Daily Cycling Facts 01.03.2014

Gastone Nencini
Gastone Nencini (nicknamed "The Lion of Mugello" after his birthplace, Barberino del Mugello in Tuscany), was born on this day in 1930. He was an example of that rarest of cycling breeds, an ace climber (he won the King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1957) who could also descend at high speed. Most climbers, due to their typically skeletal figures, lack the physical mass to keep a bike under control while riding fast down a hill - but according to French National Champion and multiple Tour stage winner Raphaël Géminiani, "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill would be if you had a death wish." Roger Rivière, a fast descender and several times a Tour stage winner himself, ignored that advice in 1960 when he tried to follow the Italian down from the Col de Perjuret - shortly after beginning the descent, he hit a low wall, plunged over the side and broke his spine. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Even more unusually for a rider who could climb like he did, Nencini was a chain smoker.

Nencini was the inspiration for one of the first anti-doping drives, set up by official Tour doctor Pierre Dumas after he saw the rider injecting himself with stored blood. He'd learned the technique from Swedish runners, who had apparently been using the technique for several years.

In 1957, the year he won his two King of the Mountains competitions, he also won the Giro outright, beating 2nd place Louison Bobet by 19" and 3rd place Ercole Baldini by almost six minutes. His Tour win came in 1960, when he also finished the Giro in 2nd place overall, beating Graziano Battistini by more than five minutes. Nencini died on the 1st of February in 1980.

Tyler Hamilton
(image credit: Rob Annis CC BY 2.0)

Tyler Hamilton
Tyler Hamilton, who was born on this day in Marblehead, Massachusetts on this day in 1971, became one of the most prominent professional cyclists in the late 1990s and beginning of the 21st Century partly as a result of his association with Lance Armstrong (his subsequent accusations that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs has earned him both enemies and fans), partly due to his own excellent results and largely because of his intelligence, affability and personality. His golden retriever Tugboat, once a frequently-seen and popular character as he waited at the finish line with Hamilton's (now ex-)wife Haven, enjoyed equal popularity and was memorably interviewed on more than one occasion. There is a moving account of the dog's death in Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong: Every Second Counts.

Hamilton began cycling whilst still at school, but was more interested in ski racing when he was at university (his BA in economics has been questioned by some authors, most notably David Walsh in From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, but he can be assumed to have graduated with a reasonable degree of certainty). He also rode mountain bikes, giving up skiing when a mountain bike accident on a ski jump broke two of his vertebrae. He rode his first Tour de France in 1998, working hard for Armstrong in the mountains and time trials.

His palmares in impressive and includes several prestigious victories such as the Danmark Rundt in 1999, Stages 2, 5 and the General Classification at the 2000 Critérium du Dauphiné; Stage 14 and 2nd in the General Classification at the 2002 Giro d'Italia; Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Stage 5 and the General Classification at the Tour de Romandie and Stage 16 at the Tour de France in 2003; an Olympic gold medal; a National Championship and the Tour of Qinghai Lake. He would almost certainly have won many more had he not have spent so much of his career suspended from racing as a result of numerous doping violations.

The first came in 2004, right after his Olympic win when the IOC accused him of doping during the race. However, as his B-sample had been destroyed when an Athens laboratory froze it, he escaped a ban and was permitted to keep the medal. He was less fortunate later in the same year when he was caught out at the Vuelta a Espana: having abandoned the race due to stomach problems, it was announced that a sample given after his Stage 8 time trial win showed a "foreign blood population" - in other words, Hamilton had received a transfusion of somebody else's blood in order to boost his own haematocrit levels, oddly enough the very thing that Gastone Nencini had been seen doing when he inspired one of the Tour's first anti-doping efforts. His team, Phonak, supported him, but withdrew their support after another team member was shown to have used the same technique. Investigation revealed that in April 2004, a hemoglobin to reticulocytes (count of new red blood cells) had registered 132.9. 133 is considered likely evidence of either blood doping or EPO use and results in automatic suspension (a "clean" healthy athlete will register around 90). One year later, he was formally suspended for two years effective from the date of his Vuelta sample. A month later, he mounted an appeal based on accusations that important documents supporting his case had been suppressed/concealed and the bizarre possibility that he might be a chimera, the medical term given to an individual carrying genetically distinct cells from an absorbed zygote with which they shared a womb - the phenomenon popularly known as a "parasitic twin." The appeal was dismissed and Hamilton would later disavow the chimera theory, which appears to have been entirely an invention of his lawyers.

Hamilton with Rock Racing, 2008
(image credit: Richard Masoner CC BY-SA 2.0)

Just three month before his ban was due to expire, his name came up in Operación Puerto when several newspapers published allegations that the investigation had revealed a payment of US$50,000 made by him into an account owned by the notorious Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. Hamilton denied making the payment, stating that he had never received any treatment from Dr. Fuentes and claimed that he had not been contacted by Spanish authorities. He returned to professional cycling at the start of the 2007 season with Tinkoff Credit Systems, soon becoming involved in a messy dispute after the team attempted to renegotiate his contract - and pay him much less than it had originally agreed - in the light of new rumours concerning his alleged doping.  The rider took the team to court, won the case and then won a subsequent appeal. At the time of writing, the case is subject to civil litigation. Unsurprisingly, his contract was not renewed; but he was signed up by Rock Racing.

In April 2009, it was announced that Hamilton had provided another positive sample during the off-season, this time revealing traces of the anti-depressant steroid 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone - a drug of questionable value to the rider, as tests have shown no effect on physical performance except in the case of ageing women. Nevertheless, as a steroid it is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and, now aged 38, the rider realised his career was likely to be at an end and retired, also revealing that he suffered from depression and had been receiving medical treatment for it for two years. This might have gone in his favour; but it was demonstrated that he was aware that 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone was a banned substance and chose not to inform cycling authorities that he was taking medication. Two months later, he was suspended for eight years.

During his career, Hamilton continued to insist that he was not doping and had never done so. However, in May 2010, he finally came clean and made what is accepted as a full confession during which he also implicated Lance Armstrong. Haven and Hamilton divorced ("amicably," according to both parties) in 2009 and it is reported that he will marry Lindsay Dyan in 2012.

Reg Harris

Reginald Hargreaves Harris, born on this day in 1920 in Bury, Lancashire, became Britain's greatest track cyclist during the 1940s and 1950s with no fewer than four National Amateur Sprint titles (1944, 1945, 1946, 1947), one World Amateur Sprint Championship (1947), a GP de Paris Amateur Sprint win (1946), a professional National Tandem Championship (1948), two silver Olympic medals (1948), one professional European Sprint Championship (1955) and four professional World Sprint Championships (1949, 1950, 1951, 1954)s.

