Daily Cycling Facts 21.09.2013

Andrey Kivilev
Born in Taldykorgan, Kazakhstan on this day in 1973, Andrey Kivilev turned professional with Festina in 1998 and stayed with them for two years, weathering the Festina Affair storm but making little impact with his results. In 2000 he went to AG2R and 32nd at the Tour de France; then in 2001 he switched to Cofidis with whom he would spend the rest of his career and life. That year he won Stage 5 at the Critérium du Dauphiné, the General Classification at the Route du Sud and was fourth overall at the Tour de France; in 2002 he was 21st overall at the Tour.

During Stage 2 at Paris-Nice on the 11th of March 2003 Kiviliev collided with Marek Rutkiewicz and Volker Ordowski, falling heavily. Rutkiewicz and Ordowski were unhurt, but Kivilev broke two ribs, fractured his skull and entered a coma. He died at 10am the following day, aged 29. Following Kivilev's death, the UCI made helmets compulsory in all races, as they had tried to as long ago as 1991 but were prevented by rider protests - ironically, at Paris-Nice.

Anna Meares

Anna Meares

In 1994, two Australian sisters - Kerrie, aged 11, and Anna, aged 10 (they'd have probably reminded you that they very nearly 12 and 11, as little girls do) - watched Kathy Watt win her gold medal for the road race at the Commonwealth Games. Both of them fell in love with cycling and decided to follow Watt into the sport. Fortunately, their parents were of the type who believe that children should be encouraged to chase their ambitions and didn't mind the regular four-hour round trips to their nearest velodrome, and before too long a coach noticed that the Meares girls had talent to go with their ambition. Eighteen years later, Kerrie had been a National Champion eight times over and a World Champion once. Her little sister had been a National Champion fourteen times, a World Champion eleven times and had won two Olympic gold medals.

Anna's first big victory was the 500m at the World Junior Championships in 2001, then a year later she was third in the Sprint at the Commonwealth Games and a year after that second in the Keirin at the Elite World Championships. In 2004 she won the 500m at the Worlds, the Nationals and the Olympics in addition to the Sprint at the Sydney round of the World Cup; then in 2005 she won the Sprint and the Keirin at the Oceania Championships, the Nationals and the Sydney round of the World Cup and took a silver and a bronze at the Worlds. Over the next few years she would win the Nationals Sprint three times (2006, 2009, 2011), the Nationals Keirin three times (2006, 2007, 2011), the Nationals 500m once (2007), the Worlds 500m three times (2007, 2010, 2012), the Worlds Sprint once (2011), the Worlds Keirin twice (2011, 2012), three gold medals at the 2010 Commonwealth Games as well as numerous gold, silver and bronze medals at many other events. All that despite an accident at the 2008 World Cup which left her with a broken neck - though such a minor injury didn't prevent a rider of Meares' calibre from qualifying for and riding in the Olympics that summer, where she was beaten by Victoria Pendleton.


Since the 2008 Games, when Meares got through to the finals due to the relegation of Guo Shang, she and Pendleton have been rivals. Lurid tales of sworn enmity and blistering hatred have been somwhat over-embellished by the media - presumably, these are the journalists who don't bother to actually watch women's racing and thus have to invent drama rather than reporting the real drama taking place on the track (though it's probably safe to say that they don't exchange Christmas cards); as a result, when they competed against one another in the Sprint in London at the 2012 Games, the race was immediately termed a grudge match, the decider and all sorts of other poetic things. It did not pass without incident: during the race, Pendleton veered very slightly out of her lane, crossing into Meares'. Meares reacted by pushing her away, using her elbow on Pendleton's leg. Some fans - mostly British, but a fair few from elsewhere including Australia - were initially angry at the judges' decision to relegate the British rider; however, once the slow-motion replay had been aired, all but the most die-hard Pendleton fans admitted that Meares had won fair and square.

Émile Georget

Émile Georget

Born in Bossay-sur-Claise, France on this day in 1881, Émile Georget rode in seven early Tours de France. In 1905, his first (and the third edition of the race), he was fourth overall; in 1906 he was fifth and won Stage 1; in 1907 he was third and won Stages 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 13; in 1908 and 1910 he abandoned, but in the latter year (when he also became National Champion) he won Stage 3; in 1911 he was third again and won Stage 5 and in 1914, the last Tour before the First World War, he was sixth. He also won Bordeaux-Paris in 1910 and 1912 and was second at Milan-San Remo in 1909.

His greatest claim to fame, however, dates from the 1911 Tour when, on the 10th of July during the 366km Stage 5, he became the first rider to reach the 2,645m top of the Col du Galibier, which featured for the first time in the Tour that year (and had inspired Henri Desgrange to pen the famous and distinctly purple-tinged words "O col Bayard, O, Tourmalet... next to Galibier you are worthless"). In 1911, the modern tarmac road that snakes up and over the mountain today was still many years off in the future; then it was little more than a rough track, made of loose gravel, and had only recently been made passable by cars - previously, the only traffic that ventured up were the mule trains led by official traders and single mules led by smugglers, and Desgrange's concern that the riders might be eaten by bears if he sent them into the mountains was a very real one.

Eugene Christophe on Galiber in
1912, a year after the Tour
climbed it for the first time

The weather on Galibier that day when the Tour first went up was atrocious, wet and windy and cold. Georget, who along with Gustave Garrigou and Paul Duboc had been one of just three riders to ride all the way up, arrived in a terrible state to where the race officials waited at the summit - he'd lost control on the rough surface several times, falling into a meltwater stream on at least one occasion, and was caked in filth, soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone. Throwing his bike down in the road, he stormed up to the officials with a face like thunder. "Ça vous met un coin dans la bouche!" he spat at them - "That's given you something to think about!" - then got back on his bike and rode away.

On Stage 3, Georget had suffered two near-disasters when he was first hit by a car and then fell into a ravine and although he was the fastest rider to the top of what has become one of the most legendary climbs in cycling, he never managed to catch up with Garrigou, who finished first overall, and Duboc, who was second, and had to settle for third place.

Émile was the younger brother of Léon, who won the Bol d'Or nine times; they sometimes teamed up, doing so to win the Brussels 24-Hour Tandem race and the Six Days of Toulouse in 1906.

Born in Szczecin, Poland on this day in 1980, Małgorzata Wojtyra came to international prominence in 2010 when she was sixth in the Scratch race at the World Championships, third in the Omnium at the European Championships and won the Scratch, 500m and Stayers at the Melbourne round of the World Cup. At the 2011 European Under-23 Championships she won the Omnium and was third in the Scratch.

In 1992 Darren Ross Smith - who was born in Yatala, Australia on this day in 1972 - finished the Postgirot Open in third place, then represented his nation in the road race at the Olympic Games, finishing in 16th place. A little over three months later, on the 18th of November, he was killed in a road accident.

Carla Ryan

Carla Ryan, born in Nathalia, Australia on this day in 1985, was National Elite Time Trial Champion and National Under-23 Road Race Champion in 2007; then National Time Trial and National Road Race Championship, both at Elite level, in 2009. She turned professional with  Cervélo Life Force in 2008 and remained with them until the team - by then known as Garmin- Cervélo - closed in 2011, at which time she and most of her team mates went to AA Drink-Leontien.nl for 2012, a superb year in which the team won race after race and she took second place at the Tour de Feminin Krásná Lípa and won Stage 5 at the Tour de l'Ardèche. Sadly, the end of the season brought bad news - AA Drink-Leontien.nl will not continue into 2013; Ryan has not yet announced her next team.

Ben Kersten, born in Wollongong, Australia on this day 1991, won the Kilo at the Junior World Championships in 1998 and 1999, then specialised in track racing for a decade during which he won nine National titles, another World Championship, the Kilo at the 2006 Commonwealth Games and numerous other races at the Oceania Championships, the World Cup and more. From 2009 onwards, he has branched out into road racing; among other races he has won stages at the Tour of Atlanta, Tour of Geelong and Tour of Murray River in addition to victories at a number of one-day races.

