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Local paper letter warns of speeding "muscular" cyclists; Ineos 1-2-3; Motorist bingo; World record attempt; I hear you're a racist now, Chris! Boardman laughs off former racist cyclist typo; Mini Sagan; Groenewegen's return + more on the live blog

It's another sunny Tuesday over here...Dan Alexander will have your live blog updates throughout the day...
Tue, Apr 27, 2021 09:11
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Local paper letter warns of speeding "muscular" cyclists; Ineos 1-2-3; Motorist bingo; World record attempt; I hear you're a racist now, Chris! Boardman laughs off former racist cyclist typo; Mini Sagan; Groenewegen's return + more on the live blogoxon travel cycle lane picture 2 - via twitter.PNG
27 April 2021, 16:01
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27 April 2021, 15:58
When there is a bike race on but you really need to get to work...
27 April 2021, 15:27
Ineos Grenadiers 1-2-3 as Rohan Dennis wins Tour de Romandie prologue ahead of Geraint Thomas and Richie Porte

Filippo Ganna was not even in Ineos' top-three riders on this afternoon's Tour de Romandie prologue. Over the 4km course, Rohan Dennis was flying, winning the stage by eight seconds from his teammates Geraint Thomas and Richie Porte. Rémi Cavagna was just behind in fourth, while Marc Hirschi did enough for a top-ten finish too.

Our Drink at Your Desk Live! guest from Friday, Alex Dowsett, probably would have wanted a longer, flatter course to help him better 42nd place. Chris Froome has said he is treating the week as a training race and appeared to be taking it relatively easy at times during his 130th place ride...only ten riders went slower than the four-time Tour de France champion. 

27 April 2021, 15:04
Cycling UK want local cyclists affected by a change in the right of way at Bolton Abbey to get in touch
27 April 2021, 14:29
A shocker from the North East
27 April 2021, 14:16
Bike share firm Donkey Republic to be floated on Nasdaq First North stock exchange
donkey republic 2.jpg

Crowdsourced bike share brand Donkey Republic believes inner city construction and traffic congestion will make bike sharing a common part of city life in the near future. Their target is to have 50,000 "donkeys" by 2024 which would hit the numbers required to make the venture profitable. 

To secure extra investment, Cyclingindustrynews reports Donkey Republic will be floated on the Nasdaq First North stock exchange in Copenhagen with the aim of reaching an IPO target of DKK100m (£11,686,244). The company currently has 13,000 registered bikes across 60 cities in 14 countries.

27 April 2021, 13:17
Cheltenham Police put up 'pass cyclists safely' signs...let's play Driver Logical Leap Bingo

You know the drill with these...it all starts with a police force making a reasonable request to motorists about overtaking cyclists safely. Motorists then inundate said reasonable request with "but what about" and general anti-cycling comments.

Dan Harte has christened it Driver Logical Leap Bingo and his money is on single file riding, helmets, hi-viz clothing and they all jump red lights...that is a fairly strong bingo card there, Dan.

Here we go, in the comments we have...

A thumbs down for "pack/race cyclists"...

Cyclists need to give drivers the same space too...

And there we go, a single file riding complaint as well...

27 April 2021, 12:55
Vincenzo Nibali back training ahead of possible Giro d'Italia appearance

Vincenzo Nibali is back on the bike 11 days after fracturing his wrist in a training crash. The two-time Giro d'Italia winner had a plate and screws fitted to the injury and is using a specially-designed carbon cast to allow him to continue to train. He has returned to altitude to finish off his preparation for the Giro d'Italia, with his physio saying he is 100 per cent convinced Nibali will take to the start in Turin a week on Saturday.

Martino Donati said he had never seen the Sicilian so focused. "I’ve never seen Vincenzo so determined and so willing to work hard. The chance of him being at the Giro? For me it's 100 per cent," he told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport.

"Otherwise, what would be the point of doing all this extra work. When it was necessary, he came for a session at 6:50 in the morning. We’re working on his wrist but also on his arm and back."

