Cycling stories from across Canada and around the world. We talk to pros who ride on the road and the trails. We also talk about gear, riding and training. It's bikes, bikes and more bikes, eh.
…
continue reading

1
Two riders go DIY to race gravel (and more) at the highest level
51:09
51:09
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
51:09Recently, Andrew L’Esperance and Alexis Cartier kicked off their North American race season. At the Sea Otter Classic gravel race, L’Esperance finished 13th, making him the top Canadian at the first event in the Life Time Grand Prix series. Cartier had a tough race. “It was fun, but I didn't perform at all,” he says in this episode. “I kind of expe…
…
continue reading

1
How did so many Canadians end up on a French ProTeam?
1:13:52
1:13:52
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:13:52Winspace Orange Seal is a Women’s Pro Team based in France. Yet, it has a rider from Alma, Que., one from Vancouver, one from Guelph, Ont., and a rider from Edmonton. They are Florence Normand, Nadia Gontova, Kiara Lylyk and Jenaya Francis. Currently, they are all based in Europe attending races, such as the Vuelta a Extremadura Femenina, Omloop Ni…
…
continue reading

1
World championship medallist Emilly Johnston leaps to the next level with her dream team
43:31
43:31
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
43:31Two days before Emilly Johnston won the Argentario instalment of the Internazionali d'Italia Series, she chatted about all the new changes that have occurred in the past seven months. As the 2024 mountain bike world championships began at the end of this past August, Johnston signed with the team she’d race with in 2025, Scott-SRAM MTB Racing, the …
…
continue reading

1
From MTBer to pro roadie: How Toronto’s Noah Ramsay won Zwift Academy
54:49
54:49
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
54:49Sprinting against Jasper Philipsen, navigating a slippery go-kart track, powering up a climb in Spain trying to put out more watts than three other finalists—those were some of the challenges Noah Ramsay faced this past December as he competed in Zwift Academy for its prize of a spot on the Alpecin-Deceuninck development team. In the end, Ramsay wo…
…
continue reading

1
Track cycling star Mathias Guillemette sets his own route on the road
59:46
59:46
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
59:46As a kid, Mathias Guillemette would get stuffed into the back seat of his parents car, wedged between a cooler and luggage, bikes all around, his older brother crammed in there too on their way to a Quebec race anywhere from three to seven hours away from their home in Trois-Rivières. There was also time on the velodromes in Bromont and Milton, Ont…
…
continue reading

1
Tales of mud, crashes and celebrations at the Canadian cyclocross championships
47:03
47:03
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
47:03Recently, the country’s top cyclocross riders took on a slick, muddy course in Lévis, Que., site of the 2024 national cyclocross championships. Just past the finish line, Canadian Cycling Magazine was there to capture the reactions of six new champions. Regular contributor Jake Williams was at the event, not only racing in the relay and the champio…
…
continue reading

1
Trash talk and disses from the cyclocross sidelines
49:35
49:35
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
49:35A mother tells her son that he sucks. A pro, on his way to a race win, lobs a retort revealing local knowledge. A masters rider can’t stop thinking about a burn yelled at him across a field years ago. A course designer screams platitudes with the frightening intensity of a death metal singer. These are all part of the world of cyclocross heckles, w…
…
continue reading

1
Woods, Gee, Leonard and more—Interviews from the biggest road cycling events in Canada
1:28:37
1:28:37
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:28:37How long will Michael Woods continue to race? What was it like for Michael Leonard in the breakaway in Montreal? Is Derek Gee giving up birding? Each year, the Grands Prix Cyclistes de Québec et de Montréal bring the world’s best riders to Canada. In 2024, mixing it up with Tadej Pogačar, Biniam Girmay and Julian Alaphilippe, were most of the top C…
…
continue reading

1
Becoming legendary: The evolving influence of Micayla Gatto in mountain biking
1:04:23
1:04:23
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:04:23This past August, the day after Micayla Gatto’s 36th birthday, the freerider, filmmaker and artist was at a boatyard in Squamish. She was there to fix up the family’s sailboat. Her goal is not only to get the craft seaworthy, but to use it to travel to new riding destinations—another chapter in the varied career of the rider-Renaissance woman. In t…
…
continue reading

1
AI and training insights from a Toronto cyclist working to make riders stronger
58:25
58:25
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
58:25Years ago, Armando Mastracci got a recumbent bike that could provide him with heart rate, cadence and power data. As Mastracci trained on the bike indoors throughout one winter, the graduate of engineering science at the University of Toronto recorded his training data on spreadsheets. He also started performing his own experiments. What happened i…
…
continue reading

1
The cloak-and-dagger story of how mountain biking became an Olympic sport
1:01:11
1:01:11
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:01:11In March 1993, four men met in secret on a beach in Cuba. The topic of discussion was mountain biking. Could they take the still-young cycling discipline to the Olympic Games in Atlanta within three years? One of the men, the one who’d been helping to build the sport for years, figured it could be done, but they’d have to continue to operate withou…
…
continue reading

1
Podcast: How a Toronto rider became a U.S. national champion
45:19
45:19
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
45:19This past spring, Ashlin Barry won two junior national championship titles: one in the time trial and one in road race. The Toronto rider snagged the victories south of the 49th parallel, so he pulled on the stars and stripes each time he stood on the podium. Since the beginning of the year, Barry—son of Michael and Dede Barry—has been racing with …
…
continue reading

1
Riding in the heat: What you need to know
55:18
55:18
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
55:18Recently, Environment and Climate Change Canada delivered its summer seasonal forecast. It looks like things will be hot, or at least most of the country will experience above average temperatures. These temperatures will mostly be seen in the North, across most of Ontario, Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces. While we don’t know things like how many…
…
continue reading

1
How a pair of mountain biking siblings became front-runners for the Olympics in one weekend
53:13
53:13
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
53:13At the recent cross country World Cup in Nové Město, Isabella Holmgren had her one shot to qualify for the Olympics. Her brother Gunnar also had to do well if he wanted to get the single spot Canada has for the men’s XC race in Paris. Isabella won the under-23 women’s XCO event, finishing 2:05 ahead of the second-place rider. Almost 24 hours later,…
…
continue reading

1
New Shimano GRX Di2: A deep drive into the electronic, 12-speed gravel groupset
59:59
59:59
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
59:59Bike component maker Shimano has launched its new GRX Di2 groupset, which features 12-speed cassettes and semi-wireless shifting. On this episode of the Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast, Dave Lawrence and Nick Legan of Shimano talk about how the latest version of their gravel group came to be, its features and what still might lie ahead for GRX. L…
…
continue reading

1
Behind the scenes at the Giro d’Italia
1:14:07
1:14:07
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:14:07This episode was just getting polished up as both Michael Woods and Riley Pickrell were involved in crashes in Stage 5 of the Giro d’Italia. Before the start of Stage 6, Woods presented symptoms of a mild concussion. The team made the decision that he should leave the race, head home and recover fully. Even though Pickrell was feeling well, he, too…
…
continue reading

1
Stephen Roche discusses Tadej Pogačar's chances of winning the Giro, Tour and worlds
1:10:26
1:10:26
Play later
Play later
Lists
Like
Liked
1:10:26Stephen Roche has accomplished what only one other rider has done: won the Giro d’Italia, Tour de France and the road world championships in one year. (The other is Eddy Merckx.) This season, it seems Tadej Pogačar could match the Irish rider’s feat from 1987. In this episode, Roche looks back at the challenges he faced during that historic season:…
…
continue reading