Daily Cycling Facts 20.07.2013

Giovanni Lombardi

Giovanni Lombardi

Born in Pavia on this day in 1969, Giovanni Lombardi suffered from the same problem that many sprinters suffer from today - in almost any other era, he'd have been the best in the world. Whereas modern sprinters are eclipsed by the incredible talent of Mark Cavendish, Lombardi found himself unable to compete with Erik Zabel and the might Mario Cipollini. A sufficiently wise man to realise that his skills could be put to good and productive use even if he was unlikely to ever attain the glory he's undoubtedly have liked, he ended a five-year stint with Italian teams in 1997 and went to Telekom to become Zabel's lead-out man. In return, the team supported him when opportunity arose for him to win, which he did with respectable regularity during the five years he spent with them - including stages at the Volta a Catalunya, the Österreich Rundfahrt, Bicicleta Vasca, Tirreno–Adriatico, the Vuelta a España, the Ronde van Nederland, the Vuelta a Burgos and the Danmark Rundt.

In 2002, he received what was then the ultimate accolade for any lead-out man in the form of an invitation to join Cipollini's Acqua e Sapone, and with them he won another stage at the Vuelta a Espana, two more at the Giro d'Italia and others at the Tour de Romandie, Tour Méditerranéen and Vuelta a Aragón. However, by 2003 Cipollini's powers were already fading; so after two more seasons working for the Lion King Lombardi moved on to Bjarne Riis' CSC team in Denmark and a new job leading out Ian Basso and Carlos Sastre. He was an instrumental part in Basso's second place at the Tour and overall victory at the Giro as well as in Sastre's second place overall and third in the Points competition in 2005, the year in which Lombardi was the only rider to complete all three Grand Tours.


Born in Kortezubi, Basque Country on this day in 1960, Federico Echave won stages in a variety of smaller stage races, then took Stage 5 at the 1985 Vuelta a Espana. Two years later he achieved the greatest ride of his life, one that any rider would love to have on his palmares: Stage 20, finishing at the summit of Alpe d'Huez, at the Tour de France. Another few years of stage wins in less prestigious races followed, then he came 6th and 5th overall at the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d'Italia respectively in 1990. In 1992 he was fifth at the Vuelta, but then began to fade away - another rider who got close enough to see the very top level of the sport, but could never quite get there.

On this day in 1985, John Kennedy Howard set a motor-paced bicycle speed record of 245kph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It would not be bettered for ten years.

Cyclists born on this day: Peter Smessaert (USA, 1908, died 2000); Volker Winkler (East Germany, 1957); Washington Díaz (Uruguay, 1954); Károly Teppert (Hungary, 1891).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.07.2013

Karel Thijs

During the Second World War, La Flèche Wallonne was held on a later date each year than has traditionally been the case. This date, the anniversary of the sixth edition in 1942, is the latest in the race's history. It was 208km long - shorter than before and after the War, but comparable to modern editions - and ran between Mons and Marcinelle. It was the last major victory for Karel Thijs, whose professional career came to an end shortly afterwards.

Percy Stallard
Born above his father's Wolverhampton bike shop on this day in 1909, Percy Thornley Stallard became the man responsible to the reintroduction of mass-start cycling road races in Great Britain.

The ban on road races had come about as the result of an incident in 1890 when a group of cyclists spooked a horse, resulting in an overturned carriage and a complaint to the police; this convinced the National Cyclists' Union that any further complaint would be likely to result in all bikes being banned from the nation's roads and they introduced a rule stating that mass-start races could only be held at velodromes or on sites such as airfields. Individual time trials, in which each cyclist rides alone against the clock, were not banned as the general public are unlikely to realise that a race is even in progress when they see one cyclist and it was easy to hold them in secret; this is the reason that time trials remain more popular in Britain than elsewhere even today and why many cycling clubs like to refer to time trial routes using codes rather than place names - it's also the reason that, until comparatively recently, British cyclists tended to do so badly when they went abroad to compete in road races.

Percy Stallard

In 1936, the Isle of Man held a cycling race on the world famous Tourist Trophy circuit (the Isle has its own government and issues its own passports - NCU laws didn't apply there) and it proved to be a huge success despite the high number of crashes among British cyclists unused to racing in a peloton, rapidly developing into the prestigious Manx International. Stallard took part in the race and finished in 16th place; inspired by it he decided to investigate the possibility of launching a similar event on the British mainland and saw his chance in 1941 when the Second World War caused petrol shortages and traffic levels dropped accordingly, so he wrote to the NCU with his suggestions.

NCU official A.P. Chamberlin was not favourable, writing back to explain the reasons behind the ban and stating that the organisation wouldn't even consider changing its policy. However, now that airfields were being used by the Army and Royal Air Force races were few and far between, so Stallard put the word around that there would be an unofficial meeting at the bottom of Shropshire's Long Mynd, a range of hills that has long been popular among cyclists. It was there that he revealed his plan to hold a 95km on the 7th of July that year from Llangollen in North Wales to Wolverhampton, without the support of the NCU but with the backing of the police - he'd spoken to them to get an idea of how they might react and, rather than threatening a ban, they'd been extremely favourable and offered their help.

