Daily Cycling Facts 25.05.2013

Karel van Wijnendaele

On this day in 1913, the inaugural Ronde van Vlaanderen was held. Like many of the older cycle races, it was organised to promote a newspaper, in this case the Flemmish Sportwereld. Only 37 riders turned up to race (some sources say 27), a major disappointment for the paper's co-founder and race organiser Karel van Wijnendaele (real name Carolus Ludovicus Steyaert, 16.11.1882 - 20.12.1961 - he took his pseudonym from the name of the village where he was born, ) who had become editor on the 1st of January that year. "Sportwereld was so young and so small for the big Ronde that we wanted. We had bitten off more than we could chew," he later said. "It was hard, seeing a band of second-class riders riding round Flanders, scraping up a handful of centimes to help cover the costs. The same happened in 1914. No van Hauwaert, no Masselis, no Defraeye, no Mosson, no Mottiat, no van den Berghe, all forbidden to take part by their French bike companies."

When van Wijnendaele was eighteen months old, his father died - which left his mother to raise her fifteen children alone. This meant, of course, that as soon as the boy reached fourteen years and could leave school he needed to find work - which he did, carrying out odd jobs for a baker and looking after cows, washing bottles and doing other odd jobs for rich French-speaking families in Brussels. He hated the way they looked down on him for his poverty, but their prejudice was what drove him on to make something of himself and, like so many others in the early days of the sport, he turned to cycling as a way to make extra money. "Being born into a poor family, that was my strength," he later said. "If you're brought up without frills and you know what hunger is, it makes you hard enough to withstand bike races." He must have been an exceptionally bright lad - his education would have been extremely basic, but when he realised he was never going to make his fortune from racing he turned to writing about it instead. His skill as a writer was good enough that by 1909 he was cycling correspondent to two national titles.

In that first year, the race started in Ghent with the parcours consisting of a 324km loop through Flanders and back towards Ghent where it ended at a wooden track at Mariakerke, running through Sint-Niklaas, Aalst, Oudenaarde, Kortrijk, Veurne, Ostend, Torhout, Roeselare and Bruges along the way. As was standard in races of the time, all riders were expected to be entirely self-reliant and, permitted no assistance from team vehicles or mechanics, had to carry spare parts and perform all roadside repairs themselves. The prize fund added up to 1,100 Belgian francs and the money Sportwereld made from the event covered less than half that cost.

Paul Deman, 1889-1961

The winner - with a time of 12h3'10" - was 25-year-old Paul Deman, who would also win Bordeaux-Paris the following year before becoming involved in espionage during the First World War when he acted as a cycle courier smuggling top secret documents into the Netherlands, which remained neutral. He was eventually caught by the Germans and imprisoned in Leuven to await execution by firing squad - fortunately, the Armistice was declared just in time to save him and he returned to cycling; winning Paris-Roubaix in 1920 and Paris-Tours three years later.

Despite van Wijnendaele's dismay, word had spread by 1914 with riders generally appreciative of the race and in 1914 47 showed up. The French teams still forbade their members from entry, but Alcyon's Marcel Buysse - a Belgian himself - recognised that the race was destined for great things and refused to pay heed; entering and winning the second edition. In time, the Ronde became a symbol of Flemmish national pride and so successful that the enormous crowds of spectators would cause problems, and the race is now perhaps the second most popular of the Monuments after Paris-Roubaix which it precedes by one week on the racing calendar.

All but forgotten: Luigi Annoni

The Giro d'Italia started on this day once, in 1921, when it covered 3,107km in ten stages. Costante Girardengo, then aged 28 and arguably the strongest cyclist the world had yet seen, was by far the favourite and led the General Classification from the start of the race after winning the first four stages. Stage 5, however, was a complete and unmitigated disaster - having suffered a series of mechanical failures, he decided he'd had enough, dismounted, drew a cross on the road and declared "Girardengo si ferma qui" ("Girardengo stops here"). Gaetano Belloni had caught him up in the GC the day before, so the leadership went to him when he won the stage and he kept it the next day too despite losing the stage to Luigi Annoni. However, Giovanni Brunero won Stage 7 and then rode carefully; keeping out of harm's way but ensuring he completed each of the remaining three stages with a time good enough to remain in front overall. Annoni won Stage 8, then Belloni won Stage 9 and 10 - but neither could catch Brunero, who won with an advantage of 41".

The Parkhotel Valkenburg Classic took place on this date in 2012 with Marianne Vos starting as favourite. During the race, an official motorbike on the parcours turned out to be slower than she was and failed to get out of her way in time; she crashed hard and broke her collarbone. Nevertheless, she remounted and finished the race, taking second place just behind her team mate Annemiek van Vleuten.

Geraint Thomas
Born in Cardiff on this day in 1986, Geraint Thomas began cycling competitively when he was ten years old with a local club, the Maindy Flyers - named after a Cardiff velodrome with a famous uneven track caused by subsidence. He also raced for the Cardiff CC and Just In Front clubs with whom he began to enjoy some success including a National Junior Championship and a silver medal at European Championships, which earned him a place on British Cycling's Olympic Academy. In 2004, he became World Junior Scratch Champion, then in 2005 he took the National Elite title for the same event and shared gold medal for the team pursuit race with Mark Cavendish, Steven Cummings and Ed Clancy. That same year, his career almost came to an early end: during a training ride in Sydney: a shard of metal lying in the road was thrown into his wheel when the rider in front of him him hit it, causing him to crash - onto the metal, which ruptured his spleen and caused massive internal bleeding.

Geraint Thomas

His spleen had to be removed, but he made a full recovery and, two years later, entered his first Tour de France with Barloworld; the first Welshman in the race since Colin Lewis in 1968 (though since Lewis was born in Devon, his status as a Welshman is a little shaky). He was 140th, just one away from Lanterne Rouge, but had finished in the top 20 for two stages - but merely finishing a Tour is an achievement, especially if it's your first and you're Benjamin du Tour (the youngest rider in the race). He chose to stay away the next year, instead riding the Giro d'Italia before returning to Britain in order to train for the Beijing Olympics where he, Ed Clancy and Bradley Wiggins won the Team Pursuit. His 2009 season was severely limited after a crash during the individual time trial at Tirreno-Adriatico when he misjudged a corner, hitting crowd barriers and fracturing his nose and pelvis. He returned to competition late in the year to take 6th place overall at the Tour of Britain and, on the 30th of October, set a individual sprint world record time under current rules at the UCI World Track Championships by finishing the 4km in 4'15.105" - 3.991" slower than the fastest time ever recorded, set by Chris Boardman thirteen years earlier but using a riding position since banned under international competition rules. At the end of the year, he announced that he would be leaving Barloworld to ride for the new British team Sky.

His first season with Sky would be a good one, kicking off with team time trial victory at the Tour of Qatar before he went on to four consecutive top ten stage finishes at the Critérium du Dauphiné and then the National Road Race Champion title. He also rode the Tour de France again, finishing the prologue in fifth place, second on Stage 3 and leading the Youth Category (in which he would eventually come ninth overall) for a short time. 2011 got off to an even better start with second place at the Dwars door Vlaanderen, possible indication that he may have the makings of a future Classics winner, then in May he won the Bayern-Rundfahrt - his first professional stage race victory and the first time the race had ever been won by a British rider. He would wear the white jersey again at the Tour that year after finishing Stage 1 in sixth place, then kept it until Stage 7 after Sky finished the second stage team time trial in third place - he would be one of several Sky riders to lose significant time in that stage when they waited for team captain Bradley Wiggins who had been in a crash and, it turned out, would not be able to continue. On the Hourquette d’Ancizan as the race entered the Pyrenees, Thomas led an early break and would twice stare injury in the eyes, losing control and very nearly crashing twice within just a few seconds - his determination that day earned him the Combativity award. For 2012, he took part in the Giro d'Italia but then concentrated on track cycling in the run up to the Olympics.

Thomas proud of his Welsh roots - when told that flags of non-participating nations would not be permitted at the 2008 Olympics (Wales, as a part of the United Kingdom, counted as such; though non-recognised might have been a more accurate term), he said: "It would be great to do a lap of honour draped in the Welsh flag if I win a gold medal, and I'm very disappointed if this rule means that would not be possible." With Ed Clancy, Stephen Burke and Peter Kennaugh, he won the Team Pursuit - he had to complete his lap of honour in the Union flag, but the crowd made up for it with masses of red dragons held aloft.

Thomas has been a vocal opponent of doping in cycling. In 2008, when Barloworld team mater Moisés Dueñas was thrown out of the Tour for France due to a positive test for EPO, Thomas was forthright in his opinions. "Duenas, when I last heard, was facing a five-year prison sentence in France, which I hope he gets," he told the BBC. "It’s about time people realised it can’t happen anymore. I guess you will always get people who will try to cheat the system, not just in sport but in everyday life. Saying that, if someone is fraudulent in a business, wouldn’t they be facing a prison term? I don’t see how riders taking drugs to win races and lying to their teams is any different. Bang them up and throw away the key!"

