s medical privacy, and coaches routinely fail in their duty of care: “For them, it is easy to fix the problem: if you have a rider with an eating disorder and he is performing, that is fine. But when he stops performing, he is out.”

By speaking about their problems, riders like Brajkovič and Cimolai are trying to help the next generation find a healthier equilibrium. “I now know that with one plate of pasta, I go stronger,” says Cimolai. “It is important to find balance. Cycling is my passion. Cycling is my work. But cycling is not my life.”

Sam Woodfield now runs the UpShift Nutrition Racing Team, which proudly prioritises the wellbeing of its riders, and supports the #TRAINBRAVE campaign, backed by McGregor, which aims to educate athletes about eating disorders. “If it helps one person, it’s worth it,” he says.

“There’s more to cycling than being super-light. I’m heavier now, but I’ve gone from a 330-watt FTP (functional threshold power) to 425 watts for 20 minutes, 470 watts for 10 and just short of 500 watts for five minutes. If I lose 3 kilos, I’ll lose power and struggle to get through a day of work. So why do it?”

Weaver says cyclists should work with their natural body shape. “If you ride your bike and enjoy it, you’ll fall where is right for you,” she insists.

“Just celebrate being the body type you are. A lot of classics-style riders, who are bigger and eat healthily, perform better than the ones who are fixated on every gram. It’s about saying: ‘I love cycling, but I’m also getting fit as a by-product’. Not everything needs a goal other than pure enjoyment.”

Zwift’s online training and racing platform has taken the cycling world by storm, enabling riders to roam virtual worlds to improve their fitness, socialise on group rides and even compete without ever leaving the comfort of their own homes.

Racing is a key part of the Zwift experience. Amateur cyclists can test their mettle against fellow competitors in Zwift’s virtual worlds, without the confusion and expense of entering real-world races.

Meanwhile, pro riders can compete in elite-level virtual events, such as the UCI Cycling Esports World Championships. There was even a virtual Tour de France in July 2020 – the first of its kind.

This new approach to racing is enabling more people than ever to dip a toe into the world of competitive cycling.

“Zwift racing is incredibly accessible and offers friendly competition for all abilities and experience levels,” says Abi Flynn, Zwift’s European PR manager.

“The biggest racing league is the Zwift Racing League (ZRL),” adds Flynn. “It’s a team-based competition with leagues catering for all abilities and all time zones. Races are a mix of ‘traditional’ first-across-the-line bunch races, with bonus points for intermediate climbs and sprints, and team time trials.”

Joining a Zwift race is simple, with both individual and series-based events available, for riders of all levels.

Riders must first select a category based on their functional threshold power (FTP) and power-to-weight ratio – this ensures you are competing against riders of a similar ability – and then find an event, either in-game or using the Companion app (we’ve got a full explainer on Zwift racing, with more on categories, race formats and tactics).

“The best way to search for races on Zwift is via the Zwift Companion app, where you can filter all events by category and type,” says Flynn.

Racing, democratised

This ease of use and accessibility has opened racing up to a wider field. It has democratised competitive cycling, giving those who might have otherwise been reluctant or unable to race a chance to build their confidence and gain the skills required to compete virtually.

“The accessibility of Zwift racing is why so many people give it a try,” says Flynn. “There are events taking place around the clock and you can dabble from the comfort of your home – no need to travel or buy racing licenses.

“It gives everyone a fantastic workout and pushes Zwifters to ride harder than they otherwise might. This is why many cyclists use Zwift racing as a component of their cycling training.”

One such rider is Andrew Grant, a photographer and keen amateur cyclist who has used the platform to bolster his training and boost his confidence.

“When I’m training, I like to throw the odd Zwift race in just to break things up and make my indoor sessions a bit more exciting,” Grant tells BikeRadar. “High-intensity sessions can be a drag on their own, so the competitive element is a great motivator for me.

“It’s a good way to get a feel for racing before you try it in the real world.

“Racing in Zwift helped to build up my fitness for racing in real life, but it also helped me to understand the strategies and tactics racing required from the safety of my own home – things like drafting and learning where to position yourself in the bunch.

“In short, it gave me the confidence to go out and race.”

Pro cycling: the new normal?

The vast majority of racers on Zwift are people like Andrew – amateur riders who benefit in some way from being part of the online racing community.

However, Zwift does host an ever-increasing selection of pro-level races, including the much-talked-about UCI Cycling Esports World Championship.

“There are pro cyclists who race regularly to tune up their top-end efforts,” says Flynn. “However, cycling esports is a discipline in its own right, and there are many specialists emerging from the community.

“There are even professionally supported esports teams like NeXT Esport p/b Enshored and Canyon Esports. Movistar Team was actually the first WorldTour team to set up a dedicated esports racing team for both men and women, with the Movistar ETeam.”

Irish national road race champion Imogen Cotter, who had been riding for Belgian elite outfit Keukens Redant Cycling Team for several years, was one of the riders selected for the Movistar ETeam when it launched.

“I feel like the opportunity with the Movistar team opened up so many doors for me,” Cotter tells BikeRadar. “The help I was able to get from the team and the sponsors over the last year has taken so much stress off my shoulders, and really enabled me to focus on cycling.

“Knowing that I could reach out to the team if I had any issues or any questions about training was a massive help. I’ve also gotten stronger from the racing opportunities they have given me on Zwift, as it’s enabled me to learn more about how to suffer as an athlete.”

The 2020 lockdowns set the scene for Cotter’s introduction to Zwift racing. Indoor cycling became an important tool when restrictions prevented outdoor rides, and racing on the platform soon became an invaluable part of her training.

“I was in Ireland and we were restricted to a 5km radius, so racing on Zwift was my way of getting in some racing intensity while I waited for my season to start back up,” Cotter says.

“I did a few races, but it was only in February of 2021 that I took it seriously. That was when I saw that Movistar was setting up an e-team.”

Since then, Cotter has won the Irish national title, only four years after taking up cycling, and will step up to the pro road ranks in 2022 after signing for Belgium-based UCI Continental team Plantur-Pura.

Pedalling through the pandemic

Cotter isn’t the only cyclist to have become more involved in Zwift over lockdown. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic saw more riders than ever before turning to smart trainers and indoor cycling apps for their daily dose of exercise.

Cyclists all over the world collectively removed their back wheels, and by May 2020, smart trainers had all but sold out.

Athletes from other disciplines also began to partake in Zwift racing as a means of keeping fit in lockdown. Jamie Tyerman is an amateur triathlete who used Zwift races to train during the pandemic as he prepared for an Ironman Triathlon he wasn’t even sure would go ahead.

“Zwift racing has helped me a lot in terms of building my FTP and overall performance on the bike,” says Tyerman. “I use it as part of a structured training plan. Now, I’ll regularly jump on a ZRL race instead of my weekly high-intensity turbo ride just to spice things up.”

Riders like Jamie have caused huge spikes in Zwift’s numbers during the pandemic. In 2020, the platform saw a 300 per cent increase in daily activity and now has somewhere in the region of three million user accounts registered across 190 countries.

One of those accounts belongs to Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, the reigning esports world champion, who, prior to 2020, did everything she could to avoid riding indoors.

The South African is a decorated road racer, currently riding for Team SD Worx and residing in Girona, Spain. When lockdown restrictions hit the country, she turned to Zwift and hasn’t looked back since.

“I never considered e-racing before the pandemic,” Moolman-Pasio tells BikeRadar. “I really didn’t enjoy training indoors as I’ve always lived in ideal locations for cycling. I also struggled to match my power numbers on an indoor trainer, which I found very demotivating.

“In Spain, it was a really hard lockdown, so the only way to continue riding was to embrace indoor training.

“In the real world, my local hill is Rocacorba, which is where I usually do my hill reps. During lockdown, I realised I could do the same thing on Alpe du Zwift.”

A month into lockdown and Zwifting had become the highlight of Moolman-Pasio’s day. The social aspect helped her to push through the initial stiffness and delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) that come with effectively starting a new discipline, and it wasn’t long before she was holding the same power numbers on the trainer as outdoors.

“That was a huge motivation for me,” says Moolman-Pasio. “It wasn’t long after that I joined one of the Zwift Premier League races as a guest rider on the Rowe & King team.

“I was very intimidated at first. It felt like a total unknown to me. I’d seen the sort of power-to-weight ratios these women were capable of in the game and I was pretty apprehensive. In the end, I wound up completely surprising myself and winning. That’s when the bug really bit.”

Winning the Esports World Championships

Moolman-Pasio took a few weeks off when the real-world season ended and realised she would have just enough time to prepare for the Esports World Championships. For the next six weeks, she chained herself to Zwift, retraining her body for optimal performance on the indoor trainer.

“It was a big goal for me,” she says. “I’d become a huge advocate of the virtual world and the potential it has, especially for women’s cycling and increasing female participation.

“I was doing most of my interval sessions on Zwift. My focus was mostly on VO2 max efforts on the World Championships course [which used a 50km route in Zwift’s Watopia world]. By the time it came to racing, I knew the course like the back of my hand so I knew exactly what I needed to do in order to win.

“I also did research into my competitors and their fastest times by using the Companion app. All of this work came together, and by the time I was on the start line, I really believed I could win. That gave me a lot of motivation and extra strength – which I needed, because Sarah Gigante did really make me work for it right to the line!”

Moving Zwiftly forwards

What does all of this mean for the future of racing? Virtual cycling platforms are providing a new arena for cyclists to compete against one another and, with more pros like Moolman-Pasio and Cotter dabbling in the discipline, it could continue to offer a new avenue for professional cycling.

“It’s incredible to be able to experience a win from the comfort of my own home with my friends and loved ones around me,” says Moolman-Pasio.

“Sure, you can’t see your competitors, but those people that support you on a daily basis are right there next to you, encouraging you and helping you to dig deeper, and that’s quite a special experience.”

Moolman-Pasio also believes the advent of e-racing has helped bring a new dawn for women’s cycling – a new dawn that, on the road in 2022, includes the long-awaited Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, with eight stages through northern France from 24-31 July.

It’s no secret that female riders have been undervalued in professional cycling, but Moolman-Pasio believes Zwift as a platform is empowering women in the sport to go further.

“Zwift has always prioritised equality,” she says. “From the word go, any racing I did on Zwift was equal in terms of male and female participation.

“That went all the way through to the virtual Tour de France, which gave 100 per cent equality to men and women. For me, it marks a massive turning point for women’s cycling.”

Cycling is often held up as an easy and effective way to reduce emissions to help curtail the devastating effects of climate change.

You don’t have to look far to spot examples of this. Cycling became a talking point at COP26, where many groups and individuals at the summit were espousing the potential of cycling as a low-emissions mode of transport, even if it wasn’t on the official agenda.

But there is a problem – compared to other sectors, the cycling industry has been slow to address (or even acknowledge) its own impact.

While the act of riding a bike is low impact, the narrative around cycling and the climate rarely acknowledges the environmental harm caused by the extraction of materials, the production of bikes and the shipping of products around the world.

Throw the relentless development of new bikes, clothing and products into the mix and the problem is even worse.

There are, of course, many examples of cycling companies increasing the amount of recycled materials in their products and moving towards carbon offsetting. But a lack of transparency about emissions and of solid commitments to reducing environmental impact can make the cycling industry feel behind when compared to other sectors.

But is this changing? And is the cycling industry finally getting real about its environmental impact?

This year, there have been a number of initiatives from companies and organisations that suggest the tide could be turning.

Collective commitments

One of the most notable acts was an open letter signed by 15 cycling companies and released just before COP26.

Organised by Shift Cycling Culture – a non-profit working to make the future of cycling more sustainable – the Climate Commitment letter binds signees to two major commitments.

First, they will disclose their Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2023. Scope 1 and Scope 2 refer to emissions direct from owned or controlled sources and indirect emissions, such as those from energy suppliers.

Second, the commitment requires brands to reduce their CO2 emissions by 55 per cent by 2030.

This mirrors the target outlined by the European Union in April this year, which was updated from the original commitment made as part of the Paris Agreement in 2016 to reduce emissions by 40 per cent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

The idea for the letter germinated from talks Shift Cycling Culture began with people in the cycling industry around this time last year.

Jane Dennyson, one of Shift Cycling Culture’s directors, says they put out an open request on social media for people in the industry to join a Zoom call to talk about sustainability in cycling.

“At that point,” Dennyson explains, “we just wanted to get a bit of a benchmark of where people were at. We were very aware that there is a massive industry that sits behind the bicycle and everything that goes with it that wasn’t really addressing its negative impact at the time. So we wanted to know how we could inspire change in this area.”

With about 100 people on the call, from product designers to managers and people working in communications, Dennyson says they had every area of the industry represented.

Asked what challenges there were in addressing sustainability within their organisations, two points raised by those on the call stood out to Shift Cycling Culture.

One was that the industry lacks a collective body and the other was that sustainability was not seen as a strategic concern.

Dennyson says Shift Cycling Culture “‘arrogantly” thought they could sort this out.

“We reached out to as many leaders of big brands as we could and said, ‘will you join us and the world’s biggest cycling companies to talk about sustainability and what it means for business from a strategic point of view?’”

This led to Shift Cycling Culture leading bi-monthly meetings with chief executives from companies such as Rapha, Schwalbe, Assos, Brompton and Riese & Müller to facilitate conversations around action on climate change and to emphasise its importance for business.

Dennyson says the group also invited an investment banker along to one of the meetings “who basically said, ‘we don’t look at companies that aren’t addressing sustainability because it’s too much of a risk if they’re not looking ahead and thinking about what the future looks like for them’.”

Dennyson says Simon Mottram, who recently announced he is stepping down as Rapha’s CEO, also spoke about his own personal journey in regard to climate change and the confluence of climate action and business.

“The penny finally dropped,” for Mottram, Dennyson says, “that we’re not even going to have a planet to do business on.”

While many will see such a statement as rather self-interested and blind to the devastating effects of climate change already faced by people across the globe, the realisation of the importance of climate action from a business perspective did get companies thinking about what they could do.

Fast forward to June this year and the brands Shift Cycling Culture was talking to wanted to know what steps they could take.

In order to reduce emissions, one major area cycling companies – and companies across all sectors – need to address is supply chains.

“Basically, 95 per cent of the negative impact of their organisations comes from the supply chain. So in order for them to really address the impact, we need their supply chain to change,” says Dennyson.

Shift Cycling Culture reached out to some big suppliers, who said their customers weren’t asking them to do anything differently.

It then went back to the brands, suggesting they draft a letter as a means to show companies in their supply chains that they were getting their own houses in order – a necessary step before asking their top 10 suppliers to start looking at reducing emissions.

Dennyson says that one criticism the letter has received is the focus on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and the omission of Scope 3 emissions. These cover emissions caused by supply chains and products when they are in use, and are included in goals for net-zero.

This does seem odd considering the admittance of the huge impact of supply chains from Dennyson and in the letter itself.

However, Dennyson says “really, we brought this down to the lowest common denominator, so as many companies as possible – wherever they are in their journey – can get on board.”

Due to the decentralised nature of modern production and the large numbers of suppliers involved in supply chains, calculating Scope 3 emissions – let alone cutting them – is a huge task.

But, Dennyson says since the letter was released 30 more companies have signed it, including suppliers, so the tactic of brands showing willingness first seems to have worked.

How will the brands reduce emissions?

What will the signees of the Climate Commitment letter do to reduce their emissions by 55 per cent by 2030?

The letter says they will reduce emissions related to production; create products that will last longer; work with consumers to extend the lifetime of products; and develop a closed-loop system to recover materials.

Dennyson says the concrete action brands will take to achieve these goals will become apparent in due course: “In terms of reduction, that really comes from the carbon report,” which the brands have agreed to release in 2023.

This is because, “you take your top-impact areas and dig into the hot spots, break those down, and ask if there are any quick wins. For instance, if they switch their factories to renewable energy, that’s going to have a massive impact.”

Trek’s sustainability report

Trek has independently begun a similar journey, giving a sense of what we could expect.

The manufacturer released its first sustainability report in July this year, providing an audit of a single year of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

Trek isn’t the first brand to lift the lid on the carbon footprint of its activities.

There is an oft-cited Specialized report from 2014 – which one would hope is now firmly out of date considering the brand’s environmental commitments – and a report from Riese & Müller, one of the brands that signed the Climate Commitment open letter.

However, Trek’s report is the most recent and is a rare example of a large cycling brand outlining serious commitments to reducing emissions.

Eric Bjorling, Trek’s director of brand, is upfront about the position the cycling industry holds when it comes to emissions:

“The bike industry sometimes gets a bit of a free pass on environmentalism. We’re not the oil or automobile industries – or a better-known perpetrator, for want of a better word. But we’re the bike industry, and there’s still a very real carbon footprint there.”

Trek worked with WAP Sustainability Consultancy, which looked at carbon emissions across the company’s activity.

“They did a life-cycle analysis of a lot of stuff we were working on,” Bjorling explains, “just so we could consider where we were at as a company, and where our biggest opportunities lay for improvement.”

Similar to the sequence of events outlined in the Climate Commitment letter, the report then led Trek to formulate a 10-step plan to reduce emissions.

In the report, Trek says it aims to reduce air freight by 75 per cent compared to pre-2020 levels by 2024.

The brand is looking to consolidate orders to retailers into single shipments where possible by 2024. It also wants to switch to 100 per cent renewable energy for its owned facilities by 2023.

Trek also says it is setting up the Trek Foundation to protect places people ride and to help build infrastructure, which should in theory help encourage people to use bikes more.

Trek is keen to highlight how it has already begun taking steps towards these targets, saying it has started consolidating shipments and using renewable energy, as well as reducing plastic.

The report can be seen as a set of commitments as well as an opportunity for the brand to shine a positive light on what it’s already doing.

What is the carbon footprint of Trek bikes?

A major focus of the report is the carbon footprint of manufacturing four different bikes: the Trek Marlin; Trek Madone; Trek Fuel EX; and the Trek Rail.

Bjorling says this selection of bikes represents the bell curve of Trek’s production.

The Marlin has the smallest footprint, of 116kg CO2e per bike, and Bjorling says it is comparable to Trek’s other entry-level bikes.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Rail – a full-suspension electric mountain bike with a motor and battery – has the largest footprint at 229kg CO2e per bike.

Trek says that due to the fact bicycles can be used as an emissions-cutting form of transport, you can offset the carbon footprint of its bikes by riding them instead of using a car.

To reinforce this, the report highlights the figure of 430 miles, the average distance you’d have to cycle to offset the footprint of one of Trek’s bikes.

While 430 miles is not a great distance, this is quite a confusing way of looking at the issue – not many people are going to be using a Trek Madone instead of a car for their commute or supermarket trip.

Bernhard Isopp, lecturer and researcher in the department of science, technology and society at the Technical University of Munich, who specialises in climate change communication and policy, has openly criticised the Trek report. He has queried the focus on high-end bikes, which he says constitute luxury products.

“There’s always this concern about greenwashing and turning sustainability discourse into a marketing opportunity,” says Isopp, “and I think in some regards Trek went in that direction when there are clearer ways they could have shown their commitment to sustainability than doing the carbon footprint of a £10,000 mountain bike.”

To highlight the issue with saying a bike can offset carbon emissions when it doesn’t actually replace a car, Isopp suggests another comparison:

“It wouldn’t make sense to compare the CO2 [emissions] per kilometre travelled on downhill skis to cars and to then say the skis are more environmentally friendly.”

But Bjorling argues the statistic is really just to get people thinking:

“We know that most people who buy a Rail are going to be driving them to a trail and riding them. What we were trying to do there was focus on consumer education.”

Away from shifting carbon offsetting onto the end consumer, Trek says increasing the amount of recyclable material in its products could lead to a significant reduction in emissions.

Trek lists a number of smaller components such as bottle cages, computers and handlebar grips that use alternate materials, but larger items are absent.

According to the report, the most polluting part of the bike tends to be the frame. But when it comes to cutting the emissions of frame production, the picture the report and Bjorling paints is of business taking precedence over sustainability.

The report says the percentage of recycled material in its aluminium frames has actually dropped due to the need to meet consumer demand.

Bjorling also highlights the difficulties faced with carbon fibre:

“The thing about recycling carbon fibre is it’s really hard to do. There aren’t that many companies out there.

“We worked with a company in the United States who would take carbon fibre – like warranty frames and trimmings from the manufacturing sector – and they were able to break it down and do injection moulding for car parts and things like that.”

The problem, in the end, Bjorling says, is “they couldn’t make it a sustainable business.”

For comparison, Dennyson says Shift Cycling Culture has had conversations with some of the biggest bike builders who are looking at alternate materials, but emphasises it is “early days”.

“It would be nice to accelerate the whole process,” Dennyson says, “and make sure that this isn’t happening in 2035, and it’s happening next year.”

So are cycling brands doing enough?

The picture the Climate Commitment letter and the Trek sustainability report paints is one of an industry finally beginning to acknowledge its environmental impact, having long escaped scrutiny due to the emission-busting potential of what it makes.

On some levels, this is unavoidable: there is no getting away from climate change, however green your product may or may not be. As Isopp puts it, “they have to say something. What else could they do at this point?”

How effective these commitments prove to be has a lot to do with urgency and scale, as well as the willingness of brands to change and to be accountable.

There is a temptation to call for change now, but the time frame outlined in the Climate Commitment feels reasonable when you consider Trek began the journey to create its report and plan a few years ago.

Seeing brands come together with a collective vision for reducing emissions is also promising.

On one level, having brands working together could lead to the germination of an industry body to tackle emissions. On another, it could enable brands to take on crucial supply chain emissions, which, due to their complexity, may require competitors to work together.

Working towards shared aims will also make it easier to hold brands accountable and for direct comparison between similar companies, as opposed to people looking outside the industry for perspective on how cycling brands are doing.

However, there are still many difficult questions to answer, which are pertinent to cycling, and for other industries too.

Much of the cycling industry is driven by a desire to create ever faster, lighter and better-performing products.

“With every innovation at the moment,” Dennyson says, “you just make things out of date, and you’re left with a shed full of parts.”

While efforts can and should be made to make parts more cross-compatible and to find ways to recycle and bring materials back into production, the difficulty of recycling materials such as carbon fibre and electric bike batteries poses a huge challenge.

It is unfeasible to imagine a brand such as Trek giving up carbon fibre, but consciously shifting to materials such as aluminium alloy and steel that can be recycled might prove a necessity rather than a choice, even if achieving green steel might be a monumental task.

