Category Archives: Cycling

Going the distance: the ‘Boris bikes’ being spotted around the world

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Stolen London hire-scheme bicycles sighted in unlikely destinations as annual thefts rise

They have been a feature of London’s streets for nearly 12 years: the docked public bikes for sharing that are billed as one of the easiest and quickest ways for people to make shorter journeys. Or in some cases, it seems, considerably longer ones.

Among the hundreds of bikes that go permanently missing from the 14,000-plus fleet every year, a handful have been tracked down to distinctly non-London locations, including Australia, the Gambia and Turkey, a freedom of information request has disclosed.

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My support for sports projects in Israel is not ‘sportswashing’ | Letter

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Sylvan Adams, co-owner of the Israel Start-Up Nation pro cycling team, says his sports initiatives look to build bonds of coexistence and understanding

Jonathan Liew’s decision to attack my support for sports projects in Israel as “sportswashing” is perhaps the most ringing endorsement of why such bridge-building efforts are needed (Sportswashing is associated with certain countries – why not Israel?, 24 January).

When our liberal and open country holds its massive annual Gay Pride parade – the largest (if not the only one) in the Middle East, Israel is accused of “pinkwashing”. When Israel leads in environmental issues and breakthroughs in climate change technologies, Israel is accused of “greenwashing”. When our generous and supremely capable NGOs like IsraAid or Save a Child’s Heart provide support to communities in need around the world, we are accused of “aidwashing”.

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A new start after 60: ‘I was a globetrotting photographer. Then I stayed home – and my world expanded’

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His career took Roff Smith, 63, to more than 100 countries. But he started to feel jaded. Exploring his local area by bike led to a whole new approach to his pictures

Roff Smith’s photographs show a solitary cyclist – Smith himself – in a painterly landscape. His wheels appear to turn briskly, but really the bike moves as slowly as it can without a wobble. As a writer and photographer for National Geographic magazine, Smith, 63, visited more than 100 countries, but now he has squeezed the brakes and shrunk his world. His photographs are all taken within a 10-mile radius of his home, and yet travel has never felt so rich to him as it does now.

Before the pandemic, he had already begun to feel jaded: air travel made “the world everywhere look the same”.

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The 20 best gadgets of 2021

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From smartphones to folding skis, the year’s top gizmos selected by tech experts from the Guardian, iNews, TechRadar and Wired

Cutting-edge tech is often super-expensive, difficult to use and less than slick. Not so for Samsung’s latest folding screen phones. The Z Fold 3 tablet-phone hybrid and Z Flip 3 flip-phone reinventions are smooth, slick and even water-resistant, packing big screens in compact bodies. The Fold might be super-expensive still, but the Flip 3 costs about the same as a regular top smartphone, but is far, far more interesting. Samuel Gibbs

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Ride on, baby: NZ politician cycles to hospital to give birth – for the second time

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Green party MP Julie Anne Genter set off for the hospital while already in labour, and gave birth an hour later

New Zealand MP Julie Anne Genter got on her bicycle early on Sunday and headed to the hospital. She was already in labour and she gave birth an hour later.

“Big news!” the Greens politician posted on her Facebook page a few hours later. “At 3.04am this morning we welcomed the newest member of our family. I genuinely wasn’t planning to cycle in labour, but it did end up happening.”

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Mark Cavendish: ‘I knew I could be top again’

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Mark Cavendish is one of the greatest bike racers of all time. But riding is the easy part, it’s the other stuff that’s hard

Mark Cavendish has just been out on his bike. He went out on his bike this morning, he’ll be back out on his bike tomorrow morning, he went out on his bike this afternoon, and when training was over and he needed to get back to his hotel in order to do this interview, there was really only one method of transport that fitted the bill. The point – and admittedly, it’s not a particularly earth-shattering one – is that he loves riding his bike. Anytime, anywhere, anyhow. It’s his sanctuary, his freedom, his reason for being.

And so, while most of us conceive of professional cycling in terms of suffering – lung-busting sprints, brutal training rides, the tortuous mountain ascents of the Tour de France – Cavendish sees things differently. For all the sweat and pain he endures in the saddle, he knows from bitter experience that the real agony is not being able to ride at all.

