thewashingmachinepost




..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

daisuke yano

daisuke and flecha

maybe it's just me, but having discovered the ronde van vlaahanshin recently, and featured same on these very pages, i was rather humbled by the realisation that i knew absolutely nothing about cycling in japan, a worrying consideration because quite a lot of cycling stuff heads over here from over there. sadly, i don't speak japanese and i don't know anyone who lives over there to ask; or rather, i didn't know anyone over there to ask.

the photos of the ronde were posted by daisuke yano, who turned out to be the agent for rapha in japan as well as for independent fabrication. i think you can fill in the blank steps for yourself. after a flurry of e-mail correspondence, daisuke agreed to my request for an interview, to find out more about him, about japan, and about cycling in the land of the rising sun.

read on...

twmp

posted on tuesday 5 may 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

le col clothing - colnago and yanto barker

yanto barker

last year i had the great good fortune to road test the top of the range colnago eps, a review about which i am still receiving e-mails even today. however, at best i could only be described as a recreational cyclist, and while that covers the majority of us, it always puts things in a greater degree of perspective if an opinion can be garnered on any bicycle frame, by someone who knows how to work it to its limits. in this case, that someone is yanto barker. as a rider who has been junior national british road race champion, been a member of the linda mccartney team, represented wales at the commonwealth games (2006) and ridden the tour of britain, i think we can safely say that the man knows a good bike when he sees one.

yanto retired from competitive cycling in 2007 to concentrate on his yet to be officially released line of clothing 'le col aiming for the same market to which colnago offers its frames. the unique selling point of the italian made clothing, according to yanto, is the material, a feature still under wraps at present. in order to promote this new clothing line, yanto decided to return to competitive cycling as a one-man-team, and approached colnago uk to support his efforts with a bike, something they were more than happy to do. this faith was repaid just over a week ago when barker finished a very strong third in britain's answer to paris-roubaix, the cicle classic.

yanto barker

modest to the last, yanto said he'd put this fine result down to the colnago eps, for which we both share the same level of enthusiasm - he claims it is the finest frame he's ever ridden, a claim with which i would not disagree; however, while i'm willing to maintain that the eps made me a tad faster than usual, third place in any race is most definitely up for discussion. with results such as this and continued strong showing elsewhere, barker has already been approached by other teams to acquire his services, but for the time being he is happy to race to promote le col clothing and remain faithful to his colnago eps.

nothing, however, stands still for long - yanto is now starting the process of adding a few more members to 'team le col' and looking for a title sponsor. if you're reading, are interested and want to get in touch, yanto can be contacted at yanto@lecol.net. hopefully colnago will step up to the plate.

le col clothing should be available for online sales and from selected outlets later this year.

lecol.net

this article also appears on colnago.cc



photos copyright simon keitch 2009

twmp

posted on monday 4 may 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

minimalism with genius

the rapha continental sets sail once again.

twmp

posted on monday 4 may 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

rapha head to toe - tweed cap and race socks

rapha tweed cap

if you're in the habit of watching the post-race interviews with the winners of whichever race we're talking about, you'll know that they are either in an incomprehensible european language (i'm not strong on linguistics) or there is in fact, no sound whatsoever. both distractions aside, however, it's the so-called podium caps which are of (arguably) greater interest: at one time, little more than a straightforward baseball cap with the main sponsor's name on the front. latterly these have metamorphosed into the headgear equivalent of times square - not only is there a heavily embroidered logo front and centre with ancillaries on each side, but the peak usually incorporates some sort of corporate wording, as well as the edging of the selfsame peak. this has raised the status of the humble baseball cap into something more substantial - and in this commercial world, rightly so.

in a slightly less ostentatious and commercial manner, the designers at perren street have contrived to raise the profile of the humble casquette (rapha refer to same as a biretta but i was under the impression that this appellation described the hats worn by clergy), the simple cotton cap much beloved by pro cyclists and their sponsors prior to the advent of the helmet regulations. a wide variety of the basic version is available from prendas, but the latest tweed caps proffered by rapha are akin to the podium cap discussed above.

