Daily Cycling Facts 30.11.2013 PART 2

Today is the day we found out that "this will let me have fewer worries and focus more on the sport side" is actually Danish for "I'm shitting myself."

Daily Cycling Facts 30.11.2013

Tommy Simpson, 1937-1966

Tom Simpson
Today is a holy day in cycling, for all the cycling nations and not just in Britain - it would have been the birthday of legendary, tragic Tom Simpson. Born in Haswell, Co. Durham in 1937, Simpson seemed for many years to have been Britain's best ever hope for a Tour de France overall General Classification winner and was the only British rider to win the men's World Road Racing Championship until Mark Cavendish took the title in 2011.

Tom died on the 13th of July in 1967, during the 13th stage of the Tour de France. There were 22 stages that year and they covered a total of 4,708km; for the first time there was also a prologue, and the race had been designed to be the hardest Tour ever. It cannot, therefore, have been an uneventful race all the way until it reached Mont Ventoux that day - but because of what happened there, everything else has been forgotten.

Simpson was rated by many as the finest rider Britain had ever produced and, thanks largely to him, the Tour was increasingly popular on the English side of the Channel. He was also intelligent and funny, making him popular with the other riders; those that might not have liked him (and not one surviving rider from his era will admit to that) learned to respect him, because he had the legs to go with it. Many believed that he could win.

It was hellishly hot when the riders woke up that morning and forecasters warned it would get worse, reaching as high as 45C. That worried official race doctor Pierre Dumas - when he went for a walk at 06:30, he met some friends. "If the riders take something today, we'll have a death on our hands," he told them. They may have shared his concerns, but Dumas - who had come to cycling almost by chance, with no previous background in the sport - was well known for taking doping far more seriously than anybody else; needlessly so, it was commonly thought, as many people accepted it a simply a part of the sport - and something that was better not discussed..

It seems odd that, only 45 years ago, medical science believed that drinking the amount of water now recommended during athletic activity was actually harmful; but that was the case and, as a result, race organisers permitted riders no more than four standard bidons (about two litres) of water per stage. The riders, meanwhile, knew that they got thirsty and mounted cafe raids in which they would descend en masse upon rural bars and shops and guzzle down any fluids they could find, not caring about the large bills that showed up on their managers' desks months later. The riders hadn't long started the stage when the first raids took place, and one of Tom's domestiques had obtained a bottle of brandy. Tom had been seen gulping it down.

He'd been up Ventoux before and was well aware, as Raphaël Géminiani had tried to warn Ferdinand Kübler more than a decade earlier, that the unearthly summit is "not like any other col." Kübler thought he could prove himself greater than the mountain, so Ventoux ended his career to prove him wrong. Tom knew all this - he described an earlier ascent thus:

"It is like another world up there among the bare rocks and the glaring sun. The white rocks reflect the heat and the dust rises, clinging to your arms, legs and face. I rode well up there doing about five miles to the gallon in perspiration. It was almost overwhelming hot up there and I think it was the only time that I have got off my bike and my pants have nearly fallen down. They were soaked and heavy with sweat which was running off me in streams and I had to wring out my socks because the sweat was running into my shoes."

He knew, then, that Ventoux demanded respect. At Chalet Reynard, near the point where riders emerge from the weird and airless forests of the lower slopes and come out into the blast furnace of a road that leads to the top, the heat and alcohol was already giving his problems and several riders passed him. Team manager Alec Taylor wondered briefly if this might be a psychological trick designed to make his rivals think he couldn't cope, but when he drew close to Tom he could see that it wasn't. A little further up he was even worse, unable to concentrate and wondering about all over the road in a place without barriers to prevent a plunge over the side. At this point, Taylor and team mechanic Harry Hall still didn't doubt Tom would make it up the mountain and were far more concerned about what he might do to try to make up the time he was losing once he was over the summit - he'd long ago earned a reputation for being a lunatic descender, apparently relishing the thrill of high-speed corners that would have had most other riders reducing their speed by half. Then he crashed.

Hall was the first one to reach him. "That's it for you, Tom," he said, preparing himself for the emotional outpouring that was sure to come when the rider sat out the remainder of the stage in the team car, following his comrades. But Tom wanted to go on. Both men wished later that they'd stopped him.

For a man suffering as Tom was, he made it a very long way - it's 5.35km along the road and not far from 400m upward (which is an average gradient of 7.5%, not too bad for a professional cyclist - but as Géminiani knew and so many have found out, Ventoux is different) to the place where he fell for the second time. This time he wasn't going on, though he didn't know it because he was already unconscious, his hands locked in a deathgrip to the bars and his legs still trying to pedal. Hall was first to him again and said later that he knew it was too late as soon as he got there. With the help of another mechanic, Ken Ryall, they prised his hands loose and laid him down at the side of the road. One of the Tour's police outriders summoned Dr. Dumas, who was there in moments. He, his deputy and a nurse took turns administering heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and oxygen until the helicopter arrived and took him to hospital, where he was declared dead. His last words, spoken as Hall reached him, were not "Put me back on my bike!" - that was made up by a journalist who wasn't there. Hall and Taylor say they were "Go on! Go on!" What he meant by that we'll never know, but the most obvious explanation is that he thought he was still riding.

The Simpson memorial, Mont Ventoux

The cause of death was given as a heart attack but Dumas, knowing that there was more to it than that and realising that Tom had bequeathed him a chance to prevent more stupid deaths, refused to sign the death certificate until an approved poisons expert had carried out an autopsy. Five days later, it confirmed that he had been taking the amphetamines that were also found in the pockets of his jersey - the drugs had stopped him being able to know when his body was unable to take any more, so that he carried on until he destroyed himself. Tom' story has become one of professional cycling's most-told; the memorial on the mountain where he died is a place of pilgrimage for cyclists from around the world. He was enormously popular both with British fans and those from abroad, as such he did not die in vain: thanks to Dumas, his death was the wake-up call that alerted the world to the prevalence and dangers of doping and forced organisers to begin to consider ways to control it.

When Cavendish was awarded an MBE by the Queen following his World Championship victory, Tom was remembered also - the honour was bestowed on the 74th anniversary of his birth.

Laurent Jalabert
Laurent Jalabert, born in Mazamet on this day in 1968, is a retired French cyclist and one of the few to have become a well-known character among the non-cycling public outside the cycling nations of France, Italy, Spain and the Benelux. As a result, it frequently comes as a surprise to many when they learn that Jaja never won cycling's most famous race, the Tour de France. However, stage wins on Bastille Day in 1995 and 2001 earned him the thanks of French fans, restoring to them some of the pride lost during the long years since Bernard Hinault last took overall Tour victory.