Ian Stannard

Thomas' Sky team mate Ian Stannard shares his birthday but is one year younger. Born in Chelmsford, Great Britain, he made his professional debut as a trainee with T-Mobile in 2007 having been invited to join the team when managers chopped out several older riders in an attempt to move on from a series of doping scandals and present a more youthful squad at that summer's races. However, he would remain with them for less than a year; moving on to Landbouwkrediet-Tönissteiner in 2008 - the year he took part in the Tour of Britain and came third overall, riding for a GB national team, an unusual sight in a race usually competed by trade teams

In 2009 he switched again, this time to ISD (now Farnese Vini-Selle Italia), and rode the Giro d'Italia - his first Grand Tour, where he came 160th. At the end of the season he announced that he would be moving to Sky for 2010, with whom he immediately revealed himself to be a Classics specialist of some note when he took third place at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. He remained with Sky in 2012, and won the National Road Race Championship; and is still with them in 2013 when top ten finishes at Milan-San Remo and Dwars door Vlaanderen suggest that he's on the cusp of his best years.


Daan de Groot
Daan de Groot, born in Amterdam on this day in 1933, won Stage 13 at the 1952 Tour de France after using what can only be described as unusual tactics. The stage ran for 205 flat kilometres between Millau, now world famous for its 343m tall Viaduc (the tallest bridge in the world), and Albi, home to one of the world' most spectacular cathedrals (which began life in 1287 as a fortress and remains the largest brick-built structure in the world). Both lie in the Tarn, which is in that part of Southern France that's just a little too far from the Mediterranean and Atlantic to enjoy cool breezes and it gets very, very hot indeed - as it had done that day, and the peloton were suffering.

1933-1981

De Groot had been dropped by the peloton and many of the other riders in the autobus must have thought the sun had gone to the Dutchman's head when he suddenly stopped, got of his bike and dived into a field of cabbages - the Dutch are, after all, not well-accustomed to searing heat. A few were probably convinced when he picked some leaves from one of the plants and wrapped two around his neck and placed one underneath his casquette.

However, he was a wiser man than they thought. With the cool, fleshy leaves protecting him he recovered and was able to sprint off to catch the peloton, then gradually made his way up to the front. Realising that the heat had now had a similar effect on the entire pack, he attacked and nobody could chase him down. Someway up the road, the blackboard man told him that he had an advantage of treize minutes, half an hour - but, as he spoke very poor French, he thought he had three minutes and accelerated, going on to win the stage by 20 minutes.

De Groot's wife died in 1981. A year later, aged 48, he committed suicide.


Joseph M. Papp
Born in Parma, Ohio on this day in 1975, Joe Papp began cycling competitively in 1989 and joined the US National Team five years later and achieved some impressive results. In 2006, a sample he provided at the Tour of Turkey tested positive for testosterone metabolites and he received a two-year ban - unusually, it was also ruled that all his results since 2001 would be disqualified, which led to widespread complaints from fans.

However, while testifying in the Floyd Landis case, Papp confessed to having been a part of an extensive doping program that had been in place for some time and listed the many drugs he and other cyclists regularly used, also admitting that he had almost lost his following a relatively minor crash that caused massive internal bleeding due to his use of EPO. As a respected cycling author, he has since become considered something of an expert on doping - his detailed descriptions of what cyclists use, when, why and what it does to them enabled WADA to successfully argue against Landis' claim that he would not have used testosterone at the 2006 Tour de France because it would not have helped him improve his performance. While he was quick to testify against Landis, he was also one of the first to extend the hand of friendship in 2010 after the Pennsylvania-born rider finally decided to come clean. That same year, Papp was charged with distributing banned performance drugs, a charge to which he pleaded guilty before naming 180 athletes to whom drugs had been supplied. The case was eventually sealed, indication that related cases are still in progress, and in 2011 Papp was handed a three-year suspended sentence.

Today, Papp gives many speeches each year in which he outlines the dangers of doping in an attempt to discourage others. He has never officially retired from cycling and as such remains on the US Anti-Doping Agency's test pool list, having to provide them with accurate details of his whereabouts for a period of one hour every day of the year. He has never missed a test.

Georg Totschnig

Born in Latenbach on this day in 1971, in 2005 Georg Totschnig became the first Austrian to win a stage at the Tour de France since Max Bulla in 1931 when he beat no less a figure than Lance Armstrong. He'd been part of a break that had escaped early in Stage 14, then he, Walter Bénéteau and Stefano Garzelli split the group when they rode off alone. Bénéteau and Garzelli fell back on the final climb to Ax 3 Domaines, but Totschnig kept going hard and held Armstrong off all the way; eventually crossing the line with a 56" advantage. His achievement earned him the Austrian Sportsperson of the Year award.

Branislau Samoilau, born in Vitebsk on this day in 1985, won the Under-23 Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2004, was Belorussian Under-23 Time Trial Champion in 2005 and 2006, then took the Elite title in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. He's also not a bad stage racer, having come 22nd overall at the 2007 Giro d'Italia and 16th overall at the 2011 Tour de Suisse. Now riding with Movistar, he may well develop into a talented all-rounder  in the coming years.

Erki Pütsep, born in Jõgeva on this day in 1976, was Estonian Road Race Champion in 2004, 2006 and 2007.

Jean-Pierre Danguillaume, born in Joué-lès-Tours on this day in 1946, won seven stages at the Tour de France (Stage 22 1970, Stage 18 1971, Stage 6 1973, Stages 17 and 18 1974 and Stages 11 and 13b in 1977) in addition to the Peace Race (1969), GP Ouest-France (1971), the Critérium International (1973) and numerous other races over the course of his eight competitive years, riding for Peugeot throughout. Were it not for the fact that his career coincided with that of Eddy Merckx, he might be remembered as one of the great riders.

Evgeni Petrov, born in Ufa, USSR on this day in 1978, became Russian National Time Trial Champion in 2000 - and took the World Under-23 titles for the TT and road race too. He won Stage 2a at the Tour de l'Ain a year later and another National TT title and the General Classifications at the Tour de Slovénie Tour de l'Avenir in 2002. The subsequent few years were less successful until 2007 when he was 7th overall at the Giro d'Italia. In 2005, he was thrown out of the Tour de France after recording a haematocrit reading greater than 50%, deemed likely indication of EPO use or blood transfusion, and was barred from competition for two weeks.

Other births: Orla Jørgensen (Denmark, 1904, died 1947); Juan Alberto Merlos (Argentina, 1945); Marian Kegel (Poland, 1945, died 1972); Wes Chowen (USA, 1939); Tarja Owens (Ireland, 1977); Patrick Jonker (Australia, 1969); Walter Signer (Switzerland, 1937); Igor Patenko (USSR, 1969); Jameel Kadhem (Bahrain, 1971); Tanya Lindenmuth (USA, 1979); Jhon García (Colombia, 1974).

Daily Cycling Facts 24.05.2013

The Giro d'Italia started on this date five times - in 1914, 1922, 1947, 1950 and 1992.


The Epic 1914 Giro

1914. The stage isn't known and the rider isn't named,
but he looks like Giuseppe Azzini.

1914 was the last edition before the outbreak of the First World War and the first to decide the eventual winner on overall time rather than points, the same system having been used at the Tour de France the year before (the 1903 and 1904 Tours had also been decided in this way). Whilst the parcours was comparatively short at 3,256km (some sources put it even shorter at 3,162km), the race consisted of only eight stages which meant, as was common in those times, stages far longer than riders today face - though we should be fair to modern riders and remember that early Grand Tours had many more rest days. Five stages were more than 400km, Stages 1 and 8 were 468km (some sources say 428km; either way they began at midnight) and the shortest stage, 5, was 328km; for which reason it's considered by many historians to have been the hardest Giro of all time. Stage 3, 430km in length, took longer than any other stage in Giro history to be completed with Costante Girardengo first over the line after 19h20'47".

Costante Girardengo

As if the distances weren't bad enough, the riders also faced severe weather, incompetent officials who supplied them with incorrect directions on numerous occasions and widespread cheating by other riders, many of whom drafted behind cars, and fans who spread nails over the roads to slow down riders they didn't like. It's perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that the average speed of 23.375kph was the lowest ever and only eight out of 81 starters finished - another record. Among those to fail was Giuseppe Azzini, leader of the General Classification for one stage after winning Stages 4 and 5 - he went missing during Stage 6 and couldn't be found anywhere. Organisers discovered the next day at a farmhouse, fast asleep in bed.


1921 winner Giovanni Brunero was favourite to win in 1922, but he faced stiff competition from Girardengo and Gaetano Belloni. He finished the first stage with a good lead, but was then docked 25 minutes for cheating. Rather than giving up, he redoubled his efforts and mounted some long-distance solo breakaways which, bit by bit, enabled him to claw his way back into contention. He then won Stage 7 with a time good enough to take the General Classification leadership, which he retained for the remaining three stages. He took 119h43' to complete the 3,095km - neither Girardengo nor Belloni finished.

