Daily Cycling Facts 18.08.2014

Ruby Miller

Ruby Miller
(© Joolze Dymond)
(Used here with very kind permission - to see more of
Dymond's excellent photos, click here.)

Born in Llantwit Major on this day in 1992, Welsh cyclist Ruby Miller began her athletic career as a triathlete at the unusually early age of ten, encouraged by her mother - a coach at Cardiff's Maindy Triathlon Club. She soon found that the bike race was her favourite part of the events she entered, joined the Maindy Flyers CC, began competing in cyclo cross and was spotted by a British Cycling scout who recruited her to the BC Wales Talent Team.

In 2007, Miller took first place in the National Youth Cyclo Cross Series, then won it again the following year before also winning the National Youth MTB Cross Country Championship, then three silver medals and one bronze in the Under-16 class at the National Track Championships.

Miller signed up to Horizon Fitness RT (which has since become Matrix Pro Cycling, racing at the top level of women's cycling) in 2011, a team well-known for taking talented young riders and turning them into world-class athletes, where she was tipped for the top by directeur sportif and manager Stef Wyman. "Ruby is a great prospect and we know that we can help Ruby develop her potential," he said. "She’s always been impressive off road, but some her road results at the end of last season really caught my eye.  The younger riders on the team are a great squad in their own right.  It’ll be interesting how far they can push things in 2011." Miller soon proved he was right: she won two rounds of the Welsh MTB Series; came third at the Tywyn Criteriums; second at the Jif Summer Criterium, Round 4 of the British MTB Cross Country Series and won Race 11 of the Cornish series. In 2012, Miller acted as a torch bearer during the Olympic Torch relay.

Miller at the Dalby Forest round of the British Cross-Country Series, 2012

Jimmy Michael

Jimmy Michael
Another great Welsh cyclist was born - in Aberaman, about 30km from Llantwit Major - on this day, but 115 years before Miller in 1877. He was Jimmy Michael and, because he was only 1.56m tall people laughed at him when they first saw him step out onto the track with his tall and lanky rivals. They shut up when they saw him race, though - because Michael was very, very fast indeed.

Michael started racing when he was 12 and won a number of local events, then entered bigger ones in Cardiff and won those too. In 1894 he went to London to race the Surrey 100 at the Herne Hill Velodrome, where Sporting Cyclist's Mal Rees was present to see him in action. He later recalled,

"Cycling chroniclers of the day, reporting on the event, were astounded as the Welsh boy matched every attack in the hectic early stages. 'Who was this youth who dared to hang on to London's speediest riders?', they wrote. In the first hour, 24 miles 475 yards had been covered and 'the little hero' Jimmy Michael dogged the heels of the leaders until he succeeded in breaking away himself to lap the field at 46 miles.

At two hours, with 48 miles 377 yards covered, he was just outside the record, but at the 50-mile mark was inside with 2h 4m 42s. There seems to have been no serious threat during the second fifty for Michael consolidated his lead and went on to win in 4h 19m 39s with a seven-minute margin from the runner-up. This was a new record."

L-R: Arthur Linton, Choppy Warburton, Jimmy Michael
and Tom Linton

In 1895, Michael received a professional contract with Gladiator, where he rode alongside Arthur Linton who was also from Aberaman; both men were trained by the notorious coach and soigneur Choppy Warburton. Linton had a bad season and became resentful, seemingly blaming Michael for his bad luck and publicly venting his anger in the South Welsh newspapers until Michael finally decided enough was enough and challenged his rival to a duel, to take place at either the Buffalo or Winter velodrome in Paris, whichever Linton preferred - he even put down a payment of £20 to cover Linton's costs. The race never happened: Linton won Bordeaux-Paris that year, then died six weeks later aged only 24. Officially, his death was blamed on typhoid; however, it's also possible that it was due to the strychnine (a stimulant in small doses) that Warburton administered to his riders and, while nothing was ever proved, Linton is often claimed to have been the first cyclist to die as a result of doping.

Charley Barden

Later that same year the Gladiator team was hired by William Spears Simpson, who had invented the Simpson Lever Chain (a rather strange apparatus made up of triangular links, the chainrings engaged with the flat bottom of each triangle and the rear cog with the pointed tops). Renamed after the chain, they were then entered into specially-organised "chain races" at which Simpson offered 10:1 odds against riders on machines fitted with normal chains beating those with his chains. It's not known if Simpson truly believed his chains offered any sort of mechanical advantage - and for anyone with any sort of engineering knowledge, it's difficult to see why he would - but the races were a brilliant way to advertise the product: Michael, Tom Linton (Arthur's brother, who also died young and whose body was also found to contain high levels of strychnine, though his death too was recorded as being due to typhoid), Constant Huret and the legendary track cyclist, stunt rider, aviator, racing car driver and hospital director Hélène Dutrieu (the world's first female cycling star) were all accustomed to racing at the big track meets in Paris, Brussels and Berlin; they were, therefore, much stronger than the provincial heroes that took them on at the chain races. At one event (most accounts say that it was in Catford, but it might actually have been in Germany), Michael was scheduled to compete against Charley Barden in a five-mile race. This was a major draw: Michael was by now extremely famous, Barden - who was born in Canterbury in 1974 (the exact date is not known, nor are many things about Barden's life) - was even more so and was said to have been so good-looking that he was mobbed by women wherever he went. Just before the race, Michael was handed a drink by Warburton. Nobody knows what it was, but almost as soon as he'd swallowed it, the rider became disorientated and began shaking; then rode badly once the race began, fell off, got back up and started riding in the wrong direction. The crowd began chanting "Dope!"

Michael and Choppy Warburton (with greatcoat and hat)
depicted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Note also the
distinctive Simpson Lever Chain

There is a great deal of speculation as to what actually happened. One possibility is that Warburton was entirely innocent and Michael had been taken ill (it's also possible that the Linton brothers did in fact die of typhoid, though the strychnine in their corpses takes some explaining). The most obvious is that Warburton gave Michael something that he believed would help him win the race, perhaps a drug with pain-killing properties such as laudanum, which can cause similar symptoms to those the rider exhibited. A third, backed up by an unconfirmed contemporary report, is that Warburton wanted to take advantage of those 10:1 odds and had placed a bet against his own rider, then took steps to ensure he wouldn't win; a fourth suggests Warburton had heard that an agent from a wealthy American team was at the race to scout out new talent and was planning to headhunt Michael, so he drugged the rider in an attempt to disguise his talent. Whatever the truth, Michael believed that he had been deliberately drugged and accused Warburton of such; Warburton responded with a libel suit, though it was settled amicably.

In 1896, Michael went to America where a successful track cyclist could live in considerable style. His contract promised him $2,500 for each of nine races, whatever the outcome, guaranteeing him an income of $22,500 that year - this being a time when the average annual salary in the USA was around $411; in addition to which he planned to earn another $30,000 by taking payments from manufacturers in exchange for using their products and then praising them during interviews in the cycling press. Yet, by 1899, he was almost broke, having lost the majority of his fortune through gambling and the purchase of a race horse (which he rode); he then returned to Europe to make a fresh start but, in 1903, fractured his skull in a 97kph crash at a track in Berlin. While recovering, he became friends with a rider named Jean Gougloz. According to Victor Breyer, one of Henri Desgrange's assistants at the Tour de France, Gougolz was "a weak-minded, yet lovable fellow when sober, but was bad under the influence of drink." He added that "Jimmy kept sliding down the toboggan" after meeting him.