27 April 2021, 11:24
Mini Sagan: Peter Sagan's three-year-old son shows off his skills

As his dad prepares for the final warm-up race ahead of the Giro d'Italia, mini Sagan (three-year-old Marlon) has been showing off his skills... 

27 April 2021, 11:03
27 April 2021, 10:36
Your comments on shared-use paths...
Brighton seafront (Twitter)

We jumped on the part of the letter which bizarrely called out "muscular" cyclists for causing a danger to pedestrians. However, as many of you have noted in the comments, there were actually some fair points made about how cycle lanes and pedestrian walkways can be better segregated for everyone's safety...

Carior commented: "I was all prepared to grumble about the "muscular cyclists" too fast point but I think as cyclists we need to think about what we want. From personal experience (which includes riding along the pictured sea front) it's about as useful as a chocolate tea pot for anything other than pottering very slowly on a touristy bike ride.  Pedestrians (myself included) pretty much disregard the painted lanes and you certainly can't ride at the type of speeds I expect many of us enjoy for fitness and fun along them and personally I would never use it - but then you get the "get in the cycle lane" crap from motorists.

"I don't think anyone really enjoys using those shared-use paths for anything other than pottering from A to B.  That said, I struggle to believe that people would be using them riding fast on expensive bikes!"

Jetmans Dad added: "The problem with shared-use facilities is that the local council puts them in and thinks their job is done, as far as cycling infrastructure is concerned. East Riding of Yorkshire Council has done a great job of turning roadside footpaths into shared-use by just adding signs that say they are. 

"They are often way too narrow even if they were dedicated cycle paths, never mind accommodating pedestrians as well, but the council is proud of how many miles of cycleway they have put in, and drivers now have free reign to abuse me for getting in their way and holding them up by not riding on the "footpath". Shared-use should not count as cycle infrastructure."

EddyBerckx summed up the general mood in the comments well: "Despite the undoubted exaggeration (though 'muscular' is better than being called 'fat') I do agree with his point as do most cycle campaigners I think - pedestrian and cycling spaces shouldn't be mixed...they only ever sort of work when there is little traffic (of both sorts) . They are bodge jobs and nothing more."

27 April 2021, 10:23
Change of plan for Dylan Groenewgen who will return to racing at the Giro d'Italia following nine-month suspension

Dylan Groenewegen will return to racing at the Giro d'Italia next month in a revised comeback from his nine-month suspension. Groenewegen has been banned since November for his involvement in the crash that left Fabio Jakobsen in a medically-induced coma. The ban was retroactive so will be lifted on May 7, the day before the Giro starts in Turin.

The Dutch sprinter had originally been scheduled to ride lots of smaller races, starting with the Tour of Hungary, while he finds his feet in the peloton again. However, Jumbo-Visma announced their Giro d'Italia team this morning with Groenewegen replacing Chris Harper who is out with an eye condition.

"Dylan is one of our leaders, but he has not been able to race for a long time due to his long suspension,” directeur sportif Merijn Zeeman said. "We had mapped out a nice program for him that would allow him to return to the peloton in the shadows.

"However, due to corona, the Tour of Norway has already been postponed and it remains to be seen whether the other races he would ride will remain on the calendar. With this solution we opt for more certainty, because after nine months without racing it is the intention for Dylan to return to competition."

27 April 2021, 09:50
Josh Quigley world record attempt underway

Spare a thought for Josh Quigley who is out on the roads again today for the second day of his week-long cycling distance world record attempt. Josh racked up 320 miles on day one with four laps of his 80-mile loop in Aberdeenshire, averaging an impressive 18mph (29km/h) for just shy of 18 hours...

With 2,177 miles the current record, Josh has seven more 320-mile days ahead of him...

Last September he broke the record for riding the North Coast 500, a 516-mile route across the Highlands and north-west coast of Scotland, by five minutes. The achievement was even more impressive considering it came just nine months after he suffered a fractured skull, pelvis and ribs when he was hit by a driver in Texas during his around-the-world attempt.

27 April 2021, 09:43
Shocking video of raging motorist driving at horse rider

No bikes involved, just one very angry motorist and a horse rider... 

