Daily Cycling Facts 01.03.2013

Gastone Nencini
Gastone Nencini (nicknamed "The Lion of Mugello" after his birthplace, Barberino del Mugello in Tuscany), was born on this day in 1930. He was an example of that rarest of cycling breeds, an ace climber (he won the King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France in 1957) who could also descend at high speed. Most climbers, due to their typically skeletal figures, lack the physical mass to keep a bike under control while riding fast down a hill - but according to French National Champion and multiple Tour stage winner Raphaël Géminiani, "the only reason to follow Nencini downhill would be if you had a death wish." Roger Rivière, a fast descender and several times a Tour stage winner himself, ignored that advice in 1960 when he tried to follow the Italian down from the Col de Perjuret - shortly after beginning the descent, he hit a low wall, plunged over the side and broke his spine. He spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Even more unusually for a rider who could climb like he did, Nencini was a chain smoker.

Nencini was the inspiration for one of the first anti-doping drives, set up by official Tour doctor Pierre Dumas after he saw the rider injecting himself with stored blood. He'd learned the technique from Swedish runners, who had apparently been using the technique for several years.

In 1957, the year he won his two King of the Mountains competitions, he also won the Giro outright, beating 2nd place Louison Bobet by 19" and 3rd place Ercole Baldini by almost six minutes. His Tour win came in 1960, when he also finished the Giro in 2nd place overall, beating Graziano Battistini by more than five minutes. Nencini died on the 1st of February in 1980.

Tyler Hamilton
(image credit: Rob Annis CC BY 2.0)

Tyler Hamilton
Tyler Hamilton, who was born on this day in Marblehead, Massachusetts on this day in 1971, became one of the most prominent professional cyclists in the late 1990s and beginning of the 21st Century partly as a result of his association with Lance Armstrong (his subsequent accusations that Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs has earned him both enemies and fans), partly due to his own excellent results and largely because of his intelligence, affability and personality. His golden retriever Tugboat, once a frequently-seen and popular character as he waited at the finish line with Hamilton's (now ex-)wife Haven, enjoyed equal popularity and was memorably interviewed on more than one occasion. There is a moving account of the dog's death in Daniel Coyle's Lance Armstrong: Every Second Counts.

Hamilton began cycling whilst still at school, but was more interested in ski racing when he was at university (his BA in economics has been questioned by some authors, most notably David Walsh in From Lance to Landis: Inside the American Doping Controversy at the Tour de France, but he can be assumed to have graduated with a reasonable degree of certainty). He also rode mountain bikes, giving up skiing when a mountain bike accident on a ski jump broke two of his vertebrae. He rode his first Tour de France in 1998, working hard for Armstrong in the mountains and time trials.

His palmares in impressive and includes several prestigious victories such as the Danmark Rundt in 1999, Stages 2, 5 and the General Classification at the 2000 Critérium du Dauphiné; Stage 14 and 2nd in the General Classification at the 2002 Giro d'Italia; Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Stage 5 and the General Classification at the Tour de Romandie and Stage 16 at the Tour de France in 2003; an Olympic gold medal; a National Championship and the Tour of Qinghai Lake. He would almost certainly have won many more had he not have spent so much of his career suspended from racing as a result of numerous doping violations.

The first came in 2004, right after his Olympic win when the IOC accused him of doping during the race. However, as his B-sample had been destroyed when an Athens laboratory froze it, he escaped a ban and was permitted to keep the medal. He was less fortunate later in the same year when he was caught out at the Vuelta a Espana: having abandoned the race due to stomach problems, it was announced that a sample given after his Stage 8 time trial win showed a "foreign blood population" - in other words, Hamilton had received a transfusion of somebody else's blood in order to boost his own haematocrit levels, oddly enough the very thing that Gastone Nencini had been seen doing when he inspired one of the Tour's first anti-doping efforts. His team, Phonak, supported him, but withdrew their support after another team member was shown to have used the same technique. Investigation revealed that in April 2004, a hemoglobin to reticulocytes (count of new red blood cells) had registered 132.9. 133 is considered likely evidence of either blood doping or EPO use and results in automatic suspension (a "clean" healthy athlete will register around 90). One year later, he was formally suspended for two years effective from the date of his Vuelta sample. A month later, he mounted an appeal based on accusations that important documents supporting his case had been suppressed/concealed and the bizarre possibility that he might be a chimera, the medical term given to an individual carrying genetically distinct cells from an absorbed zygote with which they shared a womb - the phenomenon popularly known as a "parasitic twin." The appeal was dismissed and Hamilton would later disavow the chimera theory, which appears to have been entirely an invention of his lawyers.

