On yer bike around Cambridgeshire today?

Cyclists and drivers out on the roads of Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and nearby are asked to keep an eye out for John Lumbers, an 82-year-old cyclist who left his home in Hauxton, Cambs at 3pm yesterday and hasn't been seen since. Police are concerned about his whereabouts and safety and have described as slim, around 1.80m (5'11") tall. He was wearing a red, white and black cycling jacket, grey cycling shoes and grey tweed trousers when he left home. His bike is a red Mercian road model, similar to the one in the picture below.

If you see him or have any information as to his whereabouts, please call Cambridgeshire Police on 0345 4564564.

John Lumbers, 82, went missing on the 11th of November. Police are concerned for his well-being

Update 13.11.11: Police have found a body, believed to be that of a man in his 80s, in a lake near the village of Little Shelford south of Cambridge and very close to Mr. Lumbers' home. They have yet to release further details.

Daily Cycling Facts

Alexander Serov in the
Paris-Roubaix
(image credit: Jack999
CC BY-SA 2.0)

Happy 29th birthday to Katusha's Alexander Serov, the road and track cyclist who won Stage 4 in the Fleche de Sud and shared first place at the Russian National Track Championships in Team Pursuit and Madison in 2011.

Peter Post
Peter Post, who was born on this day in 1933, became the first Dutch rider to win Paris-Roubaix in 1964 and, in doing so, also won the Ruban Jaune for setting the fastest average speed in a race more than 200km long that year (45.131kph - which, by the way, has yet to be bettered in this race, though it has been beaten in several other events). Post was primarily a track rider who won 65 Six Day events, including Brussels in 1965 when he paired up with Tom Simpson, but he performed well on the roads too; winning the Ronde van Nederland in 1960, a National Road Race Championship in 1963 and 2nd place behind Eddy Merckx in the 1967 Flèche Wallonne.

Two years after he retired from competition in 1972, Post became directeur sportif of the legendary TI-Raleigh team that is sometimes said to have been the most successful in the history of cycling. His unrivaled knowledge of cycling and skill as a coach was enormously influential on the riders who passed through the team, including such legends as Hennie Kuiper, Gerrie Knetemann, Jan Raas and Joop Zoetemelk. Yet he also possessed a very sharp business sense - when Raleigh withdrew for racing, he managed to bring the vast multinational electronics manufacturer Panasonic on board and, with their funds, built up a powerful team around Phil Anderson, Eric Vanderaerden, Viatcheslav Ekimov, Olaf Ludwig and Maurizio Fondriest.

Post retired from team management in 1995, by which time he was ranked as the second most successful directeur sportif of all time. He returned in an advisory capacity for Rabobank in 2005. He died on the 14th of January 2011, aged 77, in Amsterdam.


It's Willem Thomas' 55th birthday today. The Belgian professional won a  small number of criterium races, mostly in his home nation, during the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s. However, his best result was 3rd place in Stage 15 of the 1979 Giro d'Italia.

Happy birthday to the 2010 Tour of Flanders winner Grace Verbeke, who we hope is feeling better after she was hit and injured by a truck while on a training ride in October 2011.

Happy 25th birthday to Vacansoleil-DCM's Rob Ruijgh, fourth place overall in 2011's Four Days of Dunkirk.

More happy birthdays to Giulia Bonetti (22), Nicole Callisto (24), Jorge Castelblanco (23), Andres Avelino Antuna Coro (25), Jinjie Gong (25), Gijs Van Hoecke (20), Shih Chang Huang (23), Ferdi Van Katwijk (31), Angela McClure (21), Anita Molcik (31), Irina Molicheva (23), Yohan Offredo (25), Maximo Rojas Romero (28), Linnea Sjoblom (22), Julien Taramarcaz (24)

Daily Cycling Facts 11.11.11

Ruthie Matthes
(Image credit: James F. Perry
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Happy birthday to Ruthie Matthes, World XC Mountain Bike Champion in 1991, National Criterium champion in 1989, National Road Race champ in 1990 and twice 2nd place runner-up in the now defunct Women's Challenge road race among many other notable results. Matthes was born in the USA in 1965.

William Spencer, American professional cyclist, was born on this day in 1895. Having emigrated to the USA from England, he became a professional in 1916 before being drafted into the Army. He continued cycling after completing his mandatory six months of service, setting a new quarter mile (0.4km) record in 1920 with a time of 25 seconds. He died on the 2nd of October 1963.

