Category Archives: Cycling

Elite cyclist to lead London race while living in asylum hotel

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Trhas Tesfay, who fled war in Ethiopia, says she suffers hunger headaches as she cannot eat Home Office hotel meals

One of Ethiopia’s elite female cyclists will be pedalling at the front of one of London’s biggest bike races next month while living in an asylum seeker hotel on less than £10 a week.

Trhas Teklehaimanot Tesfay, 22, rode a bicycle for the first time when she was 13 years old. She has achieved success in a range of competitions such as the African Continental Championships and the national championships of Ethiopia.

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Cyclist killed and another injured in separate incidents in Indian Pacific Wheel Race

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Western Australia police appeal for information after second death in race after British ultra-endurance cyclist Mike Hall was hit and killed near Canberra in 2017

Tragedy has again befallen the Indian Pacific Wheel Race, with a cyclist dead and another in a serious condition in hospital after separate incidents along Western Australia’s remote Eyre Highway on Thursday morning.

The race sees participants ride solo and unsupported from Fremantle in Western Australia to the Sydney Opera House, covering 5,500 kilometres. It builds on a rich history of riders traversing Australia as early as the 1890s – considered to be the first “Overlanders”.

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British para-cycling trio’s world silver medals stolen in Rio de Janeiro robbery

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  • Neil and Lora Fachie targeted along with pilot Corinne Hall
  • Cyclists ‘shaken up’ by incident on opening day of worlds

Three members of the British para-cycling track team were robbed of their silver medals and other possessions in a mugging after the opening day of the world championships in Rio de Janeiro.

Lora and Neil Fachie, who are both double Paralympic champions, and pilot Corinne Hall were left shaken but otherwise unharmed by the incident, which occurred as they made their way back to their accommodation in the Brazilian city.

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Rohan Dennis, husband of former Olympic cyclist Melissa Hoskins, faces court charged with causing her death

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Former cycling champion Rohan Dennis charged with recklessly striking his wife with his car in Adelaide’s inner north on 30 December

The husband of former Olympic cyclist Melissa Hoskins has faced court for the first time after allegedly striking her with his car and causing her death.

Rohan Dennis, a former world champion cyclist, was arrested in January and charged with causing death by dangerous driving, driving without due care and endangering life.

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Amy Gillett Foundation for cyclist safety to close after federal funds cut off

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Set up to honour the Australian national team cyclist killed by a car, the group was behind the successful A Metre Matters campaign

The Australian cycling safety advocacy body behind the successful A Metre Matters campaign is being wound up after federal government funding was discontinued.

The Amy Gillett Foundation was established in 2006 after the death of Gillett, a former Olympic rower who had switched to track and road cycling. The 29-year-old was training with the Australian national team in Germany when she and her teammates were hit by a car.

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Dutch cargo bike firm Babboe ordered to halt sales amid safety concerns

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Regulator demands recall of two models, understood to affect about 10,000 of the popular products

Dutch authorities have ordered a leading European manufacturer of cargo bikes to suspend sales and recall thousands of its products amid safety concerns over frame breakages.

The Dutch regulator for food and consumer product safety (NVWA) called a temporary halt to trading by Babboe, which makes family cargo bikes seen daily on school runs from Berlin to Bristol, “because their safety cannot be sufficiently guaranteed”.

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Authorities investigate cause of fire at Sydney e-bike workshop

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Blaze broke out at Croydon building Friday morning, with firefighters highlighting risks from lithium batteries

An e-bike workshop has been destroyed in an early morning fire in Sydney’s inner west, causing road closures along the suburb’s shopping strip.

Residents were woken just before 5am on Friday after the fire broke out at the building on Elizabeth Street in Croydon.

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‘Bureaucracy going mad’: the 250 ‘magnificent’ 10m-high trees being felled for a Melbourne bike path

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Residents of Queens Avenue in Caulfield East are ramping up the fight against the 1km path and vow to ‘fight until the bulldozers come’

For 30 years, Tamara de Silva has woken up to the sound of birds chirping in the trees across the road from her home in Melbourne’s south-east.

“Listening to the magpies and the lorikeets in the mornings, watching them playing around – it lifts your spirits,” she said.

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Friends pay tribute to Melissa Dennis as Australian cycling community mourns

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Anna Meares among athletes paying tribute to former track cyclist who competed at world championships and Olympics

• Rohan Dennis charged over death of wife Melissa

Melissa Dennis is being remembered as a popular and talented competitor as Australian cycling reels from her death.

Olympic gold medallist Anna Meares paid tribute to Dennis on Monday morning, while AusCycling also released a statement.

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Rohan Dennis charged over death of wife, fellow cyclist Melissa Dennis

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Reports name Melissa as woman who died after being hit by car in Adelaide and Rohan as the driver

Two-time Olympian and Two-time Olympiancyclist Melissa Dennis has died after she was struck by a car in Adelaide’s inner north.

Dennis’s husband and fellow Australian Olympic cyclist, Rohan Dennis, has reportedly been charged in relation to her death.

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Cutting corners on ebike Christmas gifts could be ‘disastrous’, experts warn

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Authorities say lithium-ion battery fires happen every week across Australia and poorly built buys could lead to new wave of damage

Choosing the wrong electric bike or scooter could be a fatal mistake this Christmas, experts have warned, amid a rising number of house fires caused by faulty batteries.