Hamilton with Rock Racing, 2008
(image credit: Richard Masoner CC BY-SA 2.0)

Just three month before his ban was due to expire, his name came up in Operación Puerto when several newspapers published allegations that the investigation had revealed a payment of US$50,000 made by him into an account owned by the notorious Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. Hamilton denied making the payment, stating that he had never received any treatment from Dr. Fuentes and claimed that he had not been contacted by Spanish authorities. He returned to professional cycling at the start of the 2007 season with Tinkoff Credit Systems, soon becoming involved in a messy dispute after the team attempted to renegotiate his contract - and pay him much less than it had originally agreed - in the light of new rumours concerning his alleged doping.  The rider took the team to court, won the case and then won a subsequent appeal. At the time of writing, the case is subject to civil litigation. Unsurprisingly, his contract was not renewed; but he was signed up by Rock Racing.

In April 2009, it was announced that Hamilton had provided another positive sample during the off-season, this time revealing traces of the anti-depressant steroid 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone - a drug of questionable value to the rider, as tests have shown no effect on physical performance except in the case of ageing women. Nevertheless, as a steroid it is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and, now aged 38, the rider realised his career was likely to be at an end and retired, also revealing that he suffered from depression and had been receiving medical treatment for it for two years. This might have gone in his favour; but it was demonstrated that he was aware that 5-Dehydroepiandrosterone was a banned substance and chose not to inform cycling authorities that he was taking medication. Two months later, he was suspended for eight years.

During his career, Hamilton continued to insist that he was not doping and had never done so. However, in May 2010, he finally came clean and made what is accepted as a full confession during which he also implicated Lance Armstrong. Haven and Hamilton divorced ("amicably," according to both parties) in 2009 and it is reported that he will marry Lindsay Dyan in 2012.

Reg Harris

Reginald Hargreaves Harris, born on this day in 1920 in Bury, Lancashire, became Britain's greatest track cyclist during the 1940s and 1950s with no fewer than four National Amateur Sprint titles (1944, 1945, 1946, 1947), one World Amateur Sprint Championship (1947), a GP de Paris Amateur Sprint win (1946), a professional National Tandem Championship (1948), two silver Olympic medals (1948), one professional European Sprint Championship (1955) and four professional World Sprint Championships (1949, 1950, 1951, 1954)s.

Hargreaves, as he was christened, lost his father at the age of six and took his stepfather's surname when his mother remarried. He left school when he was 14 without any qualifications and was fortunate enough to find an apprenticeship in a car garage, which paid him enough to buy his first bike with which he entered a "roller race" competition organised by Hercules, among the first British bike manufacturers to run a racing team. There is no record of the race to tell us whether he won or not, but that his performance was good enough to earn him an invite to join the Lanacashire Road Club and compete with them suggests he probably did fairly well. He began racing in individual time trials the following year and won his first race, a grass-shortrack event.

Realising that he could make a living from cycling during the summer but would need a source of income during the off-season, Harris found employment at a papermill where he would work for three winters. In 1938, he beat the National Sprint Champion and in 1939 was invited to join the British team that would be competing in the World Championships in Milan. However, shortly after he arrived in Italy and spent some practice time on the famous Velodromo Vigorelli - reputed to be the world's fastest - the Second World War broke out and the team were recalled to Britain.

Harris served as a tank driver in North Africa during the war, being declared unfit and sent home after an injury in 1943. The following year he was racing again and won the first of his National titles, then when the war was over was invited to compete in France where he even impressed the notoriously hard-to-please Parisian crowds. He was unable to compete in the World Championships in 1947 after being left bruised and aching by a heavy-handed masseur. By this time, he was being provided with equipment and (possibly) a salary by Claud Butler, in those days a frame builder of considerable repute rather than a name stuck onto cheap, low quality bikes, but managed to retain his amateur status so that he could be entered into the 1948 Olympics in London. Then, he broke three vertebrae in an on-road training ride, but had recovered in time only to break his elbow in a British race with a few weeks to go before the Games began. Nevertheless, he entered and won his two silver medals.

With the Olympics over, Harris turned professional with a contract from Raleigh and won his first World Championship. He retired in 1957, became the manager of the Fallowfield Stadium which would be renamed in his honour (sadly now demolished and replaced by student accommodation) and worked with Raleigh in a series of business ventures all of which failed. He was, unfortunately, not much of a businessman - after giving up with Raleigh he set himself up producing bikes, but even the cachet his name carried was not enough to prevent the firm going under after just three years. He then did some promotional work with a waterproof coat manufacturer, then found jobs with companies that produced foam rubber.

Harris continued to cycle daily and, in 1971, started racing again. Despite a chronic lack of practice, he won a bronze medal in the National Championships which apparently convinced him that if he trained, there were still a few victories left in his legs - and he was proved right in 1974 when, now aged 54, he won a final British championship. In 1975, he won silver after being beaten by the man he had beaten the year before. He continued to cycle daily until his age made it impossible to do so and died of a stroke on the 22nd of June, 1992. He is buried at St. John's Church in Chelford, Cheshire. The village hosts the start and finish of numerous time trials and other races each year and the church holds an annual Christmas carol service in Harris' memory.


