Daily Cycling Facts 13.05.2014

Stefano Garzelli
(image credit: Sebastián García CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Giro d'Italia started on this date five times - 1909 (see below), 1981, 1982, 1995 and 2000. In 1981, the race consisted of 22 stages and covered 3,895km. The winner was Giovanni Battaglin who had also won the amateur version of the race nine years earlier and would go on to win the Vuelta a Espana five months later, one of only three men to have won both races in a single season. The 1982 edition was again 22 stages, but it had grown to 4,010.5km. Bernard Hinault won, then won the Tour de France - the Giro/Tour double being considered a more impressive achievement than the Giro/Vuelta though seven men have achieved it, three of them twice (Hinault became one of them in 1985) and one three times (that, as tends to be the case with unique road racing achievements, being Eddy Merckx).

By 1995, the race had shrunk down to 3,736km but retained the 22 stage format. Marco Pantani had been a favourite but was kept away by injury, which left the unusual spectacle of sprinter and a climber battling one another for victory: Mario Cipollini was the sprinter and Tony Rominger was the climber, and they fought one another tooth and nail but on different stages all the way to the end. In the end, Rominger's secondary ability in the time trials stood him in good stead and he won the race. In 2000 there were 21 stages and a prologue, adding up to 3,676km in total. Stefano Garzelli won with 98h30'14".

The First Giro d'Italia

Luigi Ganna, photographed
shortly after finishing Stage 8
at the first Giro d'Italia

1909 was the very first edition of the Giro d'Italia. Organised like most races of the day to advertise a newspaper (La Gazzetta dello Sport on this case; which like L'Auto, the paper that organised the Tour de France, wanted to out-sell and ideally completely crush a rival title - the difference being that whereas L'Auto's rival Le Vélo was dead and buried within a year of the first Tour, Corriere della Sera sells around 220,000 more copies each day than La Gazzetta.

The race covered 2,445km over eight stages which, despite the daunting prospect of stages an average of 306km in length (the longest was in fact 397km, Stage 1), makes it the shortest edition ever held. Stage racing was a new concept when the Tour started in 1903 and as a result only 60 riders took part - and then only because director Henri Desgrange halved the entry fee and increase the prizes - but six years later the idea was both established and popular with a number of smaller events having sprung up in the intervening years (sadly, none have survived. The Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, first run in 1911, is the world's third oldest stage race), so 123 Italians and four Frenchmen showed up at the start line. Another similarity with the Tour was that the results were decided on points in early editions, rather than on overall elapsed time as is the case today, with the lowest number of points getting the win. Luigi Ganna, born in Induno Olana in 1883, was declared victor with 25 - had it have been decided in the modern manner, his time of 89h48'14" would have seen Giovanni Rossignoli (third place with 40 points) take the honour.

The race started and finished in Milan, the riders setting off on Stage 1 at 02:53 in the morning. Ganna's prize was 5,325 lira, while La Gazzetta editor and race director Eugenio Costamagna was paid the princely sum of 150 lira. La Gazzetta, incidentally, was and still is printed on pink paper - which is why the race leader's jersey, known as the maglia rosa and first adopted in 1931, is pink; just as the Tour de France's maillot jaune is yellow to reflect the yellow paper used by L'Auto.

Marianne Vos - very possibly the greatest
cyclist in the history of the sport
(image credit: Maarten Thys CC BY 3.0)

Marianne Vos
If you've been reading these Daily Cycling Facts and wondering, as I did while writing them, why it is that an apparently smaller number of notable professional professional cyclists were born in May than any other month, here's the reason: when Marianne Vos was born on this day in 1987, she was given the entire month's-worth of talent for several years in either direction.

A native of 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, Vos' father and brother were both keen cyclists and, when she was five, she decided that she'd like to have a go too. Her first bike was too big for her, but even then she refused to give up. By the time she was six she was out training two nights a week. A few years later, she was taken to see the Alpe d'Huez stage of the Tour de France and spent much of her time hanging around the hotels to meet riders - it's tempting to wonder any of them remember the little Dutch girl who asked them for their autograph, now that her career has eclipsed all of theirs. In fact, and with the arguable exception of Eddy Merckx, Vos has now eclipsed all those who came before her; she is quite simply a phenomenal athlete and very welcome to younger fans who missed out on seeing the greats of days gone by, riders such as Hinault, Ancquetil, Burton, Bartali, Coppi and, of course, Merckx himself.

Vos has won all of the most prestigious races in women's road cycling including three World Road Race Championships (2004 Junior Championships, 2006 and 2012 Elite Championships, two European Championships, six National Championships and an Olympic Road Race gold medal in 2012. In addition, she has won two National Time Trial championships (despite claiming not to be very good at time trials), more than 70 stages, 18 criteriums and 30 general classifications. By her 27th birthday, on this day in 2014, her total number of victories in road racing, cyclo cross, track and mountain biking added up to 307. Merckx clocked up 525 by the time he retired shortly before his 33rd birthday: the great Belgian has been asked for his thoughts on her by several journalists and makes it clear that he admires her enormously, perhaps even expecting her to beat his tally sooner or later.

Vos is also known for being one of the most personable professional cyclists around. Highly intelligent and articulate, she regularly talks to fans on Twitter and is as popular among the riders who race against her as she is with her supporters. If you don't already follow women's cycling, Vos is one of many reasons to start doing so - all indications suggest that we have not seen her like in professional cycling before, one who is limited not by her own abilities but by the number of races available to her.

Johnny Hoogerland 

Johnny Hoogerland
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Born in Yerseke, Netherlands on this day in 1983, Johnny Hoogerland became one of the stars of the 2011 Tour de France for his repeated attacks, five days in the polka dot jersey as leader of the King of the Mountains classification and a horrific crash that could very easily have ended his career.

Nicknamed The Bull of Beveland due to a large tattoo depicting a bull on his arm, Hoogerland came to international attention when he won the Junior Tour of Flanders in 2001 and then followed it up with numerous wins over the next few years, including the tough GP Briek Schotte - a race designed to reveal those riders who can be aid to be Flandriens, the toughest cyclists of them all, of which Schotte is considered to be the definitive example.

Hoogerland - a Flandrien to the core
(unknown copyright, believed public domain due to widespread use)

It was at the 2011 Tour that Hoogerland proved just how tough he is. During Stage 9, as he cycled alongside Sky's Juan Antonio Flecha, an inattentive driver in France Télévisions official car realised he was about to hit a tree. Rather than slamming on the car's brakes - as all drivers at the Tour are trained to do - he swerved right, hitting the two riders. Flecha hit the road hard and received extensive bruising, but Hoogerland was catapulted into a barbed wire fence hard enough to smash a wooden fence post and become entangled in the wire, which tore his shorts to shreds and left him with deep lacerations to his buttocks and legs.

