Saturday, 12 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 12.01.2013

Happy Birthday to... the Bicycle
On this day in 1818, Baron Karl von Drais was granted a patent for a machine he'd invented as a means of transport during a period of famine when many horses died of starvation. The machine featured a wooden wheel at either end, connected by a wooden beam upon which the user sat and used his feet to push the device along the ground. Soon becoming known as a draisine or draisienne, it was the earliest known bicycle. Drais' patent applied only in the Baden region of Germany and as such his invention was widely copied throughout the rest of the country, France and - once news spread - the rest of Europe.

Von Drais called his device a Laufmaschine or running machine, but others called it a velocipede or a dandyhorse. Curiously, we owe thanks for the invention to a volcano - Mount Tambora in Indonesia. When Tambora erupted in 1815, following a series of smaller eruptions, it ejected so much dust into the atmosphere that global temperatures dropped by an average of as much as 0.7C and harvests failed throughout the Northern Hemisphere in what became known as The Year Without A Summer; he had aimed to invent a machine that would be able to replace horses both as personal transport and as a way to transport food around the country. In 1848, Drais publicly renounced his nobility, stating that he wished to be known as Citizen Karl Drais in support of the French Revolution. The Prussian government viciously suppressed a revolution of their own the following year and, viewing Drais as an enemy of the establishment, seized his pension and belongings to assist in covering the costs of preventing unrest. He died destitute two years later.

David Zabriskie
David Zabriskie
Happy birthday to David Zabriskie, cyclist with Garmin-Cervélo and the first vegan in the Tour de France (well, almost - he revealed that he would eat small amounts of salmon during the 2011 Tour). Zabriskie is known for his eccentric sense of humour and unconventional ways, frequently interviewing other riders in the peloton and later posting the results on his website. He also collects Marvel action figures, his collection being stolen along with thousands of dollars of cycling equipment and Olympic memorabilia from his home in 2009 when he and wife Randi Reich were away at the Tour of California.

Zabriskie won a stage in the Tour de France in 2005, beating Lance Armstrong and becoming the first American to have won stages in all three of the Grand Tours. David's career has been held back by misfortune with several crashes ending his races early - the most recent was Stage 9 in the 2011 Tour when he injured his wrist in the crash on a descent that also put Jurgen van den Broeck, Frederik Willems and Alexander Vinokourov (Vino announced his retirement afterwards but has since returned) out of the race. However (or perhaps as a result of this) he is a favourite among fans and journalists. As might be expected, he has a range of nicknames: The Green Hornet, DZ, DZNuts, Dizzy, Captain America and Zup.

Peter Mitchell, team mate of Victoria Pendleton and Chris Hoy at the Team Sky Track Team, was born on this day in 1990.

Polish Olympian Ryszard Szurkowski was born on this day in 1946. He won silver medals in the 1972 and 1976 Games, adding three gold and one silver at the World Cycling Amateur Championships in 1973, 1974 and 1975. He won the Peace Race four times (1970, 1971, 1973 and 1975) and the Dookoła Mazowsza, now part of the UCI Europe Tour, in 1977 and 1978.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jan van Houwelingen (Netherlands, 1955); Gabriele Aynat (Spain, 1972); Guido Bontempi (Italy, 1960); Honson Chin (Jamaica, 1956); David Cook (Great Britain, 1969); Michel Coulon (Belgium, 1947); Miguel Espinós (Spain, 1947, died 2006); Hans Flückiger (Switzerland, 1926); Guo Longchen (China, 1968); Hans-Joachim Hartnick (East Germany, 1955); Karl Klöckner (Germany, 1915); Adolf Kofler (Austria, 1892); Hideo Madarame (Japan, 1944); Ed Nestor (Australia, 1920); Gema Pascual (Spain, 1979); Sergey Pesteryev (Russia, 1888); Louise Robinson (Great Britain, 1965); Ralph Therrio (USA, 1954); Zdzisław Wrona (Poland, 1962); Lars Zebroski (USA, 1941); Vasyl Zhdanov (USSR, 1963).

Friday, 11 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 11.01.2013

Cameron Meyer
Cameron Meyer

Born in Viveash on this day in 1988, rising Australian star Cameron Meyer was highly successful during his amateur track career, winning three World titles and four National titles in 2006. He then began to race on the road as well, winning the Tour of Tasmania in 2007, then the Tour of Japan and a bronze in the World Under-23 Time Trial Championships in 2008. He became National TT Champion at Elite level in 2010, also winning three gold medals at the World Track Championships and another three at the Commonwealth Games.

