Cycling

Tejay van Garderen added vital seconds to his lead at the Tour of California with victory in stage six.

More than 100,000 stolen bikes were reported in the UK in 2012, and police have warned cyclists that expensive bikes are targets because they represent a lucrative market for criminals. BikeRadar spoke to policeman Tom Llewellyn and John Moss, founder of Stolen Bristol Bikes, about what you can do to keep your bike safe and secure. “It’s a case of being as savvy as you can and being aware that expensive bikes are a big target,” said PC Llewellyn, who is investigating a stolen goods conspiracy involving high value bikes. “They’re the easiest thing for people to take.”1. Create a logbookWhen you buy your bike, note down serial numbers for your bike and take photos. As it gets used, log paint chips, scratches and new components as they replace old ones. “Put a folder together of all the information that makes your bike personal,” said Llewellyn. “We do recover a lot of bikes, but a lot of the time they don’t get identified because the information we get from people who report crimes is often not good enough to identify them.” He said many police authorities offer free postcode marking services such as SmartWater. In the event of the stolen bike being recovered, these forensic tools can help reunite it with the owner. 2. Store the bike behind a locked door The majority of bike thefts are opportunistic raids on sheds, so deter criminals by making sure your bicycle is kept behind a lockable door, in a garage or the house. A padlocked, wooden garden shed won’t do, said Llewellyn: “A padlock can be bolt-cropped in five seconds.” If your shed is up to the job, securing the bike a second time behind the locked door is worthwhile. Fixings sunk into concrete floors are a good option, as is installing CCTV cameras and security lighting in the garden. “Thieves will look for the easiest opportunity for theft,” said Llewellyn. “They won’t go, ‘I want to get into that address.’ They might try five or six addresses before they get one that’s easy access or it’s got something inside that they want. If you have something really precious and you haven’t got those security measures, I would put my bike in the house until I’ve got them in place.”John Moss suggested using an alarmed padlock in addition to standard bike locks: “In addition to your usual bike locks it can be a useful tool when stopping bike thieves from plucking bikes out of your shed or garage. When it goes off it’s unlikely thieves will hang around to see if anyone has heard it.”Read more on how to make your shed more secure.3. Be savvy with ride sharingSome police forces have linked ride sharing platforms such as Strava, MapMyRide and Endomondo to bike thefts. Moss said: “If you use Strava or other ride logging applications, set up exclusion zones around areas you regularly store your bike. They don’t typically affect your ride statistics, but turn off the mapping features when you’re within the boundaries of one.” If you’re planning on leaving your bike unattended, make sure it’s secured with a good quality lock. We recently reported on thieves tailing riders to a café and stealing an expensive mountain bike off the roof rack. Watch the BikeRadar video guide on how to secure your bike properly. 4. Contact the police and do some DIY trackingIn the event of a theft, Llewellyn said your first move should be to contact the police and pass over the logbook details. However, he said victims should visit websites to find the bike – or parts of it – themselves. Telltale signs that a for-sale bike might be stolen are short auctions (to move the goods quickly), a bike that deviates wildly from build specifications, or a seller with a short or non-existent history. “If it was my bike I would trail auction websites such as eBay,” said Llewellyn. “A

Despite our large sample being a very serious slab of bike, Velocite’s SRAM Force-equipped Geos is still relatively light. We figured we’d best tell you that, as Velocite work both direct and through bike shops, so you might actually not pull it out of the box yourself. More tellingly, you might not immediately realise from the ride either… Highs: Reasonably light frame with forgiving rear and accurate front end. Can be bought direct or via your local shop for pro setup and sizing adviceLows: Slightly soft power delivery and heavy wheels dull acceleration; it isn’t Di2 compatible, and kit value is shop brand rather than direct sell comparable. Sizing is limited, tooBuy if: You want an obedient and enjoyable but not punishing all-rounderFor a start, the Velocite own brand wheels are relatively heavy, and the Continental Ultra Sport tyres are fairly weighty too. There’s a bit of softness in the straight-gauge spokes, slim carbon cranks/spider and, seemingly, also the frame itself, despite the use of a BB30 bottom bracket. These combine to make the Velocite slightly slower to accelerate than some, and the rider less keen to put a big gear into a full nelson and force things when faced with a steep climb. Once you’re rolling, though, it holds speed fine and we’ve certainly ridden much worse for the money. The payback in terms of rear end smoothness becomes more obvious the further you ride, too. There’s a bit of chatter coming up the big diameter seatpost at slower speeds, but once you’ve got some flow going on, the compact-style sloping top tube frame definitely takes a lot of the sting out of badly fractured surfaces. SRAM’s Force groupset is very similar to earlier Red That said, you can’t relax totally in the rough, as even with a long stem and wide bar theoretically adding more flex into the cockpit, the front end is much less forgiving. It’ll jolt your hands and sting your wrists if you hit a big pothole head on and we had to regularly change hand position on longer rides. On the plus side, you do get very accurate front wheel placement and no hint of braking judder even on the steepest plummets. A short wheelbase also kept the Geos very keen on direction changes too, but that front end beef meant it never started to feel nervous even at high speeds. Build quality isn’t in doubt, either, as the Geos has full carbon dropouts and all-carbon bearing seats rather than alloy inserts for the oversized bottom bracket and tapered steerer fork. The Velocite has a great finish and was very accurately made, tooExcellent frame alignment is also better than most big brand name bikes we clamp our calibrating tools on, although a limited four-size range does leave the largest and smallest riders in the cold.This article was originally published in Cycling Plus magazine, available on Apple Newsstand and Zinio.