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Second act sensations! Meet the people who reached peak fitness – after turning 50

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Rich started working out, Mags started running and Shashi started walking three times a day. It is possible to reach new goals as you get older and it is not only your physical health that benefits

‘I do sometimes feel like a cliche,” says Rich Jones. We’re in the cafe at his gym and he is in workout gear. It’s true, something about the language and the before and after pictures from his physical transformation – severely overweight to lean and chiselled – would appear familiar from thousands of adverts and magazine spreads, if it wasn’t for one thing; Jones got into the best shape of his adult life after he passed 50. “On 9 August 2019, I walked in here. I was 54 and 127kg [20st].”

He worked out at least six days a week, for 90 minutes or more at a time. “I immersed myself in everything, I did gym, I did classes, Pilates, I even did barre,” he says. Within eight or 10 weeks, he was able to stop taking painkillers for a shoulder injury. He now cycles and runs on top of his gym sessions. “It’s just a habit – I brush my teeth every day, I go for a run every day.”

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Summer in the city: Lauren Oyler on a bike accident in Berlin

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The US author and critic recalls a summer of cycling in the German capital in 2018

• Read other authors on their memorable urban summers

Every summer when I come to Berlin, someone says, “Wouldn’t you rather be at the beach?” No. I want to drink beer from the Späti (corner shop) and marvel at the sudden appearance of disparate architectures. But increasingly, there are heatwaves.

If pressed, even these I can romanticise: everyone is carefree and dirty (even more so than usual) and doesn’t work (even more so than usual). I always end up crossing Alexanderplatz on a bike thinking, this is like a desert, but more than once I’ve run into someone I know in the bike lane, which renders the scene even more hallucinogenic. Still, I dread the heatwaves as if they are worse than they are. “They’re going to have to get air-conditioning,” I mutter with the rest of the Americans. The only real respite is, unfortunately, to go to the beach.

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Tokyo 2020 Olympics: cycling, boxing and more on final day – live!

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Men’s keirin - Kenny (GBR) rode a superb race to nick the semi on the line. Glaetzer (AUS) defended his place well throughout to come second. Both progress into the final. Carlin (GBR) misses out in fourth.

Men’s keirin - Semi-final time for the men’s keirin. Up first we have Glaetzer (AUS), Carlin (GBR), and Kenny (GBR) gunning for a spot in the top three in a field of six.

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Cargo bikes deliver faster and cleaner than vans, study finds

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Home deliveries are soaring and cargo bikes cut congestion and pollution in cities, researchers say

Electric cargo bikes deliver about 60% faster than vans in city centres, according to a study. It found that bikes had a higher average speed and dropped off 10 parcels an hour, compared with six for vans.

The bikes also cut carbon emissions by 90% compared with diesel vans, and by a third compared with electric vans, the report said. Air pollution, which is still at illegal levels in many urban areas, was also significantly reduced.

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Tour de France: stage 21 finale – live!

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Good afternoon. Hot enough for you? The mercury is rising towards 30 degrees in Paris, where the Tour de France will conclude in around four hours. The final stage is seen as a procession save for the final sprint along the Champs-Élysées, although it probably won’t feel like that for most of the pack after three weeks of racing.

This edition of the Tour has been defined by two people (OK, maybe three people). Firstly, the relentless, remarkable Tadej Pogacar, who is about to follow up last year’s last-gasp win with a very different victory. The Slovenian has been supremely dominant, in control of this race throughout the entire month of July.

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Prosecutors open investigation into doping allegations against Bahrain Victorious

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  • Prosecutor’s office launch preliminary investigation
  • Police searched riders’ rooms and requested training files

French prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into doping allegations against Tour de France cycling team Bahrain Victorious after police searched the outfit’s accommodation and bus on Wednesday following the 17th stage of the race.

The prosecutor’s office in the port city of Marseille said the investigation was into “acquisition, transport, possession, import of a prohibited substance or prohibited method for use by an athlete without medical justification”.

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Mark Cavendish equals Merckx’s record with 34th Tour de France stage win

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  • British rider’s acceleration helps him triumph in stage 13
  • Simon Yates among riders forced to abandon after crash

Mark Cavendish equalled the long-standing Tour de France stage win record, held by the five-times winner Eddy Merckx, with the 34th stage win of his career that ended in Carcassonne on Friday.

Once again the 36-year-old Cavendish, wiping away the sweat and the tears, confounded those who had written him off, after snatching his fourth win in this year’s race having almost quit the sport at the end of 2020.