The NCU, meanwhile, were furious and set about doing all they could to prevent the race from going ahead, but Stallard would not back down and the race went ahead. A thousand people turned out to see the riders cross the finish line and the event a success by the organisers and the police. Now, the NCU's anger passed beying fury -  Stallard and fifteen others involved in organising the race were handed a sine die ban: one without a specific date upon which it would end but which could be lifted at any time if the subject either successfully appealed or, as the organisation presumably hoped would be the case in this instance, apologised and did as he or she was told. Yet still Stallard would not back down, especially now that he had proved mass-start races could be held on British roads, so in November he helped launch the British League of Racing Cyclists - an organisation of like-minded riders that act as an umbrella body co-ordinating a number of pre-existing groups and would go head-to-head with the cycling establishment.

Encouraged by their success, the BLRC went on to organise Britain's first multi-stage road race which began in 1944 (Stallard won Stage 1, Les Plume won overall); this led in turn to the five-stage Victory Race between Brighton and Glasgow in 1945, organised to celebrate the end of the war - Robert Batot, a Frenchman, won (the race was not recognised by the UCI; Batot and the other five French riders to finish in the top ten came from the BLRC's French counterpart rebel organisation the Fédération Sportive et Gymnastique du Travail - an association of Communist riders - with whom organisers were put in touch by the French owners of a cafe in London's Soho). In 1946, the Victory (now known as Brighton-Glasgow) was held again, then in 1947 it received financial backing from the News of the World newspaper. Their sponsorship ended after that one event but the race took place again in 1948 and 1949, largely paid for by the organisers as had been the case with the first two editions; then in 1950 it was sponsored by the Sporting Record and in 1951 by the Daily Express (which used to be a great newspaper, rather than the rag it is today) - this edition was the first to be named the Tour of Britain (it was joined by an amateur race sponsored the Butlins firm, known as the Butlin Tour, with each stage running between Butlin's holiday camps). The Express remained on board for three years until the constant infighting between organisers and route officials saw them pull out and begin sponsoring motor racing instead, at which point Quaker Oats took over and continued sponsorship for four years. In 1958, by which time the race had become hugely successful, the Milk Marketing Board became sponsor: it was renamed the Milk Race. The final Milk Race was held in 1993, but would be reborn as the PruTour (sponsored by Prudential Insurance) in 1998 and 1999, then vanished once again. In 2004, British Cycling - whom Stallard had despised so much - teamed up with sports and events marketing firm SweetSpot to bring the race back to life. Once again known as the Tour of Britain, it grew to become the largest cycling event in the country and has become an important part of the UCI's EuropeTour racing series.

Stallard was not fundamentally opposed to the NCU itself, but to the entrenched attitudes and beliefs it held - it didn't take long before he started to feel the same way about the BLRC, and he was briefly banned after criticising it. In time, the NCU and BLRC merged to form the British Cycling Federation, which Stallard saw as treason - when one of his employees, Ralph Jones (who had finished in sixth at the Llangollen-Wolverhampton race) went to Spain as part of the group visiting a UCI meeting that led to the BCF becoming recognised as Britain's cycling governing body, he sacked him the day he got back.


Mauro Ribeiro, born in Curitiba, Brazil on this day in 1964, won Stage 9 at the Tour de France in 1991. He was the first Brazilian stage winner in Tour history.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jocelyn Lovell (Canada, 1950); Gorgi Popstefanov (Yugoslavia - now Macedonia, 1987); Edvandro Cruz (Brazil, 1978); Alois Kaňkovský (Czechoslovakia, 1983); Cipriano Chemello (Italy, 1945); Carlos Zárate Fernández (Spain, 1980); Frank Meissner (USA, 1894, died 1966); Vincent Gomgadja (Central African Republic, 1960); Francisca Campos (Chile, 1985); Liudmyla Vypyrailo (Ukraine, 1979); Laurence Burnside (Bahamas, 1946); Victor Hopkins (USA, 1904, died 1969); Rudi Ceyssens (Belgium, 1962).

Daily Cycling Facts 18.07.2013

Fabio Casartelli
16.08.1970 - 18.07.1995

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

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

Amy Gillett
09.01.1976 - 18.07.2005

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

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


Gino Bartali
Often, we describe Tour de France winners as heroes - which to cycling fans they are, but to the rest of the world all they've done is won a bike race. Gino Bartali, however, truly was a hero. Born in Pont a Ema on this day in 1914, he was the third child of a farmer and was raised in a poor household. His family were deeply religious, and his Catholic faith shaped his life every bit as much as his powerful physique and natural talent on a bike.