1947 covered 3,843km in 19 stages and saw Fausto Coppi finally exert his dominance over Gino Bartali, who had taken what would prove to be his last Giro victory the previous year - but the old warhorse wasn't ready to let the younger man go without a fight just yet. They spent the first stage sizing one another up and allowed Renzo Zanazzi to win (Zanazzi, who few remember now, had won Stage 10 the previous year, would also win Stage 5b and finished a stage in third place in 1948, 1950 and 1952 - at the time of writing, he's still alive), but Bartali attacked hard in Stage 2 and finished with a 1'41" advantage. Coppi was the better man in the mountains from Stage 4, but he wasn't quite good enough to prevent his rival taking the General Classification on that same stage and then keeping it all the way through to Stage 15. However, in Stage 16 Bartali finally cracked on the Passo di Pordoi, at 2,239m the highest paved road in the Dolomites - and Coppi beat him to the finish by 4'24". From that points onwards, his victory was as good as decided and he rode less aggressively, keeping himself out of harm's way and won the race with a 1'43" advantage.

Hugo Koblet

Bartali raced again in 1950, when the race consisted of 18 stages over 3,981km, and looked a likely contender when Coppi broke his pelvis in Stage 9 - but now he also faced problems from the Swiss Hugo Koblet who, having won Stages 6 and 8, realised that he too stood a good chance in Coppi's absence. A rider as clever as he was famously handsome, Koblet rode wisely and effectively and led the General Classification from that point onwards; eventually beating the Italian by 5'12" and becoming the first foreigner to win a Giro.

The 1992 edition covered 3,835km in 22 stages. Miguel Indurain gained an early lead in the time trial, but it was on Stage 9 - the first summit finish that year - that he really got the upper hand when he dropped all his main rivals and gained a 30" advantage over Claudio Chiappucci. When he then dominated the final time trial, he secured his winning time of 103h36'08", 5'12" ahead of Chiappucci who took second place. Later that year, he would become the sixth man to achieve the Giro-Tour double when he also won the Tour de France (and the next year, he would become the only man to have achieved two Giro-Tour doubles in consecutive years).

Sean Kelly
John James "Sean" Kelly is frequently listed as the most successful Irish cyclist in history, but he was much more than that - alongside Bernard Hinault, he was one of the most successful cyclists anywhere in the world and remained so for much of the decade.

One of cycling's most iconic images - Sean Kelly
at Paris-Roubaix

Born in Waterford on this day in 1956 to John and Nellie, who made their living from a 48-acre farm, Sean (the name was chosen to prevent confusion at home) has never been much of a talker. Friends at school believed him unintelligent (or believed that he thought he was, at least) and, while he appears the type who may have turned out to be a genius at maths or physics had a teacher ever have been able to discover such a latent talent, he never got the chance to prove it and they never got the chance to find it - aged just 13, he was taken out of school and went to work on the farm. His older brother Joe, still at school, obtained a bike at about the same time to cycle to and from classes every day and Sean got a bike of his own so that they could go for rides together. When Joe began racing (and winning), Sean followed him once again: his very first race was an eight-mile handicap on the 4th of June 1960. Setting out three minutes ahead of the more experienced riders, he remained three minutes ahead at the halfway point and then increased his lead on the return journey to win the race. Two years later, he was National Amateur Champion; a title he held for two years.

In 1975, Kelly travelled with a certain Pat McQuaid and his brother Kieron (coincidentally, Kelly shares his birthday with Pat and Kieron's cousin John McQuaid, who represented Ireland at the 1988 Olympics) to South Africa, where they planned to use the Rapport Tour as part of the preparation for the upcoming Olympics. Aware that the country was being boycotted due to the government's refusal to end apartheid, they entered under false names; however, they were caught and banned from competition for six months by the Irish Federation and then from the Olympics for life. Though this seemed a disaster, it would prove advantageous for Kelly who would, in all likelihood, have found himself outclassed by the top European cyclists at the Games; instead, he entered the 1976 Tour of Britain where he faced opponents closer to his own level and won Stage 6, then came second on Stage 7. This earned him an invitation to join a club based in Metz, which offered him a salary equal to £25 a week, four francs (40p) for every kilometre of every race he won and free bed and board - he accepted, then paid the club back by winning 18 of the 25 races he entered with them, including the amateur version of the Giro di Lombardia.

Unsurprisingly, bosses from professional teams began to take note; among them the legendary Cyrille Guimard and Jean de Gribaldy. De Gribaldy had in fact made him an offer previously but was turned down as Kelly then wished to remain an amateur - this time, though, wanted him so much that he made hasty preparations to go to Ireland to track the rider down, despite having no idea where he lived and not even being sure he's recognise him if he saw him. He did know, meanwhile, where Kelly's parents' farm was located, roughly at least; so, taking an English-speaking rider to act as translator, he flew to Dublin and took a taxi to Curraghduff - a distance of 164km. Eventually, they tracked down the farm only to be told that their quarry was out in the fields somewhere on a tractor and so they ordered the taxi driver to cruise around the lanes looking for him. When they found him, they went to his brother-in-law's house where de Gribaldy offered him £4,000 a year with bonuses - more than three times what the Metz club had been paying him. But, being a simple country boy, Kelly felt loyal to his old club and asked for time to think things over, to which de Gribaldy agreed. Metz offered him more money but couldn't match what de Gribaldy could offer. Kelly, feeling guilty for considering turning his back on the team that had given him his first opportunity, asked de Gribaldy for £6,000, certain the Frenchman would turn his back and walk away. De Gribaldy wrote up a new contract on the spot and Flandria-Velda, at long last, had its great new hope.

The Cavendish of his day, Kelly
was a devastatingly fast sprinter

Now loyal to de Gribaldy, Kelly remained with Flandria for two seasons. However, Flandria was really two outfits: the A team, who raced in the top events around Europe; and the B team which remained confined to smaller, local races in France where they were used as little more than an advertising gimmick for Flandria's mopeds and bikes - while Kelly even to this day is a country boy at heart, he'd glimpsed cycling's upper echelons now and knew that he could get there. The chance to do so appeared to come at the end of 1978 when Michel Pollentier, who had been thrown out of the Tour de France that year when the doctor in charge of taking samples discovered that the rider in front of him in the queue was attempting to fill the jar via a tube connected to a condom filled with somebody else's urine hidden under his armpit demanded that he lift his jersey to prove that he too wasn't using such a device (he was, but later redeemed himself by being one of the first riders to warn others of the dangers of doping when he admitted he'd needed treatment for drug addiction when his racing career came to an end), left to set up his own team. Freddy Maertens, another ex-Flandria rider, wanted him too, as did several other teams that had been hovering around, but when Pollentier secured sponsorship from the very generous Splendor bicycle manufacturer he was able to offer the Irishman a better salary than his rivals.

Unfortunately, Pollentier was not cut out for team management and his new squad faced serious problems - among others, the bikes they rode were of such low quality that they couldn't enter Paris-Roubaix in their first year. Kelly responded by doing what he'd done at school, withdrawing into himself and getting on with things, even winning a few races - including two stages at the Vuelta a Espana (Stage 1 and 8a, 1979) - and, in time, things began to improve as team logistics were ironed out. Meanwhile, Splendor had been joined by Wickes and EuropDecor as sponsors and money was plentiful, Pollentier easily matching offers made by other teams as they tried to lure Kelly away. In 1981, he was paid £30,000 plus bonuses - an astonishingly high figure at a time when the average annual salary in Britain was just over £8,500. However, when Pollentier brought another sprinter - Eddy Planckaert - into the team, Kelly began to wonder what his role was and when he heard that de Gribaldy was assembling a new team decided to find out more.

De Gribaldy had long been known as a rather unconventional manager with a tendency to pick up riders nobody else wanted. More often than not, they'd let him down; but from time to time he'd discover an overlooked diamond. Kelly was of course not overlooked, his results to date had been far too good for that, but he was viewed in a very similar way to Mark Cavendish today - get him in the right position for the final sprint of a race and he was all but unbeatable, but if you wanted a rider who could win stage races look elsewhere. De Gribaldy thought differently - he believed that Kelly had the potential to be more than a sprinter, and this time he signed him up as team leader. Other managers no doubt assumed this was just another de Gribaldy eccentricity, but that year the Irishman won Paris-Nice. Then, he won the Points competition at the Tour de France. The year after that, he won Paris-Nice again, and the Points competition again too. And the Tour de Suisse, and the Critérium International. When he won the Giro di Lombardia, beating Francesco Moser, Hennie Kuiper and Greg LeMond, he proved himself capable of doing battle with the best riders in the world.

Kelly's Paris-Nice record is legendary - having won those first two, he would also win for the following five consecutive years; an achievement unmatched by any rider before or since. This created a sense, especially now that he'd learned climb and ride breaks almost as well as he sprinted, that it was only a matter of time before Kelly won a Tour -  that accolade would escape him, though he finished in the top ten three times with a best result of fourth place. He did win a Grand Tour, however, taking the 1988 Vuelta a Espana with a 1'27" advantage over Raimund Dietzen. He was also a remarkably talented Classics rider, winning nine Monuments (Milan-San Remo twice, Paris-Roubaix twice, Liège-Bastogne-Liège twice and the Giro di Lombardia three times) and came very close to adding his name to those of Eddy Merckx, Roger de Vlaeminck and Rik van Looy, the only men to have won all five Monuments, when he finished the Ronde van Vlaanderen in second place three times.

