Daily Cycling Facts 18.08.12

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 (now Matrix-Prendas) 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." Wyman knows a thing or two about cycling - his team has become one of the most successful British cycling teams of all time - and 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.

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 and singing the praises of their products. 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.

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 ride 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 17.08.12

Filippo Simeoni

Filippo Simeoni

Born in Desio on this day in 1971, Filippo Simeoni was taken on as a trainee by Carrera Jeans-Tassoni in 1994 and showed sufficient promise to receive a professional contract the following year, then spent all but twp of the next fourteen series riding for a sucession of Italian teams (in 2005, he raced for Swiss-based Naturino-Sapore di Mare, the team relocated to Italy in 2006; in 2008 for Ceramica Flaminia-Bossini Docce who, for that one year, were based in Ireland before they too relocated to Italy). During that time, he became known as a super-domestique, a rider who could chase down attacks and still deliver his team leader to the best spot to win a race, but also one who could take a few victories of his own when given opportunity to do so. His best results were his two stage wins at the Vuelta a Espana; one in 2001 and one in 2003, and he also became Italian Road Race Champion in 2008, the year before he retired.

Simeoni's palmares, if we are truthful, is not especially impressive - despite a long career, he achieved just eight victories as a professional and his best Grand Tour result was 55th overall at the 1998 Tour de France. However, he was a character and is fondly remembered for his occasionally rebellious nature: when he won his first Vuelta stage, he stopped shortly before the finish line and walked across holding his bike above his head. Many interpreted this as an ungracious act designed to show rivals that he could still win even if he walked, others said that he was trying to show that the bicycle, rather than the rider, is the most important part of a race. Simeoni himself said that he had intended it to be a tribute to the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks, which had taken place sixteen days earlier. Nevertheless, the UCI fined him.

Later, he became involved in a long-running battle with Lance Armstrong. Simeoni was caught out by a doping control in 2001 and received a relatively short ban after wisely deciding that the best way forward was to co-operate with the investigation and make a full confession; and with cycling finally waking up to how serious a problem doping had become in the wake of the Festina Affair and a number of deaths attributed to EPO, Simeoni's testimony would rock cycling - especially when he stated that he had been prescribed EPO and growth hormones by the highly-respected sports doctor Michele Ferrari in 1996 and 1997. Dr. Ferrari's highest-profile client was Armstrong, who publicly called Simeoni a liar in an article published by Le Monde in 2003. Armstrong had become a little too used to those he saw as his enemies backing down the moment he called them out by that time, but Simeoni was made of sterner stuff - he launched a defamation suit, seeking to sue for €100,000 and stating that any money awarded to him would be donated to charitable causes. During Stage 18 at the Tour the following year, Simeoni bridged to a six-strong breakaway group. Though neither he nor any other member of the group posed any threat to Armstrong's lead, the American went after him, which in turn forced US Postal's rivals T-Mobile to respond and destroyed any chance the riders in the break had of winning the stage. They begged Armstrong to return to the peloton and let them have their opportunity to shine, an opportunity offered to the best of the non-GC contenders in any Tour, but he would not. Eventually, Simeoni buckled under the pressure and dropped back to the main group where he was met with a barrage of abuse from several riders who had allied themselves with Armstrong, among them Danielle Nardello, Filippo Pozzato and Andrea Peron.

Traditionally, riders do not compete with one another until the sprinters try to be first to the finish line during the final stage of the Tour; instead, they pose for the press and the leader basks in his hard-earned glory. Simeoni's rebelliousness once again came to the fore, because he wanted to show that he was not cowed by Armstrong's bullying tactics, and he attacked the leader time and time again. Each time, US Postal chased him down and brought him back; and each time Simeoni was subjected to more abuse and, shamefully, a barrage of spit from several riders. It was not one of professional cycling's finest moments.

In time, it would become apparent that Armstrong had made a serious mistake - Simeoni was still a prosecution witness in an investigation into Dr. Ferrari at the time of the 2004 Tour, and lawyers involved with the case felt that Armstrong's actions constituted witness intimidation. He was questioned over the incidents early the next year, but no further action was taken; then in December he was indicted and ordered to face charges of defamation dating from the 2003 Le Monde article. That case was also dropped, in April 2006. Armstrong escaped prosecution but, it seemed to many fans and other riders, by the narrowest of margins, and the Cult of Lance began to crumble.

Thomas Gascoyne

Thomas Gascoyne

Thomas Jepson Gascoyne - various known as Thomas Jeb Gascoyne, Thomas Jefferson Gascoyne or Thomas Mills - was born in Whittington, Derbyshire on this day in 1876 and became a cyclist in 1893. Three years later he made an attempt on the World 25-mile record, the first time he had ever attempted to beat a record greater than 10 miles, and did it in 57'18.4" - 1'43.2" faster than the previous holder's 59'01.6". According to contemporary reports, he was paced by a three-man tandem but overtook it because the combined effort of the riders was too slow for him.

Gascoyne would go on to set numerous other records, including the two miles on a tandem and the flying quarter mile. This led to widespread fame, and when he went to the USA in 1901 his arrival was reported by the New York Times, which seems to have been the first time he was called Thomas Jefferson Gascoyne. The newspaper stated that he had never been beaten in a pursuit race, and on the 20th of July he beat the famous "Major" Marshall Taylor twice in Boston. The following day, having first won a half-mile handicap, he took part in a pursuit without taking a rest break in between and was beaten for the first time.

For reasons unknown, Gascoyne chose to walk away from professional cycling a short while after his return to Europe and emigrated to Australia with a friend (also a cyclist) named Brown. Rather than continue making a living from their sport, they found badly-paid manual jobs and kept them for several years before entering amateur races under false names; Gascoyne became Thomas Mills and Brown became Atkinson. Neither man was race fit; however, Gascoyne's natural talent was sufficient that before too long rumours began to circulate and both men were forced to reveal their true identities - fortunately, the Australian public did not consider their actions dishonest, probably because they'd worked hard for little pay before returning to racing, and Gascoyne in particular became something of a hero.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Gascoyne enlisted in the Australian army and was posted to the trenches of West Flanders. He died there during the Battle of Passchendaele at Ypres on the 4th of October 1917, when he was 41. His body was not recovered and presumably lies where it fell, his memory is preserved at the Memin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres.


Álvaro Pino, born in Ponteareas, Spain on this day in 1956, is a rider who is chiefly famous for his success in the Vuelta a Espana - he was 22nd in 1981, tenth in 1982, fourth in 1983, eighth in 1985 and 1988 and fifth in 1989. His best result - and the race for which he is best remembered - was the 1986 Vuelta, which he won against the favourites Laurent Fignon of France, Sean Kelly of Ireland and Robert Millar of Scotland.