Both men got back on their bikes and finished the stage. Organisers extended the maximum permitted time so that they could do without being disqualified, then jointly awarded them what must have been the most-deserved Combativity Award for many years. Afterwards, Hoogerland was given 33 stitches.

Peter Longbottom
Peter Longbottom, born in Huddersfield on this day in 1959, was one of those cyclists whom were there any justice in this world would have been a household name. Respected among cyclists for his superb tactical mind, he was for many years in high demand among Tour of Britain teams for his ability to re-organise a team "on the road" according to rider performance, terrain, weather, opponents and a host of variable factors; frequently getting it correct and driving his team mates on to victory even when aware that he himself could not win. His skills saw him ride with Chris Boardman, assisting him at the Commonwealth Games, yet he chose never to turn professional and worked a full-time job even during the racing season.

Longbottom retired from competition in 1996 and spent the remaining two years of his life encouraging young people to take up the sport. On the 10th of February 1998, he was hit by a car on the A64 near York, the impact throwing him onto the opposite carriageway where eye-witnesses say he was hit by several vehicles


Gerrit de Vries, born in Oldeberkoop, Netherlands on this day in 1967 (and, so far as we can tell, no relation to Marijn de Vries of AA Drink-Leontien.nl) shared victory in the 1986 Amateur World Team Time Trial Championship. A a professional rider he took part in six editions of the Tour de France, his best result being 34th overall in 1991.

Eugène Van Roosbroeck was born in Antwerp on this day in 1928. At the time of writing, he is the oldest of the three surviving members of the gold medal-winning road race team at the 1948 Olympics.

Nino Schurter, born in Tersnaus, Switzerland on this day in 1986, was World Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion in 2009.

Other cyclists born on this day: David López García (Euskadi, 1981); Tony Gowland (Great Britain, 1965); Fitzgerald Joseph (Belize, 1967); Morten Sæther (Norway, 1959); Marc Blouin (Canada, 1953); Josef Landsberg (Sweden, 1890, died 1964); Domenico Cecchetti (San Marino, 1941); Eugène Van Roosbroeck (Belgium, 1928); Pavel Cherkasov (USSR, 1972); Edoardo Severgnini (Italy, 1904, died 1969); Thomas Harrison (Australia, 1942); Mark Barry (Great Britain, 1964).

Daily Cycling Facts 07.01.2014

John Degenkolb

Degenkolb at the Olympics, 2012

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

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

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

Shane Kelly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Cycling Facts 13.05.2013

Stefano Garzelli
(image credit: Sebastián García CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Giro d'Italia started on this date five times - 1909 (see below), 1981, 1982, 1995 and 2000. In 1981, the race consisted of 22 stages and covered 3,895km. The winner was Giovanni Battaglin who had also won the amateur version of the race nine years earlier and would go on to win the Vuelta a Espana five months later, one of only three men to have won both races in a single season. The 1982 edition was again 22 stages, but it had grown to 4,010.5km. Bernard Hinault won, then won the Tour de France - the Giro/Tour double being considered a more impressive achievement than the Giro/Vuelta though seven men have achieved it, three of them twice (Hinault became one of them in 1985) and one three times (that, as tends to be the case with unique road racing achievements, being Eddy Merckx).

By 1995, the race had shrunk down to 3,736km but retained the 22 stage format. Marco Pantani had been a favourite but was kept away by injury, which left the unusual spectacle of sprinter and a climber battling one another for victory: Mario Cipollini was the sprinter and Tony Rominger was the climber, and they fought one another tooth and nail but on different stages all the way to the end. In the end, Rominger's secondary ability in the time trials stood him in good stead and he won the race. In 2000 there were 21 stages and a prologue, adding up to 3,676km in total. Stefano Garzelli won with 98h30'14".

The First Giro d'Italia

Luigi Ganna, photographed
shortly after finishing Stage 8
at the first Giro d'Italia

1909 was the very first edition of the Giro d'Italia. Organised like most races of the day to advertise a newspaper (La Gazzetta dello Sport on this case; which like L'Auto, the paper that organised the Tour de France, wanted to out-sell and ideally completely crush a rival title - the difference being that whereas L'Auto's rival Le Vélo was dead and buried within a year of the first Tour, Corriere della Sera sells around 220,000 more copies each day than La Gazzetta.

The race covered 2,445km over eight stages which, despite the daunting prospect of stages an average of 306km in length (the longest was in fact 397km, Stage 1), makes it the shortest edition ever held. Stage racing was a new concept when the Tour started in 1903 and as a result only 60 riders took part - and then only because director Henri Desgrange halved the entry fee and increase the prizes - but six years later the idea was both established and popular with a number of smaller events having sprung up in the intervening years (sadly, none have survived. The Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, first run in 1911, is the world's third oldest stage race), so 123 Italians and four Frenchmen showed up at the start line. Another similarity with the Tour was that the results were decided on points in early editions, rather than on overall elapsed time as is the case today, with the lowest number of points getting the win. Luigi Ganna, born in Induno Olana in 1883, was declared victor with 25 - had it have been decided in the modern manner, his time of 89h48'14" would have seen Giovanni Rossignoli (third place with 40 points) take the honour.

The race started and finished in Milan, the riders setting off on Stage 1 at 02:53 in the morning. Ganna's prize was 5,325 lira, while La Gazzetta editor and race director Eugenio Costamagna was paid the princely sum of 150 lira. La Gazzetta, incidentally, was and still is printed on pink paper - which is why the race leader's jersey, known as the maglia rosa and first adopted in 1931, is pink; just as the Tour de France's maillot jaune is yellow to reflect the yellow paper used by L'Auto.

Marianne Vos - very possibly the greatest
cyclist in the history of the sport
(image credit: Maarten Thys CC BY 3.0)

Marianne Vos
If you've been reading these Daily Cycling Facts and wondering, as I did while writing them, why it is that an apparently smaller number of notable professional professional cyclists were born in May than any other month, here's the reason: when Marianne Vos was born on this day in 1987, she was given the entire month's-worth of talent for several years in either direction.

A native of 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, Vos' father and brother were both keen cyclists and, when she was five, she decided that she'd like to have a go too. Her first bike was too big for her, but even then she refused to give up. By the time she was six she was out training two nights a week. A few years later, she was taken to see the Alpe d'Huez stage of the Tour de France and spent much of her time hanging around the hotels to meet riders - it's tempting to wonder any of them remember the little Dutch girl who asked them for their autograph, now that her career has eclipsed all of theirs. In fact, and with the arguable exception of Eddy Merckx, Vos has now eclipsed all those who came before her; she is quite simply a phenomenal athlete and very welcome to younger fans who missed out on seeing the greats of days gone by, riders such as Hinault, Ancquetil, Burton, Bartali, Coppi and, of course, Merckx himself.