the specific example under consideration is in prince of wales check, with a central dark blue ribbon extending to the peak. however, the luxurious addition to this model is the gold coloured embroidered rapha logo on the underside of the peak, backed by a dark blue felt like material. and unlike the less expensive models, this tweed cap is lined and rimmed inside with a satisfyingly tactile wicking material. having moved into the luxury end of the luxury market recently with the tweed softshell, and subsequent bespoke suit, this is undoubtedly the cap to wear with either; or neither.in practice, ensconced under my catlike whisper, there is not a hugely noticeable difference from lesser offerings, but the quality is unmistakeable, and decidedly more impressive when sitting in front of a quintuple espresso, soya cappuccino (yes i know, debbie said exactly the same). well worth the £35 ($55)

rapha pro team socks

motor cars used to impress an advertised speed boost by the infliction of a go faster stripe along the sides of the vehicle; these were not always accompanied by the implied increase in forward motion, but more usually with an increase in the number of dashboard dials and a smaller steering wheel. so what are the implications of adding a black stripe to the back of a pair of white socks? well, since these are monikered as pro team socks it's not only the black stripe that implies an increase in speed. while i have seen certain bicycles described as fast in an obviously vacuous manner, i cannot recall anyone describing a pair of scoks in similar manner.

in fact, rapha have kept themselves to themselves and also refrained from doing so. but professional cyclists place considerably greater demands on their equipment, both sartorial and mechanical, than any of us are ever likely to: riding a stage race followed very quickly by yet another, means that not only do items of clothing need to survive a series of consistent hammerings, but to simultaneously be happily washed within an inch of their embroidery. whatever your views on pure merino wool, racing and washing would leave them less than immaculate. rapha's pro team socks are an amalgam of cotton and performance yarns including, believe it or not, carbon fibre. in use, these are exemplary, surviving well over 100 kilometres of sustained riding and an additional two hours of running around after the kids at port mor wheelers. cool, comfortable and just as fast as their counterparts.

rapha's pro team socks cost an unbelievable (this is rapha we're talking about) £12 ($18) and are available in short or long(ish) in four sizes. art again, lies in the details: the grey rapha logo on the sole is knitted into the fabric, not printed.

rapha.cc

twmp

posted on sunday may 3 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

custom bicycles - a passionate pursuit. christine elliot and david jablonka. images publishing 240pp illus. £35 ($60)

custom bicycles

as an artist of no repute whatsoever, i occasionally have cause to obtain an exhibition catalogue of an artist i admire in the hope that some of their ability may prove influential. it's often quite expensive to travel to individual galleries, usually in london, to view the works in the flesh so to speak, so the next best thing is the printed page. having had an exhibition or two in my dim distant past, i am well aware of the tosh that usually accompanies the catalogue of works, invariably written by an art critic or similar worthy intent on raising their own worth, while at the same time associating themselves with the artist in question. i think i'd be correct in positing that most of us, artists or otherwise, would happily settle for a book of paintings with captions, and do without the verbiage.

i cannot, in any way, shape or form, compare myself to those who can command a full colour, hardback catalogue available from a gallery, at a cost admittedly somewhat less than buying one of the paintings, and it is these that are temporarily under discussion here. were these on sale through the pixels of amazon (for instance), they would be described as coffee table books. since mrs washingmachinepost and i do not, in fact, own a coffee table, books of this ilk are often wasted upon us; holding such a weighty tome upon crossed leg is a lot harder to peruse than michael hutchinson's last paperback. the finest reason i can think of for producing volumes of this genre, is the generous allowance of glossy real estate to display often beautifully observed photographs.

