Daily Cycling Facts 13.04.2013

Rik van Steenbergen
(public domain image)

Paris-Roubaix was held on this date in 1952, 1958, 1969, 1975, 1980, 1986, 2003 and 2008. The 1952 winner was Rik van Steenbergen, who had also won in 1948 when he had won the Ruban Jaune, a prize established by Henri Desgrange to recognise the rider who set the fastest average time in a race more than 200km long during any one year (he chose yellow for the same reason the leader's jersey in the Tour de France is yellow: his L'Auto newspaper was printed on yellow paper), with an average speed of 46.612km - a new record, which stood for another three years after his 1952 triumph.

The 1958 winner was Leon Vandaele. The race that year was notable for two reasons: firstly, it took the unusually long time of just over eight hours to be completed, and secondly because it finished in a 23-man sprint - the largest in Paris-Roubaix history. 1969 was won by Walter Godefroot who achieved the very rare distinction of beating Eddy Merckx, who was 2'39" behind as Godefroot crossed the line. 1975 brought the second of Roger de Vlaeminck's record four wins and he too beat Merckx into second place.

Carrefour de l'Arbre
(image credit:  John.john59 CC BY-SA 3.0) 

In 1980, the Italian Francesco Moser became the second man in the history of the race to win in three consecutive years. The full 1.7km  cobbled section between Orchies, Chemin des Prières, and Chemin des Abattoirs (a fitting name for a Paris-Roubaix cobbled section if ever there was one) was used for the first time that year, the final 0.7km having been ridden in the opposite direction since 1977. Four entirely new cobbled sections made their first appearances: the first was a 1.4km stretch of the Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes to Sars-et-Rosières, to which another 1km would be added two years later; the second was the 1.2km Auchy-lez-Orchies to Bersee; the third was the 1.8km Camphin-en-Pévèle with a right corner that is often covered in mud and considered one of the most dangerous along the parcours and a final 300m made up of some the roughest cobbles anywhere in the race; the fourth was the notorious 2.1km Camphin-en-Pévèle to Carrefour de l'Arbre, considered to be the most difficult and dangerous section after the Trouée d'Arenberg and the place where many subsequent editions have been won and lost.

Sean Kelly, who had become the only Irish rider to win the race two years earlier, won for a second time in 1986. The same year, he won Milan-San Remo and would do so again in 1991, and he won Liège–Bastogne–Liège the same year as his first Paris-Roubaix and again in 1989 and the Giro di Lombardia in 1983, 1985 and 1991 (plus the amateur version in 1976), making him the joint third most successful Classics rider of all time. For the first time, the finish was relocated to the Avenue des Nations-Unies outside the offices of the race's main sponsor, mail order company La Redoute; where it would remain until 1988.

Frans Bonduel in 1932

Peter Van Petegem won in 2003, a week after he'd won the Ronde van Vlaanderen which had been held on the 6th of April that year - and thus became one of only ten men to have won both races in a single year. Tom Boonen scored the second of his three wins in 2008 after beating Alessandro Ballan and Fabian Cancellara in a final sprint. For the first time in three years, Paris-Roubaix did not form part of the UCI ProTour series - instead, the UCI wanted to include it in a new Historical Calendar series (since absorbed into the WorldTour series), a proposal that was at first resisted by race organisers the Amaury Sports Organisation until they eventually conceded two weeks before the race was due to take place. The first 100km of the race were covered in two hours, one of the fastest intermediate average speeds every recorded in the race and the overall average of 43.406kph was the fastest since 1964.

The Ronde van Vlaanderen fell on this day in 1930 when it was won by Frans Bonduel, the rider who went on to win Stage 17 and finish in 7th place overall at the Tour de France later that year. Bonduel enjoyed an unusually lengthy professional career that lasted for twenty years between 1928 and 1947. He died on the 25th of February in 1998 when he was 90 and there is a street in Baasrode, the town in which he was born, named after him.

In 1936, the first ever edition of La Flèche Wallonne was held on this day and covered a distance of 236km from Tournai to Liège. It was won by Philemon De Meersman (15.11.1914-02.04.2005), a Belgian rider who was professional for just three years up until the outbreak of the Second World War. The next time it was held on this date was in 1949, when started at Charleroi and stretched for 231km, once again to Liège. The winner was Rik Van Steenbergen, and he would win again nine years later. The race would not fall on this date again for four decades, the next time being 1988 when the 243km parcours between Spa and Huy was covered fastest by Rolf Gölz - a German rider who seems to be largely forgotten a quarter of a century later, despite having held amateur Worlds and professional Nationals titles as well as winning Stage 8 at the 1988 Tour de France and numerous other races. It has not been held on this date since.

Nicole Cooke

Nicole Cooke at La Flèche Wallonne, 2010
(image credit: Les Meloures CC BY-SA 3.0)

Nicole Denise Cooke, born in Swansea, South Wales in this day in 1983, is one of the most successful British cyclists of all time and, arguably, the most successful Welsh cyclist in history. Cooke began to cycle competitively with the amateur Cardiff Ajax CC - of which she is still a member - when she was 11, and was successful right from the start. He first major win was the National Road Race Championship, at Elite level, in 1999 - as she was 16 at the time, she is the youngest rider to have ever won the title. Two years later, she became the youngest woman to win the British Elite Cyclo Cross Championship. In that same year, she won the World Junior titles in mountain bike, time trial and road race - a unique achievement.

Cooke turned professional in 2002 and won a third National Road Race Championship, then added a Commonwealth Games gold medal. She was National Champion again in 2003 and won the World Road Cup and the Amstel Gold Race as well as the bronze medal at the World Championships, then in 2004 she won her fifth National title and the Giro Donne. A sixth National title came a year later, and a seventh in 2006 along with the General Classification at the Tour de France Féminine, then the greatest women's race in the world.

All in all, Cooke has won 10 National Championships, making her the second most successful rider in the event after the legendary Beryl Burton with 12 victories. She won the World Junior Road Race twice and the World Elite once, the Tour de France Féminine twice; with a total of 68 victories to her name to date. 2010 and early 2011 were not good for Cooke and poor results a she struggled to recover from an illness led to much of the British cycling press (that small part of it that takes notice of women's cycling, at any rate) to write her off, declaring that her career was over.

Fifth place at the Waalse Pijl, sixth at the GP Elsy Jacobs, second in the National Road Race Champions, first place on Stage 5 at the Giro Donne and fourth at the World Championships in Copenhagen (leaving her the best-placed British woman) in 2011 suggested the press had been wrong and more good results in 2012 - Stage 5 victory and eighth place overall at the Energiewacht Tour, which was emerging as one of the most popular and prestigious events in women's cycling, gave fans hope that Cooke was finding form once again.

However, early in 2013 she announced her immediate retirement. "I am very happy with my career. I have many happy memories over what's been a life's work," she said, then went on to launch a scathing attack on doping, revealing that she had been offered drugs when racing her first Tour de France: "I was invited into a team camper and asked what 'medicines' I would like to take to help me and was reminded that the team had certain expectations of me during the race and I was not living up to them. I said I would do my best until I had to drop out of the race, but I was not taking anything." She also attacked the injustice that women's cycling, although doping is far less prevalent in it, suffers enormously from doping in men's cycling: "Every scandal on the men's side has caused sponsors to leave on the women's side. With such thin budgets, the losses have a greater relative impact on what survives."

Olaf Ludwig
Olaf Ludwig was born in Gera - then East Germany - on this day in 1960. He began riding with the snappily-named SG Dynamo Gera/ Sportvereinigung (SV) Dynamo whilst still a teenager, riding on the winning teams in two World Junior Team Time Trial Championships in the late 1970s, and remained an amateur until 1990 when the Reunification allowed him to sign a professional contract with Panasonic. A sprinter of considerable repute who by this time had won numerous stages at the Tour de l'Avenir, an Olympic gold medal, several National Amateur Championship titles and a record 38 stages at the Peace Race, it came as no great surprie when he won Stage 8 and the overall Points competition of the Tour de France in his inaugural professional year.