Other cyclists born on this day: Marco Rullo (USA, 1976); Juan González (Andorra, 1972); Antoine Pellegrina (France, 1933); Albert van Schendel (Netherlands, 1912); Valdemar Christoffer Nielsen (Denmark, 1893, died 1972); Guido Bernardi (Italy, 1921, died 2002); Olaf Paltian (West Germany, 1952); Vincent Lynch (Barbados, 1968); Luis Toro (Venezuela, 1925); José Francisco Jarque (Spain, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 20.10.2013

Charles Holland

Charles Holland

Born in Aldridge, Great Britain on this day in 1908, Charles Holland was a natural athlete who played cricket and soccer, when he dreamed of one day playing for the Warwickshire cricket team and had an audition to play soccer for Aston Villa. His first bike was a 24"-wheeled machine bought by his father - who was himself a cyclist and had set a Walsall-Matlock record time - for Holland's older brother Walter; it was then handed down to him when Walter grew too big for it. Aged 12, Charles accompanied his father on a cycling tour. In 1927 he entered the Wyndham Novices 25-mile time trial and came second, his first race; then in 1928 he won the Walsall Roads CC's 10-mile race. In those days, road racing was banned in Britain by the National Cycling Union so Holland tried track racing, but it didn't suit him - except in a sprint, when he was almost unbeatable.

In 1932, the final year in which the Olympics road race was run as a time trial, Holland was selected to compete for the Great Britain team alongside Frank Southall, Ernie Johnson, Bill Harvell and Stan Butler and the team came fourth overall; then in 1934 he rode in the World Championships with Fred Ghiliks and Percy Stallard who would later set up the British League of Racing Cyclists, which stood in opposition to the NCU and returned road racing to Britain (its first race, Llangollen-Wolverhampton, grew into the Victory Cycling Marathon after the Second World War and then, over the years and after a four year hiatus at the start of the 21st Century, became the Tour of Britain). They came third behind Italy and France. Holland also rode in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin; years later he told how, while out on a training ride, he had stopped for a rest on a bridge crossing the autobahn when a cavalcade including a open-topped Mercedes carrying Hitler passed underneath. Had he have had a brick, he said, he could have prevented the War. Later that year, he won the Best British All-Rounder Award, a year later he was commemorated with a page in the Golden Book of Cycling.

Today, Holland has been criminally almost forgotten except among cycling historians and a dwindling number of cyclists, a few of whom were fortunate enough to have seen him race. He deserves much more because, with Bill Burl, he was the first British rider to ride in a Tour de France, competing in 1937. Considering the thinly- veiled (and sometimes quite open) dislike the French organisers and fans often displayed towards foreign riders, Holland and Burl were initially welcomed with open arms - in an interview towards the end of his life, Holland still remembered how he had received a polite and warm response to his application to ride and that the organisers offered to pay all of their costs. But then, it almost didn't happen: in June, he caught his foot in a rabbit hole and fell, snapping a collar bone that had only recently healed following a crash at a track in Wembley earlier in the year. News of his accident reached France and were misunderstood, the two riders being somewhat to surprised to read in L'Auto just a fortnight before the race was to begin that neither of them would now be riding. They contacted Henri Desgrange for clarification and must have been very relieved the next day when he sent a telegram informing them that he was very happy to confirm their places.

The British cycling team, 1932 Olympics

When they arrived in France, things immediately took a turn for the worse. Neither man had ever met Pierre Gachon, a French-Canadian who would be riding with them to form a British Empire team, before and neither man thought much of him when they did, finding him amateurish and, in Holland's opinion, unlikely to do well in "a second-class British event," never mind an undertaking such as the Tour. As a result, it might not have seemed particularly disastrous at the time when he abandoned during the first day. On Stage 2, a far greater disaster: Burl crashed and broke his own collarbone, forcing him to also abandon. Holland decided to continue alone.

He probably wouldn't have made it much further were it not for his considerable will and determination and, perhaps most of all, more French support, this time from the French team (this was during the days of national teams rather than trade teams) understood that road racing had been banned by the British cycling federation and that Holland was inexperienced as a result, so they adopted him as a sort of mascot and let him stay with them in their hotels, fed him and even managed to provide him with mechanical assistance from their support van. It seems that the organisers, on the other hand, no longer viewed him as favourably as they had - he revealed later that he had been left with the impression that they wanted him out of the race. We'll never know if this was because they had begun to fear he might do better than expected and make a hero of himself in the process or if it was down to Desgrange's pathological dislike of riders receiving assistance during the race because of what happened next.

On Stage 14c (the last of three stages on that one day), he punctured and, when he'd fitted his replacement tubular tyre, discovered that the seal in his pump had perished in the hot sun and left him unable to pressurise the tyre more than halfway, so he had to keep his speed low. Soon, he had two more punctures. He remembered that a crowd of spectators, peasants, crowded around him and tried to cheer him on but none could help further than that. The local priest brought him a bottle of cold beer which he gladly accepted and drank, assuming that his Tour was over. Then, a miracle - somebody showed up with a  tyre for him, but when he fitted it he was in such a hurry to inflate it that he bent the piston rod of his pump, rendering it useless. The peasants managed to find another one and the tyre was eventually inflated, but turned out to be such a loose fit on the wheel that the bike could not be ridden. Once again the peasants brought salvation, finding another tyre which turned out to be a better fit and he could finally set off - but he knew that he was now so far behind that he stood little chance of doing well. He recalled flagging down a press vehicle and asking for a lift to the finish, but they tried to persuade him from giving up and grabbed his jersey to pull him along. "I did not wish to finish this great race unless it was by my own efforts," he later said and finally, having ridden more than 3,200km, he called it a day and abandoned the race. No other British riders would enter for almost two decades.

The Second World War brought the Tour and most European events to a temporary close and, by the time it was over, Holland was both too old to continue as a professional and prevented by the arcane rules of the day to return to amateur competition. He used the money he had won as a rider to set himself up as a newsagent, started playing golf, at which he became quite successful, and rarely, if ever, mentioned his previous career. His two daughters, Nina and Frances, had seen some of his trophies but had no idea who their father had once been until 1962 when they attended a function at the Royal Albert Hall and he was invited up onto the stage to stand alongside Louison Bobet, Jacques Goddet and Brian Robinson, the man who in 1958 had become the first British rider to win a Tour stage. In 2007, 18 years after he had died, they discovered a suitcase in the loft. Inside it were letters from fans, photographs and articles clipped from newspapers and magazines, medals and jerseys from the 1932 and 1936 Olympics and, most poignant of all, the jersey he wore in his Tour de France.

Aldo Ronconi

Aldo Ronconi
20.09.1918 - 12.06.2012

Born in Brisighella, Ravenna on the 20th of September 1918, Aldo Ronconi turned professional with the Legnano team in 1940, winning the Giro dell'Umbria that year. After the Second War, he became National Road Race Champion in 1946, also winning the Giro di Toscana and Stage 15 at the Giro d'Italia.

Ronconi entered the Tour de France for the first time in 1947, the first edition of the race since 1939. That year, the Italian team was made up of Italians resident in France as the peace treaty between the two nations had not yet been formalised and they were, therefore, technically still at war. He won Stage 3, wore the maillot jaune for two days, and was fourth in the overall General Classification. After retiring from competition in 1952, he ran a bike shop in Faenza for many years and was well-known among the local cycling enthusiasts; remaining in the city until his death at the age of 93 on the 12th of June in 2012.

"How ExperiencePlus customers met Aldo Ronconi," ExperiencePlus

Olaf Pollack

Olaf Pollack, who was born in Räckelwitz, East Germany on this day in 1973 and turned professional with Agro-Adler-Brandeburg in 1997, picking up numerous good results in the subsequent years before switching to Gerolsteiner in 2000 and finding more success on track and on the road, including third place in the Points competition at the 2004 Giro d'Italia. The following year he went to T-Mobile, then in 2007 to Wiesenhof Felt and in 2008 to Volksbank. In August 2009, Pollack announced he would be retiring immediately from competition due to an eye problem, which later turned out to be a detached retina. A month later, news emerged that he had failed a doping test with his A and B samples both proving positive for a drug that has never been revealed - he was banned for two years.

Born in Gemla, Sweden on this day in 1980, Gustav Larsson was National Time Trial Champion in  2006, 2007, 2010, 2011 and 2012. He turned professional with Fasso Bortolo in 2003, then went to La Française des Jeux in 2006 for a year before joining Unibet, which got into a row with the Amaury Sports Organisation that year and was blocked from entering Paris-Nice, the Tour de France and, when other race organisers sided with the ASO, all the other major events; it closed down as a result. Larsson then signed to Saxobank and remained with them for four years, during which time he won the Tour du Limousin (2010), before joining Vacansoleil-DCM for 2012 and winning Stage 1 at Paris-Nice. Larsson is married to Veronica Andrèasson, also a racing cyclist.

Clara Sánchez, born in Martigues, France on this day in 1983, was World Keirin Champion in 2004 and 2005. She has also held a total of 14 National Championship titles, three European Championship titles and won six World Cup events.

