Canadian Cycling Magazine Podcast

Oh, things move fast these days. Matthew Pioro and Matt Hansen are joined by former pro Michael Barry to preview the Tour de France. How many Canadians will be there exactly? Well, check out the discussion around Guillaume Boivin that was nicely prescient. And don’t forget Steve Bauer.

The trio discusses a bridge that could have a significant effect on the race, cobbles and the main contenders. Can Tadej Pogačar be beaten? Also, Euro Disney [?!] and Michael Woods’s chances of taking a stage or the polka dot jersey.

Since 2020, Dave Shellnutt, the Biking Lawyer, has been a legal force behind cyclists in southern Ontario. With his partner Joel Zanatta based in Vancouver, the pair cover a lot of ground advocating for riders.

At Canadian Cycling Magazine, editors often call on Shellnutt when they need an expert quote or insight about road safety and cyclists' rights. Shellnutt is quite active in the community. He not only commutes, but races gravel, too. He does workshops. He’s also behind the Bike Bridge, an initiative that gets food to communities in need.

Not long after Shellnutt spoke with Canadian Cycling Magazine’s Matthew Pioro, the lawyer called out the president of the Toronto Blue Jays. Mark Shapiro wanted an end to one of the city's active transportation arteries so ball fans could have an easier time driving their cars to games. You can imagine how Shellnutt felt about that idea. He’ll call baloney when he sees baloney.

The main goal for this conversation with Shellnutt is to bring you tips and advice for staying safe on the road and for what to do in a crash. Crashes are not a great subject. But we have to be ready if the worst happens. The Biking Lawyer can help.

Ahead of gravel racing’s biggest event, Unbound Gravel, two racers discuss the discipline of riding the bumpy stuff. Former pro-roadie and coach Andrew Randell will be racing Unbound for the first time. He talks about his preparation for the 200-mile event. Canadian cyclocross star Michael van den Ham, who started racing gravel in 2018, looks at how much the sport has changed in four years. He was second at his first gravel event, Mid South, after he finished his cyclocross season that year, took a short break and did a bit of training. This year, after CX wrapped up, van den Ham tried a similar strategy and says he was blown out the back of the pack at Mid South. Still, he’s not doing too badly this spring. He won Paris to Ancaster in April. Just recently, he took the win at Grinduro in California. Soon, he’ll be competing at Lost and Found instead of taking on Unbound.

This episode also features interviews with two up-and-coming endurance track riders. From the infield at the Milton velodrome during the most recent Nations Cup, Ngaire Barraclough and Sarah van Dam discuss their races. Barraclough competed in the scratch race. Later, during the omnium competition, she won the first event, which was another scratch race. Van Dam had a crash in the elimination race, but was able to get back on her bike and finish in an impressive sixth place.

Ottawa’s Alex Cataford checks in from the Giro d’Italia. No pizza for him during the stage in Naples, nor any wine after a winery visit. (Fantini is a major sponsor of Cataford’s Israel-Premier Tech team.) Grand Tour racing is truly hard.

In this episode, former pro Ryan Roth recounts his big win in northern France. In 2012, the rider from Kitchener, Ont., won Tro Bro Léon, a race that features gravel sectors called ribinoù. Its famous prize is a pig, however, Roth didn’t leave the podium with livestock. No, the pig goes to the best-placed rider from Brittany, the region within which Tro Bro is held.

Tro Bro can be a chaotic race. Riders, sport directors and race officials each often have only a partial picture of what’s going on at a given time. Remembering how a race played out after a space of 10 years can be tricky, especially with an event as tough as Tro Bro. For some extra perspective on the race, Kevin Field, Roth’s sport director on SpiderTech powered by C10, shares his recollections from 2012 as well.

The show starts with a current race: the Giro d’Italia. Alex Cataford of Israel-Premier Tech talks about the opening stages of this year's Italian Grand Tour and gives a few hints as to what might lie ahead for the Ottawa rider.

For more on Roth and his 2012 Tro Bro Léon—including video of the rider checking with the race moto to confirm that, in fact, he was about to win the race—read his story “No, I didn’t win a pig.”

You’re no doubt familiar with Kelsey Mitchell’s story. It’s not only been documented in the pages—both print and web—of Canadian Cycling Magazine, but it’s also retold at the start of a recent docu-series called Back on Track, which focuses on the athletes at the Champions League that ran in the fall of 2021. Mitchell got into track cycling a bit later than most elites. In 2017, at the age of 23, she attended an RBC Training Ground talent identification event. She churned out some serious watts on a bike, which, of course, caught the attention of Cycling Canada. About four years later, she won gold in the sprint at the Tokyo Olympics.

