Cyclist Magazine Podcast

This week, Will (and a bit of James, but mostly Will), is joined by recording-breaking ultra-cyclists and wife and husband, Amy Hudson and Kyle Hudson. The pair have just completed the fastest ever round-the-World cycle for a couple, pedalling nearly 30,000km around the globe in just 123 days with no outside support. A whole 82 days faster than the previous record and 27 days faster than their initial target.

Amy’s journey...

This week, James is joined by the bicycle polymath himself, Phil Cavell. Cyclist, bike fitter, author, writer, speaker, racer, shop owner, bike designer, wrench and generally very clever bloke, Phil, together with friend and long-term business partner, Julian Walls, helped pioneer bike fitting back in the early 2000s, opening Europe’s first dedicated bike fit studio, Cyclefit, in London on 2003.

Over the years, Phil has wo...

This week, James and Will are joined by journalist, author and cyclist, James Witts. James writes for a host of prestigious titles including the most prestigious of them all, Cyclist magazine, along with The Guardian, GQ, Rouleur and Men’s Health to name but four more. James also edits the annual official Tour de France guide and has penned four books including his most recent, Dope, which explores the doping landscape of spo...

This week, James and Will are joined by cyclist and author Simon Warren. It seems mad to think it, but when the idea of a clickbait listicle was just a twinkle in the internet’s eye, Simon was busy writing an actual book about cycling, which quickly became the text that defined a genre: 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs released in 2010. Featuring everything from Box Hill to Bealach na Bà, 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs documented &nd...

This week, James and Will are joined by Cannondale’s Advanced Projects Engineer, Chris Dodman. Chris has been working for Cannondale for the last three decades, and though he might not exactly be a household name, you’ll know who he is if you’re Mario Cipolloini or Peter Sagan – Chris is the brains behind those glorious red Saeco CAAD bikes of the 1990s that saw Cipo dominate sprints, and the radioactive-gre...

This week, Robyn and Will are joined by one of British Cycling’s most decorated track riders, Victoria Pendleton. Over a career that spanned more than a decade, Victoria won two Olympic gold medals and one silver, nine World Championships, two European Championships and the Commonwealth Games, although arguably her biggest contribution to cycling was her legacy. Along with Team GB alumni such as Laura Kenny, Joanna Rowsell, B...

This week Robyn and Will are joined by Ned Boulting, a man who needs no introduction but hey, here's one anyway: Ned broadcasts, commentates, pundits, orates, performs and writes about all things cycling. This year is Ned's first away from the ITV commentary box at the Tour de France (RIP), and instead he's taking his passion for two wheels on the road with his podcast For The Love Of Cycling, where this summer he's joined by frien...

This week, Will and James are joined by Lidl-Trek’s head coach, Mattias Reck. Born and raised in Sweden, like most people in his profession Mattias started out racing as a pro before moving into performance coaching. In 2017 he joined Trek-Segafredo, where he soon found himself nurturing the talents of a young Mads Pedersen (Swedish and Danish languages are pretty similar, says Mattias, which certainly helped with coaching). ...

This week Robyn is joined by Road Race World Champion Magdeleine Vallieres. The 24-year-old EF Education-Oatly rider wasn't seen as one of the main favourites when the women's peloton lined up at the start of last year's course in Rwanda, but after one of the hardest World Championships in years she was a convincing winner, attacking clear from the lead group of three at the bottom of the final climb. In the process she took Canada...

This week, James and Will are joined by ex-road pro turned gravel ace, Rob Britton. Born in Saskatchewan in Canada in 1984, Rob turned pro in 2010 with American team Bissell Pro Cycling and for the next 12 seasons raced at Continental level, arguably enjoying his best years with Rally Cycling (not that Raleigh, although he did race for that Raleigh in 2013), where he won the Tour of Utah, his second Tour of Gila in New Mexico and t...

This week, James is joined by Guy Martin, former British motorcycle racer, land speed record setter, part-time cyclist and reluctant TV presenter - he says he’d rather be known for his day job fixing trucks than as a TV personality. But on the box he is, where you may have seen him building his own narrowboat from archaic methods (think smelting your own iron), breaking tractor land speed records (spoiler, 135mph), rebui...

This week, James and Will chat to George Hincapie, the super-est of domestiques, double 'ard Classics man and erstwhile lieutenant to Lance Armstrong.

George was born in Queens, New York City, on 29th June 1973, to cycling-mad Colombian dad, Ricardo. By twelve he was throwing elbows racing adults in Central Park, and by his teens he was showing the talent that would take him to the Olympics in 1992 and his first pro season, with...

This week James and Will are joined by Harry Tanfield. Born and raised in Yorkshire, Harry started racing aged 10, and having caught teams' attention with strong performances at races like Junior Paris-Roubaix, he turned professional aged 20 with JLT Condor. ProConti racing turned WordTour after a landmark season in 2018 that saw a silver at the Commonwealth Games time-trial, a British National track title and World Cup wins on the...

This week Will and James are joined by Castelli and Sportful’s global brand manager, Steve Smith. Steve grew up in Portland, USA, where he – like most of the city he says – worked for Nike for 10 years. But in 2000 he decided to make a bold move to Italy, to live the bella vita with a job at Sportful. Four years later parent company Manifattura Valcismon bought Castelli, and in the years since Steve and his team h...

This week, Robyn and James are joined by WorldTour pro Zoe Bäckstedt. Born in 2004 in Pontyclun, Wales to British track champion Megan Hughes and Paris-Roubaix winner Magnus Bäckstedt, there were only two ways Zoe’s life (and sister Elynor’s for that matter) could have gone – cycling or cycling. So she burst onto the scene as a teenager, winning multiple junior world titles in road, track and cyclocross, before tu...

This week's guest is Pieter Potters, R&D manager at Belgian Cycling Factory, the group that owns Eddy Merckx Cycles and Ridley Bikes. For nearly six years Pieter has been at the centre of designing cutting edge road and gravel bikes, including the recent Ridley Noah Fast 3.0, which features a new kind of geometry that many see poised to change the game - think steep seat tubes, short cranks and aggressive forward positioning of...

This week, James and Will are joined by Scottish ex-pro turned team manager, commentator and pundit, Brian Smith.

Brian cut his teeth in the 1980s at the school of cycling hardknocks, ACBB – Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt – in Paris, whose alumni include Jacques Anquetil, Stephen Roche and Pippa York, before turning pro with the legendary British Banana team in 1991. Three successful seasons followed including...

This week, James is joined by Lee Donaldson, filmmaker and passionate cycling fan, to discuss his upcoming documentary 525: The Unstoppable Eddy Merckx. Lee describes 525 as having ‘the greatest cast of racing champions ever seen in a cycling documentary', and it's hard to disagree. Contributors include Mark Cavendish, Bradley Wiggins, Lotte Kopecky, Bernard Hinault, Sean Kelly, Roger De Vlaeminck, fashion designer Paul Smith...

This week James (and Will at the beginning) is joined by Hunter Allen, co-founder of Training Peaks, long-time elite level cycling coach to pros and US national teams, and the man who literally wrote the book on power meters back when torque measurement was just a twinkle in an SRM engineer's eye. That book was, prosaically enough, called Training + Racing With A Power Meter, and it put Hunter at the pioneering frontier of what wou...