Michael behind one of the monstrous pacer motorcycles
used in track racing in his era

Michael's final races were farcical - he didn't even show up to one prestigious event near the Buffalo in 1903. Breyer, who was race organiser, recalled that Gougolz (who seems not to have been an alcoholic, despite his apparent love of getting drunk) thought he might know where the rider was and so they set off to a bar near the Arc de Triomphe, where they found Michael in a state of serious intoxication. In this day and age, he wouldn't have been allowed to race; in those days he was persuaded to honour his contract and the race was postponed by an hour to give him a chance to sober up. The crowd, therefore, were not in the best of moods when he eventually staggered out onto the track; when he trailed in in last place, a big gap between him and the second-to-last rider, they turned on him and he was booed and hissed out of the building. He decided to try again in America the following year, where he hoped that people might have forgotten the bad days and welcome him as a hero; but he died of delirium tremens aboard the Savoie on the 21st of Novermber whilst it was still at sea. He was 27.

Sarah Hammer
Born in Temecula, California on this day in 1983, Sarah Hammer has amassed a palmares since 2005 that would be the envy of any cyclist - she has won no fewer than twenty National titles, four World Track Championship titles, 18 World TrackCycling Cup races and a number of road races. She also competed in the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, and holds the current World Individual Pursuit record. Yet her professional career very nearly ended before really getting started.

Sarah Hammer's website: click here

Hammer has been cycling since she was eight, encouraged to take up the sport by her father, who realised very soon that she was good at it - and in 1995, she won a National Junior title. By 2002 she was good enough to become a professional, riding for the US Diet Rite alongside the young Joanne Kiesanowski and Tina Pic (who was not so young, but was still going to remain a force in American cycling for the next seven years - and 59 victories - until she retired at the age of 43 in 2009); in 2003 she joined Amber Neben, Kristin Armstrong and Dotsie Bausch at the legendary T-Mobile. Then, at the end of the year, she gave it all up. Professional cycling was harder than she had ever imagined and she sold all her equipment, went to college and made ends meet with a succession of uninspiring jobs.

In 2004, Hammer went to the Olympics to watch her former team mates and realised she'd made the wrong decision. Now aware that cycling was to be her life, she made her comeback with a renewed sense of devotion and determination, winning the Pursuit and Points races at the Nationals in 2005, then the Pursuit, Points and Scratch races at the 2006 Nationals and the Pursuit at the Worlds. She successfully defended her World Championship in 2007 and was selected for the Olympics team in 2008 but went home without a medal, which appears to have encouraged her to try her luck on the road instead - in 2009, she won the Red Trolley criterium and the North End Classic and Tour of Murrieta stage races, but then returned to the track in 2010 and took back her World Pursuit title, then won the Elimination, Points, Flying Lap and Pursuit in the Omnium at the Cali round of the World Cup. The next year, at the Manchester round, she won the Elimination, Flying Lap, Pursuit and Scratch; then the Pursuit at the Nationals. With results like these, she was an obvious selection to compete at the London Olympics and didn't disappoint - this time around, she went home with two silver medals won in the Team Pursuit and the Omnium. Her long winning streak continued into 2013 - having won the Pursuit and the Omnium at the World Championships in Belarus, she returned to her home soil and won the Omnium and the Points at the US Grand Prix of Sprinting in July.

Cédric Vasseur

Cédric Vasseur
Cédric Vasseur, born in Hazebrouck, France on this day in 1970, won a large number of races and stages over the years; but he will forever be remembered for Stage 5 at the 1997 Tour de France and his 147km solo break, which won him the stage and kept him in the maillot jaune for five days. Four years later, riding for US Postal, he was left out of the team's Tour de France squad. This may have been due to his poor results that year - he was third in the Calais criterium, his only podium finish of the season - but it was widely suspected that the real reason was "personal differences" with Lance Armstrong, as he himself claimed and was widely reported by the French media. He left the team and went to Cofidis.

Vasseur was arrested as part of the investigation into doping at Cofidis that also led to the arrest and subsequent ban of David Millar in 2004; he was cleared after his B-sample tested negative but too late for the Tour, and claimed in court that parts of his witness statement were forgeries.

Vasseur's father Alain rode professionally for Bic between 1969 and 1974 and had won Stage 8 at the 1970 Tour with his own solo break; an uncle, Sylvaine, rode with Alain for Bic during the same period, then with Super Ser in 1975 and Gitane-Campagnolo in 1976 and 1977. Younger brother Loïc rode for Home Market-Ville de Charleroi in the late 1990s, but seems not to have received his full share of Vasseur talent.

Jürgen Kissner
Jürgen Kissner was born in Germany in 1942 and, after the war was over, became a citizen of the new "Communist" state of East Germany - where he wasn't permitted to become a sports instructor because his family was deemed as being bourgeois. He was a sufficiently talented rider, however, to be selected for the team sent to the All-Germany Championships held in Cologne, in West Germany, in 1964.

Had he have won a race there, he'd have stood a good chance of being selected for the East German Olympic team, but he had other ideas: on the 15th of September, he climbed into a service elevator at the team's hotel and fled, officially defecting to the West a short while later. The East German authorities tried to claim he'd been abducted, but news that he had left of his own free will soon reached the public. His parents were interrogated by the Stasi and his mother was sent to Cologne to beg him to return, but she told him to stay where he was even if it meant they would never see one another again.

In 1968, Kissner went to the Olympics with the West German team; but a mistake on his part in the team sprint led to disqualification. Newspapers printed stories claiming that he was a "ringer," a secret agent sent by the East Germans specifically to sabotage the West German team's chances; however, one year later the race was re-examined and the team was reinstated, then awarded a silver medal.



Lisa Brambani, who was born in Bradford, Great Britain on this day in 1967, won the National Road Race Championship in 1986, 1987, 1988 and 1989. She was also 11th in the road race at the Olympics in 1988, won the Women's Challenge in 1989 (when the UCI refused to have anything to do with the race, claiming that "excessive climbing, stage distances, number of stages, and duration of event" made it too difficult), and in 1990 she won a silver medal in the road race at the Commonwealth Games. She should be a household name, among cycling households at any rate; had she have been a man and thus able to compete in events to which the media pay attention, she probably would be.

Gordon "Tiny" Thomas, born in Shipley, Great Britain on this day in 1921, competed in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London where he - along with Ian Scott and Bob Maitland - came second on the team road race. In 1952 he won Stage 13 at the Tour of Britain, then won it overall a year later. At the time of writing, he is 91 years old.

Loretto Petrucci, born in Capostrada, Italy on this day in 1929, won Milan-San Remo in 1951, 1952 and 1953.

George Atkins, born in Leicester, Great Britain on this day in 1991, won the National Junior Road Race, Pursuit and - with Dan McClay - Madison championships in 2009. In 2010, he won the Points race at the National Track Championships and came second on Stage 1 at the Under-23 Tour of Berlin, then in 2011 he won the Scottish Hill Climb Championships and was second at the National Under-23 Individual Time Trial Championships and in 2012 he won the Jock Wadley Memorial.