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Tour de France withdraws lawsuit against spectator who caused crash

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  • Woman who held up large sign had been in police custody
  • ‘This story has been blown out of proportion,’ says Tour director

Tour de France officials have withdrawn a lawsuit against a spectator who caused a mass crash during the opening stage of the race.

The spectator, a 30-year-old French woman, was in custody at a police station in Landerneau, Brittany, the northwest French region where the world’s biggest cycling event held its first four stages. She was holding a cardboard sign and facing away from the cyclists towards a television camera as they passed. German Tony Martin, from the Jumbo–Visma team, was sent tumbling when he rode straight into the sign, and a large number of other riders also fell.

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Trouble in cyclists’ paradise: Amsterdam accused of favouring pedestrians

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Dutch cycling union claims city has turned on them by making centre more difficult to navigate

Its reputation is that of an idyll for cyclists, a city freed from the torment of cars. But while Amsterdam remains a model to most of the world, there are signs of trouble in paradise.

A series of developments have led the Amsterdam branch of the Fietsersbond, the Dutch cyclists’ union, to claim the municipality has turned on them, unfairly prioritising pedestrians in the city’s historic centre.

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Traffic wars: who will win the battle for city streets?

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Radical new plans to reduce traffic and limit our dependence on cars have sparked bitter conflict. As legal challenges escalate, will Britain’s great traffic experiment be shut down before we have time to see the benefits?

On an overcast Saturday afternoon in December, a convoy of 30 cars, led by a red Chevrolet pickup truck, set off from the car park of an east-London Asda with hazard lights flashing. The motorists, who formed a “festive motorcade”, wore Santa hats as they made their way slowly through the borough of Hackney before coming to a halt outside the town hall a couple of hours later.

They had gathered to register their outrage at being the victims, as they saw it, of a grand experiment that has been taking place on England’s roads since the start of the pandemic. As the national lockdown eased last summer, swathes of Hackney, stretching from Hoxton’s dense council estates at the borough’s western border with Islington to the edge of the River Lea marshland near Stratford in the east, had been closed to through traffic (with exceptions made for delivery vans, residents’ cars and emergency vehicles).

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From keep fit to sex: how Guardian readers have boosted their mood during the pandemic

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Everyone needs a release from the stresses of lockdown life. Readers share the ideas that work for them

We bought some solar-powered garden fairy lights and set them up on our garden shed. We can see them when we are having dinner or letting the dog into the garden. It means that, during the day, we have the fun of the flowers and, at night, twinkling lights. They remind me of the stars, another mood-lifter – stargazing puts everything in perspective. Nicholas Vince, actor and YouTuber, London

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Dr Richard Freeman found guilty of ordering banned testosterone for unnamed cyclist

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  • Worked for Team Sky and British Cycling between 2009 and 2017
  • Claimed he was bullied into ordering banned testosterone

The former chief doctor of British Cycling and Team Sky, Richard Freeman, has been found guilty of ordering banned testosterone “knowing or believing” it was to be given to an unnamed rider to improve their athletic performance. The verdict, announced on Friday by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service in Manchester, will send shockwaves through British sport and raise questions about the decade-long success of British Cycling and Team Sky.

Announcing the verdict, the chair of the MPTS, Neil Dalton said: “The tribunal had found that you, Dr Freeman placed the order, and obtained the Testogel, knowing or believing it was to be administered to an athlete to improve their athletic performance. The motive for your action was to conceal a conduct.”

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Europe doubles down on cycling in post-Covid recovery plans

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Success of schemes during pandemic has led many cities to plan vastly expanded bike networks

When the coronavirus pandemic led to global lockdowns a year ago, hundreds of cities reconfigured their streets to make walking and cycling easier to aid social distancing and reduce air pollution. Now, with an end to the lockdowns in sight, the measures have proved so successful that cities across Europe are betting on the bicycle to lead the recovery.

According to the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), the continent’s cities spent €1bn on Covid-related cycling measures in 2020, creating at least 600 miles (1,000km) of cycle lanes, traffic calming measures and car-free streets.

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Sydney cycling: has the city that ‘hates bikes’ finally turned the corner?

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Almost 7km of cycleways have been created in six months, a sign the government conflicts that have held up progress may be on the wane

When the officials charged with making cycling safer and more accessible in Sydney meet their international counterparts, they can expect to be greeted with a mixture of incredulity and sympathy.

“I don’t think anyone has a tougher time than we do,” says the City of Sydney’s executive manager of cycling strategy, Sebastian Smyth.

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