of course, a predisposition to enjoy the subject matter of such photos is necessary to part with often substantial amounts of cash. in this case, the title of the book custom bicycles is, in my opinion, slightly misleading: i had expected to be regaled with chat and pics of bicycles that had been modified by their owners in similar fashion to those who plasteer chrome and flames over a 57 chevrolet corvette. not entirely disappointingly, the contents are, in fact, an homage to some of the world's builders of bicycle frames - the sort of vehicle you would have made to suit your particular frame dimensions or materials. in short, the north american handbuilt bicycle show, but devoid of its physical audience.

the photographs are exemplary, as would be expected, but the accompanying words are leaning towards the anodyne. it is unlikely that any of those within the book's pages are in the business of building bicycle frames as a road to fame and fortune; they're there because they love the bicycle and they love what they do. it therefore seems slightly unnecessary to tell the reader this over, and over, and over again.
'whatever the desire, the attention to detail is second to none.'
'each frame gives evidence to the pursuit of aesthetic functionality.'
'trying to stretch the design boundaries of the bicycle in order to create a point of difference.'
'the next step in bike building that pushes the boundaries of what is being created today.'

ira ryan

the above are excerpted from the text accompanying four different builders (written by the authors, not necessarily the framebuilders themselves), but they are completely interchangeable. sadly, however genuine the sentiments expressed, it's a bit like the beauty queen who says she hopes for world peace. and there are also quotes from satisfied customers, but at the risk of turning into even more of a cynic than i have already received credit for, they'd be very unlikely to have included words from the less than satisfied.

by all means acquire a copy of the book for photographs of some beautiful bikes - they are well worth the price of admission alone, but however well meaning messrs elliot and jablonka are (and i have it on very good authority that they are genuine enthusiasts), they would have been better off leaving out the words which add little to the enterprise. and if you already own the catalogue from this year's nahbs, you may have everything you need in front of you, minus the foreword by phil ligget (why he?).

bizarrely, images publishing website lists the book under motoring, something that i doubt would gain the favour of those included in the book. (framebuilders portrayed include: ira ryan, richard sachs, moots, cyfac, bilenky, vanilla, independent fabrication, signal, kirk, dario pegoretti and many others.)

imagespublishinggroup.com

twmp

posted on saturday may 2 2009

top of page.

.........................................................................................................................................................................................................

school's in

christel house

it's what we do - ride over hill and down dale, bump uncontrollably (well, some of us did) across some of the smoother cobbles that paris roubaix owns, fall in the canal (not me, but someone did) and smile graciously while french people and kids stand by the roadside cheering and clapping. some raced for jerseys, some raced to keep up (have to hold my hand up to that one) and some of us sat in the slow group and had a great time (messrs smith and harmon, i salute you). and like those we all watch on the final day of the tour, we pedalled up the champs elysees on closed roads before rounding a closed arc de triomphe, and freewheeling down to the eiffel tower, meandering about with self-satisfied grins on our faces.

and every one of us deserved that luxury, because we'd just cycled around 200km each day for three days all the way from london to paris (excluding the wet bit in between the two countries - memorable as the point where hastings and harmon challenged each other to do it all again this year on fixed gear). hedonistic pleasure, if seen from the outside and on a superficial level, but not only had we all paid to be part of this big peloton, but a large majority of us had persuaded, cajoled and hassled those at home to part with at least a portion of their hard-earned cash to sponsor us while we pretended to be real cyclists. even more so in my case, because i'd been supplied with an eddy merckx bicycle and a choice of two sets of wheels - something i could almost get used to.

when it was all over and done with, we slapped each other on the back, got out of the way in the bar to avoid being press-ganged into undertaking more frightening sporting activities, before boarding a eurostar train the following day and back to reality. or in the case of mr hastings and myself, back to island civilisation. others, however, had the more daunting tasks ahead of them: if you're going to raise a lot of money through sponsorship, that money has to be spent in constructive ways, and sven thiele's hotchillee company, organisers of the london-paris ride, are the ones responsible for so doing.

christel house

one of the nominated charities of the ride is christel house, a youth education charity in cape town which benefited from a gratifying £20,894 ($31,000) with which they built a new classroom. during the recent cape argus ride, sven and some of the hotchillee challenge team riders visited christel house.