Olaf Ludwig
(image credit: Etixer CC BY-SA 3.0)

Like many sprinters, Ludwig suffered badly on the climbs and as such was never a contender for the General Classification of the Grand Tours or many of the other stage races, but in a flat race with a straight finish he often seemed unbeatable - so much so that comparisons are frequently made between him and Mark Cavendish, whose technique closely resembles that of Ludwig.

In 1991, Ludwig was ranked 9th in the world by the UCI, won Stage 7 at the Tour de Suisse, Stages 2 and 5 at the Tour of Ireland and stood on the podium of the Tour de France six times, this time coming 3rd in the Points competition. In 1992, he won Stages 5 and 10 at the Tour de Suisse and the World Road Race Championship, the Four Days of Dunkirk, the Dwars door Vlaanderen and Stage 21 at the Tour de France, this time coming 4th on Points. In 1993, he won Stage 13 at the Tour but abandoned after the next stage; then a year later he won Stage 4 at the Tour of Britain as his career began to wind down, victories coming fewer and further between before his retirement in 1996.

In retirement Ludwig was employed by Telekom, the team with whom he spent his last four professional seasons, as a public relations agent. Later, when the team became T-Mobile, he would become a manager but ended his association with the organisation in 2006.

Tadej Valjavec

Tadej Valjavec
(image credit: McSmit CC BY-SA 3.0)

Tadej Valjavec, born in Kranj on this day in 1977, won the Slovenian National Road Race Championships in 2003 and 2007 and has achieved consistently good results in a variety of races including 4th at the 2003 Tour de Romandie and 7th at the 2009 Tour de Suisse. His Grand Tour results have also been good, with 17th, 19th and 10th overall at the Tour de France between 2006 and 2008 and 9th, 15th and 34th overall at the Giro d'Italia from 2004 to 2006 (including, in 2004, 2nd place on the Queen Stage 14) and 13th and 8th in 2008 and 2009.

On the 4th of May 2010, the UCI announced that Valjavec was among a number of riders under investigation for suspicious blood values - usually an indication that a rider has been found to have an unusually high red blood cell population, indication of either undetected EPO use or blood transfusions rather than a failed anti-doping test. He strongly denied that he'd cheated and continues to do so, claiming that an illness he'd failed to report to the testers was the cause of the suspicious results. The Slovenian Federation found in favour and declined to charge him, also criticising the UCI's use of biological passports (a system that aims to keep an accurate record of a rider's test history). The UCI, meanwhile, disagreed and referred the case for appeal at the Court for Arbitration in Sport which subsequently over-ruled the Slovenian decision, found him guilty and banned him on the 22nd of May 2011, effective as of the 20th of January 2011, and disqualified his results between the 19th April and 30th of September 2009 - including the 8th place finish at the 2009 Giro, his best ever Grand Tour result.


Alex Steida, born in Belleville, Ontario on this day in 1961, became the first North American cyclist to lead the General Classification of the Tour de France in Stage 2, 1986. He was also leading the Mountains, Points and Youth Classifications. Unfortunately, the remainder of the race did not go his way and he finished in 120th place overall, then never entered again.

Juan Carlos Domínguez, born in Íscar, Spain on this day in 1971, won the General Classification, Mountains Classification and Stage 5 at the Vuelta a Murcia in 1997 and numerous Spanish races until 2007. That year, he recorded an unusually high haematocrit level of greater than 50% - evidence of possible EPO use or illegal blood transfuion - at the 2007 Eneco Tour of the Benelux and was banned for fifteen days.

(Copyright unknown)

Dino Bruni, born in Portomaggiore on this day in 1932, won a silver medal at the Olympic Games of 1952 and competed again in 1956. He won Stages 4 and 16 at the 1959 Tour de France - but, due to much poorer results on other stages (especially the mountain stages) was 64th overall with only Louis Bisilliat finishing after him - and Stage 21 in 1962, also Stages 1 and 17 at the 1960 Giro d'Italia.

Fabrizio Guidi, who was born in Pontedera, Italy on this day in 1972, won the Points competition at the 1996 Giro d'Italia, then one stage in 1999 and 2000. He also won three stages in the 1998 Vuelta a Espana and the overall Tour de la Région Wallonne in 2006 before retiring in 2007 with more than 40 professional victories to his name.

Other cyclists born on this day: Ian McGregor (USA, 1983); Ángel Vicioso Arcos (Spain, 1977); Geneviève Robic-Brunet (Canada, 1959); Anton Joksch (Germany, 1900); Peter Clausen (Denmark, 1964); Klaus Kynde Nielsen (Denmark, 1966); Christoph Sauser (Switzerland, 1976); Yves Landry (Canada, 1947); Óscar Giraldo (Colombia, 1973); Igor Dzyuba (Uzbekistan, 1972); Roman Kononenko (Ukraine, 1981); Stephen McGlede (Australia, 1969); Ed McRae (Canada, 1953).

Daily Cycling Facts 12.04.2013

Crupelandt in 1912

Paris-Roubaix was held on this date in 1914, 1925, 1936, 1953, 1959, 1970, 1981, 1987, 1992, 1998 and 2009. Charles Crupelandt won for the second time in 1914, having previously done so two years earlier, and thus became the last man to win before the race was suspended during the First World War, and the start was moved to Suresnes where it would remain until 1928. Crupelandt  was injured in the war but survived and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, one of France's greatest honours and a medal reserved for those who have demonstrated heroic courage in combat.

However, at some point after being demobilised - there is a lack of clarity concerning the dates which vary from 1914 to 1917 to three years after the war ended - he was charged with a crime and sentenced to two years in prison. In response, the Union Vélocipédique handed him a lifetime ban, almost certainly after being pressured into doing so by Crupelandt's rivals. He was able to continue racing under the aegis of another organisation and won the unofficial National Championships in 1922 and 1923, but it spelled the end of what had been a very promising career - one that Henri Desgrange once predicted would lead to victory in the Tour de France - and which led to the eventual destruction of his life and health. When he died in 1955 - at Roubaix - both his legs had been amputated and he was blind. To mark the centenary of the race  in 1996, the commune of Roubaix laid a 300m stretch of cobbles along the centre of the Avenue Alfred Motte on the final approach to the velodrome that hosts the finish line. Set among the cobbles are inscribed stones commemorating all of the winners int he first 100 years of the race, which has led to the section's unofficial name Chemin des Géants, Road of Giants. The official name is Espace Charles Crupelandt.

1925 winner Félix Sellier had won Stage 13 at the 1921 Tour de France after Henri Desgrange, who was angry that riders had refused to attack the eventual overall winner Léon Scieur and even more angry that as a first class cyclist he'd been assisted earlier in the race by riders in the second class, decided he'd punish the peloton by splitting two groups up and allowing the second class to set out two hours ahead of the first class. The first class, not wanting to be beaten by a bunch of amateurs, rode hard and fast to catch them up. They did catch most of them, but a few - including Sellier - stayed out in front and beat them to the finish line (the next year, Sellier was back as fully-sponsored professional. That time, he won Stage 14 and 3rd place in the General Classification entirely in his own merit, this proving that he didn't need a head start in order to win).

For a while in 1936, nobody was quite sure who had won. The Belgian rider Romain Maes was very clearly seen to be first over the finish line (which was located for the second and final time at the Flandres horse racing track), but the judges then declared Georges Speicher - who, completely coincidentally, happened to be French - the winner. The crowd were not impressed, with many of the French fans seemingly every bit as angry as the Belgians. Things began to look ugly but, suddenly and for no obvious  reason, they settled down and accepted the result. The Belgians may have been cheated out of a win, but they were apparently content in the knowledge that their men had taken 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th place.

