Daily Cycling Facts 02.09.2013

Rachel Dard and Bernard Bourreau

Rachel Dard

Rachel Dard and Bernard Bourreau were both born in France on this day in 1951 and both became professional riders with Peugeot, Dard signing up in 1975, two years after Bourreau. Both won a stage at the L'Étoile des Espoirs in 1976 and both were called to provide a sample on the day that Dard won. They were both discovered to be using a system that allowed them to fill the sample bottle via pipe connected to a condom filled with somebody else's drug-free urine, hidden either in the shorts or under an armpit, where it could be squeezed..

Dard went back to his hotel room then, having thought things over and realised he was probably going to be blocked from racing, possibly for the remainder of the season, went back to find the doctor, Bruno Chaumont, and begged not to be exposed. It seems remarkable nowadays that Chaumont agreed, but he did - and burned the report sheets he'd filled in. Dard went away happy. However, to satisfy riders' concerns that the bottles into which they urinate might be tampered with prior to a test so as to give a false sample, a rider was permitted to select two at random and the label bearing the date, tracking code etc. would then be attached in his presence. This had been done according to regulations - which meant that records would show he'd been to the anti-doping control but hadn't provided a sample, which was going to raise even more questions. He went first to Bourreau to inform him that they could avoid a positive test but Bourreau - who was apparently aware that by trying to cover up a positive test he'd be creating a far more difficult situation than he was already in - didn't want anything to do with it and was willing to accept whatever fate had in store for him; Dard then went alone in search of Dr. Chaumont to get the two bottles.

Chaumont had already left the race and was on his way back to the test laboratory in Paris, presumably taking the two empty bottles with him, so Dard persuaded another team mate named Bernard Croyet to drive him (in Dard's car) to the local station - but they arrived just as the non-stop train to Paris was leaving. Now frantic, Dard persuaded Croyet to drive him all the way to Austerlitz Station in the capital, where they met Chaumont as he got off the train at 06:30. Dard begged, in floods of tears, not to be exposed; Chaumont - at first reluctant, which rather suggests that he'd either thought better of his apparent willingness to assist a cheat earlier, or had perhaps planned to expose him all along - eventually took pity and smashed the two bottles to pieces.

Precisely what happened next remains a mystery. L'Equipe ran a story on the subject of doping some months later and Chaumont revealed all while being interviewed for it; but he insisted that he was not the one that first revealed the story. Dard, meanwhile, flatly denied that any of the events in the story had ever happened at all: "Everything is false, from beginning to end. There never were any empty bottles. I never had a morning meeting at Austerlitz station. My car is a 504 diesel and I'd never have been able to drive from Dax to Paris at the speed of a train." However, he admitted - to L'Equipe - that he had in fact doped at L'Étoile des Espoirs and even provided a prescription signed by the Peugeot team doctor, François Bellocq (he of the notorious "hormonal rebalancing"), to prove it. Still Chaumont was adamant that he had not exposed the rider. "I would never have dropped him," he said. "I would have defended him. I don't want the death of a sinner. I came into cycling to try to overcome the wall that exists between the cyclist and the doctor. I'm not there to do the dirty on anyone."

The most likely explanation regarding who revealed the story is that Borreau and/or Croyet, who so far as we know were the only people other than Dard and Chaumont to know what was going on at the time, had told somebody else and the story was doing the rounds as a peloton rumour. Had it have then got back to Chaumont, he might have assumed it was common knowledge rather than subject to the Omerta and blurted it out to journalists. It was most certainly in his best interests for the story to be kept quiet - as a doctor, he would be expected to maintain a high level of professionalism at all times; while Dard might have been banned from racing for a while (probably no more than six months maximum, as tended to be the way in those times) and lost his salary for that period, Chaumont could very easily have been banned from practicing as a doctor in the future and might even have been imprisoned This does not, however, enlighten us any further as to whether or not the events after the race ever actually happened or not, and there's one thing that seems in little doubt: Dard's statement that a diesel-engined mid-1970s Peugeot 504 could not possibly have beaten a French train cross-country.

