Daily Cycling Facts 08.02.2014

Sissy van Alebeek

Sissy van Alebeek

Born in Shijndel, Netherlands on this day in 1976, Sissy van Alebeek won the bronze medal for the Elite Sprint at the National Track Championships in 1996, then joined Michel Zijlaard's VKS where she rode alongside the legendary Leontien van Moorsel the following year and returned to the Track Nationals to win the silver for the Elite Sprint and 500m; in 1998, with the team renamed Opstalan (and Leontien renamed Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel after she married Michel), she won the silver for the Sprint again.

Although van Alebeerk had enjoyed success in road racing since the early days of her cycling career, from 1999 she began to find greater fame as a road racer - that year, she won stages at the RaboSter Zeeuwsche Eilanden and the Ster van Zeeland in addition to winning two prestigious one-day races, then in 2000 she was second overall at the Omloop van Kempen and won a stage at the Ster van Zeeland as well as once again taking the silver for the Sprint and the bronze for the 500m at the Track Nationals. Then, having won three one-day races and come third on Stage 7 at the Holland Ladies' Tour - one of the most prestigious and important stage races in women's cycling - she beat Bertine Spijkerman and Martine Bras to become National Road Race Champion.

2002 was a quieter year, her most notable performance being a bronze-winning ride in the Points race at the Nationals, but in 2003 she regained form and won four races, also sharing victory for the Stage 3 team time trial at the Holland Ladies' Tour. The winning streak continued through 2004 with eight victories including the overall General Classification at the Ronde van Drenthe and third place overall at the Holland Ladies' Tour, then all the way through to 2009 when, having clocked up another 18 victories, she retired from racing. Van Alebeek, who holds a degree in economics, continues to be involved with the sport, serving as commerical manager at Project 1t4i..


Sara Mustonen

Sara Mustonen

Born in Höganäs on this day in 1981, Swedish cyclist Sara Mustonen became National Short Distance Road Race Champion in 2006 and signed her first professional contract the following year with S.C. Michela Fanini-Rox. She would enjoy ten victories that season, including three stage wins and the General Classification at the Söderhamns 3-dagars and a successful attempt to defend her National Championship title.

 In 2008 she moved to Cmax Dila, another Italian team, and made her name by winning the Tour of Poland before once again keeping her National title, then she spent the first four months of 2009 with Cykelcity.se before switching to Hitec Products, the team that remains her home to this day. With them, she performed well at the Tour of New Zealand, finishing several stages in ninth place before coming ninth overall, then won bronze in the National Road Race and Individual Time Trial Championships and took a series of top-ten stage finishes and ninth overall at the Route de France.

In 2011 Mustonen was fifth overall at the Tour of Chongming Island, third again in the National Individual Time Trial Championship and finished Stage 6 at the Giro Donne in fourth place; in 2012 she was third on Stage 5 at the Holland Ladies' Tour. Random fact: during her youth, Mustonen competed in boxing.


Rory Sutherland
Canberra-born Rory Sutherland came into the world on this day in 1982. In 2005, he tested positive for Clomiphene - a drug without any recognised performance-enhancing effects but, as it's been used (chiefly by body-builders) to aid recovery at the end of a cycle of steroid drugs, on the list of substances for which sportspeople can receive a ban from the World Anti-Doping Agency as its presence (especially in male athletes, since it's a selective oestrogen receptor modulator used most commonly to treat female infertility) may indicate something more untoward.

Since no evidence of steroids or other doping products were found and it was the rider's first offence, he received a relatively lenient nine-month ban from the Belgian cycling federation by whom he was licensed.  When his ban expired, he returned to racing and has done particularly well in the USA, winning the Nature Valley Grand Prix, the Redlands Classic and the Southlands Classic. In 2011, he added his first notable European success in six years (having come 3rd overall at the Danmark Rundt, in which he also won the Youth classification) with 6th overall at the Settimana Internazionale di Coppi e Bartali.

One of these riders is Albert Taillandier!

Albert Taillandier
Albert Taillandier was born on this day in 1879 and raced between 1898 and 1910, never turning professional. He represented France in 1900 Olympics, held in Paris, and won a gold medal for winning the sprint, also winning the Grand Prix de Paris that year. The last we know about him is that he won a bronze for sprinting in the 1906 National Championships. Then, like so many cyclists before and since, he vanished off into the wider world and nobody knows anything else about him, including when and where he died.


Other cyclists born on this day: Marco Villa (Italy, 1969); Vincent Le Quellac (France, 1975); Livingstone Alleyne (Barbados, 1971); Jari Lähde (Finland, 1963); Paul Kind (Liechtenstein, 1950); Frode Sørensen (Denmark, 1912, died 1980); Arnold Ruiner (Austria, 1937); Cormac McCann (Ireland, 1964); Günter Hoffmann (Germany, 1939); Charles Coste (France, 1924); Don Burgess (Great Britain, 1933); Jan Karlsson (Sweden, 1966); Dmitry Nelyubin (USSR, 1971, died 2005); Walter Andrews (Canada, 1881); Tadeusz Wojtas (Poland, 1955); Katrin Leumann (Switzerland, 1982); Charles Pranke (USA, 1936).

Daily Cycling Facts 07.02.2014

89

Learco Guerra
Learco Guerra, who died on this day in 1963, started out as a footballer. However, he turned out not to be very good at it and so he decided to have a go at cycling instead. He turned out to be very good at that, earning himself the nickname "Locomotive" for his ability to keep on for kilometre after kilometre at high speed.

Born in Bagnolo san Vito on the 14th of October 1902, Guerra's football ambitions meant that he came to cycling unusually late when he was 26. It took him just a year to become National Champion in 1930, the same year he entered the Giro d'Italia for the first time and won two stages (8 and 11), coming 9th overall. Even more remarkably, he also entered the Tour de France for the first time, where he won three stages (2, 13 and 15), wore the maillot jaune for seven days and finished in 2nd place overall and retained his National title. He kept it again in 1931 and added the World Road Race Championship for good measure, having won another four stages in the Giro too. He wasn't World Champion in 1932 but remained National Champion, this time winning six Giro stages (1, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 13). In 1933, he took Stages 1, 3 and 5 at the Giro, then went back to the Tour where he won Stages 2, 6, 7 and 18, once again finishing 2nd overall, won Milan-San Remo and became National Champion for the fourth consecutive year.

Guerra's best year was 1934, when he won 13 major races including the Giro di Lombardia and ten stages at the Giro d'Italia (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 14) - more than enough for an overall win - and won the National Championship for the final time. He settled for 4th overall at the 1935 Giro, this time having to make do with Stages 3, 4, 7, 8 and 10, then had a quieter year in 1936 during which his only notable win was the  Giro della Provincia Milano in which he teamed up with Gino Bartali. His last Giro came a year later and he won Stage 9, polishing off his career in 1940 when he became National Track Stayer Champion.

Sadly, Guerra's enormous success was hijacked by the Italian Fascist government who used him as a heroic figurehead in propaganda. His own politics are not known, but most historians feel he was probably not a fascist himself - his popularity in the peloton, among cyclists of various nations and at a time when many were beginning to develop real suspicions and fear of what was taking place in Italy and Germany, may confirm this; as would his work after retiring as a cyclist when he became a team manager for, among several others, Charly Gaul, a rider who would have made one of the most unlikely fascists ever.