The outcome of The Policeman's Crash

Jalabert - whose nickname Jaja came into being because he continued drinking wine when he became professional (it's slang for a glass of wine) - began racing with the Toshiba team in 1989, having come to their attention due to his rocket-like sprinting capabilities. He moved on to ONCE in 1992 and would remain with them for nine seasons. Having won a wide variety of stages and one-day races, he was involved in a dramatic crash in the sprint finish of Stage 1 at the 1994 Tour de France when a policeman's love for the sport got the better of his common sense and caused him to step into the road, where Belgian rider Wilfried Nelisson and Jalabert piled straight into him - an incident that has gone down into cycling history, known as The Policeman's Crah. The policeman was thrown backwards into the crowd and Nelissen concussed. Jalabert was most injured, requiring reconstructive surgery to repair his smashed teeth and face.

Sylvie, Jalabert's wife to whom he is still married, was understandably concerned that her husband had been so badly hurt in such an unpredictable accident. He promised her that he would find a way to continue racing that didn't require him to be in the high-speed tussle of a final sprint. Thus began his transformation into one of the finest all-rounders of his generation, a change that turned him from a sprinter able to grab glory in individual sprints to a rider who had a real chance at topping general classifications. Just a year later, he proved his new status at the Vuelta a Espana when he won the Points classification, the King of the Mountains and the General Classification - the trifecta, the only man to have done so in the Vuelta and an honour he shares in the Grand Tours with only Tony Rominger and the legendary Eddy Merckx. In that same Vuelta, he cemented his popularity among fans by allowing a little-known German rider named Bert Dietz to win the sought-after summit finish at Sierra Nevada: Dietz had ridden much of the race in a solo break but, after chasing for many kilometres, Jalabert caught him on the mountain. The outcome of the stage was, apparently, settled - but then Jaja was seen to hold back, refusing to overtake. "I never thought we'd catch him, and when I saw he was ready to drop I felt sorry for him," he later told reporters.

Jaja
(image credit: Cycling Art)

His generosity was repaid in good fortune, because in the coming years he won  string of races including prestigious events such as the Giro di Lombardia (1997), Paris–Nice (1995, 1996, 1997), the Classique des Alpes (1996, 1998), Milano-Torino (1997), the Vuelta a Asturias (1998), the Tour de Romandie (1999), the Tour Méditerranéen (2000), the Clásica de San Sebastián (2001, 2002) and many others before retiring after 14 years at the top. He has continued in sport since, becoming a consultant for Look who had used their experience as a ski manufacturer to develop clipless pedals and move into the bike market and acting as a commentator for French television - he can often be seen at the Tour providing race reports from the back of one of the motorbikes that follow the peloton. He also competes in triathlon and has entered numerous Ironman events, at which he unsurprisingly excels in the cycling sections - in the 2007 Swiss Ironman, he was in 966th place after the swimming section, then rose through 857 places in the cycling section to put himself into 91st overall. He also runs and has completed several marathons - something else that has stood him in good stead for triathlon, of course; in that same Swiss Ironman, he rose another 69 places during the running section.

Maurice Garin in 1897

Maurice Garin stripped of Tour win
On this day in 1904, four months after the end of the race, the Union Velocipedique de France announced that it would be stripping Maurice Garin of his Tour de France win and banning him for two years as part of its disciplinary action against 30 riders found to have cheated. Second place Lucien Pothier was also disqualified, as were several other riders, allowing Henri Cornet (real name Henri Jardry)  to become the youngest winner in Tour history at 19 (Henri Paret, at 50 the oldest rider to have completed a Tour, also rode that year). Such were the severity of the punishments that some historians have suggested that riders were not banned for taking trains, as is the official reason, but due to a major scandal that was covered up; this theory has been fueled by research carried out by Jason Jellick, who argues that riders would not have been able to take trains and finish when and where they did (but does not suggest that any scandal took place) and by the fact that official records have vanished.

Garin had also won the first Tour in 1903, but spectators claimed to have seen him take a train rather than ride one stage the following year - he denied doing so at the time, but admitted it in old age according to a man who had once run errands for his garage and later ended up working as the gravedigger and attendant at the Cimetiere Est where Garin was buried in 1957. The organisers, despite suspicions that they had permitted Garin to cheat because his personal sponsor was also a race sponsor, appear to have had grounds to have banned him immediately and would have been keen to do so had not angry spectators been likely to turn into a lynch mob if they'd done so.

In fact, aggression and cheating by spectators had been rife throughout the race that year - they'd felled trees to block riders they disliked and at one point Garin was savagely beaten by a crowd thgat had to be dispersed with pistol shots. This, combined with cheating among the entrants, was sufficient for Henri Desgrange to announce that the 1904 Tour would be the last. Thankfully, he was convinced to run the event again the following year with different, stricter rules.

Knud Enemark Jensen
Knud Enemark Jensen, born in Århus, Denmark on this day in 1930, achieved cycling fame in the very worst way possible - he was one of the earliest cyclists whose death was connected to doping when he collapsed in the 42C heat and fractured his skull during the team time trial event on the 26th of August at the 1960 Olympics. He went into a coma and died a few hours later in hospital.

Witnesses claimed that Jensen had swallowed eight pills believed to be phenylisopropylamine, an amphetamine-like drug, and another fifteen containing amphetamine and caffeine in the run-up to the race. His trainer initially said that he had administered Roniacol (nicotynol alcohol), a vasodilator, to the team but formally retracted his statement soon after. An autopsy confirmed the presence of both Roniacol and amphetamines in his body, but doctors concluded that his collapse had been caused by the heat rather than the drugs and his family were awarded one million lire compensation.

There are obvious comparisons between the deaths of Jensen and the British rider Tom Simpson, with whom he shared his birthday. Jensen's death encouraged the International Olympic Committee to accept that there was a problem with doping in sport and to establish a medical council in 1967, the year that Simpson died. Anti-doping controls would be put into place the following year, paving the way for similar controls to be introduced at the Tour de France and other races.

Pierrick Fédrigo, a French rider born in Marmande on this day in 1978, has been National Champion (2005) and has won the Tour du Limousin twice (2004, 2006), the Four Days of Dunkirk (2005), the Critérium International (2010) and stages at the Critérium du Dauphiné (Stage 6, 2011) and Tour de France (Stage 14, 2006, Stage 9, 2009, Stage 16, 2010, Stage 15, 2012). In 2013, he recorded very good results in all of his early season races and won Paris-Camembert. As a result, he probably feels a little disappointed that he is chiefly famous - and most likely to be remembered - for his nose, a prominence that gave rise to his nickname "le Nez de Marmande" and which is best described as "splendid."

Born in Rabat, Morroco on this day in 1922, Custodio Dos Reis had Portuguese nationality but became a French citizen at the age of nine - and turned out to be a  worthwhile catch by France, because he won Stage 14 of the Tour de France in 1950.

