Daily Cycling Facts 11.01.2014

Cameron Meyer

Cameron Meyer

Born in Viveash on this day in 1988, rising Australian star Cameron Meyer was highly successful during his amateur track career, winning three World titles and four National titles in 2006. He then began to race on the road 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. He 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, Meyer 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; then in 2012 he switched to the new Australian team GreenEDGE and enjoyed a superb year with second place in the National Individual Time Trial Championships, victory at the Six Days of Berlin (shared with partner Leigh Howard). first place in the Points race and third in the Madison at the World Track Championships, 11th place overall at the Tour of California and second place for Stage 13 at the Vuelta a Espana, followed by sixteenth place in the Individual Time Trial and first in the Team Time Trial at the World Road Racing Championships. Early in 2013, he became National Criterium Champion and won silver at the National Individual Time Trial Championships; later in the season, after coming tenth at Tirreno-Adriatico, he won the Points race at the World Track Championship and was second on Stage 13 at the Vuelta a Espana. He will remain with GreenEDGE for 2014.


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.

On this day in 1891, "Baron" Georges-Eugène Haussmann (he was never actually 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).