Gino Bartali, who was said to have "looked like a boxer but
climbed like an angel"

At the age of 13 he began racing after being encouraged by colleagues in a local bike shop where he worked to support his family. Success as an amateur brought his first professional contract with Aquilano in 1931, but his career didn't really take off until he joined Frejus in 1935 - in his first year with them he won a number of one-day races, the Tour of the Basque Country, one stage and the overall King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia and the National Road Race Championship. At the Giro the following year he won three stages, the King of the Mountains and the General Classification but almost gave up cycling forever when his brother Giulio was killed in a crash while racing. However, he was convinced to continue, and in 1937 he won another National Championship and the Giro's King of the Mountains for the third time and General Classification for a second time.

Bartali entered the Tour de France for the first time in 1937 and won Stage 7, but on Stage 8 he was in a collision on a narrow wooden bridge and fell three metres into a river where he was very nearly swept away by the current - thankfully, Francesco Camusso was nearby and managed to grab hold of him and haul him out. He continued, but lost significant time in the next stages and abandoned in Stage 12. Having been brought up to be respectful, he went to Tour director Henri Desgrange before publicly announcing his decision to leave and Desgrange was touched that he did, because no other rider had ever thought to do so before: "You are a good man, Gino," he told the rider. "We'll see one another again next year, and you will win."

Bartali in 1938

Desgrange was correct - in 1938, the Italian was able to defeat terrible weather and a very strong Belgian team, winning the toughest stage by a margin of 5'18" and finishing up with an advantage of 18'27". Georges Briquet, a radio commentator at the race, remembered: "These people had found a superman. Outside Bartali's hotel at Aix-les-Bains, an Italian general was shouting 'Don't touch him - he's a god.'"

Back in Italy a public subscription fund was started to reward him, the first man to donate money to it being Mussolini. Bartali's feelings about that haven't been recorded, but it's likely that it was a problem for him because, as he would later show, he was very much opposed to the Fascist leader's policies: it was known after the war that he had assisted in efforts to save the lives of Jewish Italians, but it's only comparatively recently that just how far he was willing to go to rescue a fellow human being from almost certain death has become known - not only did he courier information and fake documents around the Italian countryside, he personally transported Jewish refugees in a specially-designed trailer towed behind his bike across the Alps and into neutral Switzerland (if stopped by police, he explained that the trailer was deliberately constructed to be heavy and that towing it over the mountains was part of his training regime. If stopped, he'd almost certainly have been summarily executed or sent to a concentration camp). He was, therefore, a man whose courage went far beyond anything required in a bike race, as he proved when he was arrested and questioned by officers from the notorious SS secret service the Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS and would tell them nothing other than that he did what he felt was the right thing to do.

It's estimated that he was responsible for saving more than 800 people, yet Bartali never asked for reward nor even recognition, stating years later that "One does these things, and that's that" and insisting that the only medal he expected for what he had done was the one he wore upon his heart. In 2012, Israel's Yad Vashem announced that it was gathering further information in preparation for declaring him Righteous Among The Nations, an honour bestowed upon those who helped defend and save Europe's Jews from Fascist attempts to exterminate them.

When Bartali returned to the Tour in 1948, he found that the riders he'd known in the past had either been killed or injured in the war or were now too old to compete so he memorised the names of several other entrants in order to be able to talk to them during the race. Prior to traveling to France, the Italian team had argued before the race over whether Bartali or Fausto Coppi, who had already won two Giri d'Italia, should be team leader. The Tour organisers wanted both men in the race and even permitted a second Italian team so they could both lead, but eventually Coppi decided to sulk and refused to take part at all. Bartali was no longer a young man and whilst the war had taken its toll on everyone, he especially didn't look to be in good shape. He won the first stage, but then began to struggle and Louison Bobet had little trouble in gaining the overall lead and keeping it - though he collapsed after Stage 11, he recovered in time to win the next day.

After finishing Stage 12 with an overall disadavantage of 20', Bartali told his team mates that he was going to abandon; but they persuaded him to sleep on it and see how he felt the following day. He did so, but during the night was woken by a phonecall from Alcide De Gasperi - the prime minister of Italy. De Gasperi told him that Palmiro Togliatti, chairman of the Communist Party, had been assassinated. Could Bartali try his very best to win the next day, he asked, in the hope that such good news might prevent the populace rising up and thrusting the country into civil war?

Bartali with Fausto Coppi

Bartali assured him that not only would he win the stage, he would win the race - and he kept both promises. Stage 13 was won with a 6'13" lead after he took on and beat no less a rider than Briek Schotte, reducing the gap between himself and Bobet to 1'06". Then he won Stages 14 and 15 too, which gave him an overall lead of 1'47" - and, more importantly, united Italy in their support for him. He finished 32" behind stage winner Edward van Dijck in Stage 16, but because his rivals lost significant time his overall lead grew to 32'20" and from that point onwards. Ten years after his first Tour victory, he had won another - the longest period between two wins by any one individual in the history of the race. What he may have achieved had the War not interrupted his career and stolen his best years can only be guessed at.