In the end, Chaumont was disciplined but not banned. Bellocq was barred from working with the National Federation but not from trade teams; he was still working with GAN - the team that grew out of Peugeot and later became Crédit Agricole - in 1993, the year that he died, aged 47, of a heart attack. Peugeot team manager Maurice de Muer was angry with Dard, but for exposing the doctor rather than for doping; he knew, however, that throwing him out of the team for that reason alone would cause an outcry. He couldn't sack the rider for being a doper either, because he himself was almost certainly heavily involved in doping: according to Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, author of Le Dossier Noir de Dopage, no fewer than 36% of de Muer's riders were involved in doping cases between 1970 and 1978 - which looks far more like an organised doping program that riders acting independently. Instead, he told Dard that he would never ride anything other than the very least-prestigious races in future. When his contract expired at the end of 1977, Dard rode for six months with Jobo-Spidel, then retired in June the following year to open a bike shop in Paris.

We'll probably never know the truth.

Keith Butler

Born in London in this day in 1938, Keith Butler - the son of Stanley Meredith Butler, who rode for Great Britain at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles - was a successful amateur during the early 1960s, winning three stages at the Milk Race (Tour of Britain) and a National Amateur Road Race Champion title between 1961 and 1963. He then went to Belgium and was amazed at the sheer size of the racing scene and its popularity: "There'd be so many races that you'd cross one going the other way," he said.

Butler turned semi-professional with the French Bertin-Porter 39-Milremo team and won the Elite National Championhips in 1964, then came third the following year before returning to Belgium and taking out a full professional licence; after spending a very short time with St-Raphaël (the team of Jacques Anquetil), he joined the German Ruberg-Caltex. Later that year, whilst riding on the British national team in support of Tom Simpson at the World Championships in Spain, he met Anquetil once again and tried to follow as he went after Simpson during the race. "It was like riding behind a bloody motorbike!" he later remembered. The great French rider, the first man to win five Tours de France, would become a part of Butler's life again two years later when he returned to Britain and rode for Trumann's Steel on bikes produced by Anquetil's company.

Butler retired in 1968, having spent his final season with another British team, Allinson. Now aged 75, he is still involved with the Surrey League, a group he formed in 1974, which organises almost 200 races each year.

Kirkpatrick Macmillan
Born in Keir, Dumfries and Galloway on this day in 1812, Kirkpatrick Macmillan was "proved" in the 1890s to have been the inventor of the first pedal-driven-rear-wheel bicycle. Unfortunately, the researcher who proved it was James Johnstone, a relative who had set out to prove that the bicycle was invented in his home county and seems not to have bothered himself too much with unnecessary things like evidence while doing so: among other "proofs," he offered a report published in 1842 about a "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" who had knocked over a pedestrian but gave no details as to the gentleman's actual identity.

Johnstone later produced a bike which, he said, had been built to a design made by Macmillan; despite the fact that a Victorian newspaper would never have referred to a humble blacksmith like Macmillan as a "gentleman," this was apparently proof enough for most people, so nobody ever bothered to ask for more details on the original design that Johnstone said he'd found (but never published). In time, the story became so widely known that most people accepted it as fact - nobody even thought to verify it until well into the 20th Century but, when they did so, no reliable documentary evidence could be found whatsoever; whereas orders placed with factories from the late 1860s seem to show that the only bikes available pedal drive to the rear wheel in that period were three- or four-wheeled machines.

Tom Steels

Tom Steels

Tom Steels, born in Sint-Gillis-Waas, Belgium on this day in 1971, had a very successful career as a novice, junior and amateur - including including gold medals for 1km, Omnium and Sprint at the 1989 Junior National Track Championships, another gold at the Junior Road Race Championships and a silver for the kilo at the World Junior Championships all in 1989 - before turning professional with Vlaanderen 2002-Eddy Merckx in 1994. He won Stage 10 at the Tour de l'Avenir that year, then came second at the National Road Race Championships the next; then in 1996, riding for Mapei, he won Gent-Wevelgem, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Stages 4 and 22 and third place in the Points competition at the Vuelta a Espana.

In 1995, having won Stages 2, 3, 5 and 8a at Paris-Nice and taken the gold at National Road Race Championships, he rode his first Tour de France and came second on Stage 1 - however, during the sprint finish of Stage 6, he became frustrated when other riders boxed him in and angrily threw his bidon at the French rider Frederic Moncassin, and was ejected from the race as a result (the stage was filled with controversy: Djamolidine Abdoujaparov was also thrown out of the race after the stage when it was revealed that a sample he provided in the wake of Stage 2 had tested positive for Clenbuterol and another drug and Erik Zabel was relegated from first to last place for dangerous tactics, the stage win being eventually awarded to Jerome Blijlevens, who is now the directeur sportif of Rabobank's women's team).