Vos has won all of the most prestigious races in women's road cycling including three World Road Race Championships (2004 Junior Championships, 2006 and 2012 Elite Championships, two European Championships, six National Championships and an Olympic Road Race gold medal in 2012. In addition, she has won two National Time Trial championships (despite claiming not to be very good at time trials), more than 70 stages, 18 criteriums and 30 general classifications. By her 26th birthday, on this day in 2013, her total number of victories in road racing, cyclo cross, track and mountain biking added up to 279. Merckx clocked up 525 by the time he retired shortly before his 33rd birthday; at 26 it's entirely likely that Marianne is just about to enter her best years (it's worth noting that when Merckx was 26, he had won around 40 fewer races than Marianne) - the great Belgian has been asked for his thoughts on her by several journalists and makes it clear that he admires her enormously, perhaps even expecting her to beat his tally sooner or later.

Vos is also known for being one of the most personable professional cyclists around. Highly intelligent and articulate, she regularly talks to fans on Twitter and is as popular among the riders who race against her as she is with her supporters. If you don't already follow women's cycling, Vos is one of many reasons to start doing so - all indications suggest that we have not seen her like in professional cycling before, one who is limited not by her own abilities but by the number of races available to her.

Johnny Hoogerland 

Johnny Hoogerland
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Born in Yerseke, Netherlands on this day in 1983, Johnny Hoogerland became one of the stars of the 2011 Tour de France for his repeated attacks, five days in the polka dot jersey as leader of the King of the Mountains classification and a horrific crash that could very easily have ended his career.

Nicknamed The Bull of Beveland due to a large tattoo depicting a bull on his arm, Hoogerland came to international attention when he won the Junior Tour of Flanders in 2001 and then followed it up with numerous wins over the next few years, including the tough GP Briek Schotte - a race designed to reveal those riders who can be aid to be Flandriens, the toughest cyclists of them all, of which Schotte is considered to be the definitive example.

Hoogerland - a Flandrien to the core
(unknown copyright, believed public domain due to widespread use)

It was at the 2011 Tour that Hoogerland proved just how tough he is. During Stage 9, as he cycled alongside Sky's Juan Antonio Flecha, an inattentive driver in France Télévisions official car realised he was about to hit a tree. Rather than slamming on the car's brakes - as all drivers at the Tour are trained to do - he swerved right, hitting the two riders. Flecha hit the road hard and received extensive bruising, but Hoogerland was catapulted into a barbed wire fence hard enough to smash a wooden fence post and become entangled in the wire, which tore his shorts to shreds and left him with deep lacerations to his buttocks and legs.

Both men got back on their bikes and finished the stage. Organisers extended the maximum permitted time so that they could do without being disqualified, then jointly awarded them what must have been the most-deserved Combativity Award for many years. Afterwards, Hoogerland was given 33 stitches.

Peter Longbottom
Peter Longbottom, born in Huddersfield on this day in 1959, was one of those cyclists whom were there any justice in this world would have been a household name. Respected among cyclists for his superb tactical mind, he was for many years in high demand among Tour of Britain teams for his ability to re-organise a team "on the road" according to rider performance, terrain, weather, opponents and a host of variable factors; frequently getting it correct and driving his team mates on to victory even when aware that he himself could not win. His skills saw him ride with Chris Boardman, assisting him at the Commonwealth Games, yet he chose never to turn professional and worked a full-time job even during the racing season.

Longbottom retired from competition in 1996 and spent the remaining two years of his life encouraging young people to take up the sport. On the 10th of February 1998, he was hit by a car on the A64 near York, the impact throwing him onto the opposite carriageway where eye-witnesses say he was hit by several vehicles


Gerrit de Vries, born in Oldeberkoop, Netherlands on this day in 1967 (and, so far as we can tell, no relation to Marijn de Vries of AA Drink-Leontien.nl) shared victory in the 1986 Amateur World Team Time Trial Championship. A a professional rider he took part in six editions of the Tour de France, his best result being 34th overall in 1991.

Eugène Van Roosbroeck was born in Antwerp on this day in 1928. At the time of writing, he is the oldest of the three surviving members of the gold medal-winning road race team at the 1948 Olympics.

Nino Schurter, born in Tersnaus, Switzerland on this day in 1986, was World Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion in 2009.

Other cyclists born on this day: David López García (Euskadi, 1981); Tony Gowland (Great Britain, 1965); Fitzgerald Joseph (Belize, 1967); Morten Sæther (Norway, 1959); Marc Blouin (Canada, 1953); Josef Landsberg (Sweden, 1890, died 1964); Domenico Cecchetti (San Marino, 1941); Eugène Van Roosbroeck (Belgium, 1928); Pavel Cherkasov (USSR, 1972); Edoardo Severgnini (Italy, 1904, died 1969); Thomas Harrison (Australia, 1942); Mark Barry (Great Britain, 1964).

Daily Cycling Facts 07.01.2013

John Degenkolb

Degenkolb at the Olympics, 2012

Happy birthday to John Degenkolb, winner of Stages 2 and 4 in the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné. Born in Gera, Germany in 1989, Degenkolb began his career as a track cyclist and won the Pursuit as a Novice at the National Championships in 2004, then successfully defended the title and added another Novice victory at the National Road Race Championship a year later. In 2006 he came third in the Juniors Individual Time Trial at the Nationals, then won it in 2007 - one of nine victories that year, which earned him a contract with the Continental-class Thüringer Energie Team for 2008. He responded well to the step up, coming second overall at the Under-23 Tour du Haut-Anjou, winning Stage 2 at the U-23 Thüringen-Rundfahrt and impressing at a number of other races.

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

Highroad, which had been the first team to introduce anti-doping measures of its own that were far more stringent than those required by the UCI, came to a sadly ironic end in 2011 when sponsors decided to discontinue their association with a sport they believed to be irreparably associated with doping in the public mind. Degenkolb found a new contract with Project 1t4i and continued to impress with 11th place at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, two third place stage finishes at Paris-Nice,  fifth place at Milan-San Remo, sixth place at the E3 Harelbeke, two stage wins and overall General Classification at the Tour de Picardie, one stage win at the Tour of Poland and no fewer than five stage wins plus fourth place in the Points competition at the Vuelta a Espana before coming fourth at the World Championships - not bad for a 23-year-old racing his second Grand Tour, which has led many to predict that within a decade, Degenkolb will be likely to have won a Vuelta, Giro d'Italia or Tour de France.

Shane Kelly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An open letter to Rabobank

Lense Koopmans is the supervisory director of Rabobank's Supervisory Board, a body that "supervises the policy of the Executive Board of Rabobank Nederland and the general conduct affairs at Rabobank Group and its affiliated entities. In addition, the Supervisory Board advises the Executive Board and is responsible for the appointment and remuneration of the members of the Executive Board." 