In 2011, Meyer retained his TT title and added the National Madison Championship, two golds in the World Track Cup, two more at the Oceania Championships, one gold and one silver at the World Track Championships and an overall General Classification victory at the Tour Down Under; then in 2012 he switched to the new Australian team GreenEDGE and enjoyed a superb year with second place in the National Individual Time Trial Championships, victory at the Six Days of Berlin (shared with partner Leigh Howard). first place in the Points race and third in the Madison at the World Track Championships, 11th place overall at the Tour of California and second place for Stage 13 at the Vuelta a Espana, followed by sixteenth place in the Individual Time Trial and first in the Team Time Trial at the World Road Racing Championships. Early in 2013, he became National Criterium Champion


Happy birthday to Scotty "The Bulldozer" Cranmer, BMX-riding winner of several Dew Tours and one gold and two silver X-Games medals. Scotty also holds the honour of being the first rider to ever successfully land a frontflip-tailwhip in competition. He was born in New Jersey in 1987.

On this day in 1891, "Baron" Georges-Eugène Haussmann (he was never ennobled), the architect of many of the Paris thoroughfares along which the Tour de France passes on its final stage each year, died at the age of 80.

Heinz Stucke, cyclo-tourist extraordinaire
(image credit: Anthony Atkielski CC BY-SA 3.0)
Happy birthday to Heinz Stücke, the German touring cyclist who set a new distance record in 1995. Since giving up his job and setting out on his bike in 1962, he has ridden more than 609,000km - almost all of them on the same three-geared, steel-framed bike he began with. The bike was stolen in Portsmouth, UK, in 2006 but discovered the next day dumped in a nearby park.

María Teodora Adoracion Ruano Sanchón, known as Dori Ruano, was born on this day in 1969. A road and track cyclist, she represented Spain at the 1992, 2000 and 2004 Olympics and became World Points Race Champion in 1998.

Other birthdays: Gabriele Altweck (Germany, 1963); Orlando Bates (Barbados, 1950); Konrad Czajkowski (Poland, 1980); Ervin Dér (Hungary, 1956); Gilles Durand (Canada, 1952); Jiří Opavský (Czechoslovakia, 1931); Fritz Ruland (Germany, 1914); Ian Stanley (Jamaica, 1963); Josef Volf (Czechoslovakia, 1939); Wol Yamamoto (Guam, 1974).

Thursday, 10 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 10.01.2013

Bernard Thevenet, the man who beat Merckx
(image credit: Ken CC BY 2.0)
Bernard Thévenet
Bernard Thévenet was born in Saint-Julien-de-Civry on this day in 1948 and in 1975 became the man who defeated The Cannibal. He was born in 1948 in the tiny Burgundy village known as Le Guidon, a name which rather fittingly translates into English as "the handlebar," and his early interest in the sport was facilitated by the local priest who moved Mass to an earlier time so that Thévenet and the other choirboys could watch cycle races as they passed through the village; he would later remember, "The sun was shining on their toe-clips and the chrome on their forks. They were modern-day knights."

The young Bernard's parents knew of their son's passions but would not allow him to race as they needed him to work on their farm, so he would sneak off to enter local events - they remained unaware for some time, but then he began winning them and appeared in the newspapers. At first, they tried to forbid him from continuing, but the cycling-loving priest talked them into going to see him race and, when they'd saw how fast the boy was, convinced them that he had the potential to go a long way.

In 1970, Thévenet turned professional with Peugeot-BP-Michelin and was picked to ride the Tour de France two days before the race started when two more experienced riders became ill - up until that point, he hadn't even been on the reserves list. The team manager had to call his parent's neighbours and ask them to pass on the message as few houses in the village at that time had phones. "I can remember perfectly getting to Limoges," Thévenet later recalled, referring to where the Tour was due to start. "I was anxious and scared at the same time, but full of pride. I was given a new suitcase, seven jerseys, six pairs of shorts, overclothes, sweaters, shirts and so on and so on. Everyone else had a brand new bike, but not me, because I wasn't on the team's entry list" - yet he won Stage 18, and the year after that he won Stage 10 and came fourth overall.

In the 1972 Tour, Thévenet crashed and hit his head hard enough to temporarily lose his memory; afterwards he said that he'd looked down at his Peugeot jersey and wondered if he might be a professional cyclist in a race, so he got up and rode away. Gradually, memories returned, then he saw a team car and it all flooded back - he says he suddenly realised "I'm riding the Tour de France!" A few days later he won Stage 11 on Mont Ventoux, then later in the race Stage 17 on the Ballon d'Alsace before coming ninth overall; then in 1973 he was second overall. The year after that he  failed to finish, but then in 1975 came his finest moment - after two stage wins and some titanic battles, including six consecutive attacks on the Col d'Izoard, he ended the Tour de France reign of Eddy Merckx, the greatest cyclist to have ever lived.

Thévenet went on to win a second Tour in 1977 but, some months later, was hospitalised with serious liver damage. He had always insisted that he did not dope, claiming that he was too good to need drugs, but had failed a test at Paris-Nice earlier that year; now cycling fans wondered if his illness might have been caused by drugs. In 1978 he couldn't finish the Tour and was taken to hospital where tests revealed further damage to his adrenal glands, which he admitted had been caused by his long-term use of steroids. ""I was doped by cortisone for three years and there were many like me," he said, before calling for cycling to rid itself of doping.