Charles Henry Bartlett died on this day in 1968 in Enfield, London. In 1908, he rode 100km in 2h41'48.6" on the track at the Olympics in London and won a gold medal for his achievement. He was born on the 6th of February 1885 in Bermondsey, also in London, making him 85 when he died.

Other cyclists born on this day: Domenico Pozzovivo (Italy, 1982); Arthur Griffiths (Great Britain, 1881); Martin Hvastija (Slovenia, 1969); István Liszkay (Hungary, 1912); Armand Putzeyse (Belgium, 1916, died 2003); Franck Perque (France, 1974); Kyriaki Konstantinidou (Greece, 1984); Andrés Torres (Guatemala, 1966); Álvaro Pachón (Colombia, 1945).

Daily Cycling Facts 29.11.2013

Andre Noyelle, 1952-2003

Belgian cyclist André Noyelle, winner of a gold medal in the Individual Road Race and the Team Road Race at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, was born in Ypres on this day in 1931. Noyelle won the National Military Championship and was second in the Amateur World Championships during the same year that he had his Olympic success, then turned professional with Alcyon-Dunlop in 1953; over the course of his thirteen-year professional career he won numerous stages and one-day events, his most notable results being second at Gent-Wevelgem in 1957, third at Paris-Tours in 1959, third at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and the E3 Harelbeke in 1961. Noyelle died on the 4th of February, 2003.


Cyril Dessel was born on this day in Rive-de-Gier, France, in 1974. He won a silver medal in his National Championships in 2004, then won the Tour Méditerranéen and Tour de l'Ain in 2006 as well as wearing the yellow jersey for one day and finishing 6th overall at that year's Tour de France. He also won Stage 16 at the Tour in 2008.


Becky James

Becky James

Sharing Noyelle's birthday is the Welsh professional track cyclist Rebecca "Becky" Angharad James, born in Abergavenny in 1991. In 2009, Becky won two gold and a silver medal at the European Track Championships, repeating the achievement at the UCI Junior World Championships a month later - when she also set a new flying 200m world record. In 2012, James partnered with Jess Varnish to win the Team Pursuit at the Cali round of the World Cup and won one silver and two bronze medals at the Under-23 European Championships.

James, along with Scottish rider Katie Archibald, was one of the British stars of the 2013 World Track Championships. Competing for the first time at the Worlds, James beat Kristina Vogel 2/1 in the Sprint and Jinjie Gong in the Keirin, winning two gold medals, and won bronze in the Team Sprint and the 500m - she is the first British athelete to win four medals in a single edition of the event. James lists Victoria Pendleton as her hero, and she seems sure to become as much a household name in Britain and abroad.


Urs Zimmerman, born in Mühledorf, Switzerland on this day in 1959, was third place runner-up in the 1986 Tour de France and 1988 Giro d'Italia. In the 1991 Tour de France, riders mounted a 40 minute "no racing" protest to express support for him after he was penalised for driving from one stage town to another rather than flying.

Saturnino Rustrián, born in San José Pinula, won the Vuelta a Guatemala in 1966 and was the first Guatemalan to win against Columbian riders who had dominated the local talent whenever they entered in the past. He is also one of only three cyclists to have won the Vuelta a Costa Rica, established in 1965, on two occasions. At the time of writing he was still racing competitively in local and overseas veteran events.

Ernest Alfred Johnson, who was born in Putney, London and won bronze medals for the team pursuit events at the Olympics in 1932 and 1936, died on this day in 1997, nine days after his 85th birthday.

Other cyclists born on this day: Yauheni Hutarovich (Belarus, 1983); Carlo Legutti (Italy, 1912); Piet van der Touw (Netherlands, 1940); Brahim Ben Bouilla (Morocco, 1959); Enrique Allyón (Peru, 1952); Andy Paulin (USA, 1958); Melesio Soto (Mexico, 1941); J-me Carney (USA, 1968); Robert Baird (Australia, 1942).

Daily Cycling Facts 28.11.2013

Full Tilt by Dervla Murphy -
one of the finest books on
cycle touring ever written.

Happy birthday to the cyclist and writer Dervla Murphy. In 1963, Dervla set off from her home in Ireland astride her Armstrong Cadet and, having faced one of the worst European winters in years, robbers and a would-be rapist (whom she dissuaded using what she calls "unspeakable tactics"), arrived in New Delhi many months later - the first of many adventures. She was born in 1930.

Guy Lapébie, born on this day in 1916 in Saint-Geours-de-Maremne, won two golds and a silver at the 1936 Olympics. He also enjoyed some Tour de France fortune, winning Stage 3 and coming 3rd in the overall General Classification in 1948 and the winning Stage 8 in 1949. He made his biggest impact on the track, however, winning several prestigious six-day races. He was the younger brother of Roger Lapébie who, through a combination of derailleur gears and questionable tactics, won the Tour in 1937, and his son Serge was also a professional cyclist. Guy died on the 8th of March, 2010.

Scott Sunderland, who retired in 2004 after the longest professional career in Australian cycling history, was born in this day in 1966 in Inverell. Scott's first success came as a junior when we won the New South Wales State Championship and, whilst he never quite made it onto the A-list at least partially due to a number of injuries, he has a palmares many riders can only dream about. He later became directeur sportif of CSC, a position he held until 2008 and in which he was instrumental in driving the team towards two consecutive wins in Paris-Roubaix and coached Carlos Sastre to his 2008 Tour de France victory. After leaving CSC, he spent time working for British Cycling until becoming senior directeur sportif with Team Sky in 2010, a role from which he retired in May of the same year after coaching Juan Antonio Flecha to a win at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. Sunderland should not be confused with Australian track cyclist Scott Sunderland, who was born in 1988.

Stephen Roche

Triple Crown winner Stephen Roche
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0) 

The biggest happy birthday for today must surely go to Stephen Roche, the Irish winner of the 1987 Tour de France and the only cyclist other than demigod Eddy Merckx to have won the greatest competition in cycling, The Triple Crown (the Tour, the Giro d'Italia and the Elite Road World Championship in a single year), for which there is no trophy, prize money or official recognition, despite a knee injury that would have ended the career of a lesser man. Roche, born in 1959 in Dundrum, Ireland, was never again a contender for overall victory in the Grand Tours afterwards, but he went on to place 9th in the Giro in 1989 and 1993 and also in the 1992 Tour de France (where he also won Stage 16).