I have emailed a copy to Rabobank - if you agree that the Rabobank women's team should not suffer from the possible withdrawal of Rabobank's sponsorship due to doping in men's cycling, please feel free to copy the letter and send it under your own name. One email won't make much of a difference, but if enough women's cycling fans ask Rabobank to make the right decision we might be able to help ensure their future support.


Dear Mr. Koopmans,

First off, please allow me to apologise for contacting you in this manner - I have no doubt that, as the supervisory director of Rabobank, you are a very busy man. However, I am writing to you in order to share some thoughts on a matter involving your company and which is of very great importance to myself and to an ever-increasing number of people around the world, and reading this letter will take only a few moments of your time. I hope you will spare me those few moments.

You've probably already guessed that I'm talking about Rabobank's recent decision to withdraw from professional cycling sponsorship. I fully understand the reasons for this decision: like all cycling fans, I had hoped that doping was finally coming to an end in the sport and I am deeply upset at the recent USADA revelations that show it has remained a far greater problem than we thought. If I was the director of a company such as yours, I too would feel reluctant to continue associating my company with cycling now that doping is in the spotlight once again. I'd like to add at this point that the decision to honour contracts, now that it would be too late for the riders to find new teams, is admirable proof that Rabobank has a heart, rather than being simply another inhuman, uncaring giant corporation. Proficiat for that!

One of the reasons I admire Rabobank (the company and the cycling team) is your fantastic support of women's cycling. While I'm sure that part of the company's decision to become involved in women's cycling is that there were and still are very few "big name" sponsors, allowing Rabobank to gain greater public awareness from it than would be possible in men's cycling which benefits from numerous very famous sponsors, I've always believed there was something more to it, something related to the altruistic ideals upon which Rabobank was first established: a desire to help female cyclists get the recognition and equality that they deserve. The salaries you pay to those riders and the money you've put into promoting them is a shining example of fairness in a sport where many receive no salary at all and compete for prizes that are a tiny fraction of those on offer to the men. I like to think also that Rabobank was the first company to realise that the women's sport is not a less exciting version of cycle racing and that the riders are not weaker and less interesting than their male counterparts; that in actual fact women's racing is always every bit as interesting and competitive as men's and, sometimes, more so.

Women's cycling has never suffered from the same image problems caused by doping that men's cycling has experienced; yet the riders are subject to the same tests with the same regularity. The only conclusion, therefore, is that doping is far less prevalent in women's cycling. Imagine how women's cycling would benefit if Rabobank were to decide that the support it had given in the past would continue and that the reason was because so few female riders resort to cheating. Men's cycling will take a knock from the current scandal, then continue just as it did after Tom Simpson died and in the wake of the Festina Affair and Operacion Puerto - it might even benefit from the scar left by the withdrawal of Rabobank, which would serve as a reminder that when riders dope everybody loses. But if Rabobank stayed with women's cycling, the benefits would be enormous - it would be seen by the media to be the far cleaner, fairer form of cycling that evidence suggests it really is. With women's cycling currently more popular than ever before in the wake of the Olympics and Marianne Vos' superb victory at the World Championships, the news that Rabobank had decided to remain a part of it could do more good than all the money you've provided and then some.

I also understand that a final decision has not yet been made on the future of the Rabobank women's team (and I'm pleased to hear that you will continue sponsoring Vos, who is a hero to so many of us). I hope, therefore, that the points above will be considered - Rabobank has an opportunity to do women's cycling an enormous favour, and the increased exposure for the sport and the riders would surely make financial sense.

Many thanks for your time.

No surgery for Vos, will race Giro Donne

Marianne Vos will not need surgery to repair the broken collarbone she suffered at the Parkhotel Valkenberg and has already returned to training, her Rabobank team have revealed.

The Dutchwoman, who finished the race in second place despite obvious pain, was fortunate enough to sustain a "good break," with a simple fracture that will heal rapidly on it own, doctors at the Meander Medisch Centrum in Amersfoort said last Friday; a prognosis since confirmed by the Centre's Dr. van Olden after further tests were carried out.

Image credit: Rabosport

Vos, who celebrated her 25th birthday two weeks ago and is widely considered the best rider of her generation, also revealed that she will make her comeback at the Giro Donne - the last Grand Tour of women's cycling and due to start on the 29th of July, fans had worried she might miss it in order to concentrate on the Olympics. "My participation in London is in no doubt whatsoever," she said , "but it now looks like I'll be able to ride at the Giro Donne too. It's my next planned race and an excellent course with a view to the Olympics. In the Giro, I can gain hardness and rate rhythm. There you go - that what I'll now be focusing on."

Meanwhile, she does not plan to defend her National Road Race Championship title as the race will be held on the 23rd of June. "That's a little bit too soon," she explained. When you're Marianne Vos, missing out on a National Championship isn't a problem - you can always win it next year instead.

Van Vleuten Victorious in Valkenburg, Vos injured

Sharon Laws led the race for a long time
today - if it has been a little cooler, she
could very easily have been the winner

In addition to Stage 1 at the Exergy Tour, Friday brought us the Parkhotel Valkenburg Classic, the 86.7km race that starts and ends in the Limburg city and takes the riders up and over some of the toughest climbs in the area - none of which are very high, but many of which enter double-digit gradients.

Marianne Vos (Rabobank) and Sharon Laws (AA Drink-Leontien.nl) had gained a 55" lead just 15km into the race - a familiar sight to the rest of the field, who have become well-used to the 25-year-old  Rabobank star's tendency to get away early on and then dominate the remainder of the race just like she did here in 2007, 2009 and last year. Laws, however, is an opponent even a rider as talented as Marianne cannot take likely, especially after her stunning performances in Flanders earlier this season; if she could keep up, another Vos victory was far from guaranteed should the race prove destined to end in a test of physical strength. Then, a few kilometres further on, Vos had a  a crash - one of the official motorbikes on the parcours turned out to be slower than the Flying Dutchwoman and failed to get out of the way quickly enough.

She was rapidly back in action, but not before Laws opened a 45" gap between them. Seeing Vos in trouble spurred several hopefuls into action and before long the Dutch rider was trying to make up the gap and hold off a sixteen-strong chase group. She made it back as Laws was slowed by the first ascent of Cauberg, but was visibly suffering and apparently hoping the 2'45" lead they now had would see her through.

By the time they got around to the third ascent, Vos was looking somewhat recovered and the two riders played cat-and-mouse, taking it in turns to put one another to the test and gauge their strength. Annemiek van Vleuten (Rabobank) and Lucinda Brand (AA Drink) had now escaped the chase group and were attempting to bridge to their team mates. Unfortunately for AA Drink, the heat had taken its toll on Laws and she was beginning to lose pace; meaning that even with Brand to help her they stood little chance when their rivals turned up the gas.

