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Custom frames and bespoke builds continue to garner a healthy corner of the bike market. Those searching for a head-turning ride made totally to their specification are prepared to part with serious money for their dream machines.

Matteo Visentini from Italian specialists Passoni tells Dan Cavallari who the customer is, why they desire one of Passoni’s timeless titanium frames, and how a trained architect prefers a career working with beautiful bikes. And if you recognise Matteo’s surname, that’s because his father Roberto won the 1986 Giro d’Italia. Bicycles are in his blood.

We are also joined by Ben Farver from Argonaut Cycles, who grew from being a one-man steel operation to custom carbon production in Oregon with a dozen employees, combining the wonderful ride qualities of steel with the almost limitless customisation potential of carbon. Ben will tell you all about it. 

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Rouleur 109 - the Enable issue - is entirely devoted to Paralympic sport and disabled athletes. It features Kristina Vogel, Marion Clignet, Hannah Cockroft, Barcelona's remarkable Genesis team and many more - including British athletics and paracycling star Kadeena Cox. A promising runner until she was diagnosed with a life changing illness, Kadeena took up track cycling - then decided to continue competing in both sports. Her determination has been rewarded with multiple Olympic and World Championship medals. She talks to host Ian Parkinson about her career and her ambition to make elite cycling more diverse.

And after nine years at Rouleur, five of them as editor, Andy McGrath is off to new challenges. He reflects on the changes in the magazine, and the sport.

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Caren Hartley and Matt McDonough joined forces in 2017 to create Isen Frameworks, building high-end, award-winning custom steel and titanium bikes in their south London workshop. What are the latest developments in the field, as riders increasingly turn to off-road excursions to get their kicks? Tyres and brakes are the big game-changers, they say, and their designs reflect the advances, balancing comfort and joy. 

Plus an advance audio version of Ned Boulting’s upcoming column from issue 109, entitled Paralympia, read by Phil Wright. 

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Peter Stuart and Dan Cavallari run their beady eyes over the past year’s technical innovations and what 2022 has in store.

In 2021, we saw semi-wireless Dura Ace, SRAM phasing out mechanical groupsets, Lizzie Deignan winning Paris-Roubaix on a 1x gear system, and tubeless replacing tubulars.

 As for the new year, Peter considers whether the pure cyclo-cross racing bike’s days are numbered as manufacturers continue to focus their efforts on gravel. Aero is making a return to the fore. And power measurement grows increasingly sophisticated, alongside integrated electronics with applications outside of the gearing-only systems. Meanwhile, Dan’s hot take is that one-piece bar and stem combos are on the way out. Crazy guy… or maybe not.

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With the cyclo-cross World Championships rapidly approaching at the end of January, we have three experts to assess the contenders in Fayettville, Arkansas.

Multiple British champions Helen Wyman and Ian Field have seen the sport transform, especially on the women’s side, since they were practically the only Brits racing ‘cross in Belgium. With no Wout van Aert or Mathieu van der Poel to contend with in the States, can Tom Pidcock pull on the rainbow jersey? And Zoe Backstedt has been far and away the strongest junior rider this season. Will the current road race world champion double up in the mud? Wyman and Field guide us through the noisy and enthusiastic world of American cyclo-cross. Yee-ha.

Cameron Mason took his first UCI World Cup win over the packed Christmas holiday period. The young Scot is a genuine podium contender in the under-23s having spent three winters learning the ropes in Belgium.

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Wondering why your bikes and bits are taking so long to arrive? What is the hold up in the supply chain? Dan Cavallari asks logistics expert Dan Woodcock where the products are right now, why ships are sitting outside harbours unable to unload, and when we can expect to see some easing of the situation.

Harrison Macris of Princeton Carbon Works, supplier of TT wheels to Team Ineos, also joins Dan to explain how his company has coped with the lack of hub deliveries with a unique solution - scouring the globe for quality components, plus in-house manufacturing with their Tactic brand. 

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Ian Boswell’s road career was cut short by severe concussion sustained during a crash at Tirreno Adriatico in 2019. Where one door closes, another opens, as the American started a new job for Wahoo and, before you know it, was racing again – and very successfully too – but this time on gravel.

Rachel Jary discusses changing disciplines, the more inclusive vibe of the gravel scene and why wearing a transgender flag sweatband has a personal meaning to Boswell alongside raising a broader conversation in the cycling community.

Author Jonathan Heard compiled ten wonderful stories of long-distance riding for his book Cycling Through a Pandemic having himself put his life on hold to take a winding month-long route from Land’s End to John o‘ Groats. Adventurer cyclist and racer Sami Sauri also joins Ian Parkinson to describe the difficulty of riding across the deserts outside of Zaragoza during Spanish lockdown.

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Rouleur’s Rachel Jary has been isolating in a Milton Keynes hotel for ten days. Thankfully, Dad dropped off the Tacx smart trainer so she’s not gone completely nuts. What sessions has she been doing on the turbo? How did she keep motivated locked in a room eating dreadful food? And what Netflix series has she been binging? Dan Cavallari asks the big questions from the comfort of his garage in Colorado.

Digital editor Peter Stuart, meanwhile, mulls over the online options for virtual indoor training. Zwift is the big one currently, of course, but other players dipped their toes in the market over the last decade. A brief history of virtual training, and a gaze into the future as Wahoo launch their Systm app.

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