Hargreaves, as he was christened, lost his father at the age of six and took his stepfather's surname when his mother remarried. He left school when he was 14 without any qualifications and was fortunate enough to find an apprenticeship in a car garage, which paid him enough to buy his first bike with which he entered a "roller race" competition organised by Hercules, among the first British bike manufacturers to run a racing team. There is no record of the race to tell us whether he won or not, but that his performance was good enough to earn him an invite to join the Lanacashire Road Club and compete with them suggests he probably did fairly well. He began racing in individual time trials the following year and won his first race, a grass-shortrack event.

Realising that he could make a living from cycling during the summer but would need a source of income during the off-season, Harris found employment at a papermill where he would work for three winters. In 1938, he beat the National Sprint Champion and in 1939 was invited to join the British team that would be competing in the World Championships in Milan. However, shortly after he arrived in Italy and spent some practice time on the famous Velodromo Vigorelli - reputed to be the world's fastest - the Second World War broke out and the team were recalled to Britain.

Harris served as a tank driver in North Africa during the war, being declared unfit and sent home after an injury in 1943. The following year he was racing again and won the first of his National titles, then when the war was over was invited to compete in France where he even impressed the notoriously hard-to-please Parisian crowds. He was unable to compete in the World Championships in 1947 after being left bruised and aching by a heavy-handed masseur. By this time, he was being provided with equipment and (possibly) a salary by Claud Butler, in those days a frame builder of considerable repute rather than a name stuck onto cheap, low quality bikes, but managed to retain his amateur status so that he could be entered into the 1948 Olympics in London. Then, he broke three vertebrae in an on-road training ride, but had recovered in time only to break his elbow in a British race with a few weeks to go before the Games began. Nevertheless, he entered and won his two silver medals.

With the Olympics over, Harris turned professional with a contract from Raleigh and won his first World Championship. He retired in 1957, became the manager of the Fallowfield Stadium which would be renamed in his honour (sadly now demolished and replaced by student accommodation) and worked with Raleigh in a series of business ventures all of which failed. He was, unfortunately, not much of a businessman - after giving up with Raleigh he set himself up producing bikes, but even the cachet his name carried was not enough to prevent the firm going under after just three years. He then did some promotional work with a waterproof coat manufacturer, then found jobs with companies that produced foam rubber.

Harris continued to cycle daily and, in 1971, started racing again. Despite a chronic lack of practice, he won a bronze medal in the National Championships which apparently convinced him that if he trained, there were still a few victories left in his legs - and he was proved right in 1974 when, now aged 54, he won a final British championship. In 1975, he won silver after being beaten by the man he had beaten the year before. He continued to cycle daily until his age made it impossible to do so and died of a stroke on the 22nd of June, 1992. He is buried at St. John's Church in Chelford, Cheshire. The village hosts the start and finish of numerous time trials and other races each year and the church holds an annual Christmas carol service in Harris' memory.


Barney Storey was born in Great Britain on this day in 1977. He and blind team mate Anthony Kappes won two gold medals at the 2008 Paralympics and at the time of writing holds the 200m Tandem World Record - Barney's wife Sarah also won a gold medal in the same Games, competing in the Individual Pursuit. In 2006, they became National Tandem Sprint Champions - the first (and so far only) paralympic team to have done so.

Christian Müller, born in Erfurt, East Germany in 1982, won the German and European Under-23 Individual Time Trial Championship in 2004.

Brian Jolly, winner of the 1965 Tour of Ireland and British Road Race Champion 1973, was born on this day in 1946.

On this day in 2004, the bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased bike brake manufacturer Avid.

Other births: Stefan Nimke (Germany, 1978); Christian Lyte (Great Britain, 1989); Zhang Liang (China, 1983); Choy Yiu Chung (Hong Kong, 1961); Claudio Pérez (Venezuela, 1957); Julio César Herrera (Cuba, 1977); Svein Gaute Hølestøl (Norway, 1971); Mićo Brković (Yugoslavia, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 14.09.2013

Nina Davies in 2008

Nina Davies
Born in the Vale of Glamorgan on this day in 1974, Nina Davies became Welsh National Road Race Champion in 2001, then came ninth at the British Championships in 2002 and seventh in 2003.

Like many female cyclists, Davies excels in several disciplines - in 2007, she was Welsh National Cyclo Cross Champion and won six rounds of the Welsh CX Series; the following year she became British Masters National Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion, then won a silver medal at the World Masters Championships.

Sé O'Hanlon
Sé O'Hanlon (commonly - and incorrectly - spelled Shay O'Hanlon) was born in Dublin on this day in 1941 and became one of Ireland's best amateur riders during the 1960s and 1970s. O'Hanlon holds the record for total victories and consecutive victories in the eight-stage Rás Tailteann, having won it for the first time in 1962 and again in 1965, 1966 and 1967 and was, for many years, the dominant rider in the race with a total of 24 stage wins and 36 stages in the leader's jersey. He also won the Tour of Ulster a record four times, in 1961, 1962, 1965 and 1966.

O'Hanlon might well have gone further, but he was a member of the National Cycling Association, one of three rival national federations and one of two that were not affiliated with the UCI - he was, therefore, ineligible to compete in most of the big foreign races, the World Championships and the Olympics. When he retired from competition he became president of the NCA and built bridges with the other federations, eventually enabling them to merge into one UCI-affiliated organisation.

George Mount
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the USA was as besotted with the bicycle as the French and Belgians were. Top riders of the day such as Frank Waller were household names and track racing was, in some areas, more popular than football or baseball: in 1910, Ty Cobb - one of the most successful and legendary baseball stars of all time - went on strike in order to force his Detroit Tigers team to pay him $9,000 per year; eight years earlier track star "Major" Marshall Taylor was able to command an annual salary of $35,000, despite the fact that in some of the more backward parts of the country he was refused entry to velodromes on account of being black.

But the States, more than any other nation, fell head over heels in love with the motorcar. With enormous natural resources, it was able to produce large luxury cars that retailed at prices within reach of the common man; it also had its own oil reserves and could produce fuel more cheaply than the European nations and had the space for wide, open roads. The bicycle was forgotten by all but children, who would exchange it for a car the moment they became old enough to do (as young as 15 in some states), and a few isolated adult eccentrics.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey on this day in 1955, George Mount was no more interested in bikes or cycling than most other Americans. However, in his teenage years he refused his father's demand that he enlisted in the Army, then fighting in Vietnam, and was thrown out of the family home as a result. A series of odd jobs followed as he tried to pay his way, including one as a groom  at a race track, where he would meet one of those eccentrics - race promoter and cycling fan Pete Rich. Rich had an ability to spot potential good form (possibly in horses as well as in humans, hence his presence at a race track) and talked Mount into giving the sport a try, also offering him cheap lodgings in a room above a bike shop he owned and work as a mechanic. Thus Mount found his way into the world of cycling completely by chance.

