Road Cycling Digest: Dangerholm's Gravel Bike, A Bamboo Handlebar, Mounting A Jet Engine to A Road Bike & More

By: Gustav Gullholm / CyclingTips

I may be a mountain biker at heart, but the gravel roads are where I have spent most of my time in recent years. It’s a good way to get your training hours in and for your mind to relax, while enjoying the scenery with little to no traffic to worry about. So after several ambitious mountain bike builds, aiming for record low weights or new levels of integration, it was finally time for a real gravel bike. It was a natural step and my first foray into the drop-bar world.

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By: Dave Rome / CyclingTips

I have spent the better part of a day now trying to fill in the gaps, but they’re big gaps and impossible to fill. Nearly three years of gap. I am specifically intrigued by the very end of it. Wednesday morning, in fact. Maybe Tuesday night.

I want to know about the hours in which my bike, mostly disassembled but not entirely so, ended up locked to a very visible fence not half a mile from where it was stolen.

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By: James Huang / CyclingTips

It’s hardly a shock that Shimano has today officially unveiled its latest Dura-Ace Di2 flagship electronic road groupset with a 12-speed cassette and semi-wireless format. We’ve been expecting it for months, and there’s been no shortage of spy photos circulating online. But what few people expected is that — for the first time ever — Shimano has simultaneously launched the new Ultegra Di2 groupset, with all the same features and benefits.

What features and benefits, you ask? According to Shimano, the shifting is faster across the board, the brakes run quieter and offer better modulation and feel, it’s easier and more intuitive to install and customize, and there’s even a new lever shape that claims to address some minor issues with the outgoing model without alienating riders who love the current stuff.

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By: VeloNews

Here’s one way to win Strava KOMs.

In today’s bike news that’s too weird not to share, a cyclist in Taiwan has become an internet sensation after mounting a small jet engine to his road bicycle and then filming himself riding the bizarre contraption.

According to the Taiwan News, a 37-year-old Taiwanese man with the surname Wang purchased a small jet engine designed for a radio-controlled airplane, and then worked with a university professor to mount the engine to his bike.

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By: James Huang / CyclingTips

Shimano’s recent launch of its next-generation Dura-Ace Di2 R9200 and Ultegra Di2 R8100 electronic road groupsets was bundled with a rather unexpected and especially bitter pill: the news that the much-beloved Ultegra mechanical was being discontinued. Shimano plans to keep the current 11-speed groupset in production for one more year, but for many, that’s just going to prolong the pain — the proverbial slow peeling of that stubborn Band-Aid, if you will.

One has to wonder, though: what will fill that giant void in a year’s time? There can only be one logical answer: the long-awaited arrival of 105 Di2 R7100.


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By: Dave Rome / CyclingTips

Released in 2019, the URS was BMC’s official entry into the gravel space and it did so in a number of forward-thinking ways. Now, BMC has released the URS LT – a bike that adds a proprietary front suspension fork to the front of one of our favourite off-road-focussed gravel bikes.

With 20mm of coil-sprung and oil damped front suspension, BMC’s new gravel-specific MTT fork is quite intriguing and creates a full suspension gravel bike of sorts. The aesthetic design also sure has us reminiscing about the early Cannondale HeadShock.

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By: James Huang / CyclingTips

It’s hardly a secret at this point that bikes are hard to come by, let alone a whole bunch of bikes in a single category. And so we decided to take a different approach for the latest CyclingTips Field Test. We once again tested and reviewed some of the latest and greatest machines that the industry has recently released to the world (or is soon about to), but we also set out to answer a bunch of questions.

Can previous generation road bikes can still perform just as well as the newest models?

What’s the deal with flat-bar gravel bikes?

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By: Dave Rome / CyclingTips

Ever wondered how to get that sheen back on your once-sparkly gloss-painted bike? Perhaps a little heel rub or bike lean gone wrong has left a scratch in the surface of your paint?

