Daily Cycling Facts 23.02.2013

Paris-Roubaix was run on this day in 1913, the earliest calendar date in the long history of the race. With exception of two stages at that year's Tour de France and two more in the 1914 Tour, it was the last race ever won by Luxembourg's François Faber - two years later, he was killed in the trenches of the First World War as he attempted to rescue an injured comrade from No Man's Land.

On this day in 1898 in France, author Émile Zola was imprisoned for writing J'Accuse, an open letter in which he (with good reason) accused the French government of antisemitism in the Dreyfus Affair - which would, in  roundabout way, lead to the inauguration of the Tour de France. Henri Desgrange, the first director of the Tour, was an enormous admirer of Zola and tried to emulate his skill in his own work - thus suggesting that Desgrange was probably not an antisemite himself, even though he was an ardent anti-Dreyfusard.

Theo Middelkamp

Theofiel Middelkamp was born on this day in 1914 in Nieuw-Namen, Netherlands. He was a keen footballer in his youth and had oped to make some sort of living from it, but football was played only as an amateur sport on the Netherlands at the time and he apparently wasn't good enough at it to be able to find a contrct with a professional foreign team. Being an athletic lad, he instead looked to cycling as a career and in 1936 he bcame the first Dutch rider to win a stage at the Tour de France.

He became National Road Race Amateur Champion in 1934 but remained an independent for almost two years before turning professional with the Belgian Van Hauwaert team in 1936 and it was with them that he first entered the Tour. Having spent all his life in one of the flattest parts of the Netherlands, he had never seen a hill before let alone a mountain - yet he won Stage 7 from Aix-les-Bains to Grenoble, one of the most difficult mountain stages of that year's parcours, and came 23rd on the overall General Classification. He won a bronze medal in the National Championships that same year.

In 1938, he became National Champion and entered the Tour for a second time. This time he won Stage 7 and came 43rd overall, winning 8,000 francs. This was far less than he could win in the races of Flanders and he decided that he would not compete in future Tours, telling reporters "I cannot live on fame and honour." During the Second World War be became a smuggler, carrying goods across the borders of Nazi-occupied countries until he was caught and imprisoned for several months.

The National Championship was held in 1943 despite the Occupation, and Middelkamp won it - as he would again in 1945, then he became the first Dutch World Road Race Champion in 1947. The following years brought some 45 podium finishes before he retired and bought a bar in 1951. For a great many years and for reasons unknown, he refused to talk about his cycling career after he'd retired and would become angry with any cyclist who tracked down his bar and tried to pick his brains. Finally, in 2003, whatever had caused him to want to forget it all was far enough in the past and he discussed his remarkable stage win that had taken place 67 years previously. He was 91 when he died in 2005.

Marc Wauters
Marc Wauters, born in Hasselt, Belgium on this day in 1969, won the Junior Time Trial event at his National Championships in 1987 and then set about making a good name for himself before being offered his first professional contract with Lotto-Superclub in 1991. He won a series of Belgian and Dutch races on the following years with many observers remarking that he showed real promise for the future.

Then, for no reason, he stopped winning - he had no victories at all in the 1997 and 1998 seasons. His form was as good as it had ever been, he didn't have any more crashes than usual and there wasn't an unbeatable rival in the races he entered. It seems to have been purely coincidental, but must have bothered him intensely. Thankfully, the wins started coming in again in 1999 with an early season victory at the GP Eddy Merckx, closely followed by Paris-Tours, the Tour of Britain (then called the Prudential Tour) and the Tour de Luxembourg. 2000 and 2001 continued in the same way, including a win for Stage 2 at the 2001 Tour de France and then he won the National Time Trial Championships in 2002 and 2003. He won silver fpr the National Road Race Championship in 2004, then won back the National Time Trial title a year later and continued to achieve good results until his retirement in 2006.

Andrea Moletta
Born on this day in 1973 in Citadella, Italy, Andrea Moletta became involved in a mysterious doping incident during the 2008 Giro d'Italia when he was riding with the Gerolsteiner team. Moletta's father was one of three passengers in a car stopped by police at the race as part of an ongoing investigation into doping at Padua gyms and was discovered to be in possession of 82 packets of Viagra, a syringe hidden inside a toothpaste tube and a portable fridge containing unidentified fluids.

Andrea "Actually, That's The Baguette I'm Having
For Lunch" Moletta
(image credit: PCM Daily)

Viagra - not officially recognised as having any physical effects likely to be of much during a bike race (though some reports had claimed it improved athletic performance at altitudes greater than any reached on any Grand Tour) and, due to the effects it does have, being a tricky one to hide if your job requires you to wear very tight lycra shorts - was not banned under UCI or WADA rules, but a rumour doing the rounds claimed that riders had been taking it to increase their aggression which served to increase suspicion, as did those mysterious fluids. The hidden syringe, of course, was the most damning of all.

Gerolsteiner suspended the rider pending further investogation. The fluids turned out to be an intravenously-injected substance known as Lutelef, a drug that could be used in a virtually undetectable blood doping technique but also came with a host of common side effects including a "painful, prolonged erection," leading to its use in very tiny quantities in so-called "non-prescription blue pills" used as an alternative to Viagra (generally by men who confuse ability to achieve an erection with status and thus feel ashamed to admit impotence to their doctor).

The investigation could find no suggestion that Moletta had been using Viagra, Lutelef or any other drug, so he was cleared of all suspicion. His father continues to deny that the drugs were to be used for nefarious means and no link to any doping programme was ever found. Nor was anybody, perhaps unwilling to risk damaging the Italian Stallion stereotype, willing to come forward and admit that they had a legitimate use for 82 packets of Viagra and an extremely questionable hormone should the Viagra not work its magic. To this day, nobody knows who owned the drugs, nor for whom they were intended.

Roger Rivière, World Champion

Roger Rivière
Roger Rivière, born in St-Etienne this day in 1936, was a highly talented track cyclist who, at the age of just 19, beat Jacques Anquetil in the National Pursuit Championships at the Parc des Princes. In 1957, he became World Pursuit Champion and set a new Hour Record at 46.923km along with a new World 10km record at 12'31.8". He repeated this success the following year when he beat the 10km time by 9", set a new World 20km record at 25'15" then beat it with 24'50.6" and another new Hour Record at 47.364km - which remained intact for the next nine years. He then took the World Pursuit Champion title again in 1959.

Around 1956, he had started to perform well on the road too and won the Tour d'Europe. In 1959, he finished the Vuelta a Espana in 6th place overall and three stage wins and the Tour de France in 4th with two stage wins, leaving him among the favourites for General Classification success at the 1960 Tour. However, tragedy struck during Stage 14 when he attempted to follow the Italian rider Gastone Nencini down the difficult descent of the Col de Perjuret, despite Raphaël Géminiani's warning that "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill would be if you had a death wish."