There is also no getting away from the fact brands perpetuate a cycle of neophilia and relentless consumption, so things do have to change, and they have to change fast.

Even though yearly product cycles may fly in the face of making more sustainable and longer-lasting products, Dennyson says this model could potentially play a part in cutting emissions.

Dennyson explains that brands “are constantly in an innovation cycle because they are looking to bring out the newest model every year.”

According to Dennyson, the speed of innovation could lend itself to the bike industry quickly developing more recyclable products to mean less material ends up obsolete and wasted.

While the Climate Commitment letter, and Trek’s report, are welcome, they should really be treated as just the beginning.

“When it comes to the climate,” Isopp says, “what’s most crucial right now is really short-term, concrete actions.”

Will the brands who signed the letter release the promised reports in 2023 and build action plans off the back of them? Will Trek fulfill its 10 promises? Will, rather hopefully, the innovation cycles brands operate in deliver sustainable manufacturing processes? And will all of this happen by 2050, the date outlined for net-zero by the Paris Agreement?

While we have an idea of what some of these actions might look like, we’ll have to wait and see whether these things happen and if the bike industry lives up to its commitments. But in the meantime, it might be worth keeping one proverb in mind: “to know and not do is to not know.”

This feature was originally published in issue 386 of Cycling Plus magazine.

Science & Cycling is an annual conference that brings together cycling’s finest coaches, exercise physiologists and academics to reveal what’s happening at the tip of the peloton, while flagging up what lies ahead down the road.

It’s usually held for two days in the week prior to the Tour de France’s Grand Depart, but Covid forced a change this year to Leuven, Belgium, just prior to the World Championships.

And, despite the labyrinth of passenger locator forms, PCR tests and general Covid confusion, we were there to find out how you can ride stronger and more comfortably in 2022…

1: Learning from the track

Kurt Bergin-Taylor is a former student at Loughborough University, has a PhD in exercise physiology and worked on Cycling Canada’s Olympic track programme before taking up his current role as trainer at Team DSM.

He’s a man who successfully marries academia and real-life application, and says all roadies can learn from his time in Canada.

“We had a relatively disappointing Worlds in Berlin [2020] and what we noticed – especially the women – was that we were really struggling over the first two laps,” recalls Bergin-Taylor.

“Our flying starts were comparable with the best, but our standing starts weren’t. We didn’t have the ability to generate force early on and it was costing us. I wanted to understand why.”

Key to uncovering the problem was the uniqueness of a track bike and its fixed gear. With no gears to rapidly shift through from stop to start, that makes torque – essentially a measure of force acting on the pedals to make the wheels rotate – incredibly important.

Bergin-Taylor played around with gym work, but it wasn’t “muscle-specific” enough.

“We needed on-the-bike work for a very short period of time, so we designed a protocol via the Tacx Utility app. On there, you have an isokinetic mode, where no matter how much force is exerted, the speed is fixed, so it’s useful to train at low revolutions per minute (rpm).

“You also have the isotonic mode, which helps you to apply constant force through the pedal stroke.”

Twice weekly, the Canadian riders’ strength training was replaced with three sets of four-second maximal effort work, comprising up to 12 repetitions each time, with two minutes of rest between sets.

“It was a disgusting session, but it paid off, as 66 per cent of the participants racked up 3km individual-pursuit personal bests,” says Bergin-Taylor.

Kelsey Mitchell, who rode in the velodrome for the first time in 2018, even went on to win sprint gold at the delayed Tokyo Olympics.

Bergin-Taylor concedes it’s much harder to assess your torque generation through the pedal stroke on the road, but it is possible, “though requires much cleaning up of data”.

What’s clearer is that we can all benefit from increasing torque, whether that’s to accelerate from your mates or laying down the hammer uphill. Adapting Bergin-Taylor’s session, over-gear work and low-cadence intervals all help here.

“You should play around with cadence and gear selection, too,” Bergin-Taylor insists.

“We know certain sprinters assume they reach maximal power at 120rpm, but if we dial down into the data, we see they’re actually sprinting at 100rpm because they shove the gear down into 54/11 every time.

“We then start to educate them and say it’s fine to shift down to 54/13, as you’ll hit 120rpm and cycle faster.”

2: Your aero future

Wattshop was created by Dan Bigham, the new British Hour record-holder. Bigham broke Sir Bradley Wiggins’ record in October 2021, riding 54.723km in Grenchen, Switzerland, a day after his partner Joss Lowden set a new women’s hour record.

Bigham’s known as a disruptor and was spotted at the recent mixed relay time trial at the Worlds with something stuffed down his jersey.

Cycling commentator Michael Hutchinson referred to it as a “gigantic monoboob”.

It was revealed soon after to be a radio built into a massive padded pocket to improve aerodynamics. But that wasn’t the sole aero advantage Bigham was seeking in Flanders.

“We supported Dan at the Worlds,” explains Kelly Zwarych, co-founder of slipstreaming pioneers AeroLab Technology, “specifically on the course reconnaissance.”

Zwarych helped to create the water-resistant data logger that sits beneath aerobar extensions, and provides real-time measurements of all the metrics that time triallists are constantly looking to improve for faster times: aerodynamic drag, coefficient of drag area (CdA), coefficient of rolling resistance (Crr), wind speed, wind yaw angle, wind gusts, plus estimations of drivetrain loss.

In short, it provides a next-generation analysis of aero peformance, taking wind-tunnel feedback into the real world.

It’s all designed to answer peak-performance questions: which equipment’s best suited for a given race? What tyres and pressure are best for any given set of wheels? Will a disc wheel really be faster? Why was I slower during the second half of my race but my power was higher?

“Let me show you an example from Ironman [triathlon] racing to highlight the importance of aero,” says Zwarych.

“Two of the best – Lionel Sanders and Jan Frodeno – roughly use the same equipment, weigh the same and generate a similar power output, so as Lionel’s shorter, you’d expect him to be faster.

“But Jan’s often eight minutes faster over the 180km bike [leg of a triathlon]. Looking at Lionel’s power output, we can estimate his CdA and, if he reduced that by around 0.019, he’d be neck-and-neck with Frodeno and fresh for the run.

“This shortfall could be as simple as using the wrong tyres, helmet or hand position.”

Currently, this assessment’s focused on the peak of the performance pyramid, with a six-month lease of the product coming in at nearly $3,000.

There are plans for a more affordable Aero-Lite product to hit the market in spring 2022. This will be under $400 (with UK prices to be confirmed).

In the meantime, simple aerodynamic tweaks every recreational rider can make include wearing close-fitting clothing, zipping up your jersey, spending more time on the drops and shaving your legs.

03: It’s not all about the bike

The wonderfully named Ruby Otter is a lecturer in physiology at the University of Groningen, with a particular interest in the physiological repercussions of stress on endurance performance.

In one study, Otter and her team monitored 150 cyclists, triathletes and runners for two years, asking them to complete a questionnaire, as well as logging their training and using the rate of perceived exertion scale [in Otter’s, 6 is very light; 20 is maximum exertion] to gauge effort.

“We chronicled four areas of stress and recovery: everyday stress, general recovery, sports-specific stress and sports-specific recovery,” says Otter.

“From this, we could calculate a recovery-stress score. We found that as general stress increased, performance suffered. On the other hand, if an athlete’s happy with training and life, they see a performance increase.”

Another study followed a group of runners who’d endured a “negative life event, though I can’t say what because of ethics”.

What Otter did reveal was that the group’s running performance dropped by an average 3.6 per cent, plus oxygen consumption cranked up despite running at similar speeds. “Somehow, stress had altered their coordination.”

Why isn’t entirely clear, though a rise in cortisol levels is associated with impaired performance. What’s clearer, says Otter, is that training too intensely when life becomes stressful is a path to overreaching, even overtraining. If your performance is plummeting, and you’re irritable and recovering slowly, you could already be there.

But if you want empirical evidence, use the sub-maximal test utilised by Otter: the LSCT Test, created by one of the comperes of this year’s conference, Rob Lambert.

It’s a 17-minute sub-maximal effort on an indoor trainer that requires either a heart rate monitor or power meter.

Cycle for six minutes at 60 per cent of your maximum heart rate (HRmax); six minutes at 80 per cent HRmax; and three minutes at 90 per cent HRmax.

Alternatively, this translates to 50 per cent, 72 per cent and 96 per cent of functional threshold power, or FTP, if you train by watts.

There’s a 30-second buffer between stages, leaving you to finish with 90 seconds where you stop cycling and sit up, so you can monitor your heart-rate recovery (HRR).

It’s this final minute that’s perhaps the most telling indication of whether you’re fit to cycle as, if your heart rate struggles to return to normal levels, it’s a sign you’re potentially on the verge of overtraining.

Over time, you’ll notice what your average heart rates are over the first three active stages, becoming your own affordable cycling coach.

It’s a great way to measure stress and impact training workload accordingly.

04: Ride to your strengths

“Your little Bert comes to you and wants to take up cycling. But which discipline? A mountain biker? Or hit the track? Or a roadie? Little Bert asks his parents. He asks his friends. They give him different answers.

“Wouldn’t it be nice for little Bert if he could know exactly which discipline his muscle type was more suited to? Well, now he can…”

Those were the words of Eline Lievens, a post-doctoral researcher in exercise physiology and sports nutrition at Ghent University.

Lievens has spent the past few years delving deep into athletes’ anatomy but, thankfully for said athletes, not via the traditional technique of muscle biopsy.

Though it’s the gold standard, it requires extracting a muscle fibre from the leg via a long needle and can ascertain an athlete’s muscle typology; in other words, whether they’re a slow-twitcher or fast-twitcher.

“My professor [Pro Wim Derave] has invented a non-invasive technique to measure muscle typology by placing an athlete into a scanner and measuring their carnosine levels,” says Lievens.

“Carnosine, which is a protein building block, is found to be more readily available in fast-twitch fibres.” Vis-à-vis, high carnosine equals a prevalence of powerful fast-twitch fibres; low carnosine equals a prevalence of less powerful but more stamina-packed slow-twitch fibres.

Why is knowing this split important? As little Bert now understands, talent ID is one reason, albeit there are definite ethical arguments around enforcing your child to choose a sport that matches their genetics rather than what their friends are doing.

“It can help at an older age, too, as you might not be riding the discipline that you’re genetically best at,” adds Lievens. “We scanned 80 cyclists from road, track, mountain biking and cyclocross, and showed a correlation between disciplines.

“Athletes deemed intermediate or fast typology performed well in BMX and track sprinting. Those with an intermediate and slower typology did well on the road and cyclocross.” This partly explains the success of Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert.

Discovering your muscle typology can also help with pacing strategy, says Lievens, as a slow typology might be best suited to even pacing, while a fast typology should start slow and finish fast.

That’s because athletes with a fast typology fatigue quicker, meaning their training volume and frequency should be lower than the slow group, too.

“Their recovery duration between intense sessions should also be longer,” says Lievens.

“As should their recovery duration between intense exercises within training sessions. And their taper longer.”

This is all well and good, but this machine’s currently stationed in Belgium. Back in Britain, you can find a university that offers muscle-biopsy analysis. Or you can go for the more parochial, albeit non-invasive and pretty accurate methods of physical tests.

These include a 60-second jump test, where you jump continuously for 60 seconds and see how your vertical distance tails off. A dramatic height and then drop-off suggests you’re a fast-twitcher; slow-twitchers are more of a plateau.

05: Platform for success

Victor Scholler holds a PhD in sport science and currently works with the French WorldTour team Groupama-FDJ. He also knows how to make a cyclist comfortable on the bike.

“Through our research, it’s clear that a dynamic bike fit is better than a static alternative,” says Scholler.

A dynamic bike fit is like those delivered by Retül. In general, they’ll involve a comprehensive physiotherapy assessment off the bike before analysing your riding technique on a jig via motion-capture technology. The data is then analysed by the practitioner. But, says Scholler, not all professional bike fits are equal.

“3D motion capture is superior to the 2D system, as it’s a more realistic interpretation of your pedal stroke. But arguably even more important than that is the quality of the person undertaking your bike fitting.”

Training and communication are key, so that you leave your fit sessions with things to work on when implementing any changes. Choose wisely, however, and it’s worth the outlay.

“Dynamic assessment is better than static because it takes into account your actual pedal stroke. Riders vary greatly in how much they flex their ankles.

“This alters your knee angle, which is the main focus when it comes to saddle height because you want your quadriceps to function at their optimal length to deliver power.

“A dynamic fit takes into account factors like hip rocking, too, plus leg differences.”

Scholler supports his advice with research, suggesting knee injuries in the professional ranks are down from 28 per cent to 6 per cent, “most likely due to the improvements in bike fitting”.

That said, Scholler suggests static fitting still has a place. “For a lot of people, especially if you’re new to cycling, it’s probably good enough.

“How you calculate yours is simply measuring your in-seam. Your saddle height should be around 106 to 109 per cent of this figure.”

To do this, stand barefoot against a wall with a thick book between your legs. Pull the book upwards so it feels almost uncomfortable.

Spin around and mark the top of the book on the wall. This is your in-seam. Now measure this distance to the floor, multiply by 1.06 and you have your saddle height, which you can play around with when out riding. It’s an old-school solution that still has its place in the modern world.

If you’re interested in other techniques for determining the correct saddle height for you, check out our full in-depth guide.

This was the seventh edition of the Science & Cycling Conference, which was first held prior to the 2014 Tour de France in Leeds, Yorkshire.

It’s a meeting place for experts in the field of cycling to share their latest research and for companies to give demonstrations of their products. Dates for the 2022 edition have yet to be confirmed.

With the lowest carbon footprint of any mode of public transport, cycling has long been touted as an effective way to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions.

And with transport responsible for 24 per cent of global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, there’s no doubt cycling can play an important role in curtailing the climate crisis.

Yet COP26, which began earlier this week, doesn’t seem so bothered by life on two wheels; the transport day on 10 November includes no mention of cycling (or even walking or trains, for that matter).

This hasn’t stopped cycling from being forced into the debate.

Some people have cycled to Glasgow to highlight cycling’s potential, while a range of organisations have rallied together in order to put pressure on leaders and politicians.

But what will it take to truly unlock the emissions-reducing potential of bicycles and how does cycling fit into the broader conversation of sustainable transport? We spoke to Cycling UK and Chris Boardman to understand cycling’s role in the climate crisis.

Getting cycling in the conversation

A number of cycling advocacy groups have come together to sign an open letter calling on governments to boost levels of cycling in order to meet climate goals effectively and quickly.

One of these organisations is Cycling UK, which is currently at COP26. It has been campaigning around the hashtag #ThisMachineFightsClimateChange on social media, as well as projecting images of bikes with the slogan across landmarks in Glasgow.

Cycling UK, a charitable organisation that promotes all forms of cycling, is also organising a ride as part of the International Day of Action march in Glasgow on 6 November. It has been working with Pedal on Parliament to encourage people to organise rides advocating cycling across the UK, and there are now events planned in Cardiff, Ludlow and Devon.

This is part of a strategy from Cycling UK to raise awareness of cycling in the public and – in a bottom-up approach – to put pressure on politicians and leaders to take cycling seriously.

“We’ve got world leaders at COP26 but, at the end of the day, we need to be realistic,” says Keir Gallagher, Cycling UK’s campaign manager, speaking to BikeRadar.

“We’re not going to get Joe Biden coming to chat to Cycling UK, but we’re trying to gain momentum around COP and get people to take our messages to their local leaders, MPs, MSPs and local councillors.

“Change has to come from the local area. If you want to see more cycle lanes in your city, the best way – wherever you are in the world – is to get cyclists in your area together and put pressure on representatives from below.”

Chris Boardman, who was appointed as Greater Manchester’s first transport commissioner earlier this year, has also been vocal about the potential of cycling during COP26 and will be travelling to the summit next week for the transport day.

Speaking to BikeRadar, Boardman points out how the summit acts as a way for individuals and authorities to forge relationships and, ultimately, move toward a world with more sustainable transport in cities.

One example he cited was Andy Burnham, Manchester’s mayor, travelling to COP26 earlier this week and meeting Anne Hidalgo, his Paris counterpart.

“What really resonated with him as a politician,” Boardman explains, “is Anne Hildalgo said, ‘before I got elected, taxi drivers were sending me death threats and when I got re-elected they were sending me bouquets’.’”

Now, Boardman says, Burnham is set to travel to Paris to learn more about the city’s move to pedestrianisation.

Boardman also highlights the need to sell cycling and for a collective voice, in order to force it into the conversation surrounding future transport.

“It’s like walking,” he says. “Nobody talks about walking. It’s not a very sexy thing. It doesn’t cost billions, and it’s hard to wrap it up into a package that makes people think, ‘wow’. That’s what we have to do. We have to make cycling an attractive package and force it into the conversation.

“Until you scale it, there isn’t a lot of visible money. The cycling industry doesn’t have a collective voice, despite the protestations of the all-powerful cycling lobby.”

No bikes at COP26

What can be swept up into an attractive package – and does present a very visible spend and investment – is electric cars, which form the focus of the COP26 transport day.

Electric vehicles will undoubtedly play a part in a more sustainable future. But there are question marks around implementing the technology, from how people charge them, the cost of investment for an individual and how to make the electricity they run on sustainable, through to where the energy and materials used in production come from.

A new study by the University of Oxford’s Transport Studies Unit says active travel, which encompasses walking and cycling, “should be a cornerstone of sustainability strategies, policies and planning”.

However, sustainability studies and the opinions of established cyclists commonly butt up against how many people currently want to go about their lives.

For perspective, a YouGov poll found 43 per cent of people in Britain would be willing to switch to an electric vehicle, whereas 21 per cent would be willing to take more drastic action and substitute driving for a mode of active travel, such as walking or cycling, or public transport.

By switching to electric cars, people can continue to move around in ways that are not unlike how they move in diesel or petrol cars. “They don’t require you to change anything and make you feel like you’ve done your bit,” Boardman says.

Boardman sees the rise of electric vehicles as likely to go in one of two directions.

“There’s a massive opportunity or an incredible danger,” he says. “You could lock in car use for generations, or you could use this as a reset moment. All those cars need fuel, so you can decide where that fuel is and how much there is.

“You can fill your streets with chargers and move everyone from that type of car to that one, and you take up that public space and lock it in because you’ve invested in it. Or, you can say there’s one charger per household and within 300m of your house there is a car club.”

Cycling UK is also open to the role electric cars will play in the future, but is insistent there is an imbalance as to the future role of four-wheeled vehicles.

“Technology will always have a part to play,” says Gallagher, “but we need to look to the past as well as the future, and to put up some of the money going to electric cars and making flying less carbon-intensive to cycling.”

But how can organisations such as Cycling UK, and advocates including Boardman, help force that change?

Investment and government commitment

Much of Cycling UK’s attention is two-fold: the requirement for investment and the need for cycling to be taken seriously in public planning.

Cycling UK wants to see 10 per cent of the transport budget in the UK put towards cycling, with that percentage increasing over the coming years. This will help the government reach its target of doubling the number of journeys made wholly or partly by bike from 2013 levels by 2025, which Cycling UK has said is not currently going to be met.

“We know that how you get more people cycling is a significant investment in safe cycling infrastructure,” Gallagher says. “All of the evidence from wherever cycling infrastructure has been built – and all the evidence around why people don’t cycle – tells us that’s what we need to see the government doing.”

Despite YouGov’s findings on the reception of electric cars and active travel, Cycling UK says 77 per cent of people support measures in their local areas to encourage walking and cycling.

Gallagher points out how lockdowns last year showed what happens when fewer cars are around.

“We saw people want to cycle when they feel it is safe. We saw a 200 to 300 per cent increase in cycling when the roads were quiet. So that tells us the potential for a shift to more people cycling is there. We also saw a lot more families cycling and a lot more women cycling.”

Making cycling more inclusive, welcoming and diverse is also key. We know that current data on diversity in cycling isn’t promising and if cycling wants to really make a dent in the number of journeys by polluting vehicles, that has to change.

Cycling UK’s long-term goal is to get a million more people in the UK on bikes, but it stresses its aim is “not just to get a million more middle-class white men cycling,” says Gallagher. “It’s to get cycling to reflect the diversity of the population.

“We could just go for the low-hanging fruit, but that’s not what we’re trying to do. It’s pointless unless we get people from all backgrounds feeling like they want to cycle and can cycle.”

Boardman takes a slightly different stance, applauding government plans such as Bus Back Better. The strategy makes it clear funding for buses will not be given if it’s at the detriment of active travel, he says.

On a local level, Manchester has a plan to improve infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians with money behind it.

“The government and Andy Burnham are very much aligned,” says Boardman. “We can deliver their policies because everyone agrees.”

It’s not a position Boardman is used to being in, considering Burnham, Manchester as a whole and the Conservative government come at things from very different ends of the political spectrum: “This is a strange place, and we’re not quite sure what to do with it.”

Boardman does, however, stress the government must remain committed.

“If we’re going to change street space so buses and active travel get a higher priority, we need the government to back that with regulations and funding,” he adds.

“Emotionally rinsing”

The debate around cycling and the future of sustainable transport is a complicated and far-extending web, one that even a brief foray into can leave you feeling bamboozled.

This is, of course, emphasised by the alarming reality of what’s at stake and animating the discussions in the first place: the climate crisis.

There is an oscillation between sensing the importance of even the smallest decisions and commitments when discussing sustainable transport and the debilitating sense of this debate being only one small part of an almighty struggle.

“It’s emotionally rinsing to be involved in it, on a personal level,” he explains. “When you care, it’s all personal and you can’t do anything about that. It eats into your life. The people I’m involved with – and myself – there’s quite a personal cost to it because you are mentally absorbed. But it’s important. It’s not hyperbole to say it’s planet-saving stuff right now.”

In the last 10 years alone, Boardman says we have seen more than 20 billion more miles being driven on unclassified roads – roads not a motorway, A-road or B-road in the UK – which is a 44 per cent increase in a decade.

Ever the optimist when it comes to the opportunity for cycling, Boardman says that, in a perverse way, it should offer the potential for change.

“Look how much shift you can get in a decade. That happened. And we can do that the other way.”

This won’t happen in one fell swoop, but Boardman and Cycling UK are both adamant cycling can play a central role in the fight against climate change, thanks to everything else it can offer beyond being a zero-emissions mode of transport.

“That’s before we even start talking about the health, mental health, reduction in congestion and pollution benefits,” says Gallagher. “Even if it were just for fighting climate change, cycling would be a great tool, but there’s so much more it can offer.”

