As with other sports, the growth in popularity of cycling made hundreds of cycling magazines pop-out in the clear sky, like mushrooms after a summer rain. Rising exponentially in numbers with each passing year, cycling magazines offer a great insight on the latest gear, the latest bikes, tracks and tours. Some of them stood out from the group and are now traditional market leaders in this area. It’s these cycling magazines that we’ll talk about in the following article.
Procycling is arguably the World’s greatest cycling magazine (as the sub-title on each number states). Produced by Future Publishing, Procycling was launched in April 1999 and by now has leading magazines in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, France and Italy (so basically in the hot spots of World cycling). To see just how fast they rose from mediocrity to become one of the greatest cycling magazines of today, it’s suffice to say that the editorial team of Procycling is producing the UK version of the “Official Guide to the Tour de France” with each passing Tour.
With each number, the cycling magazine presents the latest and hottest cycling gear models, profiles on upcoming and establish stars from cycling and mountain biking, cycling performance tips and tricks, training articles, track presentations and basically everything that the cycling world has to offer. Besides their monthly magazine, Procycling also has a very complex and informative website where you can read the latest cycling news, shop for cycling gear and bikes, subscribe for the actual magazine and so forth.
Next up is another successful magazine with a good tradition in the cycling world, namely Bicycling. Bicycling is a monthly magazine produced in both the United States and Canada offering a large combination of interviews, cycling equipment reviews and comparisons, track and race reports, training methods, event coverage, a section dedicated to resolving delicate bike breakdowns and a series of tips and tricks on several subjects each number. If you’re looking for the movers and shakers in cycling, this is the magazine for you. Their website offers an online shop where you can get the gear you need, plus an online subscription method and a forum where thousands of readers or simply cycling fans gather up and discuss several issues ranging from the latest gear to disputes over who the number 1 professional cyclist of the moment is. If you live in the United States or Canada, it’s definitely something worth checking out.
Bike magazine stands out for having a wilder, nonconformist style than the other 2 cycling magazines mentioned above. The writing style used in Bike articles is more youthful, filled with slang and humor. And whereas Bicycling and Procycling tend to focus more on road cycling, Bike gives mountain biking and extreme biking their fair share of attention. Their official site is updated daily with the latest news in the field and although focusing on bikes and cycling, they offer links to surfing, skating, climbing, canoeing and other similar sports. Their subscription offer is pretty good, you can get 12 numbers of Bike magazine delivered to your door for 1 year, for only $11.97 which is cheap given the quality of this magazine.
Last but not least, Canadian based Pedal magazine is hugely popular not only in their birthplace, but also in the United States. Pedal magazine was established in 1986, being one of the oldest publications that focuses on cycling only. At first, the publication was only for the Niagara region however in 1989 it was already covering all of Canada and was considered Canada’s national cycling magazine.
Some of the stuff you’ll find in pedal include national and international event coverage (both mountain and road cycling events), interviews with some of the world’s most popular cyclists, a Touring section where you can read about some of the most exotic trips one could take on his bike, product reviews covering head-to-head product comparisons, new products and so forth, bike tests, a complete calendar of the most important events across Canada and many more.
Of course, there are dozens of cycling magazines out there that cover interesting subjects and have numerous fans across the globe, however we think the above mentioned 4 are exponential for their diverse style, format and content.
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