Just a short way into the descent, he lost control and hit a small wall at the side of the road, plunging over it into a ravine. Spectators and officials present at the scene slowly peered over, expecting to see a mangled corpse if they could see any trace of the rider at all. Precisely how far he fell is not known, eyewitness reports vary from 10 to 20 metres, but his fall had been broken by scrawny bushes and he was both alive and conscious. The helicopter was unable to land (the writer Antoine Blondin said that it "turned above us in the way that vultures circle"), delaying the time before he could receive medical treatment - and when he was eventually pulled out, it was soon discovered that his spine was broken. When Nencini received his bouquet for winning the stage, he made arrangements for it to be given to his rival in hospital.

Rivière, his spine broken, is carried from the ravine

Rivière dishonoured himself somewhat a short while later by blaming his mechanic, saying that his brakes had either not been set up properly and had failed or that there had been oil on the wheel rims and/or brake pads. However, further investigation revealed that his brakes were in fact working perfectly and were not contaminated with oil. Then, doctors revealed that they had found a large amount of painkillers in the pockets of the rider's jersey and, based on what they'd seen when he was brought to the hospital, concluded that he had probably taken so many of them that he'd been incapable of reacting quickly enough to prevent the accident. Soon, he confessed; admitting that he was swallowing "thousands" of pills each year and that he'd been doping throughout his career.

Even a man who tries to blame others for his own mistake doesn't deserve the outcome that befell Rivière, though. He never recovered from his injuries and was left an 80% paraplegic, confined for the rest of his life to a wheelchair. He spent the proceeds of his career on a bar and restaurant in St-Etienne which he renamed Le Vigorelli after the velodrome where he had set his world records, but the venture failed and left him with little. Then he opened a garage, but that too failed so he tried his luck with a holiday camp. When that failed, he was left with nothing. He died soon afterwards of throat cancer, aged just 40. "Rivière, who succeeded at the impossible, found the possible more difficult," said the writer Olivier Dazat.

Gustav-Adolf Schur
Täve Schur, as he became known, was born on this day in 1931 in Heyrothsberge, a town that would become part of East Germany after the Second World War. He began cycling in 1950 and won races immediately, including six major victories during his first two years of riding competitively. In 1954, he became Amateur National Road Race Champion, a title he would win for a second time three years later and again in 1958, 1959, 1960 and 1961 - and in 1959, he was Amateur World Champion too, thus becoming the first East German to hold the title just as he had been the first East German to win the Peace Race in 1955 (which he won again in 1959).

Täve Schur
(it was the Sixties, alright?)

Like Jens Voigt, also an East German, Schur was more popular for his personality than his palmares and earned the adoration of the fans in 1960 when he threw away an almost guaranteed victory at the World Championships to allow his team mate Bernhard Eckstein to win. 25 years after retiring, he was voted the best-loved East German athlete of all time - having won the East German Sports Personality of the Year Award every year from 1953 to 1961. He was a member of the East German Parliament for 31 years between 1959 and 1990, somehow finding time between 1955 and 1963 alongside his racing and his political duties to qualify as a rugby coach.

He retained his socialist politics in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and joined the PDS party, which has campaigned against racism, in support of the legalisation of same-sex marriage and for greater rights and welfare for immigrants; all causes that increasingly came under attack as the old Eastern Bloc swung sharply to the right as a reaction to the dark days of Soviet-style Communism. With that agenda, he sat as a member of the Bundestag parliament for four years from 1998. In recognition of a lifetime of achievement, an asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter was named (38976) Täve in his honour. The bike shop he opened in 1992 in Madgeburg is still in business, though now being run by his son, and is sufficiently successful to sponsor the locally-based Team Täves Radladen.

Henry John Lawson, known as Harry, was born on this day in 1852 in London. At the age of 15 he was accepted for a two-year apprenticeship at an iron foundry, then moved with his family to Brighton in 1873 and found work in a bicycle shop. With his employer, a man named James Likeman, he produced a design for a bike driven by a system of levers and they were awarded a patent on it. Lawson then went on to design many other bicycles in the same decade including one described as the "first authentic design of safety bicycle employing chain-drive to the rear wheel which was actually made," thus earning him the honour - shared with John Kemp Starley (and, according to some histories, various others) - of being named as the inventor of the the modern bike.

Arthur Charles Jeston Richardson
Born in Brazil in this day in 1872, Arthur Charles Jeston Richardson moved with his family to Australia during childhood and became a mining engineer, also making a name for himself as a bushman. He became famous with a number of Australian cycling firsts, including becoming the first man to "cycle" (in fact, a large part of the journey was completed on foot as he was forced to carry his bike over sand dunes) from Coolgardie in the west to Adelaide in the south-east via the Nullabor Desert, which he described as having been "about 1000 degrees in the shade." The journey, some 2,000km long, took him 31 days.

Three years later, he set out from Perth on the 5th of June in an attempt to complete a circuit of the country in a shorter time than a two-man team who had set out from Brisbane. The journey was extremely had-going with heavy rains preventing him from riding in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, where he also encountered what he termed "hostile blacks." He finished before the rival team and another solo rider, ending the 18,507km trek on the 4th of February 1900.

Two months later, he joined the Army and was posted to the South African War where his bike skills saw him put into use as a dispatch rider. He arrived in Mozambique on the 18th of April 1900 but had been discharged by June with a broken arm. He then traveled to West Africa before finding his way back to outh America where he again worked as a mining engineer in Chile and married a woman named Gwendolin Bedwell who gave birth to a son. Little is known of what happened to him after his days in the Army, but he fought again in the First World War and was injured so badly he spent two years in a hospital in Rouen, France.

Once recovered he joined his wife who was waiting in England and found more work as an engineer . However, it didn't last and the couple divorced, possibly as a result of the serious mental health issues he suffered after the War. He later married again, this time to a Rita Betsy Elliott-Druiff. On the 3rd of April 1939, police discovered his corpse lying next to that of his wife at their home in Scarborough. He had shot her, then himself.

Other cyclists born on this day: Eddy Vanhaerens (Belgium, 1954); András Baranyecz (Hungary, 1946, died 2010); Corrado Ardizzoni (Italy, 1916, died 1980); Dimitrios Georgalis (Greece, 1974); Jörg Müller (Switzerland, 1961); Nikolay Gorelov (USSR, 1948); Fernando Sierra (Colombia, 1966); Kim Yong-Mi (South Korea, 1976); Didier Pasgrimaud (France, 1966); David George (South Africa, 1976); Nicolas Morn (Luxembourg, 1932, died 1997); Karl Neumer (Germany, 1887, died 1984); Gavin Stevens (New Zealand, 1960); José Carlos de Lima (Brazil, 1955).

Daily Cycling Facts 22.02.2013

Laurence Leboucher
(image credit: Le Blog du Lutin d'Ecouves)

Laurence Leboucher, a cyclo cross and mountain bike champion, was born in Alençon, France on this day in 1972. Leboucher won both the World Cross Country Mountain Bike and European Cyclo Cross Championships in 1998, retaining the cyclo cross title for another two years. She then won the World Cyclo Cross Champion title in 2002 and 2004, winning a bronze medal in the event in 2003 and a silver in the National Championships in 2005. She then became National Champion in both disciplines in 2006, keeping the mountain bike title in 2007 and again won the National Cyclo Cross Champion in 2008, also taking a bronze at the World Championships.