Ultimately, despite the opportunity presented by active travel, cycling has largely been bypassed by COP26’s global agenda, but the continued progress in cities such as Paris and Manchester, along with the growing voice – and network – of cycling’s advocates, show there’s some hope yet.

As momentum around the climate change discussion grows, cycling needs to stake its claim as a viable solution, according to Boardman.

“What’s fortunate for us is [that you can] pick any crisis and we’re the answer,” Boardman adds. “Health, climate, pollution, social cohesion, equity. We’re not just on a sturdy soapbox, we’re on lots of sturdy soapboxes. Right now, we have to make it a common language.”

For Dr Marlon Lee Moncrieffe, how the world of cycling responded to the wave of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 was a peculiar thing to witness.

Cycling had started to talk about racism in the sport and its lack of diversity. But, as a Black man and former racing cyclist, Moncrieffe was reminded of being in school where he would be asked to leave the room for speaking about issues from a Black perspective and would return to find his white classmates being praised for giving a second-hand interpretation of what he had been saying.

Cycling may have started looking at itself in a way it hadn’t before, but the voices and experiences of Black athletes were conspicuous by their absence.

Moncrieffe’s new book Desire Discrimination Determination – Black Champions in Cycling looks to change that by bringing together the stories of Black athletes in the history of competitive cycling and highlighting the experiences of Black cyclists.

Speaking to Moncrieffe he says: “there are very few books about grassroots and competitive cycling written about Black people, let alone written by a Black person.” And that Desire Discrimination Determination “offers a new paradigm for knowing cycling; a new way of seeing the sport of cycling through the histories and lenses of Black people.”

Co-published by Rapha and Bluetrain Publishing, the book weaves together Moncrieffe’s own experiences as a bike racer, oral testimony and reflections from other cyclists, and research to tackle questions of access, diversity, inclusion and anti-racism in the sport.

The book’s beginnings

The book started life as a research project Moncrieffe, a senior lecturer at the University of Brighton, began in 2009.

Moncrieffe had raced on the road and track in the UK for much of the early 2000s and late 1990s. He came to ask why despite many successful Black cyclists, Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor – the first African American to win a cycling world title and the second African American to win a world championship in any sport in 1899 – appeared to be the only Black cyclist representing success for Black people in the sport.

This was an issue compounded by nationality: “If you are African American, at least there is someone. If you are Black British, there is no one being showcased like Taylor.” It was also compounded by gender. Moncrieffe knew of Black male cyclists, but not Black female professional cyclists.

So he wanted to tell the stories not just of more Black cyclists, but specifically of Black cyclists from the UK across genders.

Moncrieffe says seeing how white cyclists discussed Black cyclists also spurred him to start researching Black athletes in the sport.

“I came across an internet forum discussion where there was so much ignorance being spewed about Black people in cycling, their abilities and potential. I needed to set things straight.

“So, all of this got me thinking about which Black riders I had known of; seen and raced with on the road and track in the UK elite level. The likes of Maurice Burton, Russell Williams, David Clarke, Mark McKay and Christian Lyte came to mind.”

Moncrieffe began to gather oral testimony, photographs and memorabilia from these cyclists. He also spoke to other cyclists who he was introduced to during his research, including Tre Whyte, whose brother Kye Whyte recently won silver in BMX at the Tokyo Olympics.

This research came to form an exhibition in 2018 to 2019 called Made in Britain which looked at the lives, stories and successes of Black British champions in the sport, while asking what prevented them from reaching the iconic status of white British cyclists such as Mark Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins.

But Moncrieffe was interested in expanding the scope of the project beyond Black British cyclists and an encounter on social media led to just this, as well as working with Rapha.

“Guy Andrews of Bluetrain Publishing and I started to follow each other on Twitter. I had seen Bluetrain’s unique approach to book production, but I did not know of their partnership with Rapha at the time.

“Guy and I discussed the possibility of broadening my work to an international account of the Black experience in the sport. A huge task, but doable. So, I took that research and writing challenge on.”

Overlooked stories

As well as an opportunity to set things straight, Moncrieffe used his time researching and writing Desire Discrimination Determination as a way to reflect on his own time as a bike racer.

“I wanted to get a deeper meaning about my own experiences,” he says, “the truth about my own thoughts on the sport – whether illusion or reality.

“The best way for me to do this was to place myself amongst Black elite cyclists who had lived before me [and] who were current to get to know them so that I could get to know about myself as a cyclist.”

The book starts by telling the overlooked stories of some of the earliest Black cyclists and the discrimination they faced as well as the determination they had, from Kittie Knox, defying Jim Crow law in the late 1800s to race her bike, to Abdel-Kader Zaaf, who first raced the Tour de France in 1948 and was a household name in France at the time.

From discussing the history of bike racing in apartheid South Africa where Black-only races proved so popular white riders would defy the law to compete to the acceptance of Black cyclists from the Windrush generation in the UK, Moncrieffe shows how Black cyclists have always been involved in the sport and how there was at times possibly greater acceptance of Black cyclists than there is today.

The following chapters turn to Moncrieffe’s contemporaries as well as the current generation of Black cyclists at the top of the sport including the likes of Justin Williams and Corey Williams of L39ION of LA, Kévin Reza and Nicholas Dlamini, as well as British riders Charlotte Cole-Hossain and Tre Whyte.

The voices of these cyclists come together to explore different aspects of their sport, from how they got into the sport, how they rose to the top, and the discrimination they faced at all levels of the sport.

“Nothing really surprised me”

Many of the cyclist’s in Desire Discrimination Determination speak of having the same experiences of racism in the sport. Slurs and abuse while out cycling or at races litter the accounts and stories of disqualifications based on phoney reasoning or no reasoning at all are common too.

Russell Williams, an 18 times national champion, speaks in-depth of his experiences of how selectors at British Cycling would pick riders slower than him preventing him from reaching major competitions like the Olympics – decisions he has alleged were influenced by the colour of his skin.

Maurice Burton also talks of his experiences of racism and lack of support that persisted regardless of his success in winning National championships and representing Britain at the 1974 Commonwealth Games. When he realised he wasn’t going to be selected for the 1976 Olympics, he moved to Belgium, frustrated at the racism in British cycling.

These stories aren’t just in the past, either, with many of the rider’s who are racing today sharing their experiences of racism and abuse.

Nicholas Dlamini, for instance, recounts witnessing a white cyclist push Natnael Berhane off the road, and Kévin Reza expresses his shock at being the target of racist abuse from Gianni Moscon during the 2017 Tour of Romandie.

Tre Whyte talks about how his other brother Daniel had to leave the British Cycling talent team because he was treated differently to others, and how when he joined the team he had people accusing him of having stolen a car that he, in fact, owned.

“Nothing really surprised me about the racism that I would discover from the cyclist’s experiences,” Moncrieffe says.

But he does say that by weaving together the personal stories and reflections from different cyclists, Moncrieffe found there was a congruency of lived experiences among the cyclists he spoke to, which in turn helped many of the people he spoke to understand their own experiences.

“This is how I have been able to make meaning,” Moncrieffe says. “For those cyclists who took part, I know it was an education and process of making new discoveries on their experiences for them as well.”

Some of the incidents of racism in the book he still found shocking, but he is also keen to point out how many remarkable stories there are in the book too.

Russell Williams describes falling in love with cycling as a kid and how visiting Herne Hill Velodrome, south London, was like “walking into his heaven”. Moncrieffe reflects on this as “the beauty of childhood innocence”, which he also sees in Luli Adeyemo’s story: “Her rise from not being able to ride a BMX bike at the beginning of the year,” Moncrieffe says, “to becoming World Champion at the end of that same year – phenomenal!”

There are many incredible stories in Desire Discrimination Determination, but the book paints a picture of a sport that doesn’t look particularly close to leaving discrimination behind.

The future

Desire Discrimination Determination closes by considering what the future of cycling will look like, how cycling can possibly take steps to end racism in the sport, as well as improve representation at elite levels.

The response of the cycling world to the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd puts quite how far there is to go into perspective.

In the book, Moncrieffe points out how in Britain the Football Association, the England and Wales Cricket Board and the Rugby Football Union all publicised their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, but we heard nothing from the national body for cycling.

This was particularly disappointing for Moncrieffe who had worked with the organisation.

“I produced educational materials for their staff and for dissemination amongst their membership,” he writes. “I provided them with Black British histories in cycling for promotion of anti-racist education.”

Some organisations and individuals did come forward to speak out about racism in the sport.

Brian Cookson, president of British Cycling 1997 to 2013, admitted to not having addressed the whiteness of the sport. USA Cycling released a statement saying how it understands “we have been part of the problem in the inequality and representation of our sport” stating that it would use its positions to fight for equality.

But Moncrieffe also documents how many at a grassroots level felt that the statements released by organisations like USA Cycling didn’t go far enough, and needed to be followed up with concrete action and change.

In the professional ranks, little acknowledgement was made of the protests apart from at the Tour de France where Kévin Reza, the only Black rider at the race, rode at the front of the peloton on the final day and some riders wore face masks with ‘No to Racism’ written on them at the start of the Stage.

Moncrieffe highlights that organisations like the Black Cyclist Network and the Black Riders Association in the UK, alongside many others in the USA, are changing cycling from a grassroots level.

He also points out the positive impact the likes of the Williams brothers are having, acting as role models for young Black people and pushing for change from the top of podiums. But he is less hopeful about representation at the top of the sport changing any time soon.

“It will take acceptance, money, and long-term investment,” he says, elaborating that the research in Desire Discrimination Determination shows how “recent and current opportunities given to Black African riders have been diminishing and have been to some extent superficial.”

“Black-British or African-American representation on a regular basis in the ‘Classics’ and Grand Tours,” he feels, “is unlikely very soon.”

To change this, cycling needs to change from the ground up by taking steps such as diversifying leadership, investing in anti-racist education, setting up projects to get more people from diverse backgrounds into the sport, as well as providing the support and mechanisms to protect them.

This would hopefully help to remove the barriers the likes of Maurice Burton and Russell Williams faced in the past and shift the presence of Black people in the sport away from novelty and towards normality.

Moncrieffe ends the book by saying how the rise of cycling in Africa could be one place where the seeds of change could be found and a genuine revolution could take place.

The Tour of Rwanda already attracts WorldTour teams and the UCI World Road Race Championships are set to take place on the continent in 2025. Moncrieffe also says long-term high-level investment could lead to the same world-leading excellence in cycling that Kenya and Ethiopia have achieved in track and field athletics.

Desire Discrimination Determination – Black Champions in Cycling feels like it sows the seeds of change itself. It draws together many voices putting Black cyclists in control of their own narrative, creating a record that is greatly needed. It reveals how cycling is a sport that has always struggled with racism and representation, overlooked its own champions, and still has much work to do.

There is much to learn and unravel from Moncrieffe’s work, as it documents some of the most appalling moments in the history of the sport and challenges the perspective many have of cycling. But the book is also a celebration of some of the greatest champions the sport has ever seen and shines a light on some of the sport’s most marvellous moments too.

As Moncrieffe says: “Enjoy it.”

You can purchase Desire Discrimination Determination – Black Champions in Cycling via the Rapha website. 

As you’ll have discovered by reading our Bike of the Year 2021 coverage, the Boardman SLR 9.4 AXS Disc, which took our overall Road Bike of the Year award, is a superbly crafted machine.

The all-round performance is stunning, and its component selection and build utilise some of the smartest choices around. It’s taken our ultimate accolade for 2021 by being a bike that balances all aspects incredibly well. It’s comfortable, rapid, smooth and huge fun to ride, while being good value for money at £2,700 with an impressive suite of parts, including the latest SRAM Rival AXS groupset.

The twin jewels in its Bike of the Year crown, however, are the frame and fork: the heart of any great bike, and an area in which the British-based Boardman team focused on to ensure the new SLR chassis would blend the comfort, aerodynamic and performance capabilities we loved.

We spoke to Boardman Bikes’ product manager, Matt Dowler, and design manager, James Ryan, to get the inside story on the bike.

BikeRadar Meets podcast | Boardman Bikes

Read on for our Q&A with Matt Dowler and James Ryan, and more on the Boardman SLR 9.4 AXS Disc – or listen to the latest episode of the BikeRadar Podcast below.

We were joined by Matt and the man behind the brand, Chris Boardman, to talk Bike of the Year victory, new tech, old tech, gravel, ebikes and the future of cycling in the UK.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the BikeRadar Podcast via Apple or Spotify, so you don’t miss an episode.

The concept

In designing the latest SLR, the Boardman team quickly defined the key areas in which it had to excel.

First up was aerodynamics, an area that the Boardman brand has always held close to its heart, particularly given the key role drag-saving played in founder Chris Boardman’s illustrious cycling career; one that saw him win Olympic track medals and claim UCI Hour Records, not to mention Tour de France prologue successes.

Because of an over-emphasis on aerodynamics, bikes are sometimes heavy and hard riding; or in the pursuit of being as light as possible, bikes overcompensate in stiffness, making for a harsh ride. Alternatively, by chasing a light overall weight, brands can sometimes compromise the drivetrain stiffness and the result is a bike that feels sloppy and flexible.

The final concern – and one which we applaud – is its suitability for British riding conditions. Our poor roads and often inclement weather ensured the SLR had generous clearances for wider road bike tyres and proper mudguard fittings.

BikeRadar: The SLR successfully straddles the space between a race and an endurance bike. Was that the original concept?

Matt Dowler: Very much so – the development brief we worked up with Chris Boardman for the SLR was all about efficiency. That’s subtly different from the focus on pure speed with a race bike, or outright comfort on an endurance bike. Marketing a ‘WorldTour replica bike’ to people riding fast club rides or sportives doesn’t make sense to us, but we all love the thrill of beating a personal best, so the SLR is designed to deliver speed without some of the compromises on comfort, cost or usability that can come with more race-focused or endurance bikes. That’s not to say the SLR isn’t fast enough to race on, though, as Paralympian Sarah Storey will be riding hers in the Paralympic Games road race in Tokyo this summer.

Historically, we used to run two separate SLR platforms – the Endurance and the Race. However, with its ultra-high stiffness, aggressive geometry and low weight, the use case for the SLR Race was narrow. The SLR Endurance had a great road bike geometry for long, fast rides, which we kept, but it wasn’t particularly aerodynamic and lacked tyre clearance. With the new platform, we combined the best features of both older bikes and improved aerodynamic performance and comfort to improve efficiency. Less aero drag equals less effort for the same speed, and greater comfort reduces fatigue over time helping people to ride faster for longer.

BikeRadar: You’ve put in plenty of UK-friendly design touches, including increased tyre clearance and provision for proper mudguards. Was the SLR always intended as a year-round UK bike?

Matt Dowler: Absolutely. Chris’s most popular social media posts are always about mudguards – it’s fair to say he isn’t a fan of a soggy bottom. Not everyone has the luxury of multiple bikes for different times of the year, so why wouldn’t we put features into the bike that make using it year-round more enjoyable? Clearance for wide tyres and/or mudguards, and consistent disc braking without wearing down expensive rims means using a ‘best’ bike in the winter is a real option now, particularly with the more affordable Rival AXS cassette and chain.

BikeRadar: Can you expand upon the development process and what tech was utilised in the SLR’s creation?

James Ryan: We put a lot of time into the development from the original concept designs through to extensive CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) modelling and a lot of work into the carbon layup with FEA (Finite Element Analysis). All of this was using the computing power available to us in conjunction with our manufacturing partners.

Matt Dowler: Once we’ve got through all of this extensive research and development, we needed to prove the CFD results were matched in the wind tunnel and in real-world ride testing. After running the SLR’s initial fork through its paces, we weren’t happy and so we went back to the drawing board. I wouldn’t let it go until I was 100 per cent happy with it. It meant the SLR ended up being six months late and I really thought I might lose my job over that! In my defence, the bike had to be right, and a Bike of the Year award has proven it was a good decision!

BikeRadar: When balancing aero and weight, was there one of those that had more of an emphasis?

Matt Dowler: We focused on balancing aero performance, frame stiffness and ride quality to create an efficient bike, and the comparatively low weight is almost a by-product of this. The weight savings you can make in a frame and fork give such a tiny performance benefit even on a very steep climb, so it wasn’t really a specific target. However, there’s something special about the way a light bike feels to ride, so we set limits on tube sizing and shape within our CFD research programme to ensure that we didn’t add in too much weight.

The new SLR kept the sub-900g frame weight of the old SLR Endurance, but when we put it in our wind tunnel to validate our modelling, we saw around a 10-watt reduction in aero drag at 40km/h, giving a genuine performance benefit. We actually produced some lighter prototypes using different carbon layups, but they were hasher on broken roads, so the negatives outweighed the positives of saving 50g.

BikeRadar: You have been able to produce both a lightweight frame and fork at a complete bike price few can match. How?

Matt Dowler: Boardman has always been about delivering outstanding performance for the money, so we’re super-efficient in how we design, manufacture, market and sell our bikes. We work directly with factories, cutting out any middlemen, and we sell directly to customers through Halfords and Tredz.

BikeRadar: One of the major highlights of the 9.4 SLR is the new wireless SRAM Rival AXS groupset. You are one of the first major brands to bring out a bike with this user-friendly tuneable and connected gear system.

Matt Dowler: We’ve always had a good relationship with SRAM. We were the first UK brand to launch a Red eTap bike back in 2015 (AiR 9.8 eTap) and when they told us about Rival AXS, we knew straight away how much of a game-changer it was going to be.

BikeRadar: The SLR’s build has clearly been well researched, with the Alexrims wheelset, for example, not coming from one of the standard rim brands but offering an impressive spec.

James Ryan: Features and spec choices that make a difference are a really big part of what we do at Boardman and on every bike that we design. We focus on the components that are going to have the most positive impact for riders, rather than the flashy or the headline-grabbing stuff.

Matt Dowler: We run an extensive component sourcing and testing programme to make sure they have a great performance versus cost ratio. The Alexrims RXD3 wheels we’ve used on the SLR are a great example of this – they use a light, wide 30mm-deep rim with quality cartridge bearing hubs for a total weight of 1,550g. For the same performance level from Mavic or Fulcrum, for example, the bike would cost £250-300 more.

Any investments we make have to be paid for in bike sales, so they have to deliver a genuine benefit to riders to justify them. We’d much rather our product does the talking, so we invest in research and development and tooling for our frames to get them just right for customer requirements, rather than spending millions on a WorldTour team sponsorship to buy credibility and adding that cost into RRPs.

With thousands of miles ridden on roads and gravel tracks, and some 32 bikes tested, our 2021 Bike of the Year test has, once again, been gruelling but rewarding, intense but inspiring, and plenty of fun.

The 2021 edition has also been far from normal with a backdrop of a global pandemic, unprecedented shortages and pricing pressures from a combination of global factors and political decisions.

• Boardman SLR 9.4 AXS crowned Road Bike of the Year 2021
• Boardman SLR 9.4 AXS Disc Carbon review

My usual collaborative efforts when it comes to whittling down to the winning bikes have also been disrupted, with group riding and round-the-table discussions over coffee, beer and good food in Gran Canaria or San Remo replaced with Microsoft Teams and plenty of hard yards in the Wiltshire countryside that serves as my usual testing ground.

That hasn’t made our discussions any less deep or the arguments less heated, though, with myself and my three test pilots all in agreement that the final four bikes are the best on offer in 2021. And yet we all have our own favourites among this glittering group.

We’ll be bringing you full reviews of all 32 bikes tested for Bike of the Year 2021. For now, however, it’s time to reveal the final four – and tell the story of how we chose this year’s winner.

Giant TCR Advanced Pro 1 Disc

Ade and I are in firm agreement that Giant’s TCR Advanced Pro 1 package, while not cheap, is of exceptional value. The finishing kit is top-grade, the SLR-1 wheelset is superb and the Ultegra groupset is completed with Giant’s own dual-sided power meter built into the crankset. Ade has a history of training with power meters when riding some of Europe’s toughest sportives.

• Price: £4,199
• Weight: 7.65kg (L)
• Frame: Advanced-Grade composite
• Fork: Advanced-Grade composite
• Gears: Shimano Ultegra 52/36, 11-30
• Crank: Giant integrated crank-based Power Pro power meter
• Brakes: Shimano Ultegra hydraulic disc
• Wheels: Giant SLR-1 42mm Carbon Disc WheelSystem
• Tyres: Giant Gavia Course 1 Tubeless 25mm
• Saddle: Giant Fleet SL
• Seatpost: Giant Variant composite
• Stem: Giant Contact SL
• Bar: Giant Contact SL

Cannondale SuperSix Evo Carbon Ultegra

Next up it’s our resident ultra-marathon runner and Cycling Plus magazine’s senior art editor, Steve. He’s chuffed with the updated Cannondale SuperSix Evo (£3,950) with its light frame, carbon wheels and improved cockpit over 2020’s Bike of the Year-winning bike.

Steve reckons the bike suits his riding because it’s such a great climbing companion and has the comfort his marathon endeavours in the saddle deserve. Well, that and the looks. “I love the understated Cannondale graphics that contrast with the bike’s metallic plum colourway,” says Steve.

• Price: £3,950
• Weight: 8.13kg (58cm)
• Frame: BallisTec Carbon
• Fork: BallisTec Carbon
• Gears: Shimano Ultegra (52/36, 11-32)
• Chainset: Cannondale 1 chainset with 52/36 FSA chainrings
• Brakes: Shimano Ultegra hydraulic disc with 160mm Ice-Tech rotors
• Wheels: Cannondale HollowGram 35 carbon disc
• Tyres: Vittoria Rubino Pro Graphene 2.0 25mm
• Saddle: Prologo Nago S
• Seatpost: HollowGram SL 27 KNØT carbon
• Stem: HollowGram KNØT
• Bar: HollowGram SAVE SystemBar carbon

Rondo HVRT CF1 Ultegra

Now the proud father of two young children, Rob’s priorities have changed somewhat and he’s looking for a bike that’ll be fast but also versatile with it, due to space being at a premium.

The Rondo HVRT (£4,699) hits the right notes. With its Twin-Tip forks, this clever piece of design can be an aero-road bike with speedy handling or a long-distance endurance bike that’s more stable; a swift switch of wheels makes it a gravel bike par-excellence, too.

