Daily Cycling Facts 28.12.2013

Dave Marsh

Dave Marsh, born on this day in 1894, competed in the 1920 and 1924 Olympics and won the World Amateur Road Race in 1922 when the event was held in Liverpool - British riders also took the silver and bronze medals, thus making it perhaps Britain's most successful day in the history of the competition with the possible exception of 1967 when Graham Webb won the men's competition on the same day that the legendary Beryl Burton won the women's.

Around 1929, the famous Ariel bike manufacturer (inventors of the wire-spoked wheel in 1870, the company was established by William Hillman and James Starley - whose nephew John Kemp Starley invented the Rover Safety Bicycle, a bike with two equal-sized wheels and chain drive that is the ancestor of almost all modern bikes) decided it needed to move into the competition market and approached Marsh for help. Under his direction, the Marsh Model was produced in time for the annual Cycle and Motor Cycle Show with the company using Marsh's fame to advertise the new bike - using one of the bikes, Marsh had beaten the Birmingham-Bristol-Birmingham record by a full 30 minutes and 38 seconds. The bike's spec - 20" frame, lightened fork crown, Bluemel mudguards, lightened lugs, brazed-on fittings, Pelissier brakes, butted tubes, "D to round" forks, grease-gun nipples, Endrick chromium-plated rims, Marsh handlebars on adjustable stem - still sounds impressive to modern ears. The price? £8 and 8 shillings, now £8.40 (€10.03/US$13.40).


Retired Belgian cyclist and 1974 National Road Race Champion Roger Swerts was born in Heusden-Zolder on this day in 1942. In 1972 alone, Swerts won Gent–Wevelgem, Grand Prix de Forli, Grand Prix des Nations, the Trofeo Baracchi and the Tour of Belgium (which he won again in 1974). He also won stages in the Tour de l'Avenir (Stage 10, 1964), Giro d'Italia (Stage 14, 1972) and Vuelta a Espana (Stage 6a, 1973; Prologue, Stages 8 and 12, 1974; Prologue, 1975).

Tomasz Stankiewicz (1st left),
born 1902, murdered by the
Nazis 1940

Tomasz Stankiewicz was born on this day in 1902 in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire, and won a silver medal in the 1924 Olympics Team Pursuit. He was murdered by the Nazis on June the 21st, 1940 in Palmiry - part of the notorious "AB Action" that saw the mass execution of Jews and Polish intellectuals, athletes and politicians in the village and surrounding forest between 1939 and 1943. 2,115 victims have been exhumed and reburied correctly, but it is considered likely that many more skeletons lie undiscovered.

Willy Kemp, 1949 Luxembourg Road Race Champion and winner of Stage 4 in the 1955 Tour de France (60th overall), was born in Kopstal on this day in 1925.

Trevor Bull, British pursuit and sprint rider and a bronze medalist in the 1966 Commonwealth Games, was born on this day in 1944. After retiring, he teamed up with Mick Bennett, a fellow Olympian who won bronze in the 1972 and 1976 Games, to run a successful bike company. Bull died on the 4th of April 2009.

Welsh rider Craig Cooke, who came 2nd in the 2004 Welsh National Cyclo Cross Championships and is the younger brother of multiple World and National Champion Nicole, was born on this day in 1984.

Hernán Llerena, often called the greatest ever Peruvian cyclist, was born today in 1928. He was National Champion three times, won four gold medals in the 1947 Bolivarian Games and came third in the 1951 Pan American Games. He died on the 14th of March 2010, aged 81.

Arthur Eddington, astrophysicist and scientific philosopher, was born on this day in 1882. Whilst not known as a cyclist himself, Eddington invented the Eddington Number which provides a means of quantifying a cyclist's long distance ride achievement usually expressed as a figure for E. As an example, a cyclist whose E Number is 85 will have ridden more than 85 miles on 85 occasions. Raising the value of E becomes increasingly more difficult the higher the value climbs, because whereas a cyclist for whom E=25 will need to only ride more than 25 miles to increase it, a rider for whom E=85 will need to ride more than 85 miles to increase her E Number. He also has a crater on the moon and an asteroid named after him - there aren't many people who can claim that.

