Sam Challis

1 week ago | cyclist.co.uk | Sam Challis

Hasn’t this week’s weather just been perfect for riding your bike? While you’ve been out doing that, the Cyclist team have been hard at work producing articles about doing it, so you’re able to read about doing it again, straight after doing it. What could be better? We’ve even found time to sneak out for a bit of riding ourselves. As a result, this week’s content schedule has been ticking along nicely.

2 weeks ago | cyclist.co.uk | Sam Challis

There’s a sense of poetic justice about the fact that a rider famous for wearing the maglia nera – the black jersey awarded to the Giro d’Italia’s last place finisher – went on to found a company that has produced some of the most successful race bikes in the sport’s history. After coming last at the Giro in 1951, Giovanni Pinarello was paid 100,000 lire by his Bottechia team to step away from the sport as an athlete, so he used that money to set up Cicli Pinarello in 1952.

1 month ago | cyclist.co.uk | Sam Challis

The first thing that greets a visitor to Colnago’s headquarters in Cambiago, Italy, is an imposing metal sculpture. It’s a huge globe around two metres in diameter, and on a plinth underneath are the words ‘When the bicycle is art’. Perched on top of the world is a metal rendering of Colnago’s C42 time-trial bike. It’s ironic because that was one of the brand’s earliest carbon fibre frames, but it leaves no doubt as to the esteem in which Ernesto Colnago holds his bikes.

1 month ago | cyclist.co.uk | Sam Challis

The spring races are in full swing (or are they? I’m all disorientated now that there’s no non-paywalled TV coverage, thanks for that TNT), so this week our one-stop-shop race guides were out in full force, with ones published for Brugge-De Panne, E3 Saxo Bank Classic and Gent-Wevelgem.

1 month ago | cyclist.co.uk | Sam Challis

How the body adapts when it’s exposed to exercise in hot conditions is only just beginning to be properly understood, but the potential benefits are already becoming clear. Heat training is now being talked of in the same breath as altitude training, except adaptations occur more quickly and from training that is more convenient for athletes’ schedules.