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Former teammates and adversaries Jonathan Vaughters and Lance Armstrong, pictured before the 1999 Tour de France, have rekindled their relationship over discussions of the doping culture in cycling. Photo: AFPStripped Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and Garmin-Sharp team manager Jonathan Vaughters, former teammates who have spent the past decade at odds over the issue of doping in pro cycling, have renewed their long-strained relationship. After years of racing alongside each other, beginning as juniors, Armstrong and Vaughters rode as teammates at the U.S. Postal Service team in 1998 and 1999. Since then, the two men have spent most of the past 14 years on different sides of the doping issue, with Armstrong, and his inner circle, perfecting the science of performance-enhancing drug use — and profiting the most from it — while Vaughters launched a development team, which morphed into the Garmin squad, centered around the ethos of clean sport. Like Frankie Andreu before him, Vaughters came clean about his drug use at U.S. Postal Service prior to Armstrong’s televised confession to Oprah Winfrey in January. Andreu admitted to doping in a September 2006 New York Times article. Vaughters, who confessed anonymously in that 2006 Times story, finally acknowledged his own drug use in an editorial, which ran in the Times in August 2012. Along with three active Garmin riders who told the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency they had doped while members of Armstrong’s teams, Vaughters provided sworn testimony to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency that he had doped as a member of the Postal Service squad. That testimony, combined with others’, resulted in a lifetime ban for Armstrong, and ultimately to his televised confession. So it came as a surprise to Twitter users to see the two using the social media platform to have a very friendly, and very public, conversation last weekend. After Vaughters posted a joke about sneaking the sedative Rufinol into his own drink, Armstrong, who has 3 million Twitter followers, replied, “Let us know how that goes.” When asked about Armstrong’s comment by another Twitter user, Vaughters replied, “Nothing to see here, just two fallen angels discussing what lies beneath,” quickly followed by, “Honestly, we probably get along better now than we have in 20 years. Weird, I know.” Armstrong quickly replied, “Dude, shhh, don’t tell anybody that!” His reply was a very public acknowledgment that, after years of defiance, which included disparaging those who spoke out against doping in cycling (including Vaughters), the disgraced Tour champ is now openly engaging with those he formerly viewed as enemies. Both men spoke with VeloNews about their improbable reunion of sorts. The culture of doping as common ground Armstrong said he had initially reached out to Vaughters after reading an opinion piece he had written, posted on Cyclingnews.com, which stated that it was wrong to blame Armstrong for the culture of doping in cycling. “The fact of the matter is that it is our entire fault. We, the people who make up the world of professional cycling, are to blame,” Vaughters wrote. “I reached out to him and thanked him for his op-ed he wrote on Cyclingnews,” Armstrong said. “I felt it was a thorough, thoughtful, and accurate account of our generation.” Over time, the two became conversational, with the focus centered around what contribution Armstrong might be able to offer in the push to salvage pro cycling, which has seemingly bottomed out in the wake of the USADA report on the sport’s biggest star and the doping practices that brought him seven straight Tour victories, from 1999 through 2005. “We talk here and there,” Vaughters said. “At the end of the day, I think Lance has got a lot of things to say, which could clarify a whole lot. In terms of the full download on what went on in that era of cycling, he could be big part of the solution, if he chooses to be. “We keep in contact, and I encourage that,” he added. “I