Rich became Mount's coach, training him at a neglected velodrome in San Francisco, and by 1973 he was good enough to begin competing as a junior. A year later, he won two races; then in 1975 he started to win a lot of races. In 1997, he recalled: "I won a whole lot of races in a row - for a couple of months in 1975, nobody beat me in a bike race, whether it was a criterium, a road race, a time trial. I mean, I won a whole lot of races." In 1976, he was sixth in the Road Race at the Olympic Games - the first American rider to finish in the top 60 since 1912.

Mount's Olympic success vastly increased cycling' popularity among the American public overnight, but the supportive infrastructure he would need in order to develop into a genuine world class rider simply didn't exist in the USA. Fortunately, at around the same time, he met the greatest cyclist in the world, Eddy Merckx (in the US with Patrick Sercu to race in Pennsylvania), and was able to ask his advice. Merckx told him to get to Italy as soon as possible, saying that France was the place to go to win races but Italy was the place to learn about the sport. Mike Neel, another young rider trained by Rich, had already made the move and was able to provide an introduction to a club called Benotto; teliing them, "Hey, I know this kid in the States who could come over and kick all your guys' butts." The team's manager told him to get the kid over to prove it - Mount arrived in 1977 and immediately began beating the Italians on their home turf.

Mount with the 1981 Sammontana team

The USA had a national team prior to 1978, but it was seen by the European teams and fans as a bit of a joke at worst or as a bunch of plucky underdogs at best. That year, Mount rode for them in numerous high-profile European events and, all of a sudden, more often than not, there was a stars and stripes jersey somewhere near the front of the peloton. He was fourth overall at the Tour of Britain and second at the Under-23 GP Liberazione as well as winning the US Red Zinger and Coors Classics, then in 1979 he won a stage at the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe and was fourth overall at the Tour du Vaucluse. In 1981, he was third in the Youth category at the Giro Italia - European fans began to take American cyclists more seriously; more importantly, so did American fans.

Mount retired at the age of just 28, having won around 200 races - he felt that he could have continued racing for at least another five years but that if he did, he'd end up as a burned-out ex-pro earning peanuts in a bike shop; he thought it better to get some qualifications while he was still young and guarantee himself a better future. His legacy is greater even than his palmares - he had blazed the trail later followed by Greg Lemond, who would become the first non-European to win the Tour de France, Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Andrew Hampsten, Kristin Armstrong and all the other great North American cyclists to go to Europe and revolutionise professional cycling from the 1980s to the present, and it is thanks to him that by the end of the 20th Century cycling in the USA was as popular as it had been at the end of the 19th. His nickname was Smilin' George, and he has a lot to smile about.

Francesco Casagrande

Francesco Casagrande

Born in Florence on this day in 1970, Francesco Casagrande turned professional with San Marino-based Mercatone Uno-Zucchini-Mendeghini in 1992, a year after finding international fame by winning the Baby Giro, and remained with the team through its gradual transformation into Saeco until 1997. In his second professional year he came third in the Youth category at the Giro d'Italia; then in 1994 he won seven races including the Giro di Toscana and was second at the National Championships. In 1995, he won five races and finished in third place on one stage at the Tour de Romandie and two at the Giro d'Italia, finishing the latter in tenth place overall, and in 1996 he won Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour of the Basque Country, also reaching the Giro d'Italia podium after three stages. In 1997, he came second again at the National Championship, then rode in the Tour de France for the first time; he finished eight stages in the top ten, was sixth in the General Classification and third in the King of the Mountains.

Casagrande switched to Cofidis for the 1998 season, getting the year off to an excellent start with third place overall at the Tour de Romandie, a stage win at the Tour Méditerranéen, second place at the Classique des Alpes and numerous other good results. He went to the Tour de France again but seemed not to have his previous form, finishing only two stages in the top 50 before a crash in Stage 10 put him out of the race. Then, in August, it was revealed that he had failed a doping control at Romandie. He denied using drugs and requested that his B-sample be analysed; when it too turned out positive Cofidis sacked him.

He made his return with Vini Caldirola-Sidermec in June 1999 and won the Tour de Suisse, his best result so far, then added victory at the Clásica San Sebastián. The following year, still with the same team, he won the Waalse Pijl and Stage 9 at the Giro and did well on a sufficient number of other stages to take the leader's jersey, which he wore all the way to the penultimate stage before losing it to Stefano Garzelli and settled instead for the King of the Mountains; later winning the bronze medal at the Wirld Championships. That placed him in a position to negotiate a better contract with another team, so he started 2001 with Fasso Bortolo and won the Giro del Trentino before returning to the Tour de France where he was unable to break into the top 100 before abandoning. In 2002 he won another Giro del Trentino, then went back to the Giro d'Italia and looked to be on course for a good result until Stage 16, when he was accused of deliberately pushing Colombia-Selle-Italia's John Freddy Garcia into the railings running alongside the road, causing him to crash and suffer injuries that required 20 stitches in his face. Casagrande denied doing so, saying he would not even think of doing something "that stupid." However, race officials and team managers insisted that was what they had seen happen, and he was ejected from the race for "aggressive riding."

Casagrande would never win another stage race after 2002, though he won some stages and a couple of one-day races in 2003. In 2004 and 2005 he stood on numerous podiums but failed to win anything, then announced his retirement on the 1st of May.


Volodymyr Rybin, born in Kreminna, Ukraine on this day in 1980, was World Points Race Champion in 2005.

Born in Paris on this day in 1924, Dominique Forlini won Stages 6 and 15 at the 1954 Tour de France. With Georges Senfftleben (with whom he also teamed up to win several six-day races in the 1950s), he was European Madison Champion in 1955.

Veelers at the Eneco Tour, 2009

Tom Veelers, born in Oostmarsum, Netherlands on this day in 1984, won the Under-23 Paris-Roubaix and Stages 5, 6, 8 and the General Classification at the Olympia's Tour in 2006. In 2011, he was second overall at the Tour de Wallonie-Picarde. Veelers began his professional career with Rabobank's Continental team in 2005, then switched to Skil-Shimano (now Argos-Shimano) in 2008; he has been with them ever since.

On this day in 2006, the USA Cycling Federation revealed that it had been supplied with information by the UCI linking Tyler Hamilton to Operacion Puerto. The UCI requested that action be taken; the Federation referred the case to USADA for investigation.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gary Foord (Great Britain, 1970); Chetan Singh Hari (India, 1936); William Fenn (USA, 1904, died 1980); Joe Becker (USA, 1931); Peter Weibel (West Germany, 1950); Kim Refshammer (Denmark, 1955, died 2002); Johannes Knab (West Germany, 1946); Connor Fields (USA, 1992); Robert Maveau (Belgium, 1944, died 1978); Yelena Dylko (Belarus, 1988); Luis Brethauer (Germany, 1992).