Francis Pelissier
Francis Pelissier died on this day in 1959. Born in Paris on the 13th of June 1894, he was the younger brother of Tour winner Henri and older brother of multiple National Cyclo Cross Champion Charles and with regards to talent, he was right in the middle again with a little of Henri's skill on the road and a little of Charles' skill off it.

This reflected in his palmares, which include a silver medal at the National Cyclo Cross Championships in 1914, winning Stage 3 at the 1919 Tour de France and Stage 1 in 1927 when he wore the yellow jersey for five days before becoming the first rider in history to abandon the race while leading it, a National Road Race Championship and Paris-Tours in 1921, Bordeaux-Paris in 1922, a second National Championship in 1923 and a third the next year, along with a second Bordeaux-Paris and then the Critérium International de Cyclo-cross in 1926, a silver medal in the 1931 National Road Race Championships, 2nd place in Stage 22 of the 1931 Tour and 3rd in Stage 18a four years later.

According to legend - never proved nor disproved - Francis ran a bike shop belonging to Evelyn Hamilton in London during the Second World War. You can read more about that, along with more on the remarkable Hamilton and what she may have been doing during the War, by clicking here.

Philippe Gaumont
(image credit: Ralf Seger
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Philippe Gaumont
Philippe Gaumont, born in Amiens, France on this day in 1973, won a bronze medal at the 1992 Olympics and first turned professional with Castorama in 1994, then moved to GAN and was twice caught by anti-doping tests that revealed traces of the anabolic steroid Nandralone in 1996. A year later he joined Cofidis, then provided two test samples that again proved positive for Nandralone in 1998 - however, the case was dismissed on a technicality.

Then in 1999, as part of the follow-up investigation into Festina Affair that began with the arrest of Willy Voets when he was found in possession of a car full of drugs, Gaumont failed another test which this time revealed amphetamine use. The full investigation, which shook cycling to its very core and ended the careers of numerous riders, managers, soigneurs and doctors, lasted for many years with Gaumont facing trial in 2004. In court, he made what he says was a full confession and revealed that he believed as many as 95% of
riders were doping in 1998. He also explained why, and how.

Many see Gaumont's confession as a shameful attempt to save his own skin by implicating others, as it may have been. However, the details he provided both during the investigation are both valuable and enlightening, as are those to be found in Prisonnier du dopage, "Prisoner of Doping," a book he wrote following the announcement of his retirement in the wake of the investigation. In it, he argues that it is not possible for any rider to win a Tour de France without doping and reveals numerous techniques employed by riders to both obtain drugs in the first place and then hide their use, such as his claim that he and others would rub their scrotums with coarse salt to mimic the effects of saddle sores and be prescribed corticosteroid (a steroid hormone) skin cream. Whilst the use of the cream, commonly known as corticoid cream or lotion, is not illegal in competition, its use is strictly controlled and riders must declare when they are using it and provide solid medical reasons for doing so because anti-doping tests do not reveal the method by which the steroid entered the body. Thus, riders would fake saddle soreness symptoms in order to obtain permission to use the cream which could then be used to explain positive results caused by much more powerful - and illegal - steroid injections.

Romain Maes
Romain Maes, who was not related to Sylvère Maes against whom he frequently competed, was born on the 18th of August in 1913 and died on this day in 1983. He is primarily remembered as the winner of the 1935 Tour de France.

Maes turned professional in 1933 and won the Omloop van het Westen a short while later. He entered the Tour for the first time the following year, finishing two stages in 2nd place which looked set to lave him in a good position for a decent overall result, but then crashed badly during Stage 10 and was taken to hospital. 1935 was a better year right from the start - he started the race in the yellow jersey and kept it throughout, eventually winning with an advantage of almost 18 minutes on Amborogio Morelli in 2nd place, though his victory was made far easier with the departure of Antonin Magne who had collided with a car in Stage 7 - the same stage in which Francisco Cepeda crashed into a ravine, thus becoming the first rider to die during a Tour stage (Adolphe Helière had died on the Tour 25 years earlier, but during a rest day) - and a railway crossing that held up a chasing pack, permitting him to build up a one minute lead, didn't hurt either; although he lost his advantage to several punctures the next day. His win brought to a close a six-year series of French wins, guaranteeing him a hero's welcome when he got home to Belgium.

In the years immediately after his win, Maes would lose races through bad luck. The first was Paris-Roubaix in 1936, when he was clearly seen to have been the first rider to finish. However, the race judge declared that Georges Speicher (a French rider, coincidentally) had been first across. For a while, the crowd were angry and shouted insults, but just as rapidly they calmed down again and the declared result remained intact - he would never again win an important race. In 1938 he was leading Paris-Brussels with a 100m gap as the race entered the final 0.5km - more than enough to win. However, he rode into the velodrome where the race finished, rolled over the line and stopped - he'd completely forgotten that he needed to complete a lap, which gave Marcel Kint the opportunity he needed to take the lead and win.

Jean Bobet

Jean Bobet, younger brother of three-time Tour de France winner Lousion, was born in Saint-Méen-le-Grand, France on this day in 1930. Often, cycling talent runs in families and is shared fairly equally - as has been the case with the Pelissiers, the Velits, the Garins and the Schlecks - but in this instance it was not and Jean was far less successful than his brother with 14th place overall in the 1955 Tour de France being his most notable Grand Tour result. He did, however, achieve some good results in other races and was World Student Champion in 1949, going on to win the Grand Prix d'Europe in 1953 and Paris-Nice in 1955. In retirement he became a journalist and was far more successful at it, writing for L'Equip and Le Monde. He also became head of sports reporting at Radio Luxembourg and, as such, will have been the voice that introduced two generations of British fans to the Tour de France since the station was for many years the only Tour news outlet available to them. Now in his 80s, he still appears on French television to comment on the race.

Evert Dolman
Evert "Eef" Dolman, born in Rotterdam on this day in 1946, was an Olympic gold medalist who won the 10km Time Trial at the 1964 Games and became World Road Race Champion two years later. He won the National Championship in 1967 and 1968, but was stripped of the earlier title after he was shown to have doped during the event. His last major victory was the Tour of Flanders in 1971.

Dolman was active during the years before and after Tom Simpson's death, the event which finally persuaded professional cycling that it needed to start listening to experts such as the Tour's official doctor Pierre Dumas who had been warning for several years that there was a real problem and that riders and the sport would suffer as a result. He described the years immediately after the British rider died on Mont Ventoux as "a witch hunt" with officials and police desperate to catch anyone so as to be seen to be doing something. He apparently regretted having doped himself, saying that he felt he had undermined his career by doing so. He died on the 12th of May in 1993 at the age of 47.