• Price: £4,699
• Weight: 8.41kg (L)
• Frame: Carbon
• Fork: Carbon
• Gears: Shimano Ultegra, 52/36, 11-30
• Brakes: Shimano Ultegra Disc
• Wheels: Hunt/Rondo Carbon Limitless Aerodynamicist 44 carbon tubeless-ready
• Tyres: Continental Grand Prix 5000 25mm
• Saddle: Fabric ALM Ultimate
• Seatpost: Rondo CF aero
• Stem: Rondo CF
• Bar: Easton EC70 aero carbon

Boardman SLR 9.4 Rival AXS

And yet the Boardman genuinely surprised me. I tested the mechanical Ultegra-equipped 9.2 last year and the chassis, frame and fork combination, drivetrain efficiency and compliant comfort all made for a bike that rides beautifully. That the sub-900g frame and sub-350g fork are respectably lightweight only adds to the charm.

• Price: £2,700
• Weight: 8.01kg (L)
• Frame: Carbon
• Fork: Carbon
• Gears: SRAM Rival eTap AXS (46/33, 10-30)
• Brakes: SRAM Rival hydraulic disc
• Wheels: Alexrims RXD3 30mm
• Tyres: Vittoria Rubino Pro Graphene 2.0 28mm
• Saddle: Boardman SLR
• Seatpost: Boardman SLR carbon
• Stem: Boardman Elite alloy
• Bar: Boardman Elite alloy

Ebb and flow

I’ve struggled so much to pick an overall Bike of the Year winner. During the online debates, I’ve found myself ebbing and flowing between these four brilliant bikes.

The Giant TCR’s ride is second nature to me. I love its responsive handling and the way it climbs is out of this world. The Pro 1 package is pricey at £4,199, but believe me when I say that it’s a great-value package.

The tubeless wheelset (which comes set up tubeless with excellent tyres) weighs just 1,452g a pair and alone would set you back £1,200. Add in a carbon seatpost, carbon bar, full mechanical Ultegra groupset, a dual-sided Giant Power-Pro power meter built into the Ultegra crank (which again retails for £800) and you’re getting a serious amount of bike for the money. The Pro 1 is such a complete package that the thought of upgrades should be put far from your mind.

The Cannondale SuperSix has handling that I tend to judge all other race-style bikes by. It’s a bike that gives me absolute confidence when heading downhill, knowing that it’ll fly through corners holding its line with pin-point accuracy. It also refuses to be flustered on less than ideal surfaces.

The Rondo HVRT is adaptable, versatile and rapid, and in the new Ultegra package with Hunt’s Aerodynamicist wheelset it’s an impressive package. Add in the Easton carbon bar and Fabric ALM saddle, which on its own retails at a penny shy of £200, and you can rest assured that the Rondo also isn’t in need of upgrades anytime soon. You’ll just want to get your hands on that all-important second set of gravel wheels for some guaranteed off-road fun.

We’ve all come to feel very positive about the Boardman 9.4 SLR. The red-to-black fade paintwork is a great-looking design, and the wireless drivetrain gives the bike a clean and uncluttered finish.

The great debate

Our online debates centred around me and my three fellow adjudicators arguing their corners. Steve talks about setting PBs on the Evo; Rob dreams of hitting the road one day and gravel the next on the HVRT and Ade enthuses about making the most of his training rides with power measurement on tap, thanks to Giant’s all-in package. I, meanwhile, celebrate the Boardman and its ace in the deck: SRAM’s new 12-speed wireless Rival AXS groupset.

We all agreed on the Boardman’s brilliant frame and fork, and that it’d cleverly gone outside of the standard brands and sourced a light, great value alloy wheelset. The Alexrims, which offer tubeless compatibility and a low weight without the price penalty of carbon, help keep the SLR down to more than £1,000 cheaper than its closest finalist.

The real proof, however, was judging everyone’s thoughts on the bike as a whole. The Boardman has great handling, located in the sweet-spot between endurance stability and a nimble race feel – I compared it to both Cannondale’s sporty Synapse and BMC’s ground-breaking GF01 (which Steve agreed with wholeheartedly as his own bike is a GF01 Disc) in our round-laptop talks.

The addition of Rival AXS, with its eTap shift logic (right-hand button harder gear, left-hand lighter, both buttons together shifts the front mech) was celebrated as soon as everyone became accustomed to its intuitive, accurate and dependable shifting.

Ade and I soon delved into the SRAM AXS specifics of the Boardman. Ade has previously spent plenty of time on a Canyon with Red AXS, and one of my own bikes is equipped with Force AXS, so we’re both used to riding with AXS in its more expensive forms. And both of us genuinely couldn’t feel a difference in shifting performance between SRAM’s three Rival, Red and Force AXS groupsets.

Impressive stuff for the Boardman’s ‘cheaper’ Rival setup and the weight increase for the lower groupset is less than you’d think, only 233g heavier in a similar 2x setup than Force.

Things become clearer

Every year I say that it gets tougher for us to pick a Bike of the Year winner as the standard of bikes is increasing and improving annually. This year we’ve got a stunning display of bikes.

The Cannondale as the 2020 Bike of the Year currently wears the crown. The Rondo HVRT has form in being the winning bike from 2019. The TCR is also a former champion (in a previous form) from 2018, and each is a deserving winning bike in its own right. If we get hyper-critical – and we really have to – then things become a little clearer.

The Rondo, with its anomalous attitude in the world of road bikes, has plenty going for it. As we see more and more niches and sub-niches – from race bikes to all-road bikes, aero-road bikes, endurance bikes, gravel bikes, fast-gravel, bikepackers – this polished bike hits so many targets with impressive competence that I’m sure it has versatility as the first marker in its DNA.

The only downside with the 8.41kg Rondo is that it’s heavier than its rivals (though by no means a porker).

Cannondale’s SuperSix Evo Carbon Ultegra takes the (very minimal) criticism we had of the bike last year and makes upgrades using the aerodynamic KNØT stem and matching aero HollowGram KNØT Save bar.

The new cockpit looks superb and makes the most of the Evo’s internal cable and hose routing to its fullest. The stem, with its cradle design and bolt-thru clamp, still offers rotational adjustment but loses the forward-facing clamp, and the integrated GPS mount unit keeps everything smooth and clean.

You’re getting the full Evo experience here, in a bike made famous by Cannondale’s pro-tour EF riders. Yet money is an issue. Cannondale has been hit hard by pricing pressures, meaning this Evo has seen increases and, in flat terms compared to the 2020 bike, it’s nigh-on £1,000 more. If you can stretch to the £3,950 price tag you won’t be disappointed, it’s just a lot of cash for most of us.

The Giant TCR Advanced Pro 1 is also a heap of money at £4,199, but the latest TCR is absolutely the finest race bike Giant has ever produced. You’ve no idea how crushing that feels to someone whose pride and joy is the previous but now-not-quite-as-good model that’s had a huge amount spent on it!

For the UK, though, I’d like to have seen Giant complete the bike with 28mm tyres rather than the narrower 25s it comes with. Similar to the Cannondale, it offers a pure-race experience with a specification that (besides the slimmer tyres) is nigh-on flawless. Plus, it comes with an accurate power meter that’ll help you improve your fitness and riding prowess. These gains come at a price but they are worth it.

Coming up like a true underdog is the Boardman SLR 9.4. Yes, its three rivals all come with pretty special carbon wheels, hence the jump in price from the SLR’s £2,700 to the Cannondale’s £3,950, Giant’s £4,199, and Rondo’s £4,699. Yet the numbers on the Boardman’s ‘modest’ Alexrims wheels impress as the RXD3 are fully tubeless compatible and weigh in at a very respectable 1,550g a pair.

This is compared to the Giant’s 1,404g a pair with the same 19mm internal measure, the Cannondale’s just shy of 1,500g weight, and the Hunt wheels on the Rondo tipping the scales at around 1,300g, so they aren’t that far apart for a much lower initial outlay.

When it comes to the complete bikes, the Boardman’s light sub-900g frame and feathery 350g fork come into play – only the flyweight 7.65kg Giant beats out the Boardman’s 8.01kg weight, with the Cannondale at 8.13kg and Rondo at 8.41kg.

Deep data dive

Weight is only one factor, of course. When it comes to victory, what the Boardman does and does exceptionally well is ride. The handling is swift, so it’s exciting when riding fast, but it never feels unsettled or twitchy. When it comes to gearing, the SRAM Rival AXS controls – and some may call this sacrilege – are simply better than the mechanical Ultegra, which has long been the benchmark of bikes between £2,750 and £4,500.

Mechanical Ultegra is superb for cable-operated gear changing, and none of us four could find ourselves justifying upgrading to Dura-Ace, for instance, but Rival AXS is just simply easier to live with. Maintenance is simpler because there’s no complex internal cable routing and the motorised shifting doesn’t deviate because a cable is rubbing, stretched, contaminated or any other external factor. With AXS, the smart electronic brain simply tells the motors in the mechs to move the designated amount.

The app integration that comes as standard with AXS brings the humble bicycle right into the modern data-driven age. It warrants plenty of praise for the way it offers more analysis opportunities for your riding because the app will record a ride with all the usual metrics: speed, distance, moving time, heart rate (if paired with a heart-rate monitor) and full GPS tracking, which it uploads to Strava automatically. It also adds in useful component data.

So if you’ve ever wondered how many times you shift gears in a ride, your overall gear usage, or the time and distance you spend in each gear, then you’ll wonder no more.

If you’re using a power meter (and SRAM offers a Rival power meter upgrade for just £230) it’ll add those metrics. If you run a Quarq TyreWiz (a Bluetooth device that fixes to your tyre valves to measure and transmit pressures) then even tyre pressure is relayed.

The app can also provide both power and heart-rate analysis, so with the AXS app you can take a deep dive into your ride data before learning from it and using it for constructive training improvements.

The app even helps take the guesswork out of getting the right gear. You can set the bike up in compensation mode, so that when you shift the front mech to the other chainring it’ll automatically shift the rear to put you in the next best gear. Or you can go full-assist and you only need worry about rear mech shifts because it’ll change up or down at the front for you.

All of this tech was only available previously on SRAM Force- or Red-equipped bikes starting at prices around £7,000 and up. That you can get these kind of tech advancements, that truly offer a better ride experience for much less outlay, is impressive. Especially when bike pricing has been under so much pressure.

Underdog story

Boardman should be praised for not only taking a leap into the unknown but being one of the first brands to get on board with SRAM’s affordable AXS.

It’s also worth noting that Boardman was also one of the first brands to use SRAM road components back when mechanical Double Tap launched, as well as the original eTap.

It also deserves just as much praise for producing a chassis made from high-grade carbon that’s superbly designed for all-riders, all-year-round with its big tyre clearances and proper mudguard provisions not dimming the excitement of a race bike and the comfort of an endurance machine.

That you can buy a bike this good to ride, this great-looking and packed with this much value from Halfords, the same place as you can buy a pine-scented dangling tree for your rear-view mirror, is perhaps even more remarkable.

The British-designed SLR is the epitome of the plucky underdog beating out more established competition, just as its founder Chris Boardman was the plucky time trialist from a small island taking on the world’s best riders back in Barcelona at the 1992 Olympics.

When it comes to 2021’s Bike of the Year, it’s been a stellar competition and each of the final four could take the overall title. Yet the Boardman SLR 9.4 represents a perfect mix of performance, speed, comfort, agility and prudence to your pocket. In these uncertain times, it’s the bike to buy with your head and your heart.

The Rapha Festive 500 sees tens of thousands of cyclists worldwide ride 500km between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Now a new event – the Fasted 500 – has challenged cyclists to ride 500km through the month of Ramadan.

The Fasted 500 was the brainchild of Zahir Nayani, a lawyer and cyclist from Swindon, who saw the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Muslim communities and a need to encourage an active lifestyle. The Fasted 500 has required participants to ride an average of 17km a day through the holy month of Ramadan, from 12 April to 12 May.

“Having personally completed Rapha’s iconic Festive 500 on a couple of occasions, a challenge of a similar vein was the obvious choice,” says Nayani.

“Open-source data confirms the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on BAME communities, with some pointing to potential factors such as many of us being from communities of extended families, to perhaps having more presence on the NHS frontline, to even having genetic predispositions to Covid-19. There’s not much we can do about any of those, but one thing we do have control over is our lifestyle choices.

“While Muslims don’t tend to drink or smoke, boy can we eat! In light of that backdrop, it became apparent just how overdue a targeted challenge of this sort was.”

Ramadan involves a month of fasting and requires Muslims to abstain from eating or drinking anything during daylight. “The main challenge is ensuring we’re geared up nutritionally to undertake the challenge by consuming sufficient fluids and balanced meals between sunset and sunrise,” says Nayani.

“By breaking up the distance over the month, it becomes pretty achievable and a great way to get some headspace for an hour or so. Outside of the pandemic, Ramadan can be a pretty busy month with congregational night prayers and hosting evening meals for friends and family, so there’s also the practical aspect that needs to be carefully managed to ensure that we’re able to fit cycling into our busy diaries.”

Nayani describes the response to “what began as a passing idea in the midst of the third lockdown” as “staggering”, with the challenge garnering support from Komoot, Adventr.cc, Wizard Works and Bristol Bicycles, as well as endorsement from Rapha.

Riders can buy a commemorative Fasted 500 roundel, with all profits donated to Cycling Sisters Bristol, an initiative to encourage more women to start cycling.

“Perhaps even more impressive is the sheer extent of our participant base,” says Nayani. “We have people taking part in Malaysia, Indonesia, Holland, Australia and the USA.”

Global appeal

Musa Akinosho, Meena Aladdin and Izzat Roslan are among those riding the Fasted 500, based in the UK, USA and Malaysia respectively.

Akinosho has been riding for more than ten years, first cycling to work but now riding as a member of his local club. He says he signed up to the challenge to get his cycling “mojo” back.

“I’ve been working from home since the start of the pandemic, so haven’t had much consistent exercise and have slowly been putting on some weight,” says Akinosho. “So when I heard of this, I thought it would be the perfect kick-start I needed to enjoy riding my bike again.”

The Midlands-based rider is on track to ride double the distance – 1,000km – during Ramadan. Despite that, Akinosho says the key to his success has been in understanding his limits.

“It’s important that I don’t overstep my boundary,” he says. “I have more energy to ride first thing in the morning so I usually aim to leave the house just after sunrise when there’s visible light – it also means there’s no traffic either.”

Washington DC-based Aladdin is a long-distance runner turned “endurance junkie” cyclist, who switched to cycling three years ago and found her calling in gravel racing. She’s completed two half-Everest rides and made an Everesting attempt in October 2020 but withdrew after falling sick, having climbed 24,000ft (7,315m) of the 29,028ft (8,848m) target.

Aladdin is targeting 800 fasted miles (1,288km) through Ramadan and has called on her experience as a long-distance runner, having previously continued racing through the month, albeit at limited distances (predominantly 5km and 10km races).

“Ramadan training is unique in that a lot of observers scale exercise down or completely take the month off, and most coaches won’t come near it, as it’s a different type of challenge,” says Aladdin.

“Many coaches have no exposure to athletes undertaking a month long fasted and they don’t know what can push athletes into the danger zone,” she says. “Fasting is a stressor, without a doubt, and the only thing I liken it to is altitude training, in that you’re forcing your body to adapt under less than ideal conditions.”

Aladdin has adapted her training by reducing the intensity through the month of Ramadan. “If I want to go long – and long is relative here, 40 to 50 miles in Ramadan, whereas my normal long is 80+ miles with moderate climbing – I simply need to cut my efforts way down,” she says.

“I watch my heart rate and keep my heart rate at zones 1-2 – right in that fat burning zone. I know from long-distance running that I have about 2 to 3 hours before I use up my glycogen stores. It’s likely similar in cycling but I start at an even lower heart rate and effort.”

Aladdin says she hasn’t followed a training plan through the month and takes one day at a time. “I plan my ride after seeing how my body feels on a particular given day,” she says. “Perceived exertion is also a really good indicator, most of my efforts have been at conversational pace.”

While Akinosho and Aladdin have continued to ride in a fasted state, Roslan – who started riding while living in Brisbane, Australia, in 2015 before returning to Malaysia, where he competes in road races and criteriums – has taken the opposite approach and mostly rides at night.

“For the last five years, I have been riding while fasting, but it’s been counterproductive to my performance,” he says. “I did lose weight, but just couldn’t climb despite being 2 to 3kg lighter than my ideal racing weight. So this Ramadan I switched to night riding so I can fuel before, during and after.”

Roslan says riding during Ramadan requires an acceptance that he won’t hit the numbers he is used to seeing. While he focuses on high-quality foods and lots of fluids during the window he can eat and drink, the challenge has become less about fuelling his riding and more about adjusting to the demands of riding at night.

“My body clock just went haywire,” he says. “You don’t go to bed until midnight or so, and then you have to wake up [before sunrise] at around 5.30am for early breakfast before fasting starts for the day.”

Getting enough sleep and recovery time has also been a challenge for Akinosho and Aladdin. During Ramadan, Muslims have pre-dawn meals, referred to as suhoor or sehri, before breaking fast after sunset for the evening meal, known as iftar or ftoor.

This year, Ramadan coincides with the approach of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the days gradually getting longer, with the fast more than two hours longer at the end of the month than at the start in the UK.

“Napping after rides helps a ton with recovery,” says Aladdin, “especially because I can’t replenish my calories or hydrate until after my rides.”

She adds: “Ramadan is difficult and, even fasted, easy efforts can take their toll.”

Akinosho and Aladdin’s longest rides during Ramadan have approached 100km, while Roslan’s rides have included a fast, flat-out Friday night group ride.

“It’s called the ‘Friday corpse’ because it makes you feel like one after the ride,” he says. “You are racing for 86km out and back to KL International Airport and the average speed has been nothing short of 40km/h. That was good fun and hurts a lot.”

Breaking down barriers

Akinosho, Aladdin and Roslan have all found inspiration in the stories shared by other riders during the Fasted 500, and the community of like-minded riders established through the challenge.

“I always thought I was alone and never met anyone who continued training during the month of Ramadan,” says Aladdin. “I was really pleasantly surprised to stumble upon Fasted 500 and it afforded me a community of like-minded people. It didn’t change my training – I put in a similar volume of miles last year – but it just introduced me to a lot of rad cyclists.”

Creating a global community of cyclists has been key to the Fasted 500, Nayani says, and has helped participants find common ground with riders around the world.

“For me, the feedback has been the best,” he says. “Many have commented how engaging with our content on social media platforms, such as Instagram, has made them feel part of a genuine community of Muslim cyclists that they have not previously experienced or known to be possible.

“I’m all for equal representation too and have made a point to showcase the breadth of inspirational female Muslim cyclists who are often heavily underrepresented in mainstream media outlets.”

Fasted 500 founder Nayani highlights increased investment in cycling infrastructure, community initiatives, representation in cycling media and normalising cycling as a mode of transport as key hurdles to overcome to increase the uptake of cycling among riders from diverse backgrounds.

As one of the Fasted 500’s global participants, Roslan says he was inspired to take part in the event to challenge stereotypes. He also uses his Instagram account, @thatmuslimcyclist, to share his story.

“It’s really about trying to defeat the negative stereotype among people, Muslim or non-Muslim, that being a practicing Muslim doesn’t hold you back,” says Roslan.

Meanwhile, Akinosho points to clubs like Brothers on Bikes, which operates a network of group rides  to promote cycling among the British Muslim community and the role they play in encouraging greater participation in cycling. “There are many groups out there doing great work and there is certainly a feeling of belonging and companionship,” he says.

“Representation is key as it gives others a [chance to see] people who look like them cycling. It is also important to highlight to Muslims the benefit of doing regular exercise, eating healthily and accomplishing tasks they probably wouldn’t have thought was possible.”

Before this year, Aladdin says she wore a headscarf (hijab) for more than 20 years and was the “only very visibly Muslim woman at races”, for both cycling and running. (“While I support the hijab, I decided to try life without it for a bit – that’s a different story,” she says).

Aladdin would encourage more Muslims – and, in particular, Muslim women – to embrace cycling and look past any pre-conceived notions of what the sports entails.

“I was only able to ride and run as much as I did because I showed up and ignored stares and, on the rare occasions, inappropriate comments – that’s just noise,” she says. “Luckily, there were infinitely more supportive and welcoming words.

“Cycling can be a difficult sport to break into because you’re judged not only on your abilities (namely speed) but also how ‘pro’ you look. To Muslims and, in particular, Muslim women who cover, I hope they can find peace in looking ‘different’ but focus on the joy cycling brings.”

Looking ahead

With Ramadan coming to an end, what’s next for both Akinosho, Aladdin and Roslan? For Akinosho, he will continue riding with his club, hopes to embark on a season of racing in the future and plans to dip his toe into the world of audax. For Roslan, the Etape du Tour is heading to Malaysia for the first time in November 2021.

“I’m hoping it will happen but, at the same time, I’m not getting too excited about it due to the volatile Covid-19 situation,” he says. “The plan is to get into training for that. If it happens, great, I’m prepared. If not, that’s fine too because riding a bike always feels great when you are fit anyway.”

Aladdin, meanwhile, has a year of gran fondos, gravel racing and randonneuring planned, aiming for 400 to 500km rides for the latter. She also has one piece of unfinished business to take care of – Everesting.

“I’m back to Everest training, with the goal date being some time in October,” she says. “I can’t seem to get Everest out of my head, it’s my own Moby Dick!”

• Follow @fasted500 on Instagram
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We first came across Torgny Fjeldskaar’s work at the world’s biggest bike show, Eurobike, back in the early 2000s at one of Cannondale’s mega-stands, which was showcasing a cutting-edge concept bike.

The radical geometry-shifting machine on display was a bike that could morph from a flat-out time-trail machine into a more upright comfortable one. It was space-age stuff, so I set out to meet the team behind this amazing flight of fancy and through one of our Cannondale contacts were introduced to Norwegian industrial designer Torgny: a quiet, softly spoken, focused man.

After explaining his initial thinking when designing the bike he then delved deeper into the influences in his designs – which ranges from cars, to aircraft and even chairs.

After many years following Torgny’s inspiring Instagram feed (@torgny_f), which showcases his incredible designs and hand-drawn artwork, I decided to catch up with Torgny to find out more about the industrial designer’s role in bike design, discuss how the industry has changed over the decades and take a closer look at some of his fascinating sketches.

About Torgny Fjeldskaar

Having held design director roles at Cannondale and BMC, Torgny has had a significant role in the design of some of the most iconic – and much-loved – bikes of the past couple of decades, including the Cannondale SystemSix, Cannondale Hooligan and BMC Teammachine. Bikes that aren’t just great to ride, but look great and set the pulse racing, too. With carbon fibre and the latest engineering advancements allowing for increasingly complex bikes, the role of the industrial designer is more influential than ever.