Serge Baguet, born in Opbrakel, Belgium on this day in 1969, won Stage 2 at the 1993 Tour of Britain, Stage 17 at the 2003 Tour de France and the National Road Race Championship in 2005.

Paul Egli

Jeff Williams, who was born on this day in 1958, won the British National Hill Climb Championship in 1979 on the Bovey Tracey-Haytor road in Devon. His time, 12'44", remains the record at the time of writing. In 1982 he won the National Hill Climb and Road Race Championships, the only man to have ever done so.

Paul Egli, born on this day in 1911, was Swiss Amateur Cycle Cross Champion and won a silver medal at the World Amateur Road Race Championship in 1932, the took the gold at the latter event the following year. In 1935 he became the professional National Road Race Champion, a title he defended in 1936, when he also won Stage 1 and wore the maillot jaune at the Tour de France. Racing in the professional World Road Race Championships a year later he won bronze, then silver in 1938.

Other cyclists born on this day: Thomas Kvist (Denmark, 1987); Boontom Prasongquamdee (Thailand, 1946); Alges Maasikmets (Estonia, 1968); John Lieswyn (USA, 1968); Alan McCormack (Ireland, 1956); Gianni Giacomini (Italy, 1958); Theo Nikkessen (Netherlands, 1941).

Daily Cycling Facts 17.07.2014

Noemi Cantele

Noemi Cantele

Born in Varese, Italy on this day in 1981, Noemi Cantele competed in swimming and athletics as a child - but cycling was in her blood; her family having been fans and cyclists for generations. Her grandfather gave her a bike when she was 12 and, almost immediately, she found that she could beat her older brother, who took part in local races.

Having fallen in love with cycling, she joined local club JuSport Gorla Minore where she met Ugo Menoncin - whom she describes as "the man who shaped me, taught me to live and win." With him, she began to win. Not only local races, but big, prestigious ones - like a bronze medal at the Junior World Championships of 1999. In 2002, she joined the Acca Due O team and began taking part in Elite level competition. As is common with most athletes when they first make the transition to the top level of their sport, she says that the increased competition - "promettevo molto e forse non ho vinto in proporzione" ("I promised lots, but my wins were not in proportion") - took her by surprise, but in the first year she won a stage at the Eko Tour Dookla Polski and came third overall. 2003 was far quieter, but in 2004 she went to the Olympics and came 13th in the road race.

2005 would prove to be Cantele's real breakthrough year with second place at Albstadt and the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon, then victory at the GP Ouest France (GP de Plouay); results that brought an invitation to join the world famous Bigla team. She would remain with them for the next four years. Now that she had the support of a world-class team, Cantele began bringing in victory after victory - in 2006, she would win stages at the Route du France, Trophée d'Or and the Giro della Toscana, some of the best-known women's races in the world. The year after that she won the GPs Brissago and Raffeisen, another GP Ouest France and the General Classifications at the Trophée d'Or and Giro della Toscana. She concentrated on the Olympics in 2008 and came 15th, then began to work on her time trial ability, which led to victory at the National Time Trial Championship race in 2009. That same year, she won silver for the time trial at the Worlds (an bronze in the road race), also winning the Emakumeen Saria and - for the first time - a stage at the Giro Donne.

At the Giro del Trentino, 2012

In 2010, Cantele joined the legendary HTC-Colombia team and won more Giro della Toascana stages with them; in 2011 she moved on to the British-based Garmin-Cervelo and rode alongside some of the most famous names in the history of women's professional cycling, riders such as Iris Slappendel, Carla Ryan, Sharon Laws, Lizzie Armitstead and Emma Pooley, and she became Italian Champion in both the road race and the time trial that year. Sadly, Garmin-Cervelo's women's team came to an end at the end of the year when a sponsor withdrew backing (the fact that continuing the women's team would have required the diversion of only a tiny percentage of funds going to the men's team was not missed by fans, though manager Jonathan Vaughters argued this was not possible) and the riders were left in an uncertain position for a while; fortunately the British riders, Australian Ryan and Belgian Jessie Daams all found new homes with AA Drink-Leontien.nl, Alexis Rhodes went to GreenEDGE, Slappendel to Rabobank and Cantele to a new position as captain of the Italian BePink team. With them, she has ventured into new territory and won the GP el Salvador and a stage at the Vuelta Ciclista Femenina el Salvador in South America, as well as the GP Liberazione in Italy and a stage at the Giro del Trentino Alto Adige-Südtirol. She remains with BePink - now Astana-BePink - to this day, and won the Grand Prix de Oriente and two stages (in addition to her team's victory in the team time trial) and the General Classification at the Vuelta Ciclista Femenina a el Salvador  in 2013.

Cantele is a regular on Twitter, where she regularly chats with fans and posts interesting insights into races. She also has an excellent and informative website.


Belgian rider Eric Leman, who was born in Ledegem on this day in 1946. During the late 1960s and first half of the 1970s he became one of the world's top Classics riders with victories at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne (1968), the Dwars door Vlaanderen (1969) and the Ronde van Vlaanderen, for which he shares the record of three wins (1970, 1972 and 1973). Leman was also an effective rider in stage races, winning a total of five stages at the Tour de France, ten at Paris-Nice and one at the Vuelta a Espana.

Jaan Kirsipuu, born in Tartu on this day in 1969, was Estonian time trial champion seven times and road race champion three times. He also won four stages of the Tour de France between 1999 (when he led the race for six days) and 2004 and one at the Vuelta a Espana in 1998. With 130 professional victories he is regarded in Estonia as the nation's finest ever cyclist; elsewhere he is primarily known for abandoning the Tour a record twelve times.

Many cyclists are superstitious but Nico Mattan, born in Belgium on this day in 1971, took it further than most: in addition to a dislike of the number 13 that borders on being an actual phobia (if assigned it - or even a number such as 49, in which the two digits can be added to make 13 - as a race number he would try to convince organisers to assign him a different number, and if unsuccessful would wear it upside-down), he believes that 17 is lucky and would request it - or numbers such as 89 - when possible. Mattan's greatest victory was the 2005 Gent-Wevelgem, one of the prestigious Flanders Classics races, but it was a controversial win as many believed he'd drafted behind a team car in order to slingshot past leader Juan-Antonio Flecha.

Edgar Laurence Gray - born on this day in 1906 and known as Dunc - won a bronze medal for the 1000m time trial at the 1928 Olympics. This was the first Olympic medal ever won by an Australian cyclist.

Other cyclists born on this day: Alfred Achermann (Switzerland, 1959); Li Yan (China, 1978); Arles Castro (Colombia, 1979); Karl Barton (Great Britain, 1937); Wiktor Hoechsmann (Poland, 1894, died 1977); Kazuaki Sasaki (Japan, 1967); Vyacheslav German (Belarus, 1972); Monty Southall (Great Britain, 1907, died 1993); Vatche Zadourian (Lebanon, 1974); Syd Cozens (Great Britain, 1908, died 1985); Hans Lienhart (Austria, 1960); Rafael Narváez (Colombia, 1950); Jacinta Coleman (New Zealand, 1974).

Daily Cycling Facts 13.07.2014

The Tour de France started on this date in 1908 and 1950 - the latest Tours in history. 1908 was an especially interesting Tour...

