David Walters talks to Chris Sidwells as he announces the Simpson Nouvelles line-up for 2026 and plans for the new season.

Music: “Starry Eyes” by A Month of Sleep, courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com.

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The pros might now be returning to their training regimes but there’s no off-season for the Feed Zone. Obviously there’s plenty of off-topic but in our more lucid moments we talk about the new American pro team run by George Hincapie and ask whether we should let bygones be bygones or is is “once a doper, always a doper”? We also look forward to seeing Africa’s first UCI women’s team take to the stage in 2026, plus there’s other new team chat, World Cup cyclocross and we raise a glass to pro cycling’s latest newly-weds. Just not as big a glass as Fernando Gaviria apparently does tho’. The new Feed Zone: enjoy responsibly.

📸 30 January 1966: the familar sight of Jacques Anquetil and Raymond Poulidor going head to head, but in a most unfamiliar setting at the Fontenay sous Bois cyclocross. The race itself was quite remarkable and not just for having two Tour de France legends competing. First run in 1961, Fontenay sous Bois, near Paris, was an "American-style" ‘cross race with riders competing in pairs, each riding alternate laps. Each team was made up of a cyclocross specialist and a routier, or all-rounder. Paired with Jean Graczyk, it would be Poulidor who prevailed over his great road rival, with Maître Jacques finishing third, riding with Jean Stablinski. (Credit: Le Parisien Libéré)

Recommendations

Luke Rowe “Road Captain - My Life at the Heart of the Peloton” - https://amzn.eu/d/0RI0Jql

LUCA Premium women’s cycling and spin wear - https://www.rideluca.com/

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Crits, kermesse, cyclocross and cowbells! It’s been a busy second season at Simpson-Nouvelles, with the team juggling UK and Belgian commitments. Team manager and owner David Walters talks to Chris Sidwells about the ups and downs of the year while preparing to do it all again in 2026.

Music: “Starry Eyes” by A Month of Sleep, courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com.

Supporters Club

You can join the Club for as little as £10 and help support the development of women’s U23 cycling. https://www.nouvellescycling.co.uk/supporters-club

Merch

Show your support with some of our merch. As seen at races throughout 2025! Sign up for news and order Simpsons-Nouvelles merch at https://nouvellescycling.co.uk/merch

Get on board!

Is your business interested in partnering with Britain's only U23 elite women's team? Drop Chris Sidwells a line at [email protected]

Get on line!

Website www.nouvellescycling.co.uk

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/NouvellesCycling?

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/NouvellesCycling

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Lord have mercy! It’s the vice episode! Drugs are back, tell a friend. Or at least biological passport anomalies are back. Is illegal betting the next bad thing for pro cycling? We wouldn’t bet against it (badoom-tsh!). Plus six-day racing, Euro cyclocross and recommendations to generally make your life better.

📸 The end of the road season historically meant the end of regular earnings for a few months, so many riders headed to the velodrome and the lucrative six-day circuit. Patrick Sercu was the greatest six-day rider of all time, winning no fewer than 88 times in a track career that spanned 3 decades and saw him amass over 1000 victories on the boards. These also included an Olympic gold in Tokyo in 1964 and 2 professional World Championships in 1967 and 1969. Sercu was no slouch on the road either, winning 6 Tour de France stages (including the Green Jersey in 1974) and 13 stage wins in the Giro d’Italia. Here we see him at the Rotterdam Six in 1976, taking a slingshot from that other rider who was no slouch on the boards, long-term six-day partner and fellow Belgian, Eddy Merckx. (Credit: Rob Mieremet/Anefo/National Archive of the Netherlands)

Recommendations

AKT London - Get 15% off with Gary’s shameless link https://aktlondon.refr.cc/refer-a-friend/u/garyfairley73?s=sp&t=cp

Yoga with Adriene - https://youtube.com/@yogawithadriene?si=7VpbBEyTSKSIdWur

The Dr Ida Rolf Institute - https://rolf.org/rolfing.php

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Sans or Avec Zwift? That is the question. Chris, David and Gary are already looking forward to next July and August after the routes of both Tours de France are announced. Ventoux, Col d’Eze, Montjuic and Le Markstein are but some of the names whetting the collective appetite with only 8 months until both Grand Departs.

The team also look back at the World Track Championships that concluded at the weekend in Santiago, with varying successes for their respective nations, and look even further back to Eddy Merckx’s legendary Hour in Mexico City. Plus ‘cross is back and just what is it with the Brits and hill climbing? (We’re not sure either.)

📸 This past week saw the glitzy presentation of the routes of the 2026 Tour de France and Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. But the race wasn’t always announced with such razzmatazz and it wasn’t until Jean Marie LeBlanc’s stewardship of the race in the 1990s that each year’s route was announced with anything more than a press conference. Indeed, the inaugural edition of the world’s most famous bike race was announced to the world on 19 January 1903 in a single column in L’Auto. (Credit: unknown/via lefrancophille.com)

Recommendations

A House of Dynamite (Netflix) https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81744537?s=i&trkid=283039074&vlang=en&trg=cp

“Prisoners of Geography” - Tim Marshall https://amzn.eu/d/fItw2i7

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And so to Il Lombardia, via Rwanda and a whole host of other places. The traditional end of the season is upon us already and the guys might have a few things to talk about, not just Tadej Pogacar. Okay, but quite a bit of Tadej Pogacar.