In 1990, Paul Kimmage (a former team mate of Roche at Fagor) published Rough Ride, a warts-and-all account of doping in professional cycling. While Kimmage's admiration for Roche and his achievements is plain to see, he did not pull his punches; as good as accused of cheating, Roche threatened to sue and denied that he had ever doped. Ten years later Italian newspaper La Repubblica published an article in which it was alleged that Francesco Conconi, a doctor who later became notorious as the man who first introduced the cycling world to EPO, had worked with the Carrera team during the time Roche rode for them and had provided him and other riders with the blood-boosting drug; once again the rider denied that he had ever doped and then did so again when the same allegations were made in the Irish Times days later. However, some weeks later an Italian court published the results of an investigation into Conconi's affairs in which it had found evidence that, in the court's opinion, proved that Roche had used EPO in 1993, his final year as a professional rider. Four years later, the presiding judged ruled that due to the statute of limitations neither Roche nor any of his team mates at Carrera would face prosecution.

Roche's brother Lawrence was also a professional cyclist and competed in the 1991 Tour, while his nephew Daniel Martin was the 2008 Irish National Road Race champion. His son, Nicolas, rides with AG2R - his best Grand Tour result to date was 7th overall in the 2010 Vuelta a Espana, his best Tour result was 15th overall in the same year. Stephen is now 52 and runs a hotel he owns in the Antibes.

Other cyclists born on this day: Tim Kennaugh (Isle of Man, 1991); Denis Flahaut (France, 1978); Roberto Vacchi (Sweden, 1965); Albert Byrd (USA, 1915, died 1990); Jack McCullough (Canada, 1949); Preben Lundgren Kristensen (Denmark, 1923, died 1986); Willy Gervin (Denmark, 1903, died 1951); Henrik Salée (Denmark, 1955); Lauri Resik (Estonia, 1969); Juan Carlos Rosero (Ecuador, 1963); Nuno Marta (Portugal, 1976); Tomohiro Nagatsuka (Japan, 1978); Suprovat Chakravarty (India, 1931).

Daily Cycling Facts 27.11.2013

Happy birthday Wendy Houvenaghel!
(image credit: johnthescone CC BY 2.0)

Wendy Houvenaghel
Wendy Houvenaghel, the Northern Irish track cyclist, was born on this day in 1974. Houvernaghel  has won a vast collection of trophies during her illustrious years as a professional including three gold medals in the UCI Track World Championships, four golds in the UCI Track World Cup and a silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Now based in Cornwall, Houvernaghel was interested in running, horse riding and hockey in her youth, only discovering her talent for cycling during her time with the Royal Air Force. Whilst in the RAF, she rose to the rank of Squadron Leader and qualified as a dentist - which would prove handy once she completed her commission as it allowed her to support herself before she gained a professional contract.

She took part in her first race in 2002 at a time when she had little cycling experience, yet one year later she became National Individual Time Trial Champion - a meteoric rise that left the cycling world in no doubt that a serious new talent had arrived and thankful that she had done so just in time for her best years when they could so easily have been swallowed up by military service. In 2004, she won every time trial she entered. However, it seems that now she's well into her late 30s, Houvenaghel's best years are far from behind her - in fact, 2011 was one of her best yet with two gold medals won at the World Track Championships and the Track World Cup (in both cases for the Team Pursuit event), a third gold at the National Circuit Time Trial Championships and a new 25 Mile Time Trial national record plus victory at the National Individual Time Trial Championship then in 2012 she on silver in the 3km Pursuit at the World Track Championships and gold at the Celtic Chrono, the Chrono Champenois (beating second place Carmen Small by 1'26") and successfully defended her National Individual Time Trial Champion title.

Considering her continuing success, fans were surprised when Houvenaghel was not selected for the Pursuit team at the 2012 Olympics; she later claimed that she had been promised a place on the squad based on good performances during training and had been passed over in favour of Joanna Rowsell despite Rowsell being ill a few hours before the race.

Julien Moineau

Moineau in the 1935 Tour de France

Julien "The Sparrow" Moineau was born on this day in 1903. That he was a talented rider was evident as far back as 1924 when he won Paris-Le Havre and the Circuit de Bourgogne, victories he followed up by winning Stage 14, coming 3rd on Stage 15 and 2nd on Stage 19 at the Tour de France the next year. He won Stage 8 and came 2nd on Stage 13 the year after that, too, demonstrating that he was undoubtedly a man with impressive Tour ability.

More successes came in the following years: the Circuit du Forez, three Paris-Limoges, Paris-Tours - a palmares with of any professional would very rightfully feel proud. However, Moineau will be forever remembered not for these victories, but for the way in which he won his last Tour stage, Stage 17 from Pau to Bordeaux in 1935.

It wasn't an enormously long stage by the standards of the day, being 224km (four days previously, they'd faced a mountain stage more than 100km longer). It was also flat and came right after a rest day - in other words, it shouldn't have been difficult. But, when the riders woke that morning, it was already hot and the humidity was high: one of those sultry days that the French term a canicule that sometimes settle over south-western France like a hot, sticky blanket when the cooling winds stop blowing from the High Pyrenees and the Atlantic and the air gets hotter and hotter without respite until eventually, blessedly, the wind starts up again.

Moineau - perhaps the most
popular cheat in cycling history

Understandably, nobody was much in the mood for racing and the peloton was ambling along at 20km; riders wanting to simply get through the day with as little effort as possible. Then, the leaders saw what they probably first assumed to be a mirage, either that or an early symptom of heatstroke: just up ahead, an entire village had turned out with trestle tables, erecting them at the side of the road and loading them up with abundant quantities of delicious, ice-cold beer for their intrepid heroes. Astounded by the hospitality of the local fans, the riders were of course more than happy to stop for a break, all of them thankful for the relief the refreshing liquid brought to their parched throats. Even after they'd all had as much as they wanted there was plenty of beer left, so they loaded themselves up with as many bottles as they could fit into their jersey pockets before thanking their benefactors and heading back onto the road.

They probably didn't even realise that one rider hadn't stopped and was now far away in front of them. Moineau, who had rolled up to the start line that morning with a 52-tooth chainring - in those days, when the Tour was more a contest of endurance rather than speed, unheard-of off the track and a seemingly insane choice in that terrible heat - had set the whole thing up at his own expense, and the "generous villagers" were in fact a group of his friends.

Strangely, Moineau was not penalised for his cheating. Perhaps the organisers thought that the other riders were thankful for a free drink on such a horrible stage and hence didn't  resent his stage win.

Edita Pučinskaitė
(image credit: Yay Cycling)

Edita Pučinskaitė, born on this day in 1975 in Naujoji Akmenė, is the most successful female cyclist to have yet come out of Lithuania. Her best years have been 2005 with stage wins at Giro del Trentino Alto Adige - Südtirol, the Thüringen-Rundfahrt der Frauen, the Tour de l'Ardèche and the Vuelta Ciclista Femenina a el Salvador and overall victory at the Berner Rundfahrt, Tour de l'Ardèche and Vuelta Ciclista Femenina a el Salvador and 2007 when she won the Berner Rundfahrt, the Giro del Trentino Alto Adige - Südtirol and, her best result so far - the Giro Donne.