Christian Prudhomme
General Director of the Tour de France Christian Prudhomme was born on this day in 1960 and continues the long tradition of the position being filled by a journalist. Having graduated from the Lille ESJ journalism school in 1985, Prudhomme was encouraged to seek employment with the Luxembourgian broadcaster RTL by his tutor who was himself an RTL correspondent. He was accepted on a trial basis and provided reports on sports in which he had an interest, namely rugby, athletics, skiing and - his favourite - cycling.

It's not difficult to spot Prudhomme at the Tour - he's the
man who waves the flag to signal the start of competition
as the riders leave the neutral zone each day
(image credit: LeTour)

A few years later, Prudhomme had become head of sports reporting at the La Cinq television channel which would vanish in 1992 due to financial difficulty. After freelancing for a while, he received an invitation to work for LCI, a news channel, but almost at the same moment he accepted the position he was offered a far more prestigious position with Europe1. In 1998, he became involved in the creation of L'Equipe TV. L'Equipe is, of course, the newspaper that grew from L'Velo, the newspaper that organised the first Tour de France - it and the new channel are both owned by the Amaury Sports Organisation, owners of the Tour. He rapidly rose through the ranks, becoming editor-in-chief before departing to national broadcaster France Télévisions, the French equivalent to the BBC, where he was charged with modernising the network's Stage 2 sports programme. He commentated on the 2000 Tour for the channel, which films and broadcasts the official Tour coverage that is then syndicated to other channels and shown around the world, including in the United Kingdom.

Christian Prudhomme, the man who saved
the Tour de France
(image credit: Dianne Krauss CC BY-SA 3.0)

Prudhomme once said, "Cycling has always made me dream, even if today, alas, it is in a mess. It is an extraordinary sport, a legend of a sport, a sport of legends. It's almost as hard as boxing and combat sports. It takes place in exceptional conditions, obviously the mountains, the cobbles. It's a sport where anything can happen. The weather plays a significant part and the riders have to confront it. It has always made me dream." It is no surprise, then, that when he became assistant director of the Tour de France in 2003 he immediately revealed himself a a fierce opponent of doping, lobbying for more stringent anti-doping controls and harsher penalties for those that failed them. When he became director following Jean-Marie Leblanc's retirement in 2005, he set to work bringing in the stringency he had suggested and three years later was instrumental in the ASO's decision to withdraw the race from UCI control, thus enabling the organisation to introduce tougher checks and punishments than those supported by cycling's governing body.

His willingness to point the finger, name names and rock the boat as part of his efforts to clean up the sport he loves has not always made him popular, as was the case when he directly accused Saunier Duval-Scott manager Joxean Fernández Matxin of organising a doping program that would contribute to the downfall of Riccardo Riccò. However, it is largely due to Prudhomme and his fight against doping that the greatest event in cycling - and arguably in sport as a whole - was able to retain its dignity and continue after the great scandals of 1998 and 2006 came close to killing it.

Daily Cycling Facts 10.11.11

Happy birthday to Simon Richardson, the Welsh paralympic professional cyclist who is 45 today. Richardson returned to cycling in 2005 after a serious car accident in 2001, going on to set a new world record at the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. Sadly, in August this year, he was hit by a car while cycling and sustained a broken pelvis fractures to the spine, a detached lung, a broken breast bone and cuts to his legs, leaving him very unlikely to be able to compete in the 2012 Games in London.

On this day in 1905, Emile Bouhours covered the 100km between Orleans and Vierzon at an average speed of 61.291kph - considerably faster than the current UCI Hour Record for a standard upright bike, which stands at 49.7kph.

Happy birthday also to Amets Txurruka, the Euskaltel-Euskadi rider who is 29 today and began his career with the British-based Barloworld team. Txurruka has been awarded the Combativity jersey in both the Tour de France (2007) and the Vuelta a Espana (2011).

On this day last year it was announced that the Barclays Bike Hire Scheme - also known as the Boris Bikes after London Mayor Boris Johnson despite the fact that the scheme was invented by his predecessor Ken Livingstone  - would be extended to cover East London with an extra 2000 bikes and 4200 "docking stations."