BikeRadar: How did you get started in the world of designing bikes and was this the vehicle you always wanted to focus on?

“I got my first bike at the age of five and it’s been my main mode of transport ever since. For many years I was a paperboy so I got used to riding in all sorts of Norwegian weather early on. You basically get as wet as in the UK but quite a bit colder!

“At the age of 10, I got my first road bike, and as a teenager I got into the-then big, new trend of mountain biking and later on some gravel touring (except we didn’t know it was called gravel at the time). I always loved the design simplicity of bicycles and conversely the changes that mountain bikes brought.

“Bicycles are such a big part of my life that it wasn’t until the age of 33 I bought my first car, a vintage BMW 323i from 1980. As much as I love cars, in my opinion, they make little sense as a daily means of transport in urban areas.

“I studied mechanical engineering in Trondheim, Norway and then I did a masters in transport vehicle design in Barcelona for two years. My first job after graduating was in automotive design at Mazda’s European Design Centre in Frankfurt, a place I really enjoyed working and I learned a lot from helpful colleagues.

“Next stop was Cannondale Bicycles, a company I hugely admired as a teenager when I first got into mountain biking. Cannondale offered me the chance to lead the industrial design (ID) efforts on its urban bikes, which was unchartered territory for the company and was aimed primarily at the European market.

“After a year or so I was promoted to director of industrial design: the entire bike line. At 28 I knew this had clearly come a bit too early in my career, but at the same time it’s an opportunity you can’t turn down! I stayed at Cannondale for almost six years, I got to work on lots of cool projects with some truly great people and then I decided to move on as I was keen on learning new things and developing as a designer.

“Then I fulfilled another childhood dream and got a job at BMW in Munich in the exterior design team for production cars. Working with so many talented colleagues was both humbling and incredibly inspiring and I really had to raise my game on many levels.

“It was so cool to go to work and soak in new knowledge every day! Little by little I found my feet and got more responsibility, but after a while in the position of creative director of detail design for the compact vehicles, I ended up having so many meetings I had little time for design and I was [so] far away from the product that I decided to move on and go back to my first love: bicycle design.

“The next opportunity came about shortly after at BMC Switzerland, where I had the unique opportunity to build an in-house design team from scratch, develop a new design strategy and implement it over a period of five years.

“In terms of what I could influence myself and what we could achieve with the design, and engineering group, this job certainly was the highlight of my career so far! The only big issue was a terribly long (rail) commute of one and a half hours, door-to-door each way, so when we had our second child it started to become unbearable and I left the company to start my own design studio in Basel, where I now work for various clients, but mainly in the bicycle industry.”

01 / BMC: “The Impec Concept (2014) was the first project I got to work on at BMC. The idea was to imagine what a road bike could be five to seven years from then.”

• Read more: BMC Impec Concept machine revealed

02 / BMC: “The Impec Concept had a modular approach. You could, for example, choose between a Pinion-style gearbox or electric assist. The structural frame itself actually had nothing integrated inside it, but all the non-structural add-ons completed the aerodynamic shape.”

BikeRadar: What has changed in bike design and manufacturing since you first started working in the bike industry?

“When I started at Cannondale back in 2003, game-changing materials and processes, such as carbon fibre and hydroforming were just taking off and this obviously had a massive impact on our industry.

“Prior to this, there wasn’t much work done by industrial designers on bikes; frame design was, for the most part, welded, round tubes created by engineers, plus some decals (transfers) done by the graphic designers. Now all of a sudden you could pretty much shape things the way you wanted, so most large bicycle companies started hiring industrial designers, and you began seeing some heavily shaped frame designs out there… not always supporting the intended purpose of the bike, though.

“During this period at Cannondale, we held back on crazy shaping for a number of reasons. The approach was more engineer-driven and, as much as my team and I would have liked a bit more freedom, in retrospect, this probably wasn’t a bad thing.

“As far as road bikes go, integration was at a very different level than today. The focus back then was mainly on stiffness-to-weight and if you had a custom stem and some colour-matched parts and decals, you already had a visual advantage over many of your competitors.

“In the mid-00s, comfort on road bikes also started becoming a thing, although it was called compliance or vibration-damping in order not to alienate the hard-core roadies. Frame and component designs have improved vastly on vertical compliance and comfort over the last 15 years and, to some extent, it’s become relevant even for the pros.

“Another thing that has improved is computer simulations, both for structural and for aerodynamic optimisation. Today, these tools are far more sophisticated and accurate, and help in reducing development time. The flipside is that frame designs are more similar than in the past – very few stand out in terms of shapes these days, it’s become more about details and how tubes are connected.

A few other big changes worth mentioning are aerodynamics, disc brakes, wider tyres and electronic shifting – all of which have benefits that for many people outweigh the drawbacks, and they’ve obviously all had a huge impact on frame and fork design. To me, the biggest question when it comes to innovation is why on earth road bike tyres were so narrow for so long. I mean, road surfaces are often bad nowadays but I’m pretty sure they weren’t better 50 or 100 years ago!

“On the topic of integration, at BMC we had a strong focus on cleaning up the aesthetics while still providing great performance, and I’m proud of having been part of pushing this trend. The fact that so many brands have followed suit shows that it’s something many end customers really do appreciate.

“One more thing that has changed quite a bit is the complexity of the projects, so now there are typically more people involved. For example, a new cockpit is a big project in itself these days, and then you have the CAD (computer-aided design) modellers who now do part of the job the engineers and designer used to do.”

03 / BMC: “The Timemachine Road Gen 2 is one of the coolest projects I’ve ever worked on as we got to do a completely new aero cockpit and aero bottle cages. The bottle cages and storage create a flush aero section surface and help reduce drag.”

• Read more: BMC’s fastest aero bike to date, the Timemachine Road 01

04 / BMC: “The Teammachine SLR01 (2017) was a first in the altitude/racing category in terms of cable integration. Some people were sceptical as to how much of this was relevant for ‘proper’ roadies, but sales numbers certainly proved them wrong.”

• Read more: BMC’s new Teammachine offers disc or rim brakes and greater integration

05 / BMC: “The Integrated Cockpit System (ICS) is a feature that has aero and, obviously, visual benefits, and something that’s easy to propose for a designer. The hard part is the engineering. The engineers did countless hours of constructing, testing and refining prototypes, so most of the credit goes to them!”

BikeRadar: Having designed for such a broad spectrum of brands and aspects of the bike, how do you see the role of the industrial designer?

“As an industrial designer, you are given a design brief (most often from the product managers) with lots of input on, for example, who the target customer is, what this new product is supposed to do, main competitors etc. On top of that you get a lot of input and constraints from the engineers, such as geometry, clearances and tube sections.

“The industrial designer then creates a number of different 2D or 3D proposals within this framework, always trying to come up with nice shapes, and new and fresh design cues, while at the same time keeping an eye on the company’s design strategy in order to have a certain recognisable look and feel across the product portfolio.

“When selecting proposals for further development, you’d typically have a number of stakeholders involved: design, PMs (product managers), engineering, sales, marketing, CEO etc, and due to the subjective nature of the topic it can sometimes take a long time to reach an agreement!

“Once a direction is chosen the role of the industrial designer is to assist the engineer in bringing the design to production. Some things may have to be changed and then it’s all about making sure those changes don’t ruin the looks completely. In some cases, you have a conflict of interest when it comes to design refinement versus timeline or looks versus performance, but in most cases, the priorities for a given segment are pretty clear and the product manager is usually the voice of the end customer in case there’s a disagreement. For the most part, the collaboration tends to work out really well though, as everyone involved understands that both engineering and ID goals need to be met in order to end up with a successful bike.

“Another question I often get asked is the difference between the automotive and bicycle industry. In the automotive world you tend to have more and better processes in place, and in general everything’s more organised, although in recent years the bicycle industry has made big improvements in these areas, for good and bad. The chaos has definitely been reduced but, sadly, also some of the spontaneity, partying and the laid-back approach has too.

“Another big difference is the role and status of industrial design. In the automotive industry, the designers are celebrated superstars, think Ian Callum (Jaguar), Chris Bangle (BMW), or legends such as Giorgetto Guigiaro (Ferrari 250GT) and Battista Farina (Ferrari 212, Dino, Alfa Romeo Duetto).

“In the cycling industry, the industrial design plays a much smaller role in the official marketing story of new products. In the end, I think it’s not a bad thing as the truth is that it means nobody becomes a bike designer to achieve fame and fortune, it’s very much a passion-driven profession, and I believe this is one of the reasons that there’s such a great vibe in our industry.”

06 / “The Pinarello Espada Tribute is just a sketch I did as a tribute to Miguel Induráin’s world hour record rig from 1994. The original was one of the bikes that made me want to become a bike designer (along with Chris Boardman’s Lotus 108 and some of the crazy MTBs in the early 90s).”

07 / “The DH Concept is another random bicycle sketch, which I really enjoy doing if I find the time. And I also try to encourage other designers to put more bike sketches out there, because for every bicycle sketch there’s a million car sketches on the internet, and if we want the next generation of creative talent to dream of designing bikes instead of supercars, we have to change that!”

BikeRadar: The fact that bringing a bike design to reality is a hugely collaborative effort is perhaps the reason that bike design doesn’t have many stand-out names as the ‘authors’?

“It’s very important to point out that I’ve only done the industrial design on these bikes – it’s always a team that does the complete design and if these products ended up being successful it’s because I’ve been lucky to be part of some truly great teams.”

08 / Cannondale: “The original SystemSix was quite unique not only because of the manufacturing process [aluminium back-end and carbon front], but also because it was brutally stiff in torsion and had out-of-this-world power transfer, while still providing some vertical compliance due to the layup and seatstay shape. I still ride mine when I go back home to visit my parents in Norway and apart from the weight it still holds up very well with modern bikes.”

• Read more: Cannondale SystemSix Carbon Superlight review (2007)

09 / Cannondale: “The Hooligan was the brainchild of Chris Dodman (Cannondale engineer behind the SiSL chainset and BB30). The idea was to do a fun, nimble and sturdy bike for young-at-heart urbanites. The slogan was ‘Ride it like you stole it’. I got to do the industrial design, which was inspired by the Delta-V frame from the early 90s, and this model stayed on the market for 12 years. Japan was the biggest market for this bike.”

BikeRadar: You’ve seen the evolution from the early days of carbon fibre and alloy hydroforming to today’s fully integrated designs. Where do you see bike design heading next?

“Well, first of all, I think cycling as a means of transport has a fantastic future. Of course, there are obvious benefits in terms of emissions, health and congestion, but in my opinion, the real magic about urban cycling is that you can turn what for many people is just a necessary evil – commuting – into one of the highlights of the day. Of course, that will require better cycling infrastructure, and it’s great to see that many countries and cities are making some good progress on this.

“Now, regarding cycling as a sport, I think we’ll see even more blurring of categories, bikes that combine a bunch of things; bikes that are light and aerodynamic and comfortable, which so far has seldom been the case. I think this is a great thing, as those who can only afford to have one bike will enjoy a wider range of ride situations through this increased versatility.

“There will also be more ebikes, as newcomers to cycling are much less keen on suffering than those who have been riding all their life. I also think, in general, digital integration will be even more common, as the next generation of cyclists are used to having some sort of digital aspect in pretty much everything they do.

“As for materials and manufacturing processes, this is one of the biggest questions for me. Everyone knows the current way of producing carbon fibre is far from sustainable, but so far nobody has come up with greener solutions that can compete in terms of weight and performance. In other words, there’s a great opportunity to be the first!

“As for longevity and trends, my hope is that we get to a situation where large bike manufacturers start picking up more of the current zeitgeist and continue to put more focus towards developing products that won’t get obsolete that fast.”

10 / Cannondale: “The On concept started out as a student project and we put a fair amount of resources into it, but never went to production, which was disappointing for us at the time, but totally understandable since it would have required a very large investment. Both the folding mechanism and the single-side chain case were patented though, and SRAM made a single-sided i9 hub gear for it. Later on, a highly diluted version of the bike went to production. The chain case was simply mounted to a regular front triangle, mainly because 500 units of those single-sided hubs had to be used. We also proposed an electric version of it, and that’s the one I feel would have had the biggest potential today.”

• Read more: Cannondale onBIKE – first look

11 / Cannondale: “The G-Star collaboration helped put the Cannondale urban bikes on the map. It had an integrated light made by USE and lots of custom parts (even from Shimano!). It got a ton of coverage in lifestyle press helping us to reach people who never read cycling magazines.”

• Read more: Fashionistas will dig Cannondale’s G-Star Raw

12 / Fizik: “The Argo Vento is part of a new range of short-nosed saddles from Fizik. It’s very cool to work with this company as it has some very talented and nice people and impressive facilities. On saddles, you have tons of constraints and in addition to product managers and engineers, you also have medical professionals heavily influencing the product, so collaboration is key.”

• Read more: Fizik goes short-nosed with new Argo saddles

Almost every manufacturer has increased the prices of their bikes for 2021. Globally, prices have also increased significantly over the past twelve months.

Lead times are also longer than they’ve ever been – sources quote a 12-month wait for key components and a chronic shortage of bikes across the world.

But what’s to blame: Brexit or the pandemic?

We talked to several key bike, kit and accessory manufacturers in the industry, as well as smaller niche manufacturers, to find out how Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic has affected them.

“Akin to crawling through a maze”

“On the Tuesday, we were like, ‘we’re golden. We’re the very definition of doing that’ – we come in as regulation 8714, go out as a complete bike on 8712. Ding, no tariffs.

“Then we started to think, if that’s the case, why has Canyon put the [price of its] bikes up 20 per cent? Why has YT done the same?

“That’s when we started talking to Fairlight, Mason and a couple of other brands – it turned out that we would have to pay tariffs. Navigating the government and EU websites has been akin to crawling through a maze.”

These are the words of Yorkshire bike brand Cotic’s owner and founder Cy Turner on his reaction to reading the UK-EU’s new trade agreement.

Turner is nearly 20 years into his Cotic adventure, and holds a degree in mechanical engineering. He’s an intelligent man.

But since the UK left the European Union and EU single market on 1 January 2020, like the rest of the bicycle industry, he’s been wrestling with the impact of tariffs, VAT and handling fees. He’s certainly not alone.

Origin of manufacture

The last-minute trade deal between the UK and the EU means that goods passing between the two avoided defaulting to the World Trade Organisation rules.

As the UK government claimed on its website: “the UK and EU have agreed to unprecedented 100 per cent tariff liberalisation. This means there will be no tariffs or quotas on the movement of goods we produce between the UK and EU.”

Hoorah – roll out the bunting! Not so fast.

Take a look at your bike. How much of it is actually European-designed and manufactured?

In the case of Cotic’s built-up Rocket 27.5in enduro bike, the steel used in the frame is from British manufacturer Reynolds and it’s put together in Britain.

But you then have Cane Creek forks from the US, an X-Fusion dropper seatpost also from the US and – like a good number of you – a Shimano groupset.

That global construction is a big part of the problem.

The aforementioned 8712 regulation states goods shipped between the UK and EU (and vice versa) avoid tariffs if “the value of the non-EU or UK-sourced parts used to assemble it make up no more than 45 per cent of the price”.

The implications of this for the cycling industry are stark.

As highlighted by the Bicycle Association: “for bikes assembled in mainland Europe or the UK from mostly imported parts, it may be difficult to stay below the 45 per cent threshold. If that is the case, when moved between EU and GB, a 14 per cent tariff will be payable”.

The impact of this change has already been felt by consumers.

German direct-sale brand Canyon, known for great value, manufactures its bikes in Asia and applied a significant price hike to some of its bikes sold in the UK at the start of the year. YT experienced the same problem and has done similar.

As for Cotic, Turner tells us: “only around 3-4 per cent of our business is [selling complete] bikes to the EU, so not huge, though we’ve had a bit of heave-ho with a German customer.

“He had a launch-edition Jeht on order. He paid nearly £4,700 for it before Xmas but was then facing an import bill of nearly €700 after Christmas. To rectify the situation, he’s ‘deleted’ some bits from his bike to make it ‘not a bike’”.

The German customer now faces a less-painful 4.7 per cent tariff.

Because the frame is made in the UK, it comes in at 0 per cent tariff, but a 4.7 per cent tariff is applied for the parts (it’s 4 per cent if the parts are coming from the EU to UK).

That same 4.7 per cent tariff will be applied to Cotic frames that are manufactured in Taiwan.

“Frames are relatively simple; complete bikes less so,” adds Turner. “It’s still early days but, for that German rider who paid £4,700 [pre-tariff] for a Shimano XT build, we worked out that if he’d replaced everything with [British-made] Hope bits – brakes, cranks, etc – he’d have ended up paying five grand and have avoided a tariff because a high enough percentage was made in the UK.

“It leaves us with the potential of rolling out an EU special, tariff-busting made-in-Britain bike.”

However, it’s still not that simple – leaving the single market and the customs union means the customer is now charged “locally for import duty” (14 per cent on a complete bike in Germany, says Turner) plus a handling fee and local VAT.

“The EU customer actually pays us 20 per cent less [than a customer in the UK] because we’ve already deducted UK VAT,” Turner says, “but it soon adds up the other side”.

So, Brexit’s clearly had an impact, both financially and logistically, with companies having to change the way they ship, with extra paperwork, IT systems to sort and staff learning on the fly.

This is why Cotic temporarily stopped supplying to the EU at the start of January to work things out (it has resumed shipping now).

But what about the bigger players like Specialized – how much of an impact has Brexit had?

We contacted Specialized, and the brand did reply, albeit with a standard statement we have seen elsewhere that contains little detail: “Technically, the Brexit deal doesn’t affect our main supply chain from our Asia suppliers. The area where we may be affected is the sharing of inventory with markets within the EU. Inventory is sometimes moved between markets to where the demand is”.

We have it on good authority that some well-known manufacturers, including Cube, have yet to deliver a bike into the UK since the new regulations. It’s the same case with Giant and Trek shipping into Northern Ireland. Workers have returned from Christmas and are still trying to decipher the puzzle.

Supply struggling with demand

While manufacturers are still unpicking the implications of Brexit, everyone can agree that cycling enjoyed a stellar 2020.

Cotic saw a 30 per cent year-on-year increase in sales thanks heavily to growth in the gravel bike market as well as a trend-reversing rise in the sale of hardtails.

Statistics from the Bicycle Association showed that Cotic wasn’t the only brand to experience a vintage year.

The whole industry saw a 27 per cent rise in sales volume between April and September 2020, ebike sales more than doubled, and, in particularly good news for the future of the industry, a significant number of new customers were under-35 (a category often lost from teenage years).

The Covid-fuelled bike boom has seen demand outstrip supply across the board.

The likes of Pashley Cycles stopped taking orders for Christmas during September and are quoting shipping dates after Easter to satisfy orders.

Clothing has been hit, too, with the likes of Endura struggling to cope: “Our stock issues are, in part, down to sales way beyond original forecasts for 2020,” says Ian Young, the Scottish company’s brand manager.

“The production and planning timelines of fabrics, zips and other components along with garment production capacities mean sudden, unexpected uplifts in demand can’t easily be fulfilled.

“There were also some Far East production issues at the start of the pandemic but, fortunately for us, it wasn’t a critical time of year as our summer stock was already in and winter was just starting to be produced.

“It’s fair to say that although we’ve not had a lot of free stock, all forward orders of our retailers are being fulfilled on time. We’ve significantly increased orders across the board for summer and winter 2021, so we should see a better stock position in a couple of months.”

Those Far East production issues arguably caused the greatest impact on waiting times.

With so much of the bike industry based there, factory closures, social distancing and shipping issues – plus the rise in demand – all contributed to the delays experienced globally.

It’s why bike manufacturers are reportedly having to order their Shimano components twelve months in advance. For the bike giants, that’s not too much of an issue; for smaller, more niche outfits, it’s a battle.

“The bigger manufacturers have put in huge orders to fulfil demand arising from the inflation of the market size in the past year or so,” says Ollie Gray, brand manager at the Rider Firm, which encompasses Hunt wheels, as well as bike brands Cairn and Privateer.

“Cairn and Privateer are naturally smaller brands at the moment, so that’s an area where we’re working hard to ensure availability of stock. Hunt is a bigger brand and we’ve got some really strong relationships with key supply partners, so we’re able to keep pushing forwards and meet the needs of riders.”

Prices rise, but what’s to blame?

Demand outstripping supply may have also contributed to a price rise, with the Bicycle Association suggesting a staggering 26 per cent hike in the average price of bikes sold in the UK compared with the same period in 2019.

Arguably, much of that increase stemmed from retailers not having to offer discounts – congrats to you if you found an end-of-season-sale bargain in 2020! – but some accused the bike industry of profiteering from the Covid crisis. With prices rising further now, it’ll only add fuel to the fire.

A source embedded in the bike industry, who wished not to be named, rejects these claims: “yes, we’ve seen rises from the likes of Specialized, and I hear the same will happen with Giant and Trek before the month’s out, but there are good reasons.

“There’s been a rise in material costs across the globe; the considerations that factories are having to give with social distancing in factories; and a rise in costs of logistics.

“Take shipping a container from China to Europe. It used to be $2,000; it’s now $7,000. A container contains around 250 bikes, so before that was $8.50 per bike; now it’s $30. TNT costs have doubled. Manufacturing costs are probably up 7-10 per cent, too.

“The industry isn’t profiteering from this.”

As for Brexit, our source says it’s had a moderate impact but, for many brands, prices were already going to rise because of the pandemic (he suggests those rises that grabbed the Canyon headlines weren’t entirely down to Brexit).

The pandemic and those increased waiting times also saw Rose bikes stop supplying to the UK because of the extra complexity of fitting the front brake to the right-hand lever and rear brake to the left. In Europe it’s the opposite, but the law in the UK mandates bike must be sold setup ‘moto’ style.

“We wanted to shorten our delivery times, which suffered because of the pandemic,” says Sarah Terweh of the German brand. “The market standards of the UK are incompatible with serial production.” Brexit, adds Terweh, was the final straw.

“As soon as we are done with the transition in our production and get more clarity about the future of doing business with the UK post-Brexit, we will look for a long-term solution. It’s our hope that we’ll soon be able to offer our products again to the UK.”

As hopefully will another German brand, Bike24, which is currently not selling to the UK because of the confusion and added costs of Brexit.