Kelly today, as rooted in the soil and
unpretentious as he always was

Kelly has been the subject of numerous books on cycling, some of them concerned with his own great achievements and others using his career as a frame work to examine a remarkable period in cycling - when he first raced in Europe, Eddy Merckx was the king. His first Tour de France, 1978, was also the Tour debut of Bernard Hinault. Greg Lemond and Laurent Fignon, Francesco Moser and Robert Millar, Jan Raas and many others all came and went in the time that Kelly was winning races. When he retired in 1994, Miguel Indurain had already won three Tours and was eyeing up his fourth while a young American rider named Lance Armstrong began to show he might one day do well, too.

Today, Kelly works as a cycling commentator for Eurosport and still sounds like a farmer's son from rural Ireland. In 2000, he rode across the USA to raise money for a charity that works with blind and partially sighted people. He created and is still actively involved in the Belgium-based Sean Kelly Cycling Academy, home of the Sean Kelly Racing Team that he also established and which has brought a number of promising new Irish and Belgian riders to the sport. Anyone who has listened to him, following his superb dissection of race tactics and admired his enormous knowledge of cycling history, will be in no doubt that his school friends were very, very wrong about him.

Bo Hamburger
Bo Hamburger, born in Frederiksberg, Denmark on this day in 1970, began his professional career with TVM in 1991 and, in 1994, finished the Tour de France in 20th place after winning Stage 8. He improved in the coming years with 1995, then 13th in 1996 and took the silver medal at the 1997 World Championships. Having switched to Casino-C’est Votre Équipe for 1998 he won La Flèche Wallonne, came fifth at the Amstel Gold Race and then 15th again at the Tour, then had a couple of quiet years before joining CSC and winning the National Championship in 2000.

However, his time with CSC would be short, because at the 2001 Tour the team sacked him after he failed a test for EPO. This was the period before reliable tests for the drug had been developed, meaning that when his B sample proved to be below the minimum level that would have caused suspension from competition, he escaped further charges and returned the following season with Alexia Alluminio. Later, in his autobiography, he admitted to using EPO and growth hormones between 1995 and 1997. He says that he stopped taking EPO in 1997 when he discovered that he had a naturally high haematocrit count which, in the days when the only test for the drug was to count red blood cells in an athlete's sample, would have caused him to fail tests had he continued using it. In 2009, Denmark's Ekstra Bladet newspaper received intelligence that he was involved in a financial pyramid scheme and decided to expose him, later getting a scoop when a hidden camera caught him and an accomplice stealing a journalist's video camera.

Left: Antoine Mazairac. Right: Willy Falck Hansen

Antonius "Antoine" Hendrikus Mazairac, born in Roosendal, Netherlands on this day in 1901, won a silver medal for the Sprint at the 1928 Olympics. He died in Dortmund, Germany, on the 1st of September 1966.

Matthew Lloyd, born in Melbourne on this day in 1983, turned professional with Predictor-Lotto in 2007 and was "released" from the team at the end of 2011. This led initially to rumours that he had been caught doping, but the team was quick to reveal th decision had been made due to "behavioural problems" (they chose not to expand on this, citing respect for his privacy as the reason) following an accident involving a car that left him with spinal injuries. In November 2011, he signed a two-year contract with Lampre-ISD and remains with them in 2013. In 2010, he became the first Australian to achieve victory in Grand Tour King of the Mountains, winning the competition at the Giro d'Italia.

Other cyclists born on this day: Christian Stahl (USA, 1983); Joanne Kiesanowski (New Zealand, 1979); Jonas Persson (Sweden, 1913, died 1986); Barthélemy Gillard (Belgium, 1935); Kanako Tanikawa (Japan, 1970); Peter Meinert Nielsen (Denmark, 1966); Fernand Saivé (Belgium, 1900, died 1981); Steffen Kjærgaard (Norway, 1973).

Daily Cycling Facts 23.05.2013

The seventh edition of La Flèche Wallonne took place on this day in 1943. The parcours was the same length as the previous year at 208km, but the route differed - both races began at Mons, but this edition finished at Charleroi rather than at Marcinelle. Marcel Kint won, the first of his three consecutive victories, and became the first rider to win this and Paris-Roubaix in the same year.

Angelo Gremo, 1914

The Giro d'Italia began on this day four times - 1920, 1923, 1988 and 1993. 1920, which included eight stages and covered 2,632km, was won by Gaetano Belloni, one of only ten riders (from 49 starters) to complete the race. The edition saw a classic battle between Belloni and Angelo Gremo, the latter turning a five minute disadvantage into a fourteen minute lead in Stage 5 when he escaped the peloton as part of a group of five and took the General Classification leadership. With only three stages to go, most riders would have given up any hope of winning after that - but not Belloni, who simply increased the frequency and severity of his attacks in an effort to claw his way back. In the penultimate stage he had the ride of his life, escaping solo and crossing the finish line alone and 42 minutes ahead of his rival. At the end of the final stage, his time was 102h44'33"; 32'24" faster than Gremo. (Note: Giovanni Rossignoli is sometimes incorrectly listed as having become the oldest ever Giro stage winner this year at the age of 37 years and 188 days. In actual fact, he was not in the race that year.)

1923 consisted of ten stages over 3,202km - eight of them won by Costante Girardengo, who had also won in 1919 and taken the third of his six Milan-San Remo victories and the seventh of his nine National Championships that year. In fifth place, finishing 45'49" behind Girardengo's time of 122h58'17", was a young man named Ottavio Bottecchia who was then an unknown independent rider. His success brought him to the attention of Henri Pélissier who arranged for him to receive an invite to join the Automoto-Hutchinson team with whom he would win the Tour de France for the next two consecutive years.

Andy Hampsten and the '88 Giro

Andy Hampsten at the Tour de France, 1993
(image credit: Eric Houde CC BY-SA 3.0)

The 1988 Giro d'Italia covered 3,580km in 23 stages (two split). Stage 11 had to be stopped and, eventually, cancelled after environmental protestors occupied the finish line and refused to move, then Stage 14 could only just go ahead after it poured all day long, with rain turning to snow at altitude. Snow ploughs cleared the roads higher roads literally minutes before the riders arrived (the dirt roads lower down turned into a quagmire) and at 2,600m the snow turned into a blizzard. Johan van der Velde (who shouldn't be confused with John Vande Velde, father of Christian) was the first to the top, beating Andy Hampsten by around a half minute, but became so cold on the descent that he was forced to stop and ask for help from some fans in a camper van - they allowed him to come in and warm up (well, what cycling fan wouldn't - even though being van der Velde there was a fairly high chance you'd have found something had mysteriously vanished afterwards), but as a result he finished the stage 46'49" behind the winner. Hampsten's 7-Eleven team, meanwhile, had a man waiting at the summit with a musette full of skiing gear so that their rider would survive the way down. Erik Breukink sailed past him as he stopped to put it on but Hampsten, the only rider sufficiently protected from the element to ride at high speed without crashing due to shivering so much, was able to catch him up and took a good second place.

The weather had not improved the following day, which although organisers decided to drop the Stelvio Pass and shorten the stage to 83km left the riders in foul moods. Stage 16 was no better and included a climb up the 2,424m Timmelsjoch in Austria (known to the Italians as the Passo del Rombo). This time, however, the organisers would not shorten the stage, a decision that inspired two rider protests as the rain turned to snow on the way up the mountain. In the end, it was Stage 18, an 18km mountain time trial, that decided the race: Breukink was the better time trialer (he'd become Dutch National Champion nine years later), but Hampsten was by far the better climber - and since the stage climbed almost 1,000m at an average gradient of around 8.5%, he had a massive advantage. When he started the stage, he was 42" ahead of Breukink in the General Classification; then he finished the stage more than a minute ahead of his rival. His lead now all but insurmountable, he led the race to the end and finished with a lead of 1'43" - the first American and non-European to have won since the race began.

The 1993 Giro covered 3,703km in 22 stages. Miguel Indurain, who led the race in the last eight stages, won overall for a second and final time after facing down strong, repeated attacks from the Latvian Piotr Ugrumov.

Giampaolo Cheula

Giampaolo Cheula
It's not at all uncommon for mountain bikers to defect to road cycling, but the exchange tends to be one-way with few road cyclists moving into mountain biking. One of those that did is the Italian Giampaolo Cheula, who was born in Premosello-Chiovenda on this day in 1979. Having turned professional with Mapei-QuickStep in 2001, Cheula won some good results in his first couple seasons, then switched to Vini Caldirola and raced in the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a Espana. He moved on to the British Barloworld squad in 2005, remaining with them for five seasons, picking up more good results and riding in two editions of the Tour de France and another Giro, then went to Footon-Servetto in 2010 and remained with them after the transformation into Geox-TMC and eventual demise in 2011.