Annemiek van Vleuten

Van Vleuten neither intended nor expected to win, but made the most of the opportunity that fate had given her. "Our team manager Jeroen Blijlevens called me in the last couple of kilometres to say I was very close to the leaders," she explained after the race. "So I went for it, without consulting Marianne because there was insufficient time." Chances are, Marianne will be among the first to congratulate her.

Laws was third and recorded the same time as van Vleuten,  followed 15" by Emma Pooley who crossed the line alone ahead of her team mates Chantal Blaak and Lucinda Brand (+1'47") and, in eighth, Shelley Olds - an incredible five AA Drink riders in the top ten.

Vos seemed orifinally to have escaped anything serious: "I've grazed my shoulder and arm, an my right arm is giving me some trouble. I'll have it checked out," she told reporters. However, by 16:00BST rumours had begun to circulate online that she'd suffered a broken collarbone; the news being confirmed by Rabobank's press officer a short while later (and she rode Cauberg FOUR times...?!). She'll now need to concentrate on making a full recovery in time for the Olympics and, if she's taking part this year, the Giro Donne. Very best of wishes for a speedy recovery, Marianne.

Top Ten
  1.  Annemiek Van Vleuten Rabobank 2h31'18"
  2.  Marianne Vos Rabobank ST
  3.  Sharon Laws AA Drink-Leontien.nl ST
  4.  Emma Pooley AA Drink-Leontien.nl +15"
  5.  Chantal Blaak AA Drink-Leontien.nl +1'47"
  6.  Lucinda Brand AA Drink-Leontien.nl ST
  7.  Adrie Visser Skil-Argos +2'22" 4
  8.  Shelley Olds AA Drink-Leontien.nl ST
  9.  Annelies Van Doorslaer Kleo ST
  10.  Pauline Ferrand Prevot Rabobank ST

Full results when available

Photos by Bart Hazen: Sanne Cant guesting for Matrix-Prendas / Vos treats her shoulder with an icepack / van Vleuten crosses the line (follow Bart for photos from the major women's races and as-it-happens race coverage)

Other photos: Eric Boosten - Roxane Knetemann - Chantal Blaak - Emma Pooley / Amstel Gold Race XP - Podium

Daily Cycling Facts 13.05.12

Stefano Garzelli
(image credit: Sebastián García CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Giro d'Italia started on this date five times - 1909 (see below), 1981, 1982, 1995 and 2000. In 1981, the race consisted of 22 stages and covered 3,895km. The winner was Giovanni Battaglin who had also won the amateur version of the race nine years earlier and would go on to win the Vuelta a Espana five months later, one of only three men to have won both races in a single season. The 1982 edition was again 22 stages, but it had grown to 4,010.5km. Bernard Hinault won, then won the Tour de France - the Giro/Tour double being considered a more impressive achievement than the Giro/Vuelta though seven men have achieved it, three of them twice (Hinault became one of them in 1985) and one three times (that, as tends to be the case with unique road racing achievements, being Eddy Merckx).

By 1995, the race had shrunk down to 3,736km but retained the 22 stage format. Marco Pantani had been a favourite but was kept away by injury, which left the unusual spectacle of sprinter and a climber battling one another for victory: Mario Cipollini was the sprinter and Tony Rominger was the climber, and they fought one another tooth and nail but on different stages all the way to the end. In the end, Rominger's secondary ability in the time trials stood him in good stead and he won the race. In 2000 there were 21 stages and a prologue, adding up to 3,676km in total. Stefano Garzelli won with 98h30'14".

The First Giro d'Italia

Luigi Ganna, photographed
shortly after finishing Stage 8
at the first Giro d'Italia

1909 was the very first edition of the Giro d'Italia. Organised like most races of the day to advertise a newspaper (La Gazzetta dello Sport on this case; which like L'Auto, the paper that organised the Tour de France, wanted to out-sell and ideally completely crush a rival title - the difference being that whereas L'Auto's rival Le Vélo was dead and buried within a year of the first Tour, Corriere della Sera sells around 220,000 more copies each day than La Gazzetta.

The race covered 2,445km over eight stages which, despite the daunting prospect of stages an average of 306km in length (the longest was in fact 397km, Stage 1), makes it the shortest edition ever held. Stage racing was a new concept when the Tour started in 1903 and as a result only 60 riders took part - and then only because director Henri Desgrange halved the entry fee and increase the prizes - but six years later the idea was both established and popular with a number of smaller events having sprung up in the intervening years (sadly, none have survived. The Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, first run in 1911, is the world's third oldest stage race), so 123 Italians and four Frenchmen showed up at the start line. Another similarity with the Tour was that the results were decided on points in early editions, rather than on overall elapsed time as is the case today, with the lowest number of points getting the win. Luigi Ganna, born in Induno Olana in 1883, was declared victor with 25 - had it have been decided in the modern manner, his time of 89h48'14" would have seen Giovanni Rossignoli (third place with 40 points) take the honour.

The race started and finished in Milan, the riders setting off on Stage 1 at 02:53 in the morning. Ganna's prize was 5,325 lira, while La Gazzetta editor and race director Eugenio Costamagna was paid the princely sum of 150 lira. La Gazzetta, incidentally, was and still is printed on pink paper - which is why the race leader's jersey, known as the maglia rosa and first adopted in 1931, is pink; just as the Tour de France's maillot jaune is yellow to reflect the yellow paper used by L'Auto.

Marianne Vos - very possibly the greatest
cyclist in the history of the sport
(image credit: Maarten Thys CC BY 3.0)

Marianne Vos
If you've been reading these Daily Cycling Facts and wondering, as I did while writing them, why it is that an apparently smaller number of notable professional professional cyclists were born in May than any other month, here's the reason: when Marianne Vos was born on this day in 1987, she was given the entire month's-worth of talent for several years in either direction.

A native of 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, Vos has already had a career that surpasses that of most of the lauded cycling greats; a phenomenal athlete and very welcome to younger fans who missed out on seeing the greats of days gone by, riders such as Hinault, Merckx, Ancquetil, Burton, Bartali, Coppi and the like. Now 25, it's entirely likely that she will improve still further in the coming years and may yet eclipse them all. When it was announced that Tom Boonen had achieved an extremely respectable 100 wins during his career, a quick count revealed Vos had more than 143 to her name, not including stage wins - despite being six years younger.

Vos leading Kirsten Wild
(© Eddy Fever CC2.0)

Vos has already won the majority of the most prestigious races in women's road cycling including a World Road Race Championship, three National Road Race Championships, three editions of the Holland Ladies' Tour and La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, the Giro Donne and numerous other events. To that list, she can add five World Cyclo Cross Championships, four National Cyclo Cross Championships, all the premier European cyclo cross races and a whole host of track cycling World and National titles. That's not to mention her junior titles on the road, on the track and in mountain biking - the latter being a discipline to which she has hinted she may return in the coming years.

