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 biggest stars of the golden era of cycle racing, with a visit to the exhibition of Coppi-related memorabilia at the Rapha Cycle Club, just down the road and a chat with bicycle collector Kadir Guirey. Simon Rose, who put together Rapha’s new Giro-inspired compilation CD also puts in an appearance.
Listeners may notice slightly sub-optimal audio in parts of this broadcast. These should be fixed in future live broadcasts.
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 debut season. We round off the discussion with a look at the explosion of amateur cyclo-sportives. Many of the big sportives are already sold out but there are plenty of others to choose from. Cycling Weekly maintains a very comprehensive sportive calendar.
Following on from last week’s show on well-being, we look at the importance of getting a good fit between rider and machine. Scherritt Knoesen of The Bike Whisperer, is a leading London-based bike fitter. We talk geometry, contact points and pedaling action. Read Grant Peterson’sPetersen’s article The Shoes Ruse on the folly of clip-in pedals and cycling-specific shoes. If you go for a fitting with Scherrit tell him you heard him on The Bike Show. You never know, you might get a discount!
Illustration from Cycling Manual, 23rd edition, 1954
January is the perfect month to take a closer look at how to stay feeling good on the bike. In the studio to share their expertise are Michael Crebbin, a sports physio specialising in cycling-related problems, and Rebecca Bogue who teaches a yoga class designed especially for cyclists.
Contact Rebecca via the Bodywise studio in the Roman Road, east London. Her yoga for cyclists class is on Thursday nights 8.15 – 9.30pm at Bodywise, 119 Roman Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 0QN. Read more about Why Yoga Is Good For Cyclists.
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 the books discussed in the show. If you would like to buy them, follow the links to Amazon and Resonance FM will get a share of anything you buy, even if it’s stuff not on the list. What a nice way to help your favourite bicycling art radio station!
The Classics The Rider by Tim Krabbé The Escape Artist by Matt Seaton Need for the Bike by Paul Fournel
Tour de France Bad to the Bone by James Waddington Sweat of the Gods by Benjo Masso Wide-eyed and Legless: Inside the Tour De France by Jeff Connor Le Tour: A History of the Tour De France by Geoffrey Wheatcroft My Comeback: Up Close and Personal by Lance Armstrong and Elizabeth Kreutz
Cycle touring & travel Thunder and Sunshine by Alistair Humphreys The Hungry Cyclist by Tom Kevilll-Davies French Revolutions by Tim Moore Full Tilt: Ireland To India With a Bicycle by Dervla Murphy Transylvania and Beyond by Dervla Murphy Blue River, Black Sea by Andrew Eames A Bike Ride by Anne Mustoe
Advocacy, philosophy Richard’s Bicycle Book by Richard Ballantine
Those we didn’t get time to talk about Tomorrow We Ride by Jean Bobet The Passion of Fausto Coppi by William Fotheringham The Noiseless Tenor by James Starrs Golden Age of Handbuilt Bikes and Competition Bikes by Jan Heine Rouleur Annual 2009 Fixed: Global Fixed-Gear Bike Culture by Andrew Edwards and Max Leonard
To win copies of the current issues of Rouleur and The Ride Journal, send answers to the competition questions to bikeshow-at-resonancefm-dot-com. Thanks to these fine publications for donating the prizes.
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 which – with Brittany – is really the home of cycle sport à la Francaise. 2010 makes up for the omission with a Grand Départ in Rotterdam and four days winding along the roads (and over the cobblestones) of northern France, before branching east into the Champagne region.
Then come the Alps and an extended stay in the Pyrenees, climbing le col du Tourmalet not once but twice, in honour of the centenary of the first time Le Tour featured the climb back in 1910. Of course it was not uncommon for holidaying cycle tourists, men and women both, to ride over the Tourmalet and the other cols of the Pyrenees years before the Tour ever did. So potent is the self-mythologising of Le Tour I expect to tire of commentators informing me that Octave Lapize was the first man to summit the Tourmalet on a bicycle.
But back to the opening weekend, which strikes me as offering a great opportunity for a little jaunt across the Channel. Bike Show contributor, Bob Dylan buff and sometime journalist Matt Tempest has already expressed his delight at the prospect of “watching the Prologue in Rotterdam with a big fat one” (by which I assume he not referring to a Dutch version of the Camberwell Carrot but to the splendid hookers immortalised in Jacques Brel’s Amsterdam). And who am I to disagree? But how to get over there for all the fun? Continue reading →
We discuss this year’s Tour de France, the most spectacular for some time, featuring the drama over the return from retirement of seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong, seeking to try his luck against a new generation of outstanding riders including two plucky Brits: Mark Cavendish and Brad Wiggins. Our discussion is leavened with some insighful comments from a handful of Bike Show listeners.
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 biggest stars of the golden era of cycle racing, with a visit to the exhibition of Coppi-related memorabilia at the Rapha Cycle Club, just down the road and a chat with bicycle collector Kadir Guirey. Simon Rose, who put together Rapha’s new Giro-inspired compilation CD also puts in an appearance. 