Considering the eras in which he raced, it's remarkable that Bartali appears to have never resorted to doping. However, he was convinced that Coppi did (with good reason: Coppi later admitted it) and took a dim view of it, which led him to try to find evidence to support his suspicions. During the 1946 Giro he saw Coppi drink the contents of a small glass phial which he then threw into the undergrowth at the side of the road, so he stopped his bike and retrieved it. Later, he gave it to his doctor to investigate but it turned out to have contained a legal tonic. He then began closely monitoring his rival and, while he could never prove anything conclusively, became something of an expert in Coppi's habits and was able to predict how he would ride the following day:

"The first thing was to make sure I always stayed at the same hotel for a race, and to have the room next to his so I could mount a surveillance. I would watch him leave with his mates, then I would tiptoe into the room which ten seconds earlier had been his headquarters. I would rush to the waste bin and the bedside table, go through the bottles, flasks, phials, tubes, cartons, boxes, suppositories – I swept up everything. I had become so expert in interpreting all these pharmaceuticals that I could predict how Fausto would behave during the course of the stage. I would work out, according to the traces of the product I found, how and when he would attack me."

Bartali remained a competitive rider until he was 40, when a road accident ended his career. By that time he had given much of his money away to deserving causes and lost most of what remained in ill-advised investments. Fortunately, his fame was so great that he could earn a living from it, becoming the acerbic host of a popular television show and making a few cameo appearances in films. In old age he developed heart problems (not helped at all by an increasingly sedentary lifestyle - Miguel Indurain's manager once warned the five-time Tour winner to avoid being "like Gino Bartali" in his post-racing life) and underwent bypass surgery in 2000; but the operation was not successful. He was given the last rights and died ten days later, after which an official two-day period of mourning was declared throughout Italy. To this day, historians are still discovering the extents of his heroism - as recently as 2010 new evidence came to light proving that he had concealed a Jewish family in the cellar of his home, saving them from death at the hands of the Fascists he detested so much.

Bartali wins the Tour, 1948

Russell Mockridge
Russell Mockridge was born in Melbourne on this day in 1928 and started his career with the Geelong Amateur CC, where he was nicknamed Little Lord Fauntleroy on account of his accent. Then he began winning races - a lot of races - and people called him The Geelong Flyer instead.

Two years later he rode in the Olympics, but his race was ruined by two punctures; at the British Empire Games two years after that he won two gold medals and a silver. Mockridge was selected for the 1952 Olympic team but initially said he would turn down the invitation due to a requirement that athletes on the team remained amateur for two years - no less a figure than Hubert Opperman personally saw to it that the rule was reduced to one year, and Mockridge won another pair of gold medals. He did indeed turn professional a year later and in 1955 came 64th at the Tour de France - one of only 69 riders from 130 starters to finish the race.

Mockridge died on the 13th of September 1958 when he collided with a bus some 3.2km from the start of the Tour of Gippsland. He was only two months past his birthday and left behind his wife and three-year-old daughter.


On this day in 1947, Federico Bahamontes entered his first race - and won it. On this day in 1959, he won the Tour de France.

Leandro Faggin, born in Padua in this day in 1933, won two Olympic gold medals and held three World Championship titles over the course of his career. He died at the age of 37 of cancer on the 6th of December 1970, and since 2000 is frequently included on lists of probable dopers.

Other cyclists born today: Rafał Furman (Poland, 1985); Martin Stenzel (West Germany, 1946); Sergey Kucherov (Russia, 1980); Joseph Racine (France, 1891, died 1914); Stephen Hodge (Australia, 1961); Michael Neel (USA, 1951); José Velásquez (Colombia, 1970).

Daily Cycling Facts 16.07.2013

On this day in 1961, Jacques Anquetil won the second of his five Tour de France General Classification victories when he beat second place Guido Carlesi by 12'14", having led the race since Stage 1b. On that very same afternoon, 315km away at Laeken in Belgium, another race was taking place. The riders there had no doubt been following Anquetil's progress and dreaming that they might one day compete in Le Tour too; one of them, from the Evere Kerkhoek Sportif club was a stocky sixteen-year-old, making his race debut. The boy didn't win, but had Anquetil have been there to see it he might have felt a sense of foreboding about his unofficial title of The Greatest Cyclist of All Time...

The boy's name? Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx.

Miguel Indurain

Indurain in 1996

Born in Villava in Spain on this day in 1964, Miguel Indurain Larraya was given a green second-hand bike on his tenth birthday and enjoyed riding it so much that, when he was eleven and it was stolen, he went to work with his father on a farm after school each day until he'd earned anough money to buy a new one - and rode his first race on it, winning a sandwich and a drink for reaching the finish line. He tried various other sports during childhood, but none of them gave him a thrill equal to riding a bike fast so he joined a local club and, at the age of 14, entered a race for unlicensed amateurs, taking second place. He won the next race he entered, then became Spain's youngest ever National Champion three years later.

In 1984, Indurain was selected for the Olympic team - he didn't win a medal, but he impressed managers at the Reynolds trade team who offered him his first professional contract shortly after the Games. The next year, he entered the Vuelta a Espana and was second in the prologue, then led the race for a short time after Stage 1 before coming 84th overall; later in the year he rode for the first time in the Tour de France but abandoned in the fourth stage. He would abandon again, this time in Stage 8, in 1986. In 1987 he finished for the first time, coming 97th, then improved to 47th in 1988; good results (just finishing a Tour is a good result) but nothing spectacular. Then he came 17th in 1989, making it clear that he was a serious contender, and if anyone doubted it he proved them wrong by coming tenth in 1990.