Steels won the Dwars door Vlaanderen, Stages 3 and 4 and Paris-Nice and his second Elite National Road Race Championship, then went back to the Tour and won Stages 1, 12, 18 and 21, coming third overall in the Points competition in 1998; then in 1999 he won another Gent-Wevelgem, came third at Paris-Roubaix and finished Stages 2, 3 and 17 in first place at the Tour. In 2000 he won Stage 8 at Paris-Nice and Stages 2 and 3 at the Tour - he would not finish that year nor the following two, but in 2002 he won another National Championship before switching from Mapei to Landbouwkrediet-Colnago for 2003. He remained there for two seasons, winning the National Championship for a fourth time, then moved to Davitamon-Lotto in 2005. That year he rode the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana but won no stages in either - in fact, his Stage 3 victory at the Driedaagse van De Panne early in the year would be his last professional victory.

Steels stayed with Davitamon until the end of 2007, by which time it had become Predictor-Lotto, then he went back to Landbouwkrediet (now Landbouwkrediet-Tönissteiner) for seven months in 2008 before announcing his retirement on the 4th of July. He is now a team director at Omega Pharma-QuickStep.


Born in Arradin, Brittany on this day in 1930, François Mahé wore the maillot jaune for the one and only time in his career for one day in the 1953 Tour de France and finished in tenth place overall. The following year he won Stage 21a, then in 1955 he was tenth overall again with no stage wins, in 1959 fifth overall, again without winning a stage, and in 1961 he won Stages 2 and 14 at the Vuelta a Espana, coming second overall. He also came second in the the 1952 GP de Ouest-France, the 1954 Ronde van Vlaanderen and the 1960 Paris-Nice.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gonzalo Garrido (Chile, 1973); Curt Söderlund (Sweden, 1945); Robert Whetters (Australia, 1939); Jürgen Colombo (West Germany, 1949); Karl Schmaderer (Austria, 1914); Kim Jin-Yeong (South Korea, 1970); Nick Ingels (Belgium, 1984); Bart Dockx (Belgium, 1981); André Auffray (France, 1884); Miguel Ubeto (Venezuela, 1976); Jupp Ripfel (Sweden, 1938); Türel Wanzenried (Switzerland, 1906, died 1993); Graham Seers (Australia, 1958); Francisco Tortellá (Spain, 1937); Paul Henrichsen (Norway, 1893, died 1962); Walter Garre (Uruguay, 1945); Sara Neil (Born Great Britain, competed for Canada, 1960).

Daily Cycling Facts 02.09.12

Rachel Dard and Bernard Bourreau

Rachel Dard

Rachel Dard and Bernard Bourreau were both born in France on this day in 1951 and both became professional riders with Peugeot, Dard signing up in 1975 and Bourreau in 1973. Both won a stage at the L'Étoile des Espoirs in 1976 and both were called to provide a sample on the day that Dard won. They were both discovered to be using a system that allowed them to fill the sample bottle via pipe connected to a condom filled with somebody else's drug-free urine hidden in their shorts.

Dard went back to his hotel room then, having thought things over and realised he was probably going to be blocked from racing, possibly for the remainder of the season, went back to find the doctor, Bruno Chaumont, and begged not to be exposed. It seems remarkable nowadays that Chaumont agreed, but he did - and burned the report sheets he'd filled in. Dard went away happy. However, to satisfy riders' concerns that the bottles into which they urinate might be tampered with prior to a test so as to give a false sample, a rider was permitted to select two at random and the label bearing the date, tracking code etc. would then be attached in his presence. This had been done according to regulations - which meant that records would show he'd been to the anti-doping control but hadn't provided a sample, which was going to raise even more questions. He went first to Bourreau to inform him that they could avoid a positive test but Bourreau - who was apparently aware that by trying to cover up a positive test he'd be creating a far more difficult situation than he was already in - didn't want anything to do with it and was willing to accept whatever fate had in store for him; Dard then went alone in search of Dr. Chaumont to get the two bottles.

Chaumont had already left the race and was on his way back to the test laboratory in Paris, presumably taking the two empty bottles with him, so Dard persuaded another team mate named Bernard Croyet to drive him (in Dard's car) to the local station - but they arrived just as the non-stop train to Paris was leaving. Now frantic, Dard persuaded Croyet to drive him all the way to Austerlitz Station in the capital, where they met Chaumont as he got off the train at 06:30. Dard begged, in floods of tears, not to be exposed; Chaumont - at first reluctant, which rather suggests that he'd either thought better of his apparent willingness to assist a cheat earlier, or had perhaps planned to expose him all along - eventually took pity and smashed the two bottles to pieces.

