Daily Cycling Facts 07.01.2014

John Degenkolb

Degenkolb at the Olympics, 2012

Born in Gera, Germany in 1989, John Degenkolb began his career as a track cyclist and won the Pursuit as a Novice at the National Championships in 2004, then successfully defended the title and added another Novice victory at the National Road Race Championship a year later. In 2006 he came third in the Juniors Individual Time Trial at the Nationals, then won it in 2007 - one of nine victories that year, which earned him a contract with the Continental-class Thüringer Energie Team for 2008. He responded well to the step up, coming second overall at the Under-23 Tour du Haut-Anjou, winning Stage 2 at the U-23 Thüringen-Rundfahrt and impressing at a number of other races.

Staying with Thüringer Energie for the following two seasons, he continued to perform well - especially in 2010 when he was sixth at the U-23 Ronde van Vlaanderen, won two stages at the Tour de Bretagne and two more at the Rás Tailteann, became National U-23 Road Race Champion, won the U-23 Thüringen-Rundfahrt and stages at the Tours Alsace and de l'Avenir and then came second at the World U-23 Road Race Championship. ProTour teams began to take an interest: Degenkolb chose HTC-Highroad which, under the tutelage of Bob Stapleton, had a long tradition of discovering and developing promising young riders, something that Degenkolb rapidly proved himself to be with a stage win at the Volta ao Algarve, 12th place at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, 19th place at Paris-Roubaix (where simply finishing the race marks a rider out as a true great), two stage wins at the Critérium du Dauphiné, bronze at the Nationals and - remarkably for a rider making his Grand Tour debut in his first professional season - third place on Stage 1 and second place on Stage 12 at the Vuelta a Espana.

Highroad, which had been the first team to introduce anti-doping measures of its own that were far more stringent than those required by the UCI, came to a sadly ironic end in 2011 when sponsors decided to discontinue their association with a sport they believed to be irreparably associated with doping in the public mind. Degenkolb found a new contract with Project 1t4i and continued to impress with 11th place at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, two third place stage finishes at Paris-Nice,  fifth place at Milan-San Remo, sixth place at the E3 Harelbeke, two stage wins and overall General Classification at the Tour de Picardie, one stage win at the Tour of Poland and no fewer than five stage wins plus fourth place in the Points competition at the Vuelta a Espana (but 131st overall, having suffered greatly in the mountains) before coming fourth at the World Championships - not bad for a 23-year-old racing his second Grand Tour and sufficient to convince the world that he was a very fine sprinter indeed. In 2012, still with the same team, he won Stage 5 at the Giro d'Italia, was fourth at the Sparkassen Giro, won the Hamburg Cyclassics, was second at Paris-Brussels, won two stages and finished second overall at the Circuit Franco-Belge and won Paris-Bourges and Paris-Tours. He will remain with the team for 2014.

Shane Kelly

Shane Kelly
(image credit: Velo Steve CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Kilo specialist Shane Kelly - who was born in Ararat, Australia on this day in 1972 - competed in no fewer than five Olympics, the first in 1992 and the last in 2008. He won three medals, a silver and two bronze, but he's perhaps best remembered for an incident in the 1996 Kilo when the cleat of his shoe slipped from the pedal and he was left on the start line while his opponents accelerated away. He finished 4th in the 2004 Keirin, but 3rd place René Wolff was disqualified for "moving outward with the intention of forcing the opponent going up;" dangerous riding that, in the view of the judges, was deliberate and resulted in Kelly taking 3rd place.

Kelly was one of the four cyclists implicated in a doping scandal in 2004 when sprinter Mark French claimed that he, Jobie Dajka, Graeme Brown, Sean Eadie and himself were the co-owners of 13 phials of an equine growth hormone, injectable vitamins and used medical equipment including used syringes that had been discovered in his room at the Australian Institute of Sport. Dajka was found to have lied when giving evidence at the subsequent trial and was banned from competition (and began a slow downward spiral that led ultimately to his untimely death), but no evidence could be found in support of French's claims and the men he had accused were cleared. French himself received a two-year ban after the court decided he was guilty of supplying the growth hormone and corticosteroid to other riders, but after an appeal was also cleared due to lack of evidence.

Danish road and track rider Rasmus Quaade was born in Valby on this day in 1990. He became National Under-23 and Elite Individual Time Trial Champion in 2011, then National and European U-23 ITT Champion in 2012, when he was also fifth in the ITT at the World U-23 ITT Championship.

Gerrit Schulte (image credit: Polygoon Hollands Nieuws CC BY-SA 3.0)

Gerardus Bernardus "Gerrit" Schulte, Dutch Track Pursuit champion ten times, was born on this day in 1916. Schulte was also a gifted road cyclist, winning Stage 3 of the 1938 Tour de France when he beat - among other greats - Antonin Magne and André Leducq. A trophy awarded to the best Dutch professional rider each year is named after him. He died on the 26th of February in Den Bosch ('s-Hertogenbosch) - the birthplace of multi-discipline cycling superstar Marianne Vos, who won the Schulte Trophy in 2010.

Huw Pritchard, first Welsh rider to win a track medal (20km Scratch, silver) at the Commonwealth Games (2002), was born today in 1976. Huw became British National Under-23 Road Champion in 1997 and Welsh National Road Champion the next year and in 2003.

Other cyclists born on this day: Enrique Campos (Venezuela, 1961); Héctor Droguett (Chile, 1925, died 2008); René Rutschmann (Switzerland,  1941); Miguel Angel Sánchez (Costa Rica, 1943).

Daily Cycling Facts 06.01.2014

Leopard Trek

On this day in 2011, Brian Nygaard's Luxembourg-based new team Leopard Trek was officially presented to the world. It would be made up of the brothers Frank and Andy Schleck (the latter being the year's 2011 Tour de France favourite among many, with the notable exception of one Cadel Evans), Danielle Bennati, Fabian Cancellara, Will Clarke, Stefan Denifl, Brice Feillu, Davide Vigano, Joost Posthuma, Oliver Zaugg, Jakob Fuglsang (who had revealed the team's name less that a month previously), Linus Gerdemann, Maxime Monfort, Martin Pedersen, Anders Lund, Dominic Klemme, Martin Mortensen, Stuart O'Grady, Fabian Wegmann, Bruno Pires, Robert Wagner, Thomas Rohregger, Giacomo Nizzolo, Tom Stamsnijder, Jens Voigt and Wouter Weylandt.

With a roster including some of the biggest names and personalities in professional cycling, big name sponsors (in addition to Trek, they were supported by LuxAir, Oakley and Mercedes Benz, among others - Mercedes supplying them with team cars which finally ended Jaguar-sponsored Sky's monopoly in the unofficial Poshest Support Vehicles stakes), the snazziest website in the ProTour and a team bus that looked like an unusually luxurious space shuttle, the stage looked set for Leopard Trek to dominate in the Grand Tours and other stage races.