Other cyclists born on this day: Stefano Baudino (Italy, 1963), Hans Ledermann (Switzerland, 1957), Inocente Lizano (Cuba, 1940), Dieudonné Ntep (Cameroon, 1959), Jean Patou (Belgium, 1878), Virginio Pizzali (Italy, 1934).

Daily Cycling Facts 27.12.2013

Maurice Dewaele

Born in Lovendegem, Belgium on this day in 1896, Maurice Dewaele (also spelled de Waele) won the 1929 Tour de France despite being so ill before Stage 15 that he fainted and the start had to be delayed for an hour. Though he recovered enough to start, he wasn't well at all and his team had to literally surround him throughout the stage, holding him upright. Remarkably, this allowed him to lose only 2'49" and he stayed in the overall lead; however, he would probably have later lost that lead had Jef Demuysere not have been penalised 25' for taking a drink outside of the permitted areas, a penalty that saw him drop from second to third place.

Tour director Henri Desgrange, who had seen how ill Dewaele was, was furious that the Alcyon team had been able to dominate the race to such an extent that he won it anyway. "My Tour has been won by a corpse!" he proclaimed, insisting that the outcome had been decided by trickery rather than by skill - while Desgrange had never much liked trade teams (because, first of all, he felt that the Tour should be won by heroic solo effort, and secondly because they could join forces in opposition to his decisions, which he really hated), but was probably more furious than he'd otherwise have been because he was hoping for an especially spectacular victory that year when the Tour was reaching a larger than ever audience due to being covered by live radio broadcasts for the first time. As a result, the following year trade teams were banned from the Tour in favour of national teams, which Desgrange believed would prevent the team tactics he had always hated so much. (For a more complete description of the events that led to Dewaele's Tour victory, click here.)


Happy birthday to José Pérez Francés, third place winner in the 1963 Tour de France behind Jacques Anquetil and Federico Bahamontes. He was twice Spanish Road Champion (1960 and 1963), won three stages in the Vuelta a Espana and came 2nd overall in 1968, came 5th overall in the 1968 Giro d'Italia and 2nd in the 1963 Dauphiné Libéré where he won Stage 3.  Francés was born in Peñacastillo, Spain on this day in 1936.

Happy birthday to Pascal Simon who won the maillot jaune following Stage 10 of the 1983 Tour de France. The next day, he crashed and broke his shoulder - yet remained in the race for another six days. They don't make 'em like that anymore. Well, except Jens Voigt perhaps. Simon also won the Tour de l'Avenir in 1981.

Sabine Spitz
(image credit: Graham Dean CC BY 2.0)

Sabine Spitz, the German mountain biker who became World Cross Country Champion in 2003 and won a gold medal in the cross country event at the 2008 Olympics (and a bronze in the same event in 2004), was born on this day 1971 in Herrischried.

Other cyclists born on this day: Klaas Balk (Netherlands, 1948), Dennis Brooks (Cayman Isles, 1976), William Clay (Japan, raced for the USA, 1975), Dashjamtsyn Mönkhbat (Mongolia, 1963), Péter Kusztor (Hungary, 1986), Václav Machek (Czechoslovakia, 1925), Englebert Opdebeeck (Netherlands, 1945), Dimo Angelov Tonchev (Bulgaria, 1953), John Vande Velde (USA, 1949), Marian Turowski (Poland, 1965), Charles Westerholm (Finland, raced for the USA, 1897, died 1977).

Daily Cycling Facts 26.12.2013

Jonathan Tiernan-Locke
(image credit: Rapha-Condor CC)

Jonathan Tiernan-Locke
Happy birthday to Jonathan Tiernan-Locke, born in 1982 in Plymouth. Having started mountain biking during his teenage years, Tiernan-Locke made the transition into road cycling in 2003nand immediately discovered a talent for it - it took him only a few months to progress from 4th to 1st Category and within a year of starting he had been offered a place on the famous amateur French team UV Aube; then within 18 months he was riding for the British Cycling Under-23 squad.