At this year’s first instalment of the Nations Cup series in Glasgow, Mitchell won gold in the sprint. She, along with Lauriane Genest and Sarah Orban, took silver in the team sprint. The next stop in the Nations Cup is in Milton, Ont., from May 12 to 15. Mitchell and her colleagues in the team sprint will be there.

So Mitchell has made it as a track cyclist, right? This is the top? Well, sort of. Mitchell is definitely not an up-and-comer. But she says she still has more to learn. Right now she seems to be beating people with her raw power. But imagine what happens when she matches that power with richer race tactics and experience.

In this interview, Mitchell not only talks about where she thinks she’s headed, but also where she’s been, starting at the Champions League, where a whole lot of cameras and microphones were aimed at the track star.

In March, Pier-André Côté won the one-day race Grand Prix Criquielion. He rides for Human Powered Health and is now in his fourth year with the U.S.-based ProTeam. The team’s race schedule has been bringing Côté to Europe pretty consistently since 2019. The sprinter is from Gaspé and he grew up in Levis, near Quebec City. His current home is Girona, which makes for a solid European base.

In this episode, Côté discusses connections between hockey and cycling and the nature of risk in bike racing. He knows a thing or two about financial risk, as he’s studying to be an actuary. He definitely has a numerical, analytical mind. Yet, he balances that with a certain wisdom that goes beyond number crunching. His discussion about power meters and his relationship with them and his training contains insights that many of us who are training with power should think about.

Michael Yakubowicz and Frank Gairdner are behind Bridge Bike Works, a new company that’s aiming to roll out a made-in-Toronto carbon-fibre bike this summer. Join the duo for a tour of their factory to learn more about how a modern bike is made. Also, find out why these two Canadian guys think it’s a good idea to work with composites right in their city.

This episode is brought to you by GCN+. Canadians can get 25 per cent off of a subscription to the service that streams races (including the Giro d’Italia) and cycling documentaries. Go to gcn.eu/canada25 and sign up.

You’re probably familiar with Svein Tuft’s legendary tales, such as the time he used a broken hockey stick to chase away a wolf that was menacing him and his dog, or how he had a hairy mountaineering descent in the rain. But what used to freak him out? Well, it’s not wolves or slippery heights.

Tuft retired from professional road cycling at the end of 2019. In November 2020, the Langley B.C., native moved back to his hometown with his family after living in Andorra for eight years. In this discussion, he gets into all the reasons and challenges of that move. He speaks about what he likes about being back in B.C. and what he misses about the small European country.

Things have been pretty busy for Tuft in his retirement. He talks about the tricky business of balancing his drive and passion of exploring on his bike with the importance of being home and raising children. Tuft has ideas about what can make older riders with day jobs faster. The discussion covers a lot of ground as Tuft has a lot of wisdom to share.

When the Premier Tech u23 Cycling Project debuted this past November, the team said it wanted to get some of its riders in the WorldTour by 2024. By 2026, the outfit—which includes Dylan Bibic, Carson Miles, Charles-Étienne Chrétien, as well as seven others—is hoping to have placed five or six riders into the top ranks of road cycling. It’s an ambitious plan. One of the people behind it is Kevin Field.

Field has been dubbed the Moneyball of Canadian Cycling because of his ability to crunch data to help achieve successes for this country’s athletes. He’s been involved with Symmetrics, Spidertech powered by C10 and Cycling Canada. He worked with the team that got Michael Woods and Simone Boilard on the podium at the 2018 road world championships.

Today, Field is working with a longtime figure in cycling, Pierre Hutsebaut, as well as former pro French cyclist Flavien Dassonville and pro roadie Hugo Houle to develop a group of young riders. In this episode, Field discusses just how he and the Premier Tech u23 Cycling Project can get these riders to reach their full potential.

As 2021 comes to a close, the editors of Canadian Cycling Magazine get together to discuss the biggest stories in Canadian cycling. Olympics, Paris-Roubaix, the downhill world championships and even the current cyclocross season—the team gets into the details of the top performances of this country's athletes, as well as some of the biggest developments in the sport. Also, is now the time Canadians should really embrace racing bikes on snow?

You can also listen back to interviews with the year's biggest newsmakers:

• Was this Guillaume Boivin’s best season ever?
• Canada’s newest world champions
• How is Carter Woods planning to win his next race?