Tour de France 1908

Le Grand Depart, 1908

14 stages, 4,488km.
Using an almost identical route to 1907, the 1908 edition had one notable difference to previous years: all cyclists were in the same classification and they all rode identical yellow frames issued to them by the race, though they were still permitted to choose some components for themselves - one popular option was clincher tyres which, while not as efficient as tubular tyres, made repairing punctures considerably easier; since riders were required to carry out all maintenance and repairs themselves this was an important consideration. 36 riders were using them, the majority of which were made by Wolber (who also co-sponsored the Peugeot team) - those riders became eligible for the secondary and unofficial "Prix Wolber pneus démontables" classification, which offered a prize of 3,500 francs to the first rider over the finish line on a bike fitted with them and brought a huge amount of public and media attention for both the product and the manufacturer. Organisers also promised that steps had been taken to prevent bad behaviour and sabotage by  spectators, who in the past had done everything from spread nails over the road to forming mobs and physically beating the riders; this year, the riders were reassured, there was a 90% chance that what was termed "the Apaches" would be apprehended by the police and go to prison.

Marie Marvingt

114 cyclists started the race from 162 who had applied for admittance; 48 being either unable to start or having their applications turned down - among those in the latter group was Marie Marvingt, whose application was declined because she was a woman. Born in 1875 and a qualified surgical nurse, Marvingt had been encouraged to take part in a wide selection of sports by her father and became an enormously successful athlete, winning competitions in equestrian sports, field athletics, tennis, soccer, golf, shooting, water polo, swimming, martial arts, boxing, skiing, bobsleigh, luge, ski jumping, skating, shooting, fencing and mountaineering. Cycling was one of the few sports in which she didn't win any competitions, but she was an avid long distance rider and had ridden from Nancy to Napoli to witness a volcanic eruption. Knowing that only rules prevented her from completing the Tour, she followed the peloton and rode the entire route - sadly, the time she took to do it doesn't seem to have been recorded and so we'll never know how she might have fared against the men. We do know, however, that only 36 riders finished the race, so she can be considered to have beaten 78 of them (for more on Marvingt and her remarkable life, click here).

No cyclist had ever won two Tours (with the exception of Maurice Garin, whose second victory was disqualified due to cheating), but Lucien Petit-Breton believed that he could and he planned to do so; being the first man to centre his entire season on this one race alone (that he would so is indication that, five years after it began, the Tour was already the most important bike race in the world). Using other events solely to train and caring little where he placed in them, he artfully ensured that he reached a peak of physical fitness for the Tour - something that had never before been done and which would not be used again until Miguel Indurain's five wins between 1991 and 1995 and Lance Armstrong's seven wins between 1999 and 2005. What's more, Petit-Breton (whose real surname was Mazan; he had become known as Lucien Breton at the start of his career when he lived in Argentina and began to use it so that his father - who wanted him to get a "proper" job - wouldn't recognise his name in the race results published in newspapers, the Petit being added because there was another rider named Lucien Breton) had the very strong Peugeot team backing him up and, crucially since riders had to carry out their own repairs, he was a skilled mechanic.

Passerieu and fans at the Tour, 1908

The enormously powerful Georges Passerieu won Stage 1 from Paris to Roubaix on the same cobbled roads since made famous by L'Enfer du Nord (in those days, the cobbles were not considered remarkable - that was just how many roads were), beating second-place Petit-Breton by exactly five minutes. Since numerous documents recording the details and history of the early Tours were lost in the Second World War, it's not possible to know for certain if, when Petit-Breton won and Passerieu was second on Stage 2, they were given joint leadership as both had three points or if Passerieu remained leader due to having equaled Petit-Breton's winning time; support for each answer is split reasonably evenly between the various sources. During the stage several riders punctured on nails - Desgrange could make all the promises he liked, but it was never going to be possible to keep tight control on what the public got up to in a race such as the Tour.

Stage 2 ended and Stage 3 began in Metz, which as part of the Lorraine region was then under German control. Desgrange, like many Frenchmen, saw the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine as an insult to his country it seems strange that he would steer his race through the region; however, one of the reasons he organised the race in the first place was to show off the strength and athleticism of France's young men, he probably welcomed it as an opportunity to demonstrate to Germany that should they ever get ideas about expanding their territory further onto French soil they'd be met by formidable resistance. He was probably pleased, therefore, that Stage 3 was started by none other than the Count von Zeppelin: while no longer a General in the German army (he'd been forced to retire after his command came under heavy criticism in 1890), he retained great power and influence. During the stage Jean Novo, riding for the Labor team, crashed and had to retire. The team's owner then sent a telegram to the manager ordering him to withdraw the team on account of its "mediocre results." Labor is notable in that the riders wore bright yellow jerseys, which stood out in the peloton and made them easy to recognise - this may very well have been where Desgrange got the idea for the maillot jaune which he would later reserve for the leader of the race (we know for certain that the race leader wore a yellow jersey in 1919, but late in his life Philippe Thys said that he'd been given one when he led in 1913 - nobody can prove that he was, but nobody can prove he wasn't either). With Labor gone and Alcyon unable to achieve the performances they would in the coming years, Peugeot dominated the race from that point onwards; beginning with François Faber's Stage 3 victory (while Faber considered himself to be French, he a Luxembourgian passport and was the first Luxembourgian - and only the second foreigner - to win a Tour stage). Petit-Breton finished with him and thus remained in the lead with five points.

Faber, who later died in No Man's Land when
he tried to rescue an injured comrade

Faber also won Stage 4 after the peloton battled through a blizzard, but as he was 49th on Stage 2 he was out of contention for an overall victory. Petit-Breton came third but remained in the lead with eight points - overall second place Gustave Garrigou had an 18 point disadvantage by this time, so already it seemed that Petit-Breton's decision to concentrate solely on the Tour was paying off. Passerieu won again on Stage 5, beating Faber by 19' after riding solo over the Col de Porte; Petit-Breton was third and now had an advantage of 21 points over new second place Luigi Ganna. Stage 6 climbed Bayard and the infamously steep Rampe de Laffrey; André Pottier - younger brother of 1906 winner René - was first to the top of both, but he was caught and passed on the descent by Jean-Baptiste Dortinacq. Petit-Breton was third again, increasing his advantage to 31 points, then he won Stage 7 and his lead grew to 33. Faber then won Stage 8 and jumped to third overall; although he was fifth behind Petit-Breton on Stage 9, he moved into second place overall with a one point advantage over Garrigou. Nevertheless, he was 39 points behind Petit-Breton who, unless he abandoned or received a penalty, now looked certain to win.

Stage 10 went to Georges Paulmier - Petit-Breton was tenth, by far his worst performance in the race as he finished top four on every other stage. His lead was too great to be threatened, falling to 32, but Faber was only one point ahead of Passerieu and would need to work hard to remain in contention for second place. Petit-Breton won Stage 11, adding two points to his advantage; Faber and Passerieu both had 63 points after the stage but Faber remained officially in second place (which suggests that Passerieu was probably declared sole leader following Stage 2), then secured his position in Stage 12 by opening a gap of five points. It took Passerieu 16h23' to win Stage 13, the longest in the race at 415km; Faber was second and Petit-Breton third, the three of them finishing together - the last rider to complete the stage, Louis di Maria, needed an extra 23h07' to arrive at the finish line.

