Road cycling exhibition Rouleur Classic has announced that the event will be welcoming a selection of world-class cycling talent.

Guests making appearances at the show include World Tour riders Alexander Kristoff, Filippo Pozzato, Alex Dowsett, Christian Meier and Jan Bakelants, who will be in attendance over the course of the three days. A selection of Team Sky riders, Alice Barnes and Drops Cycling Team, will join them.

Sporting icons such as former Grand Tour winners Jan Ullrich and Sean Kelly, plus former record holder Graeme Obree will discuss cycling’s heritage from a historical perspective, and views from the team car will come from sporting directors Sean Yates and Viatcheslav Ekimov.

The show will offer live Q&A sessions hosted by a selection of on-screen cyclists such as Ned Boulting, Anthony McCrossan, Orla Chennaoui and Matt Barbett. Joining them onstage will be a host of specialists from the broad spectrum of cycling.

Race directors from all three Grand Tours will be in attendance; Christian Prudhomme, Mauro Vegni and Javier Guillén will each be presenting their race and expanding on why the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España are so prestigious.

Rouleur Classic will return on November 3rd to the 5th 2016 at new venue Victoria House, London.

British Cycling, with the help of UK Sport, has appointed Positive Dynamics to assist in the recruitment of a performance director for the Great Britain Cycling Team.

Appointing a performance director is part of the strategy laid out in anticipation of the Toyko Olympics in 2020.

The strategy was submitted to UK Sport in February. It will enable the Great Britain Cycling Team to build upon the successes the team enjoyed this year at the Rio Olympic Games, and provide greater support to performance staff and athletes.

This will include an initial scoping exercise followed by an open recruitment process. Further updates will follow in due course. 

Programmes director Andy Harrison, who stepped in to lead the Great Britain Cycling Team for the last phase of the Rio cycle, during which the team achieved their ambition of finishing top of the medal table at the Olympics and Paralympics, will remain in charge until a performance director is appointed.

For more information, click here. 

The 2017 Taipei Cycle will be the thirtieth staging of the event. The Spring show will move to the Autumn in 2017, confirmed the organisers as new branding was unveiled.

The new brand identity – “A New Worldview on Cycling" – was unveiled by Peter Huang, the CEO & President of TAITRA, and Giant's Tony Lo, the chairman of the Taiwan Bicycle Association (left and right in the pic).

The show is organised by TAITRA, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, and the 2017 event will be staged 22–25 March at the Taipei World Trade Center, and opens with a Demo Day, the show's first. In 2018 the show will move to the end of October and early November.

At a press conference Tony Lo said that the value of Taiwan complete bicycles export in 2016 has dropped 20 percent so far this year.

OutdoorGearLab already tests cycle clothing and accessories but now it's branching out into testing bikes. The founder of the US gear-testing website said he plans to "change the bike purchase process with a new standard of bike reviews." Chris McNamara added that "we buy all the bikes ourselves, no manufacturer freebies or advertising payola."

OutdoorGearLab – which now gets up to 1.5 million individual users per month – sprang from what was originally the climbing-gear review section of SuperTopo, a climbing guidebook publisher and rock-climbing website. The site's first bike review is of Enduro MTBs (hint: the Yeti won.)

Unlike bike mags which make their money from cover sales and ads, OutdoorGearLab is funded via Google ads and affiliates, including links to online retailer sites. 

McNamara said: “We have set out to change bike purchasing for the better by providing the world’s most in-depth, scientific, and objective side-by-side comparison of bike performance."

The OutdoorGearLab testing process is done with a team of four expert enduro bike testers, two bike mechanics, and six mountain bike consultants. Together, they spent a combined 1000 hours testing the bikes.

"Most reviews today are based on one rider heading out for an afternoon ride in isolation and how the ride ‘felt’," claimed McNamara.

"We’re not interested in what bike ‘feels’ faster. We want to know, to a precision of 1/100th of a second, how much one bike is actually faster than another. Competing reviews will sometimes say, ‘that bike pedals as hard uphill as it shreds downhill.’ That’s not good enough for us. We want to know exactly how fast, compared to competing bikes, based on a scientific and objective measurement process.“

Too many reviews from mags and bike websites are influenced by linked advertising, continued McNamara.