Néstor Mora, born in Bogota, Colombia on this day in 1963, was Amateur National Champion in 1984, won Stage 9 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1990 and rode the Tour de France four times with his best finish, 63rd overall, coming in 1987. On the 20th of February in 1995 he went  out on a training ride in Manizales and was killed by a truck.

Alfredo Balloni, born in Rome on this day in 1989, was National Novices Road Race Champion in 2005, National Juniors Road Race Champion in 2006, National Juniors Time Trial Champion in 2007 and National Under-23 Time Trial Champion in 2009.

Mariano Martínez was born in Burgos, Spain on this day in 1948 but took French nationality in 1963 and competed for France after that date. In 1972, he was sixth overall in the Tour de France; he then came eighth two years later and in 1978 he was tenth, winning Stage 11 and the overall King of the Mountains. He won another stage, 17, in 1980.

Vladimir Karpets

Vladimir Karpets, born in Leningrad, USSR on this day in 1980, won the Youth category at the Tour de France in 2004, came seventh at the Giro d'Italia in 2005, won the Tour de Suisse and came seventh at the Vuelta a Espana in 2007, was 12th at the Tour de France in 2009, 14th at the Giro and 13th at the Vuelta in 2010, 28th at the Tour in 2011 and then 53rd at the Tour in 2012. In 2013, he was second on Stage 2 at the Giro and came 47th overalll.

Danny Hart, born in Redcar, Great Britain on this day in 1991, was World Downhill Mountain Bike Champion in 2011.

Kathleen Shannon, born in Salisbury, Australia on this day in 1964, was National Road Race Champion in 1990 and 1991. In 1992, she was seventh in the Olympic Games road race.

Maria Lawrence, born in Market Harborough, Great Britain on this day in 1970, was National Road Race Champion in 1996 and 1997.

Alfo Ferrari, born in Sospiro, Italy on this day in 1924, became World Amateur Road Race Champion in 1947.

Other cyclists born on this day: Ren Chengyuan (China, 1986); Ricardo Lynch (Jamaica, 1984); Stéphane Heulot (France, 1971); Nguyễn Văn Ngan (South Vietnam, 1943, died 1998); Ole Wackström (Finland, 1932); Dimitar Bobchev (Bulgaria, 1926); Antonio Quintero (Cuba, 1961); Leonard Harvey Nitz (USA, 1956); Andrey Teteryuk (Kazakhstan, 1967); Exequiel Ramírez (Chile, 1924); Walter Bortel (Austria, 1926).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.09.2013

Damiano Cunego

Damiano Cunego

Born in Cerro Veronese, Italy on this day in 1981, Damiano Cunego originally took up cycling as part of the training for his successful career as a cross-country runner; he was spotted and persuaded to give cycle racing a try by Giuseppe Martinelli, who had won a silver medal at the Olympics in 1976, coached Marco Pantani and now serves as General Manager at the Astana team. Like Pantani, Cunego was an extraordinarily gifted climber right from the start; however, unlike The Pirate he was not destined to be a climbing specialist - unusually for a rider who can keep up with the best in the mountains, he could also sprint. With coaching, he became a good time trial rider too: a combination that virtually guaranteed future success at Grand Tours.

Cunego won the World Juniors Championship in 1999. In 2002, he turned professional with Saeco Macchine per Caffé-Longoni Sport and has remained with the team through its merger with Lampre in 2005 and to the present, when it has become Lampre-ISD; he won the Giro d'Oro and Giro del Medio Brenta in his first professional year then came 34th overall at the Giro d'Italia and won the Tour of Qinghai Lake in 2003. In 2004, he won Stages 2, 7, 16, 18 and the General Classification at the Giro, also taking second place in the King of the Mountains and the Points competition. His success was not welcomed by team leader Gilberto Simoni, who had been hoping to take a third victory - according to reports, as he overtook Cunego at one point, he hissed "You're a bastard! You're really stupid!" He then won the Giro di Lombardia at the end of the season, his thirteenth victory of the year; which also won him the World Cup. Aged 23, he was the youngest man to have ever won it.

The following year Cunego and Simoni shared the team leadership at the Giro, but on the very first climb Cunego lost significant time and was ruled out as a General Classification contender; he was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from infectious mononucleosis and would miss several races as a result. In 2006 he rode his first Tour de France and finished second behind Frank Schleck on the Alpe d'Huez before winning the Youth category overall, then he won a second Giro di Lombardia in 2007. The following year, after victory at the Amstel Gold Race and third place at the Waalse Pijl, he was tipped as a contender for overall victory at the Tour but, having finished Stage 18 in 150th place and finding himself 20th overall, he abandoned. He came second at the World Championships that year too, then in 2009 he won Stages 8 and 14 at the Vuelta a Espana. He won no races in 2010 but finished Stage 7 at the Giro in second place and Stage 9 at the Tour in third; in 2011 he won Stage 2 at the Tour de Romandie and was second in the General Classification at the Tour de Suisse, also coming third in the King of the Mountains, then finished the Tour de France in seventh place overall. In 2012 he won Stage 2 at the Giro del Trentino, but the year has otherwise passed without victory. 2013 got off to a superb start when he won the King of the Mountains at Tirreno-Adriatico and then came second at the Settimana Ciclistica Internazionale Coppi-Bartali, but he had not added victory or more impressive results by late August.

Cyril Peacock
Born in Fulham, London on this day in 1929, Cyril Peacock became interested in cycling at the age of 15. A friend recommended he join a local club, the Kingston Road CC, then on the 22nd of June 1957 later he entered his first track race aboard a stripped-down road bike and came third. Three months later he won the National Cyclists' Union Junior Championships before joining the Army to complete his compulsory National Military Service.

When he left the Army after two years, Peacock had saved enough money to buy a proper track bike. He renewed his membership of the Kingston Road CC and entered the National Sprint Championship but was eliminated during the quarter-finals - according to The Bicycle: "The last meeting of 1951, the NCU Meeting of Champions, provided a first-class sensation. In the Robbialac Bowl sprint, he was in a disputed finish with Jan Hijselendoorn of Holland, who almost fell on Peacock as they reached the line. Peacock lost the decision - but he gained a lot of admiration."

On Good Friday 1953, by which time he was riding for the Tooting Hill CC, Peacock won the International Champion of Champions sprint at Herne Hill velodrome and received the then enormous sum of £1,000; shortly afterwards he beat French champion André Beyney in a race in France, then went on to become National Sprint Champion. In 1954 he won the Sprint at the Commonwealth Games, then became World Amateur Sprint Champion - the same year, Reg Harris won the World Professional Sprint Championship;they would be last British riders to win the title until Chris Hoy in 2008.


Born in Villa do Conde on this day in 1973, Portuguese rider José Azevedo began winning races in the early 1990s and, by 2000, had twice been National Time Trial Champion and had won a Volta ao Portugal in addition to many other races. In 2001 he signed to ONCE-Eroski, won another National Time Trial Championship and came fifth overall at the Giro d'Italia and then sixth at the Tour de France in 2002 - extremely promising results for a rider's first two Grand Tour campaigns. In 2004 he went to US Postal, where Lance Armstrong called him the best domestique he had ever had; he was fifth overall at the Tour that year (fourth, should the runners-up ever be upgraded now that Armstrong has been stripped of his seven victories). He was 30th in 2005, the year that Armstrong won for the final time, then 19th in 2006 before switching to the Portuguese Benfica team as doing so would allow him to spend more time at home with his family; he won a stage at the GP CTT Correios de Portugal and was second in the National Time Trial Championship of 2007, then had no victories in 2008 and retired at the end of the season.

Gerald Ciolek, born in Cologne on this day in 1986, won the German National Championships at Elite level in 2005 - being 18 years old at the time, he was the youngest rider to have ever done so. A year later, he also won the Under-23 World Championship. In 2008 he rode at the Tour de France for Team Columbia (which had changed its name from team Highroad shortly before the race) and finished Stages 2 and 19 in third place and Stages 8 and 21 in second; he was also an integral part of the team's famed lead-out train that led Mark Cavendish to four stage victories. Ciolek chose to move to German team Milran for 2009 and 2010 - in the first year, he finished seven stages at the Tour in the top ten, earning him third place in the overall Points competition; on 2010 he finished top ten four times. In 2011 he went to QuickStep and took two top ten finishes at both the Giro d'Italia and the Tour but failed to win all season, then in 2012 his sole victory was Stage 4 at the Volta ao Algarve - as a result, he has had difficulty finding a place with a ProTour team and is racing for Continental team MTN Qhubeka in 2013.