Magali le Floc'h, born in France on this day in 1975, won some 28 races during her long career from 1994 to 2008. She was National Road Race Champion in 2002 and 2005 and won the Coupe de France in 2001, 2005 and 2008.

Phillip Lavery, who was born in Dublin on this day in 1990, has been gaining good results ever since he came second in the National Junior Road Race Championship in 2007. 2012, which he has spent with the Node4-Giordana team, has been the best of his career to date with victories at the GP Stephen Roche, the Shay Elliot Memorial, the Under-23 Nationals and a bronze at the Nationals in the Elite class.

Massimo Strazzer, born in Italy in this day in 1969, managed numerous podium stage finishes at the Giro d'Italia and, in 2001, won the Points competition.

Other cyclists born on this day: Sin Dae-Cheol (South Korea, 1959); Rinus Paul (Netherlands, 1941); Roland Zöffel (Switzerland, 1938); Julio Rubiano (Colombia, 1953); Algis Oleknavicius (West Germany, 1947); Les Ingman (Great Britain, 1927, died 1990); Jean Bourlès (France, 1930); Bojan Ropret (Yugoslavia, 1952); George Cameron (USA, 1881, died 1968); Carl Naibo (France, 1982); Kenneth Røpke (Denmark, 1965); Michael Hepburn (Australia, 1991).

Daily Cycling Facts 16.08.12

Desgrange was a successful rider in his
own right and won many races - such as
the 1893 National Tricycle Championship

On this day in 1940 Henri Desgrange - Father of the Tour de France, its director from inauguration in 1903 until 1936 and the inventor of modern bicyce stage and Audax racing - died at his Mediterranean villa. He had undergone a prostate operation shortly before the Tour in 1936, then persuaded doctors to give him their permission to follow the race in a car filled with cushions; but suffered great agony during the first stage and gave up the next day, handing over control of the race to Jacques Goddet. (For more on Desgrange's life and why it's likely that he - rather than, as many people claim, Géo Lefèvre - that first came up with the idea of holding a bike race to advertise the L'Auto newspaper, click here.)

Fabio Casartelli
Born in Como on this day in 1970, Fabio Casartelli started cycling when he was nine, encouraged by his father who was a good amateur rider. He won a gold medal at the Olympics during his own amateur career (road race 1992; the first Italian to win since 1968) and turned professional with Ariostea the following year, when he finished in the top three on three stages at the Tour de Suisse. A rider with enormous potential, Casartelli was a fine climber who also performed well on other stages - and was soon being tipped for future Grand Tour success. He moved to ZG Mobili in 1994, then to the US-based Motorola in 1995.

Fabio Casartelli
16.08.1970 - 18.07.1995

On the 18th of July 1995, during Stage 15 of the Tour de France, he lost control of his bike whilst descending the Col du Portet d'Aspet at high speed. Several other riders were also involved in the crash but got away with injuries of varying severity; Casartelli's head struck the low wall running alongside the road. Doctors reached him within ten seconds, but although television cameras showed him lying on the tarmac in a pool of blood for only a second or two it was obvious to fans that he had suffered massive head injuries and was very badly hurt indeed. Aged 24, he died in the helicopter on the way to hospital.

The next day, his Motorola team crossed the finish line together with the other riders following slowly behind them. Prizes were handed out as normal, then all recipients pooled them and donated them to Casartelli's family. Lance Armstrong, also with Motorola, dedicated his Stage 18 to him and there is now a memorial at the spot where he fell. Since 1997, the Youth category at the Tour has been known officially as the Souvenir Fabio Casartelli.


Éric Caritoux
Éric Caritoux, who was born on this day in 1960, had to become a cyclist - he came into the world at Carpentras on Provence, at the foot of cycling's holiest mountain Ventoux. Having begun his career with a local club, the old volcano became a regular feature of his training rides.

Eric Caritoux, Tour 1993

In 1982, Caritoux won the amateurs' Tour de Vaucluse, beating Laurent Fignon and getting noticed by Sem-France Loire boss Jean de Gribaldy, who signed him up for 1983. De Gribaldy was seen as something of an unorthodox character by other managers for his habit of offering contracts to riders that no other teams wanted, especially those reaching typical requirement age. However, Sean Kelly says "he was a long way ahead of his time. He had some great ideas. He was 10 years ahead of everyone else on diet. He was clear about what you could and couldn’t eat 10 years before the other teams started to think about it" - thus, aging riders discovered a new lease of competitive life with de Gribaldy, and good young riders became great (for the story of how de Gribaldy signed up Kelly, click here). Caritoux flourished; that same year he rode his first Tour de France and came 24th overall - a superb result for a debutant and one that elevated him from Kelly's domestique to a team leader.

Caritoux fulfilled that very role at the Vuelta a Espana in 1984, and won overall - a surprise not only because it was his second professional year, but because up until one week before the race began neither he nor the team - now re-named Skil-Reydem - had not planned to be there. De Gribaldy, in his usual eccentric fashion, had completely forgotten that he'd promised the race organisers that he would send a team. They, meanwhile, had not and threatened him with a breach of contract case worth £50,000; so he put a team together as rapidly as possible, phoning Caritoux, who was on holiday at the time, and asking him to fly to the south of Spain where the race was due to begin. In the circumstances, nobody expected Skil-Reydem to do well; but Caritoux unexpectedly found form and won the first mountain stage, then took the leader's jersey - which at that time was yellow, rather than gold as it is today - from Pedro Delgado during Stage 12. Caritoux was every bit as surprised as Delgado was when he then kept it for the rest of the race, especially when he did well enough in the final time trial to hold off nearest rival Alberto Fernández Blanco, who was by far the more talented time trial rider (and who, with his wife, was tragically killed in a car crash on the 14th of December that same year, one month before his 30th birthday). Caritoux's winning margin, 6", is the smallest in the history of the Vuelta.

In 1986, Caritoux joined Fagor, a team that looked set for considerable success but which suffered from its managers' lack of organisational skills; his results suffered as a result, which explains why he was 20th at the Tour - a good result, but not as good as might be expected of a rider who had won a Grand Tour in his second year. His two years with the team brought only one race win, the 1986 Trophée des Grimpeurs (which, first run in 1913 as the Polymultipliée, was last held in 2009 and seems sadly to have vanished forever), though 23rd at the 1987 Tour was another respectable enough result, if not quite up to his abilities. In 1988 he went to Kas-Canal 10, where he would once again ride with Sean Kelly, and his results improved immediately: he won the criteriums at Aulnat, Riom-en-Montagne, Toulouse and Lamballe,  18th place at the Tour and - best of all - the National Road Race Championship. Kas had returned to cycling in 1986, having been dissolved after twenty years in 1979; it would disappear again at the end of the 1988 season, leaving Caritoux in search of another team. This time, he chose R.M.O, where he would stay for four seasons during which he won another National Championship and more respectable Tour placings, then went to Chazal-Vetta-MBK when R.M.O was dissolved at the end of 1992. It was increasingly obvious that his best years were drawing to a close, but Caritoux remained a strong rider: he was 37th at the Tour in 1993, then 22nd in 1994. At the end of the year, he announced his retirement and returned to Carpentras where he now owns a holiday business and a vineyard. Just as it is for all the people who live around Ventoux, cycling remains part of his life.