Indurain in yellow, 1993

Indurain's strength made him an all but unbeatable opponent in a time trial, but at 1.88 tall and 85kg during his early career he suffered in the mountains and the lighter climbers had little difficulty in dropping him. Since 1987 he had been working with the legendary (in those days, not yet notorious) Dr. Francesco Conconi, who took a few measurements and found some extremely promising statistics including an 88ml/kg/min VO2 max, a lung capacity almost two litres greater than average and a 50l/min cardiac flow rate. With work, Indurain had the potential to be a world-beater, and the first step was to lose a few kilos. He dropped to 78kg - still heavy compared to a climber, but light enough to take them on when combined with his strength. When he rolled up to the start line of the 1991 Tour he was a completely different rider to the one he used to be and there was little doubt that he was going to win.

Nowadays, fans think of doping whenever they hear the name Conconi - with good reason: whilst employed to develop new anti-doping tests, he was also investigating new drugs that the tests couldn't detect and introducing them the sport, his most lasting legacy being EPO. However, this tends to obscure the fact that he is also a very skillful sports doctor and scientist, a man able to transform one of his "projects" from likely one-off Tour winner into one of cycling's all-time greatest athletes. Indurain became one of those projects and, under the doctor' direction, adopted a policy last used by Lucien Petit-Breton to become the first man to win two Tours back in 1908 - centreing his season entirely around the Tour with all other races used merely for training purposes.  He was good enough that winning a prestigious bonus here and there, such as the Giro d'Italia in 1992 and 1993, but he made no secret of the fact that the Tour was his raison d'être and this to accusations that he was a boring rider and that he made the Tour boring - he must have been especially stung when his hero Bernard Hinault said "Indurain is the best rider of his generation but he has won this Tour quietly, without great opposition."

Indurain on his way home, with trophy

Boring the method may have been, but it worked and he won a third Tour in 1993; having again won the Giro earlier in the year. This time it was the veteran journalist Pierre Chany who attacked: "[Indurain never] did anything unprovoked which would have allowed this exceptional rider to rise above the rest and excite the crowd," he complained. In 1994, having survived an anti-doping test that came up positive for salbutamol he broadened his horizons in an attempt to become the first man to achieve a third Giro-Tour double, but by now some other riders had adopted his technique - Evgeni Berzin and Marco Pantani had based their seasons around the Giro and took first and second place. Instead, he went after an hour record once he'd won his record Tour; on the 2nd of September he set one at 53.040km.

In 1995 he equaled the record set by Anquetil, Merckx and his hero Hinault with a fifth Tour, but went one better by taking his five consecutively - the fifth was a great victory, just like every Tour win that isn't won by a doper, but cycling fans said it may as well have been a demonstration race with the finishing order decided before the riders even began. He couldn't resist an attempt at a record-breaking sixth victory, but even in the prologue it became obvious he'd made the same mistake as Merckx and Hinault: he'd failed to quit while he was ahead and, after failing to win time in the first week due to bronchitis, gradually slipped away down the rankings for the rest of the race and ending in 11th place. Many fans decided it must be impossible to win more than five Tours then, an opinion they held until another rider adopted the Tour-centric approach and won seven in a row: we may soon find out finally if Lance Armstrong did so by his own merit or with a helping hand from drugs.

For five years, Indurain dominated the Tour in a way that nobody else ever had; but the Tour dominated him, too, and like a prisoner released after ten years in prison he had become institutionalised. He had spent so much time concentrating solely on his racing that the world moved without him: when he went to buy a bike shortly after retiring, a rather surprised shop assistant began explaining the different gear cassettes, chain rings, cranks and so on, assuming that Big Mig would probably know exactly what he wanted - but it didn't take long before he realised the rider hadn't the faintest idea what he was talking about. He was also shocked at how much modern bikes cost when compared to the far more basic machines on offer when he'd last had to actually go out and buy one and couldn't believe that a top-level Cannondale mountain bike could cost as much as the equivalent of 3,300 euros.


Stefano Garzelli
Born in Varese on this day in 1973, Stefano Garzelli found his first professional contract with the Mercatone Uno team, which took him on as a domestique for Marco Pantani. However, as a good all-rounder he was always going to win races for himself; in his second year with the team he won two stages and the overall Points competition, Combination category and General Classification at the Tour de Suisse.

Stefano Garzelli

He had ridden his first Grand Tour, the Giro d'Italia, in 1997 and finished Stage 14 in third place before abandoning. In 1999 he was selected for the Tour de France and came seventh on Stage 18, finishing in 32nd place overall - not a bad result for a Tour debut. It was in 2000 at the Giro that he got hos opportunity to really shine, however: once again, he began the race as Pantani's domestique. When it turned out that Pantani was not going to find the form he needed to win, the team managers were unsure who should be declared new leader and freed all the riders from responsbilities, than watched to see who came to the fore. Though not much of an attacker, Garzelli caught their eye by staying with the climbers, performing consistently well in the time trials and with his effective sprint: he might not have been as certain a winner as Pantani, but he'd shown he was the best they had.