On this day in 2004, Jure Robič broke the World 24-Hour Record with 834.77km.

Marc Gomez, born in Rennes, France on this day in 1954, won Milan-San Remo in 1982, the National Road Race Championship in 1983 and Stages 2 and 20 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1986.

Mike Friedman, born in Dunkirk, New York on this day in 1982, won the National Pursuit Championship in 2006 and the National Points Race Championship in 2007.

Tomasz Brożyna, born in Bieliny on this day in 1970, won the Polish National Road Race Championship in 1998.

Ben Odlin, born on this day in 1978, became New Zealand Time Trial Champion in 2012.

Other cyclists born on this day: Louis Bezzina (Malta, 1951); Katrin Meinke (East Germany, 1979); Terry West (Great Britain, 1939); Aldyn Wint (Cayman Islands, 1958); Ben Demery (Australia, 1986); José Manuel Soto (Costa Rica, 1946); Dominique Arnaud (France, 1955); Roger Gilson (Luxembourg, 1947, died 1995); Leon de Lathouwer (Belgium, 1929, died 2008); Elliot Hubbard (Bermuda, 1973); Francisco Vázquez (Mexico, 1952); Franjo Gartner (Yugoslavia, 1904); Stuart Williams (New Zealand, 1967); Dieter Gonschorek (East Germany, 1944); Tibor Debreceni (Hungary, 1946); Yang Rong-Hwa (Taipei, 1942); Rissom Gebre Meskei (Ethiopia, 1941); Michel Lafis (Sweden, 1967); François de Wagheneire (Belgium, 1937).

Daily Cycling Facts 18.09.2013

Lance Armstrong

Armstrong in 2002

There are more "rise and fall" stories in cycling and a good few (less depressing) "rise and fall and rise" stories than in any other sport. The story of Lance Armstrong goes further still - he rose, fell, rose higher than any other Tour de France champion in history, then fell again. Born in Plano, Texas on this day in 1971, Lance was the son of a teenage single mother; they were a poor family and, while his mother provided everything she could, he soon learned that anything he wanted or needed could be had only after a fight. Unfortunately, he also learned that it's a lot easier to win a fight if you're the biggest, scariest bully in the playground.

Armstrong's first taste of competition was in swimming and he came fourth in the Texas Junior Championships when he was 12 before moving into triathlon a year later. Aged 16, he became a professional triathlete; three years later he had two National Championship titles under his belt. In addition to training for the cycling sections of his races, Armstrong frequently traveled to events on his bike, sometimes riding many miles and then racing before riding home again - it was not long before he began to excel on the bike and he entered and won the 1991 National Amateur Championship, then a year later placed 14th in the Olympic Road Race. He was snapped up by Motorola soon after the Games came to an end and won the first race he entered with them, then won the Elite National Championships, Stage 8 at the Tour de France and the World Championships. In 1994 he was second at the Clásica San Sebastián and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, in 1995 he won Stage 18 at the Tour and a second Clásica San Sebastián, in 1996 he won the Waalse Pijl - it was obvious that a serious new talent had emerged, though not yet obvious how far he would go.

2008

In 1997, Armstrong joined Cofidis; however, his performances nose-dived and he was unable to win any races. Some wondered if he was an early burn-out, once of those riders who shines during the meteoric early years of his career, then fades away before what should have been his best years even began; however, in October that year he was diagnosed with stage 3 testicular cancer. It spread to his lungs and brain and doctors gave him a "less than 40%" chance of survival. Rather than undergoing the standard chemotherapy treatment, Armstrong gave doctors permission to subject him to a then experimental form avoiding the drug bleomycin which, while attacking tumours, has a lifelong detrimental effect on the lungs and might easily have ended his career as a cyclist. It worked; he made a recovery that, no matter what one thinks of Armstrong, his personality and later revelations concerning his career, was truly remarkable and inspiring. To their eternal shame, Cofidis lost faith and sacked him during treatment.

By the beginning of the 1998 season, Armstrong had recovered sufficiently to be offered a contract with US Postal and he won six victories that year. In 1999, having started the year with some very good results, he won the first of his record seven consecutive Tours de France. Initially, Armstrong was disliked by European fans due to his brash personality and, it should be said, a good dose of anti-American sentiment among the fans; in time he would earn a grudging respect. However, while his Tour results spoke for themselves, few European fans ever considered him to be one of the true greats - he had concentrated on the Tour alone, they said, and therefore could not be considered to be as great as the likes of Anquetil and Hinault, both of whom won two fewer Tours but many more races in total than Armstrong - and he wasn't even in the same league as Eddy Merckx with his 525 victories (though that one probably didn't probably didn't bother him much; anyone who knows the history of cycling knows that nobody - until Marianne Vos came along -  was in Merckx's league). He was great, but he was not a Great.

Armstrong became a personal friend of President George
W. Bush

Back home, Armstrong was viewed very differently. American was no longer what other peoples aspired to be; Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Levi's and so on had become seen not as the badges of a successful, prosperous (American-style) lifestyle but as emblems of American cultural imperialism. Armstrong's career came at a time when his nation was coming under attack for many of its policies, especially its foreign policies - the second Iraq War, deeply unpopular with the non-American public around the world began a few months before his record-equaling fifth Tour victory - they were not the only nation to declare conflict, but it was widely believed that while allied governments supported the war, those nation's populations did not; the American people, with their reputation for flag-waving, were believed to be fully in support even though millions of them were not. In the past, with US culture, music and fashion shaping the way young people looked and thought around the world, Americans had known that they were generally liked and respected - and were too far away from the rest of the world for those who thought otherwise to appear on the radar. Now, with the growth of the Internet, they became aware that this was no longer the case - their political establishment was being attacked, but so too was their culture: everywhere, the same sort of people that would once have paid many months' salary for a pair of American jeans were rejecting American fashions and music. The USA had produced some great cycling heroes prior to Armstrong, but the majority of them - such as Marshall Taylor, who was adored by the French at a time when he was sometimes not allowed to enter velodromes at home because he was black - had ridden at a time beyond living memory at the turn of the 20th Century. Towards the end of the century Americans started to do well in races again: first there was George Mount, then others including Greg Lemond (who also found a place in cycling's European heart and ended up being awarded unofficial honourary Frenchman status), yet cycling remained very much a niche sport in the USA. Those who sought to reassure the American people and the rest of the world that America was still dominant found in Armstrong a ready-made symbol, one that could be held up and claimed to be representative of all that was good about the nation, one who kept going and winning just like they had believed their country always would. He was, no less, an All American Action Hero, and was elevated to a status far beyond that of mere cyclist; he became an icon that, for millions of people, represented what it is to be an American, or at the very least what they felt an American - and America - should be. Armstrong retired following his seventh Tour win in 2005; yet when he returned to the Tour four years later some Americans (even those who followed the spot and had an awareness of Contador) believed without question he would conquer all the champions that had emerged in the intervening years. The war in Iraq had not gone well for them, even though they won, nor did the war in Afghanistan and their international reputation was in tatters; now, after just long enough away from sport and a huge amount of mythologising, Armstrong was to America what King Arthur is in British folklore - the Protector, risen to defend the nation in its time of need. He did not win; though his third place overall was better than European fans (and Americans who understood the sport) had expected.

