Welcome to Daily News, your roundup of news items from across the world of cycling. We keep this post updated throughout the week so that you can stay informed on all things bike racing, tech, industry, culture, advocacy, and more.
Here is what is making the headlines this week …
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
- Colnago celebrates its birthday with the ‘Steelnovo’
- Roglic has the ‘charisma of a champion’
- DT Swiss releases a dynamo-equipped hub
- Cavalli signs with DSM
- Prudhomme prefers today’s racing to the Sky years
Colnago celebrates its birthday with the ‘Steelnovo’
Colnago is turning 70 and has a new, limited-edition steel frame to celebrate. Colnago unveiled the Steelnovo to celebrate the brand’s 70th anniversary in a limited run of just 70 units.
It features custom Columbus tubing and 3D-printed head tube lugs, seat tube-top tube, and seat stay lugs, rear dropouts, and a custom seat post clamp for reduced weight and increased precision. The Steelnovo also combines that classic lugged construction with modern touches: It has 35 mm tire clearance, disc brakes, electronic drivetrain compatibility, and … internal brake hose routing.
Each bike comes with a custom Campagnolo Super Record Wireless groupset, featuring Italian flag and gold details and costs a whooping €17,500. Happy Birthday, Colnago!
Roglic has the ‘charisma of a champion’
Primož Roglič rode through ups and downs in his first season at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, winning the Critérium du Dauphiné but abandoning the Tour de France after a crash and then bouncing back to win the Vuelta a España. Through it all, he apparently earned the respect of multiple teammates. Both Matteo Sobrero and Roger Adrià spoke up for their GC leader in separate interviews this week.
“I felt very good with him right away, we have an excellent relationship,” Sobrero told Bici.pro. “He is a different leader from those I have had previously, he really has the charisma of a champion.”
Adrià, for his part, refuted any notion that Roglič is losing steam at this point in his career. As he told Marca, “I think that winning the Dauphiné and the Vuelta a España in the season, if that is considered a decline … In the Vuelta a España, he did his best numbers, he was flying there, so I think that for the future he is going to be super competitive like he is now.”
DT Swiss releases a dynamo-equipped hub
DT Swiss has partnered with Shutter Precision (SP-Dynamo) to develop its first dynamo-equipped hub, the 350 SP PL-7. Specifically designed to endure off-road conditions, rough terrain, and heavy loads, the hub is intended for bike packing, commuting, and gravel use and it is available exclusively as a 12mm thru-axle, 24-spoke Center Lock disc option.
DT will offer the hub in two wheelsets: the GR 1600 Spline Dyn and the G 1800 Spline Dyn, both featuring tubeless-ready aluminium rims, a 25mm rim depth, and a 24mm inner rim width. The GR 1600 is priced at €320.90 / $442.90, while the G 1800 is offered at €248.90 / $342.90. Alternatively, the standalone 350 SP PL-7 hub is available for €174.90 / $236.90.
These hubs deliver a standard output of 6V, 3W, and are StVZO compliant, ensuring they meet German road traffic regulations for visibility and safety. With a claimed efficiency of 72% at 15 km/h, the hub adds only 1 watt of drag at 30 km/h with the light off, the drag increases to 7 watts with the light on. The hubs also support standard dynamo lamps and USB converters for powering lighting systems and devices.
Cavalli signs with DSM
After a season derailed by injuries – and getting hit by a driver – Marta Cavalli is hoping to bounce back with a new team. The 26-year-old Italian is leaving FDJ-Suez to join DSM-Firmenich-PostNL on a three-year deal.
“From our first talks the team has really trusted in me and believe that I can get back to where I was as a rider, and that was something important to me,” Cavalli said via a team statement.
Prudhomme prefers today’s racing to the Sky years
Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme has told Midi Libre that he enjoys the contemporary style of racing more than that of the past decade, when the race was won seven times by riders on past iterations of the team now called the Ineos Grenadiers.
“I wasn’t a fan of the Sky era, where it was completely locked down, they attacked 800 meters from the finish,” Prudhomme said. “Now, they attack from afar, they make or break. We had an absolutely fantastic Tour two years ago, we had an exceptional half of the Tour last year.” [Midi Libre]
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
- Pinarello launches new F1 performance bike with mechanical groupset and sub $4k price tag
- Van Gils ‘has terminated his contract with Lotto Dstny’
- Merida revenue rebounds but profits remain low
- Campagnolo looks set to return to the WorldTour in 2025
- Quick Hits
Pinarello launches new F1 performance bike with mechanical groupset and sub-$4k price tag
Pinarello has introduced a new, more affordable F1 model to its F-Series range making it available to “wider audiences.” The new F1 model is priced at $3,500 and is the most affordable in the F-series the Italian brand first launched in 2023.
The F1 is built with Toray T600 carbon fiber, which means it’s heavier than the existing, higher-tier F5, F7, and F9 models. It still maintains Pinarello’s signature engineering features, including full cable integration, an aerodynamic Onda fork, and a compact rear triangle with clearance for tires up to 30mm.
