The Clouds Factory

September 2005 By this point, 4 months into it, cycling fever had hit not only me but a few of my colleagues as well, most of whom had been riding a few years already. For that reason we decided to get together and tackle our first ‘sportive’... well, charity ride, as the choice of sportives in the UK was rather poor back then. We picked the rather tame London to Windsor Ride, starting in Richmond-upon-Thames. The course was to be around 65km, meandering through the Surrey countryside and finishing in Windsor. We met at my place in New Malden the night before and quite obviously a few bottles of wine made the rounds. We also had a good serving of pasta as we would ‘carb up’ for next day’s feat! After going to bed rather late, of course, in the morning we prepared and faffed about with the usual rituals of finding shoes, energy bars and gels, spare tubes, etc etc.

Uk bikes have front brakes on the drive side lever, continental bike the other way around. Nothing new there, cars are setup differently as well, no biggie... or is it? As a right handed person I find feathering on the breaks easier to control with my left hand as the right arm is stronger, hence my constant use of the rear brake even on descents, which is quite wrong as the bike tends to lock and skid at speed. I'm forcing myself to brake with the right hand now but it is weird. After so many years it feels as though my left arm is kept on a sling and my right arm is doing the steering and the breaking. Caliper brakes are designed to have the front brake on the left lever as the cable simply sweeps down into the slot on the right of said caliper, while from the right lever, when exiting the bar tape it has to bend a lot more to drop straight down. Conclusion, I might have to swap the cables and go 'continental'. Questions: 1. How are pros' bikes set up by th...

Having followed Felix Lowe through his blog on Eurosport for years under his pseudonym Blazin' Saddles and via his humorous yet savvy twitter account, picking his book to read over the summer was an easy choice. I was amazed to learn that, although one of the main voices in cycling in the UK, Felix had yet to turn pedals in anger prior to this adventure. This fact makes his feat, riding from Barcelona to Rome via Hannibal's Alpine route, all the more astonishing. Add to it the fact that his "rest" days were used to climb Alpe d'Huez twice in the same day, Ventoux (only once though) and various detours from the planned route, and you have a truly outstanding story. While other cycling books tend to be sensationalist with various doping tell-all blubber, this one is a refreshing account of a non-pro like any of us, albeit a lot taller than most of us. We've all spent countless hours recounting tales of pain and elation at conquering mean climbs, embarrassi...

August 2005 After a few attempts at commuting to work on my mountain bike, I decided it was time to try a proper ride as I felt that surely I knew everything there was to know about cycling. So, I bought a map of Wales, yes a paper map, and plotted a course which I thought would be suitable. All on roads, of course, as I didn’t really believe there was all that difference between my steed and a road bike. I didn’t know the area and the nature of the terrain so I opted for a loop around the Elan Valley and its stunning reservoirs, which give Birmingham clean water. I booked a B&B in Rhayader in at Gigrin Farm, which doubled up as a Red Kite feeding farm. It had the smallest room I’d ever slept in but was cosy and, although spartan in its offerings, it suited me fine. No space for my bike so it had to ‘sleep’ in the car. I proved to be quite an amusement (i.e. ridiculous) to the hosts, not many lycra clad guys around the area, at least back then, and I could sense from their look...

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.

Every year there are discussions around the points classification, the green jersey. Some argue it's the sprinters' jersey, but then sprinters win stages, a lot of them, but no jersey (Cavendish/Kittel). Others call it the most consistent rider's gratification. But then that same rider might not win a single stage, so most consistent at what, losing (Sagan)? Also, the combativity prize already rewards panache. One solution, and it seems pretty simple to me is to combine stage wins with points. So stage wins come first and in case of same amount of wins, the points then sort out the classification. That way, success is rewarded, backed up by a consistent performance. A bit like it happens at the Olympics, where regardless of how many medals won, the GC is usually worked out ranking Gold medals first, then silver and so on. Example from Tour 2014:                             WINS      POINTS ...