Lucien Petit-Breton

Petit-Breton started Stage 14 with an advantage of 31 points over Faber and 35 over Passerieu. He had, therefore, no need whatsoever to win that last stage - but he did, consigning Faber once more to second place. Henri Cornet was fifth over the line, much to the delight of the crowd who adored him for his youth and sense of humour - when the race was over organisers announced that there would be a one-lap race of the 666m Pard des Princes velodrome, though the result would not be counted towards the Tour, and Cornet won.

Faber may have been second, but he was declared winner of the Prix Wolber. When the 3,500 francs were added to the prize money he earned for second place in the General Classification, he ended up making more money from the race than Petit-Breton did; however, Petit-Breton later wrote a book, Comment je cours sur route (How I Race on the Road), which is half-memoir and half the earliest example of a cycling training manual.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1  Lucien Petit-Breton (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 36
2  François Faber (LUX) Peugeot–Wolber 68
3  Georges Passerieu (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 75
4  Gustave Garrigou (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 91
5  Luigi Ganna (ITA) Alcyon–Dunlop 120
6  Georges Paulmier (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 125
7  Georges Fleury (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 134
8  Henri Cornet (FRA) Peugeot–Wolber 142
9  Marcel Godivier (FRA) Alcyon–Dunlop 153
10  Giovanni Rossignoli (ITA) Bianchi 160
(Note: with Peugeot's domination of the race so complete, the identical bikes experiment - which had previously applied only to the second-class riders rather than to the entire field - was considered unsuccessful and dropped. However, in 1909 bikes still had to be fitted with a stamped lead seal by organisers to make sure riders didn't illegally change bikes during the race.)


Tour de France 1950
22 stages, 4,775km.
Aware that some riders broke the rules by receiving a helpful push from team staff as they collected  fresh bidons, organisers announced that course officials would be keeping a close eye on things and that there would be harsher penalties for any rider spotted breaking rules in this way. There had also been concerns that the bonification system gave climbers an unfair advantage over other riders, thus this was overhauled: being the first to a summit now earned a bonus of 40" rather than a minute and no new mountains were added to the parcours. Prizes increased - a stage winner would now receive 50,000 francs, an increase of 20,000f when compared to 1949, and the overall General Classification winner would receive 100,000. Since stages were now on average much shorter than they had been in the early days of the Tour, cut-off times were reduced dramatically and, for the first time, French TV broadcast live coverage of every stage. In addition to the national and French regional teams, the plan to include an international team gradually developed into one for a North African team consisting of riders from French-controlled Algeria and Morocco.

Gino Bartali

Fausto Coppi had broken his pelvis in a crash at the Giro d'Italia, leaving no clear favourite. Many people believed Gino Bartali stood a good chance although he was a month away from his 36th birthday, others looked to Raphaël Géminiani; while those who considered Louison Bobet to be a "cry baby" (a reputation with which he had been stuck ever since he abandoned the 1947 after finding the Alpine stages too difficult) there were also those who shared manager Maurice Archambaud's opinion that the rider had enormous potential (as would be proved a few years later when he became the first man to win three consecutive Tours), and they believed that he might now have matured sufficiently to win. Finally there was Ferdinand Kübler; a fiery, impetuous and apparently half-crazed Swiss rider with more than enough talent to win a Tour but an equal amount of impulsiveness, which had led him to throw away more than one race in the past with an ill-judged attack or merely on a whim.

Orson Welles was given the honour of starting the first stage, which was won by the Luxembourgian rider Jean Goldschmidt. He then retained the maillot jaune through Stage 2 before Bernard Gauthier finished sixth in a seven-strong break on Stage 3, ending up with 5" overall advantage. Gauthier wasn't considered able to keep it but then did, finishing in sixth place again on Stage 4 to increase it to 2' which remained intact despite his 21st place on Stage 5. Meanwhile, Kübler had finished top ten on the first two stages and ended Stage 5 4'30" down in 9th overall, but he knew he was going to do well in the Stage 6 individual time trial. In fact, he did very well and beat Fiorenzo Magni by 17" and all his rivals by at least 2'55", jumping to third overall with a disadvantage of only 49" - which would have been even greater had be not have decided to stop and change his jersey on the parcours, picking up a 25" penalty for doing so (some sources say that this is incorrect and he was penalised 15" and fined 1,000 francs for wearing a silk jersey rather than a regulation woolen one; while there are obvious advantages to a silk rather than woolen jersey in a time trial, the harshness of time and financial penalty seem so wildly at odds with one another that the first version appears more plausible). Gauthier got away in a successful break again the next day (when Kübler was fined, 100 francs for turning up late at the start line; later in the race he was fined again for getting a push from fans): while he was 11th over the line, the break had been made up of riders far down in the General Classification and he finished with the yellow jersey and an overall advantage of 9'20". Although there was still two weeks of racing to go, a good all-rounder might have been able to defend a lead such a that all the way to the end if he had luck on his side, but Gauthier was not a climber. The favourites didn't even bother trying to take back time over the next few stages, allowing him to keep the jersey and his advantage. Then the race arrived at the Pyrenees and he came 53rd behind Bartali; just like that his huge lead turned into a 9'49" disadvantage and he dropped to 12th overall - he would never wear the maillot jaune again.

Jean Robic

Stages 11 saw one of the great mysterious events in Tour history: Bartali, known as The Pious One on account of his deeply-held Catholic beliefs, escaped with little Jean Robic, who looked like an imp in a painting by Bosch and had the sort of personality that must have tested even Bartali's saintliness, and together they cruised away up the slopes of the Aubisque before being caught by a group of eight including Kléber Piot, who led over Galibier and the Aspin (Piot was primarily a cyclo cross rider and very little is known about him, his performance that day indicates that he had the makings of a superb grimpeur). Huge crowds had gathered to watch the riders tackle the mountains and, as tends to be the way, were not being especially mindful of keeping out of the way: Bartali could not avoid a collision with Robic after a photographer stepped into the road, causing the Frenchman to crash hard. Precisely what happened next remains a mystery: Bartali said that the French spectators accused him of deliberately causing the crash in an attempt to dispose of a rival and that they began punching and kicking him as tried to set off, then one man came at him with a knife; Louison Bobet, who was nearby at the time, said that the spectators were trying to give him a push to get him back on the way and the man with the knife had simply not set it down when he rushed over to help, prior to which he'd been slicing a sausage while having a picnic. Bartali may well have been stunned and confused following the crash and Bobet was an intelligent man who would later win the Tour with his brain as much as his legs, and for that reason many people choose to believe the Frenchman's story. However,it would have been hard for Bobet to see what was going on in a crowd, and why would he have noticed the man slicing a sausage? Also, in recent years it's become known that Bartali both smuggled forged documents around Fascist Italy between groups seeking to help Jewish people escape the country and personally transported numerous Jewish refugees to safety in Switzerland using a specially-designed trailer towed behind his bike. Had he have been discovered, the result would have been summary execution or transportation to a concentration camp - his bravery in therefore in no doubt, for he had faced dangers far greater than a man with a picnic knife and had kept his head. It should also be remembered that like Kübler he'd been fined several times during the race so far, so he might just have been in a bad mood and wanted to make a fuss.

