First VeloNews, now CycleSport

[dbrk]

Yesterday the "new" CycleSport arrived, the "American edition" I think it's called. Gone is the Phil the Editor frontispiece, the fine humour, and the limited number of lovely colour pictures. Instead we have more boxes and sound byte-look pieces, lots of ads that look like articles and articles that look like ads, and everything about the usual American bicycle magazine that gives me a headache and makes me drop the subscription. So if VeloNews continues on its present course, I'm done with it. CycleSport is nearly now as unreadable and annoying to my eye. I just re-subscribed to Cycling Plus because despite their penchant to never say anything bad about anything British, it's a little more like cycling and less like images that move as fast as the peloton. All of these modern updates are so disconcerting. Now the Rivendell Reader arrived this week too and it is decidedly NOT spoiled. Insightful, unhurried, thoughtful, and definitely an alternative.

What I want is a cycling magazine that covers racing, updates on latestgreatest, old stuff including bikes, racers, and history, and something from which I really learn and am entertained. How about reviews or presentations that don't look like a shill for some company? Gosh, the whole thing is wag the dog. Of course, the magazine I propose can't happen. Asphalt is a good try but it's too infrequent and it wants to like everything---a little more honest, critical insight would be far more interesting, if you ask me. Anyway, now CycleSport. Geez. I give up. I'm going to the basement to play with some old parts and look at lugs or something...

dbrk

[bcm119]

There are so many parallels to this exact depressing scenario it is , well, depressing. Whats happening? I think the whole business world is to blame- the business world today is fundamentally flawed with disgustingness. And it seems to be getting worse. It makes me want to change careers and be a blacksmith or something.
Dbrk, I'm glad you mentioned something positive- the Reader- I hope it endures this **** storm.

[Bill Bove]

I'm not being rude, just making an observation. You're not happy with the current fare. You are not alone. You know what you want. Other's will probably want it too. So do it. Start an e-zine, get it to grow into newsprint, grow some more and chang to glossy paper, grow some more and go to tape on cable...

[dnovo]

If you read English, you have the following choices for a magazine that offers decent articles about road bikes and/or components: #1 Cycling Plus. Detailed group review of three bikes every issue, with a second test or sometimes a third of a single bike. At least one or more component group test or gear test each issue, and a slew of short reviews, a retro note or two and several general, and well written articles.

Second choice -- there is none.

Cycling Weekly has some good tests, not terribly deep, but better than the pap in the US pubs. I used to think the new ASPHALT was decent, but I haven't seen the latest issue yet, hope they haven't folded as I was a subscriber, but the haven't really had anything critical to say about a bike yet. Nice layout and photos, but the technical end hasn't been all that deep nor objective.

Foreign language? Le Cycle is outstanding, but you must read French or try to puzzle through the tests. Tour in German is also very good, as is Bicisport if you can read Italian.

For those like me who can barely read English, given the poor articles in ProCyling an Cyclesport lately in what passes for 'tech', our choices are REAL limited. I learn more reading this forum than I do anywhere else.

Dave N.

[dnovo]

Oh Bill, re your signature. Chapman was also famous for his stance on quality control. When asked much 'beef' Lotus engineers should add to a part to ensure its longevity, and reminding him that Dr. Porsche, when told one part would last ten years and another 15, said , "find me one that will last 20" (this was the OLD 356 era Porsche), Chapman was quoted as asking how long was the Lotus warranty. Great concepts, but built with all the care and durability of a Fiat 500, one built on a Monday. I spent many a night taking a Lotus Elan apart and throwing away the cheap nuts and bolts and brakes lines before even thinking about risking my neck on a race course in one. Light is great when coupled with strong. Light as in flimsy is not. Dave N. (who still misses the C-Production Elan he flipped end over end at Elkhart in the mid-60s. Boy those fibreglass shards were tough to pick up from the track after they black-flagged the race.)

[Bruce K]

dnovo;

I now have even more respect for you. As a former HP Frogeye driver, I have fond (?) memories of Lucas electornics before switching the whole system over.

My end for end was a FV Caldwell D-13 at Watkins Glen in the mid-1980's. Once the F&C gang lifted the car up I crawled out cursing a blue streak.

Only made it to Elkhart once, but I loved the place.

If you were racing in the 60's did you ever come up against a Porsche driver named Kurt Degener? Being a Lotus racer, did you encounter Noel Poduje and Ray Boulea from out here in New England? They both raced Elans.

[dnovo]

No, that was my first and last race in the Elan. I was a driver/wrench part-time doing bikes and cars in college and we built this one up for an owner who decided to let me drive it when I was a lot faster than him in practice. Boy was he mad! First he asked if I was okay, and then offered to kill me, as did my then-steady, now wife, who was also watching.

Never owned a Caldwell, started out with an old Formcar, then built up a Zink. Lots of other stuff later, but other than killing that Elan, no more Loti until the 23B which I did in Vintage in the late 80s. Dave N.

[Bruce K]

Dave;

I can see the Open House conversations getting VERY interesting.

Zinks were not too popular around here. The Caldwells were built in MArblehead, MA so that was about 80% of what was run. A Zink here or there, some Zeitlers, and a couple of home builts until the early 80's.

Formcars were before my entry into all that fun stuff.

BK

[BumbleBeeDave]

Go start your OWN forum . . . This one’s for BICYCLES! :mad: :rolleyes: :p

BBDave

[dnovo]

Ignore him, Bruce. He's just upset that he didn't get to make a small fortune in racing just the way we did -- by starting with a large fortune. The reason I started with older V's than you is simple, I am a lot older. Older than anyone here, except Sandy of course, who is older than dirt. Dave N.