“We think most bike reviews today are strongly influenced by marketing budgets. The result is reviews that are sugar coated by advertising dollars, often based on a brief ride on a loaner bike, offering an inevitably positive spin."

Next OutdoorGearLab plans to publish its review of trail MTBs followed by a road-bike review, and then a head-to-head of fat bikes. “We’re just getting started,” smiled McNamara.

Road cycling exhibition Rouleur Classic has announced that the event will be welcoming a selection of world-class cycling talent.

Guests making appearances at the show include World Tour riders Alexander Kristoff, Filippo Pozzato, Alex Dowsett, Christian Meier and Jan Bakelants, who will be in attendance over the course of the three days. A selection of Team Sky riders, Alice Barnes and Drops Cycling Team, will join them.

Sporting icons such as former Grand Tour winners Jan Ullrich and Sean Kelly, plus former record holder Graeme Obree will discuss cycling’s heritage from a historical perspective, and views from the team car will come from sporting directors Sean Yates and Viatcheslav Ekimov.

The show will offer live Q&A sessions hosted by a selection of on-screen cyclists such as Ned Boulting, Anthony McCrossan, Orla Chennaoui and Matt Barbett. Joining them onstage will be a host of specialists from the broad spectrum of cycling.

Race directors from all three Grand Tours will be in attendance; Christian Prudhomme, Mauro Vegni and Javier Guillén will each be presenting their race and expanding on why the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España are so prestigious.

Rouleur Classic will return on November 3rd to the 5th 2016 at new venue Victoria House, London.

Ian Drake has confirmed that he will step down as CEO of British Cycling – he leaves in April next year.
 
Drake said: “Some time ago I made the decision that the Rio Games would be my last as CEO of British Cycling. Now, following the success of our Olympic and Paralympic teams at those Games, the launch of our innovative new partnership with HSBC UK and Yorkshire’s successful bid to host the 2019 Road World Championships, I believe that the end of this Olympic cycle is the natural moment for a new CEO to take the organisation forward into the Tokyo Games and beyond.
 
“I have been involved with British Cycling in some form for almost 20 years, the last eight as CEO, and it is an organisation that I will always love. I have been privileged to be a part of the amazing success we have experienced over those two decades and I know that it will go on to even greater heights in the years to come.
 
“All organisations, particularly those operating at the highest level of sport, periodically require new leadership to take them to greater heights and tackle their new challenges – now is the right moment for both myself and British Cycling to move on.”
 
Drake first began working with British Cycling as a consultant in 1995 before joining the organisation full-time in 1998 in order to develop and implement the playground-to-podium pathway that was introduced in 2000. In this role he gave presentations to the bike industry, including at meetings organised by the Bicycle Association.

In 2004 he was appointed Participation and Operations Director, before becoming Deputy Chief Executive in 2007. He succeeded CEO Peter King in 2009.
 
The British Cycling board will now begin the search for a new CEO. 

The professional cycling team LottoNL-Jumbo has announced that Shimano will act as the official supplier of its team kit for 2017. 

The Netherlands-based team will wear a full range of elite performance cycle apparel from Shimano, including clothing and eyewear. 

Riders will also be kitted out with footwear from Shimano’s S-PHYRE range, a new elite category that includes the RC9 (road) carbon-soled racing shoe. 

Richard Plugge, managing director of LottoNL-Jumbo, said: “This announcement is another proud moment in the successful history of LottoNL-Jumbo and Shimano. We are delighted to step up our relationship with one of the world’s biggest cycle companies, providing developmental guidance for Shimano apparel at the highest level.”

The brand stated that LottoNL-Jumbo riders will be instrumental in the progression of Shimano clothing, with wind tunnel testing and bike-fitting performance analysis part of the development plan. Team riders will be wearing and testing a complete range of custom summer and winter on-the-bike race clothing including arm warmers, leg warmers and winter buffs.

Shimano Europe marketing director Richard Keeskamp commented: “This new agreement takes our long-term relationship with the team to a new level. By providing LottoNL-Jumbo with a full range of performance clothing and footwear, we are able to extend our head-to-toe strategy, maximizing the performance of every component part of the bike and the rider.

“We look forward to working more closely with LottoNL-Jumbo in the coming season to develop and progress the breadth and quality of Shimano cycle clothing.” 

Cycling UK has updated its one-stop guide to cycling statistics relevant to the UK cycling industry.