Wouter Weylandt, 1984-2011
(image credit: Dzipi CC BY-SA 2.0)

Unfortunately, the team was beset by first tragedy and then bad luck. Tragedy came when Wouter Weylandt, aged just 26, crashed and was killed on a fast descent in the Giro d'Italia; an accident that contributed a great deal to the demise of Giro director Angelo Zomegnan, who was accused of neglecting rider safety in his quest to equal the Tour de France. Then Andy didn't perform quite as well as everyone was expecting him to do around France, even managing to lose some of his previously-loyal fans after getting a bit whiny following a damp and dangerous descent from the Col de Manse into Gap at the end of Stage 16 (coming so soon after Weylandt's death, he can perhaps be forgiven even if he did sound a bit pathetic at the time). In Stage 18, he pulled off what many people called one of the best victories in recent years with a splendid solo breakaway on the slopes of the Galibier, reaching the summit finish 2'07" before brother Frank who took 2nd place, but even that wasn't enough to give him the advantage he needed after some really quite lacklustre rides earlier on in the Tour and he was left unable to hold off Cadel Evans in Stage 20, when the Australian won the race.

Fabian Cancellara wasn't having his best year either. Having earned himself the reputation of World's Greatest Ever Time Trial Rider (look up Beryl Burton to find out why he wasn't), he seemed unable to light the same fire in his legs and was roundly beaten by Highroad's Tony Martin every time they faced one another. However, he was the team's most successful rider, capturing podium places at a number of races including two stages at the Tour de Suisse, 2nd at Paris-Roubaix and 3rd at the Tour of Flanders. Jens Voigt, meanwhile, was making his way through the year in his characteristic manner, attacking anything that moved and riding like a hooligan on a stolen bike before charming the entire world with his pleasant manners, affability and articulacy when off the bike. He was a favourite to win the Tour of Britain, arriving at the race as team leader, but had to abandon after crashing and breaking a finger in the first stage. And he didn't just break it a little bit, either - being Jens Voigt, he completely smashed it to bits and needed emergency surgery to save it.

Fabian Cancellara
(image credit: Kei-Ai CC BY 2.0)

If we take a look from Leopard Trek's point of view, the year was not entirely wothout point: let's not forget that although the biggest prize slipped their grasp, Leopard riders took 3rd place at the Tour of Qatar (Bennati), 1st and 3rd at the GP Samyn (Klemme und Wagner), 10th at Paris-Nice (Monfort), a stage at Tirreno-Adriatico (Cancellara), 2nd and 10th at Milan-San Remo (Cancellara and O'Grady), 1st in the Critérium International (Frank Schleck), 1st at E3 Harelbeke (Cancellara), 2nd at Ghent-Wevelgem (Bennati), 3rd at the GP Miguel Indurain (Wegmann), 3rd in the Tour of Flanders (Cancellara), 2nd at Paris-Roubaix (Cancellara), 4th in the Amstel Gold Race (Fuglsang); 2nd and 3rd at Liège-Bastogne-Liège (Frank and Andy); 1st and 4th at the Tour of Luxembourg (Gerdemann and Monfort) plus one stage (2, Gerdemann) and the prologue (Cancellara), two stages in the Tour de Suisse (1 and 9, both Cancellara) and 4th and 7th overall (Fuglsang and Frank), Stage 18 in the Tour (Andy) and 2nd and 3rd overall (Andy and Frank), the Team Time Trial at the Vuelta a Espana and, finally, 1st place overall at the Giro di Lombardia (Oliver Zaugg, his first major win).

So it wasn't such a bad year, all in all, for Leopard Trek; they just didn't live up to the hype that others created around them. 2011 proved to be their first and last year as, at the end of the season and following widespread rumour, it was confirmed that the team would merge with RadioShack for 2012.

Belinda Goss

Belinda Goss

Born in Devonport, Australia on this day in 1984, Belinda Goss started cycling when she was 13 and marked herself out as a rider to watch when she won a bronze medal in the Scratch race at the World Junior Track Championships in 2002; a year later she proved she had serious potential on the road as well with a stage victory at the Geelong Tour.

In 2004, Goss hit the big time with two golds (Points, Scratch) and a bronze (Keirin) at the Oceania Games, all taken at Elite level. These were followed in 2005 with two bronze (Under-23 Scratch, Elite Scratch) and a silver (Elite Points) at the National Championships and another bronze in the Elite Scratch at the Moscow round of the World Cup, then third place at the Bay Classic and two more bronze (U-23 and Elite Scratch) at the National Track Championships the following year. 2007 proved to be her real breakthrough year, both on road and track - she began the season with a Stage 2 victory and second place overall at the Bay Classic, then won Stage 2 and second place overal at the UniSA Criterium season, picked up a gold medal for the Elite Points race at the National Track Championships, came second in the Points and the Scratch at the Manchester round of the World Cup and won Stages 2 and 3 and third place overall at the Tour of Chongming Island. In 2008 she was second overall again at the Bay Classic and successfully defended her National Points Champion title before winning the Noosa Criterium, then in 2009 won the Points race at the Nationals again as well as coming third in the Scratch at the World Championships. She won the National Points Championship for a fourth consecutive time in 2010, also becoming National Scratch Champion and coming third again in the Scratch at the Worlds.

Since 2011, Goss has concentrated on road racing and has continued adding good results. She was fifth in the road race at the Oceania Championships that year and performed well at the Czech Tour and Giro della Toscana, then came third at the Rapha Elite Criterium in 2012.


Antonio Suarez, Overall and Mountains Classification winner of the 1959 Vuelta a Espana, died on this day in 1981. Very unusually for a rider with the capability of winning a Mountains title, he also won the Points Classification two years later, the same year he finished 3rd overall in the Giro d'Italia behind Jacques Anquetil and Arnaldo Pambianco. Suarez appears to have been one of those Mediterranean riders who performed well only in the Mediterranean climate, for his Tour de France results appear at first glance to be those of a lesser man: his most notable finish was 17th in 1960, while he came 64th in 1958 and 43rd in 1963.

Yanto Barker

The Welsh professional and ex-British Junior Champion Yanto Barker was born on this day in 1980. Yanto was the highest placed British rider in the the 2005 Tour of Britain. In 2013, Barker won the Kirkcaldy and Stoke-on-Trent rounds of the Halford's Tour Series and the Ipswich and Coastal GP.

Happy birthday to Stephen Cox, the retired New Zealand cyclist born in 1956. Cos was hugely successful in races in his homeland, winning ten major events between 1978 and 1984. He also won a bronze medal at the 1984 Commonwealth Games.

Henry George, winner of a gold medal for Belgium in the 50km Track event at the 1920 Olympics, died on this day in 1976. He was born on the 18th of February 1891.

Mattei Montaguti, twice an Italian National Champion and a winner at the Giro della Provincia di Reggio Calabria was born today in 1984. He came 2nd in the Mountains Classification at the 2011 Vuelta a Espana, then won the classification at the Tour de Suisse in 2012. He has ridden for AG2R La Mondiale since 2011 and will remain with them for 2014.

Other cyclists born on this day: Luigi Arienti (Italy, 1937); Nada Cristofoli (Italy, 1971); Ørnulf Andresen (Norway, 1944); Enzo Sacchi (Italy, 1926, died 1988); Jorge Jukich (Uruguay, 1943); Immo Rittmeyer (Germany, 1936); Kihei Tomioka (Japan, 1932, died 2007); Rusty Peden (Canada, 1916); Paul Camilleri (Malta, 1934); Mark Gorski (USA, 1960); Volodymyr Diudia (Ukraine, 1983); Reinhold Pommer (Germany, 1935); Javier Taboada (Mexico, 1935); Stefan Baraud (Cayman Islands, 1975); Jørgen Jensen (Denmark, 1947); Theodor Rinderknecht (Switzerland, 1958); Augusts Kepke (Russia, 1886).