Germain Derycke turned professional in 1950 and, just a year later, took 2nd place at Liège–Bastogne–Liège - a sure sign of a Classics specialist if ever there was one. He won Paris-Roubaix in 1953 and would have taken 1st place at the World Championships that year too had it not been for Fausto Coppi, then at the height of his powers and near unbeatable. One year later he won La Flèche Wallonne and the Dwars door Vlaanderen, then added Milan-San Remo in 1955, 1st place at Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1957 and the Ronde van Vlaandered in 1958. The Giro di Lombardia was the only Monument that remained out of his grasp.

Noël Foré won Paris-Roubaix in 1959, a year his victory in the Tour of Belgium and two years after he won the Dwars door Vlaanderen. Four years later, he added Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne and the Ronde van Vlaanderen to  palmares that totalled 53 professional wins. 1970 brought the second of Eddy Merckx's three Paris-Roubaix victories and his winning margin over Roger De Vlaeminck - 5'21" - remains the largest in the history of the race. De Vlaeminck got his revenge, however: seven years later he topped Eddy's three wins when he became the first and to date the only man to have won the race four times.

Even The Badger suffered at Paris-Roubaix
(public domain image)

1981 was the year that Bernard Hinault - perhaps the third greatest cyclist of all time after Eddy Merckx and Marianne Vos - won his one and only Paris-Roubaix after an epic battle with De Vlaeminck's team mate Hennie Kuiper, who had defeated Hinault's attempted attack 8km from the finish. Kuiper was first into the velodrome, but when Hinault attacked one last time on the track he simply couldn't keep up and the Breton became the first French winner for a quarter of a century. After the race, Hinault told reporters: "Paris-Roubaix est une connerie!" - "Paris-Roubaix is bullshit!" He had crashed seven times, including once when a little black dog named Gruson ran out from the crowd and got between the Breton's wheels. Hinault, despite winning, was in a characteristically foul mood and, after returning the next year as defending champion when he came ninth, refused to have anything to do with the race from that point onwards. Gruson, by all accounts, was fine. That year also saw the first use of two cobbled sections, the 0.7km Mérignies to Pont à Marcq and the initial 1.1km of Cysoing to Bourghelles, an extra 0.3km being added to the latter section in 2006.

Eric Vanderaerden won in 1987, but sadly his victory did him few favours as, when taken into consideration alongside his earlier success in the other Classics and the Grand Tours, it served to confirm the belief among Belgian fans that he was destined to be the successor to their hero Eddy Merckx. Unfortunately, though an enormously talented cyclist, Vanderaerden was only a man; Merckx had seemed something greater. Knowing that he could never live up to their expectations, his career went into a decline in the following years and although his subsequent results were impressive (three editions of the Three Days of De Panne, a Tour of Ireland, the Dwars van Vlaanderen and Stage 17 at the 1992 Vuelta a Espana are pretty good by anyone's standards) it' generally agreed that he could have achieved much more. That year saw the first appearance of the 2.2km cobbled section from Troisvilles to Inchy, often one of the hardest sections as the road is frequently covered in mud that runs off the surrounding fields, despite the planting of a hedge in an attempt to keep it back. After the race, 1984 and 1986 winner Sean Kelly told the press: "A Paris–Roubaix without rain is not a true Paris–Roubaix. Throw in a little snow as well, it's not serious."

1992 brought the first of Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle's two wins - almost ten years after he'd formed a part of a breakaway that included Hennie Kuiper and Francesco Moser and which led to Kuiper's 1983 victory. Templeuve - Le Moulin de Vertain Pt 1 "Templeuve L", a 0.2km cobbled section was used for the first time and a 1.1km section from Bourghelles to Wannehain was added to the Cysoing to Bourghelles section that had first been used when Hinault won eleven years earlier, thus creating the Cysoing to Bourghelles to Wannehain stretch that, since the addition of an extra 0.km of cobbled leading to Bourghelles in 2006, is now cobbled for the full 2.5km length. Bourghelles to Wannehain had been discovered previously, but was not used in the race due to poor condition - however, it had been repaired using serviceable pavé taken from the old Péronne-en-Mélantois section that had featured in the race during the 1950s before falling into a state of irretrievable disrepair.

Franco Ballerini
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

Franco Ballerini won for the second time in 1998. The race was marked by a horrific crash on the Trouée d'Arenberg in which Johan Museeuw shattered his knee. The injury later became gangrenous and he very nearly had to have his leg amputated, yet in time he made a full recovery and won the race two years later. Before retiring in 2004, Museeuw acted as mentor to Tom Boonen, who would go on to win Paris-Roubaix three times - his third win being on this date in 2009. That year, the 1.2km Auchy-lez-Orchies to Bersee cobbles were returned to use for the first time since 2006 following repair work. Chris Boardman, commentating for the Eurosport television channel, was asked live on air why he'd always refused to take part in Paris-Roubaix. "It's a circus," he replied, "and I don't want to be one of the clowns."

La Flèche Wallonne fell on this day in 1984, 1989, 1995 and 2000. 1984 was the 48th edition and it began at Charleroi and ended at Huy, as all editions have done 1998, covering 246km in between. The winner, Kim Andersen, was the first Dane to achieve victory in this event. 1989 was the 53rd edition, covering a 253km between Spa and Huy - the longest since 1947. It was won for a second time by Claude Criquielion, who had also won four years earlier. 1995 brought the 59th edition, which covered 205.5km between Spa and Huy - there has not been a longer parcours since. Laurent Jalabert won the first of his two victories, in the same year that he would win Paris-Nice and Milan-San Remo. The 64th edition, which took place in 2000, started in Charleroi and ended in Huy and covered 198km. The winner was the Italian Francesco Casagrande.

2000 also brought the third edition of La Flèche Wallonne Féminine, won that year by the Canadian rider Genevieve Jeanson. Jeanson's victory is probably undeserved - on the 25th of July 2005, she failed a test for EPO. Initially, she denied having ever doped and retired early in 2006 before being served a back-dated two-year suspension from the date of her failed test. In 2007, she admitted to a journalist that she had used the notorious blood-boosting drug "more or less continuously" since she was 16. As she was 19 when he won La Flèche, it seems likely that she did so with illegal chemical assistance.

Arsène Alancourt

English mountain biker Liam Killeen was born in Malvern on this day in 1982. His first major success was the Under-23 National Championship of 2002, which he repeated in 2004 before adding the Elite Championship in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. He won the Cross Country race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and continues to win races at home, in Europe and in North America. In 2004, Killeen was Under-23 National Cyclo Cross Champion.

Arsène Alancourt, born in Clichy on this day in 1904, was a French professional cyclist who rode in the Tour de France in 1922, 1923 and 1924. He won Stage 13 in 1924, with help from a dog that ran under the wheels of Ottavia Bottechia who led the General Classification throughout the entirety of the race and caused him to crash, and finished in 7th place overall. He'd done better the previous year when he was 5th.

Christophe Moreau
Christophe Moreau, who was born in Vervins on this day in 1971, was a rider who spent much of his career with a very great weight upon his shoulders - he was France's greatest hope for a Tour de France win, which they had not had since Bernard Hinault's final victory in 1985.

Christophe Moreau
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Beginning his career as a time trial specialist with Festina, Moreau was 2nd at the 1995 Tour de l'Avenir and won the prologue the following year before beginning to add stage wins in races such as the Route du Sud and 1st place overall at the 1999 Tour Poitou-Charentes. He rode his first Tour de France in 1995 and didn't finish, then managed a couple of finishes just outside the top ten in 1996 but was 75th overall. In 1997, he was 6th in Stage 20 and 66th overall, then 5th in the 1998 prologue but again didn't finish. In 1999 he was 4th in the prologue and 10th in Stage 2, this time finishing in 27th place overall,

In 2000, he managed 4th place overall and fans began to wonder if he was the man who would bring them the glory they hadn't felt for fifteen years. He won the prologue a year later and was in the top ten for Stages 10 and 11 but abandoned soon afterwards, then abandoned again in 2002 after disappointing results. 2003 saw a return to form and he was 8th overall, then 12th in 2004 and 11th in 2005. In 2006, he finished the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2nd place and won the Mountains Classification - a sure sign that a rider has the potential to win the Tour, as was confirmed that same year with 7th place.

