Giro has announced the creation of the Lance Armstrong Collection, two special edition helmets built on the Ionos with new graphics to celebrate the winningest rider in the Tour de France’s history.

Used by Lance during his more recent Tour victories, the Ionos features 21 large vents, in-molded composite frame and now comes with the new RocLoc5 retention system. They’ll be available this fall for $235, the same MSRP as regular Ionos helmets.

This year, Lance has been racing in the model shown above, which has large block numbers representing every year he’s won the Tour along with his signature incorporated into the design. The other model, shown after the break, has similar block numbers but uses the reds and grays of their Radio Shack team jerseys.

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Dem gold diggaz gonna be all up in yo’ bidness when you roll to the gate on these gold stems…

Marzocchi’s leaked out a few photos of their new Nickel-Coated, Ti-Nitride, Teflon impregnated alloy stanchions for the 888 Evo Ti downhill fork.

Haters love to point out that others have done Ti-Nitride coatings before, but past iterations have been on steel sliders. Marzocchi’s latest bling takes their Nickel coated alloy tubes. They’re then polished and Ti Nitride coated and Teflon impregnated to make them as smooth as possible.

No word on availability or cost yet. UPDATE: These are going to be offered as upgrade parts soon. More photos are yours for the taking right after the break…

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Ridley has updated their entire cyclocross line with updates from the top of the range X-Night above to the more wallet friendly alloy models.

With aspirations of gaining more retail footage, they’ll be offering all models as complete bikes as well as framesets, and price points are fairly attractive.

The full carbon X-Night remains their top offering, and for 2011 it gets new internal rear derailleur housing that hides the cable inside the seatstay and runs housing all the way to the derailleur to keep mud off the wire. It’ll be offered in the white shown above as well as World Cup colors honoring sponsored Czech rider Zdenek Stybar. For $3,995, you’ll get the SRAM Red equipped bike shown with Fulcrum Racing 5 wheels and Avid Shorty Ultimates. A frameset is also available.

For more photos of the X-Night and the rest of Ridley’s 2011 ‘cross lineup, hit ‘more’…

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London’s first ever hill climb TT, held on Swain’s Lane, a 750m kicker on the fringes of Highgate, was a great success yesterday.

An early shower half an hour before the first competitor took to the slope, which starts gently next to Highgate Cemetery but then brutally ramps up to around 20%, left the conditions slippery, but the event passed smoothly and saw lung-busting efforts on featherlight road bikes, fixies and even Bromptons, as the city’s cycling population united in pain.

Winner was Chris Metcalfe of Matlock CC in 1:32.86, closely followed by Germain Burton of De Ver Cycles in 1:33:70 and Dave Clarke of British pro tour team Pendragon-Le Col-Colnago in 1:34:06. It’s a fantastic result by 15-year-old Burton, who beat scores of decent club riders to mark himself out as one to watch for the future.

In the women’s competition, meanwhile, Claire Beaumont of London’s Condor bike shop took top podium position in 2:08:35, ahead of Alexandra Marzec in 2:14:90 and Jo Perriam in 2:17:83.

For a full race report and more fantastic photos by Andy Waterman, click below.

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Watch as London’s mayor (you may recognise him from the closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics) explains London’s plan of 12 bicycle superhighways leading into the city. Characterized with bright blue paint and features to help make cycling safer, the first two superhighways opened this week. Kudos to London and their mayor for making safe alternative transportation a priority! Click here for more information on the routes.

via inhabitat and BikeBiz.

Champery has to be the most exciting downhill race of the season, mainly due to the steepness and difficulty of its track. The track has been rebuilt for this year but is still very steep and technical with huge speeds and massive jumps, including a 35 foot step down in the final section. There are some more videos and gossip after the break. (more…)

Photo by Elizabeth Kreutz via Tonic

Ever wonder about all that bling the cyclists are wearing? When the heat picks up and the jerseys get unzipped, the chains start swinging. Some have charms on them that you can’t make out what they are, but you can’t miss Lance Armstrong’s cross.  As a featured columnist on Tonic, Lance writes about one of the charms on his necklace and why he wears it. Read his poignant article here.

Photo by Mechthold.

To see more Pics of the Day, click here, and to submit your own photo to be shown to the world, go here.

Denver, Colo. – July 22, 2010 – Primal Wear, a leading designer and manufacturer of branded and custom technical cycling clothing, is designing jerseys for national bike advocacy leader Bikes Belong and their new campaign, peopleforbikes.org, which aims to collect the names of one million of the nation’s cyclists in order to show policy makers, the media and the public that bicycling is important and should be supported. Fifty percent of the total jersey retail sales will be donated to the organization and their campaign.