Thea van Rijnsoever, Dutch National Champion in 1983 and 1985, was born on this day in 1956.

Iván Gutiérrez
(image credit: Adam Baker CC BY 2.0)

José Iván Gutiérrez Palacios, more commonly known as Iván Gutiérrez, was born in the Cantabrian town of Hinojedo on this day in 1978. While he's been highly successful in mass-start road races including a win at the National Championship in 2010, the Gran Premio de Llodio, the Giro dell'Emilia, the Tour Méditerranéen, the Eneco Tour of the Benelux and many others, he is primarily known as a time trial rider. His first big win in the discipline was the Under-23 World Championship in 2002 and he has gone on to be National Champion five times (2001, 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2007) along with winning the time trials at a series of stage races including the Vuelta a Murcia (2004and 2006) and the Vuelta a Burgos (2006). Like a surprisingly high number of time trial specialists (considering the differences between the two disciplines), Gutiérrez can also climb when required to do so - he won the King of the Mountains at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2005.

Oksana Grishina, silver medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympics for the Track Sprint, was born on this day in 1968.

Rudolf Mitteregger, winner of the Tour of Austria in 1970, 1974 and 1977, was born on this day in Gaal, Austria, in 1944.

Theo Eltink, like his nation's current most famous cyclist Marianne Vos and many others, showed promise as a speed skater before deciding to concentrate on cycling. He was born in Westelbeers, Eindhoven, Netherlands, in 1981 and would later become a member of Rabobank TT3, a team that served as a training ground for young riders hoping to be offered a contract with the professional Rabobank team. While still an amateur, he won stages at the Tour de l'Avenir and Tour des Pyrénées, also taking a bronze medal in the Under-17 class at the 1997 National Cyclo Cross Championships and then a silver in the Under-23 class in 2003. The team gave him his chance to turn professional in 2005 and he entered his first Grand Tour - the Giro d'Italia, at which he managed an impressive 29th in the overall General Classification. At the Giro the following year he was 53rd, but upped his best stage result from tenth to fifth, then managed an eighth place stage finish and 24th overall at the Vuelta a Espana. Oddly, he never did better than that - he was 95th at the Vuelta in 2007, 77th at both the Giro and the Vuelta in 2008, after which he left Rabobank and moved to Skil-Shimano. Following a year without good results, the team did not renew his contract and, unable to secure a position elsewhere, he retired.

On this day in 2006 in the early hours of the morning, Spanish rider Isaac Gálvez López died of injuries sustained when he hit crash barriers following a collision with Dimitri De Fauw during the Six Days of Ghent the previous day. He was 31 years old and had been married for three weeks. De Fauw suffered terrible depression after the accident and committed suicide on November the 6th, 2009.

Francesco Chicci
(image credit: johnthescone CC BY 2.0)

Happy birthday Francesco Chicci, stage winner at the Four Days of Dunkirk, Tour of Britain, Tour of Denmark, Tour of Qatar and Tour of California and Under-23 World Road Race champ in 2002. He was born in Camaiore, Italy, in 1980.

Jan Schur, son of the famous East German cyclist Gustav-Adolf Schur, was born on this day in 1962 in Leipzig. Now retired, he represented his country in the 1988 Olympics.

Other births: Carl Lorenz (Germany, 1913, died 1993); Ian Banbury (Great Britain, 1957); Dick Ploog (Australia, 1936, died 2002); Juan Brotto (Argentina, 1939, died 2009); Arnulfo Pozo (Ecuador, 1945); Batsükhiin Khayankhyarvaa (Mongolia, 1958); Brian Keast (Canada, 1953); Jonathan Garrido (Spain, 1973); Sirop Arslanian (Lebanon, 1966).

Daily Cycling Facts 26.11.2013

Anna Millward
Anna Millward, an Australian cyclist born in this day in 1971, came to the sport late after spending much of her early life studying science and law, for which she has an honours degree; it was only when she bought a bike to travel to and from university every day that she realised how much she enjoyed cycling. Cycling is as good way to make new friends as it is a way to keep fit, so she soon met other women who shared her love of the sport and with them she took part in Great Victorian Bike Ride, a strictly recreational and non-competitive organised cycling event that, like all events of its type, inevitably features hundreds of unofficial, inpromptu races and revealed that she could ride fast. Soon afterwards, she entered a race organised by her local club and won it.

Anna Millward
(image credit: James F. Perry CC BY-SA 3.0)

By 1996, Millward was ranked 18th in the UCI World Listings and was selected for her national Olympic team. She also won the prestigious Women's Challenge race in America. One year later, she was National Time Trial Champion. In 1998, she won the Points Classification at the Giro d'Italia Femminile, the Discovery Channel Women's Classic and the Commonwealth Games time trial. Then in 1999, the results really started coming in: by the end of the season, she'd won silver medals in the road race and the time trial at the World Championships as well as the Road World Cup, the GP Tell Cup, the New York Women's Challenge, the Athens Twilight Criterium, Boulder-Roubaix, the Sea Otter Classic and several other races along with stages at many of these and more. She set a new Hour Record in 2000 and won the Women's Challenge General Classification while also coming second on Points and third in the Mountains, then became National Time Trial Champion.

In 2001, she was ranked the best female cyclist in the world in the UCI rankings. However, she later tested positive for lidocaine, a drug banned under UCI rules. She voluntarily stepped down from racing during the investigation and explained at the court hearing that the positive test had been caused by an ointment used to relieve insect bites during the Tour de l'Aude, claiming that the ointment had been supplied to her as part of the official, approved medical kit provided by the Australian Institute of Sport. Further investigation revealed that this had indeed been the case and that had she ticked a box declaring she'd used it on a drugs test form, the result would not have been recorded as positive. As a result, she was given a full exoneration and was able to continue racing.

Marshall Taylor

On this day in Indiana, 1878, Marshall "Major" Taylor was born. Taylor's cycling prowess was evident from an early age - he won his first race aged just 13. Two years later he beat the Indianapolis track 1 mile record for amateurs: however, this achievement was not celebrated. In fact, the 15-year-old boy was booed by spectators and then immediately banned from the track, all because he was black. The following year, he competed in and won a 75 mile race in which he faced racist taunts and threats of violence from both fans and other riders and decided as a result to relocate to Massachusetts, that state being known to be a little less backward.

Taylor began a professional career in 1896 and rapidly earned a reputation as "the most formidable rider in America," winning several races both at home and in Europe where he met with less prejudice, especially among the French who took him to heart. Taylor retired at the age of 32, listing racism as the main reason for his decision. Today, there is a velodrome named after him in Indianapolis.

Albert Bourlon
Born in Sancergues on this day in 1916, Albert Bourlon turned professional in 1937 and enjoyed his first professional victory, at Châtellerault; a year later he rode his first Tour de France and finished in 35th place, 2h18' after winner Gino Bartali.