He died aged 60, having been diagnosed Parkinson's Disease some time previously.

Franco Ballerini
Franco Ballerini, who died on this day in 2010, first found fame as a cyclist before becoming a cycling team manager. Born in Florence, his greatest success came in the Classics - he won Paris-Roubaix, the single-day race so hard it's known as commonly by its nicknames "The Hell Of The North" and "A Sunday In Hell" as often as by its real name, on two occasions, first in 1995 and then again in 1998. He also won Paris-Brussels in 1990, the Giro della Romagna in 1991, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in 1995 and the Grand Prix de Wallonie in 1996.

Franco Ballerini, 1964-2010
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

He was far less effective as a stage racer, finishing the Tour de France 115th overall in 1992 and 61st the following year, when he also took Stage 14 at the Giro d'Italia. He would win Stage 5 in the 1996 Tour of Austria, but that was as far as his stage race success went. He did far better as manager of the Italian team, training among others Mario Cippolini who holds the Giro record of 42 stage wins. He also managed Paolo Bettini, who would become known as the greatest Classics rider of his generation before retiring in 2008.

Ballerini loved rally racing as much as he loved cycling, and it was while participating in that sport that he met his untimely end when he was 45. He was acting as navigator for a driver named Alessandro Ciardi during a race at Larciano when the car went out of control and crashed, leaving him with the horrific injuries that caused his death a short while later.

Elia Viviani

Elia Viviani
Born in Isola della Scala, Italy on this day in 1989, Elia Viviani began to compete in cycling races both on road and track at the age of eight; for five years, he also played football and didn't decide to concentrate on cycling until he was thirteen. He first came to attention by winning the Juniors Criterium and Novices Road Race events at the European Youth Olympics in 2005, also coming second in the Novices National Road Race Championship that year. The following season he became European Junior Scratch Champion and was third in the Madison at the World Junior Championships, then in 2007 he won the Points race at the European Junior Championships and rode with the winning team in the Pursuit and Sprint events at the Junior Nationals. 2008 was his first year racing as in the Under-23 category; he won the U-23 European Scratch and Madison (with Tomas Alberio) Championship.

Viviani turned professional with Liquigas-Doimo in 2010, having proved himself an able sprinter on the road, and won stages at the Vuelta a Cuba and Tour of Turkey before taking victory at the Marco Pantani Memorial; then in his second professional season he performed well at the Tour Down Under, won the Omnium at the Manchester round of the World Track Cup,  won a stage at the Tour of Slovenia, two stages at the USA ProCycling Challenge, became U-23 European Points Champion and National Elite Madison Champion (with Davide Cimolai), then won a stage at the Tour of Beijing.

His first General Classification victory came in 2012 at the Giro della Provincia Di Reggio Calabria and he twice finished stages in second place at the Tour of Poland, performances that persuaded Liquigas managers to give him a place at his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espana: he did very well indeed with fourth place on Stage 2, fifth place on Stage 5 and second place on Stages 7 and 21 - however, his finishes on the mountain stages were far lower and he ended the race in 128th place overall. Towards the end of the season he won another stage at the Tour of Beijing and came third in the overall Points competition, then returned to the track to become European Elite Points race Champion. He continued to race for the same team - renamed Cannondale, with the US-based manufacturer becoming main sponsor - in 2013 and won the Tour of Elk Grove, Stage 2 at the Critérium du Dauphiné and Stage 1 at the Tour of Britain in addition to enjoying a very successful year on the track where he won the Points race and the Madison at the European Championships.


Belgian Wim Arras, born today in 1964, was considered destined for great things after winning Paris-Brussels in 1987, also achieving podium finishes and stage wins in numerous other events. However, his career was cut short by a motorcycle accident in 1996.

The Devil

The Devil sometimes appears at other events, such as
the Koln Marathon in 2011.

Today is also the birthday of Didi Senft, the legendary Tour de France Devil. Born at Reichenwalde in Germany in 1952, Didi began to earn his strange sort of fame in 1993, when he went to watch the Tour and decided to dress as the Devil - he says he was inspired to adopt the costume by a German cycling commentator, Herbert Watterot, who always called the final lap of a criterium race the "Red Devil's Lap." His costume may have been eye-catching, but standing in the crowd could never have been enough for Didi - soon, he began to run alongside the race, waving his pitchfork and getting noticed by the TV cameras. Fans, in general, loved it; riders were in many cases less impressed, some would throw their bidons at him.

However, in 1994 he was back, with a new and improved costume, and fans who recognised him from the previous year welcomed him back. He has been at every Tour since (except for 2012, when he underwent brain surgery; he returned in 2013 with a yellow costume to celebrate the Tour's 100th edition) and has become a fixture - some people watch the Tour not for the racing, but to look out for the Devil.

Britain's First Cycle Lane
On this day in 1934, the Queensland Times newpaper in Australia printed a short article on the opening of a new road in London. What was notable about the new road? Running alongside it for two-and-a-half miles was an innovation borrowed from Continental Europe - a segregated cycle lane, the first in Britain. Wide enough for two riders to pass in opposite directions, the lane cost £7000 to design and construct.

Cyclists in Britain had previously been opposed to cycle lanes, believing that they would become mandatory and thus cost cyclists their right to use the highway; however, more than 1,300 riders had been killed on the roads in the previous year, prompting Minister of Transport Leslie Hore-Belisha (he of the Belisha beacons, which can still be seen at zebra crossings in Britain to this day) to write "The challenge presented by the figures of cyclists killed and injured is so formidable that I would be guilty of dereliction of duty if I did not do something to try and protect them."

A little after the cycle lane was opened, surveyors spoke to cyclists using it and found that 80% of them were now in favour; within four years there were 120 miles of cycle lane in the country.

Other cyclists born on this day: Fridrihs Bošs (Russia, 1887, died 1950); Andrejs Apsītis (Latvia, 1888, died 1945); Jairo Díaz (Colombia, 1945); Michael Marx (Germany, 1960); George Corsar (Scotland, 1886); Franco Testa (Italy, 1938); Pedro Pablo Pérez (Cuba, 1977); Yuriy Krivtsov (Ukraine, 1979); Marcel Grifnée (Belgium, 1947); Józef Stefański (Poland, 1908, died 1997); Jo Geon-Haeng (South Korea, 1965); Jo Seong-Hwan (South Korea, 1943).

Daily Cycling Facts 06.02.2014

Jose María Jimenez Sastre
At the start of his professional career, Jose María Jimenez was widely hailed as a likely successor to none other than Miguel Indurain in Spain, where he was born in El Barraco on this day in 1971. Indurain, Spain's most successful cyclist, had become the fourth man to win five Tours de France and the first to do so consecutively, so it was not a comparison that was made lightly.