Then, it all went wrong. Shortly after joining CC Étupes, winning the GP de Rocheville and taking top-three places in the first ten races with his new team, his performances dropped dramatically and he fell ill. Doctors diagnosed infectious mononucleosis, and he was entirely unable to race for three years.

In 2008, he came to the end of the long road to recovery and was able to return to racing. Then, during a Surrey League race, a horse knocked him off his bike and he was left with a broken nose and clavicle. He couldn't race again until 2009, but when he could was offered a place with the British Plowman-Craven Madison team... which a few months later closed down, and he had to find work in a bike shop to make ends meet.

Fortunately, that meteoric rise had not been forgotten and Rapha-Condor-Sharp came calling in 2010 with an offer that would include the chance in 2011 to ride the Tour of South Africa where he was eighth overall, the Tour of Korea where he was fourth overall, the Vuelta a Leon where he won Stage 4 and was second overall and the Tour of Britain where he was fifth overall and won the overall King of the Mountains. For 2012, he switched to Endura which, despite holding the same Continental status as Rapha, would be competing at more prestigious continental events. This turned out to be a good move: Tiernan-Locke won Stages 1 and 4 and overall at the Tour Méditerranéen, Stage 2 and overall at the Tour du Haut-Var, Stages 2, 4a and overall at the Tour Alsace and overall at the Tour of Britain, becoming a household name in the process.

Not so very long ago, a British rider who had proved several times over that he had the skill to race with the best in the world would be taking his pick of contracts from French, Belgian and Italian teams before following the David Millar route to his new foreign home, but nowadays they go to Sky. On Sky's website, in the rider profiles, each rider offers "good advice" for fans and hopeful riders. "Stick at it; things don't happen overnight," says Tiernan-Locke.

In September 2013, the day of the World Championships, news broke that "potential discrepancies" had been found on Tiernan-Locke's biological passport. "The analysis of the biological passport of Mr Jonathan Tiernan-Locke by the Experts Panel has demonstrated an anti-doping rule violation (use of prohibited substances and/or methods)," read a statement issued by the UCI on the 17th of December, then went on to explain that the organisation had instructed British Cycling to begin disciplinary proceedings. Tiernan-Locke's agent then released the following statement: "Mr Tiernan Locke vehemently denies the charges brought against him and has informed the UCI that he fully intends to contest them. Mr Tiernan Locke will not ride for Team Sky, attend training camps or undertake any team duties until a decision is made in these proceedings. Mr Tiernan Locke is looking forward to a speedy and just resolution of these unfortunate charges. Until a decision has been reached, Mr Tiernan Locke will make no further comment on the matter."


Lesley Tomlinson, the Derbyshire-born mountain biker who moved to Canada when she was ten  and represented her adopted country in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, was born on this day in 1959. Before going to university, Tomlinson preferred to ride horses; unable to keep one while studying she began long distance running and then took up cycling. Having earned her degree in Business and Economics, she worked in business for several years and rose to a senior marketing position before deciding to have a go at becoming a professional cyclist when she recorded good times in the cycling sections of triathlons in 1988 (her times in the swimming sections, by her own admission, were not so good - "I am an anchor," she says) and, in 1995, she signed her first contract with the Evian Pro MTB team.


British Olympian Ted Piercy was born on his day in Southwark, London in 1882. He competed in the 2km Tandem Sprint during the 1908 Games in London. Ted died on the 3rd of January 1968 aged 85.


Josef Rieder, a competitor in the Individual and Team Road Races in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was born on this day in 1893 in Munich.


Tom Leezer, the Dutch Rabobank rider who was Under-19 National Road Champion in 2003 and led the Mountains classification for two stages at the 2009 Vuelta a Espana, was born on this day in 1985.


Happy birthday Riccardo Magrini, born in Montecatini Terme, Italy in 1954. He won a stage in the 1983 Giro d'Italia and another in the Tour de France in the same year.

Jerry M. Certain's parcel carrier for
bicycles, Pat. No. 639798

On this day in 1899, African-American inventor Jerry M. Certain patented a new design for a "parcel carrier for bicycles" featuring a rigid mesh body fitted to a metal frame. Similar designs are still in production today.