Daily Cycling Facts 01.03.2013

Gastone Nencini
Gastone Nencini (nicknamed "The Lion of Mugello" after his birthplace, Barberino del Mugello in Tuscany), was born on this day in 1930. He was an example of that rarest of cycling breeds, an ace climber (he won the King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1957) who could also descend at high speed. Most climbers, due to their typically skeletal figures, lack the physical mass to keep a bike under control while riding fast down a hill - but according to French National Champion and multiple Tour stage winner Raphaël Géminiani, "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill would be if you had a death wish." Roger Rivière, a fast descender and several times a Tour stage winner himself, ignored that advice in 1960 when he tried to follow the Italian down from the Col de Perjuret - shortly after beginning the descent, he hit a low wall, plunged over the side and broke his spine. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Even more unusually for a rider who could climb like he did, Nencini was a chain smoker.

Nencini was the inspiration for one of the first anti-doping drives, set up by official Tour doctor Pierre Dumas after he saw the rider injecting himself with stored blood. He'd learned the technique from Swedish runners, who had apparently been using the technique for several years.

In 1957, the year he won his two King of the Mountains competitions, he also won the Giro outright, beating 2nd place Louison Bobet by 19" and 3rd place Ercole Baldini by almost six minutes. His Tour win came in 1960, when he also finished the Giro in 2nd place overall, beating Graziano Battistini by more than five minutes. Nencini died on the 1st of February in 1980.

Tyler Hamilton
(image credit: Rob Annis CC BY 2.0)

Tyler Hamilton
Tyler Hamilton, who was born on this day in Marblehead, Massachusetts on this day in 1971, became one of the most prominent professional cyclists in the late 1990s and beginning of the 21st Century partly as a result of his association with Lance Armstrong (his subsequent accusations that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs has earned him both enemies and fans), partly due to his own excellent results and largely because of his intelligence, affability and personality. His golden retriever Tugboat, once a frequently-seen and popular character as he waited at the finish line with Hamilton's (now ex-)wife Haven, enjoyed equal popularity and was memorably interviewed on more than one occasion. There is a moving account of the dog's death in Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong: Every Second Counts.

Hamilton began cycling whilst still at school, but was more interested in ski racing when he was at university (his BA in economics has been questioned by some authors, most notably David Walsh in From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, but he can be assumed to have graduated with a reasonable degree of certainty). He also rode mountain bikes, giving up skiing when a mountain bike accident on a ski jump broke two of his vertebrae. He rode his first Tour de France in 1998, working hard for Armstrong in the mountains and time trials.

His palmares in impressive and includes several prestigious victories such as the Danmark Rundt in 1999, Stages 2, 5 and the General Classification at the 2000 Critérium du Dauphiné; Stage 14 and 2nd in the General Classification at the 2002 Giro d'Italia; Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Stage 5 and the General Classification at the Tour de Romandie and Stage 16 at the Tour de France in 2003; an Olympic gold medal; a National Championship and the Tour of Qinghai Lake. He would almost certainly have won many more had he not have spent so much of his career suspended from racing as a result of numerous doping violations.

The first came in 2004, right after his Olympic win when the IOC accused him of doping during the race. However, as his B-sample had been destroyed when an Athens laboratory froze it, he escaped a ban and was permitted to keep the medal. He was less fortunate later in the same year when he was caught out at the Vuelta a Espana: having abandoned the race due to stomach problems, it was announced that a sample given after his Stage 8 time trial win showed a "foreign blood population" - in other words, Hamilton had received a transfusion of somebody else's blood in order to boost his own haematocrit levels, oddly enough the very thing that Gastone Nencini had been seen doing when he inspired one of the Tour's first anti-doping efforts. His team, Phonak, supported him, but withdrew their support after another team member was shown to have used the same technique. Investigation revealed that in April 2004, a hemoglobin to reticulocytes (count of new red blood cells) had registered 132.9. 133 is considered likely evidence of either blood doping or EPO use and results in automatic suspension (a "clean" healthy athlete will register around 90). One year later, he was formally suspended for two years effective from the date of his Vuelta sample. A month later, he mounted an appeal based on accusations that important documents supporting his case had been suppressed/concealed and the bizarre possibility that he might be a chimera, the medical term given to an individual carrying genetically distinct cells from an absorbed zygote with which they shared a womb - the phenomenon popularly known as a "parasitic twin." The appeal was dismissed and Hamilton would later disavow the chimera theory, which appears to have been entirely an invention of his lawyers.

Hamilton with Rock Racing, 2008
(image credit: Richard Masoner CC BY-SA 2.0)

Just three month before his ban was due to expire, his name came up in Operación Puerto when several newspapers published allegations that the investigation had revealed a payment of US$50,000 made by him into an account owned by the notorious Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. Hamilton denied making the payment, stating that he had never received any treatment from Dr. Fuentes and claimed that he had not been contacted by Spanish authorities. He returned to professional cycling at the start of the 2007 season with Tinkoff Credit Systems, soon becoming involved in a messy dispute after the team attempted to renegotiate his contract - and pay him much less than it had originally agreed - in the light of new rumours concerning his alleged doping.  The rider took the team to court, won the case and then won a subsequent appeal. At the time of writing, the case is subject to civil litigation. Unsurprisingly, his contract was not renewed; but he was signed up by Rock Racing.

In April 2009, it was announced that Hamilton had provided another positive sample during the off-season, this time revealing traces of the anti-depressant steroid 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone - a drug of questionable value to the rider, as tests have shown no effect on physical performance except in the case of ageing women. Nevertheless, as a steroid it is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and, now aged 38, the rider realised his career was likely to be at an end and retired, also revealing that he suffered from depression and had been receiving medical treatment for it for two years. This might have gone in his favour; but it was demonstrated that he was aware that 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone was a banned substance and chose not to inform cycling authorities that he was taking medication. Two months later, he was suspended for eight years.

During his career, Hamilton continued to insist that he was not doping and had never done so. However, in May 2010, he finally came clean and made what is accepted as a full confession during which he also implicated Lance Armstrong. Haven and Hamilton divorced ("amicably," according to both parties) in 2009 and it is reported that he will marry Lindsay Dyan in 2012.

Reg Harris

Reginald Hargreaves Harris, born on this day in 1920 in Bury, Lancashire, became Britain's greatest track cyclist during the 1940s and 1950s with no fewer than four National Amateur Sprint titles (1944, 1945, 1946, 1947), one World Amateur Sprint Championship (1947), a GP de Paris Amateur Sprint win (1946), a professional National Tandem Championship (1948), two silver Olympic medals (1948), one professional European Sprint Championship (1955) and four professional World Sprint Championships (1949, 1950, 1951, 1954)s.

Hargreaves, as he was christened, lost his father at the age of six and took his stepfather's surname when his mother remarried. He left school when he was 14 without any qualifications and was fortunate enough to find an apprenticeship in a car garage, which paid him enough to buy his first bike with which he entered a "roller race" competition organised by Hercules, among the first British bike manufacturers to run a racing team. There is no record of the race to tell us whether he won or not, but that his performance was good enough to earn him an invite to join the Lanacashire Road Club and compete with them suggests he probably did fairly well. He began racing in individual time trials the following year and won his first race, a grass-shortrack event.