Piet Rooijakkers

Piet Rooijakkers

Born in Gerwen, Netherlands on this day in 1980, Piet Rooijakkers completed a university degree in business in 2002, then decided to try to make a career from cycling rather than going straight into management. He joined the UCI Category 3 Löwik-Tegeltoko team in 2003 and went to the Olympia's Tour, but his season was ruined by a crash during Stage 5.

Rooijakkers remained with Löwik on 2004 and won the bronze medal at the National Championship for Elite riders without professional contracts, then went to the Continental-class AXA Procycling in 2005 and started showing some serious promise with stage wins at the Olympia's Tour and the Ronde van Midden-Brabant; which earned him a contract with Pro-Continental Skil-Shimano in 2006. That year passed without victory, as is often the case when a cyclist first moves into the upper ranks; 2007 brought him third place at the Berlare criterium. The following year he managed third place on Stage 3 at the Tour of Qatar which, along with tenth place overall at the 2009 Tour Méditerranéen will have helped persuade managers to select him for their Tour de France squad when the team received a wildcard entry - unfortunately, a crash during the Stage 4 time trial left him with a broken arm.

Rooijakkers was undoubtedly a good rider, but he was never able to live up to the promise he'd once shown. In 2010, when his best result was fifth for Stage 1 at the Giro Trentino, Skil decided not to extend his contract and he retired.

Daniel Willems
Daniel Willems, born in Herentals, Belgium on this day in 1956, won 75 professional victories between 1978 (when he joined IJsboerke-Gios) and 1983 (when he rode for Safir-Van de Ven) - he was also extremely successful before turning professional, winning the road races at the National Military Championship in 1976 and the National Amateur Championship a year later.

His professional career got off to an excellent start with victory in the Promises category at the Omloop Het Volk. He lived up to it, going on to win the Brabantse Pijl and Scheldeprijs and taking  third place at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1979; then in 1980 revealed that he was a stage racer of considerable note too when he won the Prologue and five consecutive stages at the Tour de Suisse and the General Classification at the Vuelta a Andalucia. In 1981 he won the Waalse Pijl, then went to the Tour de France where he finished third in the Prologue, won Stages 11 and19 and finished in the top ten on eight other stages before abandoning in the penultimate stage. The following year he was 23rd in the Prologue and won Stages 3 and 20 but only finished top ten on two stages - however, he did better overall and was seventh in the General Classification and fourth in the Points competition. In 1983 he was 17th in the Prologue and looked all set to do well again, perhaps even bettering his previous results, but after experiencing problems on several stages was in 61st place by the end of Stage 16 and abandoned soon afterwards. Sadly, he would never again find the form he had once enjoyed and began to be plagued by bad health; after going without victory in 1984 and 1985, he retired.

Aksel Gresvig

Aksel Gresvig

Born Aksel Johan Andersen in Græsvig, Norway on this day in 1875, Aksel Gresvig was the son of a village shopkeeper who died when he was six years old; after which the family moved first to Fredrikstad and then to Christiania in Oslo. He bought his first bike when he was 18 and fell in love with it, spending his free time training around the Akerhus Festning castle, which had become a popular spot with competitive cyclists - including World Champion Wilhelm Henie, with who Gresvig became friends - whilst the old race track at Bygdøy was being redeveloped into a proper velodrome. They invited to join their club and, once the new velodrome was complete, his road bike was exchanged for a track bike; he would go on to win three National and two Scandinavian Championships titles between 1897 and 1900.

Gresvig began working as an insurance clerk in 1893, but very soon decided he'd rather try to make his living by selling bikes and spent the next few years working in bike shops, learning how to run a retail business and bike mechanics. He opened his own shop in 1901, then seven years later began to produce bikes - he was a sufficiently gifted businessman and designer for the company to actually grow during the Great Depression, taking over failed shops and manufacturers and rejuvenating them.

Gresvig died on the 16th of December 1958. His company, now trading as G-Sport, Intersport and Super-G, has some 330 outlets and is now the largest chain of sports supplies shops in Scandinavia.


Katarzyna Pawłowska, born in Przygodzice on this day in 1989, won the gold medal for the Scratch race at the 2012 World Championships and then went on to become Polish Road Race Champion. She competed in the London Olympic Games, coming 11th in the road race.

Jonathan Bellis, born in Douglas, Isle of Man on this day in 1988, became National Junior Individual Pursuit Champion in 2006 and rode with the winning pursuit team at the European Junior Championships, also winning Stage 4 at the Junior Tour of Wales for the second year running; then a year later won the European Under-23 Points and Scratch Race Championships. In 2009, Bellis was critically injured when he crashed his scooter near Team GB's training camp in Quarrata, spending four weeks in an induced coma. He returned to SaxoBank after recovering, but found the pressures of ProTour racing too great and transferred to the Continental An Post-Sean Kelly team for 2012.

Arnaldo Pambianco, born in Betinoro, Italy on this day in 1935, spent eight days in the maglia rosa before winning the 1961 Giro d'Italia - he had been seventh overall at the Giro and the Tour de France the previous year. Despite the old stereotype stating that Italian riders couldn't perform well in the often cold and wet races of Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Pambianco could: he won the Brabantse Pijl in 1964.

Six-time French National MTB Cross Country Champion (2003-2008) Julien Absalon was born in Remiremont on this day in 1980. He also won the European Championship in 2006, the World Championship 2004-2007, the World Cup in 2003, 2006 and 2007 and gold medals at the Olympics of 2004 and 2008. Still racing today, for Orbea (his home since 2008), he has won eight races thus far in 2012.

Alvaro Tardáguila

Uruguayan Alvaro Tardáguila, who was born on this day in 1975, won the Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay in 2005 - 33 years after his father, Walter, won the same race. Later that same year, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and EPO at Milwaukee's Great Downer Avenue Race and received a two-year ban; he returned to competition in 2008 and continues racing in South America to this day.