Vos is also known for being one of the most personable professional cyclists around. Highly intelligent and articulate, she regularly talks to fans on Twitter and is as popular among the riders who race against her as she is with her supporters. As the finest all-rounder of her generation (and many before), she is frequently called "the female Eddy Merckx," but if she continues to ride as successfully as she has to date it's only a matter of time until her palmares eclipses even his.

Johnny Hoogerland 

Johnny Hoogerland
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Born in Yerseke, Netherlands on this day in 1983, Johnny Hoogerland became one of the stars of the 2011 Tour de France for his repeated attacks, five days in the polka dot jersey as leader of the King of the Mountains classification and a horrific crash that could very easily have ended his career.

Nicknamed The Bull of Beveland due to a large tattoo depicting a bull on his arm, Hoogerland came to international attention when he won the Junior Tour of Flanders in 2001 and then followed it up with numerous wins over the next few years, including the tough GP Briek Schotte - a race designed to reveal those riders who can be aid to be Flandriens, the toughest cyclists of them all, of which Schotte is considered to be the definitive example.

Hoogerland - a Flandrien to the core
(unknown copyright, believed public domain due to widespread use)

It was at the 2011 Tour that Hoogerland proved just how tough he is. During Stage 9, as he cycled alongside Sky's Juan Antonio Flecha, an inattentive driver in France Télévisions official car realised he was about to hit a tree. Rather than slamming on the car's brakes - as all drivers at the Tour are trained to do - he swerved right, hitting the two riders. Flecha hit the road hard and received extensive bruising, but Hoogerland was catapulted into a barbed wire fence hard enough to smash a wooden fence post and become entangled in the wire, which tore his shorts to shreds and left him with deep lacerations to his buttocks and legs.

Both men got back on their bikes and finished the stage. Organisers extended the maximum permitted time so that they could do without being disqualified, then jointly awarded them what must have been the most-deserved Combativity Award for many years. Afterwards, Hoogerland was given 33 stitches.

Peter Longbottom
Peter Longbottom, born in Huddersfield on this day in 1959, was one of those cyclists whom were there any justice in this world would have been a household name. Respected among cyclists for his superb tactical mind, he was for many years in high demand among Tour of Britain teams for his ability to re-organise a team "on the road" according to rider performance, terrain, weather, opponents and a host of variable factors; frequently getting it correct and driving his team mates on to victory even when aware that he himself could not win. His skills saw him ride with Chris Boardman, assisting him at the Commonwealth Games, yet he chose never to turn professional and worked a full-time job even during the racing season.

Longbottom retired from competition in 1996 and spent the remaining two years of his life encouraging young people to take up the sport. On the 10th of February 1998, he was hit by a car on the A64 near York, the impact throwing him onto the opposite carriageway where eye-witnesses say he was hit by several vehicles


Gerrit de Vries, born in Oldeberkoop, Netherlands on this day in 1967 (and, so far as we can tell, no relation to Marijn de Vries of AA Drink-Leontien.nl) shared victory in the 1986 Amateur World Team Time Trial Championship. A a professional rider he took part in six editions of the Tour de France, his best result being 34th overall in 1991.

Eugène Van Roosbroeck was born in Antwerp on this day in 1928. At the time of writing, he is the oldest of the three surviving members of the gold medal-winning road race team at the 1948 Olympics.

Nino Schurter, born in Tersnaus, Switzerland on this day in 1986, was World Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion in 2009.

Other births: David López García (Euskadi, 1981); Tony Gowland (Great Britain, 1965); Fitzgerald Joseph (Belize, 1967); Morten Sæther (Norway, 1959); Marc Blouin (Canada, 1953); Josef Landsberg (Sweden, 1890, died 1964); Domenico Cecchetti (San Marino, 1941); Eugène Van Roosbroeck (Belgium, 1928); Pavel Cherkasov (USSR, 1972); Edoardo Severgnini (Italy, 1904, died 1969); Thomas Harrison (Australia, 1942); Mark Barry (Great Britain, 1964).

Evening Cycling News 29.04.12

Festival Luxembourgeois Elsy Jacobs, Tour de Romandie, Tour of Turkey and Gracia Orlova end today - BOA ban overturned, says BBC - Schleck to replace Fuglsang at Giro - Yukihiro Doi is new Japanese Champion - Van Garderen escapes serious injury - Teen injured in Berkshire hit-and-run - WW2 hero cycling campaigner dies - Cycling Newswire

Racing
Festival Luxembourgeois Elsy Jacobs

Stage 3 begins with another lap of today's main route, but omits the five laps of Garnich in favour of five laps around Mamur - the village where Luxembourg's other most famous cyclist Nicolas Frantz was born, and where Marianne Vos won last year. Vos won yesterday, too; and since today's stage used the same 53.6km GP Elsy Jacobs, this time beginning in Nicolas Frantz's home village Mamer rather than Jacob's Garnich before switching to five laps of an 8.9km circuit around the village, the 24-year-old Flying Dutchwoman's Rabobank team was favourite to win again.

Vos had warned them not to rest upon their laurels - "Our rivals aren't going to make us a gift of this race," she said in the wake of Saturday's stage, "so I'm afraid we have a lot of work to do tomorrow" - and, with Rabobank being the sort of squad that they are, they put in a superb performance to drive Annemiek van Vleuten to victory, while Vos finished in second place with the entire field recording 17" due to a crash in the final 500m. With her total time of 5h14'56", Vos also takes the General Classification victory for the second consecutive year - paying her dues to the team after the race, she said:  "The team has worked very hard today."

"The plan was that as soon as I'd got around the last corner, I'd go and Marianne would follow me," van Vleuten explained in the official Rabo race report. "That worked and, because of a crash right behind us, we took first and second without challenge."

According to onlookers, World Champion Giorgia Bronzini appeared to have been left with a broken collarbone in the crash. No confirmation nor details are yet available.

Annemiek van Vleuten won the stage

Stage Top Ten
  1.  Annemiek Van Vleuten Rabobank 2h30'17"
  2.  Marianne Vos Rabobank +17"
  3.  Evelyn Arys Kleo ST
  4.  Daniela Gass ABUS-Nutrixxion ST
  5.  Cherise Taylor Lotto Belisol ST
  6.  Annelies Van Doorslaer Kleo ST
  7.  Megan Guarnier Team TIBCO ST
  8.  Nathalie Lamborelle Kleo ST
  9.  Joëlle Numainville ST
  10.  Christine Majerus GSD Gestion ST

General Classification Top Ten
  1.  Marianne Vos Rabobank 5h14'56"
  2.  Annemiek Van Vleuten Rabobank +13"
  3.  Adrie Visser Argos-Shimano +17"
  4.  Emma Johansson Hitec Products-Mistral Home +24"
  5.  Linda Villumsen GreenEDGE ST
  6.  Amber Neben Specialized-Lululemon +25"
  7.  Megan Guarnier Team TIBCO +27"
  8.  Pauline Ferrand Prevot Rabobank +29"
  9.  Tiffany Cromwell GreenEDGE +30"
  10.  Judith Arndt GreenEDGE ST
(Full stage and GC results)

Tour de Romandie
Stage 5 (map, profile) was a hilly 16.2km individual time trial beginning at 1.327m Montana village with a gentle rise to 1,302m in the first kilometre, then a 3km descent to the lowest point at 1,102m. Riders then faced a Category 1 climb to Aminona, altitude 1,512m - very much the crux of the race, because a rider who could climb it fast and not expend too much energy in doing so woul have an obvious advantage going into the final, flat 7.2km to the finish line at the Crans-Montana ski resort. With winds as high as 57kph expected, the outcome was hard to predict,

If Wiggo does at the Tour de France
what he's done in this race...