Antonio Miguel, who rode for Spain in the 4km Team Time Trial at the 2008 Games in Beijing, was born today in 1982.


Rudolf Karsch, winner of a bronze medal at the infamous 1936 Olympics in Berlin for the 1km Time Trial, was born on this day in 1913. He died on December the 11th, 1950 aged 36 under mysterious circumstances in an apartment filled with gas.


Uruguayan Walter Moyano was born on this day in 1933. He rode in the Team and Individual Road Races at the 1956 Olympics but finished neither event. However, his palmares includes some respectable results in other events, including silver and gold medals in the Pan American Games.


Karel Nesl of Czechoslovakia failed to finish the same races in the 1952 Games in Helsinki. He was born on this day in 1930.


Emil Rusu, a Romanian rider who appeared in the Olympics in 1964 and 1968, was born on this day in 1946.


Yavé Cahard, French silver medalist in the 1980 Moscow Olympics for the Men's Sprint event, was born today in 1957. He shares his birthday with fellow Olympian Anthony Cuff, who represented New Zealand in the Individual and Team 4km Pursuit events at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.


Italian Luca Columbo, silver medalist in the 100km Team Time Trial at the 1992 Bercelona Olympics, was born on this day in 1969.


Hector Martin, a Belgian rider who was professional between 1925 and 1935, was born on this day in 1898. Hector won three stages in the 1925 Tour de France and two, wearing the maillot jaune for four days, in 1927. Among other successes, he won an amateur Tour of Flanders and Bordeaux-Paris. He died on the 9th of August in 1972.

Henning Schmitz of Kraftwerk

And finally, a very happy birthday to Henning Schmitz, a member of the cycling-obsessed, revolutionary German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk.


Other cyclists born on this day: Giacomo Fornoni (Italy, 1939); Anthony Cuff (New Zealand, 1957); Robyn de Groot (South Africa, 1982); Mariaesthela Vilera (Venezuela, 1988); Gediminas Bagdonas (Lithuania, 1985).

Daily Cycling Facts 25.12.2013

Erik Harry Stenqvist, born on this day in 1893, was a Swedish cyclist who represented his country at the 1920 Olympics and won a gold medal in the Individual Road Race and a silver in the Team Road Race. He died on the 9th of December in 1968.

Daniëlle Bekkering, born in Groningen on this day in 1976, is a Dutch speed and marathon skater who has been highly successful in both sports - as well as, since 2003, in cycling. Although she specialises in time trials, she has also won numerous mass-start road races including three editions of the Noordhoorn criterium. After spending 2003 and the first five months of 2004 with the @Home team she moved to Bik-Gios, then to DSB Bank where she remained until the end of 2008 prior to a switch to Hitec Products for 2009 and Dolmans Landscaping for 2010 and 2011. For the majority of that time, her sister Eyelien rode for the same teams.

Todd Wells
(image credit: Church of the High Pines)

Frank Bizzoni, an Italian national who was listed as an American cyclist (and thus allows Italy to just hang on to its claim to have competed in every modern Olympics, as he was the only Italian in the Games that year) died on this day in 1926. He was 51.

Todd Wells, born on this day in 1975, is one of the USA's most successful cycle crossers and has won the National Championship three times, in 2001. 2005 and 2010. In common with many cyclo cross riders, he has also enjoyed a successful mountain biking career, winning the Collegiate MTB National Championship in 1995 and 1996, the National Short Track Championship in 2002 and 2010 and the National Cross Country Championship in 2010. In 2004, he was selected for the US Olympic team.

Sandra Schumacher was born on this day in 1966 in Cologne, Germany. Now retired, she won a bronze medal in the Women's Road Race at the 1984 Olympics.