His Grand Tour performance was impressive; finishing the 1996 Vuelta a Espana in 12th place overall, then finishing the following year's Tour de France in 8th place and winning the Vuelta's Mountains Classification and a stage. The following year he got his first Vuelta podium finish when he came 3rd overall, also winning four stages and the Mountains for a second time. Then, in 2001, he only came 17th overall but won three stages, the Mountains and the Points Classification - a rare feat since the Points are almost invariably won by sprinters, and climbers do not make good sprinters any more than sprinters make good climbers. Those who can climb and sprint are the rarest of the rare and almost guaranteed Grand Tour wins.

Sadly, it was not to be. Jimenez suffered from clinical depression - he received psychiatric treatment but, as is all to frequently the case, his illness took over his life and as a result he retired in 2002, the same year that he got married. In 2003, he died of a heart attack in a Madrid clinic, aged 32. His death - like that of the great Italian climber Marco Pantani, another rider to whom he had been compared - was caused by an overdose of cocaine.

Jiminez wins on Angliru

Jiminez will always be remembered for his incredible victory in Stage 8 at the 1999 Vuelta a Espana, the first time the race had featured the Alto de l'Angliru which remains the steepest climb in any Grand Tour with gradients as high as 23%. Pavel Tonkov had been leading the stage and had a significant advantage when Jiminez launched an attack, thinking nothing of the consequences he might face from attacking on a mountain so steep and in atrocious weather with rain and fog (in 2002, the third time the mountain was used, it also rained. The combination of wet roads and sheer gradient left team cars and support vehicles unable to follow the bikes up). He'd become known for these apparently rash attacks which, as often as not, resulted in failure and exhaustion; but when they did work they tended to result in spectacular wins and glory, so he kept doing it.

This time, it worked. He caught Tonkov with a kilometre to go and the two men began to sprint through the final, flatter section. Many times when he'd done this, he'd hit the wall before the end and lost as much as ten minutes by the end. This time, despite the superhuman effort required to ride such a climb aggressively, he'd timed himself to perfection and crossed the line first. It's common to hear fans claiming that although cycling is still a fine sport, it no longer offers the spectacle that it once did. If reminded of that day in Spain, they usually change their minds.


Reza Hormes-Ravenstijn

Reza Hormes-Ravenstijn in 2009

Dutch cyclo crosser and mountain biker Reza Hormes-Ravenstijn was born in Beek on this day in 1967. She was National Champion in 1995, then came second in 1997 and 1998 and was third in 1996 and 2006.

Still racing today, Hormes-Ravenstijn took second place behind Nikki Harris at Niel on the 10th of November in 2012.


Charles Henry Bartlett was born on this day in 1885 in Bermondsey, London. In 1908, he rode 100km in 2h41'48.6" on the track at the Olympics in London and won a gold medal for his achievement. He died on the 30th of November, 1968.

Ukrainian Volodymyr Bileka was born on this day in 1979 in Drohobych, was a rider with Discovery and later Silence-Lotto who showed promise in time trials and as a sprinter. His resignation, announced as being due to "personal reasons" on the 6th of May in 2008, therefore came a s a surprise - until it was revealed that he'd been handed a two-year ban after testing positive for EPO.


On this day in 2012, after a positive test for banned bronchodilator Clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France sparked an investigation and legal case that even by the standards of the UCI and CAS was long and drawn-out, Alberto Contador was declared guilty of doping. The Court decided that although it didn't believe the rider's explanation that the drug had been accidentally ingested in contaminated meat, it was unlikely that he had intentionally doped and that the drug had probably found its way into his body via a contaminated food supplement; however, due to a legal process known as "burden of proof," his inability to prove his explanation made him guilty in the eyes of the law and he was handed back-dated two-year ban before being stripped of his General Classification victories at the 2010 Tour, 2011 Giro d'Italia and numerous other races.

Other cyclists born on this day: Bernd Dittert (East Germany, 1961); Vladimír Hrůza (Czechoslovakia, 1960); Vladislav Chalupa (France, 1871); Johann Traxler (Austria, 1959, died 2011); Jan Erik Gustavsen (Norway, 1946); Yevgeny Golovanov (Belarus, 1972); Juan Palacios (Ecuador, 1962); Kenrick Tucker (Australia, 1959); Howard Fenton (Jamaica, 1952); Vladimír Vačkář (Czechoslovakia, 1949); Reinhard Alber (Germany, 1964); Ernests Mālers (Latvia, 1903, died 1982).

Daily Cycling Facts 05.02.2014

Barry Hoban

Barry Hoban
Before Mark Cavendish first broke and then smashed his record, Barry Hoban was, with eight victories, Britain's most successful Tour de France stage winner. Born in 1940 on this day in Wakefield, Hoban began cycling in 1955 and immediately showed promise, competing against and taking inspiration from Tom Simpson. He moved to France in 1962, once again following Simpson's lead.

After two years in France he turned professional with Mercier-Hutchinson-BP and entered his first Tour, riding support for perpetually 2nd place Raymond Poulidor. Several riders must have wondered just what sort of man they'd been riding with when, with the race over, Hoban went around gathering up as many pairs of sweaty cycling shorts and jerseys as he could lay his hands on. In fact, he'd spotted an easy way to make himself a bit of extra cash: British-made kit of the time were of very poor quality and likely to fall apart after a few rides. Good quality European kit, meanwhile, cost a fortune to buy even without the expense of having them sent across, so once it'd all been laundered he had no trouble at all finding customers for it. To this day, there are veteran cyclists in Wakefield who can remember the year when club rides stepped out in the finest cycling kit Italy had to offer.

While European shorts were of higher quality than British ones, many riders from Britain and overseas considered British frame builders to be the most skilled in the world. Thus, as the beginning of each new season approached, Hoban would make an annual pilgrimage to the Leeds workshop of craftsman Maurice Woodrup, who would have a frame ready, waiting and painted in Mercier's trademark pink. Hoban would then take the frame with him back to France where Mercier would supply him with the correct decals so nobody would be any the wiser.

Simpson, as all cyclists and fans know, died on Mont Ventoux the 13th of July in 1967, during a two-year period in which the Tour experimented with a return to national teams. The following day, the Tour paid its respects by allowing Hoban, as a team mate and the next placed British rider, to win the stage. Sadly, the honour was marred afterwards by a disagreement over whether Hoban or Vin Denson, another member of the team, should have been allowed to win. In 1969, Hoban married Simpson's widow Alice. They now live in Wales.


Samuel Sánchez González
Samuel Sánchez González, who began his professional career with the Euskaltel-Euskadi team in 2000 and has remained with them ever since, was born on this in 1978 in Oviedo, Asturias. Due to his loyalty to the team and long list of impressive results, he has attained the status of Basque national hero despite not being a Basque himself.

Samuel Sánchez
(image credit: Euskalbizikleta CC BY-SA 2.0)

Like many rider who train in the Basque nation, Sánchez has become a powerful climber and won the King of the Mountains classification at the 2011 Tour de France. However, he appears to have gained this skill through hard work, not displaying the skeletal form of most climbers and - perhaps even more tellingly - excelling in other areas where grimpeurs are usually fairly hopeless, including descending (he's known as one of the fastest descenders of his time and won Stage 13 at the 2006 Vuelta a Espana by mounting a lightning-fast downhill attack) and sprinting, the latter allowing him to have won the Points Classification at Paris-Nice, the Tour of the Basque Country and the Vuelta a Burgos. He can even time-trial, as he proved in the 2007 Vuelta al País Vasco The general impression is of a rider who would have been a handy all-rounder, then made himself a Grand Tour General Classification contender through sheer determination.