Daily Cycling Facts 09.11.11

Shawn Milne is 30 today

Happy birthday Shawn Milne, the Massachusetts-born professional cyclist currently with the Kenda 5-Hour Energy Team. Milne's career began in high school and he went on to win stages and overall classifications in a series of races including the Fitchburg-Longsjo Classic and the Tour of Taiwan. He represented the USA in the Under-23 Road Race Class at the World Championships in 2002 and 2003. He took 10 hours and 25 minutes to complete the 113km course.

On this day in 1979, the famous Castelli brand - manufacturer of some of the most sought-after cycling clothes - was awarded the Corriere dello Sport Discobolo for having in the words of the presentation letter "in a truly futuristic way, revolutionized clothing for cyclists."

Daily Cycling Facts 08.11.12

November the 8th 2011

Frantz

Today marks 62 years since the death of Paul Kroll during the Berlin 1000 Laps at the Funkturm Track velodrome in 1949.

It's been 26 years since the death of Nicolas Frantz, the Luxembourg-born winner of the Tour de France in 1927 and 1928. Riding his first Tour in 1924, Frantz won two stages and achieved second place overall behind the great Ottavio Bottechia and was National Road Champion from 1923 to 1934. He died four days after his 86th birthday in 1985.


Happy birthday to Jan Raas, the Dutch ex-World Road Champion (1979) and winner of ten stages in the Tour de France. Raas also won two Ronde van Vlandaarens, a Paris-Roubaix, Milan-San Remo and five Amstel Gold Races during the 1970s and 80s. He later became manager of Team Rabobank, a position he held until 2003.

George Pilkington Mills, an English cyclist who won the first Bordeaux-Paris in 1891, died on this day in 1945.

...and happy birthday to John Orbea, cyclist and blogger who is 37 today!

Daily Cycling Facts 07.11.11

November the 7th, 2011

Happy birthday to Tanya Dubnicoff, the retired Canadian track cyclist who represented her country in three Olympics and won four gold medals in the Pan-American Games. She now lives in California where she works as a cycling coach, training Team Canada among many others and is 42 years old.

Happy birthday to Hilton Clarke, the Australian professional of the United Healthcare team. This year he became the first rider to win the Clarendon Cup (formerly the CSC Invitational) twice. Known as a sprinter, he is 32 and will ride for Toyota-United Pro Cycling Team in 2012.

The first Paris to Rouen race took place on this day in 1869, making it the first official and organised bicycle race in history. James Moore, born in Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk in 1849 (but lived in France since childhood) beat more than 200 opponents (including four women) to win (he may have also won a race the previous year, but there is no reliable evidence for this).

Happy birthday to Tom Meeusen, the Belgian road, mountain bike and cyclo cross rider from the Telenet-Fidea team.

November the 7th 2004 saw the inauguration of Sri Lanka's Cyclone, a mass participation bicycle rally aimed at establishing cyclist's rights and promoting the bike as a means of transport in the Asian nation.

James Moore (right) with an 1869 model Specialized Venge

On this day in 1942, Fausto Coppi set a new Hour Record at 45.798km at the Vigorelli Track.

Daily Cycling Facts 06.11.11

Today would have been Frank Vandenbroucke's 37th birthday. Frank, nicknamed VDP, was a bad boy but a colourful one - in 2006, while banned from professional racing, we was caught out while competing in an Italian race using a licence made out to Francesco del Ponte with a photograph of Tom Boonen. His cocaine addiction was a likely contributor to his long-standing depression and the pulmonary embolism that killed him when he was just 34 years of age.

It's the 47th anniversary of the death of Tour de France (1951) and Giro d'Italia (1950) winner Hugo Koblet, another colourful character whose career might have brought more success had he not have succumbed to a playboy lifestyle featuring a number of beautiful women, countless parties and, eventually, debt. He died in a car crash that many eye-witnesses believe was a deliberate suicide, having seen him drive his Alfa Romeo past a roadside pear tree three times before apparently deliberately steering into it at high speed. He was 39 years old.

Not so well known nowadays is Heiri Suter, another Swiss cyclist who became the first man to ever win Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders in a single year in 1923. Suter was also unofficial world champion in 1922 and 1925 after winning the Grand Prix, official Swiss road champion five times during the 1920s and multiple winner of several Classics including the now defunct Züri-Metzgete (six times in ten years) and Paris-Tours (twice) and the first non-Belgian to win the Tour of Flanders. He died aged 79 in 1978.

In 2005, Marianne Vos won the Elite European Cyclo Cross.

On this day in 2007, bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased the wheel and component manufacturer ZIPP Speed Weaponry.