Pro Women's Cycling

We're at the halfway point through the 2017 Giro Rosa with five stages completed. We cover each of the stages so far, from the opening TTT through to the ITT and all the travails and changes on GC in between. There has been more than a fair share of surprise Giro geomorphology including some truly brutal climbs and so on. An incredibly close sprint finish and more. There's lots to cover and lots more to speculate on as we continue into the second half of the stages. (Spoiler Warning: We do actually cover the end of stage 6 so bail out early if you don't want us to reveal the winner for you).

All year we watch the TV highlights of the UCI women's WorldTour made by Rose Manley, of InCycle TV. I've always enjoyed Rose's work, so I was delighted when she came on the podcast and told me all about the effort that goes into producing these, and the features she's been making on various riders throughout the season, as well as the high and low points of the year so far.

For links of everything we talked about, go to my site http://www.prowomenscycling.com

This week we preview all the stages of the 2017 Giro Rosa, from the Team Time Trial all the way through to the climb of Mount Vesuvius. There's stages to suit the sprinters, the puncheurs, the roleurs and the climbers. Who is suited to each stage? Which teams have the strongest rosters? Who are the riders to watch? How is the race likely to unfold? We answer all of these questions and more. We even unlock the age-old secret of how to interpret the race book (It's Idiosyncratic, Unless It's the Exact Opposite).

Balint Hamvas and Sean Robinson are Vélofocus, who take gorgeous photos of women's cycling. They told me about how the 2017 season is going, their highs and lows - and all about their kickstarter for a fantastic coffee table book about the year in women's road cycling.

Listen here, and head to my website, https://prowomenscycling.com/velofocus-interview/, for the links of where you can buy their book, see their work, and a lot more.

This week Sarah and Dan recap the Ovo Energy Women's Tour held in the United Kingdom, reviewing each of the stages and exploring some of the more surprising results. Along the way they accidentally reveal which one of them is the REAL comic book geek (you won't be surprised when you hear who it is!) and of course, take some time to wrap up the other things that they've seen around the way over the past week.

This week marks the beginning of the Ovo Energy Women's Tour, the United Kingdom's best known women's stage race. We run through a full preview of each stage, the riders that are likely to do well and the teams who have very clearly come prepared for this year's contest. Following that we also take a quick look at the recent downhill mountain bike event at Fort William, with a bit of a surprise result.

Isabelle Clement is the director of Wheels for Well-Being, a charity dedicate to helping disabled people cycle more, through both their sessions giving people in London with a hug range of disabilities try a massive range of bikes, and through their national campaigning work. She told me all about these aspects of her work, and talks about barriers to disabled people cycling, both physical, in terms of infrastructure, and emotional, as well as the charity's successes, plans for the future, and what we can all do to help support disabled people's cycling.

Find out more about Isabelle, Wheels for Wellbeing, and things we can all do to help, on my website:

https://prowomenscycling.com/2017/06/04/isabelle-clement-wheels-for-wellbeing-and-their-work-helping-disabled-people-cycle-more/

This week's podcast is a little bit of a catchup as we cover off the impact that May has had on the peloton with races going on in the USA, the Basque country, Belgium and more. Riders and teams have had to choose where to apply their focus and resources and it's made for a very interesting month. We take a particular look at how the Tour of California and the Emakumeen Bira played out and then how they contributed to the way that Gooik-Geraardsbergen-Gooik was raced. As always, there's plenty to laugh about and more than a few diversions along the way!

Hopefully you listened to the recent BBC Radio 4 Women's Hour programme dedicated entirely to women's cycling, and set at the London Bike Kitchen. If you did, you will have heard LBK Director Jenni Gwiazdowski talking about their work teaching people to repair their own bikes - or maybe you've heard the Wheel Suckers' podcast Jenni runs with Look Mum No Hands' Alex Davis, which I was on that same day.

You can imagine, being in the LBK space, and being on the podcast made me want to know a whole lot more - how and why did Jenni set up LBK in the first place, and what do they do? Why's she podcasting? What's her superhero secret origin story? There's only one way to find out - asking her!

Click through to my website for the links to everything we talked about:

https://prowomenscycling.com/2017/05/25/jenni-gwiazdowski-london-bike-kitchen/

This week we talk through the events in China at the Tour of Chongming Island. We catch up on Marianne Vos' first win of the season. We take a look at the Women's Tour of California (aka The Breakaway From Heart Disease Women's Race presented by SRAM). We catch up on the latest news from BMX and we take a few minutes to reflect back on the last five years of podcasting. That's right, it's our FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY EPISODE!