When it came to the final time trial, Garzelli had some luck - race leader Francesco Casagrande started the stage with sciatic nerve problems and was unable to perform at anything like his best level, leaving Garzealli to win with a margin sufficiently large to place him into the overall lead, a victory he dedicated to Pantani. From that point on he was unchallenged, winning the General Classification.


Federico Gay, born in Turin on this day in 1896, distinguished himself as a pilot during the First World War and won the Medaglia d'Argento for valour. Following the war he returned to cycling, having had an amateur career in the sport prior to the conflict and turned professional in 1920. In addition to many victories and good results in smaller races, he won Stage 13 at the 1922 Tour de France and Stages 2, 3, 5 and 6 at the 1924 Giro d'Italia when he was also second in the overall General Classification. In 1925 he was tenth overall at the Tour and in 1932 he became National Track Stayers Champion.

Other cyclists born on this day: José Balaustre (Venezuela, 1965); Leo Sterckx (Belgium, 1936); Maurizio Colombo (Italy, 1963); Sam Webster (New Zealand, 1991); Alberto Velázquez (Uruguay, 1934); David Sharp (USA, 1941); Leo Peelen (Netherlands, 1968); Ernest Kockler (USA, 1892, died 1970); José Torres (Chile, 1889); Murray Steele (New Zealand, 1961); Alan Marangoni (Italy, 1984); Derek Bouchard-Hall (USA, 1970).

Daily Cycling Facts 15.07.2013

A Vélib' parking station with the distinctive bikes

Vélib'
Vélib' (vélo and liberté), Paris' public bike-sharing scheme, was launched on this day in 2007. Since then it had expanded throughout the capital and into nearby towns and, with 20,600 bikes and 1,451 parking stations (there's one every 300m in the centre of Paris), is now the second-largest scheme of its type after the Hangshou scheme in China, which has 61,000 bikes and 2,400 stations. Since 2011, the scheme had also encompassed an electric car sharing programme known as Autolib'.

Like London's bike sharing scheme, Vélib' machines are deliberately designed to be low-geared and heavy so as to make them less tempting to thieves (nevertheless 3,000 were stolen during the first year and many more vandalised; this was - shamefully, in the opinion of more enlightened Parisians - largely blamed on immigrants and created far higher costs than had been anticipated). They are built at a factory in Hungary by the venerable Mercier company that sponsored teams in the early days of the Tour de France. They weigh 22.5kg, have a three-speed hub gear and are fitted with LED lights powered by a dynamo which remain on at all times when the bike is in motion.

Jean Dargassies
Jean Dargaties, who was born in Grisolles on this day in 1872, decided to buy a bike one day in 1903 so he could visit Montauban - which was 25km away and further than anybody in his family had ever traveled. He never intended to become a sporting cyclist - indeed, the idea that he would ever do anything other than work in the family's forged (just as several generations had before him) probably never occurred to him; but the owner of the bike shop he went to had heard that a new race was going to take place around France that summer and told him all about it, explaining that it was to be called the Tour de France. "With muscles like yours, you could ride that," he said - and so Dargaties took his new bike home and wrote to L'Auto, the newspaper that was organising the race, including his 10 francs entry fee and asking for more details.

Some months later, with only a few days left until the race was due to begin, Dargaties had received no reply. Rather than assuming he hadn't been accepted, he went to Paris and sought out L'Auto's offices where he was able to meet assistant race director Géo Lefèvre, whose idea the race had originally been (perhaps; see here for why it might not have been) and who would later describe their initial conversation in the paper:

"My name is Dargaties and I've come from Grisolles."
"Where?"
"From Grisolles, near Montauban, and I've come to make inquiries."
"About?"
"Inquiries about the Tour de France."
"But... you're already entered, I think."
"Heavens, yes, I've entered! I just wanted to know what's going to happen."
"You haven't read L'Auto?"
"L'Auto? I don't think anyone reads that in Monnetaubanne."
"Where?"
"Monnetaubanne, Tarn-et-Garonne."
"Oh, Montauban!"
"Yes. The man who sold me my bike told me there was a Tour de France race and he said: 'Dargaties, you're made for that."
"Tell me, have you ever actually ridden a cycle race?"
"No, but I've ridden from Grisolles to Montauban and back and I didn't even have to try. I'm a blacksmith; I'm not worried about tiredness."

Lefèvre misheard Dargaties' name and wrote it down as Dargassies; thus it was that he rode in the very first Tour de France and it's by that name that history knows him. Lefèvre seems have liked Dargassies from the moment he first set eyes on him, and the riders apparently did too because they arranged things so that he led the race as it passed Grisolles, where Lefèvre reported the entire town came out to see him - this was the first time that a leader was allowed to lead without challengers at his hometown and became one of the Tour's great traditions, still sometimes observed to this day. Passing through Montauban, his forks broke - he took the bike to his own forge, where one of his brothers repaired it, and continued (whether he was penalised for receiving assistance - as was Eugène Christophe, another rider who had trouble with his forks, most notably in 1913 - seems to have gone unrecorded. Perhaps he was so popular that race officials looked the other way?). He was one of only 21 riders to complete that first Tour and finished in 11th place, winning the grand sum of 145 francs.