Jelle Nijdam, born in Zundert, Netherlands on this day in 1963, rode ten Tours de France between 1985 and 1995 - he won the Prologue in 1987,  Stage 5 in 1988, Stages 4 and 14 in 1989, Stage 6 in 1990 and Stage 5 in 1991. Other highlights of his career included the National Pursuit Championship and Tour of Luxembourg in 1985, the National Derny Championship and Postgirot Open in 1986, the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1987, the Amstel Gold Race in 1988, Paris-Brussels and Paris-Tours in 1989and numerous other stage races and criteriums.

Born in Springfield, Missouri on this day in 1947, John Kennedy Howard was US National Road Race Champion in 1968, 1972, 1973 and 1975, took part in the Olympics of 1968, 1972 and 1976, won the first two Red Zinger Classics and came second at the first ever Race Across America in 1982 (then known as The Great American Bike Race, only four riders took part). In 1985, Howard set a new motor-paced bicycle speed record at 245kph on the Bonneville Salt Flats; it would remain intact for ten years.

Marc Sergeant was born in Aalst on this day in 1959 and became Belgian Amateur Road Race Champion in 1981. The year after that he won the Vuelta a Andalucia, then in 1983 came third at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and then Elite National Champion in 1984, also entering the Tour de France that year and coming 48th. In 1986 he won the Nationals again, then won Stage 5 at the Tour a year later - his only stage win in twelve Tours. Following his retirement in 1996, Sergeant became a manager at Lotto-Belisol.

Other cyclists born on this day: Paul Deem (USA, 1957); Brian McDonough (USA, 1965); Richie Thomson (New Zealand, 1940, died 2012); Gheorghe Bădără (Romania, 1941); Johnnie Matthews (Great Britain, 1884, died 1969); César Daneliczen (Brazil, 1962); Teodor Vasile (Romania, 1947); Mario Beccia (Italy, 1955); Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 15.08.12

Régis Clère

Régis Clère, who was born in Langres, France on this day in 1956, got his first professional contract with Miko-Mercier-Vivagel in 1981 after winning two stages at the Tour de l'Avenir in the previous years; that very same season, he became National Champion in Pursuit and the Points race, won the Prologue and Stage 15 at the Vuelta a Espana and came 51st at the Tour de France - during which he managed to get himself onto the podium after coming third on Stage 1b. He had been born into a family of peasant farmers and, like so many cyclists before and since, his determination when racing stemmed from a determination to make a better life for himself than his ancestors had known - and he soon picked up a reputation for being an aggressive, combative rider who forced himself to keep riding hard when others had gone into survival mode.

In 1982, Clère won the National Road Race Championship; then he went back to the Tour and came fifth in the Prologue and top ten on two stages, finishing up in 45th place overall, and the year after that he won Stage 11 before abandoning a few days later. In 1987 he won Stages 16 and 23, and in 1989 he won the bronze medal in the World Pursuit Championship race, but was forced to retire after a car in which he was traveling crashed, leaving him with facial injuries and two smashed femurs. In retirement, he returned to run the farm from which cycling had offered an escape and remained there for the rest of his life, sometimes racing for a local amateur team. Clère died of heart failure while undergoing an operation in Dijon on the 9th of June 2012.

Jérôme Neuville

Jérôme Neuville, born in Saint-Martin d'Hères on this day in 1975, won the European Omnium Championship in 1996 and 1997, won the National Madison Championship in 1997, 1999, 2003 and 2005, the National Pursuit Championship in 2001 and 2003, the World Madison Championship in 2001 and 2002 and the World Scratch Championship in 2006. In 1998, Neuville crossed over to road cycling with a trainee contract at Crédit Agricole, doing sufficiently well to be kept on as a neo-pro the next year. However, he failed to replicate his track success on the road and the team terminated his contract in 2003.

José Antonio Momeñe, who was born in Zierbena on this day in 1940, won the Vuelta a Andalucia in 1962, Stage 3 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1966 and Stage 6 at the Giro d'Italia in 1968. He also came  fifth overall at the Vuelta a Espana and fourth overall at the Tour de France in 1966

Yoshiuki Abe, born in Osaka in this day in 1969, turned professional with the Italian Panaria-Vinavil team in 1996, then went with team manager Maurizio Piovani when he switched to Mapei in 1997 - the year he became the only Japanese rider to win the Japan Cup (he still is) and also took the gold medal at the National Road Race Championships. He won the National Time Trial Championship two years later, the the National Road Race for a second time. In 2003 he joined the Japanese Shimano Racing team and won the Tour of China. The Shimano team became based in the Netherlands in 2005 after securing a co-sponsor, Memory Corps; Abe remained with them until 2008, by which time the organisation had become Skil-Shimano, then returned to Japanese racing with Matrix-Powertag in 2011.

Giampaolo Caruso, who was born in Avola, Italy on this day in 1980, was European Under-23 Road Race Champion and took the silver medal at the U-23 Worlds in 2001. In 2004 he completed the Vuelta a Espana, then in 2005 went to the Giro d'Italia and came nineteenth - and then twelfth in 2006, his best ever Grand Tour result. He was one of the many riders implicated during Operacion Puerto but the investigation into him was dropped by the Spanish Federation; the Italian Olympic Committee was unsatisfied with this result and went to the Court of Arbitration in Sport seeking a two-year suspension, but he was again cleared. Caruso rode his first Tour de France with Katusha in 2012, and came 37th.

Dimitri Fofonov, born in Almaty, then USSR on this day in 1976, won a series of Kazakh national track titles around the turn of the century and performed sufficiently well on the road to earn a contract with Cofidis in 2001. He rode the Vuelta a Espana with them that year but didn't finish, then came ninth on Stage 13 in 2002 and rode the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in subsequent years, managing nineteenth overall at the Tour in 2008. After the Tour, it was announced that a ample he provided shortly after Stage 18 had tested positive for vasodilator heptaminol, a drug that had been removed from WADA's banned list in 2004 but then reinstated two years later; he was sacked by Crédit Agricole on the 27th of July. Fofonov joined Astana when his two-year ban expired and remains with them to this day - he returned to the Vuelta that year and came 57th, then finished the World Championship road race in twelfth place; in 2011 he ride the Tour and was sixth on Stage 17, coming 106th overall, then he came tenth of Stage 10 and 63rd overall in 2012.

Other cyclists born on this day: Mercedes Cagigas (Spain, 1979); Alejandro Ramírez (Colombia, 1981); Selenge Kimoto (Kinshasa, 1966); Christophe Capelle (France, 1967); Sam Willoughby (Australia, 1991); Lionel van Brabant (Belgium, 1926, died 2004); Chad Beyer (USA, 1986); Ragnvald Martinsen (Norway, 1906, died 1987); Adam Craig (USA, 1981); Mieczysław Kapiak (Poland, 1911, died 1975); Jesús Escalona (Venezuela, 1953); Delmo Delmastro (Argentina, 1936); Claude Brugerolles (France, 1931, died 1978); Charles Hill (Great Britain, 1886); Raúl Domínguez (Cuba, 1972); Gaston Gerosa (Switzerland, 1923); Erik Andersen (Denmark, 1902, died 1980); Jean-Pierre van Zyl (South Africa, 1975).

