Launching writebikerepeat: BITESIZE

Hey there cycling pals near and far (mostly far!), how goes it? How has your summer been? I’ve been a busy person, working throughout the Tour de France (hommes et femmes) and then spending time with my family, travelling in France and just letting myself have some time off.

That’s meant that I haven’t been in your inboxes for AGES and for that I apologise. Well, if you missed me, anyway. If you didn’t – you’re welcome!

It’s given me time to step away and rethink a few things – I’m still committed to writing regularly about cycling, and I really want to continue this newsletter, but having worked hard for four years now to build up my freelance work, it’s left me with less time that is ideal to produce a newsletter of the length and detail I was previously able to.

HERE IS THE NEWS: the newsletter stays (cue parties and wild celebrations) – the format stays (um, OK?) – but it’s going to be far more digestible and hopefully, that means we will all get more out of it. Me, because it won’t take me 300 hours to produce each month, and you, because you won’t have to take a half day off work in order to actually read the thing.

Introducing… writebikerepeat BITESIZE! All the content you need, in teeny tiny tasty chunks. Think short lists, bullet points, and signposts to other great content. Including my own – with more time to spare around this newsletter, I’ll be free to waffle on at length on platforms such as Substack – where you can read my work at greater length – or other more established media publications, where I’ll still be pitching and publishing work as regularly as I can.

Let’s begin shall we?

3 THINGS FROM ME

Thing 1.

It was ages ago, I grant you. But I enjoyed pulling together this piece for Domestique covering some of the key takeaways from this year’s men’s Tour de France.

Thing 2.

After the Tours, I went to France, and began rambling on my Substack about my travels, with small detours into cycling. This first one was about ducks, and camping, and the races that get lost in the post-Tour black hole.

Thing 3.

The Substack continues to provide me space to throw words around with reckless abandon. It got a bit political in this one, in which the French supermarkets’ ‘war on baguettes’ sparked a mildly political rant about flags but ultimately ended up in a comparison between David Gaudu and Paul Seixas, two riders who have separately represented France’s next big GC hope, and the pressure that winning the Tour de l’Avenir - and being French - throws onto riders.

Please do consider signing up for the Substack - I’ll be using it in increasing amounts in the future.

5 BITESIZE CHUNKS OF NEWS - YUM!

Keeping up with the news is definitely an area where I feel my efforts can be kept to a minimum, as the good cycling journos of the world are out there doing the hard work so I don’t have to. So here, I’ll just round up the key headlines, and link you to the stories if you’d like to read more.

• Kooij to Decathlon! Of all the transfer rumours circulating this summer, this one was the biggie – and it’s been confirmed that Kooij will ride for the ambitious French team for the next three years, and they’ve signed a significant lead-out train for him too – it makes him the highest-paid sprinter in the peloton. Bosh! Daniel Benson tells the story of how the transfer unfolded in this excellent Substack post.

• Protests disrupt Vuelta: Protesters have caused significant disruption at La Vuelta España. The situation continues to develop but as it stands, one stage finish has been neutralised, one finished early, and two riders have crashed as a result of direct intervention from protesters. Many of the protests have been peaceful, in support of the people of Gaza and against the presence of the Israel-Premier Tech team at the race. The team removed the Israel name from their jerseys but it has not been enough to deter the continued impact of protests on the race. With 2,000 protesters in Galicia on Tuesday, today’s ITT in Valledolid has been shortened, and Sunday’s arrival in Madrid looks set to be severely disrupted.

• Egan Bernal takes first Grand Tour win in four years! It’s the feel-good story of the week. Following his horror crash in 2022, when it looked as though the Colombian may never walk again let alone ride his bike, Egan Bernal won the shortened stage 16 of the Vuelta in a two-up sprint against veteran climber Mikel Landa. Bernal has been rising steadily back to his best form ever since his accident, confirming this by winning both the road and ITT nationals in Colombia earlier this year.

• Chris Froome suffers serious training crash: Sad news regarding another former Tour de France winner, the four-time victor Froome, coming to the end of his contract with Israel-Premier Tech at this end of this season, suffered a training crash near his home in the south of France that required him to be airlifted to hospital. Froome’s condition is improving though there is no news regarding the long-term impacts of his injury.

• Transfer merry-go-round continues! Yes it’s silly season in cycling with the flood gates opening August 1st, and many transfers being confirmed. While Remco Evenepoel’s move to Red Bull is arguably the biggest story (with Kooij a close second), plenty more interesting moves have gone through, with the latest this week confirming that Decathlon’s ITT and breakaway specialist Bruno Armirail will head to Visma | Lease a Bike, and the hot topic that’s keeping us guessing - which team will be the final destination of unsettled Spaniard Juan Ayuso, who confirmed he would be leaving UAE Team Emirates during the Vuelta, stating the team’s management was “like a dictatorship”.

  Keep up with the latest transfer action at Daniel Benson’s Substack or Domestique Cycling.

3 BITES OF FUN

Celebrating the lighter side of the sport, this section will continue to bring you the best of the sport’s personality, from social media. I plan to develop this section in the coming weeks and months as I know with the proliferation of social media, many of you miss things – I will have themes (pets, stunts, memes, and more) and hopefully you’ll be able to keep up to date with the best of the internet, without needing 17 different accounts. This week is just a flavour as I ease myself back into the online world after a few weeks of disconnecting!