Craig Lewis was born on this day in 1985. Lewis returned from a horrific crash after being hit by a car and left with 47 broken bones, massive internal bleeding and punctures in both lungs early on in his career to win the Under-23 Road Race and Criterium titles in 2006, then managed three top ten stage race finishes a year later. In 2008, he finished the Giro di Lombardia in 11th place. Over the last two years, he has won stages at the Tour de Romandie and in the Giro d'Italia, proving himself very much a rider to watch in the coming years as he enters his peak. He rode with the new Champion System team in 2012.

"Catlike," it says on his helmet - and, accordingly,
Hayden Roulston looks as though he's just about
to fall asleep.
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0)
Hayden Roulston was born today in New Zealand in 1981. Hayden, who began his professional career with Cofidis before moving on to Discovery (from which he resigned after a "nightclub incident"), HealthNet and the Cervélo TestTeam before finding his way to HTC-Highroad (where he was a team mate of Craig Lewis, see above), has been a leading light on his home nation's racing scene as well as making his mark in Europe where he has won stages in the Tour of Poland, Tour de Wallonie, the Vuelta a Espana and even the Tour de France. He also finished the 2010 Paris-Roubaix in 10th place and has won two silver and two bronze medals in the Commonwealth Games. While Roulston was keeping himself busy building up his palmares, Discovery was mutating into Radioshack - for whom he rode in 2012, following their merger with the Schleck Bros.' Leopard Trek; a merger that Lewis described as "detrimental to the sport."

Antoine Fauré was born in Lyon on this day in 1869 and wa one of the 60 cyclists to start the very first Tour de France in 1903, but not one of the 21 to finish. He did rather better the following year when he won Stage 2 in the independent class (Aucouturier won among the professionals), then abandoned in Stage 4; and would enter again in 1907, 1909 and 1912 - 1909 was the only year in which he finished, taking 37th place.

152 Newbury Street,
Boston
On this day in 1879, the Massachusetts Bicycle Club was founded by Albert A. Pope, Edward W. Pope, William G. Fish, Arthur W. Pope, Frank W. Freeborn, George G. Hall, H.E. Parkhurst, C.H. Corken, William H. Ames, Augustus F. Webster, H. Winslow Warren, Winfield S. Slocum, William F. Brownell, Joseph P. Livermore, and Albert S. Parsons. Six years later, the club had more than 200 members and sufficient funds to have an clubhouse designed and built at 152 Newbury Street, Boston.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jean Alfonsetti (Luxembourg, 1908); Karl-Ivar Andersson (Sweden, 1932); Adolfo Belmonte (Mexico, 1945); Vic Browne (Australia, 1942); Gheorghe Calcişcă (Romania, 1935); Phillip Collins (Ireland, 1972); Auguste Garrebeek (Belgium, 1912, died 1973); Dieter Gieseler (Germany, 1941); Oscar Goerke (USA, 1883, died 1934); Theo Hogervorst (Netherlands, 1956); Gholam Hossein Koohi (Iran, 1951); Kimpale Mosengo (Congo, 1963); Joseph Werbrouck (Belgium, 1882, died 1974); Jutta Niehaus (Germany, 1964); Michel Zanoli (Netherlands, 1968, died 2003); Marlon Pérez (Columbia, 1976); Michel Vaarten (Belgium, 1957); Kamsari Slam (Malaysia, 1941); Jürgen Simon (Germany, 1938, died 2003); Amar Singh Billing (India, 1944).

Wednesday, 9 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 09.01.2013

Amy Gillett, 1976-2005
Amy Gillett
Today would have been the birthday of Amy Gillett, who was born in Adelaide in 1976. Originally a world-class rower, Amy had been identified as a track and road cyclist with enormous potential and was predicted to win medals at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Tragically, on the 18th of July in 2005, she was killed in Germany when a driver lost control of his car and ploughed into a group of cyclists with whom she was training. Five of her team mates were seriously injured, two sufficiently so that it was thought they also might die. Amy was 29 when she died and was studying for a PhD. She had been married for less than a year and a half.

The Amy Gillett Foundation was set up in her honour, an organisation that aims to cut cyclist fatalities on the road to zero by encouraging safer cycling and increasing awareness of cyclists among other road users as well as funding two scholarships per annum, one to a young female athlete and one to a researcher whose work will assist in reducing cyclist deaths on the roads. You can learn more about their work here.

Happy birthday to Mat "The Condor" Hoffman, born on this day in 1972. Mat is widely renowned as one of the best vert BMX riders the world has ever seen, breaking world records and inventing new tricks for many years and in doing o developing, promoting and driving the sport. He is also the owner and founder of the famous Hoffman BMX brand.