Tour de France, 1907 - there is said to be a photograph depicting Dargassies, his mother and his two
brothers at the family forge, but neither it nor any other photos of him seem to be available.

Dargassies entered again the following year and finished in tenth place; however, after numerous riders were disqualified for cheating he was promoted to fourth place and awarded a prize of 1,000f, a huge sum to a rural blacksmith. It was during the 1905 Tour that he first met Henri Pépin. Pépin, approaching 41 years old, had been a successful cyclist in the past and was vice-consul of the French cycling federation; he was too old to compete with the younger men in the Tour, but rich enough to enter as a coureur sur machines poinçonnée (an independent rider, either with very limited sponsorship or completely unsponsored) simply for the experience of doing so and without concern for his results. In 1907, Pépin apparently decided that now he was nearly 43 he'd make his last Tour one to remember (in fact, it wasn't his last Tour: he entered again in 1914, the year he died, when he was almost 50), so he hired Dargassies and another rider named Henri Gauban and rode the Tour purely for fun. At his expense, the three men stayed in the finest hotels, ate in the finest restaurants, picked up a rider who had fallen exhausted into a ditch and took him along with them and generally got on the organisers' nerves by doing whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. (More on les incroyables aventures de Henri Pépin here.)

Pépin tired of the adventure during Stage 5, paid his two domestiques a sum equal to the prize on offer to the overall winner and told them they could now do whatever they wanted. Gauban decided to carry on and did a superb job; getting to within 36' of the race leader before abandoning in Stage 11. Dargassies decided to go with Pépin; the fact that he never entered the Tour again is a probable sign that, at 35, he too was finding the rigours of the race too great, and thus ended one of the most unusual careers in the history of professional cycling.

After his career as a cyclist, Dargassies opened a grocery shop and then a bike shop, both in Grisolles. He lived there until 1965, when he died at the age of 93, and is buried in the town cemetery under his original name.


Jostein Wilmann, born on this day in 1953, finished in 14th place at the 1980 Tour de France - at the time of writing, this is the best General Classification result for any Norwegian rider in the history of the race.

Lewis Wyld, whom many sources claim preferred to be know as Lew but - say his descendents - actually preferred his middle name Arthur, was born in Tibshelf, Great Britain, on this day in 1905. Together with his brothers Frederick (known as Harry) and Percy (who seems to have been happy with the name his parents gave him) and George Southall, they set a new Team Pursuit record at the 1928 Olympics - which was then broken by another team the next day. (Some sources say that the fourth member of the team was Southall's older and more famous brother Frank, who won a silver in the Inidividual Road Race that same year; official Olympic records show that it was in fact George.)

Other cyclists born on this day: Julio César Aguirre (Colombia, 1969); Sébastien Rosseler (Belgium, 1981); Jostein Wilmann (Norway, 1953); Peter Hirzel (Switzerland, 1939); Uwe Unterwalder (East Germany, 1950); Manuel Guevara (Venezuela, 1969); Henk Nieuwkamp (Netherlands, 1942); Josef Helbling (Switzerland, 1935); Georges Honein (Lebanon, 1963).

Daily Cycling Facts 14.07.2013

Octave Lapize in 1910

The Tour de France ended on this day in 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966 - the four earliest end dates in the history of the race. 1963 and 1964 were won by Jacques Anquetil and 1966 by Lucien Aimar, which caused much rejoicing in France as today is also Bastille Day.

Octave Lapize - winner of the 1910 Tour de France and the man who famously screamed "Vous êtes des assassins! Oui, des assassins!" at route officials when he reached the summit of Tourmalet when it was climbed for the first time in the race that year - died on this day in 1917, aged 29. Like so many (their names still known if they won a Tour and long-forgotten if they didn't) his cycling career came to an end in the First World War: his fighter plane was shot down over Flirey in Meurthe-et-Moselle, a village that was completely destroyed during the conflict and he died in hospital shortly afterwards.

Sheldon Brown
Sheldon Brown, born in Boston, Massachusetts on this day in 1944, was parts manager at the Harris Cyclery bike shop in his home state. Whilst there, his superb memory and eye for detail allowed him to build up a vast  knowledge of bike components which he would use to create an encyclopedic website for his employer. The website grew until it included technical information, workshop advice and tips on modification for (probably) almost every bike and bike component ever manufactured, while Brown himself became a world-recognised expert on the subject and wrote several books. His writing on hub gears, especially Sturmey-Archer models, is considered authoritative.

Sheldon Brown

In the final years of his life, Brown suffered serious nerve deterioration as a result of his illness, going back some time before MS was diagnosed and gradually destroying his balance so that he could no longer ride a conventional bike. He continued cycling on a recumbent tricycle until, eventually, he lost the use of his lower limbs.

