The road.cc Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Over the past five decades, countless promising young riders have been bestowed and burdened with the tag of being the ‘Next Eddy Merckx’.  After an unbeatable 2024, Tadej Pogačar is the first to look even remotely close to matching, or even surpassing, Merckx’s until-now untouchable legacy. Which is why, since that 100km attack in Zurich, the question has raged on in social media...

Send us Fan Mail We're coming at you with episode 87 of the road.cc Podcast in association with Hammerhead a whole week early, because... well, Rapha's 'Past Forward' 20-year anniversary bash at the Truman Brewery in London finishes on Sunday 22nd, and going live next week would mean numerous continuity errors in our interview!  Anyway... as well as telling you about where and...

Send us Fan Mail Like the British cycling world for a brief period earlier this month, episode 86 of the road.cc Podcast has gone Box Hill crazy.  We sat down with Dom Jackson and Tobias Dahlhaus of the London-based team Foran Cycling – two of the figures behind arguably one of the most ambitious (and successful) Strava KOM/QOM attempts of all time – to find out how Dom, winner of the prestigious...

Send us Fan Mail If you’re a fan of nerdy technical chat about shoe design and the joy of riding a bike through town in a suit with a multiple grand tour stage winner, then you’re in for a treat on this special bonus episode of the road.cc Podcast.  Because, to mark the launch this week of the CHPT3’s Transit 2.0, we sat down with the brains behind the urban commuter shoe that aims to combine the...

Send us Fan Mail For episode 84 of the road.cc Podcast, we took a deep dive into one of the more curious, and headline grabbing, cycling tech studies of recent years – which discovered that your bike’s electronic shifters may be susceptible to hackers, who could even be lurking at the Vuelta a España, waiting to sabotage Primož Roglič’s next move to the big ring. That study, published earlier this...

Send us Fan Mail For episode 83 of the road.cc Podcast, we decided to don our analytical hats and delve into a recent survey which claimed that 49 per cent of British people do not believe they can afford to buy a bike, and that around a quarter reckon it would take around six months to save up for one. Are bikes, and the accessories commonly associated with cycling, perceived by the general publi...

Send us Fan Mail It's episode 82 of the road.cc Podcast sponsored by Hammerhead, a certain big old race across France has ended for another year, and so it's only right that we do a full debrief of Tour de France 2024! What was good and what was not so good about this year's Tour, what have we learnt, and how would we make the 2025 edition even better? Find out what George, Emily an...

Send us Fan Mail We’re almost a week into the 2024 Tour de France, so to celebrate – and inspired by Dylan Groenewegen’s peculiar, Batman-inspired aero beak – in the latest episode of the road.cc Podcast, we decided to unbuckle the Grande Boucle and focus on the strangest, daftest, and most crazy things, both on and off the bike, that we’ve witnessed at cycling’s biggest race over the years. Oh, a...

Send us Fan Mail Unless you’ve been living under a rock, or become adept at turning off the TV as soon as you hear Question Time’s twinkly theme, then you’ll be well aware that the next UK general election is fast approaching. And with under two weeks to go until the polling stations open, all of the main parties have launched their manifestos, setting out the key reasons why you should vote for t...

Send us Fan Mail Oi, you there! You can’t record your podcast around here… We’ve got a special bonus Dauphiné and election edition of the road.cc Podcast this week, because surely you didn’t think we were going to ignore THAT incident, involving a seemingly super top secret new Pinarello Dogma and a stubborn British team at the key pre-Tour tune-up race, did you? So, with everyone (including a few...

Send us Fan Mail For episode 78 of the road.cc Podcast, we donned our reading glasses, grabbed our bikes, and headed over to the National Cycle Network, that underfunded, unwieldy, often fractured, but very important collection of routes used by cyclists across the UK and which forms the subject of Laura Laker’s brilliant new book, Potholes and Pavements.  Part one features an in-depth behind the...

Send us Fan Mail It's episode 77 of the road.cc Podcast, and arguably one of our most thought-provoking episodes to date. In part 1, Jack and George sit down with leading barrister Martin Porter KC on the same week that the Government announced tougher laws are set to be introduced for 'dangerous cyclists' who kill or injure. Highlighting recent high profile and exceptionally rare c...

Send us Fan Mail In episode 76 of the road.cc Podcast, we're talking about... another podcast! Well, we'd like to think it goes a bit deeper than that, because our discussion with Lauren O'Brien - representing 'the cyclist' in a recent debate title 'Should cyclists stay in their lane?' with researcher and journalist James Woudhuysen - delves into how cycling is g...