Winning Stage 10 on the Alpe d'Huez, Tour de France 2001

For the entirety of his career, Armstrong faced accusations of doping. He rode at a time when the world was finally realising how big a problem doping had become and when professional cycling was finally realising that there could be no brushing under the rug and, after decades of half-measures and Machiavellianism, something had to be done - it was a time when all riders were under suspicion, and it is still with us today. His reaction - especially towards riders such as Christophe Bassons, a lowly domestique but one of the few people with the bravery to stand up against the Armstrong Public Relations Machine (Bassons' career would be utterly destroyed as a punishment) - won him few friends, displaying as it did a dark, deeply dislikable, bullying side to him and the multi-million dollar business that had grown up around him. There had also been a number of controversies: as long ago as 1999 corticosteroid had been discovered in a urine sample he provided, though the amount discovered was not high enough for further action - yet Emma O'Reilly, a team masseuse who, like all the other individuals to cast aspersions against the rider, rapidly found herself distanced from Lance Armstrong Inc., says that team officials panicked after the result and persuaded a doctor to sign a back-dated prescription for saddle sore cream to cover it (she also says that, as his masseuse, she'd have known if he'd had saddle sores). Greg Lemond, one of doping's most vocal opponents, joined in and was especially critical of Armstrong's connections to the notorious Dr. Michele Ferrari. Armstrong ended his professional relationship with the doctor, but evidence emerged in 2010 that they had continued to meet. Perhaps his most dangerous enemy, however, was a middle-aged journalist from Cambridge, David Walsh, whose book L.A. Confidential tied together rumours, examined them and used them to tear Armstrong to shreds. He too was pushed away from the rider's inner circle but he kept on and on, seemingly intent on destroying the rider once and for all. SCA Promotions, a Texas company, tried to back out of paying Armstrong a $5million bonus, but ultimately paid $7.5 million - the bonus plus legal fees - in an out-of-court deal. There were many other accusations, from former US Postal team mate Frankie Andreu and his wife Betsy, from L'Equipe and CBS, from Tyler Hamilton and from Floyd Landis. The latter claimed that Armstrong had made a "donation" (or bribe) to the UCI in order to hush up a failed anti-doping test in 2002, but said that there was no documentation to support his claim. In 2010, UCI president Pat McQuaid admitted that two donations had been made, one of $25,000 in 2002 and another of $100,000 in 2005; he was able to produce documents proving the donations took place and that they had been used to fund anti-doping measures including the purchase of a blood-testing machine, and he was able to produce documentation, but he admitted that the way in which his predecessor Hein Verbruggen had accepted the payments was irregular.

Tour de France 2009

In May 2012, as RadioShack-Nissan manager Johan Bruyneel stepped from his plane onto US soil shortly before the Tour of California, he was met by officials from the United States Anti-Doping Agency and served with a subpoena. Rumours soon began to circulate that he was being investigated as part of a massive inquiry into doping at US Postal, the team that had become RadioShack. The rumours were rapidly confirmed; but the scope of the investigation was far bigger than anyone had expected - USADA, it seemed, were going after some of the most powerful men in cycling, and this time they meant to win. In addition to Bruyneel, targets included US Postal doctor  Pedro Celaya, Dr. Ferarri - and Armstrong, who was given a period of time in which to prepare for a legal battle and confirm he meant to contest the allegations against him. In July Armstrong filed a suit in Texas attempting to prevent USADA continuing; the judge threw it out that same day, saying that the court was "not inclined to indulge Armstrong's desire for publicity [and] self-aggrandizement." The following day - the 10th, when USADA banned Ferrari, another doctor named Luis Garcia del Moral and a team coach from any future involvement with professional sports - Armstrong filed a new suit with the same aim. In it, he questioned whether USADA held jurisdiction over him; although the judge quetioned USADA's timing, the court was not in favour.

Days later and still maintaining that he was innocent and had never doped, Armstrong announced that he had no further plans to contest the charges against him. As a result, he was stripped of all results gained since the 1st of August 1998, including his seven Tour de France victories. Afterwards, USADA revealed that had he have fought on, they would likely have stripped him of only three. Whatever one thinks of Armstrong, his tactics and personality, there can he no doubt that one of the most remarkable eras in the history of cycling has come to an end.

Didier Rous

Didier Rous, born in Montauban, France on this day in 1970, turned professional with GAN in 1993 after spending the latter third of 1992 as a trainee with R.M.O. He stayed with GAN for four seasons, winning the GP Ouverture in his first year, a stage at the Tour de l'Avenir in his second, third place overall at the Tour du Limousin in 1995 and one stage at the Critérium International and second place at the Waalse Pijl in 1996. In 1997 he joined Festina; the following year the team was hit by scandal when soigneur Willy Voet was caught with a car filled with doping products, leading to the discovery of the team's institutionalised doping program and sparking off the notorious Festina Affair that rocked cycling to its very core. Rous confessed that he had used EPO and was banned for six months; then returned with the same team the following year.

In 2000, Rous switched to Bonjour, won the GP du Midi-Libre and managed two top ten stage finishes at the Tour de France, then in 2001 he became National Road Race Champion and won 11 other victories including the General Classification at the Four Days of Dunkirk; in 2002 he won the Circuit Cycliste Sarthe. He rode for Brioches La Boulangère for the next two years and won another National Championship as well as the GP Ouest France; then went to Bouygues Telecom, where he would spend the rest of his career, in 2005. In 2006, he won the Trophée des Grimpeurs for the third time before victory at Paris - Corrèze rounded off his season - and, as it turned out, his racing career: he won nothing in 2007, then announced his retirement due to health problems in June before joining the team management committee.


Yukihiro Doi, born in Yamagata Prefecture on this day in 1983, became Japanese Road Race Champion in 2012.

Steffen competing at the 2012 Austrian Ironman

Born in Spiez, Switzerland on this day in 1978, Caroline Steffen began her athletic career as a professional swimmer and won several National Championship titles prior to 2002 when surgery on her shoulder ended her competitive days. After recovering, she became a triathlete and came third in her age group for amateurs at the 2006 Ironman; but her shoulder limited how well she could perform in the swimming sections. Still eager to compete, she began instead to concentrate on cycling and was given a contract with the Raleigh LifeForce team where, having proved too big to do well in the mountains and lacking the top end speed to be a sprinter, she became lead-out woman for Nicole Cooke and Karin Thürig. However, she felt that she would still be able to win triathlons and left the team, becoming a professional triathlete after achieving promising results. In 2010, she won a silver medal at the World Ironman Championships.

Gary Anderson, who was born in London but raced with a New Zealand licence (having moved there when he was nine), won a total of eight medals (including three gold) at the Commonwealth Games between 1986 and 1990 and also won a bronze at the 1992 Olympics. Anderson had a heart defect that often caused his pulse to race during competition.

Azzedine Lagab, born on this day in 1986, was Algerian National Time Trial Champion in 2007, 2011 and 2012 and Nation Road Race Champion in 2010 and 2012.

Other cyclists born on this day: Piotr Chmielewski (Poland, 1970); Mathieu Perget (France, 1984); Gerard Lettoli (San Marino, 1946); Rolf Nitzsche (Germany, 1930); Felice Puttini (Switzerland, 1967); Kelly-Ann Way (Canada, 1964); Tom Morris (Canada, 1944); Eugen Kamber (Switzerland, 1924, died 1991); Gennady Komnatov (USSR, 1949, died 1979); Phil Bayton (Great Britain, 1950); Sergey Shelpakov (USSR, 1956); Mario Masanés (Chile, 1927); András Parti (Hungary, 1982); Leif Flengsrud (Norway, 1922, died 2009); Piet Kloppenburg (Netherlands, 1896, died 1972); Sławomir Kohut (Poland, 1977); Christian Poulsen (Denmark, 1979); Carlos García (Uruguay, 1964).

Daily Cycling Facts 17.09.2013

Jens Voigt

Jens Voigt

Born in Grevesmühlen, East Germany on this day in 1971 (one day before Lance Armstrong; legend has it that Jens immediately attacked and, by the time Lance celebrated his 13th birthday, was already 16), Jens Voigt had such an excess of energy as a boy that he frequently got into trouble and drove his parents to distraction. Fortunately, his parents were sufficiently intelligent (a quality he inherited from them) to realise that attempting to control a child such as that using punishment is pointless, instead they encouraged him to take up sports and channel his energy into something more productive. Before too long, somebody noticed that he was much more than just a boisterous, bored little boy - he had real athletic potential and his endurance abilities were phenomenal; when he earned a place at a specialist sports school when he was 14, his coach put him on a bike and got to work.

Jens is the only cyclist to have ever lapped the field in a point-to-point race. Sharks have a Jens Voigt Week. Jens Voigt crashed spectacularly during the 2009 Tour de France; the resulting impact created a mound of earth that is visible to this day - it is called "Col du Tourmalet."

Voigt began to collect good results in 1991, comong third at the Tour du Loir-Et-Cher 'Edmond Provost' that year and winning the prologue at the Österreich-Rundfahrt and second place overall at the Tour de la Guadeloupe the next. In 1993 he won the Steiermark Rundfahrt; in 1994 he won the Niedersachsen Rundfahrt, the Commonwealth Bank Classic and the Peace Race; in 1995 he was second overall at the Tour de Normandie and in 1996 he won he Sachsen Tour and a silver medal at the World Military Championships.

You are what you eat: Jens Voigt eats spring steel for breakfast, fire for lunch, and a mixture of titanium and carbon fiber for dinner; for between-meal snacks he eats men's souls, and downs it with a tall cool glass of The Milk of Human Suffering. When you open a can of whoop-ass, Jens Voigt jumps out and attacks.

