The Clouds Factory

July 2017 The Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a Espana organisers met UCI officials back in September 2016 at an undisclosed location in the Swiss Alps to draw up plans for a Mega Tour. Fabian Cancellara's house (oops) provided the perfect backdrop for this momentous get together. The former cyclist (slipped disc from lifting too many cobble trophies) proved a great host, but he was asked never to address anyone in Fabianese as their interpreters' budget was already over the limit. The reason for this meeting was the necessity to innovate and implement drastic changes. The cause? Oleg Tinkov. The Russian maverick fuelled by a constant flow of vodka, after losing the last three Tours, decided to up the game and disband the current cycling system by announcing a new league comprising of 7 teams, all paid for by him, where Contador would be the leader on a rotational system. He promised to pour hundreds of millions of euros, rubles and dollars into the n...

May 2005 The bicycle has always been in my radar, whether by reading about it in the pink pages of La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper, or by riding it in my childhood during my holidays visiting grandparents in Parma. In Genoa, where I’m from, cycling for leisure is not really an option as the sprawling city is built on steep terrain. My flat, for instance, would have required an elevation gain of 150 metres over 1.5 km… not exactly something for the occasional rider; so the riding was limited to the summer holidays in pan flat Parma.Therefore, while living in relatively flat London, cycling started to have a certain appeal, especially considering the ever increasing price of public transport and the constant waste of time waiting for either trains or buses.