Daily Cycling Facts 14.08.12

Andrea Peron

Andrea Peron

Born in Varese on this day in 1971, Andrea Peron received his first professional contract from Gatorade in 1993 and rode his first Tour de France that same year, coming 20th in the Prologue but abandoning after Stage 10. In 1994, having switched to Polti-Vaporetto, he was 61st overall; the year after than 44th. Two years later, having stayed away in 1995, he was 56th; then he stayed away for another year before coming back in 1999 to take tenth - his best ever result in a Grand Tour.

In 2004, shortly before the Tour, Le Monde published a report claiming that Peron and a number of other riders were still under police investigation following the notorious police raid on his then team Fasso-Bortolo's hotel before Stage 18 at the 2001 Giro d'Italia. Fortunately for him, the drugs police recovered from his room were permitted painkillers containing an amount of caffeine below the maximum and he'd already been cleared of all charges; he was, therefore, free to ride.

Peron was the rider who, in 1995, led Motorola at walking pace over the finish line of Stage 16 at the Tour de France while the peloton followed in silence behind them; a mark of respect for their team mate Fabio Casartelli, who had died in a crash on the Col du Portet d'Aspet the previous day.

Andrea Carrea
During Stage 9 of the 1952 Tour de France, a group got away from the peloton and Walter Diggelman, who rode six day races with Hugo Koblet in the late 1940s, won. Among the escapees was a little-known 27-year-old named Andrea Carrea, who had been born in Gavi Ligure on this day in 1924 and who was, by all accounts, the very humblest of domestiques ("The incarnation of personal disinterest... showing to perfection the notion of personal sacrifice. He refused the slightest bit of personal glory," said journalist Jean-Luc Gatellier). Having been seventh over the finish line he made his way to the hotel and set about doing whatever it is that domestiques do whilst waiting for their team leaders to finish with the masseurs. He hadn't been there long when the police showed up, looking for him. "What have I done wrong?" he asked, entirely mystified. They weren't there to arrest him; they were there for a reason that, as far as Carrea was concerned, was much worse than being accused of a crime he hadn't committed - he'd won enough time on the stage to be the new overall race leader.

Believing that team leader Coppi - of whom he was completely in awe, and to whom he had dedicated himself - would be furious, he burst into tears (some accounts say that Carrea was told he'd become race leader on the finish line and that he never went back to the hotel, nor were the police ever involved. Others say that he was told, then fled back to the hotel in panic. I like the version in which he didn't know until the police found him best, and since we'll never know for certain what happened - unless someone risks spoiling the story by asking Carrea who, at the time of writing, is still alive, you can pick whichever version appeals most to you). On the podium, Carrea was distraught, eyes fixed firmly on the ground in shame except for frequent furtive glances about him for Coppi, whom he expected to descend wrathfully upon him at any moment.

"Chin up, mate!" Coppi attempts to reassure Carrea

Coppi was still riding when the news reached him, getting to the finish line as Carrea was on the podium. Hearing of his domestique's distress, he went straight to congratulate him and did all he could to reassure him that he was pleased rather than angry, but Carrea was not convinced and worried that his master would punish him later on when no journalists were around to see, or at a later date in the peloton - where the worst retribution of all is meted out, and the careers of domestiques who have fallen out of favour can be brought to an end. Coppi later wrote, "Carrea gave everything to me. In return I offered him only money. I know very well that if he was not my team-mate he would earn much less, and when all is said and done he is happy and many of his comrades envy him, but I personally think he deserves more than he has the right to: a little of the intoxication of triumph. I had a way of settling the debt: it was to let him wear the jersey for a few days."

The following morning, Carrea made a point of being photographed by journalists as he polished his leader's shoes; showing his subservience before the stage in which he would become the first rider to climb the Alpe d'Huez, one of the new summit finishes that had been introduced that year, wearing the maillot jaune. "Do you know what he said to the journalists the next evening after he had taken the jersey? That it was not right for a soldier to leave his captain," Coppi recalled. Carrea still lives in Novi Ligure, just a short bike ride from Coppi's home at the time of his death.

For many years, until he became too old to do so, he would ride his bike to the top of the Alpe on the morning before the Tour arrived to pay his respects to the new generations that came after him. He died on the 13th of January in 2013, having outlived his beloved Coppi by 53 years and 11 days.


Herman van Springel

Van Springel, who spent two years riding as
a domestique for Eddy Merckx at Molteni
in the early 1970s

Herman van Springel, who was born in Grobbendonk, Belgium on this day in 1943, was an unusual combination of time trial specialist and all-rounder - a formidable combination that allowed him to build a very impressive palmares and come close to winning the greatest prize in cycling.

He turned professional with the Belgian Dr. Mann team in 1965, having already done very well as an amateur, and won three criterium races; then in 1966 he won Gent-Wevelgem and was selected for the Tour de France, where he finished tenth on Stage 1, in the top ten on Stages 16-20 and ended up sixth overall in the General Classification - an almost unheard-of result for a Tour debutant, especially one in his second professional year.

The following year was not quite as good with 24th place overall, but he won Stage 6 - his first - and came second on Stage 17. However, in 1968 he won eight of the first ten races he won and came second at Paris-Roubaix, then third at the Tour de Suisse; the other riders with a chance of going to the Tour that year took notice. He was third on Stage 1b and eighth on Stage 3b, then received a boost as his team won the Stage 3a time trial, but a string of much less impressive results between Stages 4 and 11 had some of them wondering if he'd perhaps peaked a little early that year and wasn't going to be such a threat to their own chances after all. Then he came thirteenth on Stage 12, won Stage 13 and finished several of them subsequent stages in the top ten, taking the overall lead during Stage 19; looking like a dead cert for the victory until Jan Janssen took the yellow jersey from him in the final stage. Later that year, he was also beaten into second place at the World Championships, but he rounded off the season by winning the Giro di Lombardia.

He went back to the Tour de Suisse in 1969 and won three stages, then at the Tour de France he won Stages 10 and 21, dropping to 14th overall, later winning Paris-Tours and the GP des Nations. The following year he won the Brabantse Pijl and looked to be on course for another good result at the Tour with six top ten stage finishes before being forced to abandon after Stage 12; in 1971 he was second overall at the Giro d'Italia, won the National Championship and came fourteenth at the Tour. He didn't ride the Tour in 1972; in 1973 he finished in the top ten on fourteen stages to come sixth overall and win the Points competition despite not winning a single stage, and he rode again in 1974 (10th), 1975 (31st) and 1976, when he didn't finish.