Bradley Wiggins' (Sky) General Classification lead began to look precarious on Friday when it was reduced to one second, then on Saturday Luis León Sánchez (Rabobank) converted it into a 9" disadvantage when he won Stage 4. Wiggins will have wanted to be last man to go in the time trial today, but now he was to be the penultimate man off the ramp and had to ride as fast as he coud without knowing what he had to beat. On his side was the fact that he's a more accomplished all-rounder than Sánchez, meaning that the mid-parcours climb could have worked in his favour.

Things did not go his way when his chain came off just a few kilometres into the parcours, forcing him to wait for mechanical help; but then he recorded the fastest time thus far going through the intermediate checkpoint. Just as he did so, Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Barracuda) flew over the finish line to take the first sub-29' time - but Bradley has become one of the best examples of a true all-rounder in the sport today, able to climb, sprint and ride an impressive time trial, as we saw with his performance at Paris-Nice. Now with something to aim at, he cranked up the power and hammered through the remainder of the parcours, lopping a second off Talansky's time - and, more importantly, a whole 1'24" off Sánchez's 30'50" to become the first man to win Romandie and Paris-Nice in a single season since Dario Frigo in 2001. The impressiveness of the achievement is highlighted by the fact that the last man before that was Toni Rominger in 1991.

For Britain, the Tour de France looks increasingly promising.

Stage Top Ten
  1.  Bradley Wiggins Sky 28'56"
  2.  Andrew Talansky Garmin-Barracuda +1"
  3.  Richie Porte Sky +17"
  4.  Rui Alberto Faria Da Costa Movistar +23"
  5.  Roman Kreuziger Astana +40"
  6.  Sylvester Szmyd Liquigas-Cannondale +42"
  7.  Michael Rogers Sky +43"
  8.  Thibaut Pinot FDJ-BigMat +52"
  9.  Thomas De Gendt Vacansoleil-DCM +54"
  10.  Janez Brajkovic Astana +55"


General Classification

  1 Bradley Wiggins  Sky 18h05'40"  
  2 Andrew Talansky  Garmin-Barracuda +12"  
  3 Rui Costa  Movistar +36"  
  4 Richie Porte  Sky +45"  
  5 Michael Rogers  Sky +50"  
  6 Roman Kreuziger  Astana +59"  
  7 Sylvester Szmyd  Liquigas-Cannondale +1'03"  
  8 Simon Spilak  Katusha +1'13"  
  9 Janez Brajkovic  Astana +1'14"  
  10 Luis Leon Sanchez  Rabobank +1'15"
(Full stage and GC results when available)

Tour of Turkey

Stage 8 (map) took place on an urban parcours situated entirely in Istanbul. Starting out from Sultanahmet Square; fittingly the site of the Hippodrome of Constantinople and once the Byzantine Empire's version of Elis' Olympia or the Pythian Games at Delphi, it then passed from the neutral zone on Kennedy Street, crossed the Galata Bridge and headed north-west along the shores of the Bosphoros, dipping briefly inland to get onto the Bosphorous Bridge which, at the time construction was completed in 1973, was the longest suspension bridge anywhere in the world other than the USA when the riders reached the south-eastern bank, they had officially left Europe and were in Asia. At the Cadde Bostan Coastal Road, they embarked upon the first of eight laps of a 12.2km circuit.

A group of four - Matteo Trentin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep), Ivan Stevic (Salcano-Arnavutkoy), Vladimir Gusev (Katusha) and Damien Gaudin (Europcar) - escaped the peloton as the race left the Bosphorous bridge and headed out into Asia, then reached the circuit with a decent lead they then increased to 3'25" before Rabobank and Farnese Vini-Selle Italia united and got to work on bringing them back in. A crash with 3km to go brought down several in the peloton and ended the race for Matthew Goss (GreenEDGE), also seriously messing things up for anyone planning a lead-out train. This all seemed uncannily similar to Stage 1, when Theo Bos (Rabobank) made good use of a crash in the sprint to win, and so it was again today when he and several others used the situation to their advantage by sprinting past Andre Geipel. In the end nobody could match the stocky Dutchman's raw power, and he added his second stage win.

While his race ended in such an infuriating way, Goss won't have to write it off: as the crash fell within the last 3km, he is classified as having completed the race - and he's accumulated enough to win the Points competition. Ivaïlo Gabrovski led the General Classification since Stage 3 and thus takes the first win on home soil for his Turkish Konya Torku Sekersport team, an unexpected victory - but then, the Tour of Turkey has a habit of turning up unexpected victors; none of those to have won during its eleven-year history have been A-list cycling celebrities. Long may that fine tradition continue.

Marcel Kittel, who also went down in the crash, blames a Katusha rider...

Marcel Kittel ‏ @marcelkittel
Ok, sprint finals are full of action & sometimes there's a crash. But this Katusha guy crashed 2day becoz he wasn't concentrated!! >:-/

Theo Bos

Top Ten Stage 8
  1.  Theo Bos Rabobank 2h32'35"
  2.  Andrew Fenn Omega Pharma-Quickstep ST
  3.  Stefan Van Dijk Accent.jobs-Willems Veranda's ST
  4.  Andrea Guardini Farnese Vini-Selle Italia ST
  5.  Matteo Pelucchi Europcar ST
  6.  Alessandro Petacchi Lampre-ISD ST
  7.  Robert Förster United Healthcare Presented By Maxxis ST
  8.  Juan Jose Haedo SaxoBank ST
  9.  Daniele Colli Team Type 1-Sanofi ST
  10.  Jonas From Genechten Lotto-Belisol ST

Top Ten General Classification
  1.  Ivailo Gabrovski Konya Torku Sekersport 28h48'10"
  2.  Alexandr Dyachenko Astana +1'33"
  3.  Danail Andonov Petrov Caja Rural +1'38"
  4.  Adrian Palomares Villaplana Andalucia-Caja Granada +1'44"
  5.  Romain Bardet AG2R-La Mondiale +2'01"
  6.  Alexander Efimkin Team Type 1-Sanofi +2'23"
  7.  Florian Guillou Bretagne Schuller +2'29"
  8.  Enrico Battaglin Colnago CSF Bardiani +2'58"
  9.  Michal Golas Omega Pharma-QuickStep +3'02"
  10.  Will Routley Spidertech Powered By C10 +3'14"
(Full stage and GC results when available)

Gracia Orlova

Congratulations Katie Colclough!

