The Bike Show

Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly shares his best moments of this year’s sensational Tour De France. Plus we look ahead to Bicycle Thieves, which combines theatre and BMXing on the streets of London, as part of the InTransit festival. Book tickets for just £4 here or by calling 0845 230 9769.

 

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An extended, hour long edition of the show featuring French writer, poet, cyclist and cultural ambassador Paul Fournel (pictured). We stroll from the French House in Soho to the Rapha Cycle Club in Clerkenwell, to visit an exhibition of a hundred years of racing bicycles. The exhibition runs for two more weeks and is well [...]

 

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As part of this year’s London Festival of Architecture, Stephen Bayley leads a ride around the best of French architecture, art and design to be found on the streets of London. Stephen Bayley is the Observer’s architecture and design critic, the founding director of the Design Museum and in 1989 was a made a Chevalier [...]

 

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After a week of hard drinking racing, the peloton will have earned its high altitude rest day on 12 July. The race continues with another punishing Alpine stage in which the riders must haul themselves over four different climbs culminating in the Col de la Madeleine (2000 metres above sea level) and you may want [...]

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Saturday sees the start of this year’s Tour de France, the world’s biggest annual sporting event. While the athletes will be subsisting on little but Lucozade and saline drips, we spectators can thankfully pass on such revolting fare and instead charge our bidons with the finest vintages and watch as the scintillating landscapes of La [...]

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As the Giro d’Italia enters its third week, we discuss Italy’s great stage race with Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly, in an experimental live broadcast from Look Mum No Hands, London’s newest and best cycle-cafe. Sam Humpheson shows us around the premises. The show also features a look back at Fausto Coppi, one of the [...]

 

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In an off-season podcast-only extended episode, Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly joins me to talk about the year ahead in professional road racing. We talk about the season-openers in the Gulf, the Monuments and Cobbled Classics and of course the Grand Tours, where Britain’s Team Sky is hoping to make a big impact in its [...]

 

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Tim Dawson, cycling columnist for the Sunday Times, runs the Cycling Books website, the most compendious review website for cycling books. He joins me in the studio to discuss the literature of cycling, from Tour de France to cycle touring. Paul Fournel reads another extract from Need for the Bike. Below is a list of [...]

 

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They may still be testing the syringes used by riders in the 2009 Tour De France but that hasn’t stopped the organisers announcing the course for the 2010 edition. And it’s a cracker. I didn’t much care for this year’s figure-of-eight route with its anticlimactic ascent of Le Ventoux and total neglect of northern France [...]

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Joining me in the studio is Graeme Fife, author of the definitive account of Le Tour de France, updated each year. He’s also author of the beautiful Rapha Guide to the Great Road Climbs of the Pyrenees.
We discuss this year’s Tour de France, the most spectacular for some time, featuring the drama over the [...]

 

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Copenhagen is widely regarded as the world’s most cycle-friendly city. I ask Copenhagen’s Mayor Klaus Bondam what advice he gives to other city leaders in how to emulate the Danish capital. Multitalented musician, songwriter and cartoonist Peter Blegvad reads Alfred Jarry’s proto-absurdist short story “The Crucifixion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race”. Jarry (pictured, above) [...]

 

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Pedal Pusher is a play that follows three cyclists — Jan Ullrich, Marco Pantani and Lance Armstrong — in the most dramatic recent era of professional cycle sport: from the young prodigy Jan Ullrich winning the Tour in 1997, the doping scandals of 1998, Armstrong’s conquest of cancer and ending with Pantani’s exile from the [...]

 

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I’ve made a list of my top 12 books for reading during the Tour de France. Apparently if you buy any of these books from Amazon after following the link from here, then Resonance FM gets some money. Cool, isn’t it? Get a great book and help keep the world’s best radio station on air. [...]

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A long, hard look at doping in professional cycling, with journalist Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly and theatre director Roland Smith, whose play Pedal Pusher, opens in London on 7th July.

Play on links below.

 

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A report on No Bike Week, in which a handful of courageous cyclists agree to abstain from two wheels for seven days. Find out what happened. And to read how the No Bike Week meme is evolving into something more akin to a direct action protest, check out No Cycle Day over at Crap [...]

 

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Looking back at this year’s Tour De France, with Guy Andrews, editor of Rouleur magazine and author and broadcaster Graeme Fife. As well as discussing the racing, we go into what it means for a small towns when it plays host to a stage of Le Tour de France. You can listen to an hour-long [...]

 

 28 July 2008: Looking back at Le Tour [29:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Celebrating Bastille Day and the first week of Le Tour De France plus a discussion of civilised streets with Louise Duggan, streets advisor at the UK’s Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE). Just six days until this year’s Dunwich Dynamo….
Play on links below. Other file formats (e.g. Ogg Vorbis) over here.

 

 The Bike Show: 14 July 2008: Vive Le Tour // London Street Design [29:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Featuring an interview with Stephen Bayley, design editor of The Observer, about his guided cycle ride around the houses and homes of celebrated London artists and architects which kicks of a fantastic programme of bicycle tours as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Stephanie Laslett of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios explains why architects love [...]

 

 23 June 2008: London architecture by bike and a Rapha exclusive [30:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In conversation with Julian Bray, a journalist and rider with the Rapha Condor team. Julian came to competitive cycling after falling in love with the continental tradition of the cyclosportive: mass-participation road races of historic or cultural significance, such as the annual Etape du Tour and the Gran Fondo Campagnolo. We discuss the appeal of [...]

 

 2 July 2007: The Lowdown on Cyclosportives [30:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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T’ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. Andrea Casalotti of Velorution and Jean-Marie Orhan (Frenchman-about-town and founding member of the Tweed Cycling Club) offer sartorial advice to urban cyclists. Tribute is paid to the stylish riders of the golden era of professional bicycle racing, including a pilgrimage up Le Mont Ventoux [...]

 

 The Bike Show: Style on two wheels [30:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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