Read on for the rest of the press release, and to see the Bikes Belong Jersey.

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Video interviews from today’s Stage 17 of the 2010 Tour de France with Alberto Contador, Chris Horner and others, plus a Stage 18 preview.

First introduced in 2004, Fox’s Terralogic created a true, physical platform for mountain bike suspension forks. While the design did provide a firm, virtually locked out feel for climbing and sprinting, it suffered from a noticeable delay on initial impact, which translated into a lack of sensitivity on small bump performance and some harshness when first coming into a bumpy section.

In 2007, Fox pulled Terralogic back to the drawing board and removed it from it’s lineup.

Queue up Sea Otter 2010 and Fox debuted a totally redesigned Terralogic internal for their 2011 model forks. The new version has been getting some good remarks from other media, and our initial test rides on it left us very, very impressed. We’re getting a long-term test fork this fall, so we’ll have a full review eventually, but in the meantime we really wanted to know how it worked.

I sat down with two of Fox Racing Shox’s outside tech guys at PressCamp and picked their brains.  Click ‘more’ to see internal diagrams and a full explanation of how Terralogic works…

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Times is tough when you're laid off from Rodale. Just kidding, Jasen's in the chair.

As part of their participation in the Bikerumor Media Cup, the race within a race for us blogger/journo folk at the 2010 Breck Epic, each competitor has been asked to provide a photo or two and share a bit about themselves, mad libs style. So far, you’ve met Rich “Team Dicky” Dillen and Doper Suck’s Brandon Dwight. This week, Jasen Thorpe, former editor at Mountain Bike and current PR flak for Speedplay (which is why he already has a set of their new Syzr pedals that we’re lusting after), Gore Ride-On and others:

Name: Jasen Thorpe
Hometown: Emmaus, Pa.
Breck Epic Race Bike: 2009 Trek Superfly, from the Gary Fisher Collection.  (Did I say that right?)
Bike Spec: Fox F29; Dura Ace 7803/XTR M960 30/39crankset; Speedplay Syzr pedals; Ride On Cables; Stan’s Rims, some other stuff…
Bike Weight: No idea.  I’m not that guy anymore.  I swear it.  I’ve been told that it’s “light for a 29er,” which I think means that it’s heavy, but still fast.

My name’s Jasen and I’ve been riding bikes since I was six or seven years old and racing for the better part of 22 years. I used to race like I meant it, and occasionally did ok. My favorite racing accomplishment is finishing in front of Bicycling Magazine’s Mike Cushionbury in any event while acting like it doesn’t matter to me, because it really pisses him off, even though he tries not to show it.  We’re good like that.

I’m ‘racing’ in the Bikerumor Media Cup because I used to be a media wonk, and race promoter Mike McCormack said that I should join Tyler and the guys.  Tyler was kind enough to play along even though I’m actually a PR lackey now. Unfortunately, Rich Dillen is racing in the Cup too, which sucks because he is likely to show up with a posse of Bad Idea Racing bloglodytes and a ridiculously large moustache which he will use to scare women and children and block aggressively on the singletrack.  (Note to competitors: start in front of Dillen, watch out for his posse.  You will recognize Dillen because he wears arm warmers with a sleeveless jersey and he means it.  And the moustache sets him apart as long as Mike Ferrentino doesn’t show up.)

However, Brandon Dwight is racing in it too, which is good because he killed all of us last year, which really takes off any pressure to perform this year.  (Note to competitors: Brandon is fast.)

Thus far, my training has consisted of riding my bike while holding my breath in an effort to simulate the conditions in Breck.  Those people just have no air in their air.  Damn do they have some good trails, though. In the month leading up to the Breck Epic this August, I’ll be preparing by hanging out in Colorado looking for a place to live (Front Range, not Boulder).  Thinking about moving the family out there this fall… (note to competitors: if you have advice on where I should live and that place has good mountain biking right out the front door, I’m listening)

If I win the Cup, I’ll celebrate by swimming in the Blue River wearing just my Breck Epic belt buckle.  Unless McCormack says that’s a bad idea.  He’s like Breck’s de-facto mayor, or sherriff, or both, or something.  (note to competitors: do not cross McCormack.  Also, do not show up to his kid’s birthday party dressed like a pirate, no matter how well meaning you might be.)

More “action” photos after the break…

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