Issue 124 - Colours

What’s in the magazine?

Annemiek van Vleuten

Annemiek van Vleuten has always been a bit of an enigma. She can be laser-focused in races, a ruthless competitor, and blunt and aloof in interviews. She was renowned during her career for disappearing for months at a time to train methodically at altitude and there were times when she absolutely dominated the big races on the women’s side of the sport. Her results on the bike speak for themselves, but who is Van Vleuten when she doesn’t have races to win? With the Dutch rider heading into retirement at the end of the 2023 season, Rachel Jary sat down with Van Vleuten to reflect on a career that changed women’s cycling for good and to find out what comes next.

Filippo Pozzato

The last time Herbie Sykes appeared in the pages of Rouleur, Filippo Pozzato was failing to win his beloved Tour of Flanders for the umpteenth time. Ten years on, the two of them convened in dreamy Vicenza, Pippo’s home town. The former pin-up boy of Italian cycling remains as charismatic and forthright as ever, only these days he’s organising the kind of bike races he once animated. Never one to hide his light, Pozzato has taken it upon himself to reinvent a cycling paradigm he regards as no longer fit for purpose and to reinvigorate it for the coming generations. Pippo Pozzato is on a mission to save Italian cycling, and good- ness knows it could do with some saving.

Privateer Lessons

After a few years on Axel Merckx’s development team, Joe Laverick never quite landed the WorldTour dream. But the young British rider wasn’t done with life on two wheels just yet, and he made the switch to becoming a privateer. And like everyone else, he is still figuring out what being a privateer actually means. How do you find sponsors? How much money does it cost? What races should you do? Is a gravel pro just a failed road pro? A self-proclaimed ‘kinda pro cyclist’, Joe dabbles between road, time trial and gravel, telling his story through words along the way. For the young Brit who swapped Grimsby for Girona, being a privateer is much more than riding a gravel bike.

And more...

The magazine also features an exclusive interview with two-time Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard in his home town in Denmark; Jeremy Whittle also speaks to 1980s singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole about his cycling adventure; Edward Pickering catches up with former elite runner Sarah Ruggins, who participated in the 2023 Transcontinental Race despite only starting cycling a few months before; Rouleur contributors pick a colour which speaks to them the most; Richard Abraham goes on a quest to uncover what happened to Marco Patani’s Tour-winning bike; India Paine chats to Jos and Vanessa Ruiterman, founders of Megmeister; plus the Canary Islands, Treviso, Shirin van Anrooij, KOO eyewear, Fizik, Elite, ASSOS, Orla Chennaoui, Ned Boulting and much, much more.