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Tejay van Garderen enjoyed a podium moment with his new daughter Rylan on Friday. He hopes to have another chance on Sunday in Santa Rosa. Photo: Casey B. Gibson | www.cbgphoto.comSAN JOSE, Calif. (VN) — Moments after climbing his way to victory in stage 6 of the Amgen Tour of California on Friday, Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing) took his newborn daughter Rylan into his arms and onto the podium atop Metcalf Road, red lipstick kisses languishing on his cheeks, a wide smile upon his face. It’s his bike race in California now, and he knows it. Van Garderen, after a sterling time trial performance here on a breezy afternoon, may be growing up right in front of the cycling world. All told, he won the 31.6-kilometer time trial — with a steep finishing climb of about 10 minutes — by 23 seconds over Lieuwe Westra (Vacansoleil-DCM) and, more importantly, put 1:05 into Michael Rogers (Saxo-Tinkoff). It was exactly what van Garderen needed to do, and without reservation he took the Amgen Tour into his hands. “It’s incredible,” he told reporters after the stage. “I really couldn’t have asked for a better day.” Van Garderen now has 1:47 in hand over the second-placed Rogers, and 2:57 over Cameron Meyer (Orica-GreenEdge) in third. Should he hold on up the slopes of Mount Diablo on Saturday, van Garderen will win in California, earning his first-ever professional stage-race win to complement a fifth-place finish at last year’s Tour de France. “It’s going to feel incredible. I don’t want to count my chickens before they hatch, but I’m ready to win, and I think it’s about time,” van Garderen said. “I think now I’m finally mature enough to pull through to the end. I think I’m ready to do it.” Most riders would kill for the results sheet of van Garderen. The young all-rounder has won the best young rider classification at the Tour de France. In 2011, he finished fifth in California, and won the best young rider classification here. In 2012, he finished fourth, faltering on the Mount Baldy stage. So far this year, he’s finished in the top three at the Tour de San Luís, Critérium International, and Paris-Nice. It’s seemed, and has for some while, that it’s just a matter of time for the 24-year-old. “I’ve known Tejay since he rode with HTC in 2010, and I saw his talent straight away. You knew he had a huge future; he is that kind of athlete. Certainly as a stage race rider, he’s made huge steps in the last few years, and especially in the Tour de France last year,” said Rogers. It was van Garderen who gave up a wheel to then-teammate Rogers in the second stage of the 2010 Amgen Tour and kept the Aussie in contention for his eventual overall win. BMC Racing director John Lelangue said the win was something van Garderen needed to continue his progression. “He has come so close on big races. We knew he was getting better and better. But winning his first stage race — that’s a good sign in the natural progression and his future goals,” Lelangue told VeloNews. “He’s a real leader with team around him … it’s really a big step forward. But we first have to win this one first.” Van Garderen will have to defend the yellow upon his back on Saturday, as the peloton will finish atop Mount Diablo, the hors-categorie finish climb, and the only thing in his way now.

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Kristin McGrath and teammate Mara Abbott were the only two riders shown finishing in coverage of the Amgen Tour's women's TT. Photo: Casey B. Gibson | www.cbgphoto.comSAN JOSE, Calif. (VN) — Evelyn Stevens (Specialized-lululemon) wants to sound anything but ungrateful. The one-day-a-year spotlight the women racers get at the Amgen Tour of California is wonderful. Just not wonderful enough. Not hardly. “You know, this is the United States, and women are supposed to be equal, right?” she said after her victory in a difficult time trial that preceded the sixth stage of the men’s eight-day race on a cloudless Friday. “Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s really great that they have this race and I know we’re all grateful,” she said. “But come on. We put on a good show. Give us another day. That would be great. Three days? Greater. “Personally? I want all eight.” There quite likely couldn’t be a better poster rider, or a poster stage, than the one that began at the site where IBM develops its top secrets and ended atop a windy, brown hillside. Stevens started 30 seconds ahead of the last of 15 riders, Alison Powers (NOW-Novartis for MS), and the two played cat-and-mouse for most of the first three-quarters of the 31-kilometer course. Their exchange, re-exchange, and re-re-exchange of leads over the initial climbs and along the long, crosswind-whipped middle section was interesting but inconsequential, Stevens said. She was paying more attention to her internal clock, the one she, coach Neal Henderson, and Specialized engineer Chris Yu mapped during her several reconnaissance runs in the days leading up to the time trial. “A lot of thought and process went into it,” she said. “I rode the climb once and other parts maybe three times. I rode the descent maybe eight times. Then we went over analysis of where to save and where to put out the power.” The location of the latter left little doubt. Powers, already trailing, stopped for a bike change and Stevens bolted up the final 2.5km climb of Metcalf Road to post the fastest time by nearly a minute. Sadly, video and text coverage on the online Tour Tracker application cut out after third-place finisher Kristin McGrath rolled across the line. There was no video of the climb and no coverage of Stevens’ and Powers’ finishes for those watching from afar. Instead, online coverage switched to the early men’s starters. Equal, right? After the men’s race, Stevens won again. The top finisher in the men’s stage, overall leader and new father Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing), made it a point at a post-race news conference to back more women’s racing alongside the men. Van Garderen is married to former professional and organizer of the women’s challenge in Aspen, Jessica van Garderen (Phillips). “It’s something I’ve always felt strongly about, but especially now that I have a daughter [newborn Rylan, on hand at the finish] who might want to be a bike racer, I think it’s something important that we have to do,” van Garderen said. “Not only is it great for women’s cycling but it’s also great for the spectators. The roads are already closed, so I don’t think it would be too much of an ask to put a women’s stage on probably every stage that we do.” Stevens’ story is well known. She left a job in the financial industry for the pro peleton and she wants her former colleagues on Wall Street to pay attention. “I want them to see this,” she said, and, she added, to open their portfolios. “If I could tell them all something,” she said, “it would be, ‘hey guys, you should back this.’”