1. Farfalle power

There was plenty of top quality content created by the team at the Tour of Britain – this is good one. If you’ve never seen a French cyclist do an impression of a pasta shape, this is the one for you.

thetourofbritain

44K followers

View more on Instagram

2. A helping hand

Riders helping each other out, regardless of which team they are in, always warms my soft heart. Kwiato is a steady head, and hand, in a time of need here, for Clement Braz Afonso, at the Vuelta (look out for his measured response to a troll in the comments, too)

veloncc

643K followers

View more on Instagram

3. Quality intro reel

There’s not much to say about this other than (a) some of these guys are just too cool and (b) some of these guys are just big kids having a good time and we deserve to see this side of them as well as their pain faces as they fight up climbs, so well done Renewi Tour for the inventive content.

renewitour

13K followers

View more on Instagram

4 RACES TO WATCH

Let’s face it – rounding up the results of every race was a bit of a tall order. Particularly in busy times of year. What I’ll do in this section instead, is tell you which were the most entertaining days of racing that I’ve been able to catch, in case you fancy a catch-up at some point.

For everything else, there’s FirstCycling.

1. Tour of Britain, stage 4

Is it because I was there? Maybe. Is it because I correctly predicted the eventual winner? Hmm, a bit.

Look, when you’ve been down a climb on a shuttle bus and worried over the riders managing the narrowing of the road and the cattle grid and when you’ve trodden in a whole lot of sheep droppings to find the best spot on a hill, and when some of the best riders on the planet have then tackled that hill not once, not twice, but three times, you feel somewhat attached to it. Two Frenchman battled for the win, up the Burton Dassett Hills climb in Warwickshire, on a glorious sunny September day, with the tension ramping up throughout the final kilometres as they covered the circuits. It was a really entertaining stage. And I was there! (More on that in a future Substack post).

2. Tour of Britain, stage 6

Is it because Fred Wright and Bastien Tronchon were in the break, and almost made it all the way? Um, yes. Is it also because it was Geraint Thomas’ final race day of his incredible career? Also yes.

I wasn’t there for this one, but I watched it unfold on TV (albeit three days late). It was exciting, the Welsh countryside was beautiful, there were cows crossing the road – the outcome was a little bit of an anti-climax, but the excitement that led up to it is definitely worth a re-watch.

3. La Vuelta a España, stage 15

Mighty Mads Pedersen took the bull by the horns and engineered himself a stage win that was a long time coming. I haven’t even watched this one yet because I’m so behind (I’ve been busy, OK?), but I’m told it was one of the best.

4. SIMAC Ladies Tour, stage 1

Look, I really wanted to include a women’s race, but there haven’t been many lately. I was reporting on this stage for CyclingNews, and though the result was super predictable on paper (see below thought no. 4), it was very cool to see the number of different ways in which Lidl-Trek, and other teams, really took the race on, rather than passively sitting back and accepting their Wiebes-shaped fate.

Yes, it all came back together in the end, but from the many and varied Lidl-Trek attacks, to the spirited and powerful late breakaway attempt by Margaux Vigié (Visma | LAB) and Pfeiffer Georgi (Team Picnic-PostNL), it was a highly entertaining bike race, and testament to the belief in the almost-but-not-quite-impossible by the women’s peloton.

3 FINAL THOUGHTS

This section used to be my editorial column - my extended thoughts on a timely topic within the sport of pro cycling. Now, it will serve as a sounding board - I’ll share some of the key issues on my mind, and the topics which you can expect to see me writing at more length on the Substack. Feel free to drop a line to tell me which themes you are particularly interested in hearing about!

1. Tour of Britain delivers

I took myself down to the only men’s race left on our shores last week, and it was a really interesting week of racing. I have many thoughts to share about it, which will come to light in my next Substack post. It will include interviews with some top British riders, a bit of local colour, and thoughts on the impact of Geraint Thomas on the sport, as he rode his last competitive race. Speaking of which…

2. The end of an era

With Geraint Thomas and Lizzie Deignan both retiring this year, it really does feel like the end of era, where British cycling is concerned. While there are plenty of young talents blossoming in Europe, this really spells the final throes of the generation of 2012, racers who inspired that young generation who are now coming through, in the wake of the joy and positivity that surrounded the London 2012 Olympic Games. It was the year in which Mark Cavendish wore the rainbow jersey of world champion having won the previous season, and when we had our first Tour de France winner in Bradley Wiggins. With the loss of a coherent domestic scene and a dearth of opportunities on home soil, will we see a similar level of young Brits coming through in another ten years? It seems unlikely.

3. Dominance, on other fronts

While the dominance of Tadej Pogacar has been one of the hottest topics in cycling media in the past year or two, there’s arguably a more dominant rider whose complete obliteration of all her closest competitors this year is quite frankly, astounding. I’m talking, of course, about Lorena Wiebes. Team SD Worx-Protime’s indomitable sprinter, who, like Pogacar, passed the 100 career wins mark this year. The difference? She has taken the lion’s share of her wins in bunch sprints, the specialism which currently, no other rider is capable of beating her at - the last time she was beaten fair and square in a sprint was at last summer’s Tour de France Femmes, when Charlotte Kool out-paced her to the line on stage 2.

She has of course lost races since then, but there’s always an answer as to why: a breakaway was successful; her teammate was with her; she got held up behind a crash (even this doesn’t seem to happen to her as regularly as it does others). No. When Wiebes gets a clear line of sight at a finish line, she is faster than any other woman in the pro peloton. Who will be able to challenge her, and when? With her usual rivals stumped as to how to find their way around the imperious Dutchwoman, we may perhaps have to look to young up-and-comers to seek a true challenger.

THE LAST WORD

As always, I’d like to thank you all for reading, and for bearing with me as I try to decipher where I stand with this newsletter, and what it will look like going forward - I really hope you like the new format and will stick with me, and perhaps even recommend me to your cycling-loving friends.

If you would like to support the newsletter, you can buy me a coffee, or if you’d like to make a more long-term commitment, sign up to the Substack, which I hope will grow and flourish in the coming year(s).

Until next time,

Cheers,

Katy