In 1997, Voigt signed his first professional contract and began riding for Australia-based ZVVZ-Giant-AIS and won six victories. The following season he switched to GAN, which became Crédit Agricole halfway through the year, and remained there until the end of 2003; in his first year with them he made his Tour debut, finishing Stage 9 in second place and coming 83rd overall. The following year he was 60th, in 2000 60th again, then in 2001 he took the maillot jaune from Stuart O'Grady in Stage 7 (and lost it back to him the following day) and won Stage 16.

Jens Voigt's Suitcase of Courage will not fit in the overhead compartment. Someone once told Jens Voigt to "dig deep" - that is how geologists know the earth's core contains an iron-nickel alloy. Jens Voigt can start a fire by rubbing two mud puddles together.

2004 was Voigt's break-through year. Having moved to CSC (now SaxoBank-Tinkoff Bank) he won the Critérium International and the Bayern Rundfahrt, then went back to the Tour and spent much of it in breakaways with Jakob Piil; his best stage result was seventh (Stage 19; he was also ninth overall in the King of the Mountains). During Stage 15, Jan Ullrich attacked on this Col de l'Echarasson after getting into a break with Lance Armstrong and CSC team leader Ivan Basso, neither of whom were able to respond. Voigt, out in front in an earlier break, was ordered by team management to drop back and assist Basso; an order he obeyed - until Ullrich overtook him. Just as a cat cannot help itself but chase a bird, Voigt cannot help himself but chase another cyclist; and he caught him. The nest day on the Alpe d'Huez, he was verbally attacked by German fans who called him "Judas" for attacking a fellow German rider; but it didn't matter - he went away from the Tour that year with something more valuable than a stage win: he was now adored by the huge numbers of other fans who had noticed his hard riding style and started proclaiming him to be that rarest of cycling heroes, a flahute.

Many cyclists have one leg stronger than the other - both Jens Voigt's legs are stronger than the other. It takes Jens Voigt 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes. Jens Voigt has four heart rate training zones: anger, rage, fury and breakaway. 

In 2006

2005 didn't go according to plan. Voigt won the Tour Méditerranéen, then took on Armstrong at the Tour - and for a little while at the start of the race and then again halfway through, he looked like he might be a real threat to the Texan; but would fall ill during Stage 10 and be eliminated from the race in Stage 11 when he was unable to finish within the time limit. In 2006, he rode as a domestique for Basso at the Giro and attacked the Italian's rivals so hard in the first few stages that when CSC won the Stage 5 team time trial, he found himself accidentally in second place overall with only a 6" deficit to race leader Serhiy Honchar before sacrificing his own chances for his team leader. During Stage 19 that year, Voigt and Julich got away in a 20-rider breakaway but stopped pulling in order to give the peloton, led by CSC, chance to catch up so that Basso could win the stage. However, the peloton didn't catch up; then by the final stage the break had been whittled down to Voigt and Juan Manuel Gárate. According to many who saw the stage, Voigt looked to be stronger man, but he sat up and allowed Gárate to win; later, Voigt explained that since he hadn't worked to keep the break going, he didn't feel that he deserved the stage. He had been due to support Basso again at the Tour but, days before the race began, the Italian was suspended from the team pending an investigation after being implicated in Operacion Puerto; Ullrich was barred for the same reason, leaving no clear favourite. Voigt rode for new CSC leader Carlos Sastre, once again attacking anyone who looked likely to mount a challenge and, on 230km Stage 13, got into a five-strong break that reached the finish line with almost a half-hour lead on the peloton - and once there, he out-sprinted Oscar Pereiro to take victory. On Stage 15, finishing at the summit of Alpe d'Huez, he supported Frank Schleck - the beginning of a long partnership with the Schleck brothers - with help from David Zabriskie. Schleck won that day, but Floyd Landis took the maillot jaune and wore it until the end of the race where he was declared overall winner after the closest three-way finish the Tour had ever seen; however, it was later revealed that the American had failed a doping test after Stage 17 and he was stripped of his title which then passed to Pereiro with Sastre being elevated from fourth to third.

Jens' big ring is 56; his rear cassettte is 11-11-11-11-11-11-11-11-11-12. Jens Voigt once got confused and accidentally rode two stages of the Tour de France back-to-back - he won by 5 minutes.

In 2007 Alexandre Vinokourov was barred from the Tour, leaving no clear favourite for a second consecutive year. Voigt's team mate, a young Swiss time trial specialist named Fabian Cancellara, took the maillot jaune in the Prologue and kept it until Stage 7, when it passed to Linus Gerdemann (who would become team mate to Voigt and Cancellara four years later at LeopardTrek), then in Stage 8 it went to Rabobank's Michael Rasmussen, who looked likely to win until Stage 17 when he was no longer part of the race - he'd been pulled out by the team, which had become concerned about his whereabouts on a number of occasions when he should have submitted to out-of-competition doping controls. Voigt finished in 28th place overall, Sastre was fourth again.

Tour of Germany, 2006

Voigt has never attempted to set an Hour Record because he can do it in 50 minutes. If by some incredible space-time paradox Jens could ever race himself, he would win.  When Voigt crashed while descending a mountain in the 2011 Tour de France, the mountain suffered a broken collarbone.

The following year, Voigt won Stage 18 at the Giro, came 37th at the Tour de France and won the General Classification and the King of the Mountains at the Tour of Poland. In 2009 he won the Critérium International for the fifth time, thus equaling the record set by Raymond Poulidor; he also won the Points competition and the King of the Mountains. At the Tour de France that year director Jason Berry made Chasing Legends, a stunningly beautiful film following the fortunes of the Columbia-Highroad riders, including Mark Cavendish. Voigt still rode for Saxobank, yet despite the film focusing on HTC, Berry very soon realised that he'd found a star: Voigt's honesty, intelligence, humour and patently obvious respect for his rivals - all qualities that had contributed to his enormous popularity among cycling fans - endeared him to a whole new audience, and it's probably not stretching things too much to say that some fans probably first became interested in the sport after seeing him and the horrific crash he had on the Col du Petit-Saint-Bernard during Stage 16. When he returned to racing at the Tour of Missouri, following six weeks of recovery time, he was welcomed like a rock star.

At the Tour with LeopardTrek

Jens Voigt has several reasons for not riding with a power meter; these reasons are known as the Laws of Thermodynamics. Jens Voigt doesn't age, he simply drops every year that catches up with him. 

Voigt finished the 2010 Tour in 126th place; then in 2011 - having departed SaxoBank with the Schleck brothers and Cancellara to form the new team LeopardTrek - he was 67th, already one of the oldest men in the peloton, his age seemed to be catching up with him. However, he remained one of the most formidable attackers in the race and proved himself more than capable of successfully chasing down riders ten years younger - and catching them. After the race he once again showed the side of his personallity that has won him fans who otherwise have no interest in the sport when he told the story of how he'd thrown an empty bidon to a young boy among the spectators as a souvenir, then ridden all the way back from the finish line to make sure the man who grabbed it handed it over to its intended recipient. In 2012, having once again stayed with the Schecks and Cancellara following LeopardTrek's apparently ill-fated merger with RadioShack (which is part-owned by Lance Armstrong who, despite being a day younger than Voigt, retired much earlier), he was both the oldest man in the Tour and the oldest member of any ProTour team.

Jens Voigt rides so fast during attacks, that he could circle the globe, hold his own wheel, and ride in his own draft - at least as long as he didn't try to drop himself.

Voigt attacks

Unlike Armstrong, who was widely disliked in the peloton for using tactics that other riders felt were little more than bullying, Voigt has always been as popular and respected among the riders as he is with the fans - he was selected by them to be their official representative to the UCI, a role he has fulfilled extremely successfully and used to resolve a number of disputes (also unlike Armstrong, who accused those who spoke out against doping as wanting to destroy cycling, Voigt is a very vocal and convincing opponent of doping and all other forms of cheating). He had been hinting since late in 2011 that 2012 would be his final year; however, in 2012 he confirmed that he had decided against it and would continue racing until at least the end of 2013 - a short-lived rumour had it that he would be riding for Sky ProCycling, but he in fact remained with RadioShack-Leopard (as RadioShack-Nissan Trek had become), and he was the oldest man to compete at that year's Tour de France.

Voigt is now 42 years old; despite widespread belief that 2013 would be his final year, it was confirmed in August that he would be joining the new Trek-sponsored team, formed after the bike manufacturer bought what was left of RadioShack-Leopard following the scandal surrounding Lance Armstrong (a part-owner) and Johan Bruyneel (the team's manager), for 2014. One day, of coursem the inevitable will happen; there is no other rider capable of filling the gap he will leave.