Precisely what happened next remains a mystery. L'Equipe ran a story on the subject of doping some months later and Chaumont revealed all while being interviewed for it; but he insisted that he was not the one that first revealed the story. Dard, meanwhile, flatly denied that any of the events in the story had ever happened at all: "Everything is false, from beginning to end. There never were any empty bottles. I never had a morning meeting at Austerlitz station. My car is a 504 diesel and I'd never have been able to drive from Dax to Paris at the speed of a train." However, he admitted - to L'Equipe - that he had in fact doped at L'Étoile des Espoirs and even provided a prescription signed by the Peugeot team doctor, François Bellocq (he of the notorious "hormonal rebalancing"), to prove it. Still Chaumont was adamant that he had not exposed the rider. "I would never have dropped him," he said. "I would have defended him. I don't want the death of a sinner. I came into cycling to try to overcome the wall that exists between the cyclist and the doctor. I'm not there to do the dirty on anyone."

The most likely explanation regarding who revealed the story is that Borreau and/or Croyet, who so far as we know were the only people other than Dard and Chaumont to know what was going on at the time, had told somebody else and the story was doing the rounds as a peloton rumour. Had it have then got back to Chaumont, he might have assumed it was common knowledge rather than subject to the Omerta and blurted it out to journalists. It was most certainly in his best interests for the story to be kept quiet - as a doctor, he would be expected to maintain a high level of professionalism at all times; while Dard might have been banned from racing for a while (probably no more than six months maximum, as tended to be the way in those times) and lost his salary for that period, Chaumont could very easily have been banned from practicing as a doctor in the future and might even have been imprisoned This does not, however, enlighten us any further as to whether or not the events after the race ever actually happened or not, and there's one thing that seems in little doubt: Dard's statement that a diesel-engined mid-1970s Peugeot 504 could not possibly have beaten a French train cross-country..

In the end, Chaumont was disciplined but not banned. Bellocq was barred from working with the National Federation but not from trade teams; he was still working with GAN - the team that grew out of Peugeot and later became Crédit Agricole - in 1993, the year that he died, aged 47, of a heart attack. Peugeot team manager Maurice de Muer was angry with Dard, but for exposing the doctor rather than for doping; he knew, however, that throwing him out of the team for that reason alone would cause an outcry. He couldn't sack the rider for being a doper either, because he himself was almost certainly heavily involved in doping: according to Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, author of Le Dossier Noir de Dopage, no fewer than 36% of de Muer's riders were involved in doping cases between 1970 and 1978 - which looks far more like an organised doping program that riders acting independently. Instead, he told Dard that he would never ride anything other than the very least-prestigious races in future. When his contract expired at the end of 1977, Dard rode for six months with Jobo-Spidel, then retired in June the following year to open a bike shop in Paris.

We'll probably never know the truth.

Keith Butler

Born in London in this day in 1938, Keith Butler - the son of Stanley Meredith Butler, who rode for Great Britain at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles - was a successful amateur during the early 1960s, winning three stages at the Milk Race (Tour of Britain) and a National Amateur Road Race Champion title between 1961 and 1963. He then went to Belgium and was amazed at the sheer size of the racing scene and its popularity: "There'd be so many races that you'd cross one going the other way," he said.

Butler turned semi-professional with the French Bertin-Porter 39-Milremo team and won the Elite National Championhips in 1964, then came third the following year before returning to Belgium and taking out a full professional licence; after spending a very short time with St-Raphaël (the team of Jacques Anquetil), he joined the German Ruberg-Caltex. Later that year, whilst riding on the British national team in support of Tom Simpson at the World Championships in Spain, he met Anquetil once again and tried to follow as he went after Simpson during the race. "It was like riding behind a bloody motorbike!" he later remembered. The great French rider, the first man to win five Tours de France, would become a part of Butler's life again two years later when he returned to Britain and rode for Trumann's Steel on bikes produced by Anquetil's company.

Butler retired in 1968, having spent his final season with another British team, Allinson. Now aged 74, he is still involved with the Surrey League, a group he formed in 1974, which puts on almost 200 races each year.