"we had a great tour of the school and the surrounding communities. we got to meet some of the people from the adjacent freedom park township and hear how they too, were benefiting from the new school"

.

i've always maintained that cycling cures all ills, but hadn't quite extended my horizons to realise how true this statement may have become. this year's london-paris cycle tour takes place between june 25 - 28: if you're not in it, you're too late; if you are, then make every effort to raise as much money as you can, so that the less fortunate can benefit from all that money you've spent on your bike in the last year. cycling with social responsibility - how smug can you get?

christel house logo

hotchillee.com | london-paris 2009 | christelhouse.org

twmp

posted on friday may 1 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

sportsfreund lotsch - cinema mfa dvd €14.49 (£13)

sportsfreund loetsch dvd

i'm sure many of you feel the same as i; if the weather and mrs are fine, you get to ride out on the bike on saturday just to prove that you are as fit and fast as you always knew you were. then there's that sunday ride with the peloton at whatever speed your peloton travels, with the inevitable coffee and cake post ride. then monday comes along, and we're all tied to a desk or computer or company car through to friday when, hopefully, the stars are yet again in alignment and we get to do it all again.

it's the monday to friday bit that simply gets in the way; if it wasn't for the overwhelming necessity to earn sufficient cash to put food on the table and keep a phalanx of colnagos in the bikeshed, we'd all give tom boonen a run for his money. still, the thought of the weekend, or possibly the occasional evening ride is the very notion that helps get us through the daily travail. but imagine if that weren't the case. lets assume for the moment that you've been banned from riding your bike at all - placed under house arrest by her indoors until the wallpapering, gardening, and new kitchen are all in place, and a conservative estimate covers the next ten months of your life.i can see some of you breaking into a cold sweat already.

such was the reality for wolfgang loetsch, a superb young cyclist who had the misfortune to live in east germany during the seventies, long before the wall came down. having been a cycling prodigy as a youth, he looked up to his father, a man who catered to his son's every whim as a cyclist, repaid by an almost never-ending stream of victories in races and time-trials. such successes brought him to the attention of the east german government who were, perhaps unsurprisingly, keen to recruit him to the party and channel his sporting abilities towards the greater good of the gdr. his great ambitions were to have raced and won the peace race, the olympics and the world championships, races in which he would surely have added to the greater glory of the gdr. loetsch's father however, was rather disparaging of the party, and wolfgang followed his father's lead.

wolfgang loetsch

in retrospect, it would likely to have been easier to have simply said yes, then life and cycling would have been a whole lot simpler. as it was, he found himself banned from ever more levels of cycling, and denied the opportunity to leave for the west. the gdr sure as heck weren't going to let someone of the ability of loetsch to be racing and winning for the opposition. the man lived almost entirely for his cycling, and found it impossible to simply walk away, leading to his being closely observed by the stasi, and informed on by many he considered his friends. he was eventually incarcerated for a sentence of ten months in a tiny cell, with only a fluorescent light and no natural daylight. in order to retain his fitness, he did a colossal number of push-ups and sit-ups every day of those ten months, and on his release, eventually returned to his beloved cycling, continuing to win and throw everything back in the face of the stasi.

the story is a startling realisation of the lengths to which the east german secret police would go to stifle the promising career of a top athlete, simply because he rejected and disparaged the party. when the wall came down, east german citizens who felt they had been informed upon, were allowed to view and read their stasi files, to discover the identity of those who had informed upon them. i'm not sure i would have wanted to know.

this documentary by sascha hilpert and sandra prechtel is a masterpiece in itself, covering as it does interviews with loetsch himself (after much persuasion, i am led to believe), his girlfriend during the troubled times, friends and even a stasi official. much as i'd love to give you the impression that i am multilingual, it is in fact the dvd that bears this ability; the film is german and all the participants converse in that language, but i am eternally grateful for the existence of subtitles which lessen the impact of this film not one whit. there is some incredible footage of loetsch as a boy, beating many a youthful opponent, as well as much grown-up film too.