The new report draws from government reports and industry surveys. The company has collected commonly asked questions, and has published a conclusive list of answers in one comprehensive document.

The central new updates include up-to-date information on the National Travel Survey statistics covering 2015, new Reported Road Casualty statistics covering 2015, and greater research into statistics for Wales and Scotland. 

(Examples of the updated Cycling UK statistics.)

The full statistics are available here. For more information, contact Cycling UK via phone on 01483 238 315, or via publicity@cyclinguk.org.

Haibike has announced a multi-year sponsorship agreement to be the first official e-bike sponsor of the Sea Otter Classic. Haibike will also return in 2017 and 2018 as the official sponsor of the "Haibike eMTB Race ePowered by Bosch." (The logo on the Sea Otter Classic website has yet to be updated, so we've gone with the SRAM logo ...)

"Last year's inaugural eMTB race was a phenomenal success with over 120 participants and every one of our Haibike demos in use," said Ken Miner, Haibike's U.S. director of sales. "E-bikes continue to be the fastest growing segment of the cycling industry and Sea Otter is the ideal venue for us to show off our latest and greatest products."

"We are thrilled to have Haibike come aboard as our official e-Bike sponsor for 2017 and 2018," said Frank Yohannan, president and CEO of the Sea Otter Classic. "Having such a big player in the e-bike industry join us to support our celebration of cycling will be instrumental in bringing this segment of the cycling industry to our audience."

The Sea Otter Classic takes place in Monterrey, California, and is the world's largest cycling festival, hosting almost 10,000 athletes and 70,000 spectators during the annual four-day event.

A report from the United Nations calls on national governments to seriously increase their spend on active travel, if they wish to save lives and have a healthier populace. The report suggests that 20 percent of transport budgets should go to walking and cycling.

Erick Solheim, executive director, UN Environment, said: "Scaling up that kind of change starts by deciding to take the first step, which can be as simple as creating a cycling and walking policy."

"Global outlook on walking and cycling" looks at ideas from around the world, including the policies for decision makers and the realities for citizens, to show what really works.

"As the population heads towards nine billion, we need to design mobility for our people instead of mobility for our cars," said Solheim. 

"I hope this report will inspire decision makers from across the public and private sector to explore where they live and work on foot and on two wheels."

The report has a four-point plan for governments to follow:

• Introduce a national or city non-motorised user (NMT) policy if you don’t have one. If you do have a policy do you need to revise it?
• Set aside at least 20% of the total transport budget to fund NMT programmes at national and city level. Measure the measurable goals, then collect the data you need and evaluate your success.
• Ask users where they walk or ride and what they need. Pay particular attention to more vulnerable users, such as women, children, elderly people and people with mobility challenges.
• Have the "political will" to make change, actively championing cycling and walking as modes of equal status to private cars.

"For as long as NMT is seen as a low-status alternative, it will not receive the road space, budgets and attention it deserves," said Solheim.

He added: "Don’t try to replicate what other cities or countries do without taking your local context into account."

+++

HT Mark Sutton 

The 2017 Taipei Cycle will be the thirtieth staging of the event. The Spring show will move to the Autumn in 2017, confirmed the organisers as new branding was unveiled.

The new brand identity – “A New Worldview on Cycling" – was unveiled by Peter Huang, the CEO & President of TAITRA, and Giant's Tony Lo, the chairman of the Taiwan Bicycle Association (left and right in the pic).

The show is organised by TAITRA, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council, and the 2017 event will be staged 22–25 March at the Taipei World Trade Center, and opens with a Demo Day, the show's first. In 2018 the show will move to the end of October and early November.

At a press conference Tony Lo said that the value of Taiwan complete bicycles export in 2016 has dropped 20 percent so far this year.

OutdoorGearLab already tests cycle clothing and accessories but now it's branching out into testing bikes. The founder of the US gear-testing website said he plans to "change the bike purchase process with a new standard of bike reviews." Chris McNamara added that "we buy all the bikes ourselves, no manufacturer freebies or advertising payola."

OutdoorGearLab – which now gets up to 1.5 million individual users per month – sprang from what was originally the climbing-gear review section of SuperTopo, a climbing guidebook publisher and rock-climbing website. The site's first bike review is of Enduro MTBs (hint: the Yeti won.)