Cotic’s Turner feels this could continue, certainly for more affordable items. “There’s a little confusion over the threshold of VAT as, when we were with the EU, they basically didn’t apply it for products under $150 as it wasn’t worth the paperwork,” he says.

“The rules are unclear now and it’s not much of a problem for us as the only thing we sell under £150 are T-shirts and mech hangers. But big online retailers like Wiggle and Chain Reaction must be tearing their hair out.”

Where do we go from here?

Where does this leave us? With mixed feelings.

The number of people turning to cycling has risen around the globe. This is great environmentally, for health and – in general – for those working in the industry.

But you, the consumer, now face increased waiting times and costs. Let’s hope the vaccines do their work and things settle down.

As for Brexit, the industry’s still dissecting the 1,200-page trade agreement, though there has clearly been an impact on costs and shipping. But rest assured, says Turner: “It’s out of the politicians’ hands and in ours now. We’ll figure it out and make it work”. Time will tell…

So what would it be? Haggis and cheese toastie? Haggis and bacon? Given where we found ourselves, our last chance for sustenance in the next 75 kilometres of Highland gravel was always going to be haggis with something or another.

We’d just sampled some top-notch Scotch at the Dalwhinnie Distillery, in the eponymous village on the western flank of the Cairngorms, and now I was about to eat Scotland’s favourite delicacy for the first time. A more Scottish scene you couldn’t imagine. Until the rain began lashing it down, anyway…

We’d come to the Scottish Highlands for the final in our three-part Komoot Adventures series. The best until last? That was the hope. None of us – myself, Komoot’s media manager Rob Marshall or photographer Joe Branston – had ridden our bikes up here before, but we’d heard the legends. We’d planned to go out with a bang, losing ourselves in the remote landscapes of northern Scotland and splitting our two days of riding with some wild camping.

More Komoot Adventures

In this three-part series, Adrian Miles samples some of the UK’s finest gravel riding. Catch up on the first two installments:

• Bikepacking for beginners in the Cotswolds
• Bikepacking in the Cambrian Mountains of Wales

Our Bombtrack bikes were fully laden with all the food and equipment we’d need over the next two days, giving them the handling and turning circle of an oil tanker. It took some adjusting to, after coming from my sprightly road bike, but did fade once on the bike – assisted in no small part by the distraction of the stunning scenery and the seemingly endless trail that stretched out before us.

Momentum was slow early on, as we frequently paused to allow the eye-popping vistas wash over us. We were also climbing a steep hill out of our base, the sleepy village of Kinloch Rannoch. This may also have had an impact on our progress.

First responder

To fill the considerable holes in our knowledge of the region, we had recruited the planning expertise of Komoot ‘Pioneer’ and local rider Neil Henderson. The path to Pioneer level involves having ridden a lot in a particular area and knowing every nook and cranny.

• Komoot Pioneer Neil Henderson’s Scotland Highlights

Neil had several suggestions for our route, which included sections from a couple of gravel routes whose popularity is surging: the Badger Divide and the Highland Trail 550, more on which later. To this we added a couple of other local highlights and we had a largely off-road (but accessible in terms of difficulty) 140km loop, which promised nothing short of the best gravel trails Scotland has to offer.

“These trails run from super-smooth to boggy and everything in between,” says Neil. “The route takes in some of the most stunning scenery Scotland has to offer and links together seven beautiful lochs, including Loch Ericht, Loch Ossian and Loch Rannoch. It’s remote, though, with the only resupply being Corrour Station – an absolute must on any ride in these parts.”

Adrian’s bike | Bombtrack Hook EXT-C

• Price: £3,050
• Frame: Carbon
• Fork: Carbon, triple cage mounts
• Groupset: SRAM Rival 1×11, 40t chainring, 11-42t cassette, hydraulic disc brakes
• Wheels: Hunt Adventure Sport 27.5in wheels, WTB Venture 2in tyres
• Finishing kit: PRO saddle, CX-10 bar, Roam stem

Last time out, on our tough beginnings on the Trans-Cambrian Way, we had been dropped into the deep end, but there was less trepidation and more calmness here in the Highlands.

The route appeared to be more rideable, with better trails and less climbing, even if the weather was more unpredictable this far north. Still, there were hills to be conquered and on the climb out of Kinloch Rannoch, we were out of the saddle, heaving our bikes from side to side.

Through this series, each time we’ve left the roads behind and hit the gravel, the sense of tranquillity and isolation have been palpable. And this has risen exponentially as we’ve gone deeper into the sticks.

The first 35km would take us to Dalwhinnie Distillery and the promise of sampling the local produce. We’d also siphon off a bottle for later on around the campfire, which would likely offer a deeper and more satisfying warming effect than any of the clothing we’d packed.

Before reaching that promised land, however, there was the other promise that Neil had mentioned at the start – crossing that aforementioned “boggy” bit. It would transpire that “boggy” was a gross understatement, with the emphasis very firmly on gross.

This stretch of land emitted a foul stench, a stench that’d we’d be carrying with us long after passing over it. Or through it. We would make it across, but not after our feet were engulfed in its stinking muck. I’d plumbed other depths all summer long, but now I had found a nailed-on candidate for worst surface to ride a bike on.

But bog can only last so long and we were soon back on proper tracks, only now carrying more of a pong. Fortunately, there wasn’t a soul around with the bad luck of being downwind of us.

We skirted a loch that had its glass topped up by a series of small waterfalls, audible amid the silence. Our only sentient company to date had been a handful of Highland cows and hardy sheep, and we’d only have human contact once more today, at the distillery.

With just 35km on the computer, we might otherwise have felt threatened by the perilous dark skies circling above our heads, but we departed Dalwhinnie as bon vivants, with whisky and the world’s heaviest toasties sloshing around in our stomachs.

The three of us would have only ourselves for company for the next 24 hours as we continued on our path to our overnight spot, which was perhaps for the best given the intense odour we were still emitting.

Our bikes all had a tubeless setup, which had proved reliable through the summer so far, without a single puncture, but given our passage into wilderness, I couldn’t help but interpret every creak and groan as a tyre pressure problem.

Carry on camping

Our camping location was set to be beside Loch Ossian and while we didn’t have a specific spot in mind, Neil had told us there were plenty of options to wild camp in the tree-lined banks next to the water. To get there, we would pick up the Badger Divide after a brief section on the Highland 550.

The former is a 320km bikepacking route that traverses the Highlands, linking the cities of Inverness and Glasgow. It was drawn by off-road enthusiast Stu Allan, and follows heritage paths, long-distance trails and a mix of estate and forestry gravel roads, with paved roads kept to a minimum.

Before we sampled it, we locked horns with a small section of the Highland 550 – a 550-mile self-supported mountain bike route inspired by the Tour Divide in the USA. Our section would be a reasonably friendly portion of a tough route that can turn fiendish. Friendly, at least, had it not been for the intense period of wet weather, which reintroduced bog to all our lives.

Rob’s bike | Bombtrack Audax

• Price: £2,600
• Frame: Steel
• Fork: Carbon
• Groupset: Shimano 105 hydraulic disc brakes, 48/32t chainset, 11-32t cassette, Shimano Ultegra front and rear derailleur
• Wheels: Hunt Adventure Sport 650b wheels, WTB Byway 47mm front tyre, WTB Horizon 47mm rear tyre

Once we joined up with the Badger Divide, we were deposited in gravel heaven, with long and winding gravel tracks and fire roads gently undulating through an ever-varying canvas between lochs Laggan and Ossian.

Finally, after a summer of reaching, I’d found the perfect terrain for my gravel bike, the sweet spot between tarmac and singletrack.

Up ahead we could spy heavy rainfall, but the sun stayed with us as time began to run out on day one. As did a rotten headwind. When arranging our Ortleib bike bags for the trip, Rob had opted for two front panniers and it now came to haunt him as the wind buffeted him backwards. It brought an early end to proceedings and we decided to set up camp.

I was a bit apprehensive about camping, mainly because of the cold. However, beside a roaring campfire, scoffing a reheated chilli con carne and making light work of our Dalwhinnie 15, it became a night to remember. Out of the wind and with moonlight bouncing off the loch, we felt very satisfied with our day.

Hanging around isn’t the done thing on the morning after a wild camp and we couldn’t wait to get pedalling, especially with the promise of a hot breakfast at Corrour station, a 30-minute ride away and the sole staging post for miles in all directions.

It’s the highest mainline station in the UK and best known for its appearance in 1990s classic Trainspotting. We only spotted one – the Caledonian Sleeper train, which travels overnight between London and Fort William.

Discussion over breakfast was all about the scenery and how Scotland might just be the holy grail for the off-road cyclist. The varied terrain brought to mind faraway places, such as New Zealand, Canada and Norway. If you have a gravel bike, plan a trip here. If you don’t, fix yourself up with one, then plan a trip.

The best of the gravel sections were still ahead of us. We climbed away from Corrour on a sandy, smooth track, punctuated by small mountain streams.

The views were breath-taking, accentuated by the rain moving in along the valleys. We braced ourselves to be hit by it at the summit, passing a bikepacker who’d yet to emerge from his bivvy cocoon. Turning downhill, we barrelled down a deliciously bendy descent, splashing through streams and swerving threatening rocks.

It was a joyous ride, all the way back to our base at Kinloch Rannoch – a ride that was the perfect culmination of a summer series of rides that challenged us, almost broke me at times, but, ultimately, saw me end up as the newest convert to the church of gravel.

There was only one thing for it. The shoes were coming off. I’d been heaving my bike on foot as long as it takes to do an FTP test on my road bike, and at least twice as demoralising.

The day had been a long one and stiff-soled cycling shoes were about as useful as a 10kg weight strapped around my waist.

Earlier that day, there had been promise aplenty. We were in mid-Wales, amid weather that wasn’t quite the mini-heatwave beating down on parts of the country. And that was just fine by us. The route we had planned was a challenge enough without onerous heat to handle, so we were grateful for the hand we were dealt with.

After part one of our Komoot Adventures mini-series, which saw me and Rob Marshall, Komoot’s media manager, tackle an overnight route close to home in the Cotswolds, part two was an opportunity to ramp up the difficulty, testing out how far our Bombtrack bikes – and, for me at least, newly-acquired skills – could take us.

We’d also be venturing further from our homes in south-west England to somewhere completely new. The last ride was mainly road with some gravel thrown in – this time we’d flip that on its head. I was keen to use the skills I’d learned in a demanding off-road environment.

We’d unquestionably find that with the Trans-Cambrian Way.

Snaking across mid-Wales from the English border to the coast in a most indirect 175 kilometres, the route is, nominally, one made for mountain bikes, but on an appropriate gravel bike (wide, big tread tyres/possibly some sort of suspension) you’ll still feel, if not quite at home, then certainly in a neat, well-provisioned Airbnb.

To do the whole Trans-Cambrian route would have been stretching the concept of gravel riding, so for our two-day loop we’d make it an integral feature, while also including part of the largely tarmac National Cycle Network Route 8, which runs top to bottom through Wales, from Anglesey to Cardiff.

Water world

To include both we’d start and finish in the market town of Rhayader, close to the Elan Valley’s collection of humongous reservoirs and dams, which supply Birmingham with its water.

It’s amazing how something with such an industrial function can also double up as stunning scenery. Like last time, I was joined by Rob and Joe Branston, intrepid photographer, who would once again attempt to ride the entire 154km route with a posture-compromising camera bag on his back. I can only conclude that he has a spine made of steel.

Adrian’s bike | Bombtrack Hook EXT-C

• Price: £3,050
• Frame: Carbon
• Fork: Carbon, triple cage mounts
• Groupset: SRAM Rival 1×11, 40t chainring, 11-42t cassette, hydraulic disc brakes
• Wheels: Hunt Adventure Sport 27.5in wheels, WTB Venture 2in tyres
• Finishing kit: PRO saddle, CX-10 bar, Roam stem

After a coffee in the Caban-coch reservoir’s visitor centre we were, in short order, catapulted from all vestiges of civilisation into Welsh wilderness, with very few villages left on the route until we returned the following evening.

We were carrying everything we’d need, though a further coffee or two further down the track wouldn’t have gone amiss. That said, unlike the last adventure, there’d be no wild camping this time around, nor would we be braving it in the two bothy shelters on our route. Instead, we’d booked into a warm, dry pub for our night on the road. It would prove a sage decision soon enough.

The step-up in difficulty from our Cotswolds route was immediately apparent, with progress achingly slow. Terrain was always varied, with regular river crossings and hike-a-bike sections keeping us honest. If I was here to seek out my limits, I had failed, for at times, I was well beyond them! I’d say I was a fish out of water, but for it being a phrase that struck too close to home, given all the rivers we’d had to wade through.

Rocks of all sizes were strewn across the trail, killing any speed we built up. It was no hassle for Rob, who brought with him a background in mountain bike racing and, indeed, experience in all things two-wheeled. Joe and I on the other hand…

Rob managed to not put a foot down, whereas we must have looked, to any passers-by, as though we were out taking our bikes for a walk. But watching him seemed to rub off on us, and over the following hours of day one, our confidence showed signs of green shoots, and our boundaries and knowledge for this type of riding felt like it was expanding.

A crossing to bear

It doesn’t take too long before you start to realise what you can cross on your bike – and what you can’t. Small streams can be tackled with a decent amount of speed, providing you stick to your line, but faster-flowing rivers demand further inspection before you commit to anything rash.

I’ve fallen foul of ford crossings on my road bike before, so needless to say that walking is now my first option, even if theoretically my gravel bike would make light work of it. Rob would almost always try to pedal across a river, but having watched even someone like him, with bags of knowledge and experience, slip and slide over treacherous rocks, then walking, despite all the obvious downsides, was still my preferred option. For me, at least, it’s a toss-up between a guaranteed soaking of your feet or a possible whole body dunking.

We survived some of the hardest riding of my limited gravel adventures and got rewarded with some friendlier sections that made the novel choice of travelling around several stretches of water. Away from villages and other people, we felt true isolation in the best possible sense, and could palpably feel our confidence soaring.

Speed freaks

Speed is a two-headed beast. Sometimes it’s exhilarating but when you reach what you believe to be your limit your brain changes tack, flipping from terrific to terrifying. If only you could switch off that side of your brain, training yourself to relish the higher speeds and crave the danger.

Speed is one thing on the road, but at least you can have confidence in the surface. Speed off-road heightens the issues – touching the brakes doesn’t always mean a regaining of control. Quite the opposite.

Rob’s bike | Bombtrack Audax

• Price: £2,600
• Frame: Steel
• Fork: Carbon
• Groupset: Shimano 105 hydraulic disc brakes, 48/32t chainset, 11-32t cassette, Shimano Ultegra front and rear derailleur
• Wheels: Hunt Adventure Sport 650b wheels, WTB Byway 47mm front tyre, WTB Horizon 47mm rear tyre

But as the day wore on I better understood my bike, and speed and enjoyment increased the deeper we went into rural Wales.

For Joe, however, it was hard to make that same assessment, particularly with the extra weight he was carrying on his back, which by this point was taking its toll. I’m sure he won’t mind me sharing his time-out at the top of one climb, where he, how can I best put this… untethered himself from his digesting lunch.

Given the tough, varied terrain, there was much chat all day about what gravel riding in Britain actually is.

The thrust of Rob’s point is that any off-road ride here means there will be sections where you must jump off and push, and that if you set out with that mindset then you will have a much better time of it.

I’d come to accept this way of thinking. Having come from the road, and having very much a performance-related outlook on the sport, you really do need to park it at the door on your way out when it comes to gravel. It took me some time to adjust to this slower pace and new style, and though I’m by no means there yet, I am learning to adapt.

Such open-mindedness evaporated, however, on the final climb of day one.

My computer initially told me we had a 10 per cent climb to negotiate over 3km. Demanding enough, but it then increased to 15 per cent over 2km, then 20 per cent one 1km. We were back on the Trans-Cambrian Way, with our route pointing us straight up and over a mountain. Not a switchback to be found here.

The weather was closing in, misty and murky as the three of us trudged up an unerring hill, with the gradient going all the way to 30 per cent – not the numbers you want to see after eight hours in (and often out) of the saddle. The higher we got the steeper it felt as grass turned into rock, which gave way underfoot. Only electric assistance would have got us up without pushing.

Fortunately, the descent was smooth and winding, a delicious dessert after a rotten main. On reaching our lodgings, we’d wash it all down with several hard-won pints.

Take two

Day two saw us setting off in dirty and slightly damp kit, but no matter – we were well into the groove of the ride by now.

We opened on NCN 8, which made for much faster progress, trundling over hills and through valleys. We even found a shop to refill our depleted food reserves and chat about our final adventure to come.

Although there is no shame in choosing a pub for our overnight stay, I had unfinished business with wild camping. We decided our next ride would be unsupported and self-sufficient, maybe knocking back the extreme terrain but ramping up the wilderness. We decided on the Scottish Highlands and began plotting our route.

As we continued the final leg of this ride back to the Elan Valley it felt like we were riding back towards civilisation, encountering more cyclists enjoying the sunshine.

Traditional cycle tourers, mountain bikers, ebiking groups, all appreciating the tranquil surroundings that Wales has in spades.

Cycling is at a crossroads. Prescribed by doctors as a key part of the UK’s obesity strategy, and providing a safe means of transport in the midst of a global pandemic that renders public transport as a risk, there’s never been a better time to get on a bike. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement has sparked a step-change in the way society – and, indeed, sports – regards the importance of diversity and inclusion, and not just in relation to race and ethnicity.

Current data on diversity within cycling isn’t encouraging, both at a local level and at an elite sporting level. On the flip side, evidence only continues to mount as to how important regular exercise, such as cycling, is to everyone.

Cycling also offers a potential solution to the challenges presented by urban transport and climate change, despite it becoming increasingly evident how important regular exercise such as cycling is for all.

Here, we delve into the statistics that reveal the current state of diversity in cycling, consider the importance of diversity, inclusion and representation in sport, look at the work of new and emerging cycling communities, and highlight the positive action being taken by members of the cycling industry to promote change.

What do we mean by diversity?

When discussing a group of individuals, diversity is a measure of the differences between them, including race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, age, (dis)ability, physical appearance, and background and life experience.

While we’re on definitions, let’s also consider inclusion. Inclusion reflects the degree to which individuals are both respected and have the right to participate within their community, regardless of the differences described.

How diverse is cycling?

In short, not very. Most data shows a lack of representation in cycling from non-White communities, differences between men and women, and a stark difference between socio-economic groups.

“Diversity within cycling in the UK, actually within the sport and at large, isn’t great. When you start to dig into the stats, there’s not a lot out there,” says James Scott, Cycling UK’s director of behaviour change and development.

A recent collaboration between UK cycling charity Sustrans and ARUP, a global engineering and design consultancy, highlighted the demand for cycling among ethnic minority and disadvantaged groups.

The report warns that the needs of many marginalised groups have been ignored, with 74 per cent of people in urban ethnic minority groups currently not cycling, despite 55 per cent of people in these groups stating that they would like to start (compared to 37 per cent of White people).

Besides the cost barrier of getting a bike, which reportedly stops 20 per cent of people from ethnic minority groups from cycling, other factors include a lack of confidence in skills and a lack of facilities – including safe storage or changing rooms at home and work – stopping 33 per cent and 25 per cent of people in these groups from riding respectively.

Sustrans’ Cycling For Everyone report also says 31 per cent of disabled people who do not cycle would like to start and cites infrastructure, road safety, cost and attitudinal challenges as key barriers of entry to cycling.

At an industry level, and compared to the snow, run and general outdoor categories, the bike industry is the most discriminatory of active outdoor industries in terms of gender-based exclusion (Camber Outdoors Workplace Report, 2017).

Figures from the Department for Transport (2018) also show that men make more than twice as many cycling trips as women each year and ride nearly four times further.

Beyond cycling specifically, Sport England’s Active Lives Survey (2019) yielded some interesting results, indicating that disability, increasing age and lower socio-economic status were all linked to lower activity levels in the British population. 18 per cent fewer people from lower socio-economic groups were categorised as ‘active’ compared to higher socio-economic groups.

Equally striking were the differences between adults of different ethnicities, with figures for ‘active’ population highest for ‘Mixed’, ‘White other’ and ‘White British’ categories at 65 to 68 per cent, dropping to 61 per cent for ‘Chinese’, 58 per cent for ‘Black’ and the lowest at 54 per cent for ‘Asian (excluding Chinese)’.

Diversity in pro cycling

What about diversity in pro cycling? There are just five Black cyclists in the men’s WorldTour, which consists of 543 riders across 19 teams. Simple maths; that’s less than 1 per cent.

Kevin Reza of the B&B Hotels–Vital Concept team was the only Black rider at the 2020 Tour de France. Reza has previously highlighted pro cycling’s silence on the Black Lives Matter movement, against a backdrop of significant action from other professional sports.

The Frenchman briefly rode at the front of the peloton with the wearers of the leaders’ jerseys on Sunday’s final stage into Paris, to highlight the issue, while some riders wore masks with ‘No to racism’ written on them at the start of the stage.

It’s no different at ProContinental level either; just 1.1 per cent – or five non-White riders from a total of 418.

Meanwhile, across the eight teams of the Women’s WorldTour, only four of the 162 riders are non-White, including two Asian riders, a Colombian rider and an American of Filipino descent. At less than 2.5 per cent of the women’s field, it is a white-dominated sport. (Editor’s note: Teniel Campbell will step up to Women’s WorldTour level with Mitchelton-Scott in 2021).

You also won’t find a single non-White board member at USA Cycling, British Cycling, the German Cycling Federation, Belgian Cycling or the Royal Dutch Cycling Union.

There are four non-White members of the UCI management committee, representing the UAE, Egypt, Malaysia, and Morocco, from 18 members, which also includes only two women.

Looking beyond the data

While mountain bike coach and guide Aneela McKenna of Go Where Scotland believes data offers the opportunity to build evidence and bring about change, it’s just as important to recognise the experiences of underrepresented communities.

“So often we talk about diversity as these homogeneous groups, and although this is important if we want to build data and evidence to bring about change, we are actually all made of multiple identities which impact on our lived experiences,” says McKenna.

“The one thing we have in common is that we are excluded and unable to access opportunities in the same way as those who are in privileged positions because of systemic barriers and societal attitudes.”

Besides being a mountain bike guide, McKenna is a consultant and works part-time as a diversity, inclusion and wellbeing manager at the Scottish Parliament.

