By Ultan Coyle • 14th March 2012 • Posted in Misc
Caricature by Jon Knight
Sean Kelly is from a place called Carrick-on-Suir, in County Tipperary. Suir is the name of the river passing through the town, while Carrick derives from a Gaelic word for rock. And 'Rock of the Suir' sounds so bloody perfect for Kelly that it should have been his nickname.
Kelly was a simple lad, the son of a farmer, and a boy who had a very basic upbringing. Academically speaking he was no shining star and it was his brother, Joe, who first got him into cycling; I think there is some story of the Kelly boys arriving at Sean’s first race with the future Classics legend on a bike half his size.
Read the entire post »
By Joe Hall • 12th March 2012 • Posted in Misc
All colour © Jake Stangel
Cyril: Hey! Are you really gonna shave your legs?
Dave: Certo! All the Italians do it.
Mike: Ah. Some country. The women don't shave theirs…
— Breaking Away (1979)
The knives are out, well the razors anyway. Spring arrives and with it riders head for the bathroom, reach for the cutters and perform a practice that truly signifies the new season. Leg shaving.
Read the entire post »
By Joe Hall • 8th March 2012 • Posted in Misc
Photo: Kimmy Eliot Fung
Mike Spriggs is a sometime photographer and the owner of Gage + DeSoto - a specialty shop for road cyclists. He is based in NYC and in 2010 managed the legendary Rapha Cycle Club in the city's Bowery district. He was also the first editor of Survey, Rapha's city riding style blog. We asked Mike for a few thoughts on metropolitan life, photography and cycling in New York City.
Read the entire post »
By Guest Author • 3rd February 2012 • Posted in Misc
Words – Andy Waterman
Photos from 2011 Edition of the Fidea Cyclocross in Leuven, Belgium
If you had done a straw poll of the 61,000 spectators that swamped the dunes of Koksijde on Sunday, very few would have predicted that Rob Peeters would be there to steal second place from his more illustrious countrymen. Nys, Albert, Pauwels, Stybar: these were the names on people’s lips, and with good reason. Between them these four have dominated the present cyclocross season, as they have done for the previous half a decade (or decade in the case of Nys). Cross throws up innumerable surprises, but this year the form book predicted it was going to be a whitewash for the big four. The writing was on the wall: the rest would be fighting for scraps.
Read the entire post »
By Jeremy Dunn • 13th January 2012 • Posted in Misc
Cyclists are a superstitious breed; they do a lot of strange things a lot of the time. If you hang around enough start lines, bike shops or even just your fellow riding partners, inevitably you will catch a glimpse of their true quirky selves at some point. The upside down ‘lucky’ number 13 (as seen here) is but one example of the kind of superstitions which will likely come to light. The thinking in this case being that if you were the one to pull the dreaded number from the pile then you’d better make the best of it and turn it upside down before pinning it on (and remember to always pin from left to right, starting at the top.) Well, today being Friday the 13th, that most superstitious of days, we thought it would be good to take a look at some of the others we’ve heard of. Interestingly, there are two more of these Fridays this year, one in April and another in July (gasp), so why not enter some of the more interesting cycling superstitions you’ve about (perhaps they’re your own) in the comments section below? Rapha will then pull together some of the better (stranger) ones and revisit them in April and July.
Read the entire post »
By Collyn Ahart • 8th December 2011 • Posted in Misc
Portraits by Mark Phillips
When two cyclists move in together, there’s the inevitable joining of the things, trying to figure out how to store 14 bikes and three bike boxes, the class warfare of leaving muddy bikes in the kitchen, and that old chestnut: constant laundry. And not just any old load will do. Caked in mud returning from the winter hills, almost every ride seems to merit pre-washes and extra rinsing.
Read the entire post »
By Konrad Manning • 10th November 2011 • Posted in Misc
On any normal November day the fields and woodland on the Hotond in Belgium are deserted. Any of the little passing trade stops at the inn which butts up against the redundant stump of the whitewashed windmill here. This is the highest point in east Flanders, standing above Ronse, at the southernmost edge of a rolling area of wood and farmland known as the Flemish Ardennes.
Read the entire post »