While some races continued during the Second World War, professional cycling largely came to a standstill. Bourlon joined the Army, but was captured and imprisoned by the Nazis. Known to be a Communist (he'd been politicised when he was involved in organising strikes during his time working for Renault before his cycling career) he was in very grave danger of being executed. He attempted to escape from prison three times, eventually doing so in 1944 and making his way to Romania, which had been liberated from Nazi control by the Soviet Red Army only a short while previously; remarkably, he won the Boekarest-Ploesti-Boekarest race that same year.

When the War ended, Bourlon returned to France and later entered the 1947 Tour, the first time the race had been held since 1939. At the start of Stage 14 he escaped the peloton and then successfully stayed away for the remainder of the 253km parcours, winning the stage - the longest successful breakaway in Tour history.

Bourlon died at Bourgues in Cher, where there is a velodrome named in his honour, on the 16th of October 2013. Aged 96, he was one of the oldest surviving Tour riders.

Ivan Basso
Happy birthday to Ivan Basso, born in Gallarate, Italy on this day in 1977. Basso is considered to be one of the best climbers of his generation and performs sufficiently well elsewhere to also be ranked among the best stage racers; a fact that has seen him twice win the Giro d'Italia.

Basso, left, with Armstrong on Tourmalet at the 2004 Tour

During childhood, Basso lived nextdoor to Claudio Chiappucci and must have been at least partly inspired to follow a career in cycling by him; his first noteworthy results were second place in the Junior World Championships of 1995 and victory in the Under-23 Worlds three years later, the latter bringing him offers of professional contracts that he could not accept as his parents allowed him to race only after he'd promised he would complete his academic studies first. He earned a degree in technical geometry, then turned professional with Riso Scotti-Vinavil in 1999 and rode in - but did not finish - the Giro d'Italia; in 2000 he finished it in 52nd place and picked up his first professional victories when he won Stages 1 and 3b at the Regio Tour. In 2001, riding for Fassa Bortolo, Basso made his Tour de France debut having won Stage 1 at the Tour Méditerranéen and taking second place at La Flèche Wallonne earlier in the season, he finished top ten on two stages before a crash whilst descending a mountain in Stage 8 put him out of the race. The following year he was third at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and completed the Tour in 11th place, winning the Youth classification. His seventh place result in the 2003 Tour was made all the more remarkable due to the fact that he received virtually no help from his team, which was riding in support of Alessandro Petacchi and was then left with only two team mates when the rest of the squad contracted food poisoning and abandoned. This, combined with personality clashes with team manager Giancarlo Ferretti, encouraged him to leave Fassa Bortolo for CSC in 2004; he rode for them until the end of 2006 and, in his first season with his new team, he won Stage 12 at the Tour and was third overall. Despite the team's success, courtesy of Basso and others, it suffered financial hardships after the 2004 season that became so serious manager Bjarne Riis gave the go-ahead for his riders to accept with his blessing offers of contracts from other teams. Basso was offered one, with a bigger salary, by US Postal where he'd have ridden with Lance Armstrong, but decided to turn it down and remain with Riis; he suffered personal tragedy early the following year when his mother died of cancer and set out to win the Giro so that he could dedicate the victory to her memory, but was put out of contention by illness and the Stelvio Pass but won Stages 17 and 18. Later that year he was the only rider able to stay with Armstrong at the Tour, once again finishing in second place.

During the 2005 Tour, Basso signed a new three-year contract with CSC, then in 2006 he won the Critérium International. The team won the team time trial at the Giro and he won Stages 8 and 20 before taking first place in the General Classification and second in the King of the Mountains and the Points competition. He planned to take part in the Tour as well but, the day before the race was due to start, organisers called a press conference and announced that several riders including Basso would not be permitted to ride due to implication in the Operacion Puerto doping case. Bjarne Riis stated that unless Basso could beyond doubt that he was innocent and had no links to Eufemiano Fuentes, the doctor at the centre of the investigation, the rider would not be able to continue with CSC; rumours then emerged suggesting that if found not guilty Basso would join US Postal. On the 18th of October that year, his contract with CSC was terminated; nine days later he was cleared of doping when investigators could not find sufficient evidence to link him to Fuentes and on the 9th of November Basso revealed that he would indeed be joining US Postal, now renamed Discovery Channel.

Five months later, on the 24th of April in 2007, Italian Olympic Council CONI reopened its investigation into Basso and within a week Discovery announced that his contract would be terminated, though following consultation with team management he was allowed to leave voluntarily on account of "personal reasons" relating to the case. Then he admitted that although he had not doped, he had established links with Dr. Fuentes with the intention of doping; on the 7th of May he made his official confession to CONI, acknowledged that the intention to cheat was no better than cheating and accepted a two-year ban with the period during which he had been suspended from competition while riding for CSC taken into account.

When his ban came to an end on the 24th of October 2008, Basso signed a new contract with Liquigas. His first race was the Japan Cup, at which he came third. Early in 2009 he came fifth overall at the Tour de San Luis, then won Tirreno-Adriatico before marking his return to the Grand Tours with fifth place at the Giro and fourth at the Vuelta a Espana. In the Giro of 2010 he was first over the finish line of Stage 15 at the summit of Mont Zoncalan, then took the race leadership from David Arroyo in Stage 19 and went on to win the General Classification and second place in the King of the Mountains. He had hoped to stand a chance of winning the Tour de France too, a feat achieved by only seven men (including threeo who are usually listed as the two greatest cyclists in history: Fausto Coppi and Bernard Hinault, both of whom did it twice, and Eddy Merckx who managed to do it three times); however, unlike Coppi, Hinault and Merckx, he proved to be only human after all - the Giro had taken too much out of him and, having failed to win a single stage at the Tour, he finished in a disappointing 32nd place. In 2011, aged 33 and realising that his best years must surely soon come to an end, he elected to stay away from the Giro and concentrate on the Tour; he initially finished in eighth place but was subsequently upgraded to seventh following Alberto Contador's controversial ban following a positive result for bronchodilator Clenbuterol. In 2012 he again rode both races, taking fifth place at the Giro (where he finished Stage 17 with the same time as winner Joaquim Rodriguez) and 25th at the Tour, then finished the season with a second victory at the Japan Cup. In 2014, he was fourth at the Settimana Ciclistica Internazionale Coppi-Bartali, eighth at the Tour of Poland, tenth at the Vuelta Ciclista a Burgos, took four top ten stage finishes at the Vuelta a Espana and finished the Tour of Beijing in ninth place overall.