The F1 also marks the first and only bike in the F lineup with a mechanical groupset. The new model comes with a Shimano 105 drivetrain and rolls on budget-oriented WH RS-171 wheels. It’s available in nine sizes and two colors: formula red and formula blue.
Van Gils ‘has terminated his contract with Lotto Dstny’
Het Laatste Nieuws reports that Belgian all-rounder Maxim Van Gils “has terminated his contract with Lotto Dstny” despite having signed an extension with the team earlier this year. Van Gils was one of Lotto’s top riders in 2024 and seemed destined to be a team leader in hilly Classics for years to come, but he has apparently decided unilaterally that he wants out.
As HLN points out, European employment law will allow Van Gils to leave the team if he wants, although Lotto would be entitled to compensation for the broken contract. Where the promising 24-year-old is headed next remains unclear. [HLN]
Merida revenue rebounds but profits remain low
Taiwan’s second-largest bicycle manufacturer Merida has reported a revenue increase of 5.8% in the first nine months of the 2024 financial year, reaching NT$23.8 billion (US$735 million). But while the company’s revenue recovered, profits lagged behind, standing at NT$1.83 billion (US$56 million), a 15% decrease compared to the same period last year.
Campagnolo looks set to return to the WorldTour in 2025
Historically dominant in professional cycling, Campagnolo has lost ground to Shimano and SRAM in recent years, but as Ronan Mc Laughlin reports here at Escape Collective, that could be set to change. After a significant stretch of not being associated with any top-division teams, the Italian brand seems set to return to the WorldTour with Cofidis. [Escape Collective]
Quick Hits
Annemiek van Vleuten is writing a book … Nuno Ribeiro, banned former manager of W52-FC Porto, says team owner Quintanilha masterminded the team’s doping program … Cyclocross viewership is growing (with Van der Poel and Van Aert conspicuously absent).
Monday, November 18, 2024
- Tour climbs that have challenged Pogačar before are just ‘fuel to the fire’
- VanMoof re-starts e-bike sales in the UK
- Pedersen will ride the same spring program next year
- Rowe reflects on decision to move on from Ineos
- Tarling will likely race the Giro next year
Tour climbs that have challenged Pogačar before are just ‘fuel to the fire’
Tadej Pogačar weighed in on the route of the 2025 Tour de France in an interview with Slovenian outlet Siol.net last week, specifically addressing the fact that the race will visit a handful of climbs where he has struggled in the past.
His conclusion: Tour organizers may be trying to challenge him. Pogačar is unfazed.
“Maybe the organizers have really included those three climbs where I didn’t shine in the previous performances [Col de la Loze, Mont Ventoux and Hautacam] and they want to test me a bit again,” he said, “but this is just adding fuel to the fire.” [Siol.net]
VanMoof re-starts e-bike sales in the UK
E-bike brand VanMoof – which declared bankruptcy in July 2023 – has re-started sales and service for its new S5 and A5 models in a select, eight-dealer network in the UK. The one-time bike industry darling turned heads with its unusual designs and raised almost US$200 million in venture capital before a spectacular fall and bankruptcy, after which it was acquired by micromobility brand Lavoie, a subsidiary of McLaren Applied.
The company’s focus on total design integration meant that parts and service for the 200,000 bikes it had sold was non-existent after its failure, but part of its revival is to re-start service on the S3 and X3 models from its original incarnation. The company has previously re-started sales in the Netherlands, its home market, and Germany. No plans have yet been announced for further expansion.
Pedersen will ride the same spring program next year
After an up-and-down Classics campaign in 2024 that saw him win Gent-Wevelgem only to crash days later at Dwars door Vlaanderen, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) is going to run it back in the early goings of 2024. As his coach Mattias Reck told Ekstra Bladet, “We are not going to do anything differently. It fits so well, so we’re going to copy-paste what we’ve done so far leading up to Paris-Roubaix.”
Apparently, Pedersen will ride “two stage races in February. It will probably be in France, just like this year, when he raced in Bessèges and Provence.” He will then race Paris-Nice ahead of his major targets in the Classics. Beyond the cobbled one-days, his Grand Tour plans are less certain. [Ekstra Bladet]
Rowe reflects on decision to move on from Ineos
Luke Rowe, who has called it a racing career and will leave the Ineos Grenadiers for a sports director role at Decathlon-Ag2r la Mondiale, spoke about his decision in an interview at Rouleur Live over the weekend.
“I found I perform best on the bike when I’m uncomfortable,” he said. “If you get too comfortable, you can go on a hamster wheel and go through the motions a bit, which I kind of fear for myself. If I stayed at Ineos, I would just become too comfortable.”
Tarling will likely race the Giro next year
Veteran journalist Ciro Scognamiglio wrote on X on Monday that Josh Tarling (Ineos Grenadiers “is likely” to make his Giro d’Italia debut in 2025. The 20-year-old Welshman made his first ever Grand Tour start at the Vuelta a España this year, though he abandoned the race before the first rest day after a crash. [X]
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