Then, at the start of 2012, he announced that he would be changing to fat tyres and from that point onwards would be a mountain biker. "I am aware that the only common denominator between road and mountain biking are the two wheels, and are also aware that I worked so hard," he explained. "But the idea of starting from scratch appeals to me. I'm curious to see how I will adapt to the new discipline - and one thing's for sure, I'll put in the same effort and the same professionalism that I did for all those years on the road."


Cédric Gracia, born in Pau on this day in 1978, began cycle racing as a BMX rider when he was six years old. However, his first taste of professional sport would be as a freestyle skier and he didn't return to cycling until 2001 with the Volvo-Cannondale mountain biking team, initially and enjoying considerable success as a downhiller (twice taking silver at the World Championships) and, once the disciplines had been invented, 4X and Freeride. In 2010 he started his own team, the CG Racing Brigade, and for that year was its only member (which must surely be unique in cycling, as well as pushing the definition of the term "team" somewhat); it's since swelled in numbers with the addition of Colombian National Champion Marcelo Guttierez. Gracia's reputation is so great that the two riders were among the very few other than those in the Santa Cruz Syndicate to be supplied with the firm's factory V10 carbon fibre bikes.

Other cyclists born on this day: Wim Stroetinga (Netherlands, 1985); Matthew Crampton (Great Britain, 1986); Lars Wahlqvist (Sweden, 1964); Mark Noble (Great Britain, 1963); Per Lyngemark (Denmark, 1941, died 2010); Valery Chaplygin (USSR, 1952); Didier Garcia (France, 1964); Beat Wabel (Switzerland, 1967); Gerrie Slot (Netherlands, 1954); Gabriel Cano (Mexico, 1965); Oleg Logvin (USSR, 1959); Julio Illescas (Guatemala, 1962).

Daily Cycling Facts 22.05.2013

Eugeni Berzin

The Giro d'Italia has ended on this day once - in 1913 (when it had started on the 6th of May) - and started once, in 1994. 1994 covered 3,739km in 22 stages and was won for the first time by a Russian, Eugeni Berzin. Berzin had won Liège-Bastogne-Liège earlier that year and was immediately singled out as a future great but never quite got there. He was second in the Giro in 1995 and won Stage 21, then won Stage 18 at the Giro, Stage 8 and wore the yellow jersey at the Tour de France in 2006, then vanished from the pages of cycling history.

Christian Vande Velde
Also spelled van de Velde, van der Velde, Vandevelde and in assorted other ways with varying capital position, Christian Vande Velde was born in Lemont, Illinois on this day in 1976. Now one of the peloton's elder statesmen, he turned professional with US Postal in 1998 and rode as a domestique for Lance Armstrong but very rapidly emerged as a super-domestique capable of winning races for himself.

Christian Vande Velde, pictured in 2009

His ability was allowed to flourish after a move to CSC in 2005 from Liberty-Seguros with whom he'd spent a year - though still a domestique (for Carlos Sastre and the young Frank Schleck), the team permitted him to take shots at glory for himself as was the case at the Eneco Tour that year when he led a breakaway during Stage 4 and drove it to a six second lead (unfortunately, it would ultimately fail - course officials somehow managed to direct the peloton along the wrong route and the break was ordered to stop and wait until they were brought back to the right road, reducing their advantage to four minutes). It was at the Tour de France in 2006 that he revealed himself to be one of the strongest climbers in the peloton, forcing the peloton up to such a high rate during Stage 16 that Floyd Landis - whose results would later be disqualified after he was found guilty of doping - cracked under pressure from Sastre and Schleck. Michael Rasmussen (who would be kicked out of the Tour the next year after failing to inform doping control of his whereabouts and later got a two-year ban as a result) won the stage, but the very next day Vande Velde worked with his team mate Jens Voigt and T-Mobile's Matthias Kessler and Serhiy Honchar to once again pile on the pressure as the peloton climbed to Morzine - this time, Sastre won.

Vande Velde remained with CSC until the end of 2007, riding another Tour and Vuelta a Espana with them, then received a new contract with Slipstream-Chipotle for 2008: the team that realised he had General Classification potential. No longer a domestique, he fought hard at the Tour that year and finished in fifth place overall, later upgraded to fourth following the disqualification and suspension of Bernhard Kohl who tested poitive for EPO variant CERA. In 2009, he was eighth.

The next two years, which might have brought his Grand Tour victory, were marked by bad luck. He was forced to abandon the Giro during Stage 3 following a crash (the same had happened, on the same stage, in 2009); then skidded on a patch of oil left by a film crew's motorbike and broke two ribs at the Tour. Still racing with the same team - by then renamed Garmin-Cervélo and now Garim-Barracuda - Vande Velde's 2011 results, including 17th at the Tour, suggest that while his best years may be gone he remains a very capable rider, as was seen in the 2012 Giro when he protected Ryder Hesjedal through the mountains and was thus instrumental in the first ever victory by a Canadian rider.

Vande Velde's early career coincided with that of Lance Armstrong, the two men having been team mates at US Postal from 1998 to 2004. In May 2012 news broke that USADA were conducting a large-scale investigation into doping at the team during that period, an investigation that rapidly led to Armstrong being stripped of his seven Tour de France victories. Perhaps accidentally, perhaps due to a subconscious decision  that it was better to come clean before more names were named, Jonathan Vaughters - manager of Garmin-Sharp, the team for which Vandevelde had ridden since 2008, who had admitted a month earlier that he had doped during his own cycling career - stated online in September that Vande Velde and two other riders on the team (David Zabriskie and Tom Danielson) all had what he termed "a past." In Vande Velde's case, this amounted to using a drug that boosted red blood cell production, later confirmed in the affidavit he provided to USADA to have been EPO. Less than a month later, USADA announced that Vande Velde was to be banned from competition for six months and stripped of all results gained between the 4th of June 2004 and the 30th of April 2006, a decision that the rider publicly accepted. The following day, he released a statement in which he said: "I’m very sorry for the mistakes I made in my past and I know that forgiveness is a lot to ask for. I know that I have to earn it and I will try, every day, to deserve it – as I have, every day, since making the choice to compete clean. I will never give up on this sport, and I will never stop fighting for its future."
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Jean-Christophe Péraud, born in Toulouse in this day in 1977, was a mountain biker who won a cross-country silver medal for France in the 2008 Olympics. One year later he surprised the cycling world by winning the National Time Trial Championship and suddenly turned out to be a first-rate road cyclist - in 2010, he took ninth place at Paris-Nice, then fourth in the Tour of the Basque Country; and a year later he was second at the Tour Méditerranéen, sixth at both Paris-Nice and the Critérium International and ninth at the Tour de France.

Raymond Martin, born in Saint-Pierre-du-Regard on this day in 1949, won the French National Amateur Championship in 1972, came third overall and won the King of the Mountains at the 1980 Tour de France and then eighth overall at the Tour in 1982.

Maurice Bardonneau was born on this day in Saint-Maurice, France in 1885. In 1906, he was World Stayer (ie motorpaced) Champion and won Stage 1 at Paris-Brussels and he would win bronze medals at the National Stayers Championships in 1907 and 1910 before retiring. Other than that he died at Issy-les-Moulineaux on the 3rd of July 1958, virtually nothing else is known about him.

Now retired, Andrus Aug won a bronze medal twice and silver once in the Estonian National Championships and then had a few years in which he performed well in stage races - including the 2001 Tour du Maroc when he won five stages. Born in Jõgeva on this day in 1972, he retired from professional racing at the end of the 2007 season but continued to ride in amateur events through 2008.

Sherwood CC, a cycling club based in Nottingham, was formed on this day in 1931. Among the club's many past members are Frank Beale, who represented England in the Manx International of 1950, and John Kettell, a National Junior Champion in the 1970s.

Other cyclists born on this day: Vladimír Vondráček (Czechoslovakia, 1949); Hussain Eslami (Iran, 1969); Douglas Lamb (Belize, 1968); Mario Contreras (El Salvador, 1987); Frank Francken (Belgium, 1964); Győző Török (Hungary, 1935); Helle Sørensen (Denmark, 1963); Karl Gulbrandsen (Norway, 1892, died 1973); Atilio François (Uruguay, 1922, died 1997); José Manuel Lasa (Spain, 1940); Dan Frost (Denmark, 1961); Roger Thull (Luxembourg, 1939); Ahad Kazemi Sarai (Iran, 1975); Tom Bamford (New Zealand, 1963); María Belén Dutto (Argentina, 1987); Márcio May (Brazil, 1972).