Matt White, born in Sydney on this day in 1974, won Stage 6 at the 1999 Tour de Suisse and Stage 4 at the 2005 Tour Down Under, also achieving podium finishes at many Australian and European one-day races earlier in his career. He was scheduled to ride the Tour de France with Cofidis in 2004, but broke his collarbone just a few hours before the race started and had to wait until 2005 to make his Tour debut. Having shown managerial talent in 2004 when he coached his wife towards a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics, he was employed by Slipstream-Chipotle after his retirement, remaining with them as a manager through the transformation into Garmin-Cervélo. However, in 2011 it was discovered that he had referred Garmin rider Trent Lowe to US Postal's Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, a man whose name has been mentioned in several doping cases, for a VO2 test in 2009; thus breaking the team's anti-doping and medical rules which are known to be among the strictest in the sport. Following an investigation that revealed no evidence that Lowe had doped, White was sacked from the team.

Other cyclists born on this day: Assan Bazayev (Kazakhstan, 1981); Svetlana Grankovskaya (Ukraine, 1976); Maaris Meier (Estonia, 1983); Akemi Morimoto (Japan, 1968); Vilém Jakl (Czechoslovakia, 1915); Seyit Kırmızı (Turkey, 1950); Mads Kaggestad (Norway, 1977); Petro Koshelenko (USSR, 1970); Rubén Abreu (Venezuela, 1972).

Daily Cycling Facts 21.02.2013

Marion Clignet

Marion Clignet
(image credit: MarionClignet.com)

Marion Clignet was born in Chicago on this day in 1966. Having won a silver medal in the 1990 Nationals, she was informed by the US Cycling Federation that they were no longer willing to issue her with a racing licence on account of her epilepsy. So, she did what any cyclist in the situation ought to do by leaving them with no doubts as to what she thought of their decision and set about finding a federation that would accept her, settling in France.

Having become a French citizen in 1991, she set about winning stuff for her adopted country. That first year, she became National Road Race and Individual Pursuit Champion, formed part of the winning French time trial team at the Word Championships and won a bronze medal at the World Track Championships. In 1992 she won silver medals at both the Track and Road Nationals, then regained the National Road Champion title, added another silver at the Track Worlds and finished the Grande Boucle Féminine Internationale in 2nd place overall for 1993.

In the years after that, she added five gold medals in the Track Worlds, another five in the Track Nationals, two  Olympic silver medals, the Chrono des Herbiers, two Track World Cups, the Tour du Finistère, the Route Féminine Du Vignoble Nantais and a host of other silver and bronze medals.

Bad move, USA Cycling!

Martin Velits
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0)

Martin and Peter Velits
Martin Velits, born in Bratislava on this day in 1985, is the twin brother of Peter Velits - which has caused some problems in the past, as the two are remarkably evenly matched and have ridden against one another in numerous races including National Championships. Fortunately, they found a way around this: Martin took the Under-23 National Road Race title in 2004, 2005 and 2006 while Peter concentrated on time trials, winning the National Under-19 title (and the U-19 Road Race) in 2003, then the U-23 titles in 2005 and 2006.

The brothers have ridden together throughout their careers, both turning professional in 2007 with Wiesenhof before joining Milram for two seasons. In 2010 they went to HTC-Highroad and remained there until the team closed at the end of the 2011 season, then announced that they had both accepted contracts from Quick-Step for 2012. Martin became National Road Race Champion at Elite level in 2009 before proving that he can time trial just as well as his brother with the National title in 2010.


Rosara Joseph, born in Christchurch, New Zealand on this day in 1982, represented her country in the Cross Country Mountain Bike event at the 2006 Commonwealth Games where she won a silver medal and came second in the National MTB Cross Country Championships and Oceania MTB 4X Championships in 2012. She is also a highly successful lawyer and has won a number of awards recognising her work in that field, as well as holding a degree in History.

Latta's folding bike

On this day in 1888, American inventor Emmit G. Latta was issued with a US patent for a device described as "a machine that is safe, strong, and serviceable, and more easily steered than the machines now in use, and also to construct the machine in such a manner that the same can be folded when not required for use, so as to require little storage-room and facilitate its transportation." He sold his folding bike design to the Pope company, but as no examples have ever been discovered it's not known if they ever built one.

Other cyclists born on this day: Robert Birker (Germany, 1885); Beth Tabor (Canada, 1964); Kim Chi-Beom (South Korea, 1981); Nima Ebrahim (Iran, 1969); Franciszek Szymczyk (Poland, 1892, died 1976); Félipe Enríquez (Mexico, 1961); Børge Saxil Nielsen (Denmark, 1920, died 1977); José Manuel López (Spain, 1940); Rajko Čubrić (Yugoslavia, 1958).

Daily Cycling Facts 20.02.2013

Charles Pélissier

Charles Pélissier, younger son of Francis (who won three National Road Race Championships) and Henri (the most famous of the brothers, winner of the Tour de France in 1923), was born in Paris on this day in 1903. While Henri excelled in the Classics, Charles made a name for himself a a cyclo crosser in his early career - he was National Champion in 1926, 1927 and 1928, a period in which he also performed impressively on road with wins in the Paris-Arras, the Circuit du Cantal, the Mont Faron (a climber's competition) and others during the same period, also winning silver medals for the Road Race and Individual Time Trial races at the Nationals and 3rd place at Paris-Roubaix in 1927. This is the palmares of a very strong, very talented rider; one with a better range of skills than Henri who seems to have ridden well only in road races.

In fact, the younger brother was arguably the better Tour rider too. Henri may have won one overall, but he might not have done had Ottavio Bottecchia not punctured at various inopportune times and then made a complete hash of things when he failed to change gear (in those days achieved by removing the rear wheel and flipping it over to select a cog of a different size) just before a climb - a failure noticed by Pelissier, who took full advantage of it; but Charles won sixteen stages in total, compared to Henri's ten. What's more, eight of those stages were won in one single Tour (Stages 1, 3, 10, 11, 18, 19, 20 and 21 in 1930) - and only two other riders in history have equalled that record, Freddy Maertens in 1976 and Eddy Merckx in 1970 and 1974. We should, then, bear in mind that as Charles was fourteen years younger than Henri he may also have been rather over-awed by him and was this prevented from winning a Tour for himself.

Marie Marvingt

Marie Marvingt

114 cyclists started the Tour de France in 1908, drawn from 162 who had applied for admittance and were then either unable to start or were refused - among those in the latter group was Marie Marvingt, whose application was declined because she was a woman. Born in Aurillac on this day in 1875, Marvingt had been encouraged to take part in a wide selection of sports by her remarkably enlightened father and became an enormously successful athlete who won competitions in equestrian sports, field athletics, tennis, soccer, golf, shooting, water polo, swimming, martial arts, boxing, skiing, bobsleigh, luge, ski jumping, skating, shooting, fencing and mountaineering. Cycling, oddly enough, seems to be a sport in which she showed little previous interest, but she was an avid long distance rider and had ridden from Nancy to Napoli to witness a volcanic eruption - a distance of around 1,400km. Knowing that only rules prevented her from completing the Tour, she rode the entire route after the race - sadly, the time she took to do it doesn't seem to have been recorded and so we'll never know how she might have fared against the men; but as only 36 finished the race she can be said to have out-ridden 78 of them.