Realising that he could make a living from cycling during the summer but would need a source of income during the off-season, Harris found employment at a papermill where he would work for three winters. In 1938, he beat the National Sprint Champion and in 1939 was invited to join the British team that would be competing in the World Championships in Milan. However, shortly after he arrived in Italy and spent some practice time on the famous Velodromo Vigorelli - reputed to be the world's fastest - the Second World War broke out and the team were recalled to Britain.

Harris served as a tank driver in North Africa during the war, being declared unfit and sent home after an injury in 1943. The following year he was racing again and won the first of his National titles, then when the war was over was invited to compete in France where he even impressed the notoriously hard-to-please Parisian crowds. He was unable to compete in the World Championships in 1947 after being left bruised and aching by a heavy-handed masseur. By this time, he was being provided with equipment and (possibly) a salary by Claud Butler, in those days a frame builder of considerable repute rather than a name stuck onto cheap, low quality bikes, but managed to retain his amateur status so that he could be entered into the 1948 Olympics in London. Then, he broke three vertebrae in an on-road training ride, but had recovered in time only to break his elbow in a British race with a few weeks to go before the Games began. Nevertheless, he entered and won his two silver medals.

With the Olympics over, Harris turned professional with a contract from Raleigh and won his first World Championship. He retired in 1957, became the manager of the Fallowfield Stadium which would be renamed in his honour (sadly now demolished and replaced by student accommodation) and worked with Raleigh in a series of business ventures all of which failed. He was, unfortunately, not much of a businessman - after giving up with Raleigh he set himself up producing bikes, but even the cachet his name carried was not enough to prevent the firm going under after just three years. He then did some promotional work with a waterproof coat manufacturer, then found jobs with companies that produced foam rubber.

Harris continued to cycle daily and, in 1971, started racing again. Despite a chronic lack of practice, he won a bronze medal in the National Championships which apparently convinced him that if he trained, there were still a few victories left in his legs - and he was proved right in 1974 when, now aged 54, he won a final British championship. In 1975, he won silver after being beaten by the man he had beaten the year before. He continued to cycle daily until his age made it impossible to do so and died of a stroke on the 22nd of June, 1992. He is buried at St. John's Church in Chelford, Cheshire. The village hosts the start and finish of numerous time trials and other races each year and the church holds an annual Christmas carol service in Harris' memory.


Barney Storey was born in Great Britain on this day in 1977. He and blind team mate Anthony Kappes won two gold medals at the 2008 Paralympics and at the time of writing holds the 200m Tandem World Record - Barney's wife Sarah also won a gold medal in the same Games, competing in the Individual Pursuit. In 2006, they became National Tandem Sprint Champions - the first (and so far only) paralympic team to have done so.

Christian Müller, born in Erfurt, East Germany in 1982, won the German and European Under-23 Individual Time Trial Championship in 2004.

Brian Jolly, winner of the 1965 Tour of Ireland and British Road Race Champion 1973, was born on this day in 1946.

On this day in 2004, the bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased bike brake manufacturer Avid.

Other births: Stefan Nimke (Germany, 1978); Christian Lyte (Great Britain, 1989); Zhang Liang (China, 1983); Choy Yiu Chung (Hong Kong, 1961); Claudio Pérez (Venezuela, 1957); Julio César Herrera (Cuba, 1977); Svein Gaute Hølestøl (Norway, 1971); Mićo Brković (Yugoslavia, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 14.09.12

Nina Davies in 2008

Nina Davies
Born in the Vale of Glamorgan on this day in 1974, Nina Davies became Welsh National Road Race Champion in 2001, then came ninth at the British Championships in 2002 and seventh in 2003.

Like many female cyclists, Davies excels in several disciplines - in 2007, she was Welsh National Cyclo Cross Champion and won six rounds of the Welsh CX Series; the following year she became British Masters National Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion, then won a silver medal at the World Masters Championships.

Sé O'Hanlon
Sé O'Hanlon (commonly - and incorrectly - spelled Shay O'Hanlon) was born in Dublin on this day in 1941 and became one of Ireland's best amateur riders during the 1960s and 1970s. O'Hanlon holds the record for total victories and consecutive victories in the eight-stage Rás Tailteann, having won it for the first time in 1962 and again in 1965, 1966 and 1967 and was, for many years, the dominant rider in the race with a total of 24 stage wins and 36 stages in the leader's jersey. He also won the Tour of Ulster a record four times, in 1961, 1962, 1965 and 1966.

O'Hanlon might well have gone further, but he was a member of the National Cycling Association, one of three rival national federations and one of two that were not affiliated with the UCI - he was, therefore, ineligible to compete in most of the big foreign races, the World Championships and the Olympics. When he retired from competition he became president of the NCA and built bridges with the other federations, eventually enabling them to merge into one UCI-affiliated organisation.

George Mount
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the USA was as besotted with the bicycle as the French and Belgians were. Top riders of the day such as Frank Waller were household names and track racing was, in some areas, more popular than football or baseball: in 1910, Ty Cobb - one of the most successful and legendary baseball stars of all time - went on strike in order to force his Detroit Tigers team to pay him $9,000 per year; eight years earlier track star "Major" Marshall Taylor was able to command an annual salary of $35,000, despite the fact that in some of the more backward parts of the country he was refused entry to velodromes on account of being black.

But the States, more than any other nation, fell head over heels in love with the motorcar. With enormous natural resources, it was able to produce large luxury cars that retailed at prices within reach of the common man; it also had its own oil reserves and could produce fuel more cheaply than the European nations and had the space for wide, open roads. The bicycle was forgotten by all but children, who would exchange it for a car the moment they became old enough to do (as young as 15 in some states), and a few isolated adult eccentrics.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey on this day in 1955, George Mount was no more interested in bikes or cycling than most other Americans. However, in his teenage years he refused his father's demand that he enlisted in the Army, then fighting in Vietnam, and was thrown out of the family home as a result. A series of odd jobs followed as he tried to pay his way, including one as a groom  at a race track, where he would meet one of those eccentrics - race promoter and cycling fan Pete Rich. Rich had an ability to spot potential good form (possibly in horses as well as in humans, hence his presence at a race track) and talked Mount into giving the sport a try, also offering him cheap lodgings in a room above a bike shop he owned and work as a mechanic. Thus Mount found his way into the world of cycling completely by chance.

Rich became Mount's coach, training him at a neglected velodrome in San Francisco, and by 1973 he was good enough to begin competing as a junior. A year later, he won two races; then in 1975 he started to win a lot of races. In 1997, he recalled: "I won a whole lot of races in a row - for a couple of months in 1975, nobody beat me in a bike race, whether it was a criterium, a road race, a time trial. I mean, I won a whole lot of races." In 1976, he was sixth in the Road Race at the Olympic Games - the first American rider to finish in the top 60 since 1912.