Daily Cycling Facts 21.05.2013

The Giro d'Italia began on this date six times - in 1919, 1949, 1954, 1972, 1976 and 1987. 1919 covered 2,984km in ten stages and saw an example of one of the greatest dominations by a single rider over any Grand Tour - Costante Girardengo led the General Classification throughout and won seven stages. Oscar Egg became the first Swiss rider to win a stage, the Belgian Marcel Buysse became the first non-Italian to stand on the podium when he took third place overall and Gaetano Belloni won a stage for the first time (Belloni would become known as Eterno Secondo, the implication being that he'd never beat Girardengo. However, he seems to have been happy enough with the races he did win - including the 1920 Giro, three editions of the Giro di Lombardia and a Milan-San Remo - and the two men were close friends). It was the first edition of the race since the First World War and was used to make a political point when it visited Trieste and Trento, annexed by Italy from the Austro-Hungarian Empire as it collapsed at the end of the conflict.

1949 brought Fausto Coppi's third win and saw him hammer home his status as the new master of Italian cycling when he score a spectacular victory after an extremely difficult Stage 17 that included Maddalena Pass, the Col de Vars, the Col d'Izoard, the Col de Montgenèvre and Sestriere - having escaped the peloton, he rode on alone over the mountains and finished the stage with an 11'52" lead on Gino Bartali. At the end of the race, after 19 stages and 4,088km, Coppi's advantage over his aging rival was 23'47". A new era, represented by Coppi, had begun when he won his first Giro back in 1940. Now the preceding one, represented by Bartali, finally came to an end.

Carlo Clerici

There seems to be some confusion as to how long it actually was (4,331, 4,337 and 4,396km are all commonly given figures), but 1954 is likely to forever be remembered as the longest edition ever - like the other Grand Tours, the trend for many years has been for total distance to equal around 3,500km. The surprise winner was the Swiss Carlo Clerici, who made full use of a serious tactical error by the favourites which allowed him and the Italian Nino Assirelli to finish Stage 6 with a 25' advantage, then the race with 24'16" over his nearest rival. "They never should have been allowed such a lead," said Fausto Coppi. "But, after that stage, the race was over." Assirelli soon tired and couldn't keep up with Clerici, finishing 26'28" behind him - still good enough for third and,more impressively, one place up on Coppi. Another Swiss, Hugo Koblet, was 2'12" faster than Assirelli; completing the parcours in 129h37'23" - had it not have been for Clerici's good fortune, it's probably safe to assume Koblet would have won a third Grand Tour.

Having stayed out of the 1971 edition as he concentrated on winning a third Tour de France, Eddy Merckx came back in 1972 and, being Eddy Merckx, thrashed the competition. Marino Basso started off with the General Classification leadership and held it for the first two stages, then passed it on to Ugo Colombo for Stage 3 before José Manuel Fuente took it for the next four stages. In Stage 7, Merckx joined forces with the previous year's winner Gösta Pettersson, who apparently had no illusions that he could beat Merckx and was happy to take the stage win - a rather uncharacteristic gesture of gratitude by The Cannibal. From that point onwards, the race was as good as won: Fuente attacked again and again and on every single climb but he couldn't even dent the surpremacy of Merckx, who led all the way to the end and finished the 23 stages (two split) and 3,725km with a 5'30" advantage.

1976 saw another record; set by the Spaniard Antonio Menendez Gonzalez, a lowly domestique riding with KAS-Campagnolo, broke away from the peloton the moment Stage 11 got underway in Terni and then rode solo all the way to victory in Gabbice Mare 222km away - the longest solo break in the history of the race. Whilst the middle of the race was dominated by Felice Gimondi, GC leader between Stages 8 and18, the final part broke down into a nervous duel between him and the Belgian Johan de Muynck who had taken the lead in Stage 19 and kept it until Gimondi got the better of him in Stage 22a, a 28km individual time trial and a discipline in which the Italian easily outclassed the Belgian. The race included 24 stages (two split) and covered 4,161km, Gimondi's winning time being 119h58'15" and de Muynck's 19" slower.

Giro 1987 - the Marmalade Massacre
1987 was a superb year from a Celtic point of view: Stephen Roche became the first (and to date, only) Irishman to win a Giro when he finished the 24 stages and 3,915km in 105h39'42" (he'd also win the Tour de France that year, then the World Championships; making him one of only two men to have won the fabled Triple Crown - cycling's most prestigious and entirely unofficial prize, for which there is no trophy) and the Scotsman Robert Millar was second - for many years, the best ever Grand Tour result by a British rider until Chris Froome equalled it at the 2011 Vuelta a Espana.

Stephen Roche

It was the year of one of the most vicious battles in the history of the race - the one that broke out between team mates Roche and Roberto Visentini, the 1986 winner and team leader.  Visentini arrived at the race with every intention of taking a second victory and looked more than capable of doing so in the Prologue and Stage 1a, but Roche beat him the Stage 1b individual time trial and then took the leadership when their Carrera Jeans-Vagabond won the Stage 3 team time trial. In Stage 13, by which time Visentini was again in the lead, Roche ignored an order from team management and attacked his leader to win back the GC.

He incurred the wrath of the tifosi for ever more, but earned the eternal friendship of many others - especially as he'd done so with virtually no support, Eddy Schepers being the only team member whom he could trust. Instead, he enlisted the aid of old friends Millar and Phil Anderson (both with Panasonic-Isostar, but with whom he had ridden when the trio were first trying to break into European cycling with the legendary Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt. Schepers, Millar and Anderson broke ranks and encircled Roche on the ascent of Marmaloda, protecting him from attacks and ensuring that he finished with a time sufficient to guarantee his victory. The event, one of the most remarkable in Giro history, has become known as the Marmalade Massacre.

Mark Cavendish

Born in Douglas on the Isle of Man on this day in 1925, Mark Cavendish fell in love with cycling during childhood and immediately became involved racing - though by his own admission, BMX was not his area of excellence: "I was always riding a bike, getting dropped in little races," he says. After badgering his parents, he got a mountain bike for his 13th birthday and the next day was unable to find anyone capable of beating him.

As a young teenager Cav met David Millar who was then the great hope of British cycling, in the years before his arrest, disgrace and eventual rise to become one of the peloton's most trusted elder statesmen. Millar inspired him, bringing him to a realisation that if he trained hard enough his juvenile talent might prove to be the foundation upon which a professional cycling career could be built. When he left school, he found a job in a bank and stuck it out for two years, saving the money he knew he'd need in the future.

With his naturally compact yet powerful physique, Cav soon found a contract with the British Cycling Track Team and frequently rode Madisons with Rob Hayles; the two of them winning gold at the UCI World Championships in 2005, the same year that Cav became European Points Race Champion. Both would prove relatively unimportant when compared to a pivotal decision he made that year, however - to start road racing, which he did with Sparkasse at the Tours of Berlin and Britain. In 2006, Cav started to get fast. Seriously, blisteringly fast, as he proved when he won two stages and the Points competition at the Tour of Berlin and lapped Ashley Hutchinson, James McCallum and his old mate Rob Hayles at the Commonwealth Games. Sparkasse acted as a feeder squad for the legendary T-Mobile team and he was offered a trainee contract with them in August, which he accepted before going on to win the Points competition at the Tour of Britain - in 2007, he was a fully-professional member of the team and repaid the gesture by winning the Scheldeprijs Classic.

2008 was his real breakthrough year. In addition to winning the World Madison Championship with Bradley Wiggins, Cav won his first Grand Tour stage - Stage 4 at the Giro d'Italia. Then he won Stage 13 too; and then Stages 5, 8, 12 and 13 at the Tour de France. British fans began to hope that he might one day be a Tour winner, but Cav has never been under any illusion that he could be: "I'm an old-school sprinter," he says. "I can't climb a mountain but if I am in front with 200 metres to go then there's nobody who can beat me."

When HTC-Highroad came to an end at the close of the 2011 season, many people felt that Cav would not be able to continue his success without his lead-out man Mark Renshaw and predicted that the wins would dry up if they went separate ways; as indeed turned out to be the case when Cav - after much petty intrigue - went as everyone always knew he would to Sky and Renshaw went to Rabobank. However,  because the pair won so many races when they working together, people tend to forget that Cav was winning races long before riding with Renshaw - it wasn't until 2009 that the partnership was formed. Nevertheless, it would prove devastatingly effective and at the Tour that summer Cav won six stages; in doing so becoming the first British rider to wear the green jersey for two days in a row and equalled, then beat Barry Hoban's British record of eight stage wins in total.

Problems with his teeth caused a less than satisfactory start to 2010 and his growing number of detractors started to whisper that his career so far had been lucky, that his glory days were still over, which is why he famously stuck two fingers up as he won Stage 2 at the Tour de Romandie that year (in Britain, the gesture can be politely described as meaning "I disagree with what you have said, and disapprove of you in general" - or, more accurately, as "Fuck you!"). The UCI, with their customary tolerance, were less than impressed and the team were forced to withdraw him from the race. It would not be the last time he got in trouble - a common accusation is that he's uncouth and arrogant. Those who know him disagree: Cav is a rough diamond, they say (and many find his outspokeness and "passionate" language refreshing), and explain his supposed arrogance as being simply an awareness that he's the best in the world at was he does.