Marvingt first flew in a hot air balloon in 1901 and immediately fell in love with it, becoming a qualified balloon pilot in 1907 and flying solo for the first time in 1909; later that year she became the first woman to pilot a balloon over the North Sea from France to Britain. She flew in an aeroplane for the first time a short while later and fell in love with that too, soon becoming the second woman to ever qualify as a monoplane pilot and setting a new record by completing 900 flights without a single crash. She then became fascinated by the idea of using aircraft to rescue injured personnel from battlefields, which she proposed to the French military in 1910 before co-designing the first specialised air ambulance.

When war broke out in 1914, Marvingt disguised herself as a man and with assistance from a sympathetic officer joined the army, seeing active service with the 42ième Bataillon de Chasseurs à Pied before being discovered. She was expelled, but a year later volunteered to fly bombers over Germany and was accepted, becoming the first female pilot in history to fly combat missions, also acting as a war correspondent for newspapers. After the war she devoted her life to the development of air ambulances and traveled the world lecturing on the subject, becoming perhaps the most important figure in their introduction and making two films about them.

Marvingt received more military and civilian honours than any other woman in French history; among many others the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, Officier de la Légion d'honneur, the Médaille d'Argent du Service de Santé de l'Air, the Médaille de l'Aéronautique, the Palmes Académiques, the palms du Premier Tireur, the Croix de Guerre 1914 -1918 avec palmes and the Médaille de la Paix du Maroc. In 1910, she was awarded a Médaille d'Or "for all sports" by the Académie des Sports - the only time the medal has ever been awarded.

At the age of 80, Marvingt was flown over Nancy in a USAF fighter jet and began studying for her helicopter pilot licence, which would be one of the very few things she set out to achieve but could not, and six years later she cycled the 350km from Nancy to Paris. Having become wealthy, she announced through newspapers in 1922 that she was making a bet that nobody could beat her list of awards in sport, science and the arts, and she provided a prize of US$10,000 for anyone who could. By 1936, nobody had even bothered trying to claim the money; so she reissued the bet - and then reissued it again in 1948 when she still had no takers. It remained unclaimed in 1963, when she died at the age of 88. In addition to her incredible sporting achievements, Marvingt spoke five languages fluently, wrote four best-selling non-fiction books, numerous popular poems and continued having articles published by newspapers and magazines right up until her death.

Jean Dotto
Jean-Baptiste Dotto, who died on this day in 2000, was born in St-Nazaire on the 27th of March in 1928 of Italian nationality and took French citizenship in 1937. He would become known as a powerful climber and won a Mont Ventoux hill climb competition whilst riding as an independent, then turned professional in 1952 and won the first of his two Critérium du Dauphiné victories (the second would be in 1960). He also entered the Tour de France and finished in 8th place overall - an impressive result for a debutante. The next year, he won Stage 19, a stage that included the Galibier.

In 1955, Dotto achieved his greatest claim to immortality on the history of cycling when he became the first Frenchman to win the Vuelta a Espana. His Tour results never quite lived up to the early promise, which had revealed him a possible future winner, but four more top 20 finishes and three in the top 60 were respectable enough. In 1963, his final professional year, he won the Mountains Classification at the Tour de Romandie.


Jan Boven, born on this day in the Dutch city of Delfzijl in 1972, turned professional with Rabobank in 1996 and remained with them until his retirement in 2008.

Bim Diederich, also known as Jean, was born in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg on this day in 1922. He won the Tour of Luxembourg in 1949, Stage 15 at the 1950 Tour de France, Stage 2 and the yellow jersey for three days in 1951, then Stage 5 in 1952.

Giovanni Pettenella, who was born in Caprino Veronese, Italy in 1943 and died on this day in 2010, won one gold and one silver medal at the 1964 Olympics. He also had perhaps the strangest claim to fame of any cyclist: he was the inspiration for a character named Pettenella Giovanni (do you see what they did there?) in a computer game called Mother 2, released in 1995. In the game, Pettenella has lost a contact lens in the sand of a desert. If the player can find it and keep it until reaching a bakery in a town later in the game, they will again meet Pettenella and can return the lens to him. To show his gratitiude, he rewards the player with a pair of stinky socks that can be used to overcome enemies in fights. He also appears in EarthBound, a game created by the same developer, as Penetella Giovanni.

Other cyclists born on this day: Johannes van Spengen (Netherlands, 1887, died 1936); James Freeman (USA, 1891, died 1951); Fritz Ganz (Switzerland, 1916, died 1992); Francisco Mujica (Venezuela, 1936); Willy Skibby (Denmark, 1942); Dimitar Gospodinov (Bulgaria, 1972); Jean-Paul Maho (France, 1945); Jan Østergaard (Denmark, 1961); Paul Jennings (Great Britain, 1970); Nicholas Baker (Cayman Islands, 1957).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.02.2013

Maurice Garin

Garin with masseur and son, 1903

Maurice-Francois Garin was born on the 3rd of March 1871 in Arvier, Italy - a tiny village of just seven families, five of them with the surname Garin - and died on this day in 1957 in France. Garin's father was 36 and his mother 19 when they married and life was difficult - the cottage in which he was born can still be seen in Arvier, a short way from the French border, but it lies in ruins and must have been horrendously cramped when occupied by the couple and their nine children, this no doubt being one of the reasons they emigrated over the border when Maurice was 14. It seems that they did so illegally - legal emigration was possible, but the mayors on the French side had been instructed to make it as difficult as possible and the family members traveled separately to escape detection. According to legend, Maurice was exchanged for a round of cheese at some point along the way - a frequently recounted in support of the (often true) "desperate boys from a harsh background" stereotype that makes up a large part of early cycling's mythos.

In fact, the legend may be true. In those days, a 14-year-old boy was considered to be ready to make his own way in the world and, rather than displaying a lack of care, Garin's parents may have believed that they were doing the right thing. That he was working as a chimney sweep in Reims a year later suggests that the cheese may have been a sort of custody payment from an employer - Garin would, as a result, have been tied to the job for a certain number of years, but better that than no job at all in a world where the concept of state unemployment benefits was a long way off. Also, it paid enough for him to join forces with two of his brothers and set up a bike shop in Roubaix in 1895. The exact date at which he became a naturalised Frenchman is unknown, but is thought to have been either 1892 or 1901, by which time the other members of his family had dispersed around France and his father, having returned to Arvier, was dead.

The shop seems to have been quite successful as it paid Garin enough to buy his first bike in 1889 for 405 old francs, roughly €1,400 today. He had no interest in racing but became known locally for the high speeds at which he cycled around town and earned the nickname "Le Fou," The Madman, which brought him to the attention of a cycling club secretary who pleaded with him to race for the organisation. Garin not only agreed, he also finished a very respectable 5th - not bad at all for a first race and despite suffering from the great heat that day. He realised that racing was something he could be good at, and entered more races. His first win came in 1893 and he sold his bike, combined the proceeds of that with the money he'd won in the race and bought a newer, lighter model for the equivalent of €3,000. It was fitted with the newly-popular pneumatic tyres that had been patented by a Scots-Irish vet three and a half years earlier.