Mount's Olympic success vastly increased cycling' popularity among the American public overnight, but the supportive infrastructure he would need in order to develop into a genuine world class rider simply didn't exist in the USA. Fortunately, at around the same time, he met the greatest cyclist in the world, Eddy Merckx (in the US with Patrick Sercu to race in Pennsylvania), and was able to ask his advice. Merckx told him to get to Italy as soon as possible, saying that France was the place to go to win races but Italy was the place to learn about the sport. Mike Neel, another young rider trained by Rich, had already made the move and was able to provide an introduction to a club called Benotto; teliing them, "Hey, I know this kid in the States who could come over and kick all your guys' butts." The team's manager told him to get the kid over to prove it - Mount arrived in 1977 and immediately began beating the Italians on their home turf.

Mount with the 1981 Sammontana team

The USA had a national team prior to 1978, but it was seen by the European teams and fans as a bit of a joke at worst or as a bunch of plucky underdogs at best. That year, Mount rode for them in numerous high-profile European events and, all of a sudden, more often than not, there was a stars and stripes jersey somewhere near the front of the peloton. He was fourth overall at the Tour of Britain and second at the Under-23 GP Liberazione as well as winning the US Red Zinger and Coors Classics, then in 1979 he won a stage at the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe and was fourth overall at the Tour du Vaucluse. In 1981, he was third in the Youth category at the Giro Italia - European fans began to take American cyclists more seriously; more importantly, so did American fans.

Mount retired at the age of just 28, having won around 200 races - he felt that he could have continued racing for at least another five years but that if he did, he'd end up as a burned-out ex-pro earning peanuts in a bike shop, preferring instead to get some qualifications while he was still young and guarantee himself a better future. His legacy is greater even than his palmares - be blazed the trail later followed by Greg Lemond, who would become the first non-European to win the Tour de France, Levi Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Andrew Hampsten, Kristin Armstrong and all the other great North American cyclists to go to Europe and revolutionise professional cycling from the 1980s to the present, and it is thanks to him that by the end of the 20th Century cycling in the USA was as popular as it had been at the end of the 19th. His nickname was Smilin' George, and he has a lot to smile about.

Francesco Casagrande

Francesco Casagrande

Born in Florence on this day in 1970, Francesco Casagrande turned professional with San Marino-based Mercatone Uno-Zucchini-Mendeghini in 1992, a year after finding international fame by winning the Baby Giro, and remained with the team through its gradual transformation into Saeco until 1997. In his second professional year he came third in the Youth category at the Giro d'Italia; then in 1994 he won seven races including the Giro di Toscana and was second at the National Championships. In 1995, he won five races and finished in third place on one stage at the Tour de Romandie and two at the Giro d'Italia, finishing the latter in tenth place overall, and in 1996 he won Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour of the Basque Country, also reaching the Giro d'Italia podium after three stages. In 1997, he came second again at the National Championship, then rode in the Tour de France for the first time; he finished eight stages in the top ten, was sixth in the General Classification and third in the King of the Mountains.

Casagrande switched to Cofidis for the 1998 season, getting the year off to an excellent start with third place overall at the Tour de Romandie, a stage win at the Tour Méditerranéen, second place at the Classique des Alpes and numerous other good results. He went to the Tour de France again but seemed not to have his previous form, finishing only two stages in the top 50 before a crash in Stage 10 put him out of the race. Then, in August, it was revealed that he had failed a doping control at Romandie. He denied using drugs and requested that his B-sample be analysed; when it too turned out positive Cofidis sacked him.

He made his return with Vini Caldirola-Sidermec in June 1999 and won the Tour de Suisse, his best result so far, then added victory at the Clásica San Sebastián. The following year, still with the same team, he won the Waalse Pijl and Stage 9 at the Giro and did well on a sufficient number of other stages to take the leader's jersey, which he wore all the way to the penultimate stage before losing it to Stefano Garzelli and settled instead for the King of the Mountains; later winning the bronze medal at the Wirld Championships. That placed him in a position to negotiate a better contract with another team, so he started 2001 with Fasso Bortolo and won the Giro del Trentino before returning to the Tour de France where he was unable to break into the top 100 before abandoning. In 2002 he won another Giro del Trentino, then went back to the Giro d'Italia and looked to be on course for a good result until Stage 16, when he was accused of deliberately pushing Colombia-Selle-Italia's John Freddy Garcia into the railings running alongside the road, causing him to crash and suffer injuries that required 20 stitches in his face. Casagrande denied doing so, saying he would not even think of doing something "that stupid." However, race officials and team managers insisted that was what they had seen happen, and he was ejected from the race for "aggressive riding."

Casagrande would never win another stage race after 2002, though he won some stages and a couple of one-day races in 2003. In 2004 and 2005 he stood on numerous podiums but failed to win anything, then announced his retirement on the 1st of May.


Volodymyr Rybin, born in Kreminna, Ukraine on this day in 1980, was World Points Race Champion in 2005.

Born in Paris on this day in 1924, Dominique Forlini won Stages 6 and 15 at the 1954 Tour de France. With Georges Senfftleben (with whom he also teamed up to win several six-day races in the 1950s), he was European Madison Champion in 1955.

Veelers at the Eneco Tour, 2009

Tom Veelers, born in Oostmarsum, Netherlands on this day in 1984, won the Under-23 Paris-Roubaix and Stages 5, 6, 8 and the General Classification at the Olympia's Tour in 2006. In 2011, he was second overall at the Tour de Wallonie-Picarde.

On this day in 2006, the USA Cycling Federation revealed that it had been supplied with information by the UCI linking Tyler Hamilton to Operacion Puerto. The UCI requested that action be taken; the Federation referred the case to USADA for investigation.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gary Foord (Great Britain, 1970); Chetan Singh Hari (India, 1936); William Fenn (USA, 1904, died 1980); Joe Becker (USA, 1931); Peter Weibel (West Germany, 1950); Kim Refshammer (Denmark, 1955, died 2002); Johannes Knab (West Germany, 1946); Connor Fields (USA, 1992); Robert Maveau (Belgium, 1944, died 1978); Yelena Dylko (Belarus, 1988); Luis Brethauer (Germany, 1992).

Daily Cycling Facts 01.03.12

Gastone Nencini
Gastone Nencini (nicknamed "The Lion of Mugello" after his birthplace, Barberino del Mugello in Tuscany), was born on this day in 1930. He was an example of that rarest of cycling breeds, an ace climber (he won the King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1957) who could also descend at high speed. Most climbers, due to their typically skeletal figures, lack the physical mass to keep a bike under control while riding fast down a hill - but according to French National Champion and multiple Tour stage winner Raphaël Géminiani, "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill would be if you had a death wish." Roger Rivière, a fast descender and several times a Tour stage winner himself, ignored that advice in 1960 when he tried to follow the Italian down from the Col de Perjuret - shortly after beginning the descent, he hit a low wall, plunged over the side and broke his spine. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Even more unusually for a rider who could climb like he did, Nencini was a chain smoker.