Daily Cycling Facts 05.01.2014

Georgia Gould

Georgia Gould
(image credit: Thomas Fanghaenel
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Georgia Gould, born in Baltimore on this day in 1980, is one of the most successful mountain bike and cyclo cross riders in the history of either sport. Over her career to date, she has won 24 major victories and with Juli Furtado is one of only two women to have won all rounds of a NORBA (now NIMBS) series.

Her first big win was the 2005 Verge Mid-Atlantic Cyclocross Series, which she followed up one year later by winning the National Mountain Bike Cross Country Championship. In 2007 she joined the Luna MTB team, of which she is still a part by 2013. That year she added the PanAmerican Cross Country title, then finished the 2008 Olympic MTB race in 8th place. She became National Short Track MTB Champion in 2009, then Cross Country Champion for a second time in 2010. Along the way, she won the majority of the most prestigious US cyclo cross races and achieved podium places in numerous others, also winning the US GP of Cyclo Cross in 2007, 2008 and 2010. In 2012, she became National MTB Cross Country Champion and was third in the cross country events at the Olympics and World MTB Championships.

Gould is a highly vocal supporter of the fight to introduce equal pay and prize money for professional female cyclists who, even in 2013, could expect to receive prizes and salaries many times lower than their male counterparts (and, more frequently than many people realise, no salary at all) - as Lyne Bessette pointed out in 2007, "At a UCI race, the guys will win, like, a thousand bucks and we get $175." In 2008, she started a campaign since named the Gould Formula with the aim of introducing new measures to redress the balance, centred around a petition delivered to cycling's governing body the UCI. The petition read:

“We, the undersigned, find it regrettable that there is a considerable disparity between the UCI minimum prize money for men and women. We understand that because competition in the men’s field is deeper, more places receive prize money. We do not understand why the women who are receiving prize money receive less than their male counterparts. Therefore we propose that the UCI show leadership and mandate equal prize money for the top five men and women. Article 3 of the UCI Constitution states: "The UCI will carry out its activities in compliance with the principles of: a) equality between all the members and all the athletes, license-holders and officials, without racial, political, religious or other discrimination.." We ask the UCI to honor its commitment to equality."

Henri Desgrange

On this day in 1895, Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his Army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment after being falsely convicted of treason in France - thus beginning the Dreyfus Affair that, by causing Jules Albert De Dion to join forces with other anti-Drefusards and establish the L'Auto newspaper as opposition to the pro-Dreyfus Le Velo newspaper, would also indirectly lead to the inauguration of the Tour de France, originally organised by editor Henri Desgrange in an attempt to increase sales.

Megan Hughes was born on this day in 1977. She was National Road Champion in 1998, then Welsh Road Champion the following year. In 2001 she was offered a place with British Cycling's World Performance development plan but retired shortly afterwards, preferring to settle into her new life at home in Wales with her husband, 2004 Paris-Roubaix winner Magnus Bäckstedt - who says he prefers it to their previous home in Belgium. They still live in Wales and have two daughters.

FDJ rider Benoît Vaugrenard was born in Vannes, France on this day in 1982. He won the National Time Trial Championship in 2007, then in 2008 took second place on Stage 1 at the Critérium International, eighth place on Stage 11 at the Tour de France, won Stage 4 at the Tour du Limousin and was overall winner at the Tour du Poitou-Charentes et de la Vienne. The following year saw him win only once, at the GP d'Isbergues, but he performed well at the Brabantse Pijl, Amstel Gold Race, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Critérium du Dauphiné. 2010 started well with a Stage 1 victory at the Volta ao Algarve in February followed by good stage finishes at Tirreno-Adriatico and a stage win at the Four Days of Dunkirk in May; however, the latter would be his last win that season and he did not enjoy any more success in 2011 or 2012.

David Kopp

David Kopp

Born in Bonn on this day in 1979, David Kopp never reached the heights he'd have doubtless liked to have reached but made a name for himself as a useful rider in the cobbled classics. His career was somewhat checquered - having turned professional with Telekom and doing well in 2001, he failed to impress through the subsequent two years and was dropped when the team became T-Mobile before the 2004 season. He then moved to third-category team Lamonta and apparently found the reduced level of competition more to his liking, winning nine times that year, then went to ProContinental Wiesenhof for 2005 and won four times.

Having now built up an impressive palmares, Kopp made his return to the top ranks when he was offered a place with ProTour Gerolsteiner for 2006 and 2007. His first season with the team went well with second place at Gent-Wevelgem, four top ten stage finishes at the Tour de France, first place at the Trofeo Calvia and a stage win at the Benelux Tour, yet for some reason Gerolsteiner managers decided to keep him away from the big races in 2007 (the team they sent to the Tour that year was led by Markus Fothen and Stefan Schumacher who, though both young and relatively inexperienced, had done unexpectedly well at the Grand Tours in 2006) - perhaps feeling disheartened by this, he won just a derny race and a stage at the Tour of Poland that year and, when his contract was not renewed at the close of the season, was forced to drop a rank back to the ProContinental teams.

Riding for Collstrop in 2008 he was second at the E3 Harelbeke but performed badly for most of the rest of the season; he was unable to secure a contract for 2009. That year, in March, news emerged that he had tested positive for cocaine at a Belgian race the previous September, but he was able to return with Kuota-Indeland in 2010 and won Köln-Schuld-Frechen before placing well at the Ronde van Drenthe and Dwars door Drenthe. He remained with the team when it became Eddy Merckx-Indeland in 2011 and won the Rund am Rhede, then came ninth at the Dwars door Drenthe before announcing his retirement at the end of the year.

Juan Fernández Martín, born in Alhama de Granada on this day in 1957, won Stage 8 and the Mountains Classification of the Giro d'Italia and the Spanish Road Race Championship in 1980, then won a second National Championship in 1988. After retiring from competition at the end of the 1988 season, he went on to become a directeur sportif, serving at CLAS, Mapei, Festina, Coast and Phonak at various times between 1989 and 2006.

Azizulhasni Awang, Malaysian track cyclist and silver medalist at the 2009 Worlds (the first Malaysian to win a World Track medal), was born in 1988.

Barry Mason, 1950-2011

Barry Mason, a cycling activist, was born on this day in 1950. Barry was co-ordinator of the Southwark Cyclists in London for several years and, under his leadership, it became the most active of the London Cycling Campaign groups, taking part in a range of efforts aimed at improving cycling infrastructure and promoting bike use in the city, which led to him being given the London Cycling Personality of the Year award in 2006. He died on the 2nd of June 2011 whilst swimming in Spain and his humanist funeral was attended by many hundreds of cyclists.

Henrik Morén, born in Sweden on this day in 1877, broke British rider Freddie Grubb's 24 Hour Track Time Trial record in 1912 when he covered 375.6 miles (604.47km). (Much more about Grubb on the 6th of March, which will be the anniversary of his death.)


Ronald van Avermaet, who was born in Hamm in East Flanders on this day in 1959, enjoyed considerable success during the early 1980s. He is the father of Greg van Avermaet, the winner of the 2011 Tour de Wallonie; the son of Aimé van Avermaet who won a bronze medal in the 1955 National Amateur Road Race Championship; the son-in-law of 1959 Ronde van België stage winner Kamiel Buysse; father-in-law to Tour of Austria stage winner Glenn D'Hollander (who is a cousin of Preben van Hecke); great-uncle to Belgian professional Anja Buysse and uncle to Thomas and Matthias Ongena who have won numerous races in Belgium. Cycling, it seems, runs in the family.