Unfortunately, he was now 35 - beyond the age at which most cycling careers begin to trail off. He rode again in 2007 and was 37th, then again in 2008 and once more abandoned, again in 2009 and was 29th (in fact, a respectable result all things considered) and for a final time in 2010. That last year, when he was 39 years old, he was 22nd overall and 2nd in the King of the Mountains; leaving no doubt that, a decade before, he could  have won a Tour had it not have been for one unfortunate factor: his date of birth. He'd simply had the misfortune to have been born at a time that meant his best years coincided with those of Lance Armstrong. If they had come five years earlier or five years later, when Armstrong wasn't around and the other riders were not driving themselves beyond the limits in order to keep up, the French would in all likelihood have had the winner they've wanted for so long.

Moreau tested positive for anabolic steroids at the Critérium International. However, team manager Bruno Roussel supported him, telling the team's lawyers that the rider had been tricked into taking the drugs by a member of the support staff (a not-unknown occurrence, support staff having sometimes been paid by rival teams to "nobble" riders over the years). The court found in favor, and Moreau was not suspended - which would almost certainly have been the end of that story had in not have been 1998, the year that Festina soigneur was caught as he tried to cross the French-Belgian border in a car filled with enough drugs to open a small pharmacy. Investigators discovered a massive, organised doping regime in the team and began looking again at the history of Festina riders during the Tour; which led Moreau, Armin Meier and Laurent Brouchard to confess they had used EPO and, in response, they were disqualified from continuing the race. He received a six-month suspension.

Other cyclists born on this day: Mauricio Mata (Mexico, 1939); Eric Vermeulen (France, 1954); Peter Jonsson (Sweden, 1958); Pavel Soukup (Czechoslovakia, 1965); Henning L. Larsen (Denmark, 1955); András Mészáros (Hungary, 1941); Jim Rossi (USA, 1936, died 2005); Michael Lynch (Australia, 1963).

Daily Cycling Facts 11.04.2013

1909 victor Octave Lapize, pictured at the
1910 Tour de France

Paris-Roubaix was held on this date in 1909, 1954, 1965, 1976, 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2010. The 1909 edition - the last in which riders were allowed to be paced by another bike or tandem (they'd been allowed to be paced by cars and motorbikes too between 1898 and 1901) - was won by Octave Lapize, the first of the three victories that would make him the only man to have won in three consecutive year until Francesco Moser repeated the feat nearly seven decades later in 1980. Lapize would go on to become French National Champion in 1911, 1912 and 1913 and, after Stages 5, 9, 10, 14 and the overall General Classification at the Tour de France in 1910, would win Stage 6 in 1912 and 8 in 1914. When the First World War broke out, Lapize became a pilot in the French Army but was shot down on Bastille Day 1917 near Flirey. He survived the crash but succumbed to appalling injuries in hospital shortly afterwards. He was 29.

Raymond Impanis, winner in 1954, was another rider who also did well in the Tour (and the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d'Italia too, for that matter) - he did even better, meanwhile, in the Classics; winning the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1949 and 1951, Gent-Wevelgem in 1952 and 1953 and the Tour of Flanders in the same year as his Paris-Roubaix victory (he also won Paris-Nice for the first time that year too, repeating it in 1960). All in all, he rolled across the Paris-Roubaix start line sixteen times - a record that was not equaled until Servais Knaven made his own 16th appearance in 2010, the same year that Impanis died.

Rik van Looy - first man to win all five Monuments
(image credit: Velorunner)

1965 brought the record-equaling third win for Rik van Looy. His previous victories, however, had been in 1961 and 1962, so he could not equal the three consecutive wins set by Lapize all those year before. However, by winning both Paris-Roubaix and Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1961 and having already won  Milan-San Remo (1958) and the Tour of Flanders and the Giro di Lombardia (1959), he became the first rider in history to win all five Monuments, the toughest and most prestigious of the Classics (only two other riders - Roger de Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx - have been able to repeat the achievement).

Belgian Marc Demeyer won in 1976 - the year in which the race was twice disrupted by angry protestors demonstrating against redundancies at Le Parisien, a newspaper that sponsored the race. Both incidents were filmed by a Danish crew for A Sunday In Hell, a movie that is considered one of the finest ever made on the subject of cycling and which is mandatory viewing for all historians and fans of the sport and which does an admirable job of depicting the sheer suffering involved in the race for those who have not been sufficiently fortunate as to have seen it for themselves. Less than six years later, on the 20th of January 1982, Demeyer died when he suffered a heart attack while sitting down doing a crossword at his home circumstances that would nowadays immediately suggest EPO (a synthetic version known as Epogen was undergoing clinical trials at the time, but was not available except to pharmaceutical laboratories). No link to doping has ever been proven, but as Willy Voet points out in his 1999 book Massacre á la Chaine, tests in the early 1980s were extremely rudimentary and, with the increasing elapsed time, any link to a drug available to Demeyer - if indeed such a link exists - is unlikely to ever be found.

Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1993 the race was won by Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle who had formed part of a breakaway group with Francesco Moser (winner in 1978, 1979 and 1980), Marc Madiot (winner in 1985 and 1991) and Hennie Kuiper ten years earlier in 1983, when Kuiper won. 1999 was won by Andrea Tafi, who made such a name for himself in hard, dangerous races like this one that he was nicknamed Il Gladiatore. He won wearing the jersey of the Italian National Champion, thus achieving his greatest ambition - repeating the same feat that had been accomplished by his hero Francesco Moser in 1979. In 1993, race organisers reversed the direction in which the riders tackled the Trouée d'Arenberg: with the speed offered by modern bikes ever increasing, the notorious cobbles that are considered the hardest section of the entire race had become too dangerous even by the standards of Paris-Roubaix.

Magnus "Maximus" Bäckstedt became the first Swedish rider to win Paris-Roubaix in 2004 after beating Tristan Hoffman, Roger Hammond and Fabian Cancellara in a final sprint - Johan Museeuw, the favourite, had been robbed of his chances at becoming the second man to win four editions when he suffered a puncture on the crucial section at Hem. After the race, Jo Planckaert, who had come 2nd in 1997, told reporters: "This is a race that suits me when I'm having a good day. On the other hand, if you don't have the legs, this is the worst place you could possibly be." Cancellara - nicknamed "Spartacus" - won for the second time in 2010, thus becoming the most successful Swiss rider in the history of the race.

La Flèche Wallonne took place on this date in 1974 and 1990. 1974 was 38th edition of the race and ran for the first time as a loop, starting and finishing at Verviers; as it would for a total of six years. The total distance was 225km, 24km shorter than the previous year, and the winner was Frans Verbeeck. The 54th edition in 1990 ran for a fifth consecutive year between Spa and Huy, covering 208km - 45km down on the previous year. Moreno Argentin won for the first time, but in the coming years he would manage another two victories and equal the record.

Pat Hanlon

(image credit: Retrobike)

A decade and a half after her death, Pat Hanlon's name remains one of the most hallowed in the cycling world. However, few younger riders and fans know how she achieved her fame, let alone anything about her.