Few fans will ever forget Sánchez's Stage 15 win at the 2007 Vuelta a Espana when he followed Manuel Beltrán down from the Alto de Monachil into Granada like a hawk hunting a pigeon. Beltrán, it turned out, had asked to be allowed to win the stage, but Sánchez had received news that his wife was expecting a child and wanted to dedicate it to his future son who would be born in March the following year. He caught Beltrán and crossed the line in front of him, sitting upright as he did so and rocking his arms as though cradling a baby. His performance on the stage propelled him into 3rd place overall at the end of the race, thus making him the first Euskaltel rider to stand on the podium after a Grand Tour.

Sanchez in polka dots
(image credit: Petit Brun CC BY-SA 2.0)

In 2008, he won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics. The peloton had been forced to work hard to reel in an early breakaway which was beginning to look as though it might last to the end of the race. Then, having his fair share of work, Sánchez escaped with two other riders and could only be caught by another group of three driven by the infamously fast Fabian Cancellara. The two groups combined, riding together towards a sprint finish. He finished just ahead the Italian Davide Rebellin with Cancellara coming in right behind them. In 2011, he revealed his great ethical support for the Tour of Beijing, hinting at a good understanding of the effects international events such as cycle races can have improving the lives of people living under repressive regimes.

Sánchez was a favourite at the start of the 2011 Tour de France, but the large number of crashes early on in the race left him far down the leadership board. However, he proved without equal in Stage 12, powering ahead of the climbing specialist Frank Schleck to the summit finish at Luz Ardiden after having already climbed Tourmalet in the same stage. In Stage 14, he finished in 2nd place at the Plateau de Beille summit finish, this time beating Andy Schleck. He would lose time on the Galibier in Stage 18, but then finished in 2nd place again on the Alpe d'Huez (beating Contador, no less) - at which point, with no further mountain stages, the King of the Mountains prize was in the bag. He also came 7th overall in the General Classification.

Sánchez won the 2012 Tour of the Basque Country in spectacular style, delighting the obsessive Basque cycling fans who have adopted him as one of their own - he had taken the General Classification lead at the end of Stage 3, but with no time advantage over Chris Horner of RadioShack-Nissan and Joaquim Rodríguez of Katusha; Joaquim Rodríguez - another atypical climber - would be an especially dangerous rival, as he proved when he took the race leader's jersey and a 9" advantage by winning Stage 4. This situation remained unchanged after Stage 5, which Rodríguez also won, but Sánchez turned it around with a blisteringly fast ride on the tough 18.9km individual time trial in the final stage, soaring up the three climbs and providing plenty of heart-stopping moments around the rain-soaked bends to finish 21" faster than the Katusha rider for a final overall advantage of 12". Luck would not remain on his side at the Tour de France, where a crash in Stage 8 left him with numerous injuries that caused him to abandon the race. He recovered in time for the Tour of Britain and finished Stage 7 in fourth place, then took second place at the Giro di Lombardia and 12th at the Tour of Beijing.

Sanchez announced that he was going for a podium placing at the Giro d'Italia in 2013 but was only able to achieve twelfth, which got some cycling fans wondering if, now he was 35, his career was over - then, at the Critérium du Dauphiné, he won Stage 7 by out-sprinting 28-year-old Jakob Fuglsang.

In 2013, the Basque government withdrew the funds that had partly financed Euskaltel-Euskadi (uniquely, the team had functioned both as a trade team and as a national team), and team bosses announced that this would in all likelihood spell the end. For a time, it seemed to have been saved when Formula 1 driver Fernando Olonso expressed an interest in purchasing the team and its World Tour licence; however, no agreement was reached and, at the end of the season and much to the dismay of all the cycling fans in the Basque country and to countless more from around the world, the team closed down. Sanchez, perhaps on account of his age, had difficulty in securing a new contract; as of January 2014 it was widely rumoured that he would be going to Tinkoff-Saxobank, where he would ride with his old friend Alberto Contador.

John Boyd Dunlop
On this day in 1840, John Boyd Dunlop was born in Dreghorn, Scotland. An intelligent boy, he studied veterinary science and qualified from the University of Edinburgh. He then set up a surgery and practiced for ten years before relocating to Northern Ireland and setting up another surgery. Dunlop had a sick son who suffered great pain as a result of the vibrations transmitted through the metal tyres of his tricycle, so his father set out to find a way to reduce this - resulting in the pneumatic tyre. He quickly realised that his invention had a future and patented it on the 7th of December, 1888. With help from the cyclist Willie Hume, who used the tyres to win a string of races, he soon found a market.

Then in 1891, it was discovered that a pneumatic tyre of very similar design had been patented in France by another Scottish inventor named Robert William Thompson more than forty years previously. A business deal also didn't work out which, combined with the subsequent declaration of invalidity on his patent, meant that Dunlop made very little money from "his" invention.


Paolo Rosola, born on this day in Gussago, Italy in 1957, won twelve stages at the Giro d'Italia (Stage 2 in 1981, Stages 3, 15 and 18 in 1983, Stage 12 in 1984, Stages 9 and 18 in 1985, Stages 8, 10 and 20 in 1987 and Stages 10 and 20 in 1988). 1987 was his best year with 10 wins in total.

Giovanni Mantovani, born two years earlier in Gudo Visconti, won a few stages at various races in the same period, including two (9 and 10) in the 1980 Giro, but for most of his career was one of those cyclists condemned to eternal occupation of the podium's lower steps. His best year, strangely, was one of his last - he achieved five victories in 1986, including the Perth Criterium and two stages (3 and 13, as well as 2nd for Stage 5) in the Griffin 1000, also in Australia, where it appears the climate suited him. Had he have discovered that earlier on, he might have enjoyed a far more successful career.

Fredereik Nolf, 1987-2009
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0)

Frederiek Nolf, born in Kortrijk in Belgium, died on this day in 2009 of a heart attack as he slept between Stages 4 and 5 at the Tour of Qatar, five days before his 22nd birthday. Due to his age, suspicions immediately arose that he'd been doping - EPO is frequently linked to heart attacks as it thickens the blood, putting more strain on the heart as it pumps harder in an effort to keep blood flowing around the body. However, no evidence of EPO or any other doping product was ever found and his death is generally assumed to have been caused by an undiagnosed heart defect, a tragically common cause among young athletes who might not have previously exhibited any symptoms due to their high level of fitness. Nolf was a close friend of Wouter Weylandt, who would be killed in a crash at the Giro d'Italia two years later.


Ana Barros, born in Portugal on this day in 1973, was 23rd in the Road Race at the 1996 Olympics.

On this day in 2011 Melissa Hoskins, Josie Tomic and Isabella King set a new Australian Women's Record of 3'21.427" in the 30km Team Pursuit.