Bryan Steel, who rode for Great Britain in the Olympics of 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004, was born in Nottingham on this day in 1969.

Other cyclists born on this day: Harry Genders (Great Britain, 1890, died 1971); Jean Van Buggenhout (Belgium, 1905, died 1974); Solo Razafinarivo (Madagascar, 1938); Henrik Morén (Sweden, 1877, died 1956); Ingvar Ericsson (Sweden, 1914, died 1995); Khosro Haghgosha (Iran, 1948); Arnold Lundgren (Denmark, 1899, died 1979); Guido Messina (Italy, 1931); Petrov Minchev (Bulgaria, 1950); Karl Wölfl (Austria, 1914); Ivar Jakobsen (Denmark, 1954); Abbas Saeidi Tanha (Iran, 1981); Igor Pugaci (Moldova, 1975); Knud Andersen (Denmark, 1922, died 1997); Xavier Mirander (Jamaica, 1951); Her Jong-Chau (Taipei, 1946); Heriberto Díaz (Mexico, 1942); Denis Smyslov (USSR, 1979).

Daily Cycling Facts 04.01.2014

Danilo Hondo
(Image credit: Rolf Kaiser
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Danilo Hondo was born in Guben, Germany on this day in 1974. Hondo was banned from racing for two years after he tested positive for the banned Phenylpiracetam, a drug that can improve stamina and resistance to cold (and as such, a very tempting prospect on mountain stages). The ban was then cut to one year, but subsequently extended back to two years by the Court for Arbitration in Sport. Finally, in 2007, Hondo appealed at a civil court and the suspension was ended early.

David Millar
David "The Dandy" Millar was born on this day in 1977. The Malta-born British cyclist is the only British rider to have worn the race leader's jersey in all three Grand Tours, though he was subsequently stripped of his Tour de France on his own insistence during one of the most famous and dramatic doping cases in modern cycling.

At 20:25 on the 23rd of June 2004 as Millar enjoyed dinner in a restaurant, three plain clothes officers from the anti-drugs squad approached him. He was arrested and the officers took his shoe laces, watch, keys, cellphone and other items before driving him back to his flat and beginning a search. Millar is still highly critical of their methods:

"They went in with a gun first, as if somebody was going to hit them with a back wheel or something. They sat me down and I wasn't allowed to move while they searched the house. They search while you're there. It took them four hours.

David Millar
(image credit: Petit Brun CC BY-SA 2.0)

They humiliated me and were critiquing my lifestyle, using a classic good cop, bad cop thing. It was psychological warfare. The bad cop literally hated me. He was saying: 'You're not a good person – we know that.' He said: 'You take three paces and I will bring you down like you're resisting arrest.' It was deliberate. I felt completely violated."

Eventually, the police found what they were looking for - empty phials that had once contained EPO and two used syringes. Precisely where they were found is a bit of a mystery - some reports say that they were lying on top of a book, others that they were concealed within a hollowed-out book. Millar was then taken to Biarritz and locked in a cell. It would later turn out that they had targeted Millar after Philippe Gaumont, arrested six months previously, told them that the British rider had encouraged Cofidis team doctor Jean-Jacques Menuet to provide them and Cedric Vasseur with the drug, which increases red blood cell population.

Millar denied the claims, telling police that Gaumont was "a lunatic" and that he was "talking absolute crap." However, by this time his phone had been tapped for some four months and, when faced with damning evidence against him, he took the sensible option and made a full confession the next day. Under international cyclings sanctioned by the UCI, a confession is considered equal grounds for suspension as a positive test and he was banned for two years by the British Cycling Federation in August. He was stripped of his 2003 World Time Trial Championship, his 3rd place Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré finish also from 2003 and his Stage 1 and 6 wins at the 2001 Vuelta a Espana. Cofidis, meanwhile, began to tear itself apart as Menuet resigned; sacking riders and team employees until it was left a hollow shell on the point of implosion.

An appeal to the Court for Arbitration in Sport failed to get the ban reduced, but it was backdated to begin from the day he'd made his confession. Then in 2006, he came under further investigation as part of a court hearing in Nanterres. That he had doped was not in any doubt, but the court ruled that since Menuet lived just over the Spanish border, it was impossible to prove whether the rider had taken the banned drug while in France or in Spain - and as such, criminal charges could not be sought. During the hearing, Millar opened himself up and told how he had been almost destroyed by the pressures of the sport; how he had despaired that he could never live up to the expectations of his fans and how, after spending every evening alone in his flat with only the television to take his mind off the stress, he had begun going to parties and drinking heavily. He had always found it difficult to make friends, he said; which suggests that, like many people who crave interaction with other human beings but for whatever reason cannot find friends, he filled the void with the temporary friendships that come so much easier with intoxication. He had broken a bone and been unable to cycle for four months, then split up with his girlfriend and entered a depression.

Millar's return: the 2007 Tour
(image credit: McSmit CC BY-SA 3.0)

That sort of honesty can drive people over the edge, but in Millar's case it saved him. His obvious intelligence - another quality not found in enormous qualities among professional cyclists (in the men's peloton, at least) - earned him some new fans. He had sent much of his suspension very drunk, but thanks to his honesty he was once again respected rather than pitied and as a result he could begin to respect himself for the first time in years. One of his new friends was Mauro Gianetti, manager of Saunier Duval-Prodir, and he realised that if only Millar could claw himself back from the brink he'd return a stronger, wiser person; so he threw him a lifeline - an offer of a contract once the ban expired. Millar now had hope.

The Tour de France began one week after his ban ended in 2006 and, slowly but surely, Millar began clawing his way back to the top echelon of cyclists. Since then, his intelligence and (sometimes abrasive but always interesting) personality has led to him becoming one of the sport's elder statesmen, frequently approached by journalists seeking his opinion on all sorts of matters.

Professional cycling was a poorer place without him and though many people initially felt that he should not return, he is now among the most popular figures on the ProTour circuit.

Benoît Joachim
Born in Lëtzebuerg, the capital city of Luxembourg, on this day in 1976, Joachim rode in six Grand Tours - twice in the Tour de France (2000 and 2002), four times in the Vuelta a Espana (2001, 2003, 2004 and 2005) and once in the Giro d'Italia (2005). In the 2004 Vuelta, he became the first rider from Luxembourg to wear the race leader's jersey and kept it for two days. That same year, he won the National Time Trial title, having won the National Road Race Championship in 2003.

In 2000, Joachim returned a sample that revealed an unusually high level of 19-nortestosterone, which exists naturally in the human body in minute quantities but, as a metabolite of Nandralone, in larger quantities is indication of illegal anabolic steroid use. However, he was subsequently cleared on a technicality and continued riding for the Discovery team with whom he spent his entire professional career with the exception of his final two seasons from 2007 when he joined Astana, with whom he remained for two years before going to his last team Differdange for 2009, then retired at the end of the season.

Yaroslav Popovych
Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych, born on this day in 1980, enjoyed enormous success as an amateur and won an Under-23 World Championship and Paris-Roubaix before turning professional with Discovery in 2005, where he was hailed as a potential successor to Lance Armstrong - whom he helped towards his historic seventh Tour de France victory that year, while winning the Youth Classification for himself.