Unlike bike mags which make their money from cover sales and ads, OutdoorGearLab is funded via Google ads and affiliates, including links to online retailer sites. 

McNamara said: “We have set out to change bike purchasing for the better by providing the world’s most in-depth, scientific, and objective side-by-side comparison of bike performance."

The OutdoorGearLab testing process is done with a team of four expert enduro bike testers, two bike mechanics, and six mountain bike consultants. Together, they spent a combined 1000 hours testing the bikes.

"Most reviews today are based on one rider heading out for an afternoon ride in isolation and how the ride ‘felt’," claimed McNamara.

"We’re not interested in what bike ‘feels’ faster. We want to know, to a precision of 1/100th of a second, how much one bike is actually faster than another. Competing reviews will sometimes say, ‘that bike pedals as hard uphill as it shreds downhill.’ That’s not good enough for us. We want to know exactly how fast, compared to competing bikes, based on a scientific and objective measurement process.“

Too many reviews from mags and bike websites are influenced by linked advertising, continued McNamara.

“We think most bike reviews today are strongly influenced by marketing budgets. The result is reviews that are sugar coated by advertising dollars, often based on a brief ride on a loaner bike, offering an inevitably positive spin."

Next OutdoorGearLab plans to publish its review of trail MTBs followed by a road-bike review, and then a head-to-head of fat bikes. “We’re just getting started,” smiled McNamara.

Road cycling exhibition Rouleur Classic has announced that the event will be welcoming a selection of world-class cycling talent.

Guests making appearances at the show include World Tour riders Alexander Kristoff, Filippo Pozzato, Alex Dowsett, Christian Meier and Jan Bakelants, who will be in attendance over the course of the three days. A selection of Team Sky riders, Alice Barnes and Drops Cycling Team, will join them.

Sporting icons such as former Grand Tour winners Jan Ullrich and Sean Kelly, plus former record holder Graeme Obree will discuss cycling’s heritage from a historical perspective, and views from the team car will come from sporting directors Sean Yates and Viatcheslav Ekimov.

The show will offer live Q&A sessions hosted by a selection of on-screen cyclists such as Ned Boulting, Anthony McCrossan, Orla Chennaoui and Matt Barbett. Joining them onstage will be a host of specialists from the broad spectrum of cycling.

Race directors from all three Grand Tours will be in attendance; Christian Prudhomme, Mauro Vegni and Javier Guillén will each be presenting their race and expanding on why the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España are so prestigious.

Rouleur Classic will return on November 3rd to the 5th 2016 at new venue Victoria House, London.

Ian Drake has confirmed that he will step down as CEO of British Cycling – he leaves in April next year.
 
Drake said: “Some time ago I made the decision that the Rio Games would be my last as CEO of British Cycling. Now, following the success of our Olympic and Paralympic teams at those Games, the launch of our innovative new partnership with HSBC UK and Yorkshire’s successful bid to host the 2019 Road World Championships, I believe that the end of this Olympic cycle is the natural moment for a new CEO to take the organisation forward into the Tokyo Games and beyond.
 
“I have been involved with British Cycling in some form for almost 20 years, the last eight as CEO, and it is an organisation that I will always love. I have been privileged to be a part of the amazing success we have experienced over those two decades and I know that it will go on to even greater heights in the years to come.
 
“All organisations, particularly those operating at the highest level of sport, periodically require new leadership to take them to greater heights and tackle their new challenges – now is the right moment for both myself and British Cycling to move on.”
 
Drake first began working with British Cycling as a consultant in 1995 before joining the organisation full-time in 1998 in order to develop and implement the playground-to-podium pathway that was introduced in 2000. In this role he gave presentations to the bike industry, including at meetings organised by the Bicycle Association.

In 2004 he was appointed Participation and Operations Director, before becoming Deputy Chief Executive in 2007. He succeeded CEO Peter King in 2009.
 
The British Cycling board will now begin the search for a new CEO. 

The professional cycling team LottoNL-Jumbo has announced that Shimano will act as the official supplier of its team kit for 2017. 

The Netherlands-based team will wear a full range of elite performance cycle apparel from Shimano, including clothing and eyewear. 

Riders will also be kitted out with footwear from Shimano’s S-PHYRE range, a new elite category that includes the RC9 (road) carbon-soled racing shoe. 