He became a professional that same year, and did so in typically unusual fashion: having turned up for a race in Avesnes-sur-Helpes, he was informed by officials that the event was open only to professional riders. Rather than going home or becoming a spectator, he waited until nobody was looking once the riders had set off and then jumped on his bike and went after them. He crashed twice but dropped them all, finishing the race far ahead of them. The crowd loved it - the organisers, meanwhile, were not so impressed and refused to pay him the prize money; so the spectator had a whip-round and gave him 300 francs, double what the professional winner received. It was not long until a sponsor approached him with a contract, and his first victory as a professional came a short while later at a 24-hour race in Paris during which he covered 701km. A record survives showing what Garin claimed to have eaten during the race and makes for impressive reading even when compared to the vast quantities of food (and, in some cases, intoxicating substances) consumed by rider since: 5 litres of tapioca, 2kg of rice, 45 cutlets of meat, 7 litres of tea, 8 eggs, 19 litres of drinking chocolate, some oysters, a mixture of champagne and coffee and "lots" of strong red wine.

Remarkable though his early life and career may have been, Garin will be forever remembered as the man who won the very first Tour de France in 1903 and then won the second one too but was stripped of the victory for cheating. Originally, the race had been planned as a mammoth five-week ordeal by organiser Henri Desgrange, but only 15 cyclists had liked the sound of that and expressed interest so it was reduced to a six-stage event over 2,428km. Garin won 3,000 francs, but the race had been hard - he told journalist Pierre Chany:

"The 2,500km that I've just ridden seem a long line, grey and monotonous, where nothing stood out from anything else. But I suffered on the road; I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was sleepy, I suffered, I cried between Lyon and Marseille, I had the pride of winning other stages, and at the controls I saw the fine figure of my friend Delattre, who had prepared my sustenance, but I repeat, nothing strikes me particularly.
But wait! I'm completely wrong when I say that nothing strikes me, I'm confusing things or explaining myself badly. I must say that one single thing struck me, that a single thing sticks in my memory: I see myself, from the start of the Tour de France, like a bull pierced by banderillas, who pulls the banderillas with him, never able to rid himself of them."

1904 was harder still. The race remained the same distance, but this time fans remembered the events of the previous year and started vendettas against riders they disliked, felling trees across the road to hold them up and physically beating them given the chance. Garin had apparently incurred their wrath at some point, because he was attacked under cover of darkness during a night stage as he climbed  the Col de la République, suffering  severe beating and being hit in the face with a stone. The mob were wild, braying "Up with local hero, André Faure! Down with Garin! Kill them!" The Italian rider Paul Gerbi was punched and kicked until he became unconscious and had his fingers broken - which suggested that the death threats may well have been carried out had officials not arrived and dispersed the crows by firing their pistols into the air. Later on in the same stage, they ran into a gang of men on bikes and were attacked again - this time, Garin's arm was injured and he had to steer with one hand to the end of the stage.

As if the spectators hadn't been trouble enough, there was widespread cheating among the riders that year (some of them may even have paid for the nails that the spectators threw into the road to cause punctures). No fewer than nine had been kicked out during the race, mostly for "illegal use of cars and trains" (Lucien Petit-Breton said that he'd seen a rider he preferred not to name publicly getting towed by a motorbike, but when he tried to remonstrate with the man, he pointed a pistol at him) and more complaints came in when the race was over. The Union Vélocipédique Française started an investigation, details of which were lost when records were transported to the South of France for safe-keeping during the Nazi Occupation, and in the end a further 20 riders were disqualified. Among them were Garin, who had won the race, 2nd place Lucien Pothier, 3rd place César Garin (Maurice's brother) and 4th place Hippolyte Aucouturier. 19-year-old Henri Cornet, real name Henri Jardry, had been given an official warning after he was spotted getting a lift in a car during the race but, perhaps on account of his youthful inexperience, was not disqualified and thus his 5th place finish was upgraded to 1st. He remains the youngest winner in Tour de France history. However, Garin did not confess.

Retirement was good for Garin - he ran a garage in Lens and, though not rich and rarely recognised even though a velodrome was named in his honour in 1933 and he received a gold medal for his services to sport five year later, seems to have been happy with it and was comfortable (the garage still stands at 116 Rue de Lille, but is much modernised). He retained his interest in cycling throughout his life and started a professional team after the Second World War. He lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Tour, watching the finish from a special podium with several other stars of the races from days gone by, and died four years later at the age of 85. After his death, the world began to take an interest and film crews started to document his life. In the Nord-Pas-de-Calais cemetery where he is buried, they discovered that the cemetery attendant was from Lens and had been familiar with Garin and his garage during his boyhood - and revealed that, as an old man, Garin freely admitted to his cheating in the 1904 Tour.

Even without his Tour success, Garin was a phenomenally talented rider who more than lived up to the promise he showed when he was an amateur and beat the professionals. He won Paris-Roubaix twice (d came 3rd twice), Paris-Saint-Malo, Guingamp-Morlaix-Guingamp, Paris-Le Mans, Paris-Mons, Liège-Thuin, Paris-Royan, Paris-Cabourg, Tourcoing-Béthune-Tourcoing (twice), Valenciennes-Nouvion-Valenciennes, Douai-Doullens-Douai, Paris–Brest–Paris, Bordeaux–Paris and set a world record for riding 500km behind a human pacer (ie, a series of cyclists) in 15h2'32". The money he won would have bought his parents a lot of cheese.

Albert White

Few riders have ever won as many trophies - including Olympic medals - as Albert "Lal" White, who was born in Scunthorpe in Great Britain on this day in 1890, but even fewer have had an opera written about their lives. Little was known about the cyclist, who died in 1965, other than that he had been awarded the Muratti Vase after achieving a string of prestigious race wins in the 1920s (the whereabouts of the Vase, said to have been made of solid gold and estimated to be of enormous value, are unknown), until the British Cultural Olympiad Committee appealed for information from the public on Olympians from days gone by through the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2010.

Several who remembered White came forward, including an elderly man whose brother had trained with the rider and had been told that the Vase was kept in a bank vault. Nobody, it seems, knows any more than that.

Jean Majerus
Jean Majerus was a Luxembourgian cyclist born on this day in 1914 who would be twice National Junior Road Race Champion (1935 and 1935) and would go on to become a reasonably successful rider in the Tour de France. In 1937 he won Stage 1 and wore the yellow jersey for two days, then in 1938 he won Stage 2 and wore yellow for four days - the latter equating to seven stages in total, as those days included Stages 2, 3, 4a, 4b, 4c, 5, 6a and 6b (he lost the jersey in 6b). Following the Nazi Occupation of his country, he continued to race within the German Empire and won the Dortmund Rundfahrt twice, along with some other races - successes, but not especially admirable ones because many riders in Nazi occupied lands refused to compete until after the War.

Italian rider Fabio Battesini was born on this day in Virgilio in 1912. He won Stage 3 at the Tour de France in  1931 and, at the Giro d'Italia, Stage 3 in 1932, Stage 15 in 1934 and Stage 4 in 1936. He died in Rome on the 17th of June 1987.