We will never know the truth but, whatever really happened Bartali was sufficiently shaken to announce that he wouldn't be continuing with the race and, as team leader, the majority of the Italians said that they would go with him. Some wanted to stay and help Magni defend the 2'31" advantage with which he finished the stage, but Magni - who, despite holding political beliefs so right-wing he was despised by most other riders, respected the elder statesman of Italian cycling - revealed he was going too, thus becoming the fourth man in history to abandon the Tour while wearing the yellow jersey. Race organisers tried to encourage them to continue by offering them plain grey jerseys so that they'd be less recognisable, but it was to no avail and both the Italian A and B teams abandoned.

Kübler now became overall leader with a 3'20" advantage over Bobet, but he refused to wear the maillot jaune in Stage 12 to acknowledge the fact that it was his by default. The stage was won by a Belgian, Maurice Blomme, and it would be the only Tour stage win of his career. Getting there took so much out of him that he mistook a shadow on the road for the finish line and got off his bike; fortunately a race official was on hand to get him back on his bike and explain he had a few more metres still to go.

Abdel-Kaader Zaaf asleep under the tree

As if to achieve balance with the drama of Stage 11, Stage 13 brought one of the Tour's most amusing events. It was one of those horrendously hot days that sometimes happen around Perpignan and north of the Pyrenees when temperatures rise to more than 40C, the breeze stops blowing off the Mediterranean and the mountains prevent the stale air circulating. The European  riders were unwilling - or unable - to exert themselves and the peloton settled into a slow rhythm, aiming to complete the stage with as little effort as possible. However, Abdel-Kaader Zaaf and Marcel Molinès of the North Africa team were accustomed to the heat of Algeria and found the conditions far less hard-going, so they broke away from the pack early on in the race. Continuing on their way at a high pace, the pair built a lead which reached as much as 20 minutes - sufficient to make Zaaf officially the race leader for a short while. However, by the time they neared the end of the 217km stage, even they were beginning to feel the effects of the weather and stopped to accept drinks offered to them by spectators. Unfortunately for Zaaf, the drink he took was a bottle of wine and, as a Muslim, he'd never consumed alcohol before (Molinès either took a bottle of water or was more used to wine), so it rather went to his head. Before long, he was feeling somewhat the worse for wear and realising he was wobbling dangerously all over the road decided that perhaps he'd better stop for a while in the shade under a tree and see if he started feeling any better (Molines continued and won the stage). Some time later - nobody knows how much later - a group of spectators found him and woke him up. He grabbed his bike, leapt aboard and set off. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to make up for lost time, and possibly still being a little drunk, he failed to realise that he was going back the way he and Molinès had come . When organisers caught up with him, unaware that his confusion was down to alcohol, they assumed his brain had been scrambled by the heat and had him taken to hospital. The next day, he escaped and hurried to the start line where he begged to be allowed to retake the section of the previous stage that he'd missed and continue the race, but being Tour de France officials and every bit as much sticklers for rules as the modern counterparts, the judges wouldn't allow it and upheld his disqualification. (For more information on Zaaf and the good fortune that came his way, click here.)

The weather remained the same for the next few days and nobody could really be bothered to start working on Kübler's 1'06" advantage, considering it small enough to easily be dealt with later in the race. During Stage 15, the peloton as one came to the decision that it was much too hot for cycling, so they stopped, got off and went for a cooling swim in the Mediterranean. Director Jacques Goddet was furious and ordered them to get on with the race immediately or be disqualified - unfortunately for him, reporters found the incident hilarious and he was unfavourably portrayed in the newspapers the next day; he got his revenge by fining all the riders. Stage 16 brought more drama: Kübler won with the Belgian Stan Ockers and Bobet taking second and third right behind him, but the judges declared Bobet to be second - even the French fans were outraged, insisting he was third, and the Belgian team threatened to leave the race if things were not put right. The judges ignored the threat and refused to change the result, and the Belgians eventually backed down and continued.

By the end of Stage 18, during which Bobet tried to win back time on the Izoard, the mountain where he would win the Tour in the future, Kübler's lead had increased to 2'56" and he added another 30" the next day when he finished second, 34" behind Geminiani. It was now beginning to look very much as though he might win, especially with the Stage 20 mountain time trial still to go. He more than lived up to expectations that day, beating Ockers by 5'34" and Bobet by 8'45"; his overall lead going into the final two plain stages was 9'30" on the Belgian and 22'19" on the Frenchman. It wasn't really worth their while trying to claw it back from that point onwards, and so 9'30" was the winning margin for the first Swiss rider to win the Tour de France.

There were many, of course, who said that had Coppi been there or had the Italian teams have stayed in the race, Kübler would not have won. Coppi may indeed have won if he wasn't at home with a broken pelvis; but he was and that's how cycling works, so that point is irrelevant. Bartali, as already described, was past his best and coming to the end of his career - he had been one of the greatest Tour riders ever seen and was still capable of beating far younger men in the mountains, but in this edition the time trials counted for a great deal and he wasn't as fast as he once was. Magni, meanwhile, was a superb rider in the flat time trials, as can be seen by his second place finish in Stage 6 when he was only 17" behind Kübler; but he wasn't much of a climber. However, Kübler could climb and time trial, so it seems that his insistence that he'd have won regardless is probably correct.

On the 24th of July, Kübler will celebrate his 96th birthday. He is the oldest living Tour de France winner, and the longest-lived Tour de France winner of all time.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1  Ferdi Kübler (SUI)  Switzerland 145h 36' 56"
2  Stan Ockers (BEL) Belgium +9' 30"
3  Louison Bobet (FRA) France +22' 19"
4  Raphaël Géminiani (FRA) France +31' 14"
5  Jean Kirchen (LUX) Luxembourg +34' 21"
6  Kléber Piot (FRA) Ile de France–North East +41' 35"
7  Pierre Cogan (FRA) Center–South West +52' 22"
8  Raymond Impanis (BEL) Belgium +53' 34"
9  Georges Meunier (FRA) Center–South West +54' 29"
10  Jean Goldschmit (LUX) Luxembourg +55' 21"

The Death of Tom Simpson

Tom Simpson
30.11.1937 - 13.07.67

It was on this day in 1967 that Tom Simpson - considered at that time and for some years afterwards to have been Britain's best ever hope for a Tour de France overall General Classification winner and still one of only two male British World Champions - died on Mont Ventoux during Stage 13 of the Tour. Tom's death, caused by sheer exhaustion, alcohol, amphetamines and the uniquely challenging conditions found on the mountain has become one of professional cycling's greatest and most-told stories, while the memorial at the spot where he died is a place of pilgrimage for cyclists from around the world.

Simpson did not die in vain: his death was the wake-up call that alerted the world to the prevalence and dangers of doping and forced organisers to begin to consider ways to control it.


La Flèche Wallonne was not held in the wake of the 1940 Nazi invasion and occupation of Belgium, and so the edition held on this day in 1941 - the fifth - was the first time the race had taken place for two years. Running for 205km from Mons to Rocourt, it was notably shorter than in previous years and was won by Sylvain Grysolle, one of the first Classics specialists who after the War would go on to win the Ronde van Vlaanderen and the Omloop Het Volk. Grysolle died on the 19th of January, 1985.

Sylvain Grysolle - image creator unknown, believed public domain. If you own the rights, please contact us to discuss terms/removal.