Prissie Jane Howell (as she was then known) was born on this day in 1915 and spent her early childhood in her native Cardiganshire, doing well academically but suffering a series of lung complaints due to the damp Welsh weather, so her parents decided to move her to Somerset. The drier weather suited her and she became healthy; however, as Welsh was her first language her studies went downhill fast. When she was 14, she was given a bicycle as a gift and discovered a talent for repairing it - a skill that in those days, despite the work carried out by women during the First World War when they had maintained machinery on farms and in factories while the men were away fighting, was considered most unbefitting a young lady.

Two years later, Pat went to live with an aunt in London and spent the next decade working as a "nippy," a waitress in a Lyon's Cornerhouse teashop. Often, she would wake at 3am to join the local cycling club for a 150km ride before returning to London in time to work the afternoon and evening shift. At weekends, she would ride to Somerset and back again to visit her parents - around 36 hours of riding in total. Soon, she was covering more than 24,000km each year and began to enter races; immediately enjoying some success which encouraged her to seek out a quality racing bike and finding one at McLean's, a famous bike manufacturer and shop based at 362 Upper Street, Islington (it closed in 1962), and she began to hang around the shop badgering the owners for a job. They would occasionally give her a job to do, but rarely if ever paid her for it.

The cellar at McLean's was the domain of the shop's elderly wheel builder - a man who, like many of those of achieve expertise in the art, gave the impression of being as much a wizard as a mechanic. She pestered him, too, trying to persuade him to teach her the skill, but he refused and told her that "women don't do jobs like that." Just as the First World War had forced Britain to give women the chance to prove they were equal to men, so the Second World War proved to be the opportunity Pat needed: one day, with the male shop staff all away fighting the Nazis, the boss told her that somewhat gruffly that as of the coming Monday she would be the on-site wheel builder. She remained there for almost twenty years.

At first - and as one might suspect - Pat faced awful prejudice, with many of the shop's customers making it perfectly plain that they would not be buying nor even trying wheels built by a woman. Pat, meanwhile, knew her wheels were good and refused to give up. In time, reports began to filter back from the more enlightened customers and those who bought their wheels without knowing who had built them - Pat's wheels were not good, they were excellent; magnitudes better than anything those who were fortunate enough to own them had ever ridden, light and strong and staying true on even the harshest roads.

Word of mouth is the best advertisement available, and in 1957 after her first marriage failed Pat left McLean's to set up her own shop in Tottenham (where, in the 1960s, she would employ a young man named John Berrisford; the very same one that taught your humble author how to build a wheel in the late 1990s). By this time, she was famous among cyclists throughout Europe and the great riders of the day would travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to buy Hanlon wheels. She was rarely seen in the shop, preferring to pay shop staff to deal with the likes of Jean Stablinksi, Jacques Anquetil, Tom Simpson and Rik Van Looy (who may well have been riding on Hanlon wheels when he won Paris-Roubaix on this day in 1965 - see above) when they showed up to buy the wheels she built in her private workshop. They sold as quickly as she could produce them: Mr. Berrisford told me that, in an attempt to meet demand, Hanlon would take her work home with her and build wheels while sitting down and watching television in the evenings, just as many women of her generation would knit. However, demand outstripped supply, and winning a Tour de France was by no means a guarantee that stock would be available when a hopeful cyclist visited in search of them.

Pat remarried in 1979 at the age of 64, sparking rumours that she would soon retire and sending shockwaves through cycling as riders realised that the supply of Hanlon wheels would soon dry up forever. She continued for four years, finally calling it a day in 1983 - sadly, husband Jim died soon afterwards. She outlived him by fourteen years, dying in Majorca on the 29th of December in 1997.

Some of those riders fortunate enough to have been able to lay their hands on a set of Hanlon wheels still have them, and some still use them. Mr. Berrisford's dated to 1964, and he claimed that he had never had to true them.

Przemysław Niemiec
(image credit: WR100Mio CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ron Kiefel, who was born in Denver on this day in 1960, became the first American cyclist to win a Grand Tour stage when he was first over the finish line after Stage 15 at the 1985 Giro d'Italia. His career began in cyclo cross, coming 5th in the National Championships of 1980 and 1981 before he turned to road cycling and won the National Road Race, Individual Time Trial and Team Trial in 1983. Following his Giro stage win, he won stages in the 1986 Coors Classic, then the General Classification at the Tour of Tuscany and a second National Road Race title in 1988. Kiefel rode in six Tours de France and finished them all, with his best result being 69th overall in 1988 - however, two years later, he was 3rd in Stage 8.

Przemysław Niemiec, born in Oświęcim, Poland on this day in 1980, is a climbing specialist who won the Tour of Slovenia in 2005, the Tour of Tuscany in 2006, the Route du Sud in 2009 and the Mountains Classification and 2nd place overall in the 2010 Settimana internazionale di Coppi e Bartali, later taking the Mountains Classification and 3rd overall at the Settimana Ciclistica Lombarda that same year.

Other cyclists born on this day: Will Clarke (Australia, 1985); Marvin Angarita (Colombia, 1989); Franck Rénier (France, 1974); Rick Flens (Netherlands, 1983); Franck Dépine (France, 1959); Gonzalo Aguiar (Spain, 1966); Antipass Kwari (Zimbabwe, 1975); Toni Tauler (Spain, 1974); Gino Pancino (Italy, 1943); René van Hove (Netherlands, 1915); Frans de Vreng (Netherlands, 1898, died 1974); Benedykt Kocot (Poland, 1954); Anikó Hódi (Hungary, 1986); Thanos Mantzouranis (Greece, 1982); Aleksandr Averin (USSR, 1954).

Daily Cycling Facts 10.04.2013

Maurice Garin, shortly after winning in 1898

Paris-Roubaix was held on this day in 1898, 1955, 1960, 1983, 1988, 1994, 2005 and 2011. In 1898, the winner was Maurice Garin, who had also won the second ever edition of the race the previous year and thus became the first man to win in two consecutive years. Garin is better known, of course, as the winner of the first Tour de France which was held five years later (and he was declared Tour winner in 1904, too; but was subsequently disqualified for cheating). That year, the start was moved to Chatou where it would remain for two years and to where it returned in 1902, and motorpacing - not permitted in the first two years - was allowed for the first time before being banned forever in 1901 (pacing by another bicycle was permitted until 1910).

1955 winner Jean Forestier was also a successful rider in the Tour de France - in 1954 he had won Stage 16, and he would win Stage 20 in 1955 as well as Stage 16 in 1956 and Stage 8 in 1961, also taking the Points competition and coming 4th overall in 1957. Guiseppe "Pino" Cerami, winner in 1960, was Italian by birth but had taken Belgian nationality four years before the race He too had ridden in the Tour de France but was less successful, failing to finish in 1949 and 1959, coming 35th in 1957 and 1962. However, in 1963 he won Stage 9 and, as he was 41 years old at the time, he's the oldest stage winner in Tour history.

Hennie Kuiper
(image credit: Poortugaalse Polleke CC BY-SA 3.0)

1983 winner Hennie Kuiper also won three of the other four Monuments and as such is among the most successful Classics riders in the history of cycling. Francesco Moser - who had become the second man to win Paris-Roubaux in three consecutive years in 1983 - was in a breakaway with Kuiper and three other riders and attacked hard on the unforgiving cobbles of the Trouée d'Arenberg to set a blistering pace. Kuiper fell twice, but as Moser was by the strongest rider the other riders (Marc Madiot, who would win in 1985; Ronan de Meyer; Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle)  left him to deal with the Dutchman's counter-attacks alone. Moser was indeed strong, but Kuiper kept working away at him and managed to gain the upper hand, tiring out his opponent so that he was able to build up a lead of a minute and a half by the 16km to go point. Disaster very nearly struck when he had a puncture, but a team car was close enough to provide him with a replacement bike before he lost his advantage and he crossed the finish line alone.  That year was also notable for the first appearance of two cobbled sections - Hornaing to Wandignies-Hamage, though only a part of this section was used (the full 3.7km would be used for the first time in 1988), and the 2.4km Warlaing to Brillon. 1983 was also the year in which Albert Bouvet and Jean-Claude Vallaeys set up Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix, an organisation of fans who work to maintain the cobbled sections and locate new pavé roads for possible future inclusion in the race. It's entirely due to them that several famous sections are still in good enough condition to be used.

