Daily Cycling Facts 23.11.11

Gosta Pettersson
(image credit: Bunsesarchiv CC BY-SA 3.0)

Today is the anniversary of the death of Giovanni Brunero, winner of the Giro d'Italia in 1921, 1922 and 1926. He also won the Giro di Lombardia twice, Milan-San Remo once and a stage of the Tour de France (1924). He was 39 when he died in 1934.

Gösta Pettersson
Gösta Pettersson born on this day 1940 in Alingsås, Sweden, became the first - and, so far - the only Swede to have won the Giro d'Italia when he completed the 3,621km race in 97h24'04" and held the leader's maglia rosa jersey from Stage 18 to the finish. The previous year, he had come 3rd in the Tour de France.

With his brothers Erik, Sture and Tomas (known as the Fåglum Brothers for reasons of some Swedish naming convention), he would win the World Amateur Team Time Trial Championship three times, a silver medal at the 1968 Olympics and the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal awarded annually to the performance judged to have been the most important by a Swedish sportsman or sportswoman. Individually, he would win the Tour de Romandie, Coppa Sabatini, Giro dell'Appennino and the Giro delle Marche.

After his Giro win, Pettersson managed 7th place and a stage win in the 1973 Tour de Suisse before improving it to 2nd overall the next year. Then, like so many cyclists before and since, he faded away in retirement and nothing is known of his life since.

Peter Drobach Snr.

Peter Drobach Snr., an American cyclist who enjoyed success in six-day track racing, was born on this day in 1890. His forst major win came at the Six Days of Buffalo in 1910, and he would win the same event in 1913 along with the Six Days of Newark and Indianapolis. In retirement, Drobach made a living repairing and sharpening tools, cashing in on the popularity of track racing at the time when his fame attracted customers. He built the firm up into a construction equipment hire business which is still operating and still independent to this day.

Nathan O'Neill
Nathan O'Neill, born in Sydney on this day in 1974, began cycling at the age of 15 when a school friend asked him to accompany him to a 16km race - and he won. Before long, he was racing at Junior level in the National Track Championships and was then selected Oceania Cycling Championships in 1995, winning a bronze medal even though he'd entered the event with a broken pelvis. By 2006, he was representing his nation in the Commonwealth Games and won a gold medal for the time trial in 2006 at Melbourne.

He became involved in a complicated doping case a year later after providing a sample that tested positive for Phentermine, an appetite suppressant listed as a controlled substance in Australia and several other nations for its amphetamine-like effects on the body (that same year, he would break a hip when his car rolled over in a crash). O'Neill admitted using the drug and said that he had done so off-season (off-season use is not banned by anti-doping agencies, national federations or the UCI) and that the drug had remained in his system for longer than expected. He was sacked by his HealthNet team and then, in June the next year, the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) declared that he would receive a 15-month ban for failing to declare that he had used the medicine, stopping short of a two-year ban as there was "no significant negligence" demonstrated by the rider, ie no evidence that he had used to drug to gain a competitive advantage.

The UCI, World Anti-Doping Agency and Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority made a joint appeal to the CAS, saying that while there was no evidence of significant negligence O'Neill had also not proved that he had not used Phentermine for illicit purposes. CAS then decided that, even if the rider had used the drug during the off-season, he had done so because he felt he would not be competitive when the next season began without it.  As a result, the ban was extended to two years.


Happy birthday to Liu Ying, the Chinese cross-country mountain bike rider who became World Champion in 2007. She's 26 today.

Raymond Castilloux, born on this day in 1934 in Quebec, is one of the very many cyclists who came to the sport after riding a bike as part of a summer fitness regime for speed skating. Having lived in the USA since he was 14, he later took US citizenship and represented his adopted country in the 1964 Olympic Road Race, but was unable to finish the course.

Miyataka Shimizu

Miyataka Shimizu, born in Saitama, Japan on this day in 1981, turned professional in 2004 after graduating from the National Institute of Sports and Fitness. He won Paris–Corrèze in 2008, becoming one of the very first Japanese riders to achieve race success in Europe and went on to win the Tour de Martinique in the Caribbean and the Tour de Hokkaido in Japan.

Happy birthday Nathan O'Neill, seven-time Australian Time Trial Champion prior to a suspension after testing positive for the appetite suppressant Phentermine in 2007.

Thomas Russell "Nick" Carter, silver medallist in the Road Race event at the 1950 Commonwealth Games and a competitor in the 1948 London Olympics, died on this day in 2003. He was 79.

Other births: Thierry Détant (Netherlands, 1965); Albert Micallef (Malta, 1958); Gösta Pettersson (Sweden, 1940); Robyn Wong (New Zealand, 1970); Noël Soetaert (Belgium 1949); Aavo Pikkuus (Soviet Union, 1954); Miloš Hrazdíra (Czechoslovakia, 1945, died 1990); Frans Mintjens (Belgium, 1946); Robert Sassone (France, 1978).