Cav still can't climb - he was twice docked points at the 2011 Tour when he finished outside the time limit for Stages 18 and 19 (escaping disqualification as both stages were mountainous, causing organisers to extend the original limits when 50% of the peloton also finished outside the allotted time) - and he never will be able to, but for a sprint specialist such as him the race is about the Points competition rather than the General Classification, and it was that year that he became the first British rider to have won it; in addition to winning five stages (for a total of 20 in his career, making him the most successful British Tour rider by some way) and  becoming the second man to have won the Tour's final stage for three years in a row. The only other rider to have done so was Eddy Merckx, widely considered the greatest cyclist to have ever lived.

He wasn't finished yet, though. When the Grand Tours were over, the World Championships took place in Copenhagen. The British team worked hard to retain control of the Road Race from start to finish, then succeeded in getting Cav to an ideal position within a few hundred metres of the finish line before they lit the blue touch paper and retired to await the inevitable... and Mark Cavendish became the first British World Road Racing Champion since Tom Simpson almost half a century earlier.

Mark Cavendish, World Champion 2011

As 2011 drew to a close, there was much discussion as to which team Cav would ride for in 2012, with Cav himself upping his profile by playing the media and refusing to reveal who he'd chosen. Despite several spurious rumours that appeared to confirm it definitely wouldn't be Sky, few people were surprised when it turned out he would be joining the British team after all, even though with Bradley Wiggins being hotly tipped to win the Tour de France that year (as he did, becoming the first ever British winner) it wasn't clear who'd be supporting Cav as he went for stage wins and the Points classification due to the rest of the team being geared up to support their leader. Nevertheless, he won three of the seven stages won by British riders, making him the joint most successful stage winner. He shared that claim with Peter Sagan but, having enjoyed the full support of Liquigas-Cannondale, Sagan amassed a total of 421 points and won the Points classification; Cav, who had won it with 334 in 2011, finished with 220 and had to settle for fourth place. Knowing that Sky would be supporting either Wiggins or Chris Froome (who had been second in the General Classification) in 2013, he decided to move on and was eagerly snapped up by Omega Pharma-QuickStep, making his debut for them at the Tour de San Luis in January where he won Stage 1. The following month he picked up a rare General Classification victory when he won four of six stages at the Tour of Qatar (only the first stage was won by another rider, Brent Bookwalter; with Stage 2 being a team time trial won by BMC). In April he began Scheldeprijs, a race he had already won three times, as a favourite but was beaten by Marcel Kittel of Argos-Shimano; nevertheless, Omega's superb if ultimately unsuccessful attempt to catch Kittel's break must have told Cav all he needed to know regarding the sort of support his new team mates were willing to give him.

Jean Stablinski
Born Jean Stablewski to Polish immigrant parents on this day, 1932, in Thun-Saint-Amand, France (in a region so close to Belgium that some inhabitants to this day speak French Flemish as their first language), Jean Stablinski was forced to find work in the coal mines to support his family when he was 14 after his father died. That same year, he won a bicycle when he came first in an accordion competition and fell so in love with it that his mother worried he'd skip work to ride it, so she vandalised it. He was not discouraged.

Jean Stablinski

She couldn't know, of course, that her son was destined for greatness and would earn a far better living from cycling than he ever could have done as a miner. When he was 16, he took French citizenship and began entering official amateur races, including the Peace Race - it was there that a journalist mis-spelled his surname, rendering it as Stablinski and creating the name by which he would become world famous. At the age if 21 he turned professional with Gitane-Hutchinson and remained with them for three seasons before departing for Helyet-Potin for a year, then Essor-Leroux for four years. In 1960, the team merged with Helyet-Fynsec to become Helyett-Leroux-Fynsec-Hutchinson-A.C.B.B and Stablinski found himself riding as a domestique for Jacques Anquetil. He was arguably wasted in this role - after all, he won four National Championships and took silver medals at two more in a six-year period, an achievement that remains unmatched, but by all accounts he seems to have been happy with the arrangement. Until, that is, Anquetil wrote a series of critical newspaper articles that appeared to target his team mates - Stablinski was not alone in believing that some of the worst attacks were directed specifically at him and in 1968 he left to join Mercier-BP-Hutchinson while Anquetil remained with Bic, but he retired from competition at the end of the year.

Stablinski was, it has to be said, far from the most graceful rider to have ever swung his leg over a bike. In fact, if anyone were to watch a video of him in action without knowing who he was nor what he achieved, they could be forgiven for thinking him a rank amateur and quite possibly a little drunk. However, he had a sharp mind and intuitively make detailed race plans, changing them on the road as necessary; and he displayed an almost supernatural knack of knowing which breakaway was going to survive to the end of a race, then attaching himself to it. He was, therefore, prime manager material and it was he in his role as Sonolor-Lejeune who recognised that two unknown young riders named Lucien van Impe and Bernard Hinault were worth signing up.

Unlike Hinault, who claims not to have ridden a bike since he retired, Stablinski never fell out of love with the simple joy of non-competitive cycling and continued to ride until the last days of his life. He had spent so many years riding flat out with his head down, he explained on French television, that he'd not had as much opportunity to view the countryide and enjoy riding for the sake of riding as he would have liked during his youth. Like all cyclists, a major contributing factor to his enjoyment of these rides was the cafes he found along the way and more than one unsuspecting stranger was surprised to find themselves in conversation with a four-time World Champion. He also became involved with Les Amis de Paris–Roubaix, the "friends" of the race who restore and repair the cobbled sections that have made it the most famous of the Monuments. It was he that alerted them to the existence of a road running through the forest over the mines he'd worked in all those years before; a harsh, dead-straight road that has come to symbolise the entire race - the Trouée d'Arenberg.

Stablinski died after a long illness on the 22nd of July, 2007.

Nicole Freedman is now a "bike czar,"
assisting architects and urban planners
in producing cycling-friendly town plans

Sprinter Nicole Freedman, born in Massachusetts on this day in 1972, discovered cycling whilst at university (she went to MIT and Stanford) as has been the case with many great female cyclists. She won numerous stages in North American races between 1999 and 2005, also taking one at the 2005 Tour of New Zealand and coming second on Stage 7 of the 2003 Holland Ladies' Tour. In 2000, she won the National Road Race and a year the National Criterium title. After being invited to compete for Israel and awarded dual citizenship, she won the silver medal in the Israeli National Championships in 2003.

Pierre Molinéris, who was born in Nice on this day in 1920, won the Boucles de Sospel and 30 other races including Stage 4 at the 1952 Tour de France before he retired in 1955. At the time of writing, he's 91 and very much alive.

Other cyclists born on this day: Lori-Ann Muenzer (Canada, 1966); Stephen Fairless (Australia, 1962); Martin Penc (Czechoslovakia, 1957); Evert Grift (Netherlands, 1922, died 2009); Mehari Okubamicael (Ethiopia, 1945); Roger Young (USA, 1953); Gianni Ghidini (Italy, 1930, died 1995); Mino de Rossi (Italy, 1931).

Daily Cycling Facts 20.05.2013

The Giro d'Italia started on this day six times: 1961, 1967, 1968, 1971, 1977 and 1978. Jacques Anquetil, who had become the first Frenchman to win a Giro the year before, went to the race as the favourite in 1961; but he faced stiff competition from Arnaldo Pambianco who had finished in 7th place at the 1960 Tour de France. He fought hard to leave him behind and took the General Classification leadership in Stage 10 but, somehow, Pambianco stayed with him all the way until Stage 14 - where the Italian dropped him on the Passo del Magulione. From that point onwards, the tables were turned and Anquetil never got a look in, taking second place after 21 stages and 4,002km with a 3'45" deficit on Pambianco's time of 111h25'28".

Anquetil was widely expected to win 1967, too; especially since Italy's best hope Felice Gimondi was racked with bronchitis on the start line - and the tifosi all but forgot their dreams as he failed to keep up with the high pace in the first few stages. Yet, he kept going and in time began to feel a little better, then won Stage 19. - although there had been such blatant, widespread cheating with fans pushing the Italian riders (including Gimondi) up the mountains that even the notoriously patriotic judges agreed they would have to disallow the results and annul the stage. Realising, perhaps, that he now had a serious rival, Anquetil pulled out all the stops the next day and took over the General Classification. Now, however, Gimondi was fully recovered and determined to win; with superhuman effort, he clawed his way to the top and took the leadership, then retained it to overall victory three stages later in Milan, 3,572km from the start line. For the first time that year, the leader of the Points competition was awarded a red jersey. It was a change that can be seen as symbolic of greater changes in cycling, because a new era was just beginning - both Anquetil and Gimondi couldn't fail to notice that two of the 23  stages and 9th place overall had gone to a rider who was taking part for the very first time that year, a young Belgian named Eddy Merckx.

Gösta Pettersson, the only Swede to
have won a Giro

Gimondi would play an instrumental part in the outcome of the 1971 - but not in the way he'd hoped. Looking to win Stage 18, he teamed up with Francisco Galdos, Herman can Springel and Gösta Pettersson to make a four-man break which successfully escaped the peloton and led the race to the finish line, where he won the stage. Unfortunately for him, the plan had worked better than he thought - they finished so quickly that Petterson moved into the General Classification lead, followed by van Springel in second place. So great was their unexpected advantage that they remained thus through to the end when, after 23 stages and 3,567km, Petterson became the first 9and at the time of writing, only) Swedish rider to win a Giro. Gimondi was 7th.