[Bill Bove]

Good point, dave. So I altered my signiture.

[PaulE]

by removing tubes from his frames until they fell apart. Then he put the last one removed back in! :D

[dnovo]

Heard that one before, Paul and also recall that the road cars were so badly built that the venerable SPORTS CAR GRAPHIC of blessed memory once described them as, "screwed together out of scrap by a bunch of winos under a bridge ." Dave N.

[flickwet]

I think what is missed is some form of soft cover bike porn. Some
mb zines out there but nothin for roadies, Anyone remember the old "Bicycle Guide? They would showcase builders and celebrate the finer bikes. I would think the manufactureresers(sic) would be more than happy to see something that would raise the awarness of the cycling public in general to the appreciation of higher quality bikes, not the latest $149.00 comfort crapper. Look at all the car mags with goodies,ski mags,golf,etc.
Lastly, This must be a righteous crowd, Lotus 23,s: Zinks. I could have an Ottrott for what I spent on my old Alfa (73 spider),but then ,I wouldn't have had the Alfa would I?

[Climb01742]

thanks for the heads-up on "cycling plus". i hadn't heard of it.

[oracle]

i actually found there to be some pretty solid content in the latest velonews. in decline? yes. worthy of condemnation? not just yet.

i really do miss the local race coverage, however, and if tvn cannot or will not endeavour to include these results once again, then i may be on board.

oracle

[Russ]

1) BiciSport of Italy
2) Ciclismo a fondo of Spain

I have found that these magazines provide the best of everything road cycling has to offer: big, nice pictures of pro races/racers (so one can scrutinize the equipment they use), real-in-depth product reviews, and they also have a fair share of coverage for interviews, advice, and topics of interest such as places to ride, etc. The main problem (mostly for us here in the USA) is that they are in Italian and Spanish, and some of the articles are strickly for the European consumer.

I do not subscribe to Velo News because I could care less about mountain biking (the racing part, at least). Last year, I found it very strange that for the Giro d'Italia issue, they had a mountain bike picture in the cover!!!

The other magazines, as dbrk says, have always gone the wrong path. I do not like ProCycling.... the magazine that claims that they are "probably the best cycling magazine in the world.."

There is another magazine that I am considering subscribing to, which appears very promising. This is RIDE from Australia. The magazine is now very expensive, hard to find, and not published every month, but they surely have a great cycling publication going for now.

[oracle]

velo, phor the phrancophones is as well, a good read.

oracle

[IXXI]

"Ride" is an excellent magazine. Well-worth hunting down if its not in your neck o the weeds.

[Kevan]

Cycling Plus, I'm in agreement with dnovo, it's a very good rag.

February's issue included a short blurb on the usage of Google.com, the world's most popular search engine, and that in 2003 the Tour de France had come in tenth overall as the most popular search subject, with no other sport related subject making the top 10.

I can only think cycling might have made it further up in the ranking had only Sandy spent less time searching for Britney Spears websites.

[BumbleBeeDave]

. . . to understand dbrk's criticism of the "new" CycleSport after having the chance to buy a copy and read through it.

The layout has been changed--which is pretty normal for consumer magaznies at intervals. But the gallery section in front with the big photos is still there. The stories on athletes and races are still there. I don't see that much which has been subtracted. Besides, any publication with functioning brain cells in management is always re-evaluating which features are getting readership and therefore are worth keeping. We do the same thing here at my paper.

dbrk, if you are looking for features on nostalgia, old bikes, unusual bikes, or other fine "coffee table" type subjects, then I think you are looking in the wrong place. CycleSport has always impressed me as being a magazine about the sport in racing today, not the refined intellectual journal you are bemoaning the loss of. It's for cycle racing fans. Ditto, it seems, for ProCycling. Pro interviews, pro bikes, pro features, pro-related humor and gossip.

CyclingPlus is indeed the very useful training and review source that we all wish BICYCLING could have been, and as for BICYCLING, well it seems now to be intended to be picked up at the airport with just enough glossy glamor to amuse one on the hour flight to the next business meeting.

Nothing personal against your opinions about magazines in general. After reading the "new" CycleSport I just think you are being a bit hard on Liggett and Co. I think the redesign looks great and is fun to read.

BBDave

[dbrk]

I'm not looking for something in Cyclesport that it doesn't mean to be. Sure, I love old stuff but I get that it's about the modern racing scene. My criticism is that I find the new layout distracting, confusing ads for copy like Buycycling, and filled with soundbytes rather than deeper insight.

The "American" edition is different now than the English and I'm wondering if I can subscribe to the UK version. Somehow the Brits get cycling mags far better. If this is the "Americanization" of the magazine then I'm happy to be counted out.

dbrk

[Climb01742]

for me, there's a parallel to tv coverage of cycling. when OLN had that blonde nitwit on this past summer, i railed...until i remembered what listening to john tesh music over a one hour tour highlight show on CBS was like. maybe i'm cutting OLN and the mags too much slack, but i love reading about and watching cycling so much, i'm grateful for what we've got. i may be a thirsty man in the cycling desert but, water tastes good. even impure water.

[JohnS]

Originally posted by BumbleBeeDave
[

Besides, any publication with functioning brain cells in management is always re-evaluating which features are getting readership and therefore are worth keeping. We do the same thing here at my paper.


BBDave [/B]
Dave, your job's in jeopardy!!! :D