Van Springel's last major professional victory was Paris-Tours in 1981; the last race he won was the Boom criterium on the 12th of October that same year. At the end of the season he announced his retirement, having enjoyed sixteen years at the top of his sport.

Rabottini en route to his Stage 15 victory, 2012 Giro

Matteo Rabottini won Stage 15 and the King of the Mountains at the 2012 Giro d'Italia. He was born is Pescara, Italy on this day in 1987.

Jean Dumont, born in Ambérieu-en-Bugey on this day in 1943, was Amateur Road Race Champion of France in 1963 and won Stage 5b at the Tour de France five years later.

Vern Hanaray, born in Masterton on this day in 1951, was National Road Race Champion of New Zealand in 1971, 1973 and 1977. He also won Stage 8 at the Milk Race in 1980.

Sid Patterson, who was born in Melbourne on this day in 1927, won every state and National Junior track title from 1,000m to ten miles whilst a teenager, then pulled off a similar stunt in 1949 by winning the National 1 Mile, 5 Mile, Sprint and Time Trial titles - and then a few months later, became World Amateur Pursuit Champion. He then turned professional in 1951 and went on to become Pursuit World Champion in 1952 and 1953.

Other cyclists born on this day: Rubens Donizete (Brazil, 1979); Moisés Aldape (Mexico, 1981); Paul Wright (Great Britain, 1973); Jacopo Guarnieri (Italy, 1987); Andriy Vynokurov (USSR, now Ukraine, 1982); Henrik Baltzersen (Denmark, 1984); Aleš Trcka (Czechoslovakia, 1961); Glenn McLeay (New Zealand, 1968); Belén Cuevas (Spain, 1967); Hermógenes Netto (Brazil, 1913); Oscar Giacché (Argentina, 1923, died 2005); Hans Heinemann (Switzerland, 1940); Imre Furmen (Hungary, 1933); Ove Krogh Rants (Denmark, 1925); Din Meraj (Pakistan, 1925); Pakdi Chillananda (Thailand, 1946); Megra Admassou (Ethiopia, 1935).

Daily Cycling Facts 13.08.12

Pascal Lino, born in Sartrouville, France on this day in 1966, wore the maillot jaune for eleven days after finishing Stage 3 in fourth place, then came fifth overall at the 1992 Tour de France. The following year he won Stage 14, then 1994 he was eleventh at the Tour and fourteenth at the Vuelta a Espana.

Jules Buysse leading Stage 1, Tour de France 1926

Born in Wontergem on this day in 1901, Belgian Jules Buysse was the younger brother of Lucien and Marcel. He won the first stage of the 1926 Tour de France and wore the yellow jersey for two days, then it passed first to Gustave van Slembroucke and then Lucien, who won the General Classification. Jules came ninth.

Other cyclists born on this day: Dionisio Galparsoro (Spain, 1978); Michael van Staeyen (Belgium, 1988); Jairo Hernández (Colombia, 1972); José Medina (Chile, 1973); Grega Bole (Slovenia, 1985); José Antonio Díez (Spain, 1982); John Geddes (Great Britain, 1936); Moana Moo-Caille (France, 1988); Kurt Postl (Austria, 1937); Park Se-Ryong (South Korea, 1959); Dashnyamyn Tömör-Ochir (Mongolia, 1964); Tadeusz Mytnik (Poland, 1949); Michael Walker (Great Britain, 1885, died 1971); Tompson Mensah (Togo, 1954); Martin Sæterhaug (Norway, 1882, died 1961); Aleksandr Kirichenko (USSR, 1967); Carlos Galeano (Colombia, 1950); René Abadie (France, 1935, died 1996).

Daily Cycling Facts 12.08.12

Laurent Fignon

Laurent Fignon

Born in Montmartre, Paris on this day in 1960 and raised in Tournan-en-Brie, Laurent Patrick Fignon was the polar opposite of the old "cyclists as poor boys with hungry eyes" stereoype - his background was decidedly middle class and he even went to university, studying material science at  Paris 13 in Villateneuse, though he dropped out soon after the course began and joined the army. Nevertheless, in a sport where the majority of athletes hadn't even passed their school exams, he was soon nicknamed The Professor.

Football was Fignon's great love during childhood and he played well enough to be selected for a local team. However, he was persuaded to give cycling a go by friends and he soon discovered that he was much better at that, winning his first organised race when he was 16. It seems that he was a rather mollycoddled and over-protected youth - his parents, understanding that cycling is a cruel and dangerous sport far better suited to hooligans than well-mannered, clever boys, banned him from taking part in any more competitions. But now the bug had bitten and, like so many before him, he continued racing in secret; fortunately, when they found out a short while later, he'd already won four more races and they agreed that he could continue provided cycling didn't affect his studying.

After he'd joined the army, Fignon's officers realised that he could be put to a better use than being trained to kill and posted him to the Bataillon de Joinville, which took part in amateur sporting events and in 1981 he was entered for the Tour de Corse, in which amateurs competed against professionals, and he was the only rider from either category able to stay on the wheel of Tour de France winner Bernard Hinault. Later that year, riding in the National 100km Team Time Trial Championship, he was noticed by the legendary Renault-Elf manager Cyrille Guimard and offered a place on the team, where he rode with Hinault. During that first year, he won the Critérium International and went to the Giro d'Italia, where he launched an attack on Stage 2 and became race leader for a day. Later in the race, he rode faithfully for Hinault and became his most trusted lieutenant, as he would again at the Vuelta a Espana the following year, and the Breton credited him for his help towards both victories.

Guimard had originally wanted to keep Fignon away from the 1983 Tour, perhaps worrying that should be decide to have a go at winning it for himself he might damage Hinault's chances; but Hinault was eventually unable to ride due to a knee injury. Guimard didn't believe that anybody else on the team was capable of winning, so he sent Fignon and Marc Madiot, instructing them to aim for stage wins in the hope that they might be able to salvage something of the race with victory in the Debutants classification. It proved to be the rider's great chance to demonstrate that he wasn't just another good rider but a great - he was unexpectedly in second place overall when the favourite, Pascal Simon, abandoned in Stage 17 after breaking his shoulder in Stage 10, which seems advantageous, but was generally thought likely to ruin any chance he might have had because the rest of the field now redoubled its efforts, seeing an opportunity to get rid of a relatively inexperienced rider and open up the race. There are still people today who say that if Hinault had been there and Joop Zoetemelk hadn't been caught out by a drugs test, Fignon wouldn't have won. There are also those who still talk about 1983 as the Tour that Simon lost, rather than the Tour that Fignon won. This is jejune: Zoetemelk and Simon's departures from the race are simply part and parcel of cycling, and Fignon's performance afterwards was more than worthy of any Tour winner - he met every attack, taking on all comers and defeating them, and even won the Stage 21 time trial. At 22 years of age, he was the youngest man to triumph in the Tour for half a century, though he insisted that had Hinault have been there, he'd have ridden for him and wouldn't have tried to win.

