It’s the rim brakes that done it! Illi Gardner smashes Annemiek van Vleuten’s Monte Zoncolan QOM by 86 seconds – and secures tenth-fastest Strava time ever on 14% Italian monster; “Is a bit less dangerous for cyclists enough?” + more on the live blog

The Queen of the Mountains is back… and she’s busy ripping up the Strava record books once again – and putting a few cycling legends to the sword in the process.

Welsh climbing ace Illi Gardner, who after a brief spell as a pro for CAMS-Basso at the start of the decade turned her attentions to the mountains, is indisputably the uphill queen of both Britain and Europe, securing two consecutive British national hill climb championships, the 2023 Championnats d’Europe des Grimpeurs, and an Everesting record.

But it’s on Strava where he’s really made an indelible mark on the mysterious, captivating art of riding a bike up a mountain really, really fast.

> Illi Gardner knocks a minute off her own Alpe d'Huez Strava QOM with mind-boggling effort quicker than Tour de France times

The 24-year-old has over 11,500 Strava QOMs or Course Records (when she inevitably beats all the men too) to her name, including some of the most iconic climbs in the world, such as Sa Calobra, the Col du Galibier, and Mont Ventoux.

Back in July, she set another QOM on Alpe d’Huez (three years after breaking mountain goat and world time trial champion Emma Pooley’s previous best mark by over two minutes), before returning a few days later to chip another minute off her time – which, despite Demi Vollering’s all-or-nothing ride at the Tour de France Femmes last month, remains intact.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Illi Gardner (@illi_gardner)

And now, Gardner is back for another mountain-themed holiday, this time in the Italian Alps. And the QOMs are falling like skittles.

On the iconic, switchback-laced Stelvio, one of the Giro d’Italia’s most emblematic climbs, Gardner battled through the snow and frosty conditions to beat the existing QOM by over two minutes, completing the 24km beast in 1:22.55, at an average speed of 17.2kph.

“Kicked off my holiday in Italy with a proper Stelvio experience… aged a few years towards the end of that one!” she wrote on Instagram. “Turned into quite a battle to reach the 2,757m but that’s what it’s all about – a really memorable ride on a spectacular pass.”

And if that wasn’t enough, after a brief recon ride a few days before, Gardner set her sights on Monte Zoncolan, that brutal 7.7km-long, 14.2 per cent monster which has been the sight of stage wins by the likes of Chris Froome, Annemiek van Vleuten, and Ivan Basso, and often leaves the Giro peloton resembling a bunch of Sunday club riders as they toil up its horrid, relentless slopes.

Not that Gardner was doing much toiling, however. Yesterday, she flew up the Zoncolan at an average speed of 11.6kph and at 249 watts, completing the official Strava segment in 39.47 – 86 seconds faster than Van Vleuten when she won her stage atop the legendary climb in 2018.

Gardner’s Zoncolan marker is also 3.21 faster than the third-quickest women’s time, recorded by climbing specialist Amanda Spratt, over seven minutes faster than Elisa Longo Borghini, and was enough to secure the tenth-fastest time ever on the mountain, behind a litany of male pros such as KOM Thibaut Pinot, Mike Woods, Ben O’Connor, and Jack Haig.

“Zoncolan we meet again! But this time I love you. Way better temps, super painful but really enjoyed that,” she wrote on Strava after yet another lung-bursting QOM. ‘Enjoy’ is a funny word to use when your heart rate averages 185bpm for 40 minutes, but I won’t argue.

And, as mountains-loving cycling writer Simon Warren said on social media, she also did it with “no sponsor's logos, and an old rim brake Factor with alloy wheels”.

Oh, and also insane amounts of climbing talent too, of course…

Big cycling industry conference on this week. What do all the speakers have in common… pic.twitter.com/9weohFkesZ

— Dr Josie Perry (@Josephineperry) September 16, 2024

And no, contrary to what one smart alec suggested in the comments, the thing these conference speakers all have in common isn’t that they don’t pay road tax…

In news absolutely no-one, no-one at all with even the most in-depth knowledge of the cycling world, saw coming, UCI president David Lappartient has formally announced his candidacy to replace Thomas Bach as the head of the International Olympic Committee.

Career politician Lappartient – who has never once even seemed remotely interested in gunning for world sport’s top job, despite combining his UCI duties with a new role as president of the French National Olympic and Sports Committee last year – is one of seven candidates, including the similarly unambitious Seb Coe, standing for the job, with elections due to take place next March.