27 April 2021, 08:27
I hear you are a racist now, Chris! Boardman laughs off former racist cyclist typo

Chris Boardman may have spat out his coffee when he opened Twitter this morning to discover he had been called a "former racist cyclist" in a Manchester Evening News story. The article has since been amended to "former race cyclist"...

Boardman saw the funny side and pointed out at least he was a former racist...the Father Ted memes have been flooding in...

27 April 2021, 07:56
Local paper letter warns of "muscular individuals riding performance bikes at high speeds"
Brighton seafront (Twitter)

In this letter published on The Argus' website, Richard Williams starts by saying he wholeheartedly agrees with the proposal to make new cycle lanes on Old Shoreham Road and elsewhere permanent. Later on, he added that he wants to see more cycle lanes on busy roads too...where Richard does not want to see any cycle lanes, however, is anywhere next to pedestrian spaces.

"The cyclists who use the lanes are often muscular individuals riding performance bikes at high speeds, and they are a danger to pedestrians," he wrote. "The markings indicating the lanes are not always intuitively obvious to the casual walker and we should remember that many pedestrians in Brighton will be tourists who are not familiar with the area.

"Young children, too, are not good at spotting or understanding the markings on the pavement and they are, of course, particularly vulnerable if a cyclist collides with them. I would, therefore, support more cycle lanes on busy roads but I believe that all cycle lanes on pavements should be suppressed."

Thoughts? There was briefly a pop-up cycle lane in one of the empty lanes, seen in the picture above, before it was removed and cyclists wanting to use the cycle lane were pushed back next to the seafront pavement...

We also could not let this pass without having a chuckle at the reference to ""muscular individuals riding performance bikes at high speeds". Muscular? Muscular cyclists? I wonder what they are feeding them down in Brighton?

Dan Alexander

Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.

Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.

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77 comments

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Captain Badger replied to eburtthebike | 3 years ago
1 like

eburtthebike wrote:

Captain Badger wrote:

Re Local paper letter warns of "muscular individuals riding performance bikes at high speeds"

I've been spotted again - knew I should have left the hi-viz at home...

Is that you ROFLYAO?

Pretty sure it is, trouble is we all look the same...

PS I might amend to ROFLMMAO...

Avatar
GMBasix replied to Captain Badger | 3 years ago
2 likes

No rank slide - are you sure you're a captain?  Or is that just a field promotion?

Avatar
Captain Badger replied to GMBasix | 3 years ago
2 likes

GMBasix wrote:

No rank slide - are you sure you're a captain?  Or is that just a field promotion?

Oh very good sir, chapeau!laugh

 

Avatar
EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
22 likes

Despite the undoubted exaggeration (though 'muscular' is better than being called 'fat') I do agree with his point as do most cycle campaigners I think - pedestrian and cycling spaces shouldn't be mixed...they only ever sort of work when there is little traffic (of both sorts) . They are bodge jobs and nothing more

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Sriracha replied to EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
4 likes

Agree. The focus on the physique of the cyclists is odd, but the problem is real. If "muscular pedestrians" were given to jogging at speed through heavily used promenades, jostling any who impeded their progress, I guess it would present the same issue. I see these mixed use paths more as a route to "promenade" on my bike without being obliged to dismount. But they are not really suitable for making decent progress, they're no good if you're on a mission.

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zero_trooper replied to Sriracha | 3 years ago
1 like

Which means we're stuck with roads and drivers with commuting cyclists.

Tho' I do enjoy a good pootle 1

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AlsoSomniloquism replied to Sriracha | 3 years ago
0 likes

I wonder how many times he has seen  muscular individuals riding performance bikes at high speeds on those paths though.He states it is "often" but I doubt it unless the cycling clubs in Brighton solely contain asshats.

I reckon he has seen them riding along the main road and assumes they ride on the prom as well. 

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kil0ran replied to EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
9 likes

I agree - many years ago as a pedestrian I was at a conference at the Grand and popped over to the prom for lunch. Had never seen a shared use path before, crossed the road and headed straight for the prom railings, right in front of a fixie rider who did an impressive job of avoiding me. Shared use paths are more common now so it's probably less of an issue but as a cyclist I wouldn't dream of doing much more than walking pace in such a space.