She believes that cycling is “not yet diverse and still has a long way to go towards creating inclusive spaces where people from diverse backgrounds can feel included.”

McKenna, a woman of colour, says equality extends beyond simply treating everyone the same. A history of discrimination and barriers created by systems which reinforce privilege mean that many groups aren’t starting from the same place, she says.

“If we want to be truly diverse, we need to be representative of our communities, and if we want to be inclusive we must create those spaces that welcome diversity,” adds McKenna.

“That means in our cycling community, people who work in the industry and those who make decisions at the executive level.”

Why is diversity in cycling important?

James Scott, Cycling UK’s director of behaviour change and development, believes improving diversity and inclusion within cycling has a wide range of benefits, primarily with regards to health.

“Cycling really is a silver bullet in terms of solving issues linked to obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancers,” says Scott.

“We are in the midst of a global pandemic at the moment, and that’s terrible, but actually we’ve been in the midst of a global pandemic for the last 20 years; it’s called obesity and inactivity. It’s the biggest killer worldwide.”

People in low socio-economic status communities and BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) communities are much more likely to suffer from the diseases attributed to inactivity, sedentary lifestyles and obesity, according to Scott.

“A way to stem that issue is getting people active,” he continues, “and one of the easiest ways to get people active is by tying it to form some sort of habit, like cycling to school, cycling to work, or cycling for leisure purposes.”

How can representation help to promote diversity?

Representation is believed to be key to promoting cycling to a wider audience, whereby previously marginalised groups can actively see ‘themselves’ included in the sport. Similarly, the absence of representation can be just as noticeable.

“I’m not seeing myself represented in the brands that I buy from,” says Zahir Nayani, a British second-generation south-east Asian immigrant, who is an adventure and utility cyclist.

“I don’t choose what I buy based on that though, I haven’t seen any British Asian male on any cycling website. If I did that, I’d have no kit to wear.”

Cycling UK’s James Scott explains the importance of representation in improving the accessibility of cycling: “There’s something to do with social identity theory, which basically means ‘I’ll do an activity, if someone like me, who looks like me, and has the same ethnicity or genetic make-up, does it,’” Therefore, says Scott: “I’ll associate myself with that behaviour, and that demographic.”

Scott applauds the ‘This Girl Can’ initiative from Sport England, with adverts showing ‘real people’ doing exercise, being really honest about what they looked like and how they felt.

“That campaign was instrumental in helping change the face of activity, particularly with women,” he says.

American cycling apparel brand Machines For Freedom has also been celebrated for its diverse model selection, with a range of ethnicities, body shapes (including a plus-size clothing range) and genders represented through the brand’s imagery.

Besides representing diversity, founder Jenn Kriske says it was also crucial the brand gained trust among people who have historically been exploited and marginalised.

“This is an approach that takes time and work,” explains Kriske. “And one of the reasons why representation is only the first of many steps towards real change, not just a marketing play.

“This is the result of six years of listening to the community, building relationships, having vulnerable conversations internally, and being open to some critical and sometimes hard to hear feedback.”

Diversity in our cycling communities

But what’s happening at a grassroots level? There are a number of emerging cycling clubs dedicated to and run by minority groups, including London’s Black Cyclists Network (BCN), the Women of Colour Cycling Group (WCCG), Black Girls Do Bike (BGDB) and Brothers on Bikes CC (BoB).

“Since BLM there has been a noticeable shift in minority representation within brands,” says Farooq Chaudhry, regional coordinator of Brothers on Bikes, a national network that aims to unite riders of all faiths and belief systems.

“Within BoB I think there is an aspect of ‘birds of a feather flock together’, and whenever anyone pursues something new they feel comfortable exploring that thing within their peer group whether it be race, gender or religion.”

Chaudhry, a British Pakistani Muslim who got hooked on road cycling as part of a charity challenge, would like to see more BAME role models at the top level of the sport to motivate and inspire the next generation.

“I want people to see that everyone has a fair chance to reach elite levels, regardless of background,” he says.

Positive action in progress

While the data surrounding diversity in cycling and the experiences of underrepresented riders shows there is a lot of work to be done, there are also many positive steps being taken globally within the sport.

Specialising as a diversity and inclusion consultant, McKenna has seen real change in the cycling industry over the last decade.

“It’s amazing to see so many women represented across many roles in the industry, and you can see how this is changing the nature of the industry,” she says.

“However, for some females working in the industry, this has been challenging as there is the expectation to fit into what has been a male-dominated environment, and for some this has not been easy when the onus is on them to change, not the culture itself.”

On the plus side, McKenna is convinced that the more diverse cycling becomes, the more this culture will change, and the creativity and innovation benefits that come as a result of different perspectives will become even more apparent.

Here are some of the actions and commitments from organisations helping to make meaningful change in the cycling industry:

So, what next?

Clearly, there’s a lot to unravel on multiple levels and a sizeable amount of work to be done in cycling; at a professional level, in clubs, by brand marketeers and in the media to name just a few.

However, there is a growing network of communities that cater specifically to different individuals, including Fat Lad At The Back for plus-size cycling clothing, the Black Cyclists Network in London, a great number of women’s cycling groups and clubs worldwide, the WTF Bikexplorers championing women, trans and non-binary riders, Gay’s Okay clothing and so on.

Recent events have cast a new lens over what cycling is doing to address diversity, according to McKenna.

“The Black Lives Matter movement has raised many questions about what the industry is doing,” she says. “There has been a flurry of diversity policies and commitments made by brands and companies,” she says. “Long may this continue, but what has changed?”

It’s evident that many cycling brands have started to take diversity and inclusion more seriously. Working alongside charities, campaigns, governing bodies and clubs to encourage a greater uptake of cycling for all, we will have to wait for future statistics to show how these positive steps translate into a more diverse and inclusive cycling community. The potential benefits are undeniable; besides the social impacts, our health depends on it.

Too rushed to read? We’ve updated this article with the latest edition of the BikeRadar Podcast. In this episode, Seb Stott talks through his findings with Matthew Loveridge, and offers his own perspective on how we convince people to switch to bikes. Otherwise, read on for Seb’s original piece.

If you don’t want to miss a new episode of the BikeRadar Podcast, click the buttons below to subscribe via Apple or Spotify. Or just search for us on your preferred podcast provider.

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Have you ever pedalled past a queue of idling cars and thought to yourself, ‘wouldn’t it be better if more people cycled to work?’ Well, how much better, exactly?

The UK is one of a growing number of countries to have pledged in law to get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

But while progress has been made in some areas, emissions from transport continue to rise. We’re not going to get to net-zero without dramatic changes to how we move about. Could cycling be part of the solution?

To better understand the potential impact of cycling on a sustainable future, we set out to find out just how green cycling actually is. In the process, we’ve tried to answer two key questions:

1. What is the carbon cost of cycling and how does it compare to other forms of transport?
2. Could a dramatic increase in cycling for transport budge the needle on our collective carbon footprint?

To answer the first question, we’ll look at the emissions produced from bicycle manufacturing and the extra food/calories needed to cycle.

We’ll also investigate how traditional cycling compares to riding an electric bike, as well as walking, getting the bus and driving petrol and electric cars, in terms of the total carbon emissions per kilometre travelled.

In short, we find that while making bicycles and the food to power them carries a carbon cost, cycling is among the lowest carbon-per-kilometre modes of transport – it’s even better than walking.

We estimate that if cycling’s popularity returned to 1940s levels (when the average Brit cycled six times further per year than today) and these trips replaced car journeys, that would create a net saving of 7.7-million tons of CO2 per year in the UK.

The problem to be solved: transport emissions aren’t falling fast enough

In order to uphold the Paris agreement and keep global warming below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the EU and UN is aiming to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 80 to 90 per cent before 2050, while the UK has pledged to get to net-zero emissions by then.

Net-zero doesn’t mean zero emissions, but rather minimising emissions while developing carbon-negative technologies such as direct-air capture, enhanced weathering, regenerative agriculture and afforestation to offset the rest. Reducing positive emissions to a minimum is essential, but this alone will not be enough.

There is some good news. According to Our World In Data, the UK’s domestic emissions (greenhouse gases emitted within the UK) fell by 36 per cent from a peak in 1991 to 2018 (the latest available data).

Even when taking account embodied emissions generated when producing imported goods, emissions fell by 24 per cent between the peak in 2007 and 2017.

This progress has been led by the electricity sector. Falling electricity demand, combined with swapping coal for natural gas, renewables and biomass (the role of biomass is not without controversy) has led to a 60 per cent drop in emissions from electricity generation.

But to get to net-zero, emissions from all sectors must be slashed. Emissions from transport fell by just 2 per cent between 1990 and 2017. Surface transport alone (excluding aviation and shipping) now represents 27 per cent of the UK’s total domestic greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 24 per cent for electricity generation, making it the UK’s number one source of CO2.

This is not just a British problem. Transportation emissions in the EU rose by 36 per cent between 1990 and 2007, while those from other sectors fell.

To get to net-zero, we’ll need to rethink how we travel. Is cycling part of the solution?

Just how green is cycling as a mode of transport?

In order to compare the emissions from cycling to other forms of transport, we need to work out the total amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) released per kilometre travelled.

This requires a life cycle analysis. LCAs are used to compare emissions between all sorts of products, from power stations to PlayStations.

They work by adding up all the sources of emissions from the entire lifespan of a product (production, operation, maintenance and disposal) and dividing this by the amount of useful output the product can provide in its lifespan.

For a power station, that output may be the total amount of electricity it will generate in its lifespan; for a car or a bike, the number of kilometres travelled.

It’s worth acknowledging that this method is simplistic for a few reasons.

First, it assumes that every extra calorie burned is another calorie consumed through diet. But according to this review paper titled “The Effects of Exercise on Food Intake and Body Fatness: a Summary of Published Studies”, when people burn more calories through exercise they don’t typically consume as many extra calories in their diet.

In other words, they lose weight through a calorie deficit. Therefore, this analysis may be an overestimate for cycling’s food-based emissions.

Second, it assumes that people don’t change the type of food they eat when they exercise, only the quantity. Different foods have very different environmental impacts.

Also, it doesn’t take into account the possibility that if people cycle more they might take more showers or do more laundry, or have more money to spend on other polluting activities (environmentalists call this a rebound effect).

What is the environmental cost of manufacturing a bike?

Fortunately, this study, entitled “Quantifying CO2 savings of cycling”, conducted by the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), has done a lot of the legwork.

The authors drew on data from a standard database called Eco-Invent, which catalogues the environmental impact of supply chains for various materials and products.

From this, they calculate that manufacturing an average Dutch commuter bike, weighing 19.9kg and composed mostly of steel, causes the release of 96kg CO2e.

This figure includes manufacturing spare parts required throughout its lifespan. They argue that the emissions involved in the disposal or recycling of the bike are negligible.

CO2e (CO2 equivalent) means the total global warming potential of all greenhouse gasses emitted (including CO2, methane, N2O etc.) expressed as the mass of pure CO2 required to induce the same amount of warming over a 100-year timespan.

Materials matter

According to the World Steel Association, there is an average of 1.9kg of CO2e emitted per kg of steel produced.

Whereas according to the European Aluminium Environmental Profile Report, an average of 18kg of CO2e is released per kg of aluminium produced, but recycled aluminium has just 5 per cent the carbon cost of virgin material.

Clearly, manufacturing emissions vary greatly by material, and so manufacturing emissions will vary by bike.

Muddying the waters further, this report from Duke University estimates that manufacturing an aluminium Specialized Allez road frame alone produces 250kg CO2e, while making a carbon-fibre Specialized Roubaix frame produces 67kg.

The authors suggest that the heat treatment of high-end aluminium frames adds considerably to manufacturing energy demand and carbon footprint. However, the authors note there may be considerable inaccuracies in the study. We have asked the study’s authors and representatives from Specialized to elaborate on this, but haven’t yet received a response.

Because these numbers may not be accurate or typical of the bike industry as a whole, we’ll use the ECF’s estimate of 96kg CO2e per bike produced, but be aware that the carbon footprint of an individual bike will likely vary greatly.

Manufacturing emissions per kilometre

The ECF further estimates that an average bike has a lifespan of 19,200km.

So, if the 96kg of CO2e required to make a bike is spread among 19,200 kilometres that works out to 5g of CO2e per km of cycling from manufacturing emissions.

What is the carbon cost of producing the food required to cycle a kilometre?

The ECF calculates that an average cyclist travelling at 16km/h and weighing 70kg will burn 280 calories per hour, compared to 105 calories per hour if they weren’t cycling. So an average cyclist consumes 175 extra calories per 16km; that works out at 11 calories per kilometre.

• How many calories does cycling burn?

To convert this into emissions per kilometre, we also need to know the average GHG emissions per calorie of food produced. Food production emissions come in many forms, including land-use changes (such as flooding fields and deforestation), fertiliser production, livestock emissions, transportation and refrigeration. It’s worth pointing out that transportation (food-miles) is only a small fraction of total food-systems emissions.

The ECF estimates that the average European diet is responsible for 1.44g CO2e per calorie of food consumed.

It’s unclear how it arrived at this figure, but we used data from Our World in Data and a rough calculation to check, and came to a similar estimate for the global average by dividing the global annual food production emissions by the number of calories consumed (globally) in the same year.

Multiplying 1.44g CO2e per calorie by 11 calories per kilometre corresponds to 16g CO2e per kilometre of cycling from food production emissions.

Diet matters

This is an estimate based on average CO2e emissions per calorie, but the type of food eaten makes a big difference. According to this paper published in the reputable journal Science, beef contributes on average 52g CO2e per calorie; this corresponds to 570g CO2e per/km if all the calories required to pedal came from beef.

That would make cycling more environmentally damaging than driving.

On the other hand, the paper found that wheat, rye, potatoes and maize (corn) all produce under 1g of CO2e per calorie produced. So if the extra calories came from these carbohydrates (best case scenario), the GHG emissions per kilometre could be lower than we’ve estimated.

What are the total emissions for cycling one kilometre?

Adding the 16g per kilometre for food production to 5g per kilometre for bike manufacturing gives a total of 21g CO2e for cycling each kilometre.

By this estimate, more than three-quarters of cycling’s carbon emissions come from food production.

How do the emissions from conventional bikes compare to electric bikes?

Electric bike manufacturing

The ECF estimates that ebikes have a higher average manufacturing carbon footprint than conventional bikes, at 134kg CO2e compared to 96kg.

Here’s a quick reality check on this figure. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, lithium-ion batteries used in cars release about 68kg CO2e per kWh of battery capacity produced.

Ebikes typically use 0.5kWh battery packs, so we can estimate emissions of 34kg CO2e for making the battery. This tallies with the ECF’s estimate of the additional emissions from ebike manufacturing.

Assuming the same 19,200km lifespan we used for the conventional bicycle, this equates to 7g CO2e per km for the ebike, compared to 5g for the normal bike.

Electric bike electricity consumption

The ECF also estimates that an ebike uses 23Wh (Watt-hours) of electricity per kilometre travelled, and multiplies this figure by the average amount of CO2e produced per Wh of electricity in Europe in 2006 (0.383 g CO2e per/Wh). This led to an estimate of 9g of CO2e per km.

However, at that rate of consumption, a 500Wh ebike battery would provide a range of just 22km. Our experience of testing ebikes on the road suggests this is a very low estimate.

According to Bosch’s ebike range calculator, a city ebike with a 500Wh battery will provide a range of 94km under typical commuting conditions (assuming 22km/h average speed, mountain bike tyres, “sports” assistance mode and 85kg combined weight). This is more in line with what we have found when testing and reviewing electric road bikes.

While Bosch may be accused of being optimistic when estimating its own product’s range, BikeRadar’s senior technical editor Warren Rossiter has found that e-road bikes with a battery half that size (250Wh) can deliver an average range of about 80km – albeit with skinny tyres.

Travelling 94km on 500Wh works out to 5.3Wh per km. Assuming a charging efficiency of 90 per cent (not all the energy from the plug makes it into the battery), an ebike will require 5.9Wh of electricity from the grid to travel each kilometre.

Furthermore, according to UK government figures, the carbon intensity of electricity in the UK in 2019 was far lower than it was in the EU in 2006, at 0.256g of CO2e per Wh of electricity.

Combining these figures (5.9Wh per km and 0.256g per Wh) gives a more up-to-date and UK-centric estimate of 1.5g CO2e per/km from electricity use.

Electric bike food consumption

The ECF assumes an average 70kg cyclist on an ebike will burn only 4.4 extra calories per kilometre over and above the amount used when not exercising (compared to 11 for the conventional bike). Using again the ECF’s estimate for food production emissions (1.44g CO2e per calorie), we get 6.3g CO2e per/km from food production.

Bikes vs ebikes: which is more eco-friendly?

Adding all this up, we arrive at 14.8g CO2e per kilometre travelled by ebike.

That’s 30 per cent lower than the figure from cycling a conventional bike.

Because ebikes require less food production per kilometre travelled, they have lower greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetime than conventional bikes, despite the added emissions from electricity production and battery manufacturing.

How does walking compare?

To calculate the greenhouse gas emissions from walking we only need to look at the additional food requirement per kilometre.

An average 70kg person walking at 5.6km/h (3.5mph) on level ground will burn approximately 322 calories per hour, compared to 105 calories per hour if doing no exercise. That’s 217 extra calories per hour (or per 5.6 kilometres travelled) or 39 calories per kilometre.

Using the same estimate for European food production emissions as for cycling (1.44g CO2e per calorie) and multiplying this by 39 calories per kilometre gives us 56g CO2e per kilometre from walking, just to provide the extra food.

This suggests that walking each kilometre results in 2.7 times the emissions of cycling or 3.8 times that of riding an ebike, due to walking’s higher calorific demand per kilometre.

As mentioned before, this analysis assumes that every calorie burned corresponds to an extra calorie consumed, which is not always the case.

How does travelling by car compare?

To estimate the potential for cycling to save carbon emissions, we need to see how cycling’s per-kilometre emissions compare to driving.

Manufacturing

According to ADME (the French environment and energy management agency), the average European car produces 6.6 tons of CO2e during manufacture, and will travel 157,000km in its lifetime.

That works out to 42g CO2e per kilometre from production emissions alone.

Fuel

According to the Department for Transport, greenhouse gas emissions from the tailpipe of cars in the UK totalled 70-million tons of CO2e in 2016, and there were 410-billion vehicle-kilometres driven by cars in that year. This works out to an average of 171g of CO2 per kilometre from tailpipe emissions.

But it’s not that simple.

First, there are emissions involved in extracting, transporting and refining crude oil into petrol and diesel, known as well-to-tank emissions.

According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), for every 100g of CO2 released through burning fuel in cars (tailpipe emissions), a further 17g is emitted during the production of that fuel (well-to-tank emissions).

These well-to-tank emissions are usually counted under the industrial (rather than transport) sector, but for our purposes we need to include both.

That takes our estimate of the average UK car emissions from 171g to 200g CO2e per km.

It gets worse. We want to compare the emissions from cycling with driving the equivalent journey. Internal combustion cars are considerably less economical over short trips, due to idling, cold starts, stop-starting etc.

The ECF estimates that for short journeys that compete with cycling, the average European car emits 266g CO2e per kilometre of driving, including both tailpipe and well-to-tank emissions.

This figure is still not ready to be compared to cycling because cars can carry multiple people. The ECF estimates that for such short trips, the average car has an occupancy of 1.16 passengers. That works out at 229g CO2e per passenger-kilometre from fuel use and fuel manufacturing.

Total Co2 emissions for cars compared to bikes

Adding this to the manufacturing emissions (42g/km) gives a total of 271g CO2e per passenger-km of driving. That’s around 13 times the emissions from cycling.

What about electric cars?

In order to assess the environmental impact of any future policy or technology, it’s no good just comparing it to the current alternatives – we also have to compare it to the future alternatives.

Electric cars are often touted as the future of cleaner personal transport, but how do their total emissions compare to internal combustion cars and to bicycles?

This paper published by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) looks at current electric vehicles in the US and compares them to internal combustion cars in a life cycle analysis.

The authors estimate a typical mid-size electric car produces 128g CO2e per kilometre over its lifespan. That’s assuming a 217,000km lifespan and electricity generation mix which is typical for current EV (electric vehicle) users in the US.

However, this figure is not directly comparable to the above estimate for internal combustion cars in the EU because the Union of Concerned Scientists assumes a longer lifespan than the ECF and the electricity generated in the US is more carbon-intensive than it is in the EU or in the UK.

Let’s adapt that estimate to make it more comparable for the UK.

According to the UCS, manufacturing a mid-size electric car results in 7.7 tons of CO2e (about 15 per cent more than the equivalent average-sized petrol car). If we assume the car is driven for 157,000km, as we did for the internal combustion car above, that corresponds to 49g CO2e per kilometre from manufacturing emissions.

This may be an overestimate as it assumes the battery cannot be re-used or recycled after the car has driven this distance, and so more batteries have to be made again from scratch. This is the worst-case scenario. The UCS also predicts that manufacturing emissions for batteries will decrease as technology improves.

According to the UCS, a mid-size EV uses about 0.19 kWh of electricity per kilometre driven. Unlike with internal combustion cars, electric vehicles are more efficient around town than on the highway, so this is perhaps a high estimate when looking at short journeys that compete with cycling.

In the UK in 2019, the average amount of CO2e produced in electricity production was 0.2556 kg CO2e per kWh, according to the UK government. Multiplying this by the UCS estimate for electric vehicle consumption per kilometre, this corresponds to 48g CO2e per km from electricity use. This figure will come down if the electricity grid continues to decarbonise.

As with internal combustion cars, we’ll assume electric vehicles average 1.16 passengers for journeys comparable to cycling. This brings the electricity emissions down to 41g per passenger-kilometre.

The above assumes the extra electricity required to power electric cars has the same carbon intensity as current average electricity, which is a little simplistic.

Because EVs increase the overall demand for electricity, they will affect how it’s generated. On one hand, EVs can be charged at night, or whenever electricity is cheapest or greenest, so the carbon footprint of electricity used by EVs may be lower than average.

This charging flexibility, and the potential for EVs to discharge to the grid when demand is highest, suggests that mass EV adoption could accelerate the uptake of intermittent energy sources like wind and solar.

On the other hand, the extra electricity demand could slow efforts to decommission coal and gas power plants. The point is, the long-term environmental impact of EVs will depend greatly on how they influence future electricity generation.

Total emissions for electric vehicles

Adding the emissions from manufacturing and electricity production together, we get 90g CO2e per passenger-kilometre.