Guido Reybrouck was born in Bruges on this day in 1941, the cousin of three-time Belgian champion Gustave Danneels. His first successes came in 1964 with wins at Paris–Tours and Züri-Metzgete, sufficient to persuade him to earn a place at the Tour de France the next year where he won Stages 6 and 10. A year later, he was National Champion and had won a second Paris-Tours and Stage 2 at the Tour, then in 1967 he won Stages 1 and 3 at Paris-Nice, Stages 4 and 9 at the Tour and Stage 1 at the Vuelta a Espana. A third Paris-Tours came in 1968 when he also entered the Giro d'Italia, winning Stages 3, 11 and 22. He won Stage 13 at the Tour in 1969 and the Amstel Gold Race, then had his best year in 1970 when he won Stages 3, 7, 8b, the Points competition and the Combination Classification at the Vuelta a Espana. He retired at the end of the 1973 season.

Noël Mamère, born in Liborne on this day in 1948, is the embodiment of France's passion for le velo and had been a cyclist and follower of cycling his entire life. He is a man with many strings to his bow, also achieving fame as a singer and as a television presenter, in addition to his very successful political career - he was vice-president of the Urban Community of Bordeaux from 1989 to 2001, has served five terms as the Mayor of Bègles (being halfway through the fifth at the time of writing), was Regional Councillor for Aquitaine from 1992 until resignation in 1994 and then again after reelection in 1998, became Representative for Gironde at the French National Council in 1997 and was reelected in 2002 and 2007, and sat as a Member of the European Parliament from 1994 until his resignation in 1997. He sat as president of the Ecology Generation political party from 1992 until expulsion two years later, at which point he founded the Ecology-Solidarity Convergences with similar "green" policies, then left the group in 1998 to join France's most prominent green party Les Verts. In 2004, he stirred up controversy when in his capacity as Mayor of Bègles he conducted a marriage ceremony for a male homosexual couple. Ten out of ten!

Noël Mamère - Les Enfants de par là

Other births: Lloyd Hildebrand (Great Britain, 1870, died 1924); Jacques Bellenger (France, 1927); Keith Reynolds (Great Britain, 1963); Manuel Bacigalupo (Peru, 1916, died 1965); Christ Noël Yarafa (Central African Republic, 1966); Shinri Suzuki (Japan, 1974); Luis Biera (Argentina, 1958); Max Rainsford (Australia, 1962); Leigh Barczewski (USA, 19550; Louis Bès (France, 1891, died 1961); Tarek Abou Al Dahab (Lebanon, 1939).

Daily Cycling Facts 24.12.2013

Emma Trott

Emma Trott

Born in Welwyn Garden City, Great Britain on this day in 1989, Emma Trott is not yet as well-known among the general public as her younger sister, the Olympic gold medalist Laura Trott, but the superb palmares she has already built up at the age of 24 marks her out as a rider who will achieve great things. Already she has been National Junior Road Race Champion in 2006, European Under-23 Scratch Champion in 2011 and won a bronze in the National Individual Time Trial Championship in 2012.

While both sisters started out on the track, Emma earned her first good results on the road when she finished Stages 1 and 2 of the 2008 Cheshire Classic in third place. In 2010, riding for the Dutch team Moving Ladies, she beat Annemiek van Vleuten and Marianne Vos in a sprint to win Stage 3 at the Gracia Orlova, then joined them at the Nederland Bloeit team the following year. For 2012 she moved to Dolmans-Boels and began to concentrate on road, remaining with the team when it became Boels-Dolmans in 2013.


Christian Raymond
Born in Avrillé on this day in 1943, French cyclist Christian Raymond rode for Peugeot-BP-Michelin from 1966 to 1973 and for GAN-Mercier in 1974 and 1975. Raymond won the Ubder-23 Route de France and Stage 9 at the Tour de l'Avenir in 1964 and Stage 3 at the Critérium du Dauphiné in 1966 - the same year he finished Stage 22a at the Tour de France in tenth place. He rode the Tour again in 1967, then in 1968 when he was second on Stage 3a and fourth on Stage 17 and again in 1969. In 1970 he was third at the National Road Race Championship before returning to the Tour where he won Stage 9 - it would be the only time he won a Tour stage, but he came close with eighth on Stage 2 in 1971.