On this day in 2002, bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased the mountain bike suspension manufacturer RockShox.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jelle Vanedert (Belgium, 1985); Viktor Bykov (USSR, 19450; Park Hyeon-Gon (South Korea, 1968); Roland De Neve (Belgium, 1944); Esteban Espinoza (Ecuador, 1962); Chow Tai Ming (Hong Kong, 1959); Bernd Gröne (Germany, 1963); Heinz Isler (Switzerland, 1960); Reno Olsen (Denmark, 1947); Raymond Bley (Luxembourg, 1939); Jorge Gaday (Argentina, 1968); Gwon Ik-Hyeon (South Korea, 1920); Józef Oksiutycz (Poland, 1904, died 1965); Warwick Dalton (New Zealand, 1937); Jorge Gaday (Argentina, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 18.02.2013

Amber Neben
(image credit: Crikey)

Amber Neben
Amber Neben, born in Irvin, USA on this day in 1975, originally competed in football (soccer) and cross-country running whilst at college, only adopting cycling when stress injuries forced her to give up running. She first took up mountain biking but soon discovered she performed better in road cycling and rapidly came to the attention of team managers, being signed up to ride with the USA World Championships squad in 2001 and winning a silver medal in the National Championships that same year. One year later, she took silver in both the Road and Time Trial National races.

She became National Road Race Champion in 2003 and began to show promise in stage races, finishing the Giro della Toscana in 7th place overall the next season. This would be bettered with a win at the Tour de l'Aude and a third National Time Trial silver medal in 2005, her l'Aude success repeated in 2006 along with podium finishes at the Route de France Feminin, Thuringen-Rundfahrt and other races, another National Time Trial silver and a bronze in the National Road Race. 2007 was similar, but she topped it all by becoming World Time Trial Champion in 2008. In the following years, she continued to win stages in a series of races and in 2011 won the Chrono des Nations.

Neben's HTC-Highroad team folded at the end of 2011; however, the organisation's communications officer Kristy Scrimgeour established a new company known as Velocio Sports to take over the women's squad which, once new sponsors had been found, became Specialized-Lululemon. Neben was a driving force in the team's highly successful first year: having won the Individual Time Trial at the PanAmerican Games in March, she went on to be third at the GP El Salvador, won two stages and finished fourth overall at the Vuelta El Salvador, came sixth at the GP Elsy Jacobs, won the National Individual Time Trial Championship and took seventh place in the ITT at the Olympics. At the World Championships in Valkenburg, she rode with team mates Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, Trixi Worrack, Evelyn Stevens, Charlotte Becker and Ellen van Dijk to win the Team Time Trial, came seventh in the ITT and fourth in the Road Race, then a little over a month later won the Chrono des Nations for a second time.

Neben was at the centre of a doping case in 2003 after she tested positive for 19-Norandrosterone, a recognised metabolite of nandrolone - a banned anabolic steroid. However, the result was delayed for some time and the rider accepted provisional suspension from racing during the following investigation, also stating her belief that the drug had come from dietary supplements. The Court for Arbitration in Sport decreed that while there was evidence to suggest she had been affected by the drug in races that took place prior to the announcement of the positive test, in their opinion she had not intentionally doped and had been truthful throughout the investigation. She received a six-month ban beginning from the start of the provisional suspension with the agreement that she would submit to increased checks over the subsequent 18 months and returned to racing. She has passed every test to which she has been subject ever since.

Roy Cromack

Roy Cromack was born on this day in 1940 in Doncaster, Great Britain. In 1969, he entered the Road Time Trials Council 24 hour competition and covered 507 miles (816km) - the first time he'd ever ridden as far and a new record that would stand for 28 years. Cromack was that rare breed of cyclist, a true all-rounder; and could perform well in anything and everything from short sprints on the track to major multi-stage events such as the Peace Race. He also represented Britain at the Olympics in Mexico City in 1968.

Dimitri Konyshev, born on this day in 1966 in Gorki, Russia, is a retired cyclist who became National Road Race Champion three times (once of the USSR in 1990, twice of Russia in 1993 and 2001), won the Coppa Agostini in 1989, the Hofbrau Cup in 1996, the Grand Prix de Fourmies in 1999 and the Giro della Romagna in 2000 along with a series of other prestigious races. He was also a Grand Tour rider of some note, winning a total four stages at the Tour de France, one at the Vuelta a Espana and four at the Giro d'Italia - also winning the Combination Classification and InterGiro Award in 1997 and the Points Classification in 2000.

On this day in 2011 Joanna Rowsell, Wendy Houvenaghel and Sarah Storey set a new British Women's Record when the completed the 4000m Team Time Trial at the World Track Cup in Manchester with a time of 3'19.757".

Other cyclists born on this day: Cristiano Salerno (Italy, 1985); Henry George (Belgium , 1891, died 1976); Hansjörg Aemisegger (Switzerland, 1952); Jacques Suire (France, 1943); Alan Grindal (Australia, 1940); Jesper Agergård (Denmark, 1975); Jānis Vītols (Latvia, 1911, died 1993); Adri Zwartepoorte (Netherlands, 1917, died 1991); Florian Vogel (Switzerland, 1982); Fernando Cruz (Colombia, 1953); Egon Adler (Germany, 1937).

Daily Cycling Facts 17.02.2013

René Vietto

René Vietto, born on this day in Le Cannet in 1914, was the rider who became a sort of hero for his self-sacrifice in the 1934 Tour de France. His team leader, Antonin Magne, had dominated the race from the first stage, wearing the yellow jersey ever since (and would keep it throughout the race). Then disaster struck on the way to the spa town of Aix-les-Thermes during Stage 15 when he rode into a pothole and splintered his wooden front wheel rim. So that he could continue, he took Vietto's wheel, leaving him at the roadside. He discovered a short way further along the road that his frame was damaged too, so he waited for the next rider from his team - Georges Speicher - and took his bike. Thus began one of the most interesting legends in the long history of the Tour.

In another version - which is somewhat more accurate - Magne could not make Vietto's wheel fit into his forks and waited for Speicher before taking his wheel instead. Speicher also couldn't use Vietto's wheel. Vietto, meanwhile, was still waiting for a team car to give him another a wheel and had become so upset that his chances of winning the stage - though the time he lost, eight minutes and tiny when compared to the winning margins of the day, would probably have had little if any effect on his overall Tour result (some say that we should also take into account that he was a 20-year-old domestique riding his first Tour, but the fact that he won four stages and came 5th overall that year suggests that he was a stronger rider than most debutantes) - that he'd started crying. A photographer found him at the side of the road and took the picture, which was published the following day accompanied by a story sometimes attributed to future race director Jacques Goddet and earned the rider the adoration of the French public (and, since his new celebrity would allow him to charge high fees to appear at future races, set him up for life). Henri Desgrange, for all his usual enthusiasm for anything that might increase his race's mythos, was said to have been furious at the fabrication and swore he would reveal the truth - but the public, fortunately, seem to have realised that truth should not stand in the way of a good story.