Barney Storey was born in Great Britain on this day in 1977. He and blind team mate Anthony Kappes won two gold medals at the 2008 Paralympics and at the time of writing holds the 200m Tandem World Record - Barney's wife Sarah also won a gold medal in the same Games, competing in the Individual Pursuit. In 2006, they became National Tandem Sprint Champions - the first (and so far only) paralympic team to have done so.

Christian Müller, born in Erfurt, East Germany in 1982, won the German and European Under-23 Individual Time Trial Championship in 2004.

Brian Jolly, winner of the 1965 Tour of Ireland and British Road Race Champion 1973, was born on this day in 1946.

On this day in 2004, the bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased bike brake manufacturer Avid.

Other births: Stefan Nimke (Germany, 1978); Christian Lyte (Great Britain, 1989); Zhang Liang (China, 1983); Choy Yiu Chung (Hong Kong, 1961); Claudio Pérez (Venezuela, 1957); Julio César Herrera (Cuba, 1977); Svein Gaute Hølestøl (Norway, 1971); Mićo Brković (Yugoslavia, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 28.02.2013

Claudio Chiappucci

Claudio Chiappucci
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0

Claudio Chiappucci was born on this day in 1963 in the Lombardy town of Uboldo and was moulded into the shape of a professional cyclist by his father - a man who was obsessive about the sport even by the standards of the Italian fans, who had befriended none other than Fausti Coppi while the two men languished in a British prisoner of war camp and who would die of cancer the day after his son's inaugural professional race.

Chiapucci jnr. achieved his first notable race success in 1982 when he won the National Amateur Championship, then spent the next eight years quietly winning podium finishes in a huge number of Italian races. Then, in 1990 as he rode the first stage of his second Tour de France, he decided apparently on a whim that he might as well attack the lead group and won an incredible 10 minute advantage which left him looking almost as surprised to be wearing the yellow jersey the next morning as the rest of the world was to see him in it.

That race has become one of the fondly-remembered Tours, because the Italian rider, who would have been virtually unknown had he not have won the Mountains Classification at the Giro d'Italia earlier in the year, managed to fight off the favourite, multiple World Champion and twice (at the time) Tour winner Greg Lemond all the way through to Stage 20 when, finally, the American took back the lead in the individual time trial and grabbed his third win. Chiappucci, now nicknamed Il Diablo, came second; 2'16" down on Lemond, but he'd won something perhaps even greater than a Tour - legendary status. He'd also revealed that he shared the weakness that so many great climbers do: time trials.

The next year, he won Milan-San Remo before going on to the Giro and winning the Points Classification, then won Stage 13, the Mountains Classification and the overall Combativity Award at another remarkable Tour in which he finished 3rd overall behind Gianni Bugno and first place Miguel Indurain. 1992 was equally as promising with the Giro di Trentino, the Mountains Classifications at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour, where he would win his second overall Combativity Award. He also took another one of his legendary victories for Stage 13, mounting an apparently insane attack on the route's first climb and somehow keeping Bugno and even Indurain at bay to the very end.

1993 began in much the same way with Stage 14 and the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia, followed by Stage 17 at the Tour, 2nd in the King of the Mountains and 8th overall - far from his best result, but most riders have an off-year so the world wondered if 1994 would be the year he won his Tour.

It was not to be. Sometime shortly after the Tour, something happened to Chiappucci. Nobody knows what it was, least of all the rider himself, but it caused his immediate and shockingly rapid decline. He had a few more victories in the one-day races and won the Japan Cup later in the year, but it was obvious to those with an eye for form that his days were numbered - it was impossible to pinpoint what had changed, but somehow his legs no longer glowed liked they had once done. He managed a brace of podium finishes at the Giro, but the Tour was a disaster with his best resulting being 9th place on the prologue. He won another Japan Cup and the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, but that was it - his best years were over, and he would never win a Tour.

(image credit: Team Lenox)

Towards the end of Chiappucci's career, the Festina Affair broke after soigneur Willy Voet was caught with a car stuffed full of performance-enhancing drugs. The subsequent investigation revealed for the first time the full extent of doping in professional cycling and turned up the names of several doctors - some real doctors, some with distinctly questionable qualifications and some with no qualifications at all. Among the real doctors was Francesco Conconi, almost certainly the man that first introduced the cycling world to EPO - Chiappucci was one of several riders who had been under his care between 1993 and 1995. At that time, there was no reliable test for EPO - as the doctor was well aware, since he had satisfied himself that such a process was unlikely to become available for some time by attempting to develop one himself, a reasonably accurate indicator since he was arguably the world expert on the drug at the time - and so the UCI relied on haematocrit readings, a red blood cell count, with readings in excess of 50% being considered as evidence that the athlete was likely to be using EPO. Studying Chiappuci's readings from 1993 onwards raised suspicions, but too much time had elapsed for charges to be brought against him - nevertheless, he was labelled "morally guilty."