Popovych at the 2011 Tour de France
(image credit: PB85 CC BY-SA 3.0)

In the Tour one year later, Popovych was considered to be one of the team's strongest riders and won Stage 12 in memorable style: having broken away from the peloton with Óscar Freire, Alessandro Ballan and Christophe Le Mével, he repeatedly and savagely attacked each of them until he'd drained their strength. In 2007, he rode in support of Alberto Contador and for the second time became an instrumental part in his team leader's eventual victory; a remarkable show of humility considering Popovych was two years older and at a time when many riders are entering their best years. He got his chance to go for glory at that year's Giro d'Italia when he was named team leader, but was forced to abandon in Stage 12 following two crashes.

When Discovery withdrew from cycling at the end of the 2007 season, Popovych moved to Silence-Lotto as a domestique to Cadel Evans who would come 2nd in the Tour that year. It proved to be a far quieter year for the Ukrainian, however, as he achieved just one podium finish - 3rd at Paris-Nice. At the end of the season, he signed up to Astana which had recently come under the aegis of ex-Discovery manager Johan Bruyneel, a man whose management style has earned him the eternal dislike and everlasting loyalty of riders in roughly equal amounts. Once again riding as a domestique for Contador, he helped to propel the Spaniard to 4th place overall while settling for 23rd himself. In 2010, when Bruyneel took on management duties at the new Team Radioshack co-owned by Lance Armstrong, Popovych once again went with him.

In January 2011, Popovych was implicated in the investigation into Floyd Landis. American magazine Sports Illustrated published a report claiming that Popovych's Tuscan home had been raided by police who had subsequently discovered doping products, medical supplies and documents linking him to the notorious Dr. Michele Ferrari. Through his lawyer, Popovych strongly denied the claims and also stated that the magazine's claims that police had found proof of a continuing connection between Ferraro and Armstrong, who had previously insisted he no longer had any association with the controversial doctor, were false. No charges have been brought against Popovych which, it seems, proves the allegations published by Sports Illustrated were indeed either incorrect or a deliberate falsification.

Popovych rode with the new Radioshack-Nissan-Trek team formed following the merger with Leopard Trek for 2012, but failed to win any races.

Marek Wesoły

Kara Chesworth was born in Portsmouth in this day in 1972 but later moved to Wales where she rides with the Dysynni CC. She represented Wales at the 2010 Commonwealth Games and that same year came 8th in the National Road Race Championship.

Marek Wesoły, born in Gostyń, Poland on this day in 1978, has ridden in all three Grand Tours. His best result came at the 2004 National Championships, where he won the Road Race title.

Wilf Waters, born on this day in 1923, became a household name as one of the most successful British cyclists during the 1940s when he won numerous titles. In 1948, he was selected to compete at the Olympic Games in London and, with David Ricketts, Tommy Godwin and Robert Geldard, won a bronze medal in the Team Pursuit. At the time of writing, Waters is still with us.

Dutch criterium cyclist Jan Schröder died on this day in 2007. He was born on the 16th of June 1941.

Carlos-Manuel Figueiredo Teixeira, born on this day in 1971, turned professional with Atum Bom Petisco-Tavira in 1995, then went to Boavista and remained with the team until retirement in 2002 - he didn't set the world alight, but he picked up a few good results including a stage win at the GP Sport Noticias in 1997. Many cyclists fall upon hard times when they retire, but few attempt to solve their problems in the way that Teixeira did - he robbed twenty banks, starting in 2011 and accruing a total of around €152,000 in order to set up his own business. In November 2012 he was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Other cyclists born on this day: Frank Høj (Denmark, 1973); Jan Hruška (Czechoslovakia, 1975); Ernst Denifl (Father of Leopard Trek's Stefan Denifl, Austria, 1962); Károly Eisenkrammer (Hungary, 1969); Paul Maue (Germany, 1922); Tadashi Kato (Japan, 1935); Ramón Sáez (Spain, 1940); Heinz Imboden (Switzerland, 1962); Erik Schoefs (Belgium, 1967); Tsuyoshi Kawachi (Japan, 1945); Jimmi Madsen (Denmark, 1969); Ib Vagn Hansen (Denmark, 1926).

Daily Cycling Facts 03.01.2014

Lucien Buysse

Lucien Buysse, 1892-1980

Lucien Buysse, winner of two stages and the overall General Classification at the 1926 Tour de France - at 5745km, the longest in history (it was also the first Tour that didn't start in Paris) - died on this day in 1980. He was born in Wontergem, Belgium on the 11th of September 1892 and counted the 1913 Tour of Belgium for Amateurs as his first major success.

During Stage 3 at the 1926 Tour, Buysse received news that his daughter had died. His immediate instinct was to leave the race and return home; but his family insisted he continued, realising that if her father could win a stage and dedicate his victory to her it would make a very fine memorial indeed.

Stage 10 was billed as the hardest in the history of the Tour. It began at midnight and, by 18:00, only ten men had arrived at the finish line. Possibly fearing that Desgrange's early concerns that riders in the Pyrenees were at risk of being eaten by bears, the organisers sent out cars in search of the missing men and began finding them, in various states of exhaustion, strung out along the route. A full 24 hours after the stage had begun, 47 of the 76 starters had crossed the line, at which point it was decided that all riders would be permitted an extra 40% of the winning time (6 hours and 48 minutes) in which to finish as the standard cut-off time in which all riders must finish in order to escape disqualification would leave a field so depleted it would reduce competition; the remaining 22 - incredibly, only one rider had abandoned - being disqualified. The stage had been so difficult that judges had turned a blind eye when some of the riders had arrived at the end of the stage by bus and when a member of the public confessed that he had carried some riders to the finish line in his car but insisted they'd been in such a poor state he had done so through altruism rather than for financial gain, officials declined to disqualify the riders - and paid the man for helping them.

Buysse on Tourmalet

Buysse, meanwhile, proved to be made of sterner stuff. Showing a similar ability to that later displayed by Charly Gaul, a capacity to withdraw into himself and keep going hard whilst those around him were reduced to their lowest ebb by the sheer suffering involved in what they were attempting to do, he made use of a storm on the Col d'Aspin and, accompanied by his brothers Jules (winner of Stages 1 and 2) and Michel, attacked the peloton so savagely that he took the yellow jersey from previous leader Gustave van Slembrouck and a lead just short of an hour from his own Automoto team captain Ottavio Bottecchia, winner in 1924 and 1926, who subsequently abandoned. By the time he crossed the finish line, after seventeen hours and 326km of solid riding, he was 25 minutes ahead of the next man and two hours ahead of van Slembrouck. The next stage, two days later, was also mountainous and only 3km shorter; when Buysse won that one too his overall victory was all but guaranteed Wisely, he conserved his energy from that point onwards; taking care not to over-exert himself and deliver consistent good results so that he held the race leadership all the way to Paris six stages later.


Giovanni Pelizzoli
Legendary Italian frame builder Giovanni Pelizzoli was born in Curno on this day in 1942. The son of a bike mechanic, he began racing at the age of 14 and achieved good results but always dreamed of building bikes rather than racing them. He became manager of a junior team whilst still a teenager and managed to land an apprenticeship with an artisan frame builder in Bergamo, where he learned his craft and in 1969 set up his own workshop building bikes under his CIÖCC brand, while also working as a mechanic for the GS Zonca team, then home to Gianni Motta. In 1977, Claudio Corti won a World Cup aboard a CIÖCC bike.

Pelizzoli's hand-built frames combine the best of old and
modern production techniques.