Happy birthday to Yoanka González, 2004 World Scratch Race Champion, born in Cuba in 1976.

Happy birthday to Emanuele Sella, the Italian cyclist born in 1981.

Other cyclists born on this day: Mette Anderson (Denmark, 1974); János Dévai (Hungary, 1940); Mariano Friedick (USA, 1975); José Gómez (Spain, 1944); Verena Jooß (Germany, 1979); Maxim Belkov (USSR, 1985); Michael Markussen (Denmark, 1955); Kyoshi Miura (Japan, 1961); Janusz Sałach (Poland, 1957); Volodymyr Semenets (USSR, 1950); Jason Donald (USA, 1980); David Bernabeu (Spain, 1978).

Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 08.01.2013

Jacques Anquetil
On this day in 1934, one of cycling's all-time greatest riders was born: Jacques Anquetil, son of a builder. It was said that while "Anquetil could drop nobody, nobody could drop Anquetil" and that as a result he was always racing the clock, rather than other riders - one of the reasons he became known as Mr. Chrono.

Anquetil obtained his first racing licence on the 2nd of December 1950, when he was riding with the amateur AC Sottevillais - he would remain a member of the club for the rest of his life, never forgetting the support it offered in the early days of his career, and there is a memorial provided by the club on his grave at Quincampoix. Soon after joining, he passed his exams and became a qualified engineer, finding employment with a local factory but, having by this time realised that his future was on the bike, he walked out of the job after less than a month because his boss refused to allow him extra days off for training. Fortunately, AC Sottevillais' coach and manager André Boucher was a talented man and the young Anquetil developed fast; rapidly beginning to bring in victories and money.

Just two years later, the young rider won a bronze medal at the Olympics. Boucher gathered a selection of press cuttings and mailed them to a representative of the famous La Perle bicycle manufacturer which ran a racing team, asking him to send them on to the team's manager Francis Pélissier (brother of Henri who won the Tour in 1923). The representative was impressed and so the cuttings did find their way to Pélissier, who was also impressed and personally rang Anquetil - who, as a nineteen-year-old lad, was presumably over-awed to get a call from a Pélissier - to offer him 30,000 francs per month to ride for the team as an independent (a class of semi-professionals who received limited backing from their team and were responsible for finding and paying for their own board and lodgings at races). Anquetil, in the way of young men everywhere, went straight out and spent the money on a new car; a Renault Frégate, the manufacturer's top-of-the-range model that was supposed to be a rival to Citroen's legendary DS, that he crashed twice in the first year he owned it. In 1953, Pélissier sent Anquetil to the GP des Nations which had become known as the unofficial world time trial championships and where he would compete against British star Ken Joy. At that time, British cyclists considered themselves to be far stronger time trial riders than their Continental counterparts, but once out on the parcours - upon which Joy had started sixteen minutes earlier - Anquetil wasted no time in catching and passing him, then won. The British rider was crushed, but in a way Anquetil had done the British racing scene a big favour: after many years of insularity created by the National Cycling Union's ban on road racing, British cyclists had little experience of  the level of professionalism in Europe and incidents such as this were a valuable lesson in how they needed to shape up if they were to realise their recent dream of competing in events such as the Tour de France. However, Pélissier was not yet convinced that the future lay with Anquetil, and at the same race the following year he concentrated his support on the Swiss rider Hugo Koblet who would win the Tour in 1951. Anquetil was not happy, but he beat Koblet and once again won, as he would a total of nine times.

Anquetil in 1963
(image credit: Dutch National Archive)
Later in his life, Anquetil developed an affection for Britain based on the nation's love of time trials. In 1961, he was invited to attend the annual Road Time Trails Council awards ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall, where he handed over prizes to Brian Kirby and the legendary Beryl Burton, who became perhaps the most successful British athlete of all time. Three years later, he was approached with a suggestion that he might consider taking part in a British race over a 25 mile course and was enthusiastic - when asked how long he thought he would take to complete the race, he replied "46 minutes" - 8 minutes faster than the record time set for the course. Anquetil was famous for an ability to accurately assess any course after studying maps for no more than few minutes, and the times he estimated he would take to complete them were rarely incorrect. Sadly, in this case we'll never know if he really could have finished in the time he stated because he asked for £1000 to take part - Vic Jenner, a timber merchant who had provided large amounts of money to cycling events in the past, had said he would put up the money but when he died a short while afterwards nobody else had the means to replace his offer. However, Anquetil did race in Britain that year when he took part in a cycling exhibition at the Herne Hill velodrome, riding with Tom Simpson.