Authorities have warned that lithium-ion battery fires are happening every week and a new wave of damage could be unleashed early next year due to poorly built Christmas purchases.

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Love bikes, hate ‘wild parking’ – Dutch city puts rule-breakers on the rack

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Maastricht clamps down on cyclists who illegally secure their two-wheelers to lamp-posts or railings

Officials in the Netherlands, a country with more bicycles than people, are tackling a plague of “wild parking” by confiscating illegally stationed bikes and increasing the penalties to get them back.

This year the southern city of Maastricht – beloved of international students – banned people from “orphaning” their bikes by deserting them on the street. Now it is doubling the fines it charges people who want to reclaim impounded bicycles.

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Lancashire county council criticised for not fixing pothole blamed for cyclist’s death

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Coroner says Harry Colledge, 84, would probably be alive if council had acted on warnings about 87-metre-long crack in the road

A council has been severely criticised by a coroner over the death of a cyclist who suffered fatal head injuries after hitting a pothole that had been visible on Google Street View for 14 years.

The Lancashire area coroner, Kate Bisset, concluded that Harry Colledge, 84, would probably not have died last January if Lancashire county council had acted on warnings to fix the 87-metre-long crack on Island Lane near the village of Winmarleigh.

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‘No more lives lost’: Glasgow architects urge road changes after colleague’s cycling death

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Road infrastructure campaign has been launched in honour of designer Emma Burke Newman, who was killed in lorry collision

On the long and busy stretch of road where Glasgow’s riverside meets its city centre, hundreds of commuters and visitors travel into and out of town each day. Since January this year, many will have spotted a new addition to their route: a white “ghost bike”, adorned with flowers and messages, parked at a busy junction where 22-year-old French-American architecture student and experienced cyclist Emma Burke Newman was killed in a collision with a lorry, just six months after moving to the city.

Now, former colleagues at architectural firm New Practice, where she worked as a designer while studying at Glasgow School of Art, have launched a road infrastructure campaign in her honour. Focusing on three specific junctions along the riverside, including the one where Burke Newman lost her life, the Waiting To Happen campaign aims to gather data about road users’ experiences of these locations with a view to creating a set of possible improvements.

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Sunak ‘backs drivers’ with curbs on 20mph limits and bus lanes

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Low-traffic neighbourhoods and fines also face clampdown under plans condemned by active travel groups

Rishi Sunak has pledged to end “anti-car measures” as he set out a series of ideas to prioritise the needs of drivers at the likely expense of other road users such as bus passengers, cyclists and pedestrians.

Outlining what he called a “long-term plan to back drivers”, the prime minister unveiled a clampdown on 20mph limits, bus lanes, low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), and the ability of councils to fine drivers who commit offences.

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Covid cycling boom has ended with just one-third of Australians riding in 2023

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Riding most popular in Victoria and the Northern Territory with Tasmania at the bottom of the pile, new survey suggests

A pandemic bicycle boom has faded, with the latest statistics showing many people feel it is too dangerous to ride on Australian roads.

There has been a steady decline in people cycling at least once during a 12-month period over the past decade, from about 40% in 2011 down to 34.2% in 2017.

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Schemes to boost walking and cycling ‘must take women’s safety into account’

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DfT also says bids for new £200m funding pot for England could include plans for better school routes and inclusive street designs

Council bids for a £200m funding pot to boost walking and cycling must “take women’s safety into account”, according to the Department for Transport (DfT).

A 2021 Office for National Statistics study showed half of women felt unsafe walking after dark in a quiet street near their home.

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Row growing after third historic rail bridge filled in with concrete

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National Highways faces third intervention by a local authority over infilling, after burying Congham bridge in Norfolk in tonnes of concrete

A controversial practice by the government’s roads agency of burying historic railway bridges in concrete has been dealt a fresh blow after a third council intervened over another infilled structure.

King’s Lynn and West Norfolk council has told National Highways it must apply for retrospective planning permission if it wants to retain hundreds of tonnes of aggregate and concrete it used to submerge Congham bridge, a few miles east of King’s Lynn.

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Underwater bike garage solves Amsterdam station’s storage headache

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Central station is replacing its messy, overflowing cycle parking facilities with a low-cost area that’s tucked away out of sight

Beneath the clear waters and pleasure boats by Amsterdam central station is a remarkable feat of engineering: an underwater garage for 7,000 bicycles.

The garage, which opens on 26 January, is the result of a four-year, €60m (£53m) project to clear heaps of rusty bikes left by hasty commuters and install rows of clean, safe parking spaces underground, where bikes can be left free for 24 hours and then at a cost of €1.35 per 24 hours.

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Amsterdam calls for crackdown on menace of souped-up e-bikes

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Demon young riders speeding at 40kph are making the Dutch city’s once cycle-friendly streets dangerous – and the problem is spreading

Debby Nieberg was cycling home from the dentist last October, when she was knocked to the pavement and broke her shoulder.

According to her police report, the youngster on an e-bike – overtaking Nieberg on Amsterdam’s narrow cycling lanes – got up and cycled off, a crime in itself. “This unfortunately has become a big part of my life because of the ‘need for speed’ of those on e-bikes,” says the 56-year-old freelance translator, who has just started cycling again. “The bike situation is definitely unsafe.”

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