Nencini was the inspiration for one of the first anti-doping drives, set up by official Tour doctor Pierre Dumas after he saw the rider injecting himself with stored blood. He'd learned the technique from Swedish runners, who had apparently been using the technique for several years.

In 1957, the year he won his two King of the Mountains competitions, he also won the Giro outright, beating 2nd place Louison Bobet by 19" and 3rd place Ercole Baldini by almost six minutes. His Tour win came in 1960, when he also finished the Giro in 2nd place overall, beating Graziano Battistini by more than five minutes. Nencini died on the 1st of February in 1980.

Tyler Hamilton
(image credit: Rob Annis CC BY 2.0)

Tyler Hamilton
Tyler Hamilton, who was born on this day in Marblehead, Massachusetts on this day in 1971, became one of the most prominent professional cyclists in the late 1990s and beginning of the 21st Century partly as a result of his association with Lance Armstrong (his subsequent accusations that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs has earned him both enemies and fans), partly due to his own excellent results and largely because of his intelligence, affability and personality. His golden retriever Tugboat, once a frequently-seen and popular character as he waited at the finish line with Hamilton's (now ex-)wife Haven, enjoyed equal popularity and was memorably interviewed on more than one occasion. There is a moving account of the dog's death in Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong: Every Second Counts.

Hamilton began cycling whilst still at school, but was more interested in ski racing when he was at university (his BA in economics has been questioned by some authors, most notably David Walsh in From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, but he can be assumed to have graduated with a reasonable degree of certainty). He also rode mountain bikes, giving up skiing when a mountain bike accident on a ski jump broke two of his vertebrae. He rode his first Tour de France in 1998, working hard for Armstrong in the mountains and time trials.

His palmares in impressive and includes several prestigious victories such as the Danmark Rundt in 1999, Stages 2, 5 and the General Classification at the 2000 Critérium du Dauphiné; Stage 14 and 2nd in the General Classification at the 2002 Giro d'Italia; Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Stage 5 and the General Classification at the Tour de Romandie and Stage 16 at the Tour de France in 2003; an Olympic gold medal; a National Championship and the Tour of Qinghai Lake. He would almost certainly have won many more had he not have spent so much of his career suspended from racing as a result of numerous doping violations.

The first came in 2004, right after his Olympic win when the IOC accused him of doping during the race. However, as his B-sample had been destroyed when an Athens laboratory froze it, he escaped a ban and was permitted to keep the medal. He was less fortunate later in the same year when he was caught out at the Vuelta a Espana: having abandoned the race due to stomach problems, it was announced that a sample given after his Stage 8 time trial win showed a "foreign blood population" - in other words, Hamilton had received a transfusion of somebody else's blood in order to boost his own haematocrit levels, oddly enough the very thing that Gastone Nencini had been seen doing when he inspired one of the Tour's first anti-doping efforts. His team, Phonak, supported him, but withdrew their support after another team member was shown to have used the same technique. Investigation revealed that in April 2004, a hemoglobin to reticulocytes (count of new red blood cells) had registered 132.9. 133 is considered likely evidence of either blood doping or EPO use and results in automatic suspension (a "clean" healthy athlete will register around 90). One year later, he was formally suspended for two years effective from the date of his Vuelta sample. A month later, he mounted an appeal based on accusations that important documents supporting his case had been suppressed/concealed and the bizarre possibility that he might be a chimera, the medical term given to an individual carrying genetically distinct cells from an absorbed zygote with which they shared a womb - the phenomenon popularly known as a "parasitic twin." The appeal was dismissed and Hamilton would later disavow the chimera theory, which appears to have been entirely an invention of his lawyers.

Hamilton with Rock Racing, 2008
(image credit: Richard Masoner CC BY-SA 2.0)

Just three month before his ban was due to expire, his name came up in Operación Puerto when several newspapers published allegations that the investigation had revealed a payment of US$50,000 made by him into an account owned by the notorious Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. Hamilton denied making the payment, stating that he had never received any treatment from Dr. Fuentes and claimed that he had not been contacted by Spanish authorities. He returned to professional cycling at the start of the 2007 season with Tinkoff Credit Systems, soon becoming involved in a messy dispute after the team attempted to renegotiate his contract - and pay him much less than it had originally agreed - in the light of new rumours concerning his alleged doping.  The rider took the team to court, won the case and then won a subsequent appeal. At the time of writing, the case is subject to civil litigation. Unsurprisingly, his contract was not renewed; but he was signed up by Rock Racing.

In April 2009, it was announced that Hamilton had provided another positive sample during the off-season, this time revealing traces of the anti-depressant steroid 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone - a drug of questionable value to the rider, as tests have shown no effect on physical performance except in the case of ageing women. Nevertheless, as a steroid it is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and, now aged 38, the rider realised his career was likely to be at an end and retired, also revealing that he suffered from depression and had been receiving medical treatment for it for two years. This might have gone in his favour; but it was demonstrated that he was aware that 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone was a banned substance and chose not to inform cycling authorities that he was taking medication. Two months later, he was suspended for eight years.

During his career, Hamilton continued to insist that he was not doping and had never done so. However, in May 2010, he finally came clean and made what is accepted as a full confession during which he also implicated Lance Armstrong. Haven and Hamilton divorced ("amicably," according to both parties) in 2009 and it is reported that he will marry Lindsay Dyan in 2012.

Reg Harris

Reginald Hargreaves Harris, born on this day in 1920 in Bury, Lancashire, became Britain's greatest track cyclist during the 1940s and 1950s with no fewer than four National Amateur Sprint titles (1944, 1945, 1946, 1947), one World Amateur Sprint Championship (1947), a GP de Paris Amateur Sprint win (1946), a professional National Tandem Championship (1948), two silver Olympic medals (1948), one professional European Sprint Championship (1955) and four professional World Sprint Championships (1949, 1950, 1951, 1954)s.

Hargreaves, as he was christened, lost his father at the age of six and took his stepfather's surname when his mother remarried. He left school when he was 14 without any qualifications and was fortunate enough to find an apprenticeship in a car garage, which paid him enough to buy his first bike with which he entered a "roller race" competition organised by Hercules, among the first British bike manufacturers to run a racing team. There is no record of the race to tell us whether he won or not, but that his performance was good enough to earn him an invite to join the Lanacashire Road Club and compete with them suggests he probably did fairly well. He began racing in individual time trials the following year and won his first race, a grass-shortrack event.

Realising that he could make a living from cycling during the summer but would need a source of income during the off-season, Harris found employment at a papermill where he would work for three winters. In 1938, he beat the National Sprint Champion and in 1939 was invited to join the British team that would be competing in the World Championships in Milan. However, shortly after he arrived in Italy and spent some practice time on the famous Velodromo Vigorelli - reputed to be the world's fastest - the Second World War broke out and the team were recalled to Britain.