Cyclists born on this day: Tara Whitten (Canada, 1980); Jack Bobridge (Australia, 1989); Dimitri de Fauw (Belgium, 1981, died 2009); Mirco Lorenzetto (Italy, 1981); Richard Groenendaal (Netherlands, 1971); Des Fretwell (Great Britain, 1955); Pascal Hervé (France, 1964); Benno Wiss (Switzerland, 1962); Michael Schiffner (East Germany, 1949); Vinko Polončič (Yugoslavia, 1957); Walter Tardáguila (Uruguay, 1943); Thomas Hochstrasser (Switzerland, 1976).

Daily Cycling Facts 10.07.2014

Tour de France 1939

Tour de France 1939

18 stages (Stages 2,  6, 8, 12, 17 and 18 split into parts A and B, Stages 10 and 16 split into parts A, B and C), 4,224km.

There were three big differences in 1939 compared to earlier races - one with the race, one with the parcours and one with the riders themselves. The difference in the race was that a mountain time trial had been added for the first time: in Stage 16, riders faced a very tough 64km route between Bonneval and Bourg-Saint-Maurice high in the Rhône-Alpes. The parcours differed because for many years it had closely followed the borders - now, with Europe on the brink of war and worrying news from Germany, the race turned north-west at Annecy and headed through France via Dôle, Dijon and Troyes to Paris, remaining well away from the German frontier. Finally, the riders had at long last realised that Henri Pélissier had been right 20 years earlier - it made sense for an athlete to follow a controlled diet designed to enhance their performance. As a result, they began to take vitamin supplements.

"I'm so glad that now that summer is approaching we have an event that makes us forget the dark political events that are taking place. The Tour de France is something of an armistice of the heart." - Henri Troyat

Neither Germany nor Italy sent teams, nor did Spain as it was torn apart by civil war. This posed a problem for organisers, so for the first time four French regional teams were selected. The Belgians were also permitted to send an A and B team. The main French team wasn't considered the best to ever contested the Tour - André Leducq had retired a year earlier; his most obvious replacements were Georges Speicher, Antonin Magne and Roger Lapébie, but none of them were taking part. Therefore, the Belgians were favourite.

Amédée Fournier won the first Tour stage of his career in Stage 1 after crossing the line first among a group of nine (he won the last of his career in Stage 5 too), but with Romain Maes finishing in second place and recording the same time nobody expected the maillot jaune to stay put for long. In fact, it changed hands the very next day during the Stage 2a individual time trial, when Maes won by 1'24" - and as he was a previous Tour winner, fans assumed he'd hang onto it for a few stages. He did not: that same afternoon he finished Stage 2b 9'36" and in 37th place behind an escape group led by Eloi Tassin (who would become the first post-war French road race champion). Jean Fontenay became overall leader, and with René Vietto 2'10" behind him it was only because of the plain parcours that he kept it for two days.

Vietto became leader after escaping with a group of eight during Stage 4; seemingly an unusual move for a climber as he'd have a hard job defending it on the plain stages to come - his overall advantage remained 6" all the way to the Stage 8b time trial. In that stage he beat the majority of his rivals, increasing his advantage to 58". However, the next day Edward Vissers attacked and got away from the peloton. A chase group - including Vietto - went after him, but he crossed the line 4'04" ahead of them; meanwhile Sylvère Maes (who wasn't related to Romain and presumably had no interest in catching Vissers, who was a member of the Belgian B team he captained) had tagged along with the chase group as a good way of getting himself to the finish faster than the majority of the pack. As the line approached he sprinted past and took second place, thus jumping into second place overall with a 2'57" disadvantage to Vietto. This situation remained the same after Stage 10a, but the gap then increased to 3'19" after the Stage 10b individual time trial; this time it remained the same until Stage 12b when Maes came second, recording an equal time to stage winner Maurice Archambaud, while Vietto was sixth and 1'30" down - Maes' disadvantage was slashed to 1'49". Once again, nothing changed for a couple of stages.

Maes on Izoard, 1939

This led to an interesting situation. Vietto was purely a clumber, Maes was thought to be better on the flat - and there were three mountain stages, three plain stages, one mountain time trial and one plain time trial left. In general, it's easier for a climber to win time in the mountains than it is for a rider who prefers flat terrain in the plain stages, however, and so it was widely believed that Vietto would win the Tour on the Alps. Things did not go according to plan: Vissers led over the Allos and Vars, then - as has happened so many times in Tour history - Izoard changed everything. Maes attacked and easily outclassed Vietto, who found himself completely unable to respond and, by the end of the stage, in second place overall with with 1'49" advantage transformed into a 17'12" disadvantage. Then, in the Stage 16b mountain time trial on Iseran, Maes beat him by 9'48" to increase his lead to 27' - and the only way Vietto could have won after that would be if Maes abandoned. He did not, and even added more time over the remainder of the race; at the end of the final stage the Belgian's advantage was 30'38", the largest winning margin for ten years.

The race ended on the 30th of July. 33 days later, on the 1st of September, Nazi Germany invaded Poland; two days after that France and Britain declared war on Germany. There wouldn't be another Tour for eight years.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Sylvère Maes (BEL) Belgium 132h 03' 17"
2 René Vietto (FRA) South-East +30' 38"
3 Lucien Vlaemynck (BEL) Belgium B +32' 08"
4 Mathias Clemens (LUX) Luxembourg +36' 09"
5 Edward Vissers (BEL) Belgium +38' 05"
6 Sylvain Marcaillou (FRA) France +45' 16"
7 Albertin Disseaux (BEL) Belgium B +46' 54"
8 Jan Lambrichs (NED) Netherlands +48' 01"
9 Albert Ritserveldt (BEL) Belgium B +48' 27"
10 Cyriel Vanoverberghe (BEL) Belgium B +49' 44"


Hélène Dutrieu

Hélène Dutrieu

Born in Tournai, Belgium on this day in 1877, Hélène Dutrieu became arguably the world's first female cycling superstar. Her father, an officer in the Belgian Army, seems to have been of the unusually enlightened opinion that girls and young women should be permitted to have ambitions other than marriage and children; having been raised in such a healthy and nurturing environment she decided after leaving school at the age of 14 to make her way in the world of work. We don't know when she began riding a bike, but there's a good chance that like many of the male cyclists who turned professional in those days she used a bike to get to work and discovered she was good at riding it - and at the age of sixteen she turned professional with the Simpson Lever team.

In 1895, Dutrieu set a women's hour record and she won the World Speed Track Championships in Ostend in both 1897 and 1898, becoming a household name and earning the nickname La Flèche Humaine. In August 1898 she also won the Grand Prix d'Europe, then a few months later the Course de 12 Jours in London - for which she was awarded the Cross of St André by the king of Belgium. In those days, it was impossible for even a woman as talented as Dutrieu to make a living from racing (even now, more than a century later, the vast majority of "professional" female cyclists are forced to find work between races); so she began appearing at variety shows and public events as a stunt rider, one of her most famous stunts being to ride a vertical loop. She also performed stunts on a motorbike and in cars, later becoming a racing driver.