In 1997, the rider "confessed" to prosecutor Vincenzo Scolastico that he had been using EPO since 1993, but almost immediately formally retracted the statement. This leads to two conclusions: the first is that Chiappucci began doping, as so many riders do, out of desperation when he could no longer achieve the results that he had done during his height; and the second is that he began to use EPO before his decline and the drug caused it. EPO's long term effects are not yet known, but the sheer added stress on the heart and circulatory system as it works to keep unnaturally thick blood is likely to increase wear and tear; leaving us with the possibility that, due to some anomaly of his physical make-up, Chiappucci suffered what lies ahead for an as-yet unknown number of cyclists active during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st Century.

Random fact: Marianne Vos had a pet cat named Chiappoesie ("Chiappussy") after Chiappucci.

The Tashkent Terror
(image credit: Bundesarchiv CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Djamolidine Abdoujaparov
Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, born on this day in the Uzbek captal city Tashkent in 1964, is another example of the iron-hard cyclists that came out of the Soviet sports academies and changed the very nature of European cycling following Perestroika in the early and mid-1990s. Having overcome difficulties caused by his nation's lack of UCI affiliation), his lightning-fast sprint soon earned him the peloton's respect, his somewhat wild technique - the cause of more than a few crashes - earned him his nickname, "The Tashkent Terror."

During the 1991 seaon - his second as a professional - Abdoujaparov left the world in no doubt that he was a major new talent by winning Gent–Wevelgem, the Giro del Piemonte, the G.P. Montreal, four stages at other races, and Stages 1 and 4 and the Points Classification at the Tour de France. In 1992, he won four stafes at the Vuelta a Espana and the Points Classification; then Stages 3, 18 and 20 and another Points Classification at the Tour, three stages at the Vuelta, one stage at the Tour de Suisse and three major criterium races in 1993. 1994 saw him take the Points Classifications again at both the Giro (with one stage) and the Tour (two stages) in addition to the Intergiro; two stages at the Tour of Holland, the Three Days of De Panne and Paris-Nice and another host of criterium wins.

Like Chiappucci, Abdoujaparov was at the top of his game for a relatively short period and declined sharply after 1994. In 1995, he won a single stage at the Tour and none of the classifications, though he led the Points competition for three days and came 2nd behind Laurent Jalabert on points at the end of the race. The next year he was 4th on Points and didn't wear the green jersey at any time in the race. However, he won a remarkable Stage 14 victory by mounting an attack on the climbs, an incredible achievement for a sprinter. He entered the Tour for the final time in 1997 but failed an anti-doping test after Stage 2 which revealed traces of the banned bronchodilator Clenbuterol and other drugs. He announced his retirement a short while later.

Abdoujaparov has three unusual claims to fame. The first is one of the most spectacular crashes of modern times when he hit a giant promotional soft drink can as he sprinted to the finish line of the final stage at the 1991 Tour, smashing himself face-first into the road.. His team, having established that no lasting damage had been done, put him back on his bike and he crossed the line at walking pace accompanied by doctors. The second is that he is one of only four riders to have won the Points Classifications in all three Grand Tours (the other three, incidentally, are Laurent Jalabert, Alessandro Petacchi and Eddy Merckx). The third is that there's a band named after him, headed by Les Carter of the acclaimed 1990s British indie band Carter USM.

Abdoujaparov's famous 1992 crash

Ernest J. Clements

Falcon Cycles - designed by
Ernie Clements
(image credit: Andrew Dressell
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ernest J. Clements - known as Ernie - was a cyclist who rose to prominence during the first official road races to take place in Britain since the late 19th Century. Born on this day in 1922 in Hadley, Shropshire, he came of cycling age just as the British League of Racing Cyclists gained sufficient strength to organise races independently of the National Cycling Union that had banned road racing for fear that police disapproval would lead to a blanket ban on all bikes on public roads (in fact, when the BLRC organised its first race, the police supported them). He won the BLRC National Road Race championship in 1943, came second the following year and then won again in 1945, before finding a way round the NCU's rules preventing BLRC members from taking part in their races and won their National Championship as well in 1946. Now that he was an NCU member, he could be selected to ride in the Olympics and did so in 1948, where he won silver.

In 1947, the NCU and other organisations began to consider the possibility of sending a British team to the Tour de France and approached Clements, inviting him to turn professional and form part of the team. However, mindful of the fact that the rules of the day prevented any cyclist who had been professional from competing in amateur events after retirement, he refused - and the Tour idea fizzled out anyway. Instead, he opened and ran a cycling shop to support himself, learning the art of frame building and becoming highly reputed for it. He would later become managing director of Falcon Cycles which, as older veteran cyclists can tell you, was once the producer of some of the best bikes in the world, rather than a name on the down tube of Far Eastern £50 supermarket specials. He held the position until the 1970s.