Jens Voigt has already won.

Amanda Spratt

Spratty

Born in Penrith, New South Wales in this day in 1987, Amanda Spratt began racing when she was 12 and later earned a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport. In both 2004 and 2005, Spratt won a silver medal for the Pursuit at the Junior National Track Championships; in 2006 she won another for the Points race at the Elite Nationals. A year later, having won several more medals on the track, she came third overall at the Tour of Perth and from that point on began to concentrate more on road racing, starting with victory at the Under-23 Individual Time Trial Nationals in 2008.

Spratty, as she's known to her many fans, gained more good results on the road in the subsequent years, but victory eluded her until 2011 when she took first place overall at the Tour de Feminine Krasna Lipa. A year later, having signed to GreenEDGE, she won the National Road Race Championship and was ninth overall at the infamously tough Omloop het Nieuwsblad in Belgium, then in 2012, still with GreenEDGE (now named Orica-AIS), she was fourth at the Trofeo Binda, eighth at the GP Elsy Jacobs and sixth at the Thuringen Rundfahrt.

Orica's Rowena Fry and Amanda Spratt take the team mascot Skippy for a ride

Juan Antonio Flecha
Born in Junin, Argentina on this day in 1977 but of Spanish nationality, Juan Antonio Flecha Giannoni has earned the nickname The Spanish Flandrien ("Flandrien" being a title that is not bandied about without care in cycling) due to his remarkable performances in the Northern Classics, cycling's hardest races.

At the 2005 Tour de France

Flecha signed for two years with Colchon Relax-Fuenlabrada in 2000 and, in his second year, won three stages and the General Classification at the GP International MR Cortez-Mitsubishi plus one stage each at the Vuelta Ciclista a Aragón and Euskal Bizikleta. In 2002 he went to iBanesto and rode the Vuelta a Espana- he'd entered the previou year, but failed to finish - and finished Stage 18 in third place, was 41st overall and third in the King of the Mountains. One year later he went to the Tour de France and won Stage 11, the first Argentinian rider to have ever won a stage at the race.

In 2004, Fasso Bortolo made Flecha co-leader (alongside Fabian Cancellara) of their Classics squad and he picked up some good results; then in 2005 he was second and Gent-Wevelgem and third at Paris-Roubaix, the latter being considered by many riders to be the hardest race of them all. He also rode the Tour and the Vuelta that year, managing some top ten stage finishes in both but not making an impact with 73rd overall at the Tour and another did not finish at the Vuelta. In 2006 he switched to Rabobank, where he would remain for the next four seasons; the first passed without note, then in 2007 he was second at Paris-Roubaix and at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad - another notoriously tough Classic. In 2008 he came third at both the Brabantse Pijl and the Ronde van Vlaanderen (the latter being considered by many riders the second toughest race after Paris-Roubaix), then went on domestique duty again at the Vuelta (where he won a multitude of new fans by taking the Stars and Stripes from "Moose Man" - a spectator who had been showing up at races that year with an enormous set of real antlers on his head to run alongside the peloton waving the flag, becoming almost as iconic a figure as the legendary Devil Didi Senft - and riding with it trailing behind him for a few hundred metres) and the Tour before finishing off the year with victory at the Circuit Franco-Belge.

Flecha was third at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, thenth at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, 29th at Milan-San Remo, 13th at the E3 Harelbeke, 30th at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and sixth at Paris-Roubaix in 2009 - no victories, but simply entering that many Classics in a single year marks a rider out as a potential Flandrien. He made no impact at the Tour de France but was seventh overall at the Benelux Tour; Rabobank offered to extend his contract but he decided instead that it was time for fresh pastures and began 2010 with the new British Team Sky.

Flecha at the 2011 Tour de France

Sky seems to have become his home - in his first year with them, he won the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, dedicating the win to former team mate Frank Vandenbroucke, who had died of a pulmonary embolism the year before after suffering for many years with emotional and drug addicition problems. He came 18th at Milan-San Remp, third at Paris-Roubaix and the E3 and fourth overall at the Tour of Luxembourg, then once again rode the Tour de France and (failing to finish again) the Vuelta. In 2011 he was second at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, 11th at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and ninth at Paris-Roubaix. During Stage 9 at the Tour de France that year, he and Johnny Hoogerland suffered a dramatic crash when a France Télévisions camera car swerved to avoid a tree at the roadside, side-swiping the riders and knocking them off their bikes: Hoogerland was thrown into a barbed wire fence, Flecha hit the road hard. Both men lost time as a result, but finished the stage arm-in-arm and won the Combativity award for the stage. In 2012 he was third overall at the Tour of Qatar, third at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, 20th at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and fourth at Paris-Roubaix before going to the Giro d'Italia and coming 36th, then 98th at the Vuelta.

Flecha announced in 2012 that it was once again time for a change - he would ride with Vacansoleil-DCM in 2013. He is now 35, but experience is often more valuable that youth in the Classics: he was fifth at Gent-Wevelgem, 21st at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and eighth at Paris-Roubaix, the toughest of them all. Later in the season, he would also manage a top ten stage finish at the Critérium du Dauphiné (Stage 1), another at the Tour de France (Stage 3) and sixth overall at the Post Danmark Rundt.

John Gavin Bone
Born in Glasgow on this day in 1914, John Gavin Bone entered a 25-mile novices' race in 1934 - the first race he ever rode - and won it, posting the fastest time by a Scottish novice that year. The following year, he beat the Scottish and British 12-Hour records by riding 244.75 miles (393.89km) - the race was held on a 211 mile parcours followed by laps of a seven mile circuit; Bone rode so much further than his rivals that the organisers had to hastily add an extra section leading towards Paisley. However, just hours later an English rider beat the record.

On the 29th of May in 1937, Bone won the Sunday Pictorial Cycling Festival at Alexandra Palace in London. 10,000 people were there to see him beat some of the greatest cycling names in the British Empire, including Percy Stallard (who would later form the British League of Racing Cyclists and organise the first road race held in Britain since Victorian times, a race that would grow into the Tour of Britain) and the Australian legend Hubert Opperman. For the very first time at a British cycle race, TV cameras were there to record the event.


Stuart Dangerfield, born in Willenhall, Great Britain in this day in 1971, was National Time Trial Champion in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

Mariano Diaz, born in Villarejo de Salvanés, Spain on this day in 1939, won Stage 11, ninth place overall and the King of the Mountains competition at the Vuelta a Espana in 1967. Two years later, he won Stage 15 at the Vuelta and Stage 9 at the Tour de France.

Other cyclists born on this day: Barry Forde (Barbados, 1976); Alberto Fernández de la Puebla (Spain, 1984); Eneritz Iturriagaextebarria (Euskadi, 1980); Alfred Achermann (Switzerland, 1959); Jesse Pike (USA, 1890, died 1986); Kristian Pedersen (Denmark, 1920); Luc Roosen (Belgium, 1964); Hubert Pallhuber (Italy, 1965); Jan Jankiewicz (Poland, 1955); Rudolfo Massi (Italy, 1965).

Daily Cycling Facts 16.09.2013

Alexandra Burchenkova

Alexandra Burchenkova

Born in Velikiye Luki, Russia on this day in 1988, Alexandra Burchenkova revealed herself to be a rider to watch when she won European Junior Road Race Championship in 2005 and then won the bronze medal at the European Juniors Individual Time Trial Championship a year later.

In 2007, aged only 19, she came second overall behind the legendary Judith Arndt at the Gracia Orlova before going on to take another bronze at the National Time Trial Championships, competing this time as an Elite rider. In 2008 she won Stage 1 at the Gracia Orlova, beating second place Christina Becker by 2', and was third overall behind Marianne Vos and Luise Keller, then came second (but by just 5") to Sara Mustonen at the Tour of Poland. A year later she took silver at the National Time Trial Championship, and in 2010 she won the Under-23 individual time trials at the European Championships and at the Youth Olympics. In 2011 she became National ITT Champion, in 2012 the Tour of Adygeya, and in 2013 with RusVelo she has achieved podium places in the majority of races she has entered - still aged just 25, she seems to have a great career ahead of her.

Alexandre Vinokourov
Few - if any - riders have ever divided fan opinion quite so much as Alexandre Vinokourov, who was born in Petropavl, Kazakhstan on this day in 1973. He is hated as a non-repentant convicted doper, yet he is loved for his repeated come-back after injuries that would have ended many riders' careers.