Other cyclists born on this day: Valery Kobzarenko (USSR, 1977); Burton Downing (USA, 1885, died 1929); Frédéric Magné (France, 1969); Lee Seung-Hun (South Korea, 1938); Pavel Tonkov (USSR, 1969); Fyodor Borisov (Russia, 1892); Frederick Habberfield (Great Britain, 1895, died 1943); René Gagnet (France, 1891, died 1951); Horst Tüller (Germany, 1931, died 2001); Héctor Urrego (Colombia, 1945); Michel Rousseau (France, 1936); Ma Yanping (China, 1977); Roger Kluge (Germany, 1986); Cesare Facciani (Italy, 1906, died 1938).

Daily Cycling Facts 04.02.2014

Ekimov
(image credit: Outematic CC BY-SA 2.5)

Viatcheslav Ekimov
On this day in 1966, Viatcheslav Vladimirovich Ekimov was born in Vyborg, USSR. Ekimov's life since he was 12 has been all about riding bikes as fast as possible - picked out at that age, he was sent to a specialist cycling academy associated with of the Soviet Sports schools created to mold young people into iron-hard athletes who would one day excel in their field, ready to be sent into battle against the West and bring back glory. When it was time to leave school, he moved on to an Armed Forces sports society and trained even more.

Eki was never been a Grand Tour General Classification contender but was more than capable of picking up stages and smaller races, adding valuable points to his team's total. His only Tour de France stage win came in 1991 when he won Stage 20, but he would win others at the Tour de Suisse (1993 and 1995), Prudential Tour (1998 - then the name for the Tour of Britain), the Ronde van Nederland (2003) and numerous others in addition to forming part of two winning time trial teams at the Tour. He also won two Olympic gold medals and may yet be awarded another, as he came 2nd behind Tyler Hamilton during the 2004 Time Trial - the American rider has subsequently given the medal back to the IOC after admitting to having doped and it was subsequently awarded to Ekimov as a result.

Despite his success, Ekimov became known for his rather peculiar riding style - which, according to US Postal directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel, "always looks shit." Shortly after his retirement it was announced that he would become assistant directeur sportif to Bruyneel at RadioShack, then in 2011 he revealed that he would be leaving the team at the end of the season prior to the merger with Leopard Trek and taking up a new position as an adviser at the Russian Global Cycling Project.

Nairo Quintana

Born in Tunja, Colombia on this day in 1990, Nairo Alexander Quintana Rojas grew up in poverty that, to the majority of Europeans, Antipodeans and North Americans would be absolutely shocking: the nearest school was 16km away, but his parents simply did not have the money to put him on the bus to get there - and the 32km round trip on foot each day left him too tired to concentrate on his studies. They hit on a solution: buy him a second-hand mountain bike. It took them many weeks to save $30 to buy one.

The bike, as tends to be the case with poor children everywhere when they first own one, was Quintana's pride and joy and he daydreamed about winning races on it during his daily journey, which became easier with time - including the long, 8% gradient climb he faced to get back home. Very possibly at least partially due to the hardship his family endured and the insufficient diet they existed upon, Quintana was always diminutive - even today, he stands just 1.66m tall and weighs only 57.3kg. Those dimensions, combined with the toughness developed riding to and from school each day, were ideal for him to become that most specialised of all the species of cyclist - a pure climber.

Tunja lies in Boyaca, a region of Colombia where cycling has been a popular sport for decades, yet Quintana was entirely unaware of that world and had no cycling heroes. His father taught him and his brother how to repair cars to bring in extra money and, incredibly, both boys were able to drive and made money driving taxis (at night, so the police would have a hard time seeing how young they were) by the time they were ten years old, but still they couldn't earn enough to lift themselves out of poverty. Not realising that he might be able to carve out a career in cycling, Nairo joined the army (his Orden de Boyaca medal was awarded for services to Colombian cycling following the 2013 Tour, not for exceptional military service as is usual; when the President phoned Quintana to congratulate him for improving Colombia's reputation overseas, the rider replied that the success he had achieved belonged to "all Colombians," not just to him). In time, the Quintana family discovered that a racing scene existed and soon realised that Nairo would almost certainly bring in some extra cash if he entered them. The trouble was, they didn't have enough to pay entry fees. Fortunately, the rider's father has a way with words: he talked organisers into letting his son race on the promise that they'd be paid from the money he won. It was a big gamble, but Nairo delivered; this was how the first few years of his athletic career would be financed.

Boyaca's local government created a cycling team, Boyaca es Para Vivirla, in 2009, by which time Quintana had won enough races to be an immediate choice for a place - he won a stage at the Vuelta del Huila and, discovering an ability also shown by other pure climbers, became National Under-23 Individual Time Trial Champion that year. Next, he moved to the Continental team Café de Colombia-Colombia es Pasión, where he would remain through 2010 and 2011, getting his first experience of top-level European racing with them. In 2010, he won Stages 6 and 7 and the overall General Classification at the Tour de l'Avenir, in 2011 he won the Combita race in Colombia and the King of the Mountains at the Volta a Catalunya.

For decades, European teams have gone looking in Colombia for new stars: cycling is enormously popular there, and with the Andes dominating the landscape in much of the country, young riders cut their teeth on climbs higher - and, frequently, much tougher due to the poor roads - than anything in the Tour de France. Movistar found Quintana in 2012, and with them he won Stage 1 and overall at the Vuelta a Murcia, then a spectacular victory in Stage 6 at the Critérium du Dauphiné when he proved on the descent leading to Morzine that he has the exceedingly rare (among pure climbers) ability to descend fast, too. Next he won the Route du Sud before getting his first taste of a Grand Tour at the Vuelta a Espana, where he finished Stage 16, the queen stage, in sixth place: SaxoBank, having smashed the peloton to pieces on the 25% gradient slopes of Cuitu Negro, looked more than a little surprised when the tiny Colombian suddenly appeared at the front of the race and found there was little they could do about it, so they instead formed a group with him. He rode alongside Alberto Contador and Joaquim Rodriguez, two of the strongest climbers in the world, for many kilometres before his strength finally gave out and he was dropped. It was, quite simply, an extraordinary thing for a 22-year-old to be able to do.

Quintana leading Froome, Mont Ventoux

In 2013, Quintana won the General Classification and the Points competition at the Tour of the Basque Country after sprinting up Eibar-Arrate, one of the toughest climbs in the race. Then he went to the Tour de France and, in Stage 8, led the race across the Col de Pailheres, which at 2001m was the highest point of that edition and won him the Souvenir Henri Desgrange, and might have won the stage had Chris Froome, the favourite and eventual General Classification winner, not gone all-out to catch him on the final climb. What followed was every bit as extraordinary as what had taken place on Cuitu Negro a year before: Quintana did not sit back and let the more powerful, much more experienced rider take the win - he fought him, hard. For his efforts, he won the stage's Combativity award, took the lead in the Young Riders category and began a battle that would be fought throughout the remainder of the race. It next flared up during Stage 15, when Quintana put in a ride that would have made Charly Gaul, the greatest climber that ever lived, proud: he attacked so hard early on that only Froome could go with him, and it was only 2km from the summit that Froome finally got the upper hand. Stage 18 featured a Tour first, a double ascent of the Alpe d'Huez - a weapon that the climbers could use to do serious damage not just to other types of rider, but to one another. Afterwards, Quintana was in third place overall. Stage 20 was something else entirely, one of the most remarkable stages in Tour history: even so near to the end of the race, Quintana didn't stop attacking and, on Annecy-Semnoz, left Froome behind. He won the stage, crossing the line 18" ahead of Rodriguez, 29" ahead of Froome (which, curiously, was precisely the same time by which Froome had won on Ventoux), 1'42" ahead of Valverde and more than two minutes ahead of the next riders, taking enough time to put himself into second place overall - the first time that a rider making his Tour debut had achieved a podium finish since Jan Ullrich in 1996, and the best ever by a South American in history. He also won the Young Riders classification and the King of the Mountains.

