Editor’s Note [Updated December 23rd, 2025]

Update December 23rd, 2025

Five days ago we were alerted to a concern of plagiarism on Velo. We investigated immediately, the plagiarized material was removed, and the responsible employee is no longer employed by Velo.

We have since conducted a thorough investigation, and found issues with three stories:

1. The story “This Affordable Titanium Gravel Bike Bests Carbon Competition in One Key Way” failed to meet our editorial standards for originality, and directly plagiarized James Huang of N-1. The plagiarized sections were removed and an editor’s note has been added. We have left the story up for transparency, and have added a link to the N-1 story.
2. The story “LeBron James’s Latest Partnership is a New… Bike?” failed to meet our editorial standards for originality, and directly plagiarized Cycling Weekly. The plagiarized sentence was removed and an editor’s note has been added. We have left the story up for transparency, and have added a link to the Cycling Weekly story.
3. The story “Cyclist Stabbed During Confrontation with Tesla Driver Near Golden Gate Bridge” failed to disclose significant AI contributions. An editor’s note has been added, and we have left the story up for transparency.

We appreciate the accountability this community brings, and we are grateful to James Huang for originally bringing the issue to our attention. We apologize to James Huang at N-1, the editors at Cycling Weekly, and to the cycling community at large.

What happens next?

• The employee responsible is no longer employed at Velo.
• We continue our efforts to audit that employee’s work, and will update this story if there are further findings.
• We remain committed to our Editorial Guidelines and AI policies, which are in place to prevent breaches of trust.

We are committed to doing the right thing. This painful chapter is certainly a setback, but we will continue to show up and do the work. We are going to do our best to earn the trust of both readers and industry as we do that work.

Thank you,

The Velo Team

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Original Story: December 20th, 2025

To our community:

I took the helm at Velo this year with the goal of creating the most trustworthy, valuable, and interesting road and gravel publication in the industry. We are privileged to do this work, and I do not take this mandate lightly.

Good journalism relies on a vibrant ecosystem of writers, testers, and creators, and is built on a foundation of trust. We respect our industry peers, and partners, and we have strict editorial guidelines in place to ensure a strong foundation. Because we value your trust, we must be transparent when we fall short.

We recently confirmed that several stories published on our site failed to meet our editorial standards for originality, which state that plagiarism in any form is unacceptable. As a result of our internal investigation, the employee responsible for this breach is no longer employed by Velo.

Rather than removing the content and obscuring the error, we have updated the articles with an editor’s note so the record remains transparent.

We appreciate the accountability the cycling community brings. The actions we took are a critical step in ensuring Velo‘s work remains of the highest quality.

Our team is committed to journalistic integrity through transparency and honest work.

Yours,
Will Tracy
Managing Editor, Velo