Pelizzoli sold the company in 1980 but continued building bikes and in 1993 was put in charge of the frame design division at Cicli F.lli Masciaghi, where he was responsible for the development of the firm' top-end Fausto Coppi-branded machines. The firm's pro team of the day included names such as Gianni Bugno, Richard Virenque and Davide Rebellin - at that time, among the best riders in the world. In 1995, Bugno won the Italian National Championship on a bike Pelizzoli hand-built specifically for him. A year later, Pascal Richard, Max Sciandri and Ralf Sorensen took the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympic road race, each of them aboard a Pelizzoli bike. Fabiana Luperini won five editions of the Giro Donne (the record) and three consecutive Tours de France Féminin (equaling Jeannie Longo's record) on hers.


Born in Gwndy, a village near Caldicot in Wales, on this day in 1991, Hannah Rich found her way into cycling via a roundabout route - in 2006, when she was 15, she took part in trampoline sessions held at Newport Velodrome and decided she liked the look of the track cycling she saw there. Later that same year, she won a silver medal in the Junior Points race at the National Track Championships, then two years later she became National Scratch race Champion. A year after that she was Welsh Road Race Champion and Junior British Points race Champion, then in 2011 she became Welsh Road Race Champion for a second time and came third in the British Circuit Race Championship.

Alessandro Petacchi
(image: CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Born in La Spezia on this day in 1974, Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi won an incredible 51 Grand Tour stages during his 15 year professional career - even with the stage wins that were later disqualified, he is the third most successful Grand Tour stage winner after Eddy Merckx and Mario Cipollini. He also won the Points Classification in all three races. Petacchi's results prior to 2007 have been disallowed after he tested positive for a controlled substance, though his positive result was due to incorrect use of his anti-asthma medicine rather than deliberate doping - while the Court of Arbitration in sport cleared him of intentionally doping, it ruled that in committing "human error" he had failed to exercise the utmost caution that is expected of all athletes. On the 23rd of April 2013, Petacchi announced via the Lampre-Merida website that he had retired but, at the age of 39, hinted that his decision might not be permanent. "My career has been full of satisfactions and enriched by all the most important victories that a rider like me could ever have aimed for," he said. "At the threshold of 200 victories in my career, I feel my life reaches a particular moment, a turning point, in which I perceive the need to find a new dimension and to have more time to dedicate to my family. These considerations conclude me to the decision to pause my career."

In 2013, Omega Pharma-QuickStep manager Patrick Lefevre announced that Pettachi would be joining the team on a14-month contract beginning in August, the rider having said previously that he would like to act as lead-out man for the team's star sprinter Mark Cavendish.


More cyclists born on this day: Kevin Morgan (Australia, 1948); Les Wilson (Great Britain, 1926, died 20.01.2006); Morgan Schmitt (USA, 1985); Álvaro González de Galdeano (Spain, 1970);  Robert Oliver (New Zealand, 1950); Ross Edgar (UK, 1983); Ján Lepka (Slovakia, 1977); Vittorio Algeri (Italy, 1955); Juan Carlos Haedo (Argentina, 1948); Ole Byriel (Denmark, 1958); Karel Paar (Czechoslovakia, 1945); Gino Lori (Italy, 1956); Arturo Cambroni (Mexico, 1953); Ceris Gilfillan (Scotland, 1980); Marcel Gobillot (France, 1900, died 1991); Angie González (Venezuela, 1981).

Daily Cycling Facts 02.01.2014

Fausto Coppi, 1919-1960

Fausto Coppi
The 2nd of January is one of the saddest dates in cycling and the saddest of all for Italian fans - it was on this day in 1960 that Fausto Coppi died, aged just 40.

Coppi won the Giro d'Italia five times and the Tour de France twice, also winning the King of the Mountains a combined total of five times. A list of his other successes - Paris-Roubaix, Giro di Toscana, Giro dell'Emilia, Milan-San Remo, Giro di Lombardia, Coppa Bernocchi, La Flèche Wallonne, Trofeo Baracchi, Gran Premio di Lugano, Giro del Veneto, Tre Valli Varesine and more - reads like a list of the most prestigious bicycle races of the 20th Century; few cycling fans who were not there to see it do not feel a deep wish to have witnessed his legendary duels with rival Gino Bartali. He is the only rider to have won both the first and last Tours he entered.

Coppi entered a deep depression caused at least in part by the tragic death of his brother, following a crash at the Giro del Piemonte when he was only 28, during the last years of his life; when he died he was buried in soil collected from the Col d'Izoard where he achieved some of his most memorable victories, became the subject of some of the most iconic photographs in cycling and sport in general and where there is a monument in his memory. The cause of Coppi's death is generally accepted to have been malaria, as was recorded following autopsy; however, there are still some who believe he succumbed to an overdose of cocaine - or that he was murdered in Burkina Faso with, in the worlds of a mysterious monk named Brother Adrien, "a potion mixed with grass." For a brief while, a court considered the possibility of exhuming the rider's body to test these claims; when no evidence was found to support them - Coppi's doctor, Ettore Allegri, termed the rumours "absolute drivel" - the case was dropped with no exhumation taking place.


Random Fact: after being captured by the British and becoming a prisoner of war in WW2, Coppi became friendly with a man who later fathered Claudio Chiappucci, one of the leading lights of professional cycling in the 1990s.

Svetlana Bubnenkova
Born in Izhevsk, USSR on this day in 1973, Svetlana Bubnenkova has been a regular on the podium for two decades. In 1993 she rode with the victorious team at the World Team Trial Championships, was second at the National Road Race Championships and won the Chrono Champenois. Her team won the World Team Trial Championship again in 1994 and she won the National Individual Time Trial Championship and the Tour de Bretagne, then two years later she became National Road Race Champion. She did not win any races in 1997, 1998 or 1999 but got some good results including three third place stage finishes and second place overall at the 1999 Giro Donne where she won the Points competition.

Bubnenkova in 2009

In 2000 Bubnenkova won Stage 7 at the Tour de France Feminin before going to the Giro Donne where she was third on Stage 3, second on Stage 5, won Stages 6 and 7, was second on Stages 8 and 10 and third and second respectively on Stages 12a and 12b, also winning the Points competition for a second time. She also won the National Road Race Championships, was fourth at the Trofeo Binda and  third at the Giro Trentino Alto Adige-Sudtirol that season. In 2002, she won Stages 3 and 6 and overall at the Giro Donne, won back her National Road Race Champion title and won the Trofeo Binda and Tour de Suisse Feminine, then in 2003 she retained the National title and added the National Individual Time Trial Championship. In 2004, she won the overall King of the Mountains at the Giro Donne. In 2005 she won Stage 1 and overall at the Emakumeen Bira, the Prologue and overall at the Giro Trentino Alto Adige-Sudtirol, the National ITT Championship, Stage 8 at the Giro Donne and Stages 2, 3, 4 and 5 at the Tour de l'Ardèche. She was no less successful in 2006 with victory in Stage 1 and overall at the Giro di San Marino, Stages 1, 2 and overall at the Giro Trentino Alto Adige-Sudtirol, Stage 8 at the Route de France and Stage 5 and overall at the Giro della Toscana; nor was 2007 with Stage 8 and the overall King of the Mountains at the Giro Donne, victory at the Criterium Internationale, Stages 1 and 4 at the Tour en Limousin and Stages 2, 5, 6 and 7 (but only second overall) at the Route de France. Victories came less frequently after 2007, by which time Bubnenkova was older than most male riders when they retire, but she still won: in 2009 the GP Elsy Jacobs, in 2011 the Gracia Orlova and in 2013 - when she was 39 - the National Individual Time Trial Championship.