Basso in 2011

Basso, now aged 36, has not yet indicated when he plans to retire from competition and has confirmed that he will ride for Cannondale in 2014. However, he has invested part of the money he has earned from and won in the sport by purchasing a large tract of land near Gallarate, which he has begun to develop into a blueberry farm. The farm is named Il Borgo, "The Village," and with it he hopes to be able to provide secure, well-paid employment for locals in what he believes will be Europe's unstable economic future. His fans argue that a man can be forgiven his youthful intention to cheat when he acts as altruistically as that.

Note: Following an investigation into doping at US Postal in the late 1990s and first decade of the 21st Century, Lance Armstrong was stripped of all his seven consecutive Tour de France victories. Unlike the Tours won by Contador during the time for which he was banned, the riders who finished after Armstrong will not be upgraded and the Tours between 1999 and 2005 will remain without an official winner; this is at least in part because the majority of those riders to have come second and third also later fell foul of anti-doping tests and, as a result, Basso's second place result in 2005 (third place Jan Ullrich was also disqualified, as was sixth place Levi Leipheimer) will not be declared a victory.


In 2008, the Sports Journalist's Association of Great Britain named Chris Hoy Sportsman of the Year - the second cyclist to receive the honour after Tommy Simpson in 1965.

Isaac Galvez, 1975-2006

On this day in 2006, Spanish rider Isaac Gálvez López suffered internal bleeding after he hit crash barriers following a collision with Dimitri De Fauw during the Six Days of Ghent, dying in the early hours the following day. He was 31 years old and had been married for three weeks. De Fauw suffered terrible depression after the accident and committed suicide on November the 6th, 2009.

Arthur Vichot was born on this day in 1988. Vichot's early career suggested great things lay ahead, and in 2012 he won a superb solo victory on Stage 5 at the 2012 Critérium du Dauphiné when he rode away from the group with which he'd climbed the Col de la Colombière and crossed the line 26" ahead. In 2013, Vichot won the National Road Race Championships and came 18th at the World Championships. The race he most enjoyed, meanwhile, must surely have been the 2010 Tour Down Under when he became subject to a tradition unique to the race in which fans choose a non-English speaking lowly domestique and treat him as though he is the greatest cyclist to have ever lived, painting his name in huge letters on the roads, cheering him whenever he appears and gathering in huge crowds outside his hotels. Vichot's uncle, Frédéric, won Stage 12 at the 1981 Vuelta a Espana and Stages 15 and 16 at the 1984 and 1985 editions of the Tour de France respectively.

Vincent Jérôme, born on this day in 1984 in Château-Gontier, is a rider who came to attention when he won the Under-23 Paris-Tours in 2004. In 2011, with Europcar, he won the Tro-Bro Léon, a race in Brittany that is sometimes known as Le Petit Paris–Roubaix on account of the harsh conditions and rough roads the cyclists face, and he remains with Europcar as of the close of the 2013 season. In 2012 he was 27th at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, 15th at the Tour of Luxembourg and sixth at Paris-Corrèze, and in 2013 he was 19th at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, second at the Ronde de l'Oise and 13th at the Tour of Luxembourg.

Other cyclists born on this day: Anton Hansen (Norway, 1886, died 1970); Peter Doyle (Ireland, 1945); Kevin Brislin (Australia, 1942); David Scarfe (Australia, 1960); Cédric Ravanel (France, 1978); Jan Smyrak (Poland, 1950); Colin Fitzgerald (Australia, 1955); Doug Ryder (South Africa, 1971);  Todd McNutt (Canada, 1964); Ab Sluis (Netherlands, 1937); Dino Verzini (Italy, 1943).

Daily Cycling Facts 25.11.2013

Romain Bellenger, 1894-1981

Romain Bellenger, the French cyclist who came third in the 1923 Tour de France, died at the age of 87 on this day in 1981. Bellenger was a large man for his day and physically strong, a fact that in view of his palmares suggests that he may have been one of the many potential winners had he not have suffered in the mountains. In fact, he was the leading Frenchman in the 1921 (though never the race leader - Leon Scieur of Belgium had taken the yellow jersey from his countryman Louis Mottiat after the first stage and kept it for the remainder of the Tour). Unfortunately, the water from a mountain spring at which he had stopped to drink was too cold for his overheated body, causing crippling stomach spasms and he dropped several places while recovering. The water, it seems, wasn't only cold - not long afterwards, he developed chronic diarrheoa and was forced to abandon on the Col de Portet d'Aspet.

Angelino Soler, born in Alcazar in Spain on this day in 1939, was the winner of the 1961 Vuelta a Espana, during which he won Stage 6 and shared victory in the Stage 1a Team Time Trial. In 1962, he won Stages 3, 16 and 18 and the King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia.

Dutch track cyclist Petrus "Piet" Ikelaar, a bronze medalist at the 1920 Olympic Games, died on this day in 1992. He was 96 years old.

Lene Byberg
(image credit: MTBRaceNews)

Lene Byberg, born on this day in 1982, is one of the few cyclists to have given up road racing in favour of mountain biking (the other way round, meanwhile, is very common). She has competed in both disciplines in the Olympics and won a silver medal in the 2009 World Cross Country Championships.

Steven de Jongh, born in Alkmaar in the Netherlands on this day in 1973, was a professional rider first with TVM from 1995, moving to Rabobank until 2005 and then spending his final three seasons prior to retirement with Quick Step. He became National Under-23 Road Race Champion in 1995 and won a stage at the Tour of Poland that same year, then showed his skill in criteriums before winning a stage and the General Clasification at the Postgirot Open (Tour of Sweden) in 1998. He would return to the same race in 2002, the last year it was held, and won two stages. For the remainder of his career he concentrated chiefly on one-day races, winning Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, the Nokere Koerse semi-classic and others, adding a stage win at the Tour of Qatar in his penultimate professional career. In 2010, he became directeur sportif at Team Sky. "The tension you experience during races is greater in the team car than it ever was on the road," he says.

Kristjan Koren, born on this day in 1986, is a Postojna-born professional whose best results to date have been the Slovenian National Championship in 2007 and two stages in the 2009 Under-27 Giro d'Italia. He rode his first Tour de France in 2010. In 2011, Koren came 25th at Gent-Wevelgem and performed well throughout the season, marking himself out as a rider to watch; in 2012 he won a stage at the Tour of Slovenia and managed a few decent stage finishes at the Tour de France before coming 17th at the World Individual Time Trial Championship, and in 2013 he was 20th at the E3 Harelbeke. He joined Liquigas-Doimo in 2010, and he will remain with the team - now known as Cannondale - in 2014.

Charles Albert Brécy raced at turn of the 20th Century, as an individual and later as a professional. He died on this day in 1904 after a crash at the Parc des Princes velodrome managed by Henri Desgrange.