Alexandre Vinokourov

He began cycling at the age of 11, joining a local "Children and Youth Sports School" where he trained daily, in all weathers, and begin to enter cyclo cross races. Later, he was given a place at a Soviet sports academy and remained there for five years until his compulsory national military service, during which time he was given a place on the Soviet national team. Kazakhstan declared itself independent from the disintegrating USSR in 1991 and he moved on to the Kazakh national team.

In 1996, the Kazakh manager wrote to Gilles Mas, a directeur sportif of the French Agrigel-La Creuse team outlinin his plans to field a professional trade team in European races. Mas supported the plan and agreed to train the best two Kazakh riders at the Espoir Cycliste Saint-Etienne Loire; the two best riders - Vinokourov and Andrey Mizurov - being chosen by him and Saint-Etienne manager Pierre Rivory. Mizurov found adjusting to his new life difficult and returned home in May 1997 after less than three months in France, his place being given to Andrei Kivilev who later died following a crash at Paris-Nice; Vinokourov found things more to his liking and, only a few weeks after his arrival, won the King of the Mountains at the Coupe de France. Later in the year he was given an opportunity to try to impress the managers of the Casino-C'est Votre Equipe team, being told that if he rode well at the Circuit de Saône et Loire they would consider taking him on. He won three of the total four stages.

In 2004

The team became Casino-AG2R for 1998 and Vino got a full professional contract, repaying them with the General Classifications at the Tours de Lorraine and Picardie, the Four Days of Dunkirk and stage win at the Tour of Poland; then in 1999 (when the team became known as Casino-C'est Votre Equipe again) he won the Vuelta Ciclista a la Communidad Valenciana and the Critérium du Dauphiné - and finished two stages at the Tour de France in second place. He joined Telekom in 2000, finished another Tour stage in second place and, won Stage 18 at the Vuelta a Espana and came second in the road race at the Olympics. He remained with Telekom until the end of 2005, by which time it had become T-Mobile, and won the Deutschland Tour (2001), Paris-Nice (2002, 2003), the Amstel Gold Race, the Tour de Suisse and Stage 9 at the Tour de France (all 2003) and Liège-Bastogne-Liège (after a thrilling two-man break with Jens Voigt), the Kazakh National Championships and Stages 11 and 21 at the Tour (all 2005).

In 2006 he joined Liberty Seguros-Würth, but in May team manager Manolo Saiz was arrested due to suspected links to a blood-doping program; Liberty Seguros pulled their sponsorship. A conglomerate of Kazakh teams went into partnership with Würth, after which the team became Astana-Würth, but the Tour de France squad (including Vinokourov) had to withdraw from the race when five of its riders were implicated in Operacion Puerto. Vinokourov was never linked to Puerto, but the team was down to only four riders - two less than the required minimum. Würth then backed out too, at which point the team became known simply as Astana and entered the Vuelta a Espana - Vinolourov won Stages 8, 9, 20 and the General Classification, also coming second in the Points competition. After the team relocated its base from Spain to Switzerland in 2007 he won the Points competition at the Critérium du Dauphiné and another brace of stages at the Tour. However, the day after he'd won Stage 15, he failed a doping test that revealed his blood contained double the normal number of red cells, suggesting he'd received a blood transfusion. Many people felt that the result must be false, among them Phil Ligget who insisted that it was "incomprehensible that Vinokourov could do such a thing when he must have known he was under suspicion because of his dealing with disgraced doctor Michele Ferrari in Italy;" nevertheless, the Kazakh Federation banned him for a year (and were immediately criticised by the UCI, which correctly pointed out that other riders who had doped in similar circumstances had received longer bans). He was stripped of his Stage 13 and 15 wins; meanwhile, Astana began moves to sue him for damage to the team's reputation, as did Predictor-Lotto and Cadel Evans who wanted to sue for publicity lost when Evans was denied Stage 13 victory by Vinokourov's cheating. In December that year, Vinokourov announced that he had retired.

Winning the Vuelta a Castilla y León, 2006

He stayed away for the entirety of 2008, then revealed on Belgian TV that he believed he still had the ability to win big races and was planning a return for 2009. The UCI approached the Court of Arbitration in Sport, asking it to reconsider giving the rider a two year ban which would have expired in July, by which time it would be too late for him to enter the Tour. The Court had been hearing the UCI's case when Vinokourov retired, at which point it was dropped; it found in favour and he was unable to return until the 24th of July. One month later, he was welcomed back into Astana; he won three races in what was left of the season.

2010 got off to a good start with victory at the Giro del Trentino and, thanks to a little help from team mate Alberto Contador, a second Liège-Bastogne-Liège; then he went to the Giro d'Italia and came sixth overall as well as second in the Points competition. Since the Festina Affair and Operacion Puerto, the organisers of the Tour de France have been more careful about who is allowed to ride in the race, well aware that as the world's biggest sporting event and the pre-eminent cycling race all the world's press will be paying attention. It was, therefore, not clear if Astana wound in fact be able to enter Vinokourov for it; however, he was. They needn't have worried - he had no intention of winning and, apart from his Stage 13 win, spent the entire race working as a domestique and paying off his debt to Contador, the eventual winner (until 2012, when he was stripped of the victory following a controversial investigation and long-winded court hearing that found him guilty of using bronchodilator Clenbuterol).

Vinolourov leading the road race, 2012 Olympics

Vinokourov was 37 years old when he wheeled up to the start line of the 2011 Tour de France, but he was visibly on good form and fans, while not considering him a likely winner, expected him to do well. Disaster struck in Stage 9 when he and other riders lost control on a descent, coming off the road and falling down a steep slope - he hit a tree and had to be lifted out in very obvious pain. It was initially feared that he had suffered a broken pelvis and possible spinal injury, fortunately he had escaped with a relatively minor broken femur. Soon afterwards, rumours began doing the rounds on Twitter and Facebook that he would be retiring as a result of the crash - a week later, he confirmed them. Once again and only two months later, he had second thoughts and announced that he would be riding for Astana in 2012. The first part of the season passed without success, but he finished Stage 16 at the Tour de France in fourth place; then in July, aged 38 and in his 14th year as a professional rider, he won the most glorious victory of his career - the road race at the Olympic Games.

"It is nice to finish off my career with a gold medal," he told reporters after the race. As always, cycling fans are split into two camps: those that believe he's gone for good and those who believe he'll make a come-back in 2014.

Léon Hourlier

Léon Hourlier, born in Reims on this day in 1885, won the French Road Race Championships in 1909, 1911 and 1914. When the First World War broke out, he enlisted along with his close friend and brother-in-law Léon Comès; they died in an aeroplane crash on the 17th of October 1915. Hourlier was 30, Comès was 26.

Heinz Müller, born in Germany on this day in 1924, won the World Road Race Championship in 1952 and the National Championship a year later. In 1957 he won Stage 8 at the Tour de Suisse and in 1958 he came second at the Six Days of Cleveland in the USA. The vast majority of his 19 professional victories, however, were won in Germany; he might well have won more races abroad and become far better known has he have raced in a different era - after the Second World War and right into the 1960s, German riders were limited in the races they could enter due to a risk that fans might attempt to get "revenge" for what "they" had done during the war.

Olga Panarina, born in Belarus on this day in 1985, became World 500m Time Trial Champion in 2011 at Apeldoorn. At the same event, she won the silver medal for the Keirin.

Gal Fridman, born in Karkur on this day in 1975, won the Israeli National Road Race Championship in 2005. Fridman is also a windsurfer, winning the gold medal - the first ever awarded to an Israeli athlete - for the event at the 2004 Olympic Games.

Laurent Desbians, who was born in Mons et Berceul, France, on this day in 1969, won Stage 11 at the 1997 Tour de France. In 1998 he wore the maillot jaune for two stages after finishing Stage 8 in  fifth place and taking it from Jan Ullrich. Ullrich won it back in Stage 10, then in Stage 15 it passed on to eventual overall winner Marco Pantani.

Other cyclists born on this day: Burry Stander (South Africa, 1987); Billy Griggs (USA, 1968); Oscar Guldager (Denmark, 1904, died 1986); Heino Dissing (Denmark, 1912, died 1990); Hans Pfenninger (Switzerland, 1929, died 2009); Billy Griggs (USA, 1968); Colin Forde (Barbados, 1949); Sergey Polinsky (USSR/Russia, 1981); Primož Štrancar (Slovenia, 1972); Sigvard Kukk (Estonia, 1972); John den Braber (Netherlands, 1970).