After retiring from Falcon, Clements opened another bike shop in 1990 so that he'd be able to keep in touch with the sport and young people taking it up for the first time. In later life, he developed Parkinson's Disease which led to his death on the 3rd of February in 2009, when he was 83.


Fernand Sanz (full name Fernando Sanz y Martínez de Arizala), born in Madrid on this day in 1881 and 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 the 8th of January in 1925.

Other cyclists born on this day: Dmitry Kosyakov (USSR, 1986); Pedro Bonilla (Colombia, 1967); Esteban López (Colombia, 1974); Nataliya Karimova (USSR, 1974); Dino Porrini (Italy, 1953); August Nogara (USA, 1896, died 1984); Mārtiņš Mazūrs (Latvia, 1908, died 1995); César Muciño (Mexico, 1972, died 2003); Zygmunt Hanusik (Poland, 1945).

29th of February

Dave Brailsford

Ruben Plaza, born in Ibi, Spain on this day in 1980, became National Under-19 Champion in 1997 and then Elite Champion in 2003. 2005 brought his first Grand Tour success with an impressive Stage 20 win against a strong field led by Carlos Sastre and a 5th place finish overall. The remaining highlights of his palmares have been one-day races, a second Elite National Championship in 2009 and 3rd place in Stage 16 at the 2010 Tour de France.

Dave Brailsford was born in Derby, England on this day in 1964 but grew up in Deiniolen, Wales, where he learned to speak Welsh fluently. As a professional cyclist, he spent four years racing in France before returning to Britain to study psychology and sports science degree, later adding an Master of Business Administration degree. He was later recruited by British Cycling as programme director, the performance director, a role that led to an MBE for services to the sport. In 2010, it was announced that he would be taking on duties as general manager of Team Sky with the aim of achieving the first Tour de France overall General Classification win by a British Rider within five years.

Daily Cycling Facts 27.02.2013

André Leducq

Leducq (in the dark jersey) with Georges Speicher

Born in Saint-Ouen, France on this day in 1904,  André Leducq achieved considerable success on his bike during his youth - he came 3rd in the National Amateur Championships when he was just 19 and won the event the following year - set him on a path that would lead to him becoming one of the most popular riders in cycling history, both at home and in England where his attempts to speak English (Inspector Clouseau was said to sound like Leducq) won him any fans. Ron Kitching, a world-famous frame builder and so-called professional Yorkshireman, remembers visiting Paris and performing a duet of On Ilkla Moor Baht' At - a song that recounts the tale of a young man who meets his girlfriend on Ilkely Moor but does not wear a hat while doing so, causing her to warn him that he risks death from exposure and that his body will be eaten by worms, the worms will be eaten by ducks and the ducks will be eaten by the singers of the song. It is written and performed in the North Yorkshire dialect of the mid-19th Century, a tongue that had as much in common with Old English and Old Norse as modern Standard English, and Leducq's rendition must have been nothing less that stunning - especially when one considers that it was performed at 5am, after the two men had enjoyed several Parisian nightclubs.

Leducq was also popular with female fans, some of whom were fans of cycling and some of whom were fans of him - it was said that he "honoured" them as frequently as he honoured his track contracts. However, he was no useless playboy: his Tour de France record of 25 stage wins held for a quarter of a century until it was finally broken by Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault didn't beat him until 1986 and he's still the third most successful stage winner of all time today, with Mark Cavendish just behind him with 23. Leducq rode his first Tour in 1927 and won Stages 6, 23 and 24, coming 4th overall, then came 2nd in 1928 after winning Stages 2, 10, 11 and 16, having already won Paris-Roubaix that year. In 1929, he won Stages 2, 11, 17, 18 and 21 and wore the yellow jersey for one day (this being the famous incident when he, Victor Fontan and Nicolas Frantz had the same time following eventual winner Maurice Dewaele's loss of the race leadership due to a series of punctures, thus becoming the only time that three riders all wore yellow - an event that is extremely unlikely to happen again, since times can now be measured to thousandths of a second if need be) but this time dropped to 11th overall.

This photograph of Leducq, one of the Tour's
most iconic images, was used as a model by
sculptor Arno Breker for his most famous work
La Guerrier Blessé (The Injured Warrior). The
most notable difference is that Leducq has his
clothes on.

His second Tour victory came the following year when he took Stages 5 and 16 and wore the yellow jersey for 13 days, making him the first rider to win a Tour ridden by National rather than trade teams. In 1931, he won Stage 20 and was 10th overall but won the General Classification at Paris-Tours, then won a second Tour in 1932 along with Stages 3, 11, 13, 15, 20 and 21, spending 19 days in yellow. That was the last of his top 5 finishes - in 1933 he was 31st overall with wins for Stages 13 and 14, then he was 17th the next year when he won the Stage 18b time trial and in 1938 he shared victory for Stage 21 with Antonin Magne and came 30th overall.