Harris served as a tank driver in North Africa during the war, being declared unfit and sent home after an injury in 1943. The following year he was racing again and won the first of his National titles, then when the war was over was invited to compete in France where he even impressed the notoriously hard-to-please Parisian crowds. He was unable to compete in the World Championships in 1947 after being left bruised and aching by a heavy-handed masseur. By this time, he was being provided with equipment and (possibly) a salary by Claud Butler, in those days a frame builder of considerable repute rather than a name stuck onto cheap, low quality bikes, but managed to retain his amateur status so that he could be entered into the 1948 Olympics in London. Then, he broke three vertebrae in an on-road training ride, but had recovered in time only to break his elbow in a British race with a few weeks to go before the Games began. Nevertheless, he entered and won his two silver medals.

With the Olympics over, Harris turned professional with a contract from Raleigh and won his first World Championship. He retired in 1957, became the manager of the Fallowfield Stadium which would be renamed in his honour (sadly now demolished and replaced by student accommodation) and worked with Raleigh in a series of business ventures all of which failed. He was, unfortunately, not much of a businessman - after giving up with Raleigh he set himself up producing bikes, but even the cachet his name carried was not enough to prevent the firm going under after just three years. He then did some promotional work with a waterproof coat manufacturer, then found jobs with companies that produced foam rubber.

Harris continued to cycle daily and, in 1971, started racing again. Despite a chronic lack of practice, he won a bronze medal in the National Championships which apparently convinced him that if he trained, there were still a few victories left in his legs - and he was proved right in 1974 when, now aged 54, he won a final British championship. In 1975, he won silver after being beaten by the man he had beaten the year before. He continued to cycle daily until his age made it impossible to do so and died of a stroke on the 22nd of June, 1992. He is buried at St. John's Church in Chelford, Cheshire. The village hosts the start and finish of numerous time trials and other races each year and the church holds an annual Christmas carol service in Harris' memory.


Barney Storey was born in Great Britain on this day in 1977. He and blind team mate Anthony Kappes won two gold medals at the 2008 Paralympics and at the time of writing holds the 200m Tandem World Record - Barney's wife Sarah also won a gold medal in the same Games, competing in the Individual Pursuit. In 2006, they became National Tandem Sprint Champions - the first (and so far only) paralympic team to have done so.

Christian Müller, born in Erfurt, East Germany in 1982, won the German and European Under-23 Individual Time Trial Championship in 2004.

Brian Jolly, winner of the 1965 Tour of Ireland and British Road Race Champion 1973, was born on this day in 1946.

On this day in 2004, the bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased bike brake manufacturer Avid.

Other births: Stefan Nimke (Germany, 1978); Christian Lyte (Great Britain, 1989); Zhang Liang (China, 1983); Choy Yiu Chung (Hong Kong, 1961); Claudio Pérez (Venezuela, 1957); Julio César Herrera (Cuba, 1977); Svein Gaute Hølestøl (Norway, 1971); Mićo Brković (Yugoslavia, 1968).

Strange superstitions of the Tour de France

Lance Armstrong is just one of the
many riders who observed various
superstitions while competing in the
Tour de France

There are around 400 professional cyclists eligible for UCI competitions at any one time and an average of five will injure themselves in any one week - in other words, any rider who gets through an entire year without any injury has been reasonably fortunate. For this reason, all sorts of superstitions have arisen, some personal to the riders and some pertaining to the entire race.

Italian riders, for example, believe that they'll suffer bad luck during the race if they pass salt to one another during team meals both before the race and while it's in progress. Some are content to pick up a salt shaker once it's been replaced in the middle of the table while others prefer not to take risks and insist on having their own shaker and will not pass it to anyone. Another tradition peculiar to the Italians is their belief that a rider must eat pasta precisely three hours before a race begins - not such a problem in the Tour, but some races begin at 6am or earlier.

The salt superstition stems from the old belief that spilled salt somehow causes the devil to appear and get up to the sorts of high jinks with which he is associated. Danish Michael Sandstød was above all that: when he spilled salt during a team dinner, he decided to show his fellow cyclists a thing or two and deliberately brushed the salt onto the floor which is an absolute no-no among the superstitious - the correct thing to do is to pick up some of the salt and throw it over your left shoulder so that it hits the devil in the eye (and he really hates that because it stings). The very next day, Sandstød suffered a terrible crash on a fast downhill and smashed his shoulder and eight ribs, one of which punctured a lung so he spent the next few days on a ventilator. He retired not long afterwards.

Coincidence? Well yeah. But...

Tyler Hamilton always said he wasn't superstitious but began to carry a bottle of holy water and a vial of salt with him after being given them by a friend. Gradually, he began to feel he couldn't race without them until one day when he forgot them during one stage of the Tour of Holland - he crashed badly and cracked his femurCarlos Sastre displayed perhaps the strangest superstition, winning Stage 13 with a baby's dummy in his mouth as an auspicious welcome to the world for his new daughter.

Many riders have their hair cut before a race. There are practical reasons for this, since short hair  allows sweat to evaporate more easily (even in the pre-helmet days), but over time it's become a sort of superstition in its own right so that nowadays even riders with shaved heads have a trim before going out. Others, meanwhile, refuse to shave for certain stages.  A very great many riders suffer from triskaidekaphobia, making them extremely reluctant to wear the number 13. Hence, it's common to see a rider allocated the number - such as Jakob Fuglsang, another Dane, this year - pin it in place upside-down or overlapping a second patch to make 1313, which apparently is acceptable. The great Jacques Anquetil, who became the first rider to win five Tours, was as fascinated by astronomy as he was by cycling but even an interest in science didn't prevent him from being superstitious. In 1964, a fortune teller publically predicted that he would die on the thirteenth day of the race - fortunately for his team, that was rest day; but Anquetil refused to leave his hotel room until he was eventually coaxed out by a team manager and taken for food. The stress was so great on him that he was still suffering exhaustion the next day and he quickly dropped to a low position.

Louison Bobet

Louison Bobet, who won three Tours in the 1950s, refused to wear any item made of artificial fibre - including the yellow jersey which had included synthetic material since 1947. Organisers had to persuade manufacturers Sofil to make a new one in natural fibres overnight. However, this was not a superstition: Bobet had suffered from terrible saddle sores, became obsessed with hygiene as a result and believed synthetic fibres to be unhealthy. Lance Armstrong had certain rituals surrounding clothing, too - such as one which saw him refuse to wear the yellow helmet, as traditionally worn with the yellow jersey, except for on the final stage. He also had to always start and finish a stage on the same bike, meaning that his team mechanics would have to rush to complete repairs on a damaged bike before the end of the stage.

Keep a careful eye on the riders and bikes in the Tour this year - this is made easier by the camera crews who also seem to have an interest in the various bits of voodoo the riders exhibit - and see what odd things you can see hanging around their necks, stuffed in their jersey pockets and fixed to their bikes.