The full 3.7km Hornaing to Wandignies-Hamage cobbled section was used for the first time in 1988 (see above). The winner, Dirk Demol, had formed part of a group that broke away from the main pack after 27km and - for reasons never explained - the peloton then decided to let them get on with it, doing nothing whatsoever to reel them back in. Demol and a Swiss rider named Thomas Wegmuller then broke away from the breakaway as the finish line approached, but Wegmuller got into difficulty when a plastic carrier bag blown onto the course became entangled in his gears. His team car drew up alongside him and managed to free it, but he was unable to shift through the gears for the remainder of the race. Electing at such a late stage to continue rather than risk letting Demol blast off for an easy win while he swapped to a replacement bike proved an unwise move - the two men now had such a lead on the rest that Demol was able to take advantage of the situation by taking it easy in Wegmuller's slipstream, confident that he could make use of his working gears to print past him to victory.

Andrei Tchmil
(image credit: Eric Houdas
CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1994, Andrei Tchmil was the first  rider from the ex-USSR to win the race. Like many of the Eastern Bloc cyclists who made it big on the European scene in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st Century (Ekimov, Vinokourov, Voigt and others), Tchmil was a product of a Soviet sports academy, facilities to which promising young athletes were sent so that they could be developed into world-beaters. A stupendously powerful rider who seemed able to only ride at full pace; Tchmil did poorly in stage races such as the Tour de France which he entered five times and finished just twice without winning any stages but proved devastatingly effective in the Flemmish Classics, winning the Dwaars door Vlaanderen, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Gent-Wevelgem and the Tour of Flanders in the years after his Paris-Roubaix victory and before a crushed thigh sustained in the 2002 Three Days of De Panne forced him to take early retirement.

Vansummeren rides alone in the
Roubaix Velodrime, seconds away from
his 2011 victory
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0) 

2005 was another year of firsts. Not only was it the first time Tom Boonen won (the Belgian has four victories - the record - to his name as of 2013, when he was kept away from the race by injury), he won on a bike with an extended wheelbase designed specifically to offer more stability and comfort on the cobbles - the first time that such a bike had been used in the race. The 1.7km Capelle sur Ecaillon to Buat cobbles made their first appearance - after a 4% decline over the initial 0.7km, the section then climbs from 66m above sea level to 400m - creating a 7% climb that is the steepest part of the race and about as steep as hills get in that part of the world. The remainder continues to climb, but at a far gentler 2%. For the first time since 1983, the Trouée d'Arenberg was not used - the road was in such poor condition (not helped by fans who often dig up the cobbles and take them away as a souvenir) that it required repairs costing a total of a quarter of a million euros to bring it up to standard for a return in 2006.

In 2011, the race was won by Johan Vansummeren after he attacked the other members of a four-man breakaway group some 15km from the finish, crossing the line with a 19" advantage.

Edgard de Caluwé

The Ronde van Vlaanderen fell on this day in 1938 and 1949. Edgard de Caluwé won in 1938 but, as was first over the line in a group of nine, he couldn't claim the 100 franc bonus that was on offer should the victor win with an advantage of or greater than 30 minutes. For the first time, the police played a major role in the organisation of the event: prior to 1933, their presence had not been required but as the race gradually increased in popularity it became necessary to have a few gendarmes keeping an eye on things, as had happened in 1933. However, in 1937 half a million spectators had shown up and caused chaos by driving between various points along the parcours so they could watch the peloton pass by several times - rather than face their race being closed down, organisers asked the police to provide support and the event became more like a modern race with large numbers of officers controlling the crowds, vehicles setting up rolling roadblocks and so on.

Fiorenzo Magni became the first Italian to win in 1949 and he would win again for the next two years, thus becoming the second man to have won three times and (as of 2013, following Fabian Cancellara's second victory) the only man to have won three consecutive times. Magni, who died in 2012, is often described as being "a rare Italian in the Flemish Classics," which at the time and for some years afterwards was true - riders from his country,  perhaps due to the difficulties involved until the comparatively recent advent of cheap air travel and good quality roads through the Alps and perhaps due to being accustomed to the Italian weather, rarely took part in the races of Northern Europe and when they did they tended not to perform well. This seems to be changing in recent years with a number of Italian winners in this race, Paris-Roubaix and others. In 1949, Sportwereld - the newspaper that had created the Ronde - merged with Het Nieuwsblad ato become its sports section and the last four riders to reach the finish line were given bottles of massage oil as prizes.

La Flèche Wallonne was held on this day in 1979, the 43rd edition of the race. After many years in which the distance had decreased, it was 25km longer than the previous year at 248km between Esneux and Marcinelle. The winner was the great Breton Bernard Hinault, who later on that same year would win his third Tour de France. The race has never been held on this date since.


Fumiyuki Beppu
Fumiyuki Beppu, born in Kanagawa-ken on this day in 1983, is one of Japan's most successful road cyclists and one of the very few to have made a breakthrough into the almost entirely white, Caucasian European cycling scene, where he enjoys enormous popularity among fans.

Fumiyuki Beppu
(image credit:  Josh Hallett CC BY-SA 2.0) 

Beppu received his first professional contract with Discovery in 2005 after winning the 2003 Under-23 National Road Race Championship and the King of the Mountains at the 2004 Ronde de l'Isard d'Ariege. He spent his first year with the team fulfilling his duties as a domestique, learning from the squad's more experienced riders and finding his feet after the big step-up that turning pro entails, also finding time to finish 3rd in the Youth category at the Circuit de la Sarthe that year; then in 2006 won both the National Time Trial and Road Race Championships at Elite level. 2007 wasn't a spectacular year with 2nd place for Stage 3 at the Tour de Romandie his best result, hence he experienced difficulty in securing a contract with a ProTour team at the end of the year when Discovery announced it would withdraw from cycling and the team folded. In the end, he had to settle for the ProContinental Skil-Shimano and remained with the team for two seasons.

In 2008, he finished 3rd on Stage 1 at the Tour of Qatar and won the road race at the Asian Cycling Championships which that year took place in his home nation, then in 2009 - when the team rode on a wildcard invitation - he took part in his first Tour de France; sharing with Europcar's Yukiya Arashiro the honour of being among Japanese riders to take part in the race (neither of them were the first, however, and not by a long way - Kisso Kawamura had been there more than eight decades earlier). He finished in 8th place in Stage 3, 7th in Stage 19 and won the Combativity award for Stage 21, while Arashiro managed 5th in Stage 2. Beppu was 117th overall compared to Arashiro's 129th.

He began 2010 with Skil-Shimano but left the team to join Johan Bruyneel's Radioshack in February, thus making his return to the upper echelons of the sport. The rest of the year was spent racing in Europe and achieving some good results in prestigious races including the Tour of Austria, Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen, Châteauroux - Classic de l'Indre and Tour of Poland, but overall victories remained out of grasp. 2011, however, proved to be his best year to date - he scored his best Grand Tour results yet with 2nd place in Stage 1 and 67th overall at the Giro d'Italia and won the National Time Trial and Road Race titles that he had lost in 2007. At the end of the year, the new Australian GreenEDGE team announced that Beppu would be joining them for the 2012 season and he went on to enjoy a good season, taking ninth place on Stage 3 and 13th place on Stage 18 at the Giro d'Italia, helped the team win the Team Time Trial at the Benelux Tour and came second in the Criterium at the Japan Cup. He is still with GreenEdge - now renamed Orica-AIS - as of 2013.