Early in the Second World War, Leducq was arrested by the Nazis for reasons unknown (the Nazis being the sort of people that they were, there may not have been a reason). The rider recounted after the war that things were not going his way while under detention and he began to have very grave worries about his safety - but then, he was saved by an unlikely hero: a high-ranking German officer, who had been watching him, suddenly said, "I know you - you're Leducq" and let him go.

After retiring in 1939, Leducq took up a job with the Mercier bike company and briefly managed the firm's team, resigning from the position because he felt that the new generation of riders were boring and had none of the sense of fun and adventure that his own had done.  When Raymond Poulidor was with the team and  trying to win his own Tour de France (but never would) after several years in which he became known as "The Eternal Second" , Leducq sought to encourage him with the story of his arrest by the Nazis. "So you see, Raymond - sometimes, it's good to have won a Tour," he finished. He died on the 18th of June in 1980.

Post-race celebratory beer for Boyarskaya
(All rights reserved; image used by 
kind permission of Sarah Connolly)

Russian Natalia Boyarskaya, born on this day in 1983, came to widespread attention at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing when she made a solo break and built up an advantage over the peloton of more than a minute, then lost it when she first had to stop and ask directions due to insufficient signage and then tackle a descent at low speed due to heavy rain and poor visibility. Great Britain's Emma Pooley caught her a short while later but expended too much energy in doing so, leaving Nicole Cooke to win the race. Boyarskaya was National Road Race Champion in 2007 and won the Tour Féminin en Limousin in 2008. In 2011, she won the Gracia - Orlova in the Czech Republic, then in 2012 while racing with RusVelo she was second in the National Individual Time Trial Championships and fifth in the Chrono Champenois-Trophée Européen.

Agnes Dusart, born in Tienen, Belgium on this day in 1962, was National Road Race Champion in 1986 and 1987, then again 1988 when she also finished 2nd at the GP Chiasso.

Takashi Miyazawa is one of the very few Far Eastern cyclists to have made an impact in cycling's European heartland, beginning when he came 2nd in Stages 3 and 5 at the Vuelta Ciclista a Leon in 2005. He stayed nearer to home in 2006, winning Stage 1 at the Tour of Siam, podium finishes at several other events and the overall Generall Classification at the Tour de Okinawa, then scored a series of podium finishes in Europe and the East in the next season. He won two Tours of Hokkaido in 2008 and 2009, then became National Road Race Champion and won the Kumamoto International Road Race criterium in 2010. In 2011, he returned to Europe and won Isegem, came a surprising 5th at Paris-Brussels and 6th at the GP Nobili Rubinetterie Coppa Città di Stresa.

Other cyclists born on this day: Marcelino Garcia Alonso (Spain, 1971); David Fletcher (Great Britain, 1989); Aaron Donnelly (Australia, 1991); Anna Barensfield (USA, 1983); Roger De Pauw (Belgium, 1921); Márcio Ravelli (Brazil, 1972); Park Seong-Baek (South Korea, 1985); Onni Kasslin (Finland, 1927, died 2003); Jock Miller (Great Britain, 1881, died 1957); Innar Mändoja (Estonia, 1978); Piet van Katwijk (Netherlands, 1950); Fisihasion Ghebreyesus (Ethiopia, 1941).

Daily Cycling Facts 25.02.2013

Team Sky's first race, the 2010 Cancer
Council Helpline Classic
(image credit: Ant CC BY 2.0) 

Team Sky
On this day in 2009, the creation of Team Sky was announced. Sponsored by the satellite television broadcasting, telephony and broadband internet provided BSkyB, the team is managed by Dave Brailsford and began with an annual budget of more than £30 million. Other sponsors included IG Markets, Marks&Spencer, Gatorade and Oakley. Italian manufacturer Pinarello provided the bikes and Jaguar provided cars, thus enabling the team an easy win in the unofficial "poshest team car" stakes. The team is based in Manchester and maintains a logistics base in Belgium and an operational base in Italy.

Planning to build a British core, the first riders confirmed by the team were Steve Cummings, Peter Kennaugh, Ian Stannard, Chris Froome, Russell Downing and Geraint Thomas. Morris Possoni, Chris Sutton, Michael Barry, Kjell Carlström, John-Lee Augustyn, Greg Henderson, Lars Petter Nordhaug, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Thomas Löfkvist, Kurt Asle Arvesen, Ben Swift, Simon Gerrans, Juan Antonio Flecha, and Bradley Wiggins would join them later.

Sky won its first race, the Cancer Council Helpline Classic in Adelaide at which Greg Henderson and Chris Sutton took the top two places, and then received a wild card entry for the Tour de France alongside invites to the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana. Bradley Wiggins became the first Sky rider to wear a Grand Tour leader's jersey when he won the Giro prologue and, weeks later, Ben Swift won the Tour de Picardie. Immediately a favourite for the Tour, in the end the team was less successful than they had hoped with Thomas Löfkvist's 17th overall being the best result. They withdrew from the Vuelta following the death of soigneur (called a "carer" on Sky's official website, as is the preferred term since Willy Voet tried to drive a car full of drugs over ta border in 1998).