In other news, we begin the campaign for Remco Evenepoel’s assault on the Hour Record, Quinn Simmons impresses us once again, there is no ‘you’ in team according to the Dutch women’s gravel squad and - speaking of squads - just what is the link between Eddy Merckx and Scotland’s 1978 World Cup football squad?

📸 Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia, Como, 13 October 1973. Eddy Merckx wins his third Giro di Lombardia (as it was known then) some 4 minutes and 15 seconds ahead of nearest rival Felice Gimondi. Or so he thought. Merckx would later test positive for norephedrine - a decongestant - and Gimondi was subsequently awarded the win. In April the following year, a commission would ultimately accept that Merckx had not knowingly taken the banned substance, having been prescribed a cough syrup by his doctor while suffering from bronchitis. His ‘victory’, nevertheless, was not reinstated. (Credit: Photo News)

Recommendations

Apollo Flight Journal https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/

Gil Scott-Heron ‘Whitey on the Moon’ https://youtu.be/goh2x_G0ct4?si=uNHXYe99dc8PKn8p

Cycling into the Darkness https://dstanley.substack.com/p/cycling-into-the-darkness?utm_source=publication-search

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Recorded live without a safety net (or an internet) at Harworth and Bircotes Town Hall on 12 September 2025 before an Actual Audience, Chris and Gary were joined onstage by Joanne Simpson to remember her father, Tom, and celebrate his World Championship win 60 years ago.

Simultaneously, joyful, funny, poignant and at times deeply personal, you’ll want to hear this.

Special thanks to Lee Stewart at Harworth and Bircotes Town Council who went over and above the call of duty to help make the whole thing happen.

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Back after an indecently long hiatus, the team regroups to catch up on all things bike racing, with some geopolitics, genocide and sporting boycotts thrown in for good measure.

Along the way, we salute some newly-crowned TT World Champions and welcome women’s pro racing back to the Land of the Free.

Photo: Elite racing returned to the USA this weekend with the third edition of the Baltimore Cycling Classic and the inaugural women’s edition, but the Land of the Free hasn’t always been so sparsely served by international pro racing. The Tour du Pont (known as the Tour de Trump for its first 2 editions) had varied fortunes during its 8-years on the UCI calendar, not least down to a May slot which clashed with the Giro d’Italia.

This view of the peloton was taken during Stage 9 of the 1996 and final edition, from Blowing Rock to Charlotte North Carolina. Al Bello/Allsport/Getty Images

Recommendations

Jo Jackson Art https://www.jojacksonart.co.uk

Ben Musholt- ‘Mad Skills Exercise Encyclopedia XL: The Ultimate Guide for Strength, Bodyweight Training, and Home Fitness’ 

 https://amzn.eu/d/iPi2qe

Get in touch

Drop us a line at [email protected]! We’d love to hear from you.

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Dali! Hemingway! Picasso! Er, Elton John! Things get surreal as the Vuelta a Espana heads to Salvador Dali country, and little - if any - of it is related to the racing of bicycles. Doncaster celebrates a Grand Tour victory, presumably while Visma Lease-a-Bike were too busy filling in the insurance paperwork after their entire fleet of race bikes evaporated so we wonder just how hard can it be to fit a decent bike lock. Almost as hard as fitting a GPS tracking device in Romandie, it would appear.

Photo: The Team Time Trial is one of the most spectacular sights in cycling, as demonstrated by Team Sunweb as they power through the equally spectacular salt lakes at Torrevieja on the way to a third place on stage 1 of the 2019 Vuelta. Credit Zac Williams/SWpix.com

Links

Podium Analytics - https://podiumanalytics.org/ 

Tom Simpson Cycling Festival 7-14 September - https://cyclinglegends.co.uk/pages/tom-simpson-cycling-festival

Team Simpson-Nouvelles Supporter Club - https://www.nouvellescycling.co.uk/supporters-club

Get in touch

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France is still where it’s at as David, Chris and Gary look back on another historic Tour de France Femmes, but is the race grand enough not only for its name but for the women who light it up every summer? We have thoughts! Red Bull Remco Evenepoel opens our perennial salary cap discussion and we start passing the envelope around for Tadej Pogacar’s retirement collection. Don’t worry, it’s still a while off!

Photo: Anna Van Der Breggen on bottle duties, back at the Dutch team car during the 2021 UCI World Road Championships. The 157.7km run from Antwerp to Leuven would be won for Italy by Elisa Balsamo, who held off Van der Breggen’s team mate, a charging Marianne Vos, in the final. (Photo by Kristof Ramon - Pool/Getty Images)

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Tom Simpson Cycling Festival 7-14 September 2025

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