Ernie Mills and Bill Paul

Ernie Mills, who was born on this day in 1913, was a great English tandem rider who as an amateur with the Addiscombe CC set a number of records with team mate Bill Paul in the 1930s; including an official British 12-hour record in 1934 and an unofficial World record two years later, establishing a new tandem Hour Record  too when the covered 30 miles (48.28km). In 1937, Cycling magazine paid for them to travel to Italy where they made an appearance at the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan, which still stands but has been converted into an American football stadium. Whilst there, they beat their previous Hour Record by covering 31.06 miles (49.991km) - a record that remained unbroken for 63 years. In 1938, they set a new 100 Mile record, completing the distance in 3h53'12". The record still stood at the time of writing, 73 years later. Strangely, the exact date and place of Mills' death are unknown (though it presumably wouldn't take an enormous effort to find out despite his common name) - as are the date and place of Paul's birth in 1910. The two men were honoured with a joint page in the Golden Book of Cycling in 1937, and two years later they were commemorated on Track Tandem Position, Card No.45 in the now highly-valuable John Player & Son cigarette card series Cycling 1839-1939.

Tetiana Stiazkhina
(image credit: Le Blog du Cyclisme Feminin)

Tetiana Stiazhkina (also spelled Tatiana Stiajkina and in numerous other ways) was born in Ukraine on this day in 1977. As an Under-23, she won the European Time Trial and Road Race in 1999 - and would win a National TT Championship at Elite level in 2002 and both the National TT and Road Race in 2008. Stiazkhina is one of the few riders who excels in both time trials and on climbs (though such a combinations seems to be less unusual among female riders than their male counterparts) - she has been fastest to climb the challenging El Boquerón in the Vuelta a El Salvador on one occasion and second fastest on another. She won Stage 4 and the overall General Classification at the Vuelta a El Salvador in 2008, adding to victory to a Stage 1 win in 2007, the General Classification at the Eko Tour Dookola Polski in 2003 and the Trophée d'Or Féminin in 2002.

Leonardo Duque, born on this day in 1980, was Colombian champion in Madison, Points and Scratch in 2003 - the same year he won a silver and a bronze at the PanAmerican Games. In 2006, he won the Tour du Limousin and a year later Stage 16 at the Vuelta a Espana. He was awarded the Combativity prize for Stage 19 at the 2009 Tour de France and was 12th in Stge 15, 2011.

Atle Kvålsvoll, born in Trondheim on this day in 1962, entered six Tours de France and finished four, his best result coming when he assisted Greg Lemond to victory in 1990 and took 26th place for himself making him one of the most successful Norwegian riders in the Tour after Thor Hushovd - whom he coaches. In 2011, he also took up a position as directeur sportif for the Plussbank Cervélo Continental team.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gary Trowell (Australia, 1959); Léonard Daghelinckx (Belgium, 1900, died 1986); Wernell Reneau (Belize, 1965); Sandra Ambrosio (Argentina, 1963); Ali Sayed Darwish (United Arab Emirates, 1977); František Trkal (Czechoslovakia, 1970); Fabio Placanica (Argentina, 1970).

Daily Cycling Facts 09.04.2013

Emile Masson jnr., depicted on a 1939
poster for Alcyon

Paris-Roubaix took place on this date in 1939, 1944, 1945, 1950, 1961, 1962, 1967, 1989, 1995, 2000 and 2006. 1939 was the last edition before the start of the Second World War brought it to a halt for four years, the next one being in 1943 when it was organised and held despite the Nazi Occupation. The start was moved back to Porte Maillot after having been relocated to Argenteuil for a year and the winner was Émile Masson jnr., who would twice win the Belgian National Road Race Championship after the war - his father, Émile Masson snr., had also been a successful Classics cyclist and was the winner of Bordeaux-Paris in 1923 (and, the year before that, Stages 11 and 12 at the Tour de France).

1944 was won by another Belgian, Maurice Desimpelaere, who also won the Dwaars door Vlaanderen in 1946 and Gent-Wevelgem in 1947. In 1945 it was the turn of Paul Maye who won Stages 10 and 19c at the 1936 Tour de France, had been National Champion in 1938 and 1943 and won Paris-Tours three times in 1941, 1942 and 1945. Fausto Coppi won in 1950 - he may have won the Giro di Lombardia Monument five times, but he could manage just the one Sunday in Hell.

Rik van Looy
(image credit: Dave's Bike Blog)

1961 and 1962 were won by Rik van Looy, who would go on to win again in 1965 and become one of only seven men to win the race three times in its long history. In 1967, Jan Janssen was the winner. Since film cameras had begun following the race some years previously, local mayors had begun to order their local roads to be resurfaced with tarmac the moment they heard the race would be passing through their locale and the cobbled roads that give Paris-Roubaix its character - and make it the cruel, vicious, unforgiving  and beautiful spectacle that it is - were becoming few and far between. In the early days of the race, organisers had not sought out the challenging, traditional cobbled roads - that's simply how roads were in those days; but realising that their race was in serious danger of losing the one thing that made it stand out as the hardest Classic of them all, they began to do so. Today, if a long-forgotten cobbled road is discovered anywhere near Paris-Roubaix's route, the local mayor doesn't have it resurfaced a soon as possible: he or she will be on the phone to the Amaury Sports Organisation begging them to direct the revered race through the area he or she controls. The finish line was at the Roubaix Velodrome for the first time in 1989, where it has remained ever since - Jean-Marie Wampers was the first to cross it. Franco Ballerini won in 1995, the first of his two wins; then in 2000 Johan Museeuw won the second of his three.

In 2006 Fabian Cancellara beat favourite Tom Boonen to take the first win by a Swiss rider since Henri Suter more than eight decades before in 1923. Cancellara's solo assault on the Carrefour de l'Arbre is among the most iconic footage of Paris-Roubaix; as it that of George Hincapie, dragging himself away from the road in agony with a smashed collar bone after the cobbles of the Mons-en-Pévèle caused his steerer tube to snap some 25km earlier in the race.

The Ronde van Vlaanderen has also fallen on this date, in 1966, 1972 and 1978. 1966 was won by Ward Sels, who was assisted by a crash roughly halfway through the race and which took down Walter Godefroot and Eddy Merckx before a final sprint proved him to be the fastest of a group of fourteen riders who escaped the peloton on the Muur van Geraardsbergen.


1972 brought the second of three victories for Eric Leman, who had spent much of a race - characterised by appalling weather and freezing temperatures that year - working with Merckx to escape the peloton. They were caught by five others with 10km to go and the new group approached the line together, then began to sprint. Leman was fastest - Merckx, who never did as well in this race as he did in most others, was 7th. The 1978 edition was won by Merckx's great rival Walter Godefroot - ten years after his first win. 47 finished out of 174 starters that year.


Linda Villumsen

Villumsen at the 2012 Olympics
(Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Born in Herning, Denmark on this day in 1985, Linda Villumsen came to widespread attention when she took a silver in the Road Race and a bronze in the Individual Time Trial at the National Championships of 2005, then came second at the Damesronde van Drenthe later that season. In 2006 she became national Road Race and Time Trial Champion in addition to Under-23 European Time Trial Champion, then in 2007 she retained the European title, was second overall at the Holland Ladies' Tour and won Stage 6 at the Tour de l'Aude. She regained both National titles in 2008 and finished the Road Race at the Olympics in fifth place, keeping the National titles in 2009 when she also came third in the Time Trial World Championship and won the Thüringen Rundfahrt.

In 2009, Villumsen became a citizen of New Zealand and has raced with a New Zealand license since 2010. She was third again in the Time Trial World Championship in 2010 but managed second in the same event at the Commonwealth Games. The following year she was second in the Time Trial World Championship and enjoyed more time trial success in 2012 with victory in the Stage 3 TT at the Emakumeen Bira, fourth in the Olympics and another third in the World Championships but also performed well in mass-start road racing, winning the Giro del Trentino Alto Adige-Südtirol.