2011 got off to a good start with Ben Swift coming 3rd overall at the Tour Down Under and Flecha and Hunt did well at the Tour of Qatar. Boasson Hagen took the Points Classification and was 2nd overall at the Tour of Oman, then Wiggins finished Paris-Nice in 3rd and Geraint Thomas was 2nd in the Dwars door Vlaanderen. In June, Wiggins won the Critérium du Dauphiné, a race that is frequently considered to reveal riders destined for future Tour success and thus making himself a favourite when the Tour began. However, he abandoned with a broken collar bone after a crash involving several riders in Stage 7, the day after Boasson Hagen had won Sky's first ever Tour Stage and the race ended with Rigoberto Urán the highest-placed Sky rider at 24th overall. Chris Froome would later win Stage 17 at the Vuelta, dropping Geox-TMC's surprise star Juan José Cobo as they fought towards the finish line at the summit of Peña Cabarga.

Bradley Wiggins becomes the first
British Tour de France winner, 2012

Sky's mission statement, the reason it had been brought into existence, was also announced that day: they would, they promised, win a Tour de France within five years - something no British rider nor British team had ever done and something many British cycling fans thought they would never see. However, early in 2012 it became apparent that Sky had evolved into an extraordinarily professional, well-drilled team: Edvald Boasson Hagen won the Sprint Classification victory at the Tour Down Under in January followed by the same title at the Volta ao Algarve, where team mate Richie Porte won the General Classification and the team won the Team Classification. What's more, Bradley Wiggins had found the greatest form of his career so far, winning Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie a few months later - excellent results that saw him become the favourite for the Tour de France. In fact, Wiggins didn't merely win the Tour, he dominated it; taking the General Classification lead from Fabian Cancellara in Stage 7 before retaining it through to the end of the race, also winning Stages 9 and 19. Meanwhile, new team member Mark Cavendish (who would leave for Omega Pharma-Quickstep at the end of the season) won Stages 2, 18 and 20 while Chris Froome won Stage 7 before coming second overall. Sky had been in existence for just three and a half years.

Gee Atherton

Gee Atherton
(image credit: Courtney Nash CC BY 2.0) 

George David "Gee" Atherton, one of Britain's most successful mountain bikers, was born on this day in 1985 near Salisbury. His first major success was a bronze medal for the Downhill Race at the British National Mountain Bike Championships in 2000, when he raced in the Youth Class. He won the same event in 2001, again as a Youth, then again in 2002 and 2003 as a Junior and in 2004 as an Elite rider - the same year he won Round 3 of the UCI Downhill Cup; which he would win outright in 2010 when he beat three-time champion Greg Minnaar.

Like many downhill riders, Gee also rides 4X - a race in which four riders compete against one another on a downhill course featuring prepared BMX-style jumps. He won Round 1 of the UCI 4X Cup in 2007 along with the European Downhill Championship, but has tended to leave 4X for older brother Dan. He won the UCI Downhill Championships in 2008, the same year younger sister Rachel won the Women's Class, then took British Downhill Championship in 2009 and the UCI World Downhill Cup the following year.

Connie Carpenter-Phinney
Now retired, Connie Carpenter-Phinney was one of the many cyclists to have also excelled in speed skating. She was born in Madison, USA on this day in 1957. In 1972 when she was 14, she competed in the speed skating event at the Winter Olympics; thus becoming the youngest American athlete to take part in the history of the Winter Games (a record that still stands).

On the bike, she won the National Road and Track Pursuit Championships in 1976, 1977 and 1979 and was victorious in numerous criterium races. She won an Olympic cycling gold medal in 1984 after beating Rebecca Twigg in a sprint. She is married to Davis Phinney, the first US rider to win a stage at the Tour de France and the couple have two children, one of whom - Taylor - is himself a professional cyclist, a three-time World Pursuit Champion and winner of two editions of the Under-23 Paris-Roubaix.


On this day in 2005, Victoria Pendleton set a new British Women's Record when she completed the 1000m Time Trial in 1'10.854".


Other cyclists born on this day: Jan Jansen (Netherlands, 1945); Kwok Ho Ting (Hong Kong, 1988); Gerard van Vliet (Aruba, 1964); Dorus Nijland (Netherlands, 1880, died 1968); Guo Shuang (China, 1986); Bogdan Yanchev (Bulgaria, 1913); Svatopluk Buchta (Czechoslovakia, 1966); Pavel Tesař (Czechoslovakia, 1967); Billy Kerr (Ireland, 1945); Frank Verleyen (Belgium, 1963); Artūras Kasputis (USSR, 1967); Bruno Loatti (Italy, 1915, died 1962); Ferenc Habony (Hungary, 1945); Yves Van Massenhove (Belgium, 1909, died 1990).

