The Tour, being the greatest race on the cycling calendar and having been in existence for more than a century, has given rise to numerous traditions and unspoken rules, some shared with other races and some unique to this one. Riders who ignore them do so at their peril, as Coccolo discovered when he decided that he'd grab the opportunity to attack when the peloton took what cyclists like to term a nature break. This was not the first time the rider, born on this day in 1957, had done such a thing and the peloton were not best pleased.
Later on in the same stage, Coccolo needed to take a comfort break of his own. While he was thus engaged in the roadside bushes, two riders whose names have since been forgotten (probably immediately - and deliberately, so they wouldn't be penalised by judges) sneaked up and wheeled his bike away with them before throwing it in a ditch a couple of kilometres up the road. Coccolo was forced to wait five minutes for a Jobo-Spidel team car to collect him, but by this time his managers Yves Gobert and Guy Faubert had heard what had happened. They too were not pleased with how their rider had behaved. Deciding that he hadn't been punished enough, they made him sit on the car's bonnet as they drove him to his bike. He finished the race second to last overall and left the team soon afterwards, never riding in the Tour again. (For another fun tale of Tour misadventure, check back here tomorrow!)
1996 Canadian National Road Race Champion Sue Palmer-Komar was born on this day in 1967 in Hamilton. Ontario. Sue had come 2nd in the race in 1992 and 1995, also finishing 2nd in the National Time Trial Championship race, then came 3d in 1997 before taking up mountain biking with the Haro team for a while but enjoyed little success in the discipline. She returned to road cycling with the Jane's Cosmetic team in 2001 and soon began achieving good results again, taking a silver medal at the 2002 Commonwealth Games and then a bronze at the Nationals and 2nd place at the Waalse Pijl a year later. In 2004, she won both the Circuit National Féminin de Saint-Amand-Montrond and the National Time Trial Championship, retaining the title for a second year in 2005. In 2006 she won two stages and the General Classification at the Green Mountain Stagerace before moving on to Colavita in 2007. Since then, her results have not been as impressive and, after a year with them, she left for Advil-Chapstick.
José Luis Rubiera
José Luis Rubiera, the now retired cyclist from Gijón in Spain, was born on this day in 1973. His first win as a professional was in no less a race than the 1997 Giro d'Italia when he was first over the line after Stage 19, coming a very respectable 10th overall two days later when the race drew to a close. He came 6th overall in the 1999 Vuelta a Espana, then 8th in the following year's Giro. He was 7th in the 2001 Vuelta, also winning the King of the Mountains classification at the Vuelta a Burgos, finishing the same race in 2nd place for 2002. His first taste of Tour de France success came the next year when his US Postal team won the Stage 4 Team Time Trial, a feat they would repeat the following two years. He managed 3rd in the 2006 Vuelta a Castilla y León, a stage win at the 2007 Tour of Qinghai Lake and another at the 2007 Vuelta a Murcia, then rounded off his career with 10th place at the 2009 Tour of California and 2010 Vuelta a Castilla y León.
 |
| Rubiera (image credit: YellowMonkey/Binguyen CC BY-SA 3.0) |
Rubiera is also unusual in professional racing on account of his education - he earned an degree in engineering in 2004 (unusual in men's professional racing at any rate, degrees and even doctorates are fairly common in the women's peloton), even though he raced three Grand Tours while studying. His skill on the bike, intelligence and likable personality ensured he was both respected and popular among other the riders who elected him as their deputy on the UCI ProTour Council.
Sprint specialist Robert Förster was born today in 1978 in Markkleeberg, Germany. He turned professional in 2001 and straight away did well in stage races, but he really made his mark in 2006 when he won Stage 21 at the Giro d'Italia and Stage 15 at the Vuelta a Espana while riding with the Gerolsteiner team. The next year, he won two stages at the Giro. He added two more stage wins in the 2008 Volta ao Algarve and another at the 2009 Tour of Turkey, then had a quieter 2010. In 2011, he won stages at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, Vuelta a Asturias, another at the Tour of Langkawi and two at the Nature Valley Grand Prix while racing with UnitedHealthcare.
Few people outside the Spanish racing scene now remember Enrique Martinez Heredia, who was born on this day in 1953 in the little town of Huesa, yet he was a name to be reckoned with during his short professional career lasting from the late 1970s to early 1980s. He first came to the world's attention by winning the 1974 Tour de l'Avenir, a race for amateurs that frequently serves to reveal future greats, then won the Volta a Catalunya and the Youth Classification at the Tour de France in 1976. . His future Tour de France results were never quite as good, the highlight of his career as a Tourist coming when he finished 29th in Stage 8 1977, but he became National Champion in 1978 and won seven more races and numerous stages before retiring at the end of the 1983 season.
Other births: Hugh Porter (Great Britain, 1940); Juris Silovs (Latvia, 1973); José Chacón (Venezuela, 1977); Inga Thompson-Benedict (USA, 1964); Gorazd Štangelj (Slovenia, 1973).
No comments:
Post a Comment