Kirkpatrick Macmillan
Born in Keir, Dumfries and Galloway on this day in 1812, Kirkpatrick Macmillan was "proved" in the 1890s to have been the inventor of the first pedal-driven-rear-wheel bicycle. Unfortunately, the researcher who proved it was James Johnstone, a relative who had set out to prove that the bicycle was invented in his home county and seems not to have bothered himself too much with unnecessary things like evidence while doing so: among other "proofs," he offered a report published in 1842 about a "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" who had knocked over a pedestrian but gave no details as to the gentleman's actual identity.

Johnstone later produced a bike which, he said, had been produced to a design made by Macmillan; despite the fact that a Victorian newspaper would never have referred to a humble blacksmith like Macmillan as a "gentleman," this was apparently proof enough for most people, so nobody ever bothered to ask for more details on the original design that Johnstone said he'd found (but never published). In time, the story was sufficiently widely as to become widely accepted as fact - nobody even thought to verify it until well into the 20th Century. When the did so, no reliable documentary evidence could be found whatsoever; whereas orders placed with factories from the late 1860s seem to show that the only bikes available pedal drive to the rear wheel in that period were three- or four-wheeled machines.

Tom Steels

Tom Steels

Tom Steels, born in Sint-Gillis-Waas, Belgium on this day in 1971, had a very successful career as a novice, junior and amateur - including including gold medals for 1km, Omnium and Sprint at the 1989 Junior National Track Championships, another gold at the Junior Road Race Championships and a silver for the kilo at the World Junior Championships all in 1989 - before turning professional with Vlaanderen 2002-Eddy Merckx in 1994. He won Stage 10 at the Tour de l'Avenir that year, then came second at the National Road Race Championships the next; then in 1996, riding for Mapei, he won Gent-Wevelgem, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Stages 4 and 22 and third place in the Points competition at the Vuelta a Espana.

In 1995, having won Stages 2, 3, 5 and 8a at Paris-Nice and taken the gold at National Road Race Championships, he rode his first Tour de France and came second on Stage 1 - however, during the sprint finish of Stage 6, he became frustrated when other riders boxed him in and angrily threw his bidon at the French rider Frederic Moncassin, and was ejected from the race as a result (the stage was filled with controversy: Djamolidine Abdoujaparov was also thrown out of the race after the stage when it was revealed that a sample he provided in the wake of Stage 2 had tested positive for Clenbuterol and another drug and Erik Zabel was relegated from first to last place for dangerous tactics, the stage win being eventually awarded to Jerome Blijlevens, who is now the directeur sportif of Rabobank's women's team).

Steels won the Dwars door Vlaanderen, Stages 3 and 4 and Paris-Nice and his second Elite National Road Race Championship, then went back to the Tour and won Stages 1, 12, 18 and 21, coming third overall in the Points competition in 1998; then in 1999 he won another Gent-Wevelgem, came third at Paris-Roubaix and finished Stages 2, 3 and 17 in first place at the Tour. In 2000 he won Stage 8 at Paris-Nice and Stages 2 and 3 at the Tour - he would not finish that year nor the following two, but in 2002 he won another National Championship before switching from Mapei to Landbouwkrediet-Colnago for 2003. He remained there for two seasons, winning the National Championship for a fourth time, then moved to Davitamon-Lotto in 2005. That year he rode the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana but won no stages in either - in fact, his Stage 3 victory at the Driedaagse van De Panne early in the year would be his last professional victory.

Steels stayed with Davitamon until the end of 2007, by which time it had become Predictor-Lotto, then he went back to Landbouwkrediet (now Landbouwkrediet-Tönissteiner) for seven months in 2008 before announcing his retirement on the 4th of July. He is now a team director at Omega Pharma-QuickStep.


