Send us a text

On the evening of Tuesday 23 May 2019, Ben Hetherington’s life changed forever.

Ben, then 23-years-old and one of the most exciting young prospects in British cycling, was racing a local 10-mile time trial when he was struck by a motorist who turned right across the carriageway’s eastbound lanes after failing to give way. Ben suffered serious, life-threatening injuries in the crash, including a traumatic brain injury, and spent several weeks in an induced coma and three months in hospital. He eventually returned to para-cycling and continues to pick up top results.

However, after the motorist was cleared in the criminal courts, Ben pursued civil proceedings against the driver – who then claimed the cycling club who organised the time trial (and Ben) were actually the ones at fault. Earlier this year, the driver’s case was dismissed in what has been described as an “important decision” for grassroots cycling clubs.

Ryan sat down with two lawyers who worked on the case, Laura Murphy and Martin Porter, to discuss what that judgement means for time trialling in Britain, for cycling clubs staging any kind of event on open roads, and for the volunteers who help make it all possible – and also why cyclists should expect better from the police investigating crashes.

Send us a text

How do you go about building a Tour de France team effectively from scratch? That’s the question I asked when I popped around to the rest day hotel of Julian Alaphilippe’s Tudor Pro Cycling squad, who are making their debuts at this year’s Tour.

The Swiss team are relative newbies to the sport, only launching under the Tudor name in 2022, two years after classics legend and national hero Fabian Cancellara took over the Swiss Academy Racing project. The squad then stepped up to the second-tier ProTeam level the following year, and has enjoyed something of a meteoric rise to the top of the sport, making their Giro debut last year, before being invited to the 2025 Tour.

On this week’s episode, I chat to Tudor CEO Raphael Meyer about the team’s growth and how you get ready for a race as big as the Tour de France.

I clambered up into the team truck, to have a nosey at the squad’s bikes and wheels, and to chat to their head mechanic Diego Costa about what it takes to put together a Tour de France bike.

Send us a text

Tadej Pogačar, already four stage wins to the good this year and chasing his fourth Tour de France title at the age of just 26, is busy cementing his status as one of cycling’s greatest ever riders, with yet another dominant, cannibal-esque performance at the sport’s biggest race.

But is Pogačar’s relentless dominance hurting the race? And is he just too good? That’s the big debate featured on the latest episode of the road.cc Podcast, where Ryan is in the Pyrenees following the Slovenian’s exploits this week.

Ryan also chats with one of the big stars of the first two weeks of the Tour, Ben Healy, whose swashbuckling, attacking displays were rewarded with a stage win and two days in the yellow jersey.

After relinquishing yellow on Hautacam, Healy reflected on his spell leading the Tour and why he’s looking forward to getting back to doing what he does best: attacking.

Send us a text

It’s July, it’s hot, the men’s and women’s pelotons are both deep into grand tour season – and the road.cc Podcast is hitting the road and embracing all the stage racing madness, as part of a new mini-series we’re calling… errr, ‘road.cc on the road’.

And kicking off this tentatively titled podcast series, I headed to northern Italy and the self-proclaimed cheese capital of Europe, Bergamo, for the start of the Giro d’Italia Women, one of the biggest, most prestigious week-long races on the calendar.

During my weekend in Bergamo, in-between eating as much casoncelli as I could physically manage, eavesdropping on interminable cat selfie shoots, and dodging thunderstorms and VIP mascots (you’ll have to tune in to find out what that’s about), I caught up with four riders on extreme ends of the Giro experience spectrum: four-time Giro winner Anna van der Breggen, and debutants (and future stage winner and pink jersey) Anna Henderson, Pfeiffer Georgi, and Irish champion Mia Griffin.

Send us a text

Coppi versus Bartali. Anquetil versus Poulidor. LeMond versus Hinault. Armstrong versus Ullrich. Contador versus Schleck. Does Tadej Pogačar’s epic rivalry with Jonas Vingegaard at the Tour de France beat them all?

That’s the question we try our best to answer during this week’s Tour de France-focused episode of the road.cc Podcast, as we rub our hands in glee at the prospect of Pogi v Jonas entering its fifth consecutive instalment, with the scores currently even at two-all.