Bubnenkova's career has not been without controversy: at the 2006 Tour en Limousin she failed a test for EPO and, the following season, received a two-year ban that she escaped due to clerical errors. Nevertheless, all the results she gained between June and September of that year were disqualified.

Victor Fontan, leading the Tour through the mountains
in 1928. He was a remarkable rider who rode three
remarkable Tours.

Victor Fontan
Another rider who died on this day was Victor Fontan, aged 89 in 1982. Fontan, who achieved limited fame in the Pyrennean commune of Nay as a young man after some success in local races, never won a Tour (though he won the Volta a Catalunya twice) but was nevertheless a remarkable rider and, in some ways, can be seen as the embodiment of the early Tours. Firstly, he was the son of a cobbler, yet his own son became a heart surgeon - emblematic of how, in the first two thirds of the 20th Century, cycling presented the best chance many young men would ever get to lift their families from poverty. Secondly, after a short pre-war professional career, he saw action and was shot twice in the leg; yet returned to racing almost immediately after his demobilisation in 1920 and soon made a name for himself as the strongest rider in the south-west of France.

He entered the Tour for the first time in 1924 as a touriste-routiere (an individual, private rider allowed to take part provided he paid for his own equipment, food and lodgings) but did not finish, most observers deciding that at 32 (and with his war injury) he was already too old to make an impact. Then, aged 36 in 1928, he won two stages - one, Stage 7, was a team time trial (as were all flat stages that year); but the other, Stage 9, was a difficult mountain stage over 387km from Hendaye to Luchon. Unfortunately, Fontan's team were weak and other than that one stage, they proved far from his equal in the rest of the race and as a result he was forced to spend a great deal of time looking after them and trying to hurry them up a little, so he finished the race with an overall time 5h7'47" behind winner Nicolas Frantz. However, when journalists worked out the total time he had spent attending to the needs of his team, they discovered subtracting that time would have left Fontan as the overall winner.

That wasn't the last mark he made: one year later he was back, riding as an independent again in a Tour that was unique because at one point there were three yellow jerseys after Fontan, Frantz and André Leducq recorded identical elapsed times. He did not remain a race leader for long due to a crash after he was either knocked off by a dog or rode into a gutter and damaged his bike (explanations vary; it seems likely, therefore, that he rode into the gutter while trying to avoid the dog) - this happened just 7km into a stage that began before dawn, so it was still dark. Riders were permitted to continue on a replacement bike provided a race official had deemed their original machine was beyond repair but, when they showed up, they had no replacement bike to give him; he was forced therefore to run to the nearest village and go from door to door waking people up and begging to borrow one. Finally, somebody provided him with one and, since the rules dictated that a rider needed to cross the finish line with an officially approved bike, he set off aboard the borrowd bike with the broken machine strapped across his back. By 6am, he'd punctured and the broken bike had cut his back badly, leaving him exhausted and in agony - journalists Alex Virot and Jean Antoine of L'Intransigeant discovered him in tears, sitting on a fountain in Saint-Gaudens, Haute-Garonne, and took pity on him. The journalists were also providing radio coverage for the Radio Cité station, which played a recording of Fontan's sobbing a few hours later. Fans were deeply moved to hear the rider's distress. One of them was Louis Delblatt, another journalist at the Les Echos des Sports newspaper, who would later write:

"How can a man lose the Tour de France because of an accident to his bike? I can't understand it. The rule should be changed so that a rider with no chance of winning can give his bike to his leader, or there should be a a car with several spare bicycles. You lose the Tour de France when you find someone better than you are. You don't lose it through a stupid accident to your machine."

In response, Henri Desgrange - who hated change - altered the rules for the 1930 Tour, adopting those suggested by Delblatt. For the first time riders could have their bikes repaired by team mechanics and no longer had to finish each stage on the same bike with which they started without seeking official approval.

Danilo Di Luca
(image credit: Michal Sagrol/Procycling CC BY-SA 2.5)

Danilo Di Luca
Born in Spoltore on this day in 1975, Danilo Di Luca became a professional cyclist in 1998 and won the Under-23 Giro d'Italia in his first year. Seen originally as a rider who could perform well only in races lasting for a few days, he surprised many by finishing the 2005 Giro in 4th place overall, having won two stages - just one of several misjudgments by team management, which is partially the reason he has ridden for so many different teams during his career.

He seemed to prove just how wrong they were in the 2007 Giro when he won an incredible eight stages and the overall General Classification. In 2008, his LPR-Brakes Ballan team received a wildcard entry for the Giro and he won the Points classification, finishing 2nd overall. This feat was also mired, this time by a positive test result that showed the presence of CERA, a form of EPO. His placing was declared void and he received a two-year ban and a 280,000 euro fine. This had not been the first time his name had been linked to doping - as long ago as 2004 he had been investigated after he was recorded discussing doping with Eddy Mazzoleni, a rider who was implicated in the Oil for Drugs scandal of 2007 and received a two-year ban the following year. In 2007, he was found to have unusually low hormone levels, which can be a sign that the body has been stressed by a heavy racing schedule or that a masking agent has been used, most likely in an attempt to hide abnormally high testosterone levels; that same year, he was handed a three-month ban when he was shown to have visited a doctor banned from working with professional athletes.

Due to his co-operation with the investigation, in 2010 both the ban, backdated to July 2009, and the fine were reduced to nine months and seven days and 106,400 euros respectively, though the UCI would this decision. Di Luca made his return to the top of the sport with the ProTeam Katusha for 2011, but received no salary for the season he spent with them and won no races. In 2012 he moved to Acqua e Sapone and won Stage 2 (ending at the summit of the Kitzbüheler Horn) at the Österreich-Rundfahrt and took first place at the GP Nobili Rubinetterie Coppa Città di Stresa. Acqua e Sapone will not continue into the 2013 season; in November 2012 he was reported to be considering offers from several teams, eventually choosing Vini Fantini-Selle Italia which received a wildcard invitation to race at the Giro d'Italia. The race was coming to a close by the 24th of May (that day's stage, 19, was the Queen due to featuring ascents of the Gavia and Stelvio Passes, both of which were taken off the parcours due to heavy snowfall the day before - when more heavy snow fell on the remaining passes, the entire stage was cancelled) when news broke that Di Luca had failed a test carried out at his home one week prior to the start. Following an investigation, he was found guilty of using EPO; in December that year he was given a lifetime ban from all competitive sports.


Félix Sellier

Sellier after being hit by a car in 1920. He looks reasonably
relaxed, but note that the car's occupants have squeezed
up on the opposite side - perhaps to try to distance
themselves from an angry verbal onslaught!

Félix Sellier was born in Spy, Belgium on this day in 1893 and had to abandon the 1920 Tour de France after he was hit by a car - a photograph survives showing his bike under the car while he leans in through the window and delivers what was doubtless an angry lecture.

In the 1921 Tour, when he was riding as an unsponsored touriste-routier, he won Stage 13 - however, it wasn't the most glorious victory in the race's history because Henri Desgrange had decreed that the independent riders would set off two hours before the profeesionals for that stage as he wanted to punish the sponsored entrants for refusing to compete against Leon Scieur, who was riding so powerfully that they'd given up hope of beating him and were vying with one another for second place.