(image credit: Velorunner)
That ability to read a parcours so accurately is evidence of Anquetil's formidable intelligence, which combined with his physical attributes to make him the devastatingly effective rider that he was - Dick Yates said, "That Anquetil was a highly intelligent man there can be no doubt and he was the nearest thing to a true intellectual that cycling has ever produced." He found astronomy fascinating and, according to those who knew him, had a working knowledge and understanding of the science; yet he also had a superstitious side that remain common among cyclists to this day. In 1964, a fortune teller for a French newpaper predicted that he would die on the 13th day of the Tour de France. His wife Janine tried to hide it from him, but he found out when fans of his rivals sent him anonymous letters with clippings of the prediction and, on the rest day before the 13th day of the race, he locked himself in his hotel room and refused to come out. Eventually, Raphaël Géminiani managed to tempt him out by promising to take him to a party,something almost guaranteed to pique the famously hedonistic rider's interest; the next day, feeling the after effects of a night of excess, Anquetil rode badly and was dropped soon after the stage began. However, he survived the day and went on to win the Tour, his fifth. That he suffered so badly may be seen as evidence that tales of wild parties he supposedly held during races and his habit of preparing himself by staying up late and drinking vast amounts of wine (he claimed that his preparation the night before a race consisted of "a pheasant with chestnuts, a bottle of champagne and a woman") are simply legends - legends that the he, like Mario Cippolini four decades later, did nothing to dispel, realising the effect that being passed with ease by a rider they believed to be hung-over would have on his opponents (Géminiani said that Anquetil had on more than one occasion bluffed his rivals into thinking he was no good in the mountains - which, in truth, were not his favourite part of a race - before "tearing them to shreds," further evidence that he used psychology against rivals). Janine also insists that the tale in which the rider successfully treated mid-race indigestion as he battled Poulidor to the top of the Puy de Dôme by gulping down half a bottle of champagne passed to him from the team car by Géminiani is a myth; despite it being recounted as fact in many books (if we were to stop telling all the good stories from Tour history that are really myths, however, we'd lose many of the best tales; and the truth should not be permitted to get in the way of a good narrative when dealing with matters such as cycling).

In 1954, Anquetil began his mandatory two years' military service. Towards the end, he was given orders that he described as the "strangest, the most unusual that a gunner has ever been asked to carry out" - namely, to beat the Hour Record that Italian Fausto Coppi had set fourteen years previously at 45.848km and which he had already failed to better in 1955. The agreement was that, should he succeed, half the prize money would go to the Army and the other half to the mother of a soldier who had been killed in Algeria. Anquetil, of course, would keep the glory - worth far more to a young cyclist than any amount of money. His first two attempts failed when he started off to quickly, but on the third - riding a near-exact copy of Coppi's bike built from scratch in three days especially for the attempt - he covered 46.149km. Coppi placed his seal of approval upon the achievement by giving the French rider his autograph.

Memorial, Chateaufort
(image credit: Henri Salome CC BY-SA 3.0) 
In 1965, Anquetil beat the Hour Record once again with 47.493km. However, this time it was disallowed because he arrogantly refused to submit to an anti-doping test afterwards, feeling that a rider of his stature - by this time, he had won his five Tours, two Giro d'Italia and a Vuelta a Espana - should be afforded better treatment than having to urinate in a bottle in a tent set up in the middle of the track. He would, he said, be perfectly content to supply the sample in the more dignified surroundings of his hotel room; but the Italian testers disagreed. The row became rather heated and manager Géminiani (a man known for his short temper - which was never displayed more memorably than in 1952 when he lost his patience with Jean Robic, who had for some reason decided to give a press conference while in the bath: Géminiani stormed over and pushed his head under the water three times, holding it there until Robic could no longer hold his breath)  tried to physically throw the testers out of the tent.

Anquetil's attitude towards doping was an unusual one. While he never made a full admission to using drugs, he was completely open with journalists and other figures at a time when the subject tended to remain unspoken, as exemplified by none other than Charles de Gaulle when he said of Anquetil, "Doping? What doping? Did he or did he not make them play the Marseillaise abroad?" Anquetil's views on the matter, meanwhile, are better summed up by the response he gave when the subject came up during a televised interview: "Leave me in peace. Everyone takes dope." The nearest he came to a confession was when he told the story of how he and Roger Hassenforder - who entered the Tour six times and finished once, in 50th place - had decided to find out if amphetamine has the same effect on fish that it has on humans by dropping a handful of Maxiton tablets into a restaurant's fish tank. Apparently, it does.

He was the first cyclist to achieve five overall victories in the Tour de France, including his incredible win in 1961 when he wore the maillot jaune in every stage of the race - a feat that had happened before, but against far weaker fields than one which included riders like Jean Stablinksi and Charly Gaul. He also won the Giro d'Italia twice, the Vuelta a Espana once, the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré twice, Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Bordeaux-Paris once, Paris-Nice five times and the Grand Prix des Nations nine times, among many other victories. Even the notoriously bad-tempered Bernard Hinault, who detests being compared to the cycling giants that came before him, says that being compared to Anquetil "is an honour."