Whilst Raymond's palmares is good, he is most famous not for his racing but for being the father of the little girl who, watching her father being resoundingly beaten by Eddy Merckx in a race on television, said: "That Belgian - he doesn't even leave you the crumbs. He's a cannibal!" Merckx, who would become the greatest cyclist of all time, is still known by the nickname to this day.


Thomas Peterson
Thomas Peterson was born on this day in 1986 and was National Junior Road Race Champion in 2004. His best results to date have been winning the King of the Mountains in the 2009 Herald Sun Tour and 4th overall in the 2011 Tour of Turkey.

Peterson's professional career began with TIA-CREFF in 2006 and he moved up to the top level with Slipstream, which later became Garmin, a year later. His Grand Tour record shows promise: 27th at the Vuelta a Espana in 2010, 89th at the Giro d'Italia in 2011, 115th at the Vuelta in 2012 and 116th at the Vuelta in 2013 when he rode for Argos-Shimano.


José Aguilar Rodriguez was born on this day in 1980. The Venezuelan rider has achieved numerous stage wins during his eight years as a professional.


On this day in 1854, Thomas Stevens was born in Birkhamstead, Hertfordshire. Aged 29, he set out from his family's adopted home in San Francisco on a penny-farthing fitted with cutting-edge nickel-plated wheels - a ride that, a year and a half later, would earn him the title of the first man to circumnavigate the globe on a bicycle. He died on the 24th of January 1935 and is buried in London's St. Marylebone Cemetery.


Andreas Matzbacher, who was born on the 7th of December 1982, died on this day in 2007 when he lost control of his car and collided with a signpost in Austria. The rider began his professional career with Saeco in 2004.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gao Hongying (China, 1970); Thomas O'Rourke (USA, 1934); Florent Jodoin (Canada, 1922, died 2008); Imre Győrffy (Hungary, 1905); Jan Smolík (Czechoslovakia, 1942); Gaston Dumont (Luxembourg, 1932, died 1978 - Dumont's birthdate is also given as the 9th of March by some sources); Daniel Pandèle (France, 1961); Kim Svendsen (Denmark, 1955).

Daily Cycling Facts 23.12.2013

Wim Vansevenant, Tour Lanterne
Rouge a record three times and
possibly a very naughty boy

Wim Vansevenant, the Belgian ex-professional and three-time Tour de France Lanterne Rouge (a record) turned soigneur who was arrested in June 2011 after allegedly trying to smuggle doping products (which he later claimed were for him and had been, to the best of his knowledge, legal amino acids) into Belgium, was born in Diksmuide on this day in 1971.

"Lanterne Rouge is not a position you go for. It comes for you." - Wim Vansevenant

Happy birthday to Thomas Rohregger, the Austrian rider who came 4th overall in the Tour of Austria for Leopard-Trek in 2011. He rode for RadioShack-Nissan in 2012 following the RadioShack/Leopard-Trek merger and came 31st overall at the Giro d'Italia. Rohregger was born in Innsbruck on this day in 1982.

Noël Foré was born in Adegem, Belgium, on this day in 1932. He won Paris-Roubaix in 1959, a year his victory in the Tour of Belgium and two years after he won the Dwars door Vlaanderen. Four years later, he added Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne and the Ronde van Vlaanderen to  palmares that totalled 53 professional wins.

Robert Bartko, the track and road cyclist who was born in the former East Germany and winner of two gold medals in the 2000 Olympics, was born on this day in 1975 in Potsdam.

Ernest Payne
Ernest Payne, born on this day in 1884, worked as a carpenter after completing his education but was destined for worldwide fame as a cyclist - and was there ever a man with a name more suited to professional cycling?

We know a surprisingly large amount about Payne's early life - just a century ago, records were not kept at stringently as they are today and it's common for mystery to surround the births and deaths of cyclists during the earlier years of the sport. Some were not sure even of their own birth dates and many vanished from the public eye in retirement and were never heard from again, so that we don't know what became of them, when and where they died (some are feasibly still alive, though would be extremely elderly now). For example, we know that Payne was born in a cottage located at 221 London Road, Worcester: the house, Cyclopunk is informed by Graham Taylor (who lives nearby), is still there near to an unattractive commercial building, as is 224 London Road to which he later moved - the bay windows of both properties were made by Payne at his joinery business (thanks, Graham!).