Richard Plugge, managing director of LottoNL-Jumbo, said: “This announcement is another proud moment in the successful history of LottoNL-Jumbo and Shimano. We are delighted to step up our relationship with one of the world’s biggest cycle companies, providing developmental guidance for Shimano apparel at the highest level.”

The brand stated that LottoNL-Jumbo riders will be instrumental in the progression of Shimano clothing, with wind tunnel testing and bike-fitting performance analysis part of the development plan. Team riders will be wearing and testing a complete range of custom summer and winter on-the-bike race clothing including arm warmers, leg warmers and winter buffs.

Shimano Europe marketing director Richard Keeskamp commented: “This new agreement takes our long-term relationship with the team to a new level. By providing LottoNL-Jumbo with a full range of performance clothing and footwear, we are able to extend our head-to-toe strategy, maximizing the performance of every component part of the bike and the rider.

“We look forward to working more closely with LottoNL-Jumbo in the coming season to develop and progress the breadth and quality of Shimano cycle clothing.” 

Cycling UK has updated its one-stop guide to cycling statistics relevant to the UK cycling industry.

The new report draws from government reports and industry surveys. The company has collected commonly asked questions, and has published a conclusive list of answers in one comprehensive document.

The central new updates include up-to-date information on the National Travel Survey statistics covering 2015, new Reported Road Casualty statistics covering 2015, and greater research into statistics for Wales and Scotland. 

(Examples of the updated Cycling UK statistics.)

The full statistics are available here. For more information, contact Cycling UK via phone on 01483 238 315, or via publicity@cyclinguk.org.

Haibike has announced a multi-year sponsorship agreement to be the first official e-bike sponsor of the Sea Otter Classic. Haibike will also return in 2017 and 2018 as the official sponsor of the "Haibike eMTB Race ePowered by Bosch." (The logo on the Sea Otter Classic website has yet to be updated, so we've gone with the SRAM logo ...)

"Last year's inaugural eMTB race was a phenomenal success with over 120 participants and every one of our Haibike demos in use," said Ken Miner, Haibike's U.S. director of sales. "E-bikes continue to be the fastest growing segment of the cycling industry and Sea Otter is the ideal venue for us to show off our latest and greatest products."

"We are thrilled to have Haibike come aboard as our official e-Bike sponsor for 2017 and 2018," said Frank Yohannan, president and CEO of the Sea Otter Classic. "Having such a big player in the e-bike industry join us to support our celebration of cycling will be instrumental in bringing this segment of the cycling industry to our audience."

The Sea Otter Classic takes place in Monterrey, California, and is the world's largest cycling festival, hosting almost 10,000 athletes and 70,000 spectators during the annual four-day event.

A report from the United Nations calls on national governments to seriously increase their spend on active travel, if they wish to save lives and have a healthier populace. The report suggests that 20 percent of transport budgets should go to walking and cycling.

Erick Solheim, executive director, UN Environment, said: "Scaling up that kind of change starts by deciding to take the first step, which can be as simple as creating a cycling and walking policy."

"Global outlook on walking and cycling" looks at ideas from around the world, including the policies for decision makers and the realities for citizens, to show what really works.

"As the population heads towards nine billion, we need to design mobility for our people instead of mobility for our cars," said Solheim. 

"I hope this report will inspire decision makers from across the public and private sector to explore where they live and work on foot and on two wheels."

The report has a four-point plan for governments to follow:

• Introduce a national or city non-motorised user (NMT) policy if you don’t have one. If you do have a policy do you need to revise it?
• Set aside at least 20% of the total transport budget to fund NMT programmes at national and city level. Measure the measurable goals, then collect the data you need and evaluate your success.
• Ask users where they walk or ride and what they need. Pay particular attention to more vulnerable users, such as women, children, elderly people and people with mobility challenges.
• Have the "political will" to make change, actively championing cycling and walking as modes of equal status to private cars.

"For as long as NMT is seen as a low-status alternative, it will not receive the road space, budgets and attention it deserves," said Solheim.

He added: "Don’t try to replicate what other cities or countries do without taking your local context into account."

The Monterey Bay region of California, which is the regional planning area for San Benito, Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties, spends 9 percent of its transport budget on cycling (and walking), as does Edinburgh in Scotland.

+++

HT Mark Sutton