Daily Cycling Facts 11.01.12

Happy birthday to Scotty "The Bulldozer" Cranmer, BMX-riding winner of several Dew Tours and one gold and two silver X-Games medals. Scotty also holds the honour of being the first rider to ever successfully land a frontflip-tailwhip in competition. He was born in New Jersey in 1987.

Cameron Meyer, who was born in Viveash on this day in 1988, is an Australian cyclist who pursued a very successful career on track as a junior including three World titles and four National titles in 2006. He then began to race on roads as well, winning the Tour of Tasmania in 2007, then the Tour of Japan and a bronze in the World Under-23 Time Trial Championships in 2008. Meyer became National TT Champion at Elite level in 2010, also winning three gold medals at the World Track Championships and another three at the Commonwealth Games. In 2011, he retained his TT title and added the National Madison Championship, two golds in the World Track Cup, two more at the Oceania Championships, one gold and one silver at the World Track Championships and an overall General Classification victory at the Tour Down Under.

On this day in 1891, "Baron" Georges-Eugène Haussmann (he was never ennobled), the architect of many of the Paris thoroughfares along which the Tour de France passes on its final stage each year, died at the age of 80.

Heinz Stucke, cyclo-tourist extraordinaire
(image credit: Anthony Atkielski CC BY-SA 3.0)

Happy birthday to Heinz Stücke, the German touring cyclist who set a new distance record in 1995. Since giving up his job and setting out on his bike in 1962, he has ridden more than 609,000km - almost all of them on the same three-geared, steel-framed bike he began with. The bike was stolen in Portsmouth, UK, in 2006 but discovered the next day dumped in a nearby park.

María Teodora Adoracion Ruano Sanchón, known as Dori Ruano, was born on this day in 1969. A road and track cyclist, she represented Spain at the 1992, 2000 and 2004 Olympics and became World Points Race Champion in 1998.

Other birthdays: Gabriele Altweck (Germany, 1963); Orlando Bates (Barbados, 1950); Konrad Czajkowski (Poland, 1980); Ervin Dér (Hungary, 1956); Gilles Durand (Canada, 1952); Jiří Opavský (Czechoslovakia, 1931); Fritz Ruland (Germany, 1914); Ian Stanley (Jamaica, 1963); Josef Volf (Czechoslovakia, 1939); Wol Yamamoto (Guam, 1974).