Quintana will be 24 on this day in 2014, still four years from the age at which most riders reach their best years. He is already among the greatest climbers cycling has ever seen and he'll get better yet; with his skills in the time trials and - perhaps even more crucially - his ability to maintain speed on the steep descents where so many other great climbers lost Tours that would otherwise have been theirs, it seems as good as guaranteed that he'll win more than one before he retires.


Johan van Summeren

Johan van Summeren
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Johan van Summeren, at 1.97m one of the tallest professional cyclists of all time, was born on this day in 1981 in the Belgian town of Lommel. Van Summeren is well known for his ability to ride in support of General Classification contenders, leading Cadel Evans to nominate him as the "number one team mate of the Tour" in 2007 for his work in a race that had seen him praised in almost every stage by commentator and race expert Paul Sherwen.

His first major win was the Under-23 Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2003, the same year he took a silver medal in the Under-23 Road Race World Championship. He first demonstrated the depth of his stage race potential in 2005 when he came 4th overall at the Tour Down Under, then won the Points Classification at the Tour of Britain the following season and the General Classification at the Tour of Poland a year after that. In 2008, he finished 8th overall at Paris-Roubaix, the world'd toughest one-day race. A year later, he improved to 5th place before a quiet year in 2010. In 2011, he broke away from the peloton with 15km to go and won the race by 19", but in 2012 he could manage only ninth place.

Galina Yermolayeva

Galina Yermolayeva
Born in Novokhopyorsk, Russia on this day in 1937, Galina Vasilievna Yermolayeva (also spelled Ermolaeva) was originally a champion cross country skier who, having suffered serious injury due to frostbite, became the most successful female Individual Sprint rider in the World Track Championships between 1958 and 1973; winning gold every year from 1958 to 1963, silver in 1964 and 1965, bronze in 1967 and 1968, more silver in 1969, 1970 and 1971, another gold in 1972 and a final bronze in 1973.

Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, was so impressed by Yermolayeva's performances that he made her a personal gift of a Volvo, in a time when most Soviet citizens had to wait many years to be able to purchase a far-inferior Russian-made car. Police officers on the streets of Moscow would salute her as she drove past.


John Tanner is a Yorkshire-born cyclist who came into the world on this day in 1968. He competed in two Olympic Games (1996 and 2000) but has primarily concentrated on the British racing scene, becoming National Road Race Champion twice 1999 and 2000) and winning two Archer GPs (1997, 2005), two Tours of the Cotswolds (1997, 2001) and the Manx Trophy (1998), the latter having been the most prestigious British race for many years and able to attract names such as Eddy Merckx, Jacques Anquetil and Fausto Coppi in addition to the cream of British cycling including Robert Millar, Brian Robinson, David Millar and Tommy Simpson. His greatest achievement has been winning the Premier Calendar, a competition decided by points accrued in a series of races throughout the season, a record five times (1994, 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2002).

Peter Dawson, born in this day in 1982 in Pinjarra, Australia, is a multiple track world champion with five Team Pursuit titles to his name. He has also won stages at the Tour of Tamania, the Tour de Perth, the Tour of the Murray River and the International Cycling Classic.

Fred de Bruyne (born Belgium, 21.10.1930), who died on this day in 1994, was one of the greatest Classics riders of all time. During his professional career, he won Milan-San Remo (1956), Liège–Bastogne–Liège (1956, 1958 and 1959),  the Tour of Flanders (1957), Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne (1961) and Paris-Roubaix (1957). He also performed well in stage races, winning Paris-Nice twice (1956 and 1958) and a total of six Tour de France stages in 1954 and 1956.

Tomas Vaitkus was born on this day in Klaipėda, now Lithuania, in 1982. He began his professional career with Landbouwkrediet-Colnago. He would later move to AG2R, then Discovery and in 2008 to Astana. He remained there for two seasons before leaving for RadioShack, the returned to Astana for 2011. At the end of the 2011 season, it was announced that he would race with the new Australian GreenEDGE team in 2012. Vaitkus became Under-23 World Time Trial Champion in 2002, later becoming National Elite Time Trial champ (2003 and 2004) and National Elite Road Race champ (2004 and 2008).

Yvonne Brunen, born in Nunspeet on this day in 1971, became National Road Race Champion of the Netherlands in 1994 and kept the title through 1995 and 1996 before exchanging it for the National Mountain Bike Cross Country Championship in 1997 - and a silver in the National Road Race. In 1998 she won bronze in the National Individual Time Trial Championship, then in 1999 she won bronze in the National Road Race and MTB Cross Country Championships. She won the Flevotour in 2000 and 2002, also winning Stage 2 at the Holland Ladies' Tour in the latter year, then, having won Stage 3b at the RaboSter Zeeuwsche Eilanden in 2003, she retired.

Sheldon Brown
Sheldon Brown, who died from a heart attack on this day in 2008 after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis the previous August, was born on the 14th of July 1944, was parts manager at the Harris Cyclery bike shop in Massachusetts. Whilst there, his superb memory and eye for detail allowed him to build up a vast  knowledge of bike components which he would use to create an encyclopedic website in conjunction with his employer. The website grew until it included technical information, workshop advice and tips on modification for (probably) almost every bike and bike component ever manufactured. Brown himself became a world-recognised expert on the subject and wrote several books. His writing on hub gears, especially Sturmey-Archer models, is considered authoritative.

Sheldon Brown, 1944-2008

His greatest contribution to the world of racing was probably his work on developing a method of comparing gear ratios, at its time the only method to take crank length into account. Brown and his colleagues Galen Evans and Osman Isvan  produced a formula that used wheel radius (a), crank length (b), size of front gear ring measured conventionally in teeth (c) and the size of the rear gear also measured conventionally in teeth (d). a over b then gives the radius ratio, which can be termed r. r multiplied by c over d gives a final figure that Brown termed the gain ratio. As an example, Brown uses a fairly standard road bike which, with modern tyres, will have a wheel diameter of 680mm and crank length of 170mm. Therefore, a/b=340/170=2. If the biggest chain ring has 53 teeth and the biggest cassette ring has 19, r a/b=2 x (53/19)=5.58. The advantages of this formula are three-fold. Firstly, it's considerably more simple than some earlier attempts to provide a method able to achieve the same result; secondly, the gain ratio is a pure ratio and as such requires no units to be given - the result will remain the same provided a and b have been measured using the same units and thirdly, it only needs to be done once for any bike unless the chain rings, cassette, wheels or tyres are changed as the gear the bike is in at any one point is irrelevant. If the figures used in the example are accurate, each unit through which the pedals move (eg 20cm) will result in the bike moving that distance x 5.58 forward (111.6cm).