Other births: Carlo Westphal (Germany, 1985); Rudolf Maresch (Austria, 1934); Ivan Kučírek (Czechoslovakia, 1946); Luis Zárate (Mexico, 1940); Stéphane Operto (Monaco, 1966); Louis Verreydt (Belgium, 1950); David Brink (USA, 1947); Manon Jutras (Canada, 1967); Dalbir Singh Gill (India, 1936).

Daily Cycling Facts 24.11.2013

Happy birthday to Thomas Ziegler, born on this day in 1980 in Arnstadt. The German professional announced his retirement from racing when he was just 27 and opened a bike shop in Hanover.

Luis León Sánchez
(image credit: Astana-Würth)

Luis León Sánchez Gil
Luis León Sánchez, who born in Mula, Spain, on this day in 1983, began his career with Liberty Seguros-Würth and immediately demonstrated ability in time trials. In recent years, he has also developed his climbing ability, enabling him to ride well in hilly races such as Stage 9 of the 2011 Tour de France. He rose to international prominence when he won the General Classification and young riders' competition at the Tour Down Under in 2005, a race at which he came 2nd overall in 2006, winning the Youth classification at Paris-Nice too.

In 2008, he became Spanish National Time Trial Champion for the first time. He would lose the title the following year, but then regained it in 2010 and 2011. He won his first stage at the Tour de France in 2009 while racing with Caisse d'Epargne - the mountainous Stage 8 which included the highest paved road in the Pyrenees, the 2,400m Port d'Envalira. He would then confirm his status as a force to be reckoned with in Grand Tours by finishing the Vuelta a Espana in 10th place overall and the Tour in 11th the following season. Now with Rabobank, he finished the 2011 Tour of Beijing in 6th place - his Grand Tour final results, however, were not so impressive, with 53rd in the Vuelta and, despite the Stage 9 victory, 57th in the Tour. In 2012, Sánchez was selected to compete for Spain at the Olympic Games and was expected to do well in the Individual Time Trial; however, fortune was not on his side - his chain came off at the brginning of the race as he descended that start ramp, then a second mechanical problem later on ruined any chances he'd had of making up time. He was luckier later in the season with a well-earned and spectacular victory at the Clásica de San Sebastián following a solo breakaway in the final few kilometres.

In 2012, Rabobank decided in the wake of Lance Armstrong's exposure as - and, eventually, admission that he was - a drugs cheat that it no longer wished to be associated with professional cycling (following some consideration and more than a little persuasion by Marianne Vos, who the bank wanted to continue sponsoring, it decided it would continue to support its women's team), but agreed to honour contracts and pay salaries until the end of the season. Thus, the Rabobank team became Blanco until new sponsor Belkin took over. Sánchez remained, but in February 2013 the team's managers announced that Sánchez had been suspended pending an investigation into links between him and Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, the Spanish doctor whose clinic had been found to contain a large amount of EPO, human growth hormone, various steroids and no fewer than 186 bags of blood, each bearing a coded name, thus sparking off Operacion Puerto - the second international scandal to hit cycling in less than a decade (it should be remembered, though, that not all of the blood belonged to cyclists. Fuentes says that if he named names, Spain would be stripped of its 2010 football World Cup, and that he also worked with tennis players. The team did not say how long the investigation would take, only that the rider was suspended "indefinitely." He was back just weeks later, the investigation having apparently found no evidence against him; returning to competition, he won Stage 5 and came second overall at the Ronde van Belgie, took a silver for the individual time trial and a bronze for the road race at the Nationals and won Stage 3 and finished second overall at the Tour de l'Ain. However, the earlier investigation had not found evidence to clear him of all suspicion - in October, the team announced that his contract would not be renewed for 2014 due to new allegations connecting him to Puerto, and as of his birthday in 2013 he does not have a new contract elsewhere.

León is not his given middle name. He adopted it, at first in honour of his grandfather and later for his brother (also a cyclist, and winner of a silver medal for the road race at the Junior National Championships of 1999) who died in a motorcycle accident. He has one older and one younger brother, both footballers - the younger once played professionally with Rea
l Madrid.

Zimmerman may have been
a little free in what
he  considered "amateur,"
but he was by all accounts
a superb rider and won
more than 1000 races
during his career

The International Cycling Association
On this day in 1892, representatives from Great Britain, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, the USA, Germany, France and Denmark met at the Agricultural Hall in Islington, London, and formed the International Cycling Association - the world's very first cycle racing regulatory body. The meeting had been organised by one Henry Sturmey (who would later join forces with James Archer and begin producing the famous hub gears) in an effort to produce a definition of the term "amateur" which had been widely abused, especially by cyclists traveling from and to overseas - with especial attention paid to one Arthur Augustus Zimmerman, who would become the first ever World Champion the following year and is sometimes called cycling's first superstar. The meeting decided that the the house, furniture, "enough silver plates, medals and jewellery to stock a jewellery store," land, numerous horses and carriages, six pianos and 29 bikes that he had won in races, along with - most crucially - money paid to him by Raleigh in return for appearing in their adverts, was stretching the previous definition of the term somewhat and forced him to declare himself a professional rider. The ICA was effective for just eight years until 1900, when the Union Cycliste Internationale - cycling's governing body to this day - took over due to other nations' disatisfaction at Great Britain entering separate teams for England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and then claiming all medals they won for Great Britain (as a result of this, Britain was not permitted to join the new organisation for some years).

Peter Drobach, 1890-1947

Today is the anniversary of the death of American track cyclist Peter Drobach who died in 1947, the day after his 57th birthday. Drobach specialised in six-day races, winning the Six Days of Buffalo (1910 and 1913), Newark and Indianapolis (both 1913).


On this day in 2007 Sarah Ulmer - the first New Zealand cyclist to win an Olympic gold medal and holder of several world cycling records, formally announced her retirement.


Guido Trentin, now retired, was born on this day in Grandate, Italy, in 1975. Trentin was never really a Grand Tour General Classification contender but could hold his own in the peloton, winning Stage 5 at the 2002 Vuelta a Espana and two more at the 2006 Trofeú Joaquim Agostinho and Tour de Wallonie.


John Wilson, a Scottish rider who represented his country at the 1912 Olympics when England, Scotland and Wales competed as separate nations (see the section on the International Cycling Association, above), died on this day in 1957. He was 81.


On this day in 2011, Martin Reimer - a German rider born the 14th of June in 1987 - announced his retirement. Just 24 at the time, he'd been National Champion and come 3rd overall at the Tour of Britain in 2009 but had not experienced much success afterwards, his best result since then being 2nd in Stage 2 of the 2010 Critérium du Dauphiné.


Other births: Federico Cortés (Argentina, 1937); Carl Sundquist (USA, 1961); Brian Sandy (Great Britain, 1932); Miguel Martorell (Spain, 1937); Heinrich Schiebel (Austria, 1926); Ian Hallam (Great Britain, 1948).