Towards the end of the 1960s, Anquetil became increasingly angry with the French fans for transferring their loyalty to Raymond Poulidor: Poulidor was a great rider, but he was human. Anquetil, meanwhile, often seemed more than that and had a tendency towards pomposity at times which meant that while he enjoyed enormous respect, he was not especially liked by many French, who prefer their heroes flawed (we can seem the same characteristics in their attitude towards Lance Armstrong). On the 27th of December, in what looks rather like a tantrum, he announced his retirement and devoted the rest of his life to running his farm at his chateau, Le Domaine des Elfes - according to Dick Yates, "he had a deep love of the land and was at his happiest when driving a tractor." Like Bernard Hinault (who claimed not to have ridden a bike for many years after retiring), Anquetil gave up cycling altogether and is known to have ridden just three times afterwards; once at the Grand Prix des Gentleman in which professionals try themselves against the greats of years gone by, once on an afternoon jaunt with friends and once with his daughter on her birthday. He did, however, maintain links to the cycling world, commentating on races for French television where his race analyses were became considered the best in the business and stirring up controversy when he showed bias towards Luis Ocaña by explaining to him in detail how he should go about beating Eddy Merckx at the Tour de France.

Anquetil's grave
(public domain image)
He was 53 when he died of stomach cancer, at 6am on the 18th of November. Towards the end, Poulidor came to see him and the two men became friends. "He said to me that the cancer was so agonisingly painful it was like racing up the Puy de Dôme all day, every hour of the day," Poulidor said. "He then said, I will never forget it, 'My friend, you will come second to me once again.'"


Mirella van Melis, one of the many great Dutch cyclists to have begun her career in cyclo cross, was born on this day in 1979. In 1997, she became World Road Junior Champion, then won eight National Track Championships over the next three years whilst also winning stages and podium finishes at several road races.

Happy birthday to mountain biker Paola Pezzo, born in 1969 in Verona. Paola was World Champion in 1993, won a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, then became World Champion for a second time and won the Grundig World Cup in 1997, won the European Championship in 1999 and took another Olympic gold in 2000. Her most recent major victory was becoming National XC Champion in 2005.

Fernand Sanz (full name Fernando Sanz y Martínez de Arizala), born on the 28th of February 1881 in Madrid, won a silver medal in the Men's Sprint at the 1900 Olympics when he represented France. However, he has a far better claim to fame than that: he was the illegitimate son of Alfonso XII, King of Spain. He died on this day in January in 1925.

Other cyclists born on this day: Nicholas White (South Africa, 1974); Severino Andreoli (Italy, 1941); Chelly Arrue (USA, 1969); Jim Davies (Canada, 1906, died 1999); Rolando Guaves (Philippines, 1945); Rudy Houtsch (Luxembourg, 1916); Jaroslav Kulhavý (Czechoslovakia, 1985); Peter Latham (New Zealand, 1984); Jiří Mainuš (Czechoslovakia, 1945); Klaus Nielsen (Denmark, 1980); Vladimir Osokin (USSR, 1954); Kurt Rechsteiner (Switzerland, 1931); Edwin Santos (Guatemala, 1972); Eric Wohlberg (Canada, 1965).

Monday, 7 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 07.01.2013

John Degenkolb
Degenkolb at the Olympics, 2012
Happy birthday to John Degenkolb, winner of Stages 2 and 4 in the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné. Born in Gera, Germany in 1989, Degenkolb began his career as a track cyclist and won the Pursuit as a Novice at the National Championships in 2004, then successfully defended the title and added another Novice victory at the National Road Race Championship a year later. In 2006 he came third in the Juniors Individual Time Trial at the Nationals, then won it in 2007 - one of nine victories that year, which earned him a contract with the Continental-class Thüringer Energie Team for 2008. He responded well to the step up, coming second overall at the Under-23 Tour du Haut-Anjou, winning Stage 2 at the U-23 Thüringen-Rundfahrt and impressing at a number of other races.

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

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

Shane Kelly
Shane Kelly
(image credit: Velo Steve CC BY-SA 2.0)
The Kilo specialist Shane Kelly - who was born in Ararat, Australia on this day in 1972 - competed in no fewer than five Olympics, the first in 1992 and the last in 2008. He won three medals, a silver and two bronze, but he's perhaps best remembered for an incident in the 1996 Kilo when the cleat of his shoe slipped from the pedal and he was left on the start line while his opponents accelerated away. He finished 4th in the 2004 Keirin, but 3rd place René Wolff was disqualified for "moving outward with the intention of forcing the opponent going up;" dangerous riding that, in the view of the judges, was deliberate and resulted in Kelly taking 3rd place.