In the final years of his life, Brown suffered serious nerve deterioration as a result of his illness, going back some time before MS was diagnosed and gradually destroying his balance so that he could no longer ride a conventional bike. he continued cycling on a recumbent tricycle until, eventually, he lost the use of his lower limbs.

Brown was universally liked by all who met him, cyclists and the general public, his cheery personality proving infectious. As he neared the end of his life, he wrote:

"Multiple Sclerosis is a nasty, rare, incurable disease, but there are lots of nasty rare incurable diseases out there. As nasty, rare, incurable diseases go, it's one of the better ones. If you must acquire a nasty, rare, incurable disease, MS is one of the best things going!... I think of it as not so much a "tragedy" as a Really Major Inconvenience... Another great thing about MS is that it's guilt free and blame free! Since nobody knows what causes it, nobody thinks it's because you didn't eat your vegtables, or had sex with the wrong person, or took inappropriate drugs, or lived in a place you shouldn't have, or didn't go to the gym as often as you should have!"

Other cyclists born on this day: Robert Lelangue (Belgium, 1940); Ronald Cassidy (Trinidad and Tobago, 1939); Kurt Innes (Canada, 1971); Bruno Castanheira (Portugal, 1977); Choijiljavyn Samand (Mongolia, 1937); Fernando Vera (Chile, 1954); Francisco Pérez (Uruguay, 1934); Josef Genschieder (Austria, 1915, died 1943); Aleksandra Dawidowicz (Poland, 1987); Roberto Breppe (Argentina, 1941); Janka Števková (Slovakia, 1976); Juan Esteban Curuchet (Argentina, 1965); Toshiaki Fushimi (Japan, 1976); Eduard Gritsun (USSR, 1976); Peter Brotherton (Great Britain, 1931); Neil Hoban (Great Britain, 1966); Masahiro Yasuhara (Japan, 1963).

Daily Cycling Facts 03.02.2014

Hennie Kuiper
(image credit: Poortugaalse Polleke CC BY-SA 3.0)

Hennie Kuiper
Prior to the current growing interest in the sport, Hennie Kuiper - who was born in this day in Denekamp, Netherlands in 1949 - was one of the very few cyclists to become a household name in Britain and almost certainly the only foreign rider to achieve such a claim without winning a Tour de France. He owed it to two factors - winning the Milk Race (which would become the Tour of Britain) in 1972, and his piercing blue eyes which some women, including this author's mother, apparently found extremely attractive. Winning gold at the 1972 Olympics had little to do with it, because only cyclists watched the cycling events on the television in Britain in those days.

In Europe, where the general population are a little more aware that the Tour is not the only race that matters than are the British public, his palmares was enough. After all, while he never stood on the top step of the podium after the Tour, he was on the second step twice and picked up a handful of stage wins at the Tour and Vuelta too. He also won the World Road Race Champion title in 1975 (and the National), becoming one of only four riders to have won gold the professional Worlds race and the Olympics. In 1976 he won the Tour de Suisse and was then selected as Dutch Sportsman of the Year in 1977, the same year he finished the Tour in 2nd place. He won a Tour stage the year after that and came second in the Tour de Romandie, then came 4th on the Tour and 3rd at Paris-Roubaix the following season, then 2nd again in the Tour a year later. In 1981 he won both the Tour of Flanders and the Giro di Lombardia, the Grand Prix de Wallonie in 1982 and Paris-Roubaix in 1983. 1984 was a little less successful and he had to settle for 9th in Paris-Roubaix, then he added his last major win in 1985 with Milan-San Remo. All in all, he won 74 races during his professional career.

Who cares about some summer jaunt around France?

Ernest J. Clements

Falcon Cycles - designed by
Ernie Clements
(image credit: Andrew Dressell
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ernest J. Clements - known as Ernie - was a cyclist who rose to prominence during the first official road races to take place in Britain since the late 19th Century. Having been born on the 28th of February 1922 in Hadley, Shropshire, he came of cycling age just as the British League of Racing Cyclists gained sufficient strength to organise races independently of the National Cycling Union that had banned road racing for fear that police disapproval would lead to a blanket ban on all bikes on public roads (in fact, when the BLRC organised its first race, the police supported them). He won the BLRC National Road Race championship in 1943, came second the following year and then won again in 1945, before finding a way round the NCU's rules preventing BLRC members from taking part in their races and won their National Championship as well in 1946. Now that he was an NCU member, he could be selected to ride in the Olympics and did so in 1948, where he won silver.

In 1947, the NCU and other organisations began to consider the possibility of sending a British team to the Tour de France and approached Clements, inviting him to turn professional and form part of the team. However, mindful of the fact that the rules of the day prevented any cyclist who had been professional from competing in amateur events after retirement, he refused - and the Tour idea fizzled out anyway. Instead, he opened and ran a cycling shop to support himself, learning the art of frame building and becoming highly reputed for it. He would later become managing director of Falcon Cycles which, as older veteran cyclists can tell you, was once the producer of some of the best bikes in the world, rather than a name on the down tube of Far Eastern £50 supermarket specials. He held the position until the 1970s.

After retiring from Falcon, Clements opened another bike shop in 1990 so that he'd be able to keep in touch with the sport and young people taking it up for the first time. In later life, he developed Parkinson's Disease which led to his death on this day in 2009, when he was 83.

Jennifer Hohl

Jennifer Hohl, born in Wolfhalden on this day in 1986, is a Swiss cyclist who turned professional with Bigla in 2006 and remained with the team until the end of 2009; a period in which she won the Elite National Road Race Championships of 2008 and 2009. She switched to Noris Cycling for 2010 and came fourth at the Nationals before moving to SC Mcipollini and coming third in 2011, then went to Faren Honda and won the title again in 2012.

Florian Rousseau should by all rights be famous for winning three gold and one silver medals at the Olympics (1996 and 2000) and a long list of World and National titles on the track. However, he achieved cycling immortality through the faces he pulled whilst riding, which ranged from crowd-pleasing, cartoon-like weirdness to frankly terrifying, gargoyle-like grotesqueness. Off the bike, he's about the most normal-looking bloke you could imagine.

Other cyclists born on this day: Manfred Klieme (Germany, 1936); Sergey Renev (Kazakhstan, 1985); David Handley (Great Britain, 1930); José Antonio Villanueva (Spain, 1979); Valery Batura (USSR, 1970); Roz Reekie-May (New Zealand, 1972); Jonas Carney (USA, 1971); Michael Stoute (Barbados, 1948); Luboš Lom (Czechoslovakia, 1965); Georges Schiltz (Luxembourg, 1901).

Daily Cycling Facts 02.02.2014

On this day in 1896, during an interview with the New York World newspaper, the civil rights leader and suffragist Susan B. Anthony said the words that have become the most famous of the quotations attributed to her and one of the most famous to mention bicycles...

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel... the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood."

