John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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so for about £2k i could buy £6k worth of components...if only i had some spare cash lying around for it. Hopefully they'll get a good amount for each to help fund next season
That's a lot of extra kit I'll have to buy just for the saddle fnar fnar arf arf and so forth.
Teams selling old bikes isn't exactly a new thing is it?
Be awesome to pick one of those up, although a bit small for me.
Seller kaz_n_jai, location Australia? Gilmore?
**Insert crass, mindless sexist comment here**
Ta.
Anyway, it's an auction and with a few days to go yet, I would think these bikes will achieve a lot more money.
I thought there was no money in women's cycling. Well, there will be even less if they go around selling perfectly good £10000 bikes on eBay for £2000! Maybe their team is downgrading to Carrera Subways for next season...
They'll almost certainly have been given them by Colnago as part of their sponsorship. Everything they get for selling them now goes into next year's budget - can't see them selling them without having a similar deal lined up for next year. Their budget is quite small (as in fractions of a Froome for the whole team) - at that level every ££ counts
There will be an agreement on what happens to the bikes at the end of a season - sometimes they go back to the sponsor/manufacturer for assessment and R&D, sometimes they get given or sold to team staff/hangers-on, sometimes they get scrapped if they've been crash-damaged. And occasionally they get sold to the public.
You get more money for them that way, especially when the riders concerned are Olympic and World Champions. That money will go back into the team pot.
Joannas one took a bit of a beating when she crashed in the RideLondon criterium.
Are they being auctioned for charity?
Yes, the charity being women's cycling. I wish this tongue in cheek reply was true however it would seem to be a private sale.