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


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

Gerrit Schulte (image credit: Polygoon Hollands Nieuws CC BY-SA 3.0)
Gerardus Bernardus "Gerrit" Schulte, Dutch Track Pursuit champion ten times, was born on this day in 1916. Schulte was also a gifted road cyclist, winning Stage 3 of the 1938 Tour de France when he beat - among other greats - Antonin Magne and André Leducq. A trophy awarded to the best Dutch professional rider each year is named after him. He died on the 26th of February in Den Bosch ('s-Hertogenbosch) - the birthplace of multi-discipline cycling superstar Marianne Vos, who won the Schulte Trophy in 2010.

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

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

Sunday, 6 January 2013

Daily Cycling Facts 06.01.2013

Leopard Trek
On this day in 2011, Brian Nygaard's Luxembourg-based new team Leopard Trek was officially presented to the world. It would be made up of the brothers Frank and Andy Schleck (the latter being the year's 2011 Tour de France favourite among many, with the notable exception of one Cadel Evans), Danielle Bennati, Fabian Cancellara, Will Clarke, Stefan Denifl, Brice Feillu, Davide Vigano, Joost Posthuma, Oliver Zaugg, Jakob Fuglsang (who had revealed the team's name less that a month previously), Linus Gerdemann, Maxime Monfort, Martin Pedersen, Anders Lund, Dominic Klemme, Martin Mortensen, Stuart O'Grady, Fabian Wegmann, Bruno Pires, Robert Wagner, Thomas Rohregger, Giacomo Nizzolo, Tom Stamsnijder, Jens Voigt and Wouter Weylandt.

With a roster including some of the biggest names and personalities in professional cycling, big name sponsors (in addition to Trek, they were supported by LuxAir, Oakley and Mercedes Benz, among others - Mercedes supplying them with team cars which finally ended Jaguar-sponsored Sky's monopoly in the unofficial Poshest Support Vehicles stakes), the snazziest website in the ProTour and a team bus that looked like an unusually luxurious space shuttle, the stage looked set for Leopard Trek to dominate in the Grand Tours and other stage races.

Wouter Weylandt, 1984-2011
(image credit: Dzipi CC BY-SA 2.0)
Unfortunately, the team was beset by first tragedy and then bad luck. Tragedy came when Wouter Weylandt, aged just 26, crashed and was killed on a fast descent in the Giro d'Italia; an accident that contributed a great deal to the demise of Giro director Angelo Zomegnan, who was accused of neglecting rider safety in his quest to equal the Tour de France. Then Andy didn't perform quite as well as everyone was expecting him to do around France, even managing to lose some of his previously-loyal fans after getting a bit whiny following a damp and dangerous descent from the Col de Manse into Gap at the end of Stage 16 (coming so soon after Weylandt's death, he can perhaps be forgiven even if he did sound a bit pathetic at the time). In Stage 18, he pulled off what many people called one of the best victories in recent years with a splendid solo breakaway on the slopes of the Galibier, reaching the summit finish 2'07" before brother Frank who took 2nd place, but even that wasn't enough to give him the advantage he needed after some really quite lacklustre rides earlier on in the Tour and he was left unable to hold off Cadel Evans in Stage 20, when the Australian won the race.

Fabian Cancellara wasn't having his best year either. Having earned himself the reputation of World's Greatest Ever Time Trial Rider (look up Beryl Burton to find out why he wasn't), he seemed unable to light the same fire in his legs and was roundly beaten by Highroad's Tony Martin every time they faced one another. However, he was the team's most successful rider, capturing podium places at a number of races including two stages at the Tour de Suisse, 2nd at Paris-Roubaix and 3rd at the Tour of Flanders. Jens Voigt, meanwhile, was making his way through the year in his characteristic manner, attacking anything that moved and riding like a hooligan on a stolen bike before charming the entire world with his pleasant manners, affability and articulacy when off the bike. He was a favourite to win the Tour of Britain, arriving at the race as team leader, but had to abandon after crashing and breaking a finger in the first stage. And he didn't just break it a little bit, either - being Jens Voigt, he completely smashed it to bits and needed emergency surgery to save it.

Fabian Cancellara
(image credit: Kei-Ai CC BY 2.0)
If we take a look from Leopard Trek's point of view, the year was not entirely wothout point: let's not forget that although the biggest prize slipped their grasp, Leopard riders took 3rd place at the Tour of Qatar (Bennati), 1st and 3rd at the GP Samyn (Klemme und Wagner), 10th at Paris-Nice (Monfort), a stage at Tirreno-Adriatico (Cancellara), 2nd and 10th at Milan-San Remo (Cancellara and O'Grady), 1st in the Critérium International (Frank Schleck), 1st at E3 Harelbeke (Cancellara), 2nd at Ghent-Wevelgem (Bennati), 3rd at the GP Miguel Indurain (Wegmann), 3rd in the Tour of Flanders (Cancellara), 2nd at Paris-Roubaix (Cancellara), 4th in the Amstel Gold Race (Fuglsang); 2nd and 3rd at Liège-Bastogne-Liège (Frank and Andy); 1st and 4th at the Tour of Luxembourg (Gerdemann and Monfort) plus one stage (2, Gerdemann) and the prologue (Cancellara), two stages in the Tour de Suisse (1 and 9, both Cancellara) and 4th and 7th overall (Fuglsang and Frank), Stage 18 in the Tour (Andy) and 2nd and 3rd overall (Andy and Frank), the Team Time Trial at the Vuelta a Espana and, finally, 1st place overall at the Giro di Lombardia (Oliver Zaugg, his first major win).