Brown, who died of a heart attack on the 4th of February in 2008, was universally liked by all who met him, cyclists and the general public, his cheery personality proving infectious. As he neared the end of his life, he wrote:

"Multiple Sclerosis is a nasty, rare, incurable disease, but there are lots of nasty rare incurable diseases out there. As nasty, rare, incurable diseases go, it's one of the better ones. If you must acquire a nasty, rare, incurable disease, MS is one of the best things going!... I think of it as not so much a "tragedy" as a Really Major Inconvenience... Another great thing about MS is that it's guilt free and blame free! Since nobody knows what causes it, nobody thinks it's because you didn't eat your vegtables, or had sex with the wrong person, or took inappropriate drugs, or lived in a place you shouldn't have, or didn't go to the gym as often as you should have!"

Odile Defraye (Odiel Defraeye)

Odile Defraye

Born in Rumbeke, Belgium on this day in 1888, Odile Defraye was invited at the last moment to join the French bike manufacturer Alcyon's team for the 1912 Tour de France - the team, previously made up entirely of French riders, was initially reluctant to take him on. However, the company's Belgian representative, in charge of sales in the lucrative Belgian market, applied pressure and Defraye was taken on; his job being to help 1911 winner Gustave Garrigou take another victory.

Despite immediately proving to be the stronger rider, Defraye performed his task faithfully and, when Garrigou punctured on nails spread across the road by spectators, the Belgian was the only rider to stop and wait, then try to help him back to the peloton. Garrigou then showed an admirable lack of selfishness: realising that the Belgian had a better chance of catching them without him, he told him to go on alone. Defraye won the stage; while Garrigou did manage to catch up and took second place, the team managers decided that Defraye should become team leader (Garrigou, again proving himself to be free of prima donna tendencies, accepted this). That put him in a very good position indeed - he had the strong Alcyon team riding for him and, since he was the first Belgian with a good chance of winning, all the other Belgian riders too.

Defraye with spare tyres around
his shoulders

A series of punctures and knee problems later in the race nearly put him out of contention and Octave Lapize (who would die on Defraye's birthday five years later, see above) came very close to taking over the lead, but Defraye recovered and launched an attack on the Col de Portet d'Aspet that left Lapize far behind - he abandoned that day, complaining that he couldn't win due to the Belgians all riding for Defraye. Marcel Godivier and Charles Crupelandt, the remaining members of his La Française team, left in solidarity with him the following day.

Once Lapize had gone, Eugène Christophe became Defraye's greatest rival. Christophe was a superbly talented climber but, like most climbers, couldn't sprint; his preferred technique was to mount enormously long solo breaks on the mountain stages (this would have been even more successful when the Tour returned to the accumulated time format the following year, rather than deciding the winner by points, had Christophe not have experienced perhaps the most infuriating and long-running period of bad luck in Tour history) - including, this year, one of 315km, which remains the longest solo break in the history of the race. However, with no mountain stages left and a whole army of helpers willing to chase down an attack, his opportunities had all be used up. Had the race have been decided according to accumulated time, Christophe would in fact have been in the lead; this remained the case until the final time when he eventually gave up, accepted he was beaten and allowed Defraye to become the first ever Belgian winner of the Tour without further challenge.


Mauro Simonetti, who was born in Livorno on this day in 1948, won a bronze medal in the team road race at the 1968 Olympics and Stage 6b at the 1971 Tour de France.

Paul Choque, born in Viroflay on this day in 1910, won a silver medal for the Team Pursuit at the 1932 Olympics. He later twice became French Cyclo Cross Champion (1933 and 1938), won the Critérium International twice (1933 and 1936) and won two stages (16 and 18b) at the 1937 Tour de France, when he was also seventh overall.

On this day in 2012, at the Tour de France, Frank Schleck provided a sample to doping control that tested positive for Xipamide, a diuretic also known as Aquaphor or Aquaphoril. The drug is a diuretic, working by reducing the kidneys' ability to absorb water and thus diluting the urine; this has no performance-enhancing effect but can be used to mask the presence of other substances. As it is not on the UCI's list of banned drugs the rider would not face a suspension, nevertheless his beleaguered RadioShack-Nissan team (caught up in a legal case surrounding retired seven-time Tou winner Lance Armstrong and team manager Johan Bruyneel) withdrew him from the race.

Other cyclists born on this day: Iryna Yanovych (USSR, 1976); Joby Ingram-Dodd (Great Britain, 1980); Gunnar Göransson (Sweden, 1933); Teddy Billington (USA, 1882, died 1966); Mannie Heymans (Namibia, 1971); Tadesse Mekonnen (Ethiopia, 1958); Hipólito Pozo (Ecuador, 1941); Dirk Jan van Hameren (Netherlands, 1965); Jazy Garcia (Guam, 1967); Mark Kingsland (Australia, 1970); Ion Ioniţă (Romania, 1928); Stefan Brykt (Sweden, 1964); Fritz Joost (Switzerland, 1954).