Fignon trailing Maurizio Fondriest, Giro 1989

The relationship between Hinault and Guimard had been crumbling for some time; both were strong characters and clashes had become increasingly frequent so, at the end of the 1983 season, he left and joined La Vie Claire. Guimard then made Fignon team leader and, after two years as one of the most successful partnerships ever seen in cycling, the Professor and the Badger found themselves in opposition. Their rivalry was the stuff of sports journalist's dreams - Fignon, the well-spoken, erudite and educated Parisian who used his mind as much as his muscles to win races and Hinault, a man of the Breton soil who owed everything he achieved to his brute strength and used his fists to win more than one argument over the years.

At the Giro in 1984, Fignon's main rival was the Italian Francesco Moser - the Frenchman was by far the better climber, but Moser was much faster in a sprint or a time trial; the French fans therefore considered it fortunate that the eventual outcome looked to hinge on the highest mountain in the race, but the climb had to be cancelled due to heavy snow on the mountain. Some fans climbed it anyway and discovered that in actual fact the roads were clear, sparking suspicions that the organisers had lied and cancelled it to favour Moser - an accusation that has never been proven nor disproven. Moser later extended his lead in the final time trial, which also caused controversy when Fignon's fans claimed that the Italian press helicopters flew in front of him to create a head wind and behind Moser to create a tail wind. The Italian won by 1'03" overall. Hinault returned to the Tour that year and, while it was generally agreed that Fignon would give him a run for his money, he'd already won four times and was the clear favourite. The Breton won the Prologue, but beat Fignon by only three seconds, then Fignon's team mate Vincent Barteau got away in a break in Stage 5 and took the maillot jaune. Stage 7 was an individual time trial, and this time - against the odds - Fignon beat the Badger by 49", though Barteau remained leader and would do so until Stage 17 when he finally handed over the yellow jersey to his team leader. During that stage, Hinault pulled out all the stops and launched savage attack after attack on Fignon, but the mild-mannered Professor would not crack. Each and every time he responded to and matched his rival - and then, he simply rode away, leaving the Breton behind. At the end of the stage, Fignon's overall advantage over Hinault stood at 5'41". He won the next day, then won Stages 20 and 22 too; finishing the race with an advantage of 10'22". The Badger hadn't been beaten - he'd been well and truly thrashed; however, he never believed that he had been a better rider than Hinault when Hinault was at his best, claiming years later that while the Breton was born a champion, he himself had needed to be shaped by Guimard.

Fignon said he felt stronger than ever in 1985, but a knee injury early in the season forced him to stay away from the Tour. He entered again in 1986 after winning La Flèche Wallonne, but injury and constant attacks by Hinault - who was now riding for Greg Lemond rather than for himself and thus devoted himself entirely to destroying other riders' chances, turning himself into a very fearsome enemy indeed - caused him to abandon during Stage 12. He regained good form the following year and won two stages at Paris-Nice and third place overall at the Vuelta, then Stage 21 and seventh place overall at the Tour; people wondered if, aged 27, his best years were gone, and many would have been glad to see him go - Fignon, despite his fine manners, was never a popular rider among the fans, who prefer their stars to confirm to the poor boys stereotype. He also had a habit of downplaying his achievements, claiming after winning races that he's felt good rather than spinning out a grand tale of suffering and heroic battle; many misinterpreted this as grumpy taciturnity. Lance Armstrong, who was another rider with whom it wasn't always easy to get along and says he felt afraid and over-awed by the great men of European cycling when he first made the trip over from America, tells a different story: according to him, Fignon was always friendly and handed out encouragement and advice in equal measures to young fans.

Winning the Giro d'Italia, 1989

They were not. He didn't finish the Tour again in 1988, but then in 1989 he won the Giro and came second in the Points competition. He also returned to the Tour as joint favourite alongside Pedro Delgado and Lemond, the latter also making a return after a near-fatal accident in which a shotgun was fired into him; came second in the Prologue, won Stage 18 and finished seven stages in the top ten. He came second overall, but his disadvantage to winner Lemond was just eight seconds - had Lemond not have used tri-bars (previously used only in triathlon), a rear disc wheel and a new, more aerodynamic helmet to ride what at that time was the fastest full-length time trial, as opposed to a short prologue - and had Fignon not have developed saddle sores (and, as some claimed, cut off his ponytail to reduce drag) - it might have been cut to only a second. It remain the smallest winning margin of any Tour since the first in 1903, a fact that for some reason sticks in many cycling fans' minds far better than his successes - whenever asked if was the rider "who lost the Tour by eight seconds," he would snap back: "No - I'm the one who won it. Twice." It seems he recognised even during the race that this was going to be the case and rode much of it in a foul mood - hence one of the most civil, polite riders to have ever found a place in the peloton became recipient eof the unofficial Prix Citron prize, awarded by journalists to the rider they judge to be the most unpleasant in the race.

In 1990, having joined Castorama, Fignon abandoned the Tour. He rode for Castorama (now renamed Castorama-Raleigh) again in 1991 and came sixth, then again in 1992 as a domestique for Gianni Bugno in the Gatorade-Chateau d'Ax team and came 23rd; winning Stage 11 - the last he would ever win in a Grand Tour. His final win as a professional rider came early the following year at the Vuelta y Ruta de Mexico, in which he (and many other riders) were extraordinarily fortunate in being able to continue after a drunken man ploughed his truck into the peloton, and later in the year he entered the Tour for the tenth and final time, abandoning after Stage 10. Towards the end of the season, he retired. Years later he admitted to having doped with corticosteroids and amphetamine during his career but insisted he never used EPO - and cited the drug's ability to raise the performance of mediocre riders to a point where they could keep up with him, rather than a drop in his own performance as the real reason his results began to tail off and a major factor in his decision to retire.

Fignon had, for some time, felt that race organisers were no longer as professional as they had once been; so two years after ending his racing career he created the Laurent Fignon Organisation, a race organising and promotion company. The most prestigious event on its roster was Paris-Nice, which it owned after buying it from the family of Jean Leulliot (who ran it between 1951 and his death in 1982, from which point until Fignon took it over it was run by his daughter Josette) in 2000 until 2002 when it was sold onto the Amaury Sports Organisation, which owns the race to this day - along with many other events, including the Tour de France. He was also critical of new anti-doping policies, which he appeared to feel were too strict in France and to blame for the decline of French cycling.