The deadline for individuals to confirm their candidacy was midnight on Sunday, with the IOC announcing this morning that Lappartient, Coe, Juan Antonio Samaranch (the son of the former ICO president), Zimbabwe sports minister Kirsty Coventry, International Gymnastics Federation president Morinari Watanabe, Prince Feisal Al Hussein of Jordan, and International Ski Federation president Johan Eliasch are all confirmed on the list to replace the outgoing Bach, who was first elected in 2013.

The seven candidates will present their programmes to IOC members at a private meeting in Lausanne in January, before the votes are cast at the committee’s session from 18-21 March in Greece.

 (ASO/Charly Lopez)

Despite spending most of the last 15 years climbing up sport’s greasy pole after being elected president of the French Cycling Federation in 2009, before moving on to head the European Cycling Union four years later and eventually beating incumbent Brian Cookson for the UCI presidency in 2017, Lappartient has always remained coy about his wider ambitions in the sporting world.

It’s all about the bike, he’d say, in-between updating his CV.

Even at the weekend, he was stand-offish when the subject of Bach’s impending departure was brought up by L’Équipe.

“I invite you to read the IOC's press release on Monday, as they will announce the names of the candidates at that time. I won't comment before Monday,” the 51-year-old told the newspaper at the French Olympic ‘parade of champions’ in Paris.

“What I have said is that I am interested in continuing to serve the Olympic movement in the broadest sense of the term in my international federation, at the CNOSF and at the IOC. Where I fit in, we'll see.”

(Pauline Ballet/SWpix.com)

Like Steve Ovett back in the day, he’ll be up against it with Coe on the line-up, but Lappartient can certainly call on the success of last year’s ‘cycling Olympics’ in Glasgow as evidence of his credentials to put on a big quadrennial sporting show.

And what’s more, with the exception of a few pesky traffickers and drug rings, the Frenchman has almost single handedly banished the spectre of cycling’s doping past – at least if we only focus on positive tests at the elite level (which is all that really matters, eh Lance?).

As cycling statistician Cillian Kelly wrote on Twitter today after the IOC candidates were announced: “Amazing luck for Lappartient that doping stopped for the entire time he’s been UCI President and that he’s had a lovely time to get his campaign for the IOC all in order.

“Number of riders positive at the Tour de France while he’s been in charge: 0.

“Number of riders positive at the Tour de France during the eight years before that: fucking loads.”

To be fair, I’ll think he’ll fit right in at the IOC…

 

 

 

 

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After almost a decade faffing about (and winning lots of rainbow jerseys and Olympic medals) the PFP road era 2.0 is about to begin…

Vittoria Bussi, the first woman in cycling history to break the 50km mark in an hour when she claimed the UCI Hour Record for a second time last year, has announced her decision to retire from the sport, the morning after failing to break the world record for the 3,000m individual pursuit.

The Italian spent the weekend in Aguascalientes, Mexico, the scene of her Hour Record triumph last October, in a bid to Chloé Dygert’s time of 3:16.937 for 3,000m, set in 2020 by the American. However, after a late collapse, Bussi was forced to settle for 3:19.787, which was still enough to break the Italian record.

“At 2,500m for a moment I believed in the fairy tale of a third world record and the girl who finds redemption by reaching the top of the world in a specialty she may not have been made for, in which she was never given a chance,” Bussi wrote on her Instagram post.

“Then Mr Lactic Acid arrives and the seconds fly by, the legs no longer move. She’s gone.”

The 37-year-old’s 3,000m attempt came almost a year after she set a blistering new benchmark of 50.267km for the Hour, easily surpassing Ellen van Dijk’s previous record of 49.254km as well as bettering her own past Hour Record by over two kilometres.

That previous 48.007km benchmark set by Bussi in September 2018, also achieved at the high-altitude velodrome in Aguascalientes, stood for three years before Britain’s Joss Lowden, and then Van Dijk, surpassed it in quick succession in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

> Flying Vittoria Bussi becomes first woman to break 50km barrier as she reclaims UCI Hour Record

Bussi’s history-making Hour was the culmination of her ‘Road2Record’ campaign, which brought together aerodynamic, training, and nutritional experts with the specific goal of enabling her to surpass the 50km mark.

The Italian, who holds a DPhil in Pure Mathematics from the University of Oxford, utilised her mathematical expertise by playing an active role in the aerodynamic preparation for her effort, the third time she has taken on the Hour Record, after falling just short in 2017. She also launched a crowdfunding campaign to support her attempt, raising over €12,000 on GoFundMe.