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Joe Totale replied to EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
2 likes

Came here to post something along the same lines but you summed it up perfectly.

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mdavidford replied to EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
9 likes

I'd say the problem is not so much the presence of shared use or pedestrian-proximate cycle spaces. They're fine for people who are happy to pootle along and share the space considerately.

The problem is the lack of alternative higher speed routes. If those cycle lanes on busy (read - direct) roads were built, likely most of those 'muscular' cyclists would choose to use them anyway, as they'd be more convenient, and the problems of mixing would largely evaporate.

It's when authorities use the existence of those mixed spaces as an excuse not to build dedicated cycling facilities that it all falls apart.

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fwhite181 replied to mdavidford | 3 years ago
9 likes

Nail on the head - the core issue is that planners still see cycling as a leisure pursuit and are bemused when cyclists actually want to get places at more than walking speed. Shared use spaces only work when the speeds are approximately the same. If I want to commute, go shopping, or just get to where I'm going on a bike, I don't want to travel at walking speed...otherwise I'd have walked.

It would help if charities like Sustrans and the Greenways group would stop treating 'roadies' and 'fast commuters' as if they're a problem because they want to travel by bike, rather than "meander around to a pretty little independent coffee shop". For example, the new greenway opened up in the Wye valley could have been tarmacked. It has been intentionally gravel/slimed (that nice hard-packed grey-brown mud that turns to sticky suicide surface at the slightest hint of rain) to prevent 'roadies' from riding it... Upshot, a potentially good commuter route has been rendered functionally useless except in summer because the organisers feel like traffic free routes shouldn't be used to get places.

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Awavey replied to mdavidford | 3 years ago
0 likes

I'm not sure it's just a high speed route thing, I've highlighted before on pieces about that route along the prom, the volume of pedestrians you deal with along there at certain times of day,months of the year, the way you cross the road with the sea and beach in front of you to find you've walked straight into another lane of traffic unsighted,and it only takes a few individuals whose approach to getting around slower cyclists or an oncoming group is just to jump into whatever gap they see, can create real problems, and then you get to the widest part where most of those things wont be an issue and they ban cyclists from using it, which the 'muscular' (they mean fat dont they? ) cyclists ignore,which just ups the ante.

Absolutely a cycle lane on the road I think is a must and would help thru cycling traffic, but I dont think it would solve the issues with that prom

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Joe Totale replied to mdavidford | 3 years ago
2 likes

The presence of a shared use path can also make car drivers more aggressive towards cyclists who choose to use the road as it's faster as the drivers feel that all cyclists should be on the path.

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TriTaxMan replied to Joe Totale | 3 years ago
3 likes

In my experience some motorists will complain about cyclists not matter what :-

You go too slow on national speed limit roads, too fast on urban roads, you dont use the cycle lanes *irony alert* that their road tax pays for.  Cycle lanes create more traffic jams, and cyclists keeping up with traffic are holding up traffic cause cars MGIF

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mdavidford replied to Joe Totale | 3 years ago
0 likes

Exactly - which pushes those faster riders towards using the shared path, which is unsuitable for them.

Whereas, if there was proper dedicated provision, the motorists wouldn't be able to bully them, and they would have no need to use the shared space, so the only people left there would be the slower riders who can mix more safely anyway.

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Mungecrundle replied to EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
6 likes

I'll give you a £ to a penny for every reported incident in the Argus involving a cyclist injuring a pedestrian v a vehicle driver injuring a pedestrian.

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Secret_squirrel replied to EddyBerckx | 3 years ago
1 like

I agree too.  Mixed use spaces like promenades - where there is significant pedestrian footfall is an accident waiting to happen.  They are a bodge and if there is a enough space to mark in a bike lane there should be enough space to put some physical seperators in.

I get the romance and freedom of aimlessly pottering on a bike along the promenade but when its also used as transport route where speed is desired then bad things are bound to happen.

In these sort of cases I'd actually be in favour of Australian style speed limits - although not above segregated cycleways.

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