wolfgang loetsch

at the time this film was made, loetsch would appear to have been working as a mechanic with the milram continental team: there is footage of him riding his beloved steel merckx bike, (presented by eddy himself) clad head to toe in milram kit, as well as preparing the bikes of his young charges and handing out bottles during races. loetsch seems remarkably unaffected by all that has transpired, appearing to have forgiven those who caused him such grief throughout the career he never had. the interviews with wolfgang are fraught with long silences, as if he considers his answers with great deliberation. a better man than many of us will ever be.

the story of wolfgang loetsch was brought to my attention by an article in the current issue of rouleur, the footnote of which attested to the existence of this dvd. it took a bit of tracking down, though mostly through the incompetence of yours truly; i finally purchased my copy from amazon.de - gratifyingly amazon allow british customers to order from amazon germany without any difficulty whatsoever: ordered on sunday, arrived on wednesday. if you're serious about your cycling or cycle racing, you really need to watch this documentary - it puts our peeves and moans in a whole different perspective.

amazon.de

twmp

posted on thursday april 30 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................

one less car

kids cycling

in my ideal world, and perhaps your's too, motor car use would dwindle to a bare minimum and we'd all get about on bicycles; it may well happen at some time when the oil runs out, but otherwise this will probably only happen when my head hist the pillow every night. idealist that i am, i always find it disappointing when i read interviews with the pro peloton's finest, and see full page photos of them standing in front of their ferraris and porsches (or lamborghinis, in the case of tom boonen); somehow my naivety extends to these chaps not only racing their bikes, but riding to the shops on them too. we're continually being told that, as the elder statesmen of the peloton enter the latter parts of their careers, they continue racing because they love riding their bikes, just not in their social lives it would appear.

unfortunately, we live in a car culture: something like sixty percent of all journeys in the uk are under two miles, such a short length that personally i cannot understand why it would ever be considered necessary to fire up the internal combustion engine to get from a to b. i'm not that clear whether these journeys are two miles from a to b or a to b and back to a, but it really matters not. trying to change this is always going to be an uphill struggle, mostly because the adults of this world have the motor car ingrained in their psyche, and tend not to think of the options (like walking or cycling). a neighbour of mine walks about two miles out and back along a nearby country road to get fit, then gets in his car and drives less than a quarter mile to collect his newspaper.

jez and i are of a mind that the best way to break the sequence of events whereby predominantly young males reach the age of seventeen and need to get a car, is to educate children at a far earlier age as to their transport options. when that really difficult age dawns, their thoughts immediately turn to alloy wheels, matt black windscreens and which car would allow them to fit the largest speakers in the back, (i know - i'm father to one). i realise this sounds like an unjust attempt to spread bicycle propaganda, and perhaps that's the case, but when there are programmes on telly like top gear and formula one races are broadcast on prime time tv, it's only fair that someone creates a balanced point of view.

aside from running port mor wheelers every two weeks, we have been going into the local primary schools to hopefully show how much fun cycling can be, and just how far it is possible to travel, no matter what the weather. after having been out to ardbeg distillery for a meeting this morning, we both rode to the opposite end of the island for a playground session and back home again: 80km all-in, in less than clement weather. neither of us are in the early spring of youth, but we're keeping fitter than most of our age group through regular cycling, and we're keen to pass on this enthusiasm and practicality of cycling to kids of an age where it might just balance out the car culture they're going to be indoctrinated with, as life chugs along.

if you've got the time and inclination (because it's not for everyone), and the local primary school(s) is/are open to suggestion, why not give it a go? it's a lot easier if there's at least two of you - safety in numbers - and there's always the possibility that it might make a difference.

plus it's the ideal opportunity to harangue the teachers about how far they've just driven to work: in the case of my local primary school, one heck of a lot less than two miles.

twmp

posted on wednesday april 29 2009

top of page.

..........................................................................................................................................................................................................