In June 2009, when he was 49 years old, Fignon told reporters that he had been diagnosed with cancer two months earlier and was undergoing chemotherapy. The treatment was not successful; he died on the 31st of August the following year.

Joseba Beloki

Beloki at the Tour, 2005

Joseba Beloki, born in Laskao, Euskadi on this day in 1973, turned professional with the great Basque Euskaltel-Euskadi team in 1998 after winning a silver medal in the the National Individual Time Trial Championship of the previous year. He would remain with them for two years, coming second on Stages 6, 7 and 8 at the Tour de l'Avenir in the first and winning a bronze medal at the Elite National Road Race Championship in the second.
In 2000, Beloki joined Festina and came second overall at the Tour de Romandie, then won the Vuelta Ciclista Asturias before taking part in his first Tour de France - where he surprised many by finishing the Prologue in twelfth place and top ten on five other stages, including third on Stage 12. Most riders do not even finish their first Tour and will be content with finishing in the top one hundred for the next few; Beloki had come third. He was able, therefore, to take his pick of new contract offers and eventually opted for ONCE-Eroski for 2001 and started the season in fine form with second place at the Euskal Bizikleta, then victory at the Volta a Catalunya. That year at the Tour, he was seventh in the Prologue and finished six stages in the top ten; his performances on the other stages had also improved when compared to 2000, but once again he was third overall. In 2002 he concentrated primarily on the Tour, riding a few smaller events for practice (and in doing so emulated Lance Armstrong, who had been the winner in 1999, 2000 and 2001 and would be for four more years). He got to the start line in better shape than ever before, and virtually every Basque in the world was willing him to win; got off to a good start with ninth place in the Prologue, then finished top ten on eight stages - second place overall, 7'17" behind Armstrong. Later that year, he was third overall at the Vuelta a Espana.

Many people believed that Beloki could win the Tour in 2003, and it's probably safe to say that many more hoped he could because Armstrong was never a popular rider outside the USA despite his efforts to speak French and educate himself in the traditions and customs of a world with which he'd had no contact during the early years of his career. A little under halfway through the race, it began to look as though he would, too, when he was only 40" behind Armstrong as the Tour reached its halfway point. However, whilst descending the Cote de la Rochette, just a few kilometres from the Stage 9 finish line in Gap, his back wheel came into contact with a patch of tar melted by the hot weather, which tore the tyre from the rim and caused him to crash hard. Armstrong, right behind him, went in for a bit of cyclo cross riding by heading straight over a field to avoid him, then shouldered his bike over a ditch and back onto the road; Beloki was left with a broken wrist and elbow and double fracture of the femur.

When transfer season rolled around and Beloki announced he'd be riding for Brioches La Boulangère, a team in the same category as ONCE-Eroski, it seemed that he had made a full recorvery; as was in fact reported in the cycling press a few months later. It would not be long into 2004 before he began giving signs that all was not well, though - he had started the Tour of the Basque Country but wasn't even able to finish the first stage, abandoning in very obvious agony. Rather than admit to the unthinkable - that his career was in ruins - he claimed that he was finding it difficult to fit into a French team and switched to Saunier-Duval in August, going with them to the Vuelta and was once again unable to finish. At the end of the year, he went back to the team that had been ONCE and was now renamed Liberty Seguros-Würth, and he entered the Tour and the Vuelta for the final time. He was 75th in France and 39th in Spain.

Beloki left Liberty and joined Astana on the 1st of June 2006 so that he would be able to ride the Tour again, but his name was one of those implicated in the Operacion Purto doping scandal and he was withdrawn at the last moment. He was completely cleared less than two months later but, by now, he'd had enough - a career that could have been great until it was destroyed by a patch of sun-warmed tarmac was finally brought to a close.

Tejay van Garderen

Van Garderen at the 2012 Tour

Born in Tacoma, Washington on this day in 1988, Tejay van Garderen, competed in his first race at the age of ten and, four years later, marked himself out as a considerable talent with a series of National Championship victories in the 10-12, 13-14, 15-16 and 17-18 age groupings. He also recorded a time of 2h00'56" on the Mount Evans Hill Climb when he was only 14: the race consists of 2,008m of climbing in  44.1km - a climb comparable to, though slightly harder than, the Col de l'Iseran (1,995, 48km).

Having ridden the 2007 Tour of California as part of the national team, van Garderen turned professional with Rabobank's Continental squad the following year, coming second overall at the Flèche du Sud and eighth - with one stage win - at the Tour de l'Avenir. He remained with them for two seasons, then joined the US-based HTC-Highroad, a team with a fine reputation for finding young riders and developing them into world-class athletes, in 2010; with them he went to the Critérium du Dauphiné and took third place in the Points competition and the General Classification. He also rode the Vuelta a Espana that year, his first Grand Tour, and came 35th overall. In 2011, he went to his first Tour de France as a domestique for Peter Velits and Tony Martin, earning his place on the team after good performances in the Tour of California and the Tour de Suisse; he came 82nd overall, a respectable enough result for a Tour debutant.

Highroad ceased to be at the end of the 2011 season after owner Bob Stapleton was unable to recruit new sponsorship due to the companies he approached reluctance to become involved in a sport they believed still rife with doping; a sadly ironic end since, under his leadership, the team had introduced anti-doping measures far more stringent than was required by UCI rules. Fortunately, van Garderen experienced little difficulty in finding a new contract and signed to BMC. With them, 2012 proved to be the best year of his career to date with fourth place overall and victory in the Youth classification at Paris-Nice followed by fifth overall and another Youth classification triumph at the Tour de France. Fans are eager to see what he'll achieve in the coming years, and more than a few believe him to be a likely future Tour winner.

Madeleine Sandig

Madeleine Sandig, born in Frankfurt on this day in 1983, began cycling at the age of seven and fell in love with it immediately. She was good at it too: by 2004, she had already won two silver medals at the European Under-23 Individual Time Trial Championships - and then in 2005 she won the gold. The year after that, she took the Nationals ITT silver at Elite level and won the Nationals Points race on the track - a title she would successfully defend in 2009 and 2010. Sandig is still racing and, in 2012, won Stage 4 of the Czech Tour.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jean Gainche (France, 1932); Urs Huber (Switzerland, 1985); János Henzsel (Hungary, 1881); Zhang Miao (China, 1988); Omar Pkhak'adze (USSR, 1944, died 1993); Aleksandar Nikolov (Bulgaria, 1912); Yan Yinhua (China, 1968); Gabriel Moiceanu (Romania, 1934); Kazunari Watanabe (Japan, 1983); Randolph Toussaint (Guyana, 1955); Park Min-Su (South Korea, 1970); Stig Kristiansen (Norway, 1970); Luigi Gilardi (Italy, 1897, died 1989).