The following day, Magne once again had trouble and broke his back wheel on the fast descent of the Portet d'Aspet. Vietto, trying to make up time, was out in front and didn't see it happen so had carried on. At the bottom of the mountain, an official beckoned him over and relayed the news, informing him that his leader was stuck without support. So Vietto turned around and rode back up to find him, and handed over his bike. Italian Guiseppe Martano, Magne's most dangerous rival, would break his own bike in Stage 17, leaving the Frenchman to finish the Tour without challenge.

Feeling sorry for him? Let's delve a little deeper. The famous photograph shows poor Vietto all alone in the world as he waits for a new wheel, but in fact the photographer had realised that he would have a sensational image once he'd cropped out the apparently quite sizable crowd who had gathered around the stricken rider and were taking care of him (it remains, however, one of the sport's most iconic images, commonly used to illustrate the glorious pain and hardship of the Tour). Secondly, while Magne was grateful for his team mate's actions, Vietto was far from magnanimous - he verbally attacked his leader and told him he was a bad rider when he tried to thank him. Magne continued to express thanks for the rest of his life, but Vietto became bitter and ended his life living as a recluse on a pig farm. Magne was also not permitted to ride the victory lap to which he was fully entitled when he won in Paris, where the crowd waved banners declaring Vietto to be "the moral winner of the Tour."

Vietto memorial, Col de Braus
(image credit: Markus Schweiss CC BY-SA 3.0)

Worse still, Vietto allowed the event to turn him into a bully. Tour legend has it - without proof, since none of the people involved are still alive - that when he lost a toe to an infection, he demanded that his domestique Apo Lazaridès chopped off one of his own toes too. "But why? I don't need to," the Greek rider protested. "Because I say so," Vietto replied. Lazaridès, whilst perhaps not the most intelligent rider in cycling history, was not lacking in bravery - he had risked death at the hands of the Nazis when he used his bike to transport supplies through the mountains to the Resistance during the Occupation of France, so the toe came off and he walked with a limp until the 30th of October 1988, the day he died. The legend says that Magne's toe is kept in a jar filled with formaldehyde (or absinthe, in some versions) in a bar in Marseilles - but nobody seems to know which bar, and several attempts to track it down have been unsuccessful.

Whatever he was, Vietto was a talented rider and wore the yellow jersey for a total of 29 stages either side of the Second World War - a record among riders who never won a Tour. He won the Mountains classification and Stages 7, 9, 11 and 18 in 1934, Stages 6 and 9 in 1935 and Stages 2 and 9 in 1947. His memorial is located on Col de Braus in the Alpes-Maritimes department where he was born and closely resembled those erected in memory of Tom Simpson in Haworth (where he was born) and on Mont Ventoux (where he died).


Thomas Frischknecht

Thomas Frischnecht
(image credit: Bakashi10 CC BY-SA 3.0)

Thomas Frischknecht, born in Feldbach in Switzerland on this day in 1970, has been a professional mountain biker since 1990 - earning himself the nickname "the Elder Statesman." The son of a three-time silver medal winner at the cyclo cross World Championships, he has enjoyed considerable success in the same discipline, including a National Championship victories in 1991, 1997, 1999 and 2002.

He became World Mountain Bike Cross Country Champion in 1996, 2003 and 2005. He has always been a vocal opponent of doping in cycling and all other sports, frequently given as an example of how an athlete can rise to the top of a sport through hard work and determination without turning to drugs, and has been sponsored by ex-professional road and mountain bike racer-turned world famous frame builder Tom Ritchey since the beginning of his career.

Bernhard Eisel
(image credit: Ralf Seger CC BY-SA 3.0)

Bernhard Eisel
Bernhard Eisel, born in the Austrian town of Voitsberg on this day in 1981, is best known as part of the Cavendish-Eisel double act in which he leads the Manx rider out from the peloton, providing him with clear space in which to launch the devastating sprint to the line that has seen him become Great Britain's most successful rider in Tour de France history and supporting him through the mountains and long flat stages.

However, Eisel is a very successful rider in his own right, especially in one-day races: he has won the Lancaster and Reading Classics (2007), Paris-Bourges (2008), the E3 Harelbeke (2009) and Gent-Wevelgem (2010) as well as finishing 5th (2006) and 7th (2011) at Paris-Roubaix. In addition, he has won numerous stages in important races such as the Criterium des Espoirs (Stage 3, 2004), the Volta ao Algarve (Stages 1 and 4 in 2005, Stage 5 in 2008) and the Tour de Suisse (Stage 1, 2005 and Stage 2, 2009).

With the demise of the HTC-Highroad team due to sponsorship problems at the end of the 2011 season, it was announced that Eisel would be going to Team Sky with Cavendish for 2012; however, he was afforded several opportunities to chase victory for himself and enjoyed a successful year with third place at the E3 Harelbeke, two top twenty stage finishes at the Tour de France (best: 15th, Stage 6) and second place at the Schwaz Criterium.


Timothy Gudsell became New Zealand National Scratch Race Champion in 2003 and won three gold medals at the Oceania Games in 2005. He was due to make his first Grand Tour appearance at the 2007 Giro d'Italia but was unable to compete due to injuries sustained in a crash. He was born on this day in 1984 in Fielding.

Leire Olaberria Dorronsoro was born in Ikaztegieta, Euskal Herria, on this day in 1977. Her best result to date was a bronze medal in the Points Race at the 2008 Olympics when she was beaten by Marianne Vos and Yoanka González.

Ferdinando Teruzzi was born on this day in 1924 in Sesto San Giovanni, Italy. With Renato Perona, he won a gold medal in the Tandem race at the 1948 Olympics in London.

Antonio Domenicali, born on this day in 1936 in Berra, Italy, won a gold medal in the Team Pursuit at the 1956 Olympics. He died in Lozzolo on the 5th of July 2002.

On this day in 1869, Charles Spencer, John Mayall and Rowley Turner complete what The Times newspaper reported as an "Astonishing Velocipede Feat" by cycling the 53 miles (85km) from Trafalgar Square in London to Brighton in 15 hours.

On this day in 2011, the Spanish Meat Production Association issued a press release strongly denying any possibility that Alberto Contador could have consumed the drug Clenbuterol - used illegally to promote the growth of lean muscle in livestock destined for food production - in contaminated Spanish meat. He had been cleared due to the impossibility of proving his claim was false by the Spanish Cycling Federation two days previously; but in 2012, following a lengthy investigation, was handed a back-dated two year ban and stripped of all results gained during that period.

Other cyclists born on this day: Miguel Fernández (Spain, 1969); Gustavo Faris (Argentina, 1962); Walter Bäni (Switzerland, 1957); Maurice Hugh-Sam (Jamaica, 1955); Frans Cools (Belgium, 1918, died 1999); Carlos Melero (Spain, 1948); Haluk Günözgen (Turkey, 1950); Jacques van Egmond (Netherlands, 1908, died 1969. Also known as Jacobus van Egmond); Ole Højlund Pedersen (Denmark, 1943); Vito Corbelli (San Marino, 1941); Jürgen Tschan (Germany, 1947); Lee Fu-Hsiang (Taipei, 1960); Markus Andersson (Sweden, 1973).