Daily Cycling Facts 10.12.11

Hannah Mayho, born this day in 1990, was winner of the National Under-16 Pursuit and Circuit Race in 2006, Junior Pursuit and Road Race in 2007 and Junior Pursuit in 2008. In 2011, having returned to racing after her leg was broken in a collision with a car in 2010, she came third in the 10 mile Junior National Time Trial Championship.

Retired Norwegian mountain biker and triathlete Rune Høydahl was born on this day in 1969. The only mountain biker to have been World Champion in both downhill and cross country, Rune achieved eleven World Champion titles in total, winning five consecutively, and represented his nation twice in the Olympics. He won the  2004 Norseman Triathlon (equal distances to Ironman competitions) after he'd retired. Having made wise use of his winnings, he now runs his own professional mountain bike team, Etto-Høydahl.

Paolo Longo Borghini

Paolo Longo Borghini, Italian winner of the 2006 GP Nobili Rubinetterie and currently riding with Liquigas-Cannondale, was born today in 1980.

German track cyclist Rudi Mirke, who was born on the 16th of June in 1920, died at the Funkturm Track on this day during the Six Days of Berlin event in 1951. Two years previously, Mirke had played himself in the film Um eine Nasenlänge ("To a Nose").

"Citizen" Karl Drais
Today marks the death in 1851 of Baron Karl Drais, inventor of the Laufmaschine ("running machine") - a device featuring two wheels, one behind the other and connected by a wooden bean fitted with a seat so that it could be pushed along the ground using the feet. Known later as the Draisienne or velocipede, it is credited as being the first bicycle.

Drais aboard his Laufmaschine

Curiously, we owe thanks for Drais' invention to a volcano - Mount Tambora in Indonesia. When Tambora erupted in 1815, following a series of smaller eruptions, it ejected so much dust into the atmosphere that global temperatures dropped by an average of as much as 0.7C and harvests failed throughout the Northern Hemisphere in what became known as The Year Without A Summer. What little food there was had to go to starving populations, so horses went unfed and died in huge numbers - Drais hoped to find a means of transportation to replace them.

Drais was, by any standards, a remarkable man for his time and in 1848 he publicly renounced his nobility, stating that he wished to be known as Citizen Karl Drais in support of the French Revolution. The Prussian government viciously suppressed a revolution of their own the following year and, viewing Drais as an enemy of the establishment, seized his pension and belongings to assist in covering the costs of preventing unrest. He died destitute two years later.
Other birthdays: John Bettison (Great Britain, 1940); Sergio Ghisalberti (Italy, 1979); Enrico Brusoni (Italy, 1878, died 1949); Ladislav Fouček (Czechoslovakia, 1930, died 1974); Viktor Klimov (USSR, 1964); David Miranda (El Salvador, 1942); Vitali Petrakov (USSR, 1954); Hiroshi Yamao (Japan, 1943).