As the Grand Départ in Lille approaches, Emily, Ryan, and Dan discuss the duo’s sustained rivalry and its place in cycling history and why, despite this year’s Tour appearing more delicately poised than ever, Pogačar is, in most people’s eyes, the hot favourite for yellow in Paris.

In part 2, legendary Olympic champion-turned-Active Travel Commissioner, Chris Boardman, is taking some time out from the Tour to offer us some much-needed respite from incessant bike racing chat.

In the full version of our interview featured earlier this month on road.cc, Ryan and Chris talk e-bikes, safety concerns, “sloppy journalism”, and the need to tackle anti-cycling narratives in the press and some political circles by highlighting the positive outcomes of riding a bike.

00:00 - 00:54: Introduction
00:55 - 37:52: Is Tadej Pogačar vs Jonas Vingegaard the greatest Tour de France rivalry in history?
37:53 - 39:38: Hammerhead advert plus exclusive offer
39:39 - 51:27: Chris Boardman interview
51:28 - 53:17: outro

The road.cc Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music, and if you have an Alexa you can just tell it to play the road.cc Podcast.

At the time of broadcast, our listeners can also get a free Hammerhead Heart Rate Monitor with the purchase of a Hammerhead Karoo 2. Visit hammerhead.io right now and use promo code ROADCC at checkout to get yours.

Send us a text

For most of the pro cycling world, June is all about altitude camps, warm-up races, and fine-tuning that all-important preparation ahead of the big one: the Tour de France. But here at road.cc, it really means only one thing: our annual tech-spotting pilgrimage to the Critérium du Dauphiné! (Or whatever it’s going to be called next year…)

And while all eyes were on Tadej Pogačar, road.cc’s editor Jack and news editor Dan were busy skulking around rural French car parks in search of the next big thing in bike tech, from the new Cervélo S5 aero bike to that mad, track-inspired, super wide fork-sporting Factor.

After discussing their findings and why bike brands still love “playing the game” when it comes to ‘secret’ new tech, attentions turned to the UCI’s latest regulatory bombshell, after the governing body’s string of new tech rules, covering everything from helmet designs and rim height to handlebar and fork width, provoked a backlash from riders and bike fitters.

And in part two, the Cycle to Work Alliance’s chair Steve Edgell joins us to chat about the success of Cycle to Work in enabling people to, well, cycle to work, recent claims it lack inclusivity and is “sucking the lifeblood” out of bike shops, and what modernising the scheme actually means in practice.

Send us a text

On this week’s episode, we’re joined by Julian Chamberlayne, a partner at Stewart’s, the UK law firm who last month secured a £4.5m settlement case against Planet X’s insurers, after cyclist Dr Daniel Gordon was left paralysed in a crash caused by his gravel bike's carbon fork shearing in two on a grass slope.

We discuss what went wrong to lead to such a horrendous crash, the case itself, and its potential implications for the cycling industry, where gravel bikes are frequently marketed as ‘go anywhere’ machines, when the reality can often be very different.

And in part one, Ryan and Dan chat about THAT staggering ending to the Giro d’Italia, the tactical drama that unfolded on the Colle delle Finestre, and whether Simon Yates’ pink jersey triumph places him firmly in the upper echelon of British cycling greats.

Send us a text

This week, Ryan chats with the co-founder of the latest big idea hoping to shake up the conservative world of cycling: Formula Fixed, a new US-based indoor racing series featuring bikes with no brakes on tight, twisting, go-kart style circuits in a ticketed arena setting.

With this new brand of cycling set to launch this year, Formula Fixed founder James Grady chats about his background in cycling, his plans for his new racing league, how it will actually work, and why big swings, not marginal gains, are required to give cycling a metaphorical boot up the backside.

We also talk about turning cycling from a participant-based sport into a fan-based one, the issues afflicting US racing at the moment, why Formula Fixed can boost the road scene, not usurp it – and why he doesn’t care what people in France think.

And most importantly: Does our sport really need a rebrand and can Formula Fixed, ahem, ‘fix’ cycling?