Send us Fan Mail It's time for episode 75 of the road.cc Podcast, a two-parter that is as chalk and cheese as we've ever recorded in cycling terms... but that's how we like it! Part 1 is all about folding bikes, and more specifically a fascinating chat with Mark Bickerton, whose father Harry invented arguably the first properly practical, lightweight folding bike in the early 70s. B...

Send us Fan Mail With Paris-Roubaix, arguably the most hotly anticipated weekend on the pro cycling calendar, approaching fast around the next cobbled bend, episode 74 of the road.cc Podcast features two representatives of the past, present, and future of the Queen of the Classics: Canyon-Sram’s father-daughter duo Magnus and Zoe Bäckstedt, 20 years on from Magnus’ career-defining Roubaix victory....

Send us Fan Mail On episode 73 of the road.cc podcast, we hear from two cyclists who tell us their trials and tribulations of trying to get their bikes on the ferry... something that appears to be a tad more difficult that boarding one by car!  Our original story about Elaine Baker's ordeal with Irish Ferries ignited much debate, so we thought it was only right to follow up and get all the de...

Send us Fan Mail While the two topics discussed on episode 72 of the road.cc Podcast are both high on the cycling world’s list of talking points this week, they notably sit at opposite ends of the seriousness spectrum (unless you take your time trial helmet debates very seriously, of course).  In part one, George and Ryan are joined by a former Wiggle Chain Reaction Cycles employee, one of the 450...

Send us Fan Mail In episode 71 of the road.cc Podcast, we’ve got two great guests and two great topics to discuss… namely sportswashing and low traffic neighbourhoods. We’re arguably missing a debate about helmets, but otherwise it doesn’t get much more road.cc Podcast than this! In part 1 Ryan is joined by Darach McQuaid, the former chairman and current advisor to pro cycling outfit GreenEDGE Cyc...

Send us Fan Mail At the start of 2024, the London Cycling Campaign’s Women’s Network, a coalition of cycling groups in the capital, published a report, titled ‘What Stops Women Cycling in London?’, which detailed the shocking extent to which women riding their bikes in the capital face a barrage of verbal and physical abuse, sexual harassment, and intimidation from motorists and other road users....

Send us Fan Mail On episode 69 of the road.cc Podcast, we delve into the reasons and behavioural patterns that underpin most, if not all, of the 887 (and counting) examples of close passes and dangerous driving that make up our Near Miss of the Day series, aided by a road safety expert currently undertaking a PhD study on the relationship between motorists and cyclists on the road.  Will Cubbin, t...

Send us Fan Mail It’s episode 68 of the road.cc Podcast and we’re turning our attention once again to the troubling state of the bike industry and its worryingly shaky prospects for the year ahead, following the news that Orange Bikes – one of the UK’s most iconic cycling brands and a staple of the mountain bike scene – has appointed an administrator. To discuss what lines in store for the bike in...

Send us Fan Mail It's episode 67 of the road.cc Podcast, and we're turning our attention to cycling safety ahead of the festive season. It's perhaps not the cheeriest of subjects, but a crucial one - and there is hope for the future thanks to hard-working activists such as the folks at the More Than A Cyclist Campaign. We speak to Rob Anderson, who tells us the main aims of the More...

Send us Fan Mail The two subjects we're discussing on episode 66 of the road.cc Podcast are arguably chalk and cheese, but equally as interesting we hope you'll agree!  In part 1, Jack and Ryan are joined by Jack Gebhard, Chief of Staff for the Conservative MP for Worcester, Robin Walker, about cycling's curious relationship with 'wokeness'.  With 'woke' having m...

Send us Fan Mail Could the widespread implementation of 20mph speed limits across the UK spell the end of Britain’s long and venerable history of time trialling? On episode 65 of the road.cc Podcast, Ryan and Dan are joined by solicitor and club chairman Jonty Gordon to discuss Cycling Time Trials' recent refusal to sanction courses that feature 20mph zones, and the serious impact this new po...

Send us Fan Mail For episode 64 of the road.cc Podcast, Ryan is talking to the intrepid and indefatigable Han Lu, who has many a story to tell from her epic Transcontinental adventure. When many others would have 'scratched', Han carried on despite many setbacks and finished the mammoth Transcontinental Race route across Europe after a whole month of riding, and approximately 4,000km cov...