So it wasn't such a bad year, all in all, for Leopard Trek; they just didn't live up to the hype that others created around them. 2011 proved to be their first and last year as, at the end of the season and following widespread rumour, it was confirmed that the team would merge with RadioShack for 2012.

Belinda Goss
Belinda Goss
Born in Devonport, Australia on this day in 1984, Belinda Goss started cycling when she was 13 and marked herself out as a rider to watch when she won a bronze medal in the Scratch race at the World Junior Track Championships in 2002; a year later she proved she had serious potential on the road as well with a stage victory at the Geelong Tour.

In 2004, Goss hit the big time with two golds (Points, Scratch) and a bronze (Keirin) at the Oceania Games, all taken at Elite level. These were followed in 2005 with two bronze (Under-23 Scratch, Elite Scratch) and a silver (Elite Points) at the National Championships and another bronze in the Elite Scratch at the Moscow round of the World Cup, then third place at the Bay Classic and two more bronze (U-23 and Elite Scratch) at the National Track Championships the following year. 2007 proved to be her real breakthrough year, both on road and track - she began the season with a Stage 2 victory and second place overall at the Bay Classic, then won Stage 2 and second place overal at the UniSA Criterium season, picked up a gold medal for the Elite Points race at the National Track Championships, came second in the Points and the Scratch at the Manchester round of the World Cup and won Stages 2 and 3 and third place overall at the Tour of Chongming Island. In 2008 she was second overall again at the Bay Classic and successfully defended her National Points Champion title before winning the Noosa Criterium, then in 2009 won the Points race at the Nationals again as well as coming third in the Scratch at the World Championships. She won the National Points Championship for a fourth consecutive time in 2010, also becoming National Scratch Champion and coming third again in the Scratch at the Worlds.

Since 2011, Goss has concentrated on road racing and has continued adding good results. She was fifth in the road race at the Oceania Championships that year and performed well at the Czech Tour and Giro della Toscana, then came third at the Rapha Elite Criterium in 2012.

Antonio Suarez, Overall and Mountains Classification winner of the 1959 Vuelta a Espana, died on this day in 1981. Very unusually for a rider with the capability of winning a Mountains title, he also won the Points Classification two years later, the same year he finished 3rd overall in the Giro d'Italia behind Jacques Anquetil and Arnaldo Pambianco. Suarez appears to have been one of those Mediterranean riders who performed well only in the Mediterranean climate, for his Tour de France results appear at first glance to be those of a lesser man: his most notable finish was 17th in 1960, while he came 64th in 1958 and 43rd in 1963.

The Welsh professional and ex-British Junior Champion Yanto Barker was born on this day in 1980. Yanto was the highest placed British rider in the the 2005 Tour of Britain

Yanto Barker
Happy birthday to Stephen Cox, the retired New Zealand cyclist born in 1956. Cos was hugely successful in races in his homeland, winning ten major events between 1978 and 1984. He also won a bronze medal at the 1984 Commonwealth Games.

Henry George, winner of a gold medal for Belgium in the 50km Track event at the 1920 Olympics, died on this day in 1976. He was born on the 18th of February 1891.

Mattei Montaguti, twice an Italian National Champion and a winner at the Giro della Provincia di Reggio Calabria was born today in 1984. He came 2nd in the Mountains Classification at the 2011 Vuelta a Espana, then won the classification at the Tour de Suisse in 2012.

Other cyclists born on this day: Luigi Arienti (Italy, 1937); Nada Cristofoli (Italy, 1971); Ørnulf Andresen (Norway, 1944); Enzo Sacchi (Italy, 1926, died 1988); Jorge Jukich (Uruguay, 1943); Immo Rittmeyer (Germany, 1936); Kihei Tomioka (Japan, 1932, died 2007); Rusty Peden (Canada, 1916); Paul Camilleri (Malta, 1934); Mark Gorski (USA, 1960); Volodymyr Diudia (Ukraine, 1983); Reinhold Pommer (Germany, 1935); Javier Taboada (Mexico, 1935); Stefan Baraud (Cayman Islands, 1975); Jørgen Jensen (Denmark, 1947); Theodor Rinderknecht (Switzerland, 1958); Augusts Kepke (Russia, 1886).