Early in 2013, Villumsen became New Zealand National TT Champion. Considering her love of her adopted country - "My connection to Denmark will always be there, but it is here in New Zealand that I have found my life," she says - it's probably the trophy she cherishes most.


Charles Terront

Charles Terront
(public domain)

Charles Terront certainly started a trend - he was the first French cycling star. Born in Saint-Ouen on this day in 1857, he won 54 races during his 15 year career and due to the rather ambiguous nature of competition rules at the time achieved the unique honour of being both French and British Champion on two occasions.

Having taken up cycling in 1876 -with his brother Jules, he immediately began winning races and set numerous speed and endurance records, including with Jules aboard a tandem. In 1879, he set a new 24 Hour record at 546km and in 1883 he cycled the 3,000km between St. Petersburg in Russia and the new Vélodrome Buffalo (named after the Buffalo Bill Cody Wild West Show it once hosted) in Porte Maillot, Paris; a ride that took him 14 days and 7 hours. 

In 1891, he won the inaugural Paris–Brest–Paris, then called the Paris-Brest et retour. Rules by that time were strictly enforced and tended to be far more strict than today, so all riders were required to be entirely self-sufficient and carry all their own spare parts, food and clothing as well as sticking to one bike for the duration of the event. However, the race proved to be so popular that more than 300 would-be entrants showed up and, having already told seven women that they could not take part, organisers had to demand a five franc fee to whittle them down. Five francs was quite a lot of money in 1891, but they were still left with 207 or 280 (records disagree) riders, of whom 97 finished. Among the bikes they rode were several tricycles, tandems and a penny-farthing.

Charles Terront

Terront won, completing the 1,196km in 71 hours and 22 minutes on his British-built Humber; a bike fitted with the brand new Michelin pneumatic tyres that had been patented that very year. His rival Jacques Jiel-Laval, riding for Dunlop who had patented his own pneumatic tyres three years earlier (and was believed to be the inventor until it turned out that another Scottish inventor had patented his own version in 1846), was on a similar bike - both men had to stop and fix several punctures along the way, but the advantages offered by their tyres far outweighed the advantages of solid tyres. Jiel-Laval had a lead of almost an hour by the time they reached Brest, but then took a sleeping break. Spies recruited by Terront's manager, a man named Duncan, passed on the news and Terront rode hard to catch up, eventually overtaking and keeping the lead for the remainder of the race. He was met by a crowd of more than 10,000 fans in Paris, many of whom had stayed up all night to make sure they caught a glimpse of their hero.

Two years later, a collection of his memoirs as told to and written by journalist Louis Baudry de Saunier went on sale - making Terront the very first athlete to have a biography published within his lifetime. He died in Sainte-Marguerite-lès-Marseille on the 31st of October 1932, aged 75.


Graeme Brown
Graeme Brown, an Australian cyclist born in Darwin on this day in 1979, won numerous titles on track and on road, including several National Sprint, Pursuit and Scratch races, stages at the Tour Down Under and the Points competition at the Tour de Langkawi in 2003 and 2005. In 2004, he was implicated in a doping scandal when multiple Sprint and Keirin champion Mark French claimed that Brown, Shane Kelly, Joble Dajka and Sean Eadie were the co-owners of 13 phials of an equine growth hormone, injectable vitamins and used medical equipment that had been discovered in his room at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Dajka was later found to have lied when giving evidence, resulting in his suspension from competition and deselection from the Olympic team. No evidence was ever found to connect the drugs or equipment to the cyclists French had accused, so ultimately only he was the only cyclist other than Dajka in the case who was prosecuted - his lifetime ban was later ended at appeal, since there was also no evidence that he had taken the drugs.



Yvonne McGregor
Born in Wibsey, Bradford, United Kingdom on this day in 1961, Yvonne McGregor won the Points race at the Commonwealth Games and was National Pursuit Champion and Best British All-Rounder in 1994, National Pursuit Champion again in 1998, 1999 and 2000, World Pursuit Champion in 2000 and National Time Trial Champion in 2001. In 2002, she was awarded an MBE for services to cycling.

Australian Luke Durbridge, born in Greenmount on this day in 1991, became World Under-23 Time Trial Champion in 2011.

Robert Alban, born in Saint-André-d'Huiriat on this day in 1952, is a retired French cyclist who took 2nd place in the National Cyclo Cross Championships of 1977 and 1980; 19th in the 1979 Tour de France; 11th in the 1980 Tour de France; 3rd in the 1981 Tour de France when he also won Stage 18; 11th in the 1982 Tour de France and 38th in the 1984 Tour de France. He also won Stage 5 at the 1982 Critérium du 

Dauphiné and was 3rd in the same race one year later.

Ryan Cox, 1979-2007
(image credit: Paul Giovanni)

South African professional Ryan Cox, born on this day in 1979, won the Tour of Qinghai Lake in 2004 and the Tour de Langkawi and National Road Race Championship one year later. In July 2007, he underwent vascular lesion surgery in a knotted artery in his leg. Three weeks later, the artery burst and caused massive internal bleeding which led to heart failure. He received several blood transfusions but his condition did not improve, and he died at 05:15 on the 1st of August. He was 28 years old.

Maria Östergren, born in Södertälje, Sweden on this day in 1978, was National Mountain Bike Individual Time Trial Champion in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006 and 2007, National Mountain Bike Cross Country Champion in 2003, 2005 and 2006. She has also twice won the silver medal in the National Road Race Championships, in 2001 and 2005.

Margarita "Marga" Fullana, born in Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, Spain on this day in 1972, won the bronze medal in the Mountain Bike event at the 2000 Olympics, was World MTB Cross Country Champion in 1999, 2000 and 2008, National MTB XC Champion in 1999 and 2005 and European MTB XC Champion in 2006. On the 30th of August 2010, she was subjected to an out-of-competition anti-doping test that subsequently proved positive for EPO and made a full confession whilst provisionally suspended pending an investigation. "I’ve done the stupidest thing of my life. I have had a very bad year, both emotionally and physically... I am stupid and I am brave enough to admit it. So many years working hard on my career, and one lapse, and everything’s in the trash can," she said.

Nataliya Kachalka, born in Vinnytsya, USSR (now Ukraine) on his day in 1975, began her professional career with SC Michaela Fanini-Rox in 2001 and picked up promising results with them and other teams until 2005 when she tested positive for furosemide, a diuretic that has been used as a masking agent for performance-enhancing drugs. She received a ban running from the 30th of July 2005 to the 30th of July 2007, but has not returned to professional cycling.

Roar Skaane, born in Horten, Norway on this day in 1970, formed part of the winning Time Trial Team at the National Championships of 1989 and 1993.

Nikolas Maes, born in Kortijk on this day in 1986, scored his first professional victory with a stage win at the Vuelta a Burgos in 2009 and was reported to be joining RadioShack for 2010 - however, when the 2010 team roster was announced, his name wasn't on it and he went instead to QuickStep. Still with them as of 2013, he went on to win the Youth category at the 2011 Tour of Qatar and was sixth at the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 2013. He is not related to Sylvère, Romain nor any of the other 38 Belgian cyclists to have shared his surname (nor to Paul Maes, winner of 2nd place for Stage 2 at the 1966 Tour de l'Avenir, who is French).

Other cyclists born on this day: Henning R. Larsen (Denmark, 1931); Steve Bent (Great Britain, 1961); Gyula Mazur (Hungary, 1888); Daniel McConnell (Australia, 1985); Miroslav Vymazal (Czechoslovakia, 1952, died 2002); Harald Christensen (Denmark, 1907, died 1994); Viesturs Bērziņš (Latvia, 1974); Bernhard Doyle (Great Britain, 1888); Jacinto Brito (Mexico, 1938, died 1968); Max Jørgensen (Denmark, 1923, died 1992).