This race too came to an end today, with Stage 4 (map) involving on tough-looking 100.2km parcours consisting of six laps of a 16.7km circuit including an 11% 50m climb in the last half of each.

Specialized-Lululemon seem to have decided that the best way ahead is to win every stage in this race, so fans were eager to see if they could manage total domination by taking this one too - and there was no disappointment for the squad when British rider Katie Colclough won them this one too. Gracie Elvin was hot on her heels for second and special mention goes to AA Drink-Leontien.nl's Marijn de Vries, who rode exceptionally well for third place.

None of them, however, could put enough of a dent in Evelyn Steven's overall time to take the General Classification. Game, set and match to Specialized-Lululemon!

Stage Top Ten
  1.  Katie Colclough Specialized-Lululemon 3h08'13"
  2.  Gracie Elvin +6"
  3.  Marijn De Vries AA Drink-Leontien.nl ST
  4.  Alessandra Borchi MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss ST
  5.  Olena Pavlukhina +8"
  6.  Sharon Laws AA Drink-Leontien.nl +43"
  7.  Andrea Graus Vienne Futuroscope ST
  8.  Alena Amialyusik Be Pink ST
  9.  Larisa Pankova ???
  10.  Evelyn Stevens Specialized-Lululemon ???

General Classification Top Ten
  1.  Evelyn Stevens Specialized-Lululemon 9h45'11"
  2.  Trixi Worrack Specialized-Lululemon +1'20"
  3.  Sharon Laws AA Drink-Leontien.nl +3'36"
  4.  Tatiana Antoshina Rabobank +3'50"
  5.  Alena Amialyusik Be Pink +3'52"
  6.  Ellen Van Dijk Specialized-Lululemon +6'32"
  7.  Olena Sharpa +6'51"
  8.  Olena Pavlukhina +8'17"
  9.  Alexandra Burchenkova S.C. Michela Fanini Rox +9'23"
  10.  Audrey Cordon Vienne Futuroscope +10'03"
(Full stage and GC results)

See also: GreenEDGE's race report

CAS overturns British Olympics lifetime dope ban policy
The Court for Arbitration in Sport will, as expected,  overturn the British Olympic Association's policy of banning any athlete to have been subject to a doping-related suspension at any point during their careers for life, according to a report published by the BBC on Sunday. The BOA had appealed to the court after the World Anti-Doping Agency ordered them to abide by existing international rules.

The case has been much-reported in the cycling press due to David Millar, who served a two-year ban after being found to have used EPO. British Cycling has stated that should it become possible, Millar would be invited to compete; however, the rider may turn down the opportunity after saying he had no wish to be seen as a black sheep. Of more importance to him is that he will now be free to take part in the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

An official announcement is expected on Monday.

Schleck will replace Fuglsang at Giro

Frank Schleck (playing cat's-cradle, by the
looks of it)

Frank Schleck has been confirmed as Jakob Fuglsang's replacement at the Giro d'Italia, as widely reported yesterday after Luxembourg's L'Essentiel published a story saying that he should be.

"My season was directed at peaking in the Tour”, explained the Luxemburgish 32-year-old. “but when you think about it, this situation creates opportunities. For sure, I will come to the start with a different preparation than the other GC riders, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. My condition is not so bad and it can only grow the coming weeks. The Giro d'Italia is one of the big monuments of cycling as well, so it is at least a big challenge for me."

"I see a lot of opportunities for Frank as well as for the team”, commented Johan Bruyneel, RadioShack-Nissan team manager. “Frank is a born leader and a team needs a leader. Moreover – though bad luck and circumstances did not provide the right results - he has shown in the last few weeks that his condition has already reached a high level. I am confident he can surprise us in the coming weeks."

Yukihiro Doi

Yukihiro Doi wins Japanese Championships
Japan has a new National Road Race Champion in the shape of Yukihiro Doi after he beat Nariyuki Masuda and Miyataka Shimizu in a tight sprint at Hachimantal in Iwate Prefecturei to take the title from Fumiyuki Beppu, who chose not to compete this year. One of the few Japanese riders with an active presence on the European circuit, Osaka-born Doi is not yet as well-known outside Japan as the popular Beppu - however, in 2011 he became the first Japanese to take part in the Vuelta a Espana and as his Argos-Shimano team's profile increases, his will also.

Van Garderen escapes injury
High winds at the Tour de Romandie created problems for many riders yesterday, but worst off was BMC's Tejay van Garderen - a branch blown from a tree hit him in the face and he abandoned the race. Team doctor Max Testa (surely the best possible name for a man who measures VO2 and athletic performance on a regular basis) confirms that the rider escaped serious injury, being left with just a nose bleed (and a depleted supply of swear words, in all likelihood).

Other racing news
Nolan Hoffman wins Tour of Durban (Sport24, South Africa)

"BMX superstar Sifiso Nhlapo (MTN Cycling) powered his way to victory in the first of two legs of the SA National BMX Championships" (Supersport, South Africa)

Cycling
Teenager injured in Maidenhead hit-and-run
The driver of a black Subaru is being hunted by Berkshire police after failing to stop following an accident in which a 15-year-old boy was knocked off his bike at Bourne End. The boy was taken to hospital and treated for injuries to his leg, but has since been discharged. The car was seen being driven at speed in the direction of High Wycombe - anyone who believes they might know the owner of the car can speak to police anonymously by phoning 0800 555111.

Cycling campaigner dies at 92
Lon Pullen, author of the Pitman Book of cycling, has died at the age of 92. A lifelong cyclist and cycling safety campaigner, Mr. Pullen was also a veteran of the Second World War and saw active service in the Arctic Convoys, Crete, Omaha Beach and Egypt; later being awarded a Humane Society medal in recognition of his efforts to save the lives of sailors when their ship was hit by a torpedo. His funeral, to be held in Kingston-on-Thames, will include a procession of bicycles - one of which will pull a trailer carrying his coffin.

Newswire
Britain
"Aldi are offering a whole load of cycling accessories in a promotion next week, including a soft shell jacket for 15 quid" (road.cc)

Worldwide
"Annual 'Bike Swap' allows cycling enthusiasts to pick out new wheels" (WMTW News8ABC, Portland, Maine)

"'Critical Mass' a global cyling event would be organised at Imphal by the Manipur Cycle Club(MCC) tomorrow" (E-Pao, India)