In 1910, Dutrieu became the first woman to pilot a plane with a passenger; later that year she became the fourth woman in the world (and the first from Belgium) to earn a full pilot's licence, after which she became a stunt aviator with a new nickname - The Girl Hawk - and won numerous competitions and set new records (and caused a minor scandal when she revealed that she didn't wear a corset when flying). In the First World War she drove an ambulance between the trenches and was later installed as director of a military hospital, then after the conflict ended she became a journalist. When she married in 1922 she took French nationality, later becoming vice-president of the women's Aero Club of France and established the Coupe Hélène Dutrieu-Mortier, an award of 200,000 francs for the female Belgian or French pilot to have completed the longest flight in any one year. She died on the 26th of June 1961, aged 83. (For a similar character, see Marie Marvingt - the woman who applied to ride the Tour.)


Víctor Hugo Peña, born in Bogota on this day in 1974, was recruited to the US Postal team in 2001 as a domestique serving Lance Armstrong. He rode the Tour in that capacity that year, again in 2002 and then again in 2003 - when, following the team's successful time trial in Stage 4, he became the first Colombian to have ever worn the maillot jaune. He kept it for three stages, then Richard Virenque took it for a single stage in the Alps before it went to Armstrong for the rest of the race.

Davis Phinney, born in Boulder, Colorado on this day in 1959, became the second American rider in the history of the Tour de France to win a stage in 1986. A devastatingly fast sprinter when at his best, he claims (with some justification) to have won more races than any other American cyclist. In 1999, aged 40, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease; together with wife Connie Carpenter-Phinney (also a professional cyclist and three-time National Road Race Champion) he created the Davis Phinney Foundation, a charitable organisation that seeks to improve the lives of others with the disease. Their son, Taylor, is also a famous professional cyclist.

Wilfried Cretskens, born in Herk-de-Stad, Belgium on this day in 1976, won the Juniors Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1993 and 2007 Tour of Qatar. He has ridden in three Grand Tours (the Vuelta a Espana in 2001, the Tour de France in 2005 and 2006) but failed to finish.

Other cyclists born on this day: Wilfried Peeters (Belgium, 1964); Sarah Walker (New Zealand, 1988); Tsutomu Okabori (Japan, 1957); Roberto Amadio (Italy, 1963); Oliver Martin (USA, 1946); Rıfat Çalışkan (Turkey, 1940); Aubrey Bryce (Guyana, 1949); Oliver McQuaid (Ireland, 1954); Héctor Páez (Colombia, 1982); Eom Yeong-Seop (South Korea, 1964); Dante Benvenuti (Argentina, 1925, died 2002); Sonny Cullen (Ireland, 1934, died 1999); Tilahun Alemayehu (Ethiopia, 1962); Jens Glücklich (West Germany, 1966).

Daily Cycling Facts 15.06.2014

The Giro d'Italia set off on this day in 1946, the first edition since the Second World War and latest start date in the history of the race. It covered 3,199km in 20 stages, three of them won by Fausto Coppi - however, he was not able to hold off Gino Bartali who led the race through the final six. This would be the last of Bartali's three Giro victories and his penultimate in a Grand Tour, as he won a second Tour de France the following year; but it marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. Stage 13 had to be stopped and cancelled when the race came under attack - stones were thrown at the peloton and shots fired into the air from the crowd.

Peter Kennaugh

Kennaugh at the Tour di Romandie, 2010

Born on this day in 1989 at Douglas on the Isle of Man,  Peter Kennaugh was a childhood friend of Mark Cavendish. Like Cav, Kennaugh began racing at a young age and competed in local BMX competitions from the age of 6; but he would later come to concentrate on track cycling and became World Scratch Race Junior Champion in 2006. The next year, he held the Junior National titles for Pursuit and Points and returned to road racing, winning the Junior National Championship for that too. In 2008, he won the Under-23 National Road Race title and then took the silver medal in the Elite class for good measure before making his first mark on the European road race scene with first place at the GP Capodarco criterium.

In 2009, Kennaugh won Stage 3 at the Baby Giro, then towards the end of the year announced that he would be riding as a professional in 2010 with the all-new British-based Team Sky (it was widely believed at that time that Cavendish would also join Sky for 2010; but as he explains in his autobiography he never had any intention of dishonouring his contract with Bob Stapleton's Highroad). He finished in second place behind Sky team mate Geraint Thomas at the Nationals that year, then made his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a Espana the next before the team left the race as a sign of respect for their soigneur Txema Gonzalez who died of sepsis during the event.

Kennaugh completed the Giro on his first attempt in 2011, then came third overall at the Route du Sud. He was also third at the National Championships behind team mates Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas, later haring victory with the latter (and Steven Burke, Ed Clancy and Andrew Tennant) after the British team won the Pursuit at the World Track Championships. In 2012, he has once again concentrated on track cycling in preparation for the London Olympics - it paid off because, riding with Thomas,Clancy and Burke in the Team Pursuit, he won a gold medal. The following year, Kennaugh returned to the road with Sky to help win the team time trial at the Giro del Trentino, then also won the Lincoln International. In 2014, he won the Settimana Internazionale di Coppi e Bartali.

Yuliya Martisova

Yuliya Martisova, born in the USSR on this day in 1976, was third at the Russian National Road Race Championships in 2000 and second at the 2001 Trophée d’Or Féminin when only Edita Pucinskaite could beat her. She won the National Road Race title in 2005, 2007 and 2010 and was fifth at the World Championships in 2011, finishing behind Giorgia Bronzini, Marianne Vos, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg and Nicole Cooke - which is nothing to be ashamed about. At the end of 2011 Martisova announced that she would ride for Be Pink in 2012 and, with them, won Stage 1 at the Tour of Adygeya before coming 8th overall. In 2013, riding with Chirio Forno d'Asolo, she was tenth in the Chongming Island round of the World Cup.

Marzio Bruseghin, born in Conegliano on this day in 1974, was Time Trial Champion of Italy in 2006 and won Stage 13 (an individual time trial) at the Giro d'Italia in 2007, also coming eighth overall. In 2008 he won Stage 10 (another ITT) and was third overall, later coming tenth overall at the Vuelta a Espana. That same year, he also completed the Tour de France - he was 27th overall, but completing all three Grand Tours in a single year is a major achievement and one that he shares with only 30 other riders. He completed both the Giro (ninth overall) and the Tour (80th overall) again in 2009, then came 22nd overall at the Vuelta in 2010 and 14th in 2011. At the 2012 Giro he finished in 17th place overall, suggesting that at the age of 37 his career was not over yet.

Chris Lillywhite, who was born in East Molesey, UK on this day in 1966, won the Milk Race (which is now known as the Tour of Britain) in 1993 and the Tom Simpson Memorial in 1994 and 1997. He competed for England at the Commonwealth Games in 1984, 1994 and 1998; in 1994 he was disqualified from the Men's Road Race after grabbing a hold of Australian Grant Rice's shorts and pulling him back in the final sprint. Lillywhite was a professional rider between 1987 and 1999, ending his career with the Linda McCartney team.

Other cyclists born on this day: Ivan Vrba (Czechoslovakia, 1977); Bailón Becerra (Bolivia, 1966); Małgorzata Wysocka (Poland, 1979); Muhammad Shafi (Pakistan, 1933); Jo Ho-Seong (South Korea, 1974); No Yeom-Ju (South Korea, 1968); Jack Disney (USA, 1930); George Nayeja (Malawi, 1946); Ernest Meighan (Belize, 1971); Shue Ming-Shu (Taipei, 1940); Maksym Polishchuk (USSR, 1984); Fang Fen-Fang (Taipei, 1981); Jean Alexandre (Belgium, 1917).