Cyclist
In The Drops: Football Cycling Club, Helinox Zero, The Handmade Cyclist espresso cups and the Fifth French Republic
It’s Friday, and there’s a new Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. However, cycling remains the number one priority in our manifesto. So, let’s proudly shut out the noise from the pungent sewer of British politics and tune into another fix of In The Drops.
The Tour de France is in full swing, and Tadej Pogačar is already in the yellow jersey. Jonas Vingegaard looks better than many expected, so look out for him in the final week. I’m still holding onto some hope with my predictions though and look forward to having the last laugh.
Earlier this week, I returned from the Tour de France with an unholy amount of sunburn and a bag full of complimentary Orangina. Thank you, sponsors. During the week, I shared my dispatches from the Tour including a gallery from the Grand Départ and an account of a cheery press conference with Mark Cavendish ahead of the Tour. And speaking of the record-breaker, later in the week I compared Mark Cavendish to a very old man from the Bible.
Elsewhere in the racing world, Robyn has you sorted out when it comes to the Women’s Giro. She also got us feeling all nostalgic over a certain Frenchman, Romain Bardet.
It’s not all about those men riding around France, however. We have reviewed a whole host of bib shorts on the site this week. If you enjoy seeing men in skin-tight glorified leotards, then Andy Turner has you covered. Elsewhere, Giant has launched a new Revolt gravel bike and James Spender reviewed the Lazer KinetiCore Z1 helmet.
Enough of that, it’s time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
Football Cycling Club’s England 1990 jersey
One of my worst financial habits is collecting football shirts. I have an alarmingly large collection of strips spanning clubs from Greenock Morton to Olympique Lyonnais.
Football shirts reflect a team’s identity and history in a way that runs parallel to sporting, cultural and stylistic zeitgeists. Whack a big sponsor logo on it and it feels somewhat kitsch to be walking around in a 2012 Luton Town home shirt branded with the EasyJet logo. Marrying this with cycling is like pairing cheese with crackers.
English-based Football Cycling Club adapts classic football shirt designs and projects them onto the canvas of a cycling jersey. In honour of Euro 2024, I present Football Cycling Jersey’s cycling transformation of England’s 1990 away kit. I am sure you are familiar with this shirt – it’s the armour of pub punters and offside rule mansplainers the country over.
Football Cycling Club’s repertoire is broader than just international kits. They have Lycra’d up club classics including Arsenal’s ‘banana’ 1992 away kit, Liverpool’s speckled 1989 home kit and the emblematic rugby-shirt-style Newcastle United away strip from 1996. It’s not all English, I should add that my trusty Celtic FC have representation with their 1988 home kit branded with the iconic sponsorship of CR Smith.
Unlike some jerseys trying to capitalise on the football craze, Football Cycling Club’s offerings give a real tailored fit. There are no baggy frills like with some more budget-conscious jerseys. The arms fit snuggly with an elasticated sleeve hem.
There’s no headline-grabbing scientific word salad of innovations, the pricetag represents that, however these jerseys reflect real sporting passion and show off a nerdy taste for vintage sports design. For that, I am grateful.
Also, if anyone has any vintage football shirts going in a men’s medium size, feel free to send an email my way. Thanks.
- Buy now from Football Cycling Club (£42)
Helinox Zero chair
It’s festival season – or so I have been told. In fact, my sources informed me that Cyclist staff writer Laurence Kilpatrick was at Glastonbury last weekend. He has not been seen at the office since.
Also, if you’re heading out to the Tour de France, a good camping chair will come in very handy for those hours spent on the side of the roads, whether that be on an Alpine slope or a vineyard in Burgundy this weekend.
Billed as an ultra-lightweight chair for bikepacking and kayaking, the Helinox Zero is a featherweight solution to stay comfortable on the roadsides, campsites or lake shores this summer.
The Zero packs up into a bag barely the size of a footlong Subway sandwich. The weight also sits at around 500g, no more than a bottle of Diet Coke.