Born in Arradin, Brittany on this day in 1930, François Mahé wore the maillot jaune for the one and only time in his career for one day in the 1953 Tour de France and finished in tenth place overall. The following year he won Stage 21a, then in 1955 he was tenth overall again with no stage wins, in 1959 fifth overall, again without winning a stage, and in 1961 he won Stages 2 and 14 at the Vuelta a Espana, coming second overall. He also came second in the the 1952 GP de Ouest-France, the 1954 Ronde van Vlaanderen and the 1960 Paris-Nice.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gonzalo Garrido (Chile, 1973); Curt Söderlund (Sweden, 1945); Robert Whetters (Australia, 1939); Jürgen Colombo (West Germany, 1949); Karl Schmaderer (Austria, 1914); Kim Jin-Yeong (South Korea, 1970); Nick Ingels (Belgium, 1984); Bart Dockx (Belgium, 1981); André Auffray (France, 1884); Miguel Ubeto (Venezuela, 1976); Jupp Ripfel (Sweden, 1938); Türel Wanzenried (Switzerland, 1906, died 1993); Graham Seers (Australia, 1958); Francisco Tortellá (Spain, 1937); Paul Henrichsen (Norway, 1893, died 1962); Walter Garre (Uruguay, 1945); Sara Neil (Born Great Britain, competed for Canada, 1960).

Finally - an end to broken collar bones?

Hardly a week seems to go by without news that a professional cyclist has broken his or her collar bone in an accident. According to studies, the majority of professional riders will suffer an injury of this type at least once during their career, with amateurs who cycle twice a week also standing a 41% chance of being injured in the same way during their lifetime. In fact, it's not uncommon to hear cyclists saying that they wish nature had come up with a better design.

Dr. Adolf von Elkalebeite

Until last year, Dr. Adolf von Elkalebeite was the head of the Sports Science Laboratory at the University of Geneva. He is a recognised expert on athletic injury and he's worked with some of the most famous teams, organisations and governing bodies in sport, including FIFA, the Olympic Council and Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile. As a keen amateur rider himself - he says he dreamed of turning pro in his youth after being inspired by his hero Ferdinand Kübler, the oldest living Tour de France winner and who has assisted the doctor in a study into the changes a retired athlete's skeleton undergoes as part of the aging process - his first love has always been cycling.

A new approach
"Cycling - along with medicine, of course, has been my life," Dr. von Elkalebeite says. "For many years, it was difficult for us to secure any funding for my academic program and I ran it primarily as a labour of love." That's no longer a problem. In fact, the 71-year-old doctor no longer has to go cap-in-hand to the University authorities begging for money at all. The reason? He's discovered a way to prevent all those broken bones.

Although a broken clavicle, as doctors term the bone, begins to knit relatively quickly with limited athletic training frequently becoming possible within a week of the injury's occurrence, full recovery - and return to previous performance - may take some months; meaning that a broken collar bone can negatively affect a rider's entire season. Millions of pounds have been spent by professional cycling teams in an attempt to develop new, more effective methods of hastening recovery but thus far have met with little success.

"I realised one day that the problem is an intrinsically simple one," the doctor told us. "While we've designed the bike to fit us, the human body evolved to walk upright and run, not to ride a bicycle - which is so different to anything our ancestors on the plains of Africa did that we're simply not physically suited to the task."

"The clavicle acts as a strut permitting the arm to remain attached to the body yet still achieve free movement. However, due to its position it often absorbs the impact created when a cyclist's body hits the road; a task for which it is unsuited and which causes it to snap. That's all there is to it: we cannot prevent it snapping, nor can we hurry repair. It does what it is supposed to do very well indeed, but we ask of it something else."

Dr. Sally-Patrice Röthy

Finding a solution
From that point, it didn't take a huge leap of the imagination to realise that if the collar bones with which we all come supplied can't cope with the strains placed upon them in a cycling accident then rather than attempting to increase that capability it might be better to come up with something that can. Dr. von Elkalebeite got in touch with his colleague Dr. Sally-Patrice Röthy, formerly head of the University's Orthopaedics Laboratory where her team investigated new materials for use in artificial joints.

"Replacement hips have developed vastly since the first examples in the late 19th Century, when surgeons attempted to use carved ivory," she explains. "Modern types are made of titanium, and they offer certain advantages over natural hips. For example, the material's strength-to-weight ratio is greater than any other metal - in fact, it's stronger than any metal with the exception of some heat-treated steel alloys.

"When Dr. von Elkalebeite first came to me, I suggested titanium immediately and once we'd looked closely at what he wanted to do he agreed it seemed ideal. Then we started to wonder if we might be able to make it still lighter, and that's when we came up with the concept of using titanium only for the tips of the bone where it interacts with other parts of the skeleton, while using carbon fibre for the main length of the bone."