Daily Cycling Facts 24.02.2013

Vilma Rimšaitė

Vilma Rimšaitė

Vilma Rimšaitė, born in Lithuania's fourth largest city Šiauliai on this day in 1983, seemed destined for a life in music during her childhood when she earned a place at a specialist music school and won awards for her singing. At the age of six, she began to ride BMX and, spurred on by her BMX enthusiast father, soon demonstrated she was equally as talented at that - just three years later she took part in the European Championships, the continent's most prestigious BMX competition.

She spent the late 1990s and early years of the 21st Century concentrating on her academic studies, graduating from high school before taking a place at Šiauliai University and completing a degree in Business Management. Her studies done, she was free to return to BMX competition and was given a place on her nation's Olympic team with whom she rode in the 2008 Games in Beijing. In 2009, she won a bronze medal at the UCI BMX World Championships.


Bradley McGee
Bradley McGee was born in Sydney, Australia on this day in 1976 and became his nation's most successful male cyclist alongside Cadel Evans. His long string of wins began in 1993 with four Junior and Under-19 National titles followed by another six, two Commonwealth Games gold medals and an Under-19 3000m World Record (3'19.878") the next year. In 1995, competing at Elite level, he took two more National and one World Championship titles on the track.

Bradley McGee, 2005 Tour de France
(image credit: GSL CC BY-SA 2.5) 

More National titles came in 1997 along with a new Australian Hour record at 50.052km, then two more Commonwealth Games golds in 1998. In 1999, he began to make a name for himself in stage races by winning the prologue at the Tour de Normandie and the prologue and Stage 10 at the Tour de l'Avenir. In 2002, he won the Points Competition at the Critérium du Dauphiné, the World Individual Pursuit Championship, another Commonwealth gold and Stage 7 at the Tour de France. He won the prologue of the Tour a year later and wore the yellow jersey for three days.

2004 saw him win his first Olympic gold, having won bronze in 1996 (2) and 2000 (1), along with 1st place overall at the Route du Sud and 8th overall at the Giro d'Italia, in which he won the prologue and wore the maglia rosa for three days. He won the Points Classification at the Tour de Suisse in 2005 and wore the race leader's golden jersey for four days at the Vuelta a Espana. His last major victory was a gold medal in the Team Pursuit race at the UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics, then he retired at the end of the season.

Jan Ghyselinck, born on this day in 1988 in Tielt, Belgium, is a rider who showed enormous promise as an amateur when he won the Giro della Toscana Juniors, Ronde van Vlaanderen Juniors, U23 Ronde van Vlaanderen, two Junior and one Under-23 National Time Trial Championships. He then turned professional with HTC-Highroad, a team with a reputation for seeking out and developing future stars, in 2010. Originally signed up as a neo-pro, wins at Mandel - Leie - Schelde in 2010 and a string of good results earned him a full professional contract with the team for 2011. Highroad folded at the end of the 2011 season due to problems with sponsorship, causing the riders to look to other teams - Cofidis confirmed that they had signed Ghyselinck in September that year and he remained with the team as the 2013 season got under way. In 2013, he was fourth at the Dwars door Vlaanderen.

Clara Hughes
(image credit: Tabercil CC BY-SA 2.0)

On this day in 2010 Clara Hughes - the only Canadian athlete to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics and one of the most successful Canadian cyclists of all time - announced her retirement from speed skating. She remains a professional cyclist and, at the age of 38, won countless new fans with a fantastic solo breakaway at the 2011 World Road Race Championship in Copenhagen, considered by many to have been the highlight of the competition.

Stefan Steinweg, born in Dortmund, Germany on this day in 1969, won his first World Championship in 1989 in the Points Race. The next came in 1991 with the Amateur Team Pursuit and was followed by a gold medal in the same event at the Olympics the following year. Since then, he has won two World Madison Championships riding alongside Erich Weispfennig and won ten criterium races on the road.

Leon Vandaele was born on this day in 1933 in Ruddervoorde, Belgium. As a rider who excelled in one day races, his greatest results were victories at the Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne in 1954 and 1961, the Omloop van het Houtland in 1956, the Kampioenschap van Vlaanderen in 1956, 1957 and 1958 and, greatest of all, Paris-Roubaix in 1958. He died on the 30th of April, 2000.

On this day in 2008, Matt Manger-Lynch was killed when he collided with a car during the Tour da Chicago alleycat race. His death, which sparked several discussions on radio, television and the Internet, was partly responsible for bringing alleycat racing - unofficial urban events - to widespread attention, having previously been known only to the bike messengers who originally organised them and to a few "underground" cycling clubs.

Other births: Frank Brazier (Australia, 1934); Héctor Mellado (Chile, 1925); Vera Hohlfeld (Germany, 1972); Bernardo Alfonsel (Spain, 1954); Fujio Ito (Japan, 1945); Helge Hansen (Denmark, 1925); John Watters (Australia, 1955).