1977 saw the Belgian Freddy Maertens lead the General Classification for the first six stages and win seven in total, which some fans (especially Belgian ones) apparently considered a more impressive achievement than the overall victory - he'd almost certainly have won the Points competition as a result, but a crash 100m from the finish line in Stage 8b forced him to abandon. Francesco Moser was a favourite for the GC and his success seemed all but inevitable after he took the race leadership in Stage 5 and kept it until Stage 17, when Michel Pollentier (another Belgian) wrested it away from him. However, Italy didn't worry unduly: the 29km time trial at Binago (Stage 21) may as well have been specifically in order that Moser could thrash his rivals, so ideally did the parcours suit his skills. Everybody knew that he was going to win it by an enormous margin. Of course, irony stepped in at this point and saw to it that it was in fact Pollentier who won the stage, and the General Classification. One year later, Pollentier's reputation and career were in tatters after he became the second rider to be caught using a pipe connected to a condom containing somebody else's urine that he had hidden under his armpit, which allowed him to produce a sample of "clean" urine at the anti-doping control (he was caught through sheer bad luck, in fact: the rider just before him had an identical system, but it became blocked, possibly as a result of sabotage, and the doctor, having spotted the pipe as he fiddled with it, demanded that Pollentier pull up his jersey to see if he had one too), so we can probably assume that irony was not the only factor in his time trial win. It's perhaps not quite as unfair as it first seems, meanwhile - if Moser was riding clean that day, it was probably the only race of his professional career in which he did so.

Felice Gimondi was still racing in 1978, though it would be his final Giro - now 36 years old, his 11th place overall was very respectable. The Belgian Rik van Linden held the General Classification leadership through Stages 1 and 2, fighting off savage attacks from Francesco Moser and Giuseppe Saronni. However, in Stage 3 he lost it to another Belgian, Johan de Muynck, who then defended it all the way through the remaining 18 stages and finished the race with a time of 101h31'22" - 59" faster than second place Gianbattista Baronchelli.

Isaac Gálvez
Road and track cyclist Isaac Gálvez, who was born in Vilanova i la Geltrú, Spain on this day in 1975, was twice World Madison Champion(1999 and 2006) and won numerous stages in road races including the Volta a Catalunya and Critérium International.

During the Six Days of Ghent in 2006, Gálvez was involved in a collision with the Belgian rider Dimitri de Fauw which sent him into the railings, hitting them hard enough to suffer massive internal bleeding that killed him early the next day. He was 31 and had been married for three weeks. Following his death, de Fauw suffered deep depression and, three weeks before the second anniversary of the incident, committed suicide.

Chris Froome
Born in Nairobi, Kenya on this day in 1985, Chris Froome moved to South Africa as a teenager and became interested in mountain biking, then road racing and began to show talent as a climber and time trial rider which led to his selection for the Kenyan team at the 2006 World Championships (where he got himself known by colliding with a UCI course official). He turned professional with the South Africa-registered Team Konica Minolta a year later but was then invited to join Barloworld in 2008, racing with a British licence as his father was born in Britain. With them, he entered his first Tour de France in 2009 and came 84th overall but 12th in the Youth Classification, indication that he had great potential, then in 2009 he was 36th overall and 7th in the Youth at the Giro d'Italia. Froome was one of the first riders to be announced for the new Team Sky in 2009 - he is still with them at the time of writing.

Chris Froome

In the 2011 Vuelta a Espana, Froome was selected by the team to act as a domestique for Bradley Wiggins and did an admirable job in assisting his leader to 4th place in Stage 9. The next day, meanwhile, he completely out-rode Wiggins in the time trial, finishing the stage in 2nd place behind Tony Martin. Over the next few stages he was notably weaker and concentrated on his domestique duties until Stage 15, which featured an ascent of Alto de l'Angliru - a mountain so steep that in the past team cars have been unable to follow their riders to the summit. After Stage 10, he'd taken 2nd place in the General Classification; this time he was the second fastest up the mountain behind Juan José Cobo - and while he got to the top 48" after Cobo, it was good enough to keep his GC place. Stage 17 featured a summit finish on top of Peña Cabarga, a far less daunting climb than Angliru but a tough one nevertheless and one that Cobo was expected to win with ease. 1km from the finish line, Froome attacked - Cobo was on his case immediately and got in front of him with 300m to go, apparently securing the win. However, Froome hung on, refusing to let go of his rival's back wheel and then, when Cobo looked around to see if he'd shaken him off yet, he sneaked past on the other side and put the power down, winning the stage by 1". With the bonuses awarded, Cobo's overall lead was reduced to 13". By keeping himself out of danger and continuing to ride well in the next stages, he was able to keep 2nd place in the General Classification through to the end of the race four days later - and thus equalled Robert Millar's best ever finish by a British rider in a Grand Tour.

In 2012, 75 years after Charles Holland and Bill Burl had been the first British riders to take part, Bradley Wiggins became the first British rider to win. Froome, who had won Stage 7 (one of seven stages won by British riders, more than any other nation), took second place with an overall time 3'21" slower, leading to an interesting situation: Wiggins is a remarkably talented all-rounder who can win a Grand Tour through his time trial abilities, but most Grand Tours are won not in time trials but in the mountains - and Froome appears to be a better climber than Wiggins. Who, then, would lead Sky at the 2013 Grand Tours? Wiggins was chosen to be team leader at the Giro, but a few weeks before Froome's birthday team managers seem not yet to have decided who will lead at the Tour.

Giovanni Gerbi
Giovanni Gerbi, winner of the first Giro di Lombardia, was born in Piedmont on this day in 1885. Always racing in a red jersey and his dare-devil attitude earned him the nickname Il Diavolo Rosso. Considered one of the pioneers of Italian competitive cycling, he bought his first bike in 1900 with money he'd earned doing odd jobs and that very same year finished his first three races in third place, then won his fourth - the 95km, now long-defunct Asti-Moncalieri. Realising he could make a living on the bike, he moved to Milan and began racing against the likes of Carlo Galetti, who would win the second and third editions of the Giro d'Italia, supporting himself by working as a baker until 1902 when he won the amateur Coppa del Re and received an invitation to turn professional with Maino.

After winning Milan-Turin in 1903, Gerbi entered the second ever Tour de France but was one of the many riders who failed to finish. He also rode the first Giro d'Italia in 1909, but abandoned after a crash in the early stages left with an insurmountable disadvantage. He entered again in 1920, but was disqualified for riding a bike with - of all things - a sidecar attached to it.

A few years after his retirement, Gerbi returned in veteran competition and continued winning races, including two editions of La Coppa Guerra, and set a veteran's hour record at the Vigorelli velodrome. According to legend, he was once mistaken during a race for the real devil by a priest.

Laurent Dufaux
Laurent Dufaux, born in Montreux, Switzerland on this day in 1969, became National Road Race Champion in 1991won the Critérium du Dauphiné in 1993 and 1994, was twice fourth overall at the Tour de France (1996 and 1999, he was also ninth overall in 1997) and second overall at the 1996 Vuelta a Espana.

Noted as an excellent climber, Dufaux rode alongside Richard Virenque with Festina; the two men forming a highly-effective partnership in the high mountains of the Grand Tours. He doped alongside Virenque, too, but whereas Virenque first denied the charges and then tearfully blamed everyone and everything but himself, Dufaux had the good sense to know when the game was up and confessed to using EPO. As a result, Virenque's case span out for more than two years until he was eventually banned, fined and then had enormous difficulty in finding a team that would have anything to do with him (Domo-Farm Frites would, but only when Eddy Merckx promised to provide a big chunk of cash towards his keep), whereas Dufaux served a relatively light six-month suspension and was racing with Saeco early in the following season.


Katie Cullen, born in Edinburgh on this day in 1977, had no interest in cycling until she was assigned the task of producing a velodrome blueprint while she studied for her architecture degree. Visiting the example in Manchester to investigate which features a velodrome should have, she found that she was becoming fascinated  by the racing - and became hooked when she was given a chance to ride around the track. In 2005, she won the first of her four National Championship titles.

Other births: Marco van der Hulst (Netherlands, 1963); Michael Allen (USA, 1935); Armando Latini (Italy, 1913); Robert Karśnicki (Poland, 1972); Gintautas Umaras (USSR, 1963); Robert Bouloux (France*, 1947); Norman Webster (Canada, 1896, died 1967); Noé Medina (Ecuador, 1943); Andreas Walzer (Germany, 1970); René Bianchi (France, 1934); Wiesław Podobas (Poland, 1936); Armando Castillo (Guatemala, 1932, died 2006); Lado Fumic (West Germany, 1976); Imants Bodnieks (USSR, 1941).

*Fortunately, for him. You would not want to go through the British school system with that surname.