So electric cars pollute much less per kilometre than internal combustion cars. Over short journeys that compete with cycling, and when using relatively clean UK electricity, they produce around a third of the the CO2 per kilometre of an internal combustion car, but over four times more than bicycles.

What about buses?

The ECF estimates GHG emissions for travelling by bus in much the same way as the internal combustion car.

It assumes that buses, like internal combustion cars, have manufacturing emissions of 5.5 tons of CO2e per ton of vehicle. Other assumptions include an average vehicle weight of 11 tons, that buses are driven for one million miles before disposal, and that they carry an average of ten passengers.

With these assumptions, the ECF estimates that travelling by bus produces 101 g CO2e per passenger-kilometre.

Of course, this figure varies greatly depending on the occupancy of the bus. This MIT study estimates that the operation and manufacturing emissions for a typical US bus add up to 49g CO2e per passenger-kilometre at peak times and 393g at off-peak times when the bus is less busy.

As with passenger cars, electrifying buses could make for dramatic reductions to their carbon footprint, but we were unable to find data on the carbon footprint of electric buses.

What we’ve learned so far: how do transport emissions compare?

Ebiking and cycling are clear winners in terms of CO2 emissions per kilometre, even when compared to walking, electric cars and getting the bus. Over short distances, driving an average petrol or diesel car emits more than ten times the CO2 per kilometre compared to cycling.

So cycling is greener, but how big an impact could it make?

According to the Department For Transport, 5.3-billion kilometres were cycled in the UK in 2018 for all purposes. With a population of 66-million that works out as a paltry 80km per person per year on average.

Surprisingly, back in 1949 Brits cycled 474 kilometres per person per year, while the Danes currently manage 936km per person per year. If modern Brits cycled as much per person as they did in the forties (still only half what the Danes do), it would equate to 31-billion kilometres per year in total.

Brits drive a total of 61 5-billion kilometres per year on journeys of less than five miles, according to the Department for Transport, so increasing cycling to 1940s levels would be the equivalent of  replacing half of these short trips.

In a best-case scenario where cycling in Britain returned to peak 1940s levels, and all this extra cycling replaced driving, how much of an impact could this have?

We worked out earlier that conventional bikes generate about 21g CO2e per/km, so cycling 31-billion kilometres would produce 0.7-million tons of CO2e through additional bike and food production.

But the corresponding reduction in car journeys would lead to a reduction of 8.4-million tons of CO2, so there would be a net reduction of 7.7-million tons of CO2 annually.

Even in a future where all cars are electric (but still using current electricity), replacing 31-billion kilometres of driving with cycling would result in a net saving of 2.1-million tons of CO2 every year.

Is this a big number?

7.7-million tons of CO2 is roughly equivalent to 13-million flights from London to New York every year.

According to gov.uk, total transport emissions in the UK in 2016 equated to 126-million tons of CO2e (this includes all surface transport plus domestic flights and shipping, but excludes the emissions required to manufacture fuel and vehicles), which accounted for 27 per cent of all UK domestic emissions.

So, that 7.7-million-ton saving is equivalent to 6 per cent of the UK’s current transport emissions, or 2 per cent of its total current domestic emissions.

How does cycling compare to other ways of reducing transport emissions?

One of the most popular ideas for reducing transport emissions is simply swapping petrol and diesel for electric cars. This is not just a hypothetical idea – the UK government has pledged that all new cars will be zero-emission (electric or hydrogen-powered) by 2035.

According to the Department for Transport, 410-billion vehicle-kilometres were driven by car or taxi in the UK in 2016.

Based on the calculations above, but looking at emissions per vehicle-kilometre (as opposed to per passenger-kilometre), and for all journeys as opposed to short journeys, we can estimate that electric cars produce 97g CO2e per vehicle-kilometre, while current internal combustion cars produce 242g.

Converting all current car journeys to electric would save about 60-million tons of CO2 annually. That’s equivalent to 48 per cent of the UK’s current transport emissions, or 11 per cent of the UK’s total domestic GHG emissions in 2016.

That’s nearly eight-times more of an impact than our ambitious best-case cycling scenario. Not because electric cars are greener than bikes, but because people drive far further than they cycle (even in Denmark).

This crude calculation ignores any rebound effect, where greater efficiency leads to lower costs and therefore more driving, and more money to spend on other polluting activities, such as flying.

The rebound effect has contributed to a 40 per cent increase in driving in Europe since 1990, which has more than offset the improved efficiency of cars over the same period.

What’s the bottom line?

By these calculations, cycling has the lowest carbon footprint of any mode of personal transport, even when compared to walking.

From a climate perspective, it makes sense for as many journeys as possible to be made by bike.

On an individual level, cycling instead of driving (or any other method of travelling) can make a positive impact on your carbon footprint.

But on a national scale, cycling has a limited role in addressing climate change. Because cycling is restricted to short journeys for most people, it can only replace a small fraction of the kilometres covered by cars.

Even if half of all sub-5-mile car journeys were replaced with cycling (a deliberately optimistic scenario) this would save around 7.7-million tons CO2e in the UK, equivalent to 2 per cent of UK domestic emissions in 2016. Not to be sniffed at, but not a silver bullet.

Ebikes could boost the uptake of cycling to some extent.

It’s no coincidence that countries with the highest cycling rates are flat (Denmark and the Netherlands), and ebikes go a long way towards flattening the landscape from the cyclist’s perspective.

Because they’re faster and easier to ride, particularly when carrying cargo, they could help more people to cycle more journeys. Better still, by our estimates, they have an even lower carbon cost than conventional bikes because their riders require less extra food per kilometre travelled.

Currently, cars account for two-thirds of UK transport emissions, and car-reliance continues to rise. Reducing car-related emissions directly by swapping to electric will have a bigger impact than cycling in terms of cutting carbon emissions.

But even when compared to electric cars, we estimate travelling by bike has about one-quarter the carbon footprint per kilometre travelled, so cycling is still, journey-for-journey, the best option for the climate.

Replacing car journeys with cycling is also something many of us can do tomorrow, whereas electrifying the UK’s vehicle fleet will take decades.

Beyond greenhouse gasses

While cycling is among the greenest ways to travel, this is just one of many reasons to ride a bike. This article focuses on climate change, but replacing cars with bikes would have many other benefits.

Sustrans, the UK’s sustainable transport charity, outlines a few of them in its 2019 manifesto. These include cutting congestion, addressing health problems associated with sedentary lifestyles, thereby cutting sick days, increasing life expectancy and benefiting the economy, while cutting particulate air pollution – a problem which shortens global life expectancy by an average of 1.8 years according to one study, and has also been linked to an increased COVID-19 death rate.

While electric vehicles will reduce urban air pollution and CO2 emissions dramatically compared to current cars, they cause considerably more pollution than cycling,  and won’t solve congestion or the problems associated with sedentary lifestyles.

In fact, they may add to them thanks to electric vehicles’ lower running costs leading to more people driving.

Finally, let’s not forget that cycling is meant to be fun! Most people ride a bike because it’s cheap, convenient, healthy and enjoyable, not just because it’s green.

There are certain things people really love and there are things people really loathe. Marmite. Coriander. The leader of the government of the day. And we certainly get enough readers writing in for us to believe that gravel riding and off-road bikepacking adventures also fall into this category.

For some, it’s their natural habitat. For others, the prospect of spending a night under the stars, close to nature but stripped of their creature comforts, and slap bang in the middle of at least two tough days on the bike, is the stuff of nightmares.

However, with coronavirus still a real threat – when foreign travel remains unappealing, hotels feel like a biohazard and your local routes have the unerring familiarity of a deleted scene from Groundhog Day – those who still need persuading on the joys of such rides are at their most persuadable.

I’ll put my cards on the table now: I’m one such rider. I’m a die-hard roadie. What keeps my fires burning through the dreariness of indoor training and relentless local loops are pristine Alpine cols, but with all my best-laid summer plans abroad up in smoke, it was about time to see if all this off-road gravel riding was what it’s cracked up to be.

I’m not a total stranger to it. It’s just that, on the occasions I have ridden gravel, I always feel as though I’m on the wrong bike. On the smoother sections, I yearn for my skinny-tyred road bike, and when mellow gravel tracks morph into choppy singletrack, my minds turns to thinking how much better equipped I’d be with a hardtail mountain bike.

Of course, the converts would say that’s all part of the fun of gravel bikes. I still needed convincing.

Whichever way you slice it, gravel riding expands your horizons and opens up a huge world of traffic-free cycling.

The sticking point in the UK – as opposed to the USA where gravel riding originated and which is teeming with wonderful gravel roads connecting its highways – is finding the best sections and piecing them all together without it turning into a ride that would be best done on a mountain bike.

The shallow end

Over the course of this three-part series, I’m going to immerse myself in all things gravel, starting off easy with a two-day, predominantly tarmac bikepacking trip, before raising the stakes and going further, longer and tougher.

Unless you live in the wilderness, it’s unlikely that you’ll find good gravel on your doorstep, so you need to be prepared to travel.

For my first trip, I’d be doing just that, but there was no need to head off too far. I wanted to ease myself in and get used to a new bike – a Bombtrack Hook EXT-C, fully laden with bikepacking bags – and work out the new bike-handling technique that it requires. Starting, stopping, turning, standing – it’s all different when your bike is twice as heavy as usual.

I wanted plenty of off-road sections mixed in with a big helping of flowing country lanes, just near enough to familiar roads and villages close to my Cheltenham home.

That’s half the truth – really my proximity to home meant that if it all became too much, the comfort of my own bed wasn’t too far away.

With the help of the Komoot app and Komoot staff (media manager and experienced gravel campaigner Rob Marshall would be my ride buddy for the trip), I set about planning a two-day, 150km ride with 2,000m of elevation.

Of this, 70 per cent would be on the rough stuff – and the rest off-road (that’s an in-joke to anyone familiar with riding on British roads).

We’d begin in Cheltenham, travelling south through the Cotswolds and along the historic Fosse Way on day one, then back up north along the western ridge of the Cotswolds to complete the loop.

The Fosse Way is an ancient Roman road that linked Exeter with Lincoln. Many sections of the route are now modern roads, but the section between Cirencester and Bath includes a traffic-free gravel track – perfect for the modest aims of this tour.

Day one began with a bang, with a climb out of Cheltenham up to the highest point in the Cotswolds, the 330m Cleeve Hill. It can be tackled in several different directions, both on and off-road, but we decided on the most direct path to the summit to get the blood pumping out of the gate.

From the top, we travelled down a lovely stretch of golden gravel streaking across Cleeve Common, snaking further into the wilderness after only just leaving town. We followed the ridge of the Cotswold Hills through a raft of lookalike villages, occasionally traversing busier roads but largely avoiding traffic, my bike’s 47mm tyres making mincemeat of the varied terrain.

Just two hours into the ride, and despite still being close to Cheltenham, this was a new personal frontier, as we discovered forest paths and singletrack around Sheepscombe.

Heavy ground combined with sharp climbs meant our average speed hovered uncomfortably close to single-digit territory, though that’s something you soon get used to as you adapt from the speed you’re used to on the road. It’s a whole different ball game; the faster you realise that, the better.

After a much-needed pit stop, we hit the Slad Valley road, a fantastic gradual descent into Stroud. We passed the Woolpack Inn, synonymous with local author and poet Laurie Lee and his famous book Cider With Rosie, which makes a much better fist of describing the local area than I ever could.

Out of Stroud came a long old battle onto cattle-strewn Minchinhampton Common, before following the back roads around Tetbury and onto the Fosse Way, a gently undulating gravel nirvana that included the odd river crossing.

Attention now turned to our overnight stay, which we’d arranged with a local landowner in the impossible glamour of a field near Sherston.

Wild camping rules vary across the UK; in England and Wales, you generally need permission to camp, but the right to roam law in Scotland gives you much more freedom. As a bikepacking novice, I wanted the reassurance of a plan, knowing where I was going to get my sleep. But with experience comes a willingness to chance your arm and see what happens.

Stars in their eyes

If I said I’d slept well, I’d be lying. It was unlike any camping I’d done before. Wild camping has romance attached to it, but I would prefer somewhere with at least some basic facilities. I also found the bivvy bag slightly claustrophobic, so will investigate other options – while being fully aware that there’s a balance to be struck between bulk/weight on the bike and a semi-decent sleep. B

ut there are few issues that a coffee can’t remedy and, after a quick cup, we were back on the bikes and heading to the village of Sherston to grab some breakfast.

The first hour or so of day two took us through quiet country lanes with a few brief sections of well-packed, off-road trail. The combination of wild camping, a lack of washing and unusual surroundings made for a holiday vibe. Already, just one day in, we felt a long way from both home and our usual routines.

After an accommodating opening to the day’s proceedings, we hit the first big obstacle of the day and suddenly felt the exertions of the previous 24 hours. Climbing through Tresham and over to Ozelworth – punchy off-road climbs both, with a loose, rutted surface – I was fighting a losing battle trying to take the right line. It’s a skill that only comes with experience.

At least the weather had been good in the week leading up to today, meaning the ground was hard and dusty. Had it been wet, it may not have been uninterrupted pedalling.

For climb after climb, Rob – who, allied to his considerable skill, has the ideal slimline build for this sort of riding – put me to shame, but I was able to keep up on the road descent on our return to Stroud, before heading up again towards Painswick Beacon, a road I know well.

Right on the edge of the Cotswold ridge, it offers up great views over the Severn Valley across to the Malvern Hills and on towards Wales, scene of our next gravel adventure. Several more gravel sections ensued before our finish line in Cheltenham hovered into view through the trees as we rode through the village of Birdlip.

The five hours of the second day flew by and my thoughts were already turning to our next ride, where we’d be heading further off-grid. Rob was mulling over the idea of the Trans-Cambrian Way, which seemed to have all the ingredients for what we were looking for.

I’d survived my first bikepacking experience and was now hungry for more.

Back in the summer of 2018, Cycling Plus magazine visited Slovenia’s Julian Alps for a ride in the mountains that had it all – snow-capped peaks, cobbled climbs, glacial lakes and the country’s highest road.

Now, with Tadej Pogačar becoming the first Slovenian to win the Tour de France and his compatriot, Primož Roglič, finishing second (a first in itself), we revisit that day in Slovenia’s high mountains.

If the Julian Alps weren’t on your must-ride list, this might make you reconsider (once we’re allowed to travel, of course).

“Eoin, tell me, what are your needs?” enquired Klemen. Sweat pouring down his pained face, and breathing heavy, Eoin’s reply is quick and to the point, if a little beyond Klemen’s capabilities. “A helicopter and a hospital.”

Klemen is Klemen Cepirlo, our driver, mechanic, soigneur and local sage all rolled into one compact Slovenian package.

Eoin is Eoin McCoy, an Irishman living in Poland’s Krakow for the past 18 years and one of several guests of cycling holiday outfit Podia – also based in Krakow – on this trip to Slovenia’s Julian Alps. (Editor’s note: Podia has paused its cycling holidays but still sells quality apparel through the company’s website)

Eoin’s anguish is understandable. We’re on the fourth and final day of an increasingly mountain-packed trip to the northwestern corner of this central European country and Max Burgess, Podia’s founder, has conspired, Grand Tour-like, to backload the trip with Slovenia’s biggest road challenge – its highest road, the Mangart.

Previous days had seen us explore the mountains and valleys of the Triglav National Park and today, our final ride of the trip, had dialled up the altitude with passage over the Vršič, a 1,611m giant of the region that’s simultaneously both beauty and beast.

If the Vršič Pass had added another 400 vertical metres to any of the previous climbs we’d ridden, the towering Mangart, its head in the clouds of an increasingly brooding late afternoon sky, does likewise, crashing through the 2,000m mark and adding another 72m for good measure.

At the point where Eoin had made his tongue-in-cheek call for aerial assistance we’d been climbing for 15km from Bovec, our base for the week and where we’d passed through again on our way to the Mangart. But the 11.7km up to the Mangart Saddle, as it’s known, had yet to begin. Eoin’s needs – all our needs – would become far greater before they subsided.

Small and mighty

Small in stature, Slovenia still manages to pack a wallop. That’s particularly true of the Triglav National Park, with its eponymous mountain standing at 2,864m – both Slovenia’s highest peak and that of the whole former Yugoslavia.

Much of Triglav covers the mountainous region known as the Julian Alps, which span northeastern Italy and Slovenia, and named after Julius Caesar.

In professional road cycling terms Slovenia, a country of just two million people, punches well above its weight. The current men’s WorldTour is packed with Slovenians, including Tadej Pogačar (Team UAE–Emirates), Primož Rogli (Team LottoNL–Jumbo) and Matej Mohori (Bahrain-Merida).

The Julian Alps don’t get as much love as neighbouring Alps in Italy, France and Switzerland when it comes to elite bike racing, even from the Tour of Slovenia.

Though the country’s national race has climbed the Vršič Pass, it’s done so just once (2013) in the past decade, before that, in 2007, a young Vincenzo Nibali took one of the first wins of his career here.

The Mangart remains untapped, though that, says the race’s press officer, is more because of the “logistical nightmare” of taking the race up such a high, isolated, dead-end road. It’s actually their dream to head up there.

What this means is that the region fits nicely into Podia’s ‘Hidden Europe’ message – taking cyclists to the less-heralded but no less magnificent regions of Europe that fly under the radar.

Car share

To see the best of the Julian Alps and not have 160km-plus days to tame, car transfers are a necessary evil, and so it was that our 93km ride began in the van of our ride guide, Maciej Proficz, who as well as being a top road racer also moonlights as the frontman in a death metal band, Dormant Audio.

Our base for the week was the small ski resort town of Bovec, on the western edge of Triglav close to the Italian border, and it would be an hour’s drive to another town, the larger Kranjska Gora, at the base of the Vršič, where our ride would begin.

Despite his musical pedigree, Maciej’s listening tastes are far broader and the journey to the start was accompanied by mass singalongs to the back catalogue of American rock-pop heroes Toto. Maciej belted out Rosanna in particular with gusto.

This drive took us up a road that had become familiar. Around 15km from Bovec, we’d descended down it on day two to finish the ride, driven up it on day three to get to the start at Lake Bohinj and were due to end today coming down off the Mangart. Descending it is a blast, full of new tarmac, steep slopes and sinewy bends.

“I can’t wait to come down this again,” exclaimed an excited Michał Tretyn, one of Podia’s paying punters.

“You’re going to have to go up it first,” I offered back.

“Excuse me?”

“You have to go up it. This takes us up to the start of the Mangart, and then we come back down it on the way to the hotel,” I insisted.

If it wasn’t for Toto, I reckon I’d have heard his heart sinking – it’s a stinker of climb.

In truth, the Vršič was little easier but where the climb to the Mangart is a long slog up on an unremarkable main road, the Vršič, especially from the Kranjska Gora side, is – and this might sound like a writer overplaying their hand – one of the finest stretches of asphalt to be found anywhere in Europe.

Not that it is all asphalt. Each hairpin on this northern side of the pass remains cobbled and another reason why this is the best side to climb – though each section is small and well-maintained, you don’t want to corner them in the wet.

The Russian Road

As beautiful a sight as the pass is today, it forever carries a tragic history. While a version of the pass had already existed before World War One, the pass we know today is largely thanks to the work of over 10,000 Russian prisoners of war, under the watch of their Austrian captors.

In the spring of 1916, two severe avalanches claimed over 300 Russian lives and several Austrian guards. The chapel at kilometre four on the Kranjska Gora side was built a year later by the prisoners in memory of their fallen comrades and their own suffering.

In 2006, 90 years after its construction, the Slovenian government paid for its restoration and renamed this stretch the Russian Road.

Your suffering will be put firmly in perspective, but it’s only after the chapel that the 9.25km Vršič gets its claws into you, and barring a couple of flat sections it’s largely double digits from there to the 1,611m summit – the highest pass in Slovenia.

If this side is the best to climb, the south, free of cobbles, is surely the best descent, with most of the summer tourist traffic seemingly turning back for Kranjska Gora at either the summit or the chapel, allowing us a largely free run at the 26 hairpins and 12km (8.1 per cent) into Trenta.

In all, the Vršič has 50 hairpins, every one of them numbered, Alpe d’Huez-like. But which came first? In his book Mountain Higher, cycling journalist Daniel Friebe tells the story of Georges Rajon, who took the Tour de France to Alpe d’Huez in 1952.

A frequent visitor to Slovenia, he was the owner of the Alpe’s Hotel Christina, now in the hands of his daughter Christiane, who confirmed her father brought the idea home from one of his many Slovenian hunting holidays.

Lunch was taken at the foot of the Vršič in Trenta. In character with the rest of my week with Podia, it was late, long and leisurely, with pizza eaten and beers sunk on the warmest, brightest day of the week.

One rider’s bike computer actually had a beer count metric, showing how many beers he could drink to make up his calorie deficit. It was wise he didn’t take up the computer’s invitation to sink eight lagers, given it had gone 3pm, we’d only covered 24km of 93km and had almost 2,000m still to climb, the bulk of it in one continuous chunk up the Mangart.

Like Vršič, here’s another climb built for war. This time it was the Italian army, constructing it in 1938 over six months as defence against the Yugoslav army.

The final climb of both the day and the trip is tough, but shorn of this context, the Mangart, climbing 980m in 12km, was objectively the biggest challenge of the trip. Second to its Wikipedia entry on Google is its dangerousroads.org webpage, which hadn’t escaped anybody’s attention.

There’s nothing to be overly concerned about, just a few notes of caution. It’s a dead-end road (the summit – the saddle, a bell-shaped loop – overlooks Italy) so it’s not used that often, which means debris, particularly early in the summer, is often strewn across the road. It’s very narrow and there are several poorly lit tunnels, that make for a weirdly sense-deprived riding experience if you don’t have lights.

Our long charge to the summit was abruptly cut short just before it. Given the Mangart isn’t a pass, local authorities weren’t in a hurry to clear the winter snowfall. Just as we were about to corner one of the final bends, a head-height blockade of snow stopped us in our tracks.

Reluctantly turning around, we were left to look back down this spectacular mountain from the highest road in the country (well, almost!). The poor weather promised at the start of the day had stayed away, but now, close to 7pm, it was belatedly closing in, and fast.

But we’d already got what we’d come for – a spectacular ride in one of Europe’s best-kept secrets. The hard work was done and all that remained was the long descent back to our Bovec base. Our needs? Every one of them, well and truly satisfied.