The Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), in association with the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), shocked the world this morning by announcing the launch of a new Formula 1 Cycling Series for bicycle racing, set to begin in 2024. The announcement was made during a press conference in Aigle, Switzerland, where UCI President David Lappartient revealed that Lance Armstrong had been named as the Series Race Director.
After going over an early version of the A.S. Gillott history contained elsewhere on this website, Ron Cooper and I sat down for a conversation during a trip to Northern California in 2004.
As a fan of handmade steel bicycle frames, especially those of English design, one of my favorite framebuilders was a gentleman named Ron Cooper. Ron got his start working at A.S. Gillott as a teenager in 1947, before branching out on his own in the late 1960s. The British bicycle industry was robust during this time, but also very close-knit, with some individual builders working for a variety of different companies throughout their career.
Richard Sachs is one of the preeminent bicycle framebuilders in the United States, and yet building bicycles was never really an aspiration of his.
Towards the end of October 2021, I found out that my old friend, mentor, and boss Tony Tom (of A Bicycle Odyssey, in Sausalito, California) passed away the previous week. His death was a suicide. I worked for Tony from 1994-2001. When it came to equipment, I was a complete and utter newbie. Tony taught me pretty much everything I know about bicycles.
One of the most popular routes to ride in Marin County, California is known as the Alpine Dam Loop. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the loop, but I remember one 4th of July ride over twenty years ago clearly, as if it just happened yesterday.
Winter can be kind of rough for cyclists sometimes, at least for those who don’t have a winter sport that gets them outside. Winter can also be a good season for a little downtime, to either recover from the year’s efforts, or to take your mind off the mind-numbing chore of riding a trainer indoors. As a fan of cycling as a sport, along with its history, I am constantly seeking out new books to read, and I know that others may do the same. As such, I am pleased to present the 2019 version of A Cyclist’s Winter Reading List.
Burke “T-Bird” Swindlehurst’s Crusher in the Tushar will be joining the Life Time family of events starting in 2020, alongside notable endurance events such as the Leadville Trail 100 MTB and Emporia’s Dirty Kanza. Swindlehurst will remain at the helm as Crusher’s Event Director, but will now have the added resources and wealth of experience that the Life Time team brings.
From 2008 to 2014, Paul Basagoitia was one of the stars of the annual Red Bull Rampage, which takes place each October near Virgin, Utah. On October 16, 2015, after a devastating crash in practice, his life changed forever. HBO’s excellent new documentary Any One of Us, much of which was filmed by Basagoitia himself, tells the story of the crash and Basagoitia’s road to recovery from a severe spinal cord injury (SCI) which left him paralyzed from the waist down.
30 years ago today, shortly after 5:00 pm, I was sitting on the stoop outside the Nob Hill restaurant at which I worked in San Francisco, smoking a cigarette. The lunch rush was long over, and the dinner rush hadn’t started. It was hot; very hot that day. We called it earthquake weather. Little did we know. I was one of the lucky ones.