In many cases, all it takes is a few basic supplies, a little elbow grease, and a bucket of patience. And to show you how, we enlisted Steve Gardner of Velocraft in Melbourne. Formerly known as Bikes by Steve, VeloCraft has quickly become one of the most sought-after bicycle paint shops in Australia. If you’ve ever seen the paint on a Prova or Bastion you’ll understand why.

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By: Frederick Dreier / VeloNews

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when road bike racing was a thriving professional sport in the United States. Top riders chased hefty prize purses at races across the Southeast and Midwest, while American pro teams battled European squads from the Tour de France at the Amgen Tour of California and USA Pro Challenge.

Today, the U.S. pro road scene is on life support after half a decade of rapid sponsorship divestment. Gone are the big tours and the big paydays. Only a handful of pro teams remain.

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By: Matt De Neef / CyclingTips

From a tiny grassroots challenge conceived in early 2014, Everesting – the challenge of riding the height of Everest in one ride, via repeats of the same hill – has grown into a legitimate global phenomenon. By 2021, almost 20,000 people have completed an Everesting, amateurs and Tour de France podium finishers alike.

Although Everesting is now regularly cited in mainstream media, it is inextricably linked with CyclingTips. The phenomenon was founded by CT’s community manager Andy van Bergen, and in 2020-21, CT’s managing editor, Matt de Neef, wrote a book about the challenge.

“Everesting – The Challenge for Cyclists: Conquer Everest Anywhere in the World” is released this week by Hardie Grant Books. This extract, chapter two, tells the story of the rise of the phenomenon.

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By: Ben Delaney / VeloNews

What a week it was — 11 world champions were crowned over eight days of thrilling and exciting racing across the Flanders region of Belgium.

Following four days of time trials in Bruges, the worlds moved into three days of road races, building to a feverish peak with the men’s road race that ended with circuits inside the jam-packed town of Leuven in front of an estimated 1 million fans.

Here are the winners of each race, and the key stories around each event.

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By: John Wilcockson / Peloton Magazine

“X” was the greatest classics rider of all time. But who was “X”? Perhaps that’s an impossible question to answer because over the 120 years that cycling’s major one-day races have been held, the athletes, the technology and the events have been constantly changing. If we go by results alone, there is only one answer: Eddy Merckx. The legendary Belgian won 27 times in the nine races that were regarded as the top classics during his racing era, the late-1960s to mid-1970s. Merckx missed out on only one of those nine, Paris-Tours, whereas his predecessor, Rik Van Looy, won all nine classics for a total of 16 victories. So was Van Looy a better classics rider than his fellow Belgian? And what about those who raced before them, including the Italian legends Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi? And should we consider current standouts such as Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara and Philippe Gilbert? Let the debate begin….

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By: Peloton Magazine

In issue 104, our 10th annual Photo Annual, we showcased 12 photographers and 1 collector that are at the top of their game in cycling photography. Here’s the extended interviews from Peloton Magazine: The Photo Annual.

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By: Jeremy Whittle / Peloton Magazine

In the end, it was all about timing and Julian Alaphilippe’s proved to be perfect. The former Tour de France yellow jersey wearer, winner of the 2020 UCI World Championships Road Race in Italy, showed his attacking qualities once again on the final circuit of the 2021 men’s road race in Belgium, with another lone win.

Back-to-back wins by the Frenchman in the world championships are proof of his durability, continuing ambition and also his racing instincts. With all eyes on Wout van Aert, Alaphilippe’s opportunism proved irresistible. He is now the eighth Frenchman to win the world title and the first to claim it twice, taking the rainbow jersey first in Imola, last autumn, and then again, in Louvain.

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By: Dave Rome / CyclingTips

In recent times the cycling industry has paid an increasing amount of attention to unwanted vibration and how to reduce it. Just in the last few years, we’ve seen a number of interesting products try to address the issue, such as Spank’s Vibrocore handlebars, low-rebound bar tape from Silca, and the re-invention of suspension stems, too.

And now, you can add a handlebar made of bamboo to the list.

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