In her post this morning, Bussi – who spent two years in the pro peloton before focusing on individual track and time trial efforts – said this weekend’s 3,000m attempt started out as a “joke” in the wake of her Hour Record triumph, based on the “bizarre idea of learning to go from a standing start and reach almost 60kph in seconds”.

 

 

 

 

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She said she moved to the UCI’s Swiss headquarters in Aigle to prepare – even clocking a 3:18 a few days after her wedding – and aimed to beat Dygert’s time by “starting at record pace and trying to hold it for as long as possible”, but ultimately fell short in what has turned out to be her last record attempt.

“I end my career like this, not at the peak of glory, but with bitterness in my mouth. In the end, happy ending movies are kind of boring, right?” she wrote, announcing her immediate retirement.

“I will hang the sign of the Italian record for the 3km next to the two world records on the hour, maybe with even more pride, for courage, for accepting the pain, for not having regrets. Always push yourself further, even where you are not capable.”

More frontline news from the so-called ‘war on the motorist’…

> Cyclists share horrifying stories of assault after rider pushed off bike by man in passing van, as police launch appeal over “despicable random attack”

The controversy surrounding Torquay’s harbourside revamp is showing no signs of going away, is it?

Over the past few months, cyclists in the Devon seaside town have been up in arms after Torbay Council unveiled a new set of designs for its much-vaunted harbour regeneration scheme – which, thanks to the local authority being forced to move a line of trees due to the discovery of some water pipes, no longer include the cycle lane earmarked in the original plans.

So, instead of protected cycling infrastructure, cyclists along the harbourside will be shunted onto a new one-way 20mph road, a decision local activists say will actually “worsen the provision for cyclists” in the area and discriminate against those who use cycles as mobility aids.

> Cyclists say they are being forced “into direct conflict with drivers” by holding up traffic or onto pavement with pedestrians, as petition calls on council to rethink “discriminatory, unsafe” decision to scrap cycle lane plans

And last week, these campaigners protested outside a public question time session on the matter, which saw a number of local cyclists take the council to task over the controversial scrapping of the planned bike lane.

During the meeting, while responding to Conservative councillor Chris Lewis’ assertion that the new road layout would be safer for cyclists than the existing one, protester Beth Huntley asked: “Is ‘a bit less dangerous’ really what we should be achieving with this multi-million pound, once-in-a-lifetime funding?

“This infrastructure would have been a flagship for active travel and I firmly believe that the message ‘build it and they will come’ would have been the case here, with families and people of all ages using this safe, protected, enjoyable path.

“Instead cyclists are to be given ‘safe access to the road’ – a busy, narrowed road where cars are now going to be forced to wait behind cyclists as opportunities to pass safely will be rare.”

> “Is this what anyone wants?”: Council goes back on promise and scraps cycle lane plans without any consultation to move “line of trees closer to kerb”

“I believe this project is a good project,” Lewis, who described the decision to scrap the bike lane as a “rapid” one following the discovery of the pipes, hit back.

“It’s unfortunate that we can’t include the cycle lane, but it’s only 200 yards. The layout before was a bus terminal and it was highly dangerous. This will be a lot safer for cyclists.”

However, the harbourside scheme wasn’t the only cycling-related project that Torbay Council came under fire for at the meeting.

> Warning signs to be placed at “crazy” cycle route steps after 83-year-old injured in horror fall

Dr Simon McGinnes also challenged the council on the Shiphay-to-Chelston path, the head scratching route which runs behind Torre Station through Torquay woodland, cost £350,000 to build, and includes a steep flight of steps where cyclists push their bike through a gulley while climbing or descending the 30 steps.

It was opened in 2016 to offer riders a route away from the busy main road. Original sketches for the cycle route showed a gentle slope through the trees, but a 60-metre set of steps was built instead – earning it We Love Cycling magazine’s accolade of the fourth worst cycling path in the UK.

“That’s an achievement for Torbay,” said Dr McGinnes. “Torbay is so far behind on cycling. It needs to step up and start supporting cyclists. How genuinely does the council support active travel?”

In 2022, we reported that 83-year-old Ron Keegan, a former road racer and clubmate of Robertson’s at Mid-Devon CC, fell while trying to negotiate the steps in cleats, somersaulting down the steep descent and suffering a list of “cuts and bruises, various wounds and aches and pains”, prompting a five-hour stay at hospital.

Speaking at the meeting, Keegan asked why the council had not consulted local cycling groups before scrapping the harbourside bike lane – which, considering one councillor said at last week’s meeting that they were “optimistic” the stairway cycle path problem could be resolved soon, two years on from the cyclist’s fall, may be a question that answers itself.