The concept is simple, but actually making it happen was not. "Titanium is highly biocompatible, so that part was no problem," Dr. von Elkalebeite says. "Same is true of carbon - as any school kid knows, our bodies are full of it. The issue was finding a biocompatible bonding agent that could make the fibres rigid - in the case of existing carbon fibre objects, such as bike frames, epoxy is used. However, epoxy relies on epichlorohydrin as a hardening agent and since epichlorohydrin, as an organochloride, is a toxic, carconogenic irritant it's unsuited to this application."

The source of the resin - a species of gum arabic tree
(image credit: Marco Schmidt CC BY-SA 2.5)

The solution came from an unexpected source. One of Dr. Röthy's students had grown up in rural India before winning a scholarship to study for her medical degree in Delhi before moving to Geneva to take his doctorate. He remembered that when he'd broken his leg as an infant, his grandmother had told him a story about breaking a finger when she was a child. The snapped bone was exposed by the injury and she had been taken to see an untrained "physician," what we in the West might term a medicine man, who had used a resin collected from a locally-found species of tree to literally glue the bone back together.

"I was dubious about this," says Dr. Röthy. "I mean, it does seem rather hocus-pocus, don't you think? However, the student came back to me with a copy of a document obtained for him by a family member at the University of Delhi. It confirmed that the tree, a species of gum arabic, does in fact exist. Its use in primitive medicine is known, but has not been extensively studied - though one thing that was known it that not only does it appear to be biocompatible, it also seemed to have pain- and infection-fighting qualities. We got some samples flown over as soon as we possibly could."

It soon turned out that they'd hit the jackpot. Not only did the resin from the tree have exactly the right mechanical qualities, rapidly hardening and setting the carbon fibre, molecular analysis revealed that it contained the same salicylic acid as found in willow - natural aspirin, accounting for its reported pain relieving qualities. "We never did find anything likely to help fight infection," says Dr. von Elkalebeite, "which leads us to believe there may be a fungus with similar properties to Penicillium that occurs on the tree in the wild. More importantly, though, tests could find no evidence that the resin was not 100% biocompatible."

Top: human clavicle. Bottom: Dr. von Elkalebeite's improved version.

Realisation
With the technicalities out of the way, actually making the thing was a very straight-forward process. Titanium joints were fabricated to mimic the interface points of a natural clavicle; then a carbon fibre central shaft copying the shape of the clavicle was produced with the new resin. A recently retired Professional Continental cyclist who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of being banned from amateur competition was then recruited to be the first person to receive the false clavicle. "He told us that he had suffered five clavicle fractures in the past and each had given him a large amount of pain," Dr. von Elkalebeite informed us. "Because of that, he was eager to help others avoid the same injury. Also, by this time, we'd attracted a lot of attention from professional teams - making the experiment worth his while was not an issue.

Next, they had to wait for their guinea pig to have an accident - which happened just a month later when he was involved in a collision with a car during a training ride. "We had created a special cycling jersey fitted with miniaturised acceleration logger devices in the sleeves," Dr. von Elkalebeite explains. "By downloading data from these, we could establish the impact that had been transmitted through the replacement clavicle during the accident, and we found then that it had successfully absorbed and withstood an impact some six times greater than would have been necessary to causing extensive mechanical failure in a natural clavicle. Removal and microscopic study confirmed that it had suffered no damage."

The Present
Asked if any currently-active cyclists have been fitted with the artificial clavicles, Dr. von Elkalebeite explains that the procedure is at present experimental and would require approval by both governmental bodies and the Union Cycliste International. "It could be seen as offering an unfair advantage," he says, sounding as though he is reciting a speech he's been over again and again, "because a rider fitted with them would feel willing to take greater risks, confident that he or she is less likely to face missing races if an accident occurs."

He is unmistakably cagey, and steers the conversation around the issue. However, some people have wondered if he's gone further - among them, a well-known ex-rider turned team manager who says he wishes to remain anonymous until such time as he has proof to back up his allegations, giving the pseudonym Johan van Nott rather than his real name. "Anyone who knows anything about this sport knows that no team would simply hand over as much cash as we're talking about here," he claimed on his blog. "In the current economic climate and with the guys at the top of the sport demanding the sort of salaries they do, the teams just couldn't afford it. The only thing that would persuade then would be if they got something back right now - after all, many teams can't even be certain they'll still be around in a year or two, as we saw with the rapid demise of Highroad."