Edith Atkins
Edith Atkins, born on this day in 1920 in Bilston, Great Britain, became famous for setting numerous long-distance cycling records during the 1950s. She had competed at international level in gymnastics during childhood, aided by her diminutive size (even in adulthood, she was less than than 1.52m tall) but, like many female cyclists of her day, she found her way into cycling by chance when her mother gave her a bike won while playing the card game whist. She discovered her racing potential when she was loaned a better bike by local cyclist Roland Atkins, whom she would later marry - though only after he admitted she was faster than him.

Edith Atkins is passed a bidon by husband Roland

Atkins seems to have joined the Coventry Meteors club some time in the middle of the 1930s, then became part of the Coventry Road Club in 1938. Racing was limited by the Second World War and she didn't begin competing until 1946. Very soon, she found herself with a rival - Eileen Sheridan, a professional with the Hercules company that would later supply bikes for Britain's first Tour de France team and, in the 1950s, sponsored team member Brian Robinson who would become the first Briton to both finish a Tour and win a stage. Atkins, meanwhile, could not find a sponsor and even went so far as to remortgage her home so she could continue racing. Sheridan was sponsored to set records, so Atkins reasoned that the best way to attract a sponsor of her own was to break those records.

On the 25th of September 1952, she broke her first by riding from Land's End in Cornwall to London, a distance of 462km, in 17'13'31" - an average speed of almost 27kph. The next year, she broke the record times for Holyhead to London (425.3km, 13h31'57" = 31.4kph). Soon afterwards, she set out to beat the London-York record and did so (314km, 9h56'20" = 31.6kph) and then kept going. After 21h37' she reached Edinburgh, thus setting a new London-Edinburgh time. Still she kept going and, after having been riding for 24 hours, had covered 679km: her third record of the day. Since the previous women's distance record over 24 hours was 640km, she ended up setting four. After spending a few days in Scotland, she decided to have a go at the Edinburgh-Glasgow-Edinburgh record and beat that too, covering the 141.6km in 4h38'56". Two days later she rode between John O'Groats and Land's End (1,402km) and beat the previous record (set by a professional cyclist) by 4h48'.

Atkins continued setting records for many more years and became as acclaimed as one of the finest cyclists Britain has produced of either gender. She continued cycling for the rest of her life, still riding a minimum of 160km each week when she was 76 years old - the same year she entered 40 races. Three years later, she was hit by a car and killed as she wheeled her bike over the A45 road near Ryton-on-Dunsmore in Warwickshire.


Sandy Casar
Sandy Casar, a French cyclist who spent the entirety of his thirteen years as a professional cyclist with the FDJ team, was born on this day in 1979 in Mantes-la-Jolie. He won the Route du Sud, one stage at the Tour de Suisse and two at the Tour de France outright, in addition to becoming winner of Stage 16 in the 2009 Tour after coming second behind Mikel Astarloza who was subsequently disqualified after a test carried out before the beginning of the race revealed traces of EPO. He retired in 2013.

Though known primarily as a breakaway rider, in that same stage - which included an ascent of that year's highest mountain Col du Grand-Saint-Bernard - he beat Alberto Contador, both the Schleck brothers and a number of other respected climbers. He also finished the 2003 Giro d'Italia in 13th place overall, beating the great Marco Pantani. However, he is likely to be remembered for the Stage 16 victory, which without Astarloza's cheating he still would have finished in a respectable second place despite colliding with a dog. The dog was unhurt.

Leon Meredith

Leon Meredith was born on this day in 1882 in St. Pancras, London, and records of his cycling career can be difficult to pin down as official documents show his name as having been Lewis Leon Meredith, contemporary reports call him Leon Lewis Meredith, other sources insist he was Leonard Lewis Meredith and those who knew him called him Jack. In appearance, he was what we now term a nerd - years later, Cycling magazine described him:

There was something Clark Kent, the children's comic-book hero, in the make-up of Edwardian cyclist Meredith. Like Clark Kent he presented a mild, shy, bespectacled image off the bike, but once on the bike he became Superman, beating all and sundry in a devastating manner.

Meredith developed an interest in cycling when he was 13 years old and decided he'd ride from London to Brighton. Along the way, he met a group of riders from the Paddington Cycling Club who, concerned that a lad of his age would not be able to complete the 80km on the poor roads of the day and might get into difficulties without any means to summon assistance, invited him to ride with them. He agreed after they'd promised not to go too fast and leave him behind. A few miles up the road, they had to ask him to slow down so they could keep up.

Naturally, they asked him to join their club, based in a neighbouring London borough to his home. They encouraged him to race and he won the first one he entered. He won the first of his seven World Championships, the 100km motor-paced race, in 1904 at Crystal Palace and did so in style: after 80km, his pace motorbike broke down and he was forced to veer up the banking and into the wall, crashing hard and turning multiple somersaults as he fell. When he stopped, blood pouring, he leapt to his feet and called for the team to bring him a replacement bike and a new motorpacer, then continued and won the race - beating the world record of the time by more than seven minutes. He was 16.

Unusually for a rider so talented on the track, Meredith was also highly respected on the road and set a number of time trial records, including becoming the first rider to complete 100 miles in under five hours which rather suggests that Britain could have had a stage winner at the Tour de France decades before Brian Robinson managed it. he was also a canny businessman, acquiring the patent rights to a revolutionary tubular tyre with diagonal threads that allowed access to the inner tube without the need to cut the stitching. Building on that success, he became managing director of a bike parts company and began importing high-end bikes from Europe, pioneered the development of lightweight alloy components and building the the firm up into one of the largest bicycle companies in Europe. Sadly it would fail and vanish in the 1960s, many years after his death. The company made him so wealthy that, when he was selected for what would have been the third of his four Olympics in 1916 (he'd raced in 1908 and won gold, 1912 when he won silver and would do so again in 1920) it was decided that he would compete at his own expense (the Games that year would be cancelled due to war).

He died on the 27th of January 1930,  less than a week before his 48th birthday of a heart attack while skiing in Switzerland.


Gilbert Desmet was born on this day in 1931 in the Flemish city of Roeselare. He should not be confused with another Belgian cyclist with the same name, born in 1936. The older Desmet, professional for fifteen years, never won a Grand Tour and has thus been largely forgotten, but wore the maillot jaune for two days in the 1956 Tour de France and then for nine days in 1963, as well as coming 4th overall in 1962. He also won Paris-Tours in 1958 and La Flèche Wallonne in 1964, in addition to around 100 other victories.

On this day in 2011, Jack Bobridge set a new Australian Record for the 4000m Individual Pursuit, covering the distance in 4'10.534".

Other cyclists born on this day: Shane Archibold (New Zealand, 1989); Jiang Cuihua (China, 1975); Lorenzo Murdock (Jamaica, 1961); Mitsuhiro Suzuki (Japan, 1963); Paul Popp (Austria, 1963); Gösta Carlsson (Sweden, 1906, died 1992); Hong Yeong-Mi (South Korea, 1968); Marcello Neri (Italy, 1902, died 1993); Brian Chewter (Canada, 1954); Sanusi (Indonesia, 1933); Peter Pieters (Netherlands, 1962); Cédric Mathy (Belgium, 1970); Julio César León (Venezuela, 1925); Josiah Ng (Malaysia, 1980); Marcin Sapa (Poland, 1976).