The chair is not foldable though. To pack the chair away, the seating fabric must be unhooked and the legs disconnected like tent poles. This is rather fiddly to set up, but it keeps the frame tightly contained for outdoor pursuits.
The fabric itself is sturdy yet stretchy, ready to be moulded around every twist and turn of your rear end.
Sitting down, your derrière will be pretty close to the ground. Those with knee problems, do be warned. I am 187cm tall and this chair somewhat crunched my body.
If you’re looking for something more laidback than bikepacking this summer, then the Helinox Zero ticks the boxes for roadside Tour viewing. Pair this with some factor 50 sunscreen, a cold Kronenbourg and you’re all set for the Tour de France fan experience.
- Buy now from Helinox (£135)
The Handmade Cyclist’s Tour de France espresso cups & mugs
It might be summer, but that doesn’t mean you have to retire the coffee machine. The French and Italians don’t do iced coffee anyway.
To celebrate the Tour de France, I have been using The Handmade Cyclist’s chinaware for my morning espressos and lunchtime café allongé.
The British-based brand offers designs inspired by cycling for multiple mediums from wall-prints to T-shirts. The ceramics range is designed in-house in the UK. The mugs and espresso sets are made in potteries in Stoke-on-Trent and are designed to not fade in the wash.
I opted for two Tour de France classics in the Télégraphe-Galibier and the Alpe d’Huez designs.
The espresso set, both cup and saucer, is a cute ode to cycling folklore. The twenty-one hairpins of Alpe d’Huez are depicted wiggling around the geometric Alpine landscape. On the other side of the cup, the climb’s title is projected using a typeface not too dissimilar from a French road sign. Bonus, the orange, black and white colour palette is similar to our faithful colour scheme here on the Cyclist website. It must be a sign.
Luckily, the cup’s handles are not restricting for my spider-like fingers, unlike some continental-style espresso mugs where I am forced to clutch onto a ceramic contour for dear life in fear of an embarrassing spillage.
The Col du Galibier mug is a bigger vessel for your hot drinks. The increased size feels fitting given the interminable nature of the climb tackled on Stage 4 of the Tour earlier this week. The mug is adorned with hues of blue and grey, the centrepiece being the telegraph tower found halfway up the Alp.
All I need now are the Ineos Grenadiers coffee pods and I’ll be good to go.
- Buy now from The Handmade Cyclist (Espresso Set: £31, Mug: £26)
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What we’re into this week: The Fifth French Republic
I have duly nominated the whole nation of France as my cultural feature this week. Riding on a Tour de France high, I am very blue, white and red-pilled.
The nation of France will always hold a special place in my heart. I’ll be honest, the mere smell of a French supermarket and the sight of a scarf in June could send me to tears.
I hope for us all that this enthusiasm doesn’t require an edit on Sunday night.
In my appreciation of la république française, my go-to read for Tour season is Béatrice Houchard’s book Le Tour de France et la France du Tour, a title that translates roughly to The Tour de France and Tour’s France – it works better in French, I promise.
I bought this book in a charity shop in Lyon after classes one day and didn’t think much of it. I’ll be honest, I have a great amount of cycling literature fatigue. However, this book was different. I devoured the whole thing while travelling from France to Slovenia by bus a couple of years ago.
Houchard’s work recounts the history of the Tour and how the story of France, its politics and society have intertwined and been mirrored in the race.
It includes tidbits and quotes through time, including an angry monologue from Bernard Hinault about Sunday amateurs wearing yellow kit. ‘I want to take it off these puppets,’ Hinault says. ‘A yellow jersey is earned and the right to wear it should be protected.’
A major caveat here is that the book is entirely in French. If that’s a problem for you, don’t worry, it’s never too late to brush up on the GCSE French you previously butchered on an exchange trip to Normandy. That’s why this week I have decided to throw in a playlist of the finest tunes in the French language. Bon courage à vous!
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