One thing's for certain, though - the two doctors have secured a large amount of capital from somewhere. On the same day in Autumn of 2011, they resigned from their posts at the University and, within days, registered a new company under the name La Clinique du Sport à Genève. "A couple of the guys on the team reported back to me that they heard a couple of Belgian riders talking about the Clinique a few days before Paris-Nice this year," says van Nott. "Apparently, the word around the peloton is that it's soon going to be offering the procedure to anyone with the money to pay for it. There's also a rumour that at least one rider - I'd better not say who - has already got two of the false collar bones fitted after suffering a third break in four seasons. We got hold of a load of video of his races, and it did appear that he's now taking bigger risks in the technical sections."

The future
The invention seems nothing short of miraculous and may yet prove to dramatically extend the amount of time professional cyclists can spend racing - but, as is the case with all scientific developments, it must first be approved for competition use by the UCI. As of yet, there has not been an official announcement regarding Dr. von Elkalebeite's work nor confirmation that it is even gathering evidence with a view to making one; however, spokesman Fabian Lottractio told reporters: "We are aware of the matter and will continue to monitor it. At present, we see no need to consider new regulations, but should it prove to be a precedent - perhaps ushering in a new age in which athletes can gain a competitive advantage over others through synthetic body parts, which could be construed as a form of doping - we will decide if we need to act."

They need to make that decision soon. At present, it's only rumoured that riders have undergone surgery to have the artificial device fitted, but as soon as the Clinique opens its doors riders will show an interest. "Cycling is a dangerous sport already," van Nott claims. "The last thing it needs is a peloton seeded with bionic kamkaze cyborgs throwing caution to the wind on the descents and corners with little regard for their own safety or that of riders around them."

The Hövding: innovation or idiocy?

The Hovding uninflated, permitting this fashion-
conscious young lady to maintain her oh-so-stylish
topknot ponytail...

"What the world was waiting for. An invisible bicycle helmet. That wouldn't ruin your hair." (Haupt and Alstin)

With the BBC and Daily Nazi - er, Daily Mail, rather - both carrying reports on crop circles this week, it seems that Silly Season is officially under way (the Mail has a peculiar love of crop circles, much as the Nazis were into all sorts of stuff nowadays more commonly associated with hippies; yesterday's report being a prime example of pseudo-scientific woo-woo rubbish).

Searching the news this morning (because Google Alerts always miss the best stories), it looked as though the good ol' Grauniad had been getting in on the act early, displaying Silly Season symptoms right back in October last year when it reported on something called the Hövding - which means chieftain in Swedish, as you all know.

The Hövding is intended by its designers, Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, to be an alternative to the conventional cycling helmet for fashion-conscious riders, allowing them to avoid that awful plague of modern life, helmet hair. As such, it surely deserves to be up there with the continuing battle against cancer, the defeat of smallpox and the invention of the artificial heart; glorified among the most panegyrized* of human accomplishments thus far.

"We want to encourage others to follow in our footsteps and dare to demand something better, to stand out from the crowd, and believe in themselves and their own capabilities." (Haupt and Alstin)

...and inflated, permitting her to preserve her
brain. Perhaps.

Consisting of a specially-designed helmet-shaped airbag, a canister of compressed helium and a sensor, the device utilises gyroscopes and accelerometers in the same way as do airbags in a car; sensing a crash in progress and inflating the airbag in a fraction of a second, and thus - in theory - negating a knock on the noggin. The whole shebang is stowed away in a sort of scarf to be worn, as is the way with scarves, about the neck.

Unfortunately, it seems that Haupt and Alstin are probably not cyclists themselves. This is clear from the fact that the Hövding is a big, bulky unit which would seem to be of little use when unzipped, as would be necessary when the wearer became overheated or on a hot summer's day - which is, of course, probably the only time that anyone so concerned about their hair will ever ride a bike. Funny that they'd overlook that really, since their research discovered that one reason people don't wear helmets - other than vanity - is that they can't fit a warm hat underneath.

Anyway, you can have one for just £300 - about ten times what a decent conventional helmet will cost you. They work once and will soon be available from the Swedish retailers listed on the Hövding website which has lots of pictures of models in terrifyingly expensive haute couture and no pictures of cyclists. Whether or not you do buy one is dependent on your own choice and whether or not you can recognise utter pointlessness when you see it.

Stringbike

Once again someone out there has decided they can think up a better way to transfer power from the legs to the rear wheel. Once again, it's more complex and probably far less efficient than the traditional chain which has been in use for over a century with good reason.




Oh, and guys? You might want to tighten up the front wheel quick release.