Sellier should not be remembered as an also-ran who once got lucky though. The next year he returned with a sponsor, and he won both Stage 14 and 4th place overall fair and square

Emily Kachorek

Born in Sacramento on this day in 1980, Emily Kachorek won the Tour de Murrieta and came third at the Tour de Nez and Lodi CycleFest in 2012 when she rode for Primal/Map My Ride. She was also sixth at the Tour of the Gila, having finished all but two stages in the top ten. In 2012, riding for Vanderkitten, Kachorek was second at the Bariani road race.

Frenchman Jérôme Pineau was born in Mont-Saint-Aignan on this day in 1980. In 2002 he won the Tour de Normandie, then in 2003 and 2004 the Tour de l'Ain before spending a few years getting good results in the Classics from 2005 - he was ninth at the Amstel Gold Race that year, tenth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2007, tenth at the Amstel Gold Race in 2008 and second at the Brabantse Pijl in 2009. In 2010 he won Stage 5 at the Giro d'Italia, then wore the King of the Mountains jersey for four stages in the 2010 Tour de France where he also won the Combativity award in Stage 7 and in 2011 he was ninth at the Brabantse Pijl. Pineau recorded some good results in 2012 including seventh place at the Four Days of Dunkirk, but the season passed without victory - as did 2013, though his Omega Pharma-QuickStep team took second place behind Orica-GreenEdge in the Stage 4 time trial at the Tour de France. In 2014, Pineau will ride with IAM.


Paul Litschi, Swiss National Road Champion in 1927, was born on this day in 1904.

Other cyclists born on this day: Peter Aldridge (Jamaica, 1961); Bunki Bankaitis-Davis (USA, 1958); Chen Weixu (China, 1966); Ottavio Dazzan (Argentina, 1958); Gabriela Diaz (Argentina, 1981); Piet Ikelaar (Netherlands, 1896, died 25.11.1992); Helge Jacobsen (Denmark, 1915, died 02.08.1974); Ritchie Johnston (New Zealand, 1931, died 18.07.2001); Vlastibor Konečný (won bronze in 100km Team Time Trial at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, born Czechoslovakia 1957); Leijn Loevesijn (won silver for the Netherlands in the 1968 Olympics, born 1949); Jiří Mikšík (Czechoslovakia, 1952); Marino Morettini (won gold and silver medals at the 1952 Olympics, born Italy 1931, died 10.12.1990); No Yeong Sik (South Korea, 1977); István Pásztor (Hungary, 1926); Gérard Quintyn (France, 1947); Ihor Tselovalnykov (born 1944, Armenia, won gold for USSR at the 1972 Olympics, died 01.03.1986); Maria Paola Turcutto (Italy, 1965);

Daily Cycling Facts 01.01.2014

Mark Beaumont

Happy birthday to the British long-distance cyclist Mark Beaumont, born in Scotland on this day in 1983. Beaumont set a new world record (broken in 2010 by Vin Cox) after riding 29,446km around the world in 194 days and 17 hours. Mark's first big adventure was a solo ride from John O'Groats to Land's End when he was 15, his most recent was the 21,050km from Anchorage in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina - en route, he climbed Mount McKinley and Aconcagua, the highest peaks in North and South America respectively. His round-the-world ride was completed on a Koga-Miyata.

On this day in 1997, having been a popular sport around the world for two decades, BMX was finally fully accepted by and integrated into the British Cycling Federation.

Happy birthday to Karl Köther, born in 1942, the German representative in the Sprint and 1km time trial at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Karl's father - also named Karl, born 1905 - was an Olympian cyclist too, riding the 2km Tandem Sprint at the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.

On this day in 2009, Team Rabobank entered a new contract with Giant and began riding the company's top-of-the-range American-produced bikes after several years with the Italian Colnago manufacturer.

Happy birthday to Tristan Hoffman, who rode Paris-Roubaix three times and came second in 2004. Following retirement he became a directeur sportif, first with the Danish CSC team (still with us as Tinkoff-Saxo in 2014) and later for HTC-Highroad (which closed down at the end of 2011). He was born in Groenlo, Netherlands in 1970 and became National Road Race Champion in 1992; in 1996 and 2000 he won the Dwars door Vlaanderen.

On the first day of 1939, professional cyclist Tommy Godwin (born 1912) set out to achieve a new record in Cycling magazine's annual distance competition. One year later, he had ridden 120,805km - a record which still stands. By May 1940, he had reached 160,000km (100,000 miles), then decided to do his bit for the war by joining the RAF. After spending so much of his waking time in the saddle, he reported that he had to spend weeks relearning to walk properly. Godwin should not be confused with Thomas Charles Godwin, also known as Tommy, an Olympic cyclist born in 1920.

Happy birthday to Rabaki Jeremie Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso, twice National Champion and overall winner of the 2005 Tour du Faso. He was born in 1973.

On this day in 2005, Russian Olympian track cyclist Dmitry Nelyubin died following a fight in St. Petersburg. Nelyubin, who had ridden with the winning Pursuit team at the 1988 Olympics, had gone outside with friends at midnight to set off fireworks but were attacked by a group of men; during the fight, the rider was stabbed in the stomach. An ambulance was called but took half an hour to reach him due to snow, and although he was alive when it reached him he died later that morning. Nelyubin's death appears to have been caused by mistaken identity: the group that attacked him and his friends stated that earlier that night they had themselves been attacked and beaten up by a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads and claimed they had later mistaken Nelyubin for one of them. Nelyubin was the son of Vladislav Nelyubin, also an Olympian cyclist and the winner of the Points competition at the 1973 Tour of Austria. Every year, Vladislav organises a memorial race in the city where his son died.

On this day in 1994, New Zealand became the first - and to date the only (helmets are not mandatory everywhere in Australia) - nation to make protective helmets mandatory when cycling. The law came about largely due to the efforts of Rebecca Oaten, whose son Aaron was left with permanent brain damage after he was hit by a car in 1986. Aaron spent eight months in a coma and, when he awoke, was paralysed and unable to speak. He died on the 14th of August in 2010, aged just 37.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jamal Ahmed Al-Doseri (represented Bahrain in the Individual Road Race and 100km Team Time Trial at the 1992 Olympics, born 1970); Youssef Khanfar Al-Shakali (represented Oman in the Individual Road Race at the 1996 Olympics, born 1972); Bernd Barleben (represented Germany in the 4km Team Pursuit at the 1960 Olympics, born 1940); Mario Benetton (represented Italy in the 4km Team Pursuit at the 2000 Olympics, born 1974); Danial Kaswanga (Malawian Olympian in 1984 and 1988, born 1960); Arturo Friedemann (represented Chile in the 1912 Olympics, born 1893); Enrique Heredia (Mexican professional, born 1912, died 26.06.1996); Otto Jensen, (Danish Olympian, born 1893, died 25.12.1972); Alvin Hjalmar "Al Loftes" Lofstedt (American bronze medalist in Team Road Race at the 1912 Olympics, born 1890); Hans Olsen (Danish cyclist, born 1885, died 04.12.1969); František Řezáč (Czech professional, born 1943, died 04.05.1979); Prajin Rungrote (Thai professional, born 1953; Asyat Saitov (Russian Olympian, rode for USSR in 1988, born 1965); Anthony Young (rode for USA in 1920 Olympics, born 1892, died 1969).