1902 Imperial Rover Path Racer - not Payne's bike, but his
would have been similar
(image credit: Chris Borneo's Resto Blog)

We also know that Payne's boss when he was a carpenter must either have been interested in cycling or simply in encouraging his employees to enjoy their lives outside work because he allowed him to take time off to train with his brother Walter - Payne would repay the man's kindness with a gold watch once his winnings gave him the means to purchase such an object. His first official race took place on the 14th of July in 1902 at Stourbridge, when he competed with the St. John's CC. He crashed hard enough to destroy his bike, but then won the half-mile handicap race on a bike he borrowed from another club member. Specialising in one-and-a-half-mile races, he won thirteen of the fourteen races he entered and within a year was known as "The Worcester Wonder" in the cycling press. Graham Taylor says that Payne is all but forgotten in Worcester, and all cyclists will agree with him that this is a very great shame.

Payne photographed with his trophies in 1910 - in the
middle is the enormous Challenge Cup that he won in 1904

Payne used a locally-made bike during his first year, details of which are lost. In 1903 he switched from Dunlop Road Race to Dunlop Sprint tyres and began racing on an Imperial Rover - the bike upon which he won the Challenge Cup at the Bath Whitsun meet in 1904. Standing over 122cm tall and containing some 14kg of silver, the Cup was reputed to be the largest trophy ever awarded in any athletic competition in Britain.

Payne was himself 169cm tall - lifting the Cup must have been almost as much an achievement as winning it, as can be seen in a 1910 photograph depicting him with his bike standing next to a three-tiered display of his prizes. The photograph may have been taken to mark the end of his cycling career - during which he won 150 races and an Olympic gold medal in 1908 - for that same year he gave it up in favour of football, which he had been playing for two years. In 1909, he made his debut in a match against Nottingham Forest, playing for a team named Newton Heath - and which is still with us, but now known as Manchester United. Payne died at the age of 76 on the 10th of September, 1961.


Happy birthday to David Daniell, the British track sprint rider who won three silver medals at the 2011 British Track Championships and a bronze for the Kilo at the Championships a year later. David, from Middlesborough, was BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2006. He was born in 1989.

Jim Ochowicz at the 2010 Tour de France
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0)

Many people have made a living from cycling, fewer make it their life to such an extent that their entire being is weaved into the sport. One of them is Jim Ochowicz, who was born on this day in 1951. He would represent the USA in the Olympics of 1972 and 1976, then was inducted into the USA Cycling Hall of Fame in 1977 in recognition of his services to the sport. In 1981, he set up the 7-11 Cycling Team which began as an amateur organisation before transforming itself into a team that competed at the very highest levels, including the Tour de France. In 1990, it found a new big-name sponsor and was renamed Motorola, becoming the first team to use race radios. Motorola eventually folded in 1996 after sixteen seasons. In 2002, Ochowicz was back, serving a four-year tenure a president of the USA Cycling Board of Directors, then in 2006 he set up the BMC Racing Team which is still racing the Grand Tours and ProTour circuit under his direction to this day.

Other cyclists born on this day: Adam Wadecki (Poland, 1977); Bjarne Sørensen (Denmark, 1954); Karl-Heinz Oberfranz (East Germany, 1951); Noel Luces (Trinidad and Tobago, 1948); John Walker (Great Britain, 1888); Warren Johnston (New Zealand, 1935); Domingo Villanueva (Philippines, 1964); Yoichi Machishima (Japan, 1954); Andreas Kappes (Germany, 1965); Armand Blanchonnet (France, 1903, died 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 22.12.2013

On this day in 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason in France - thus beginning the Dreyfus Affair that inspired Jules Albert De Dion to join forces with other wealthy anti-Drefusards and establish the L'Auto newspaper as opposition to the pro-Dreyfus Le Velo newspaper. L'Auto did not sell well during its first few years and its owners demanded that the editor, an ex-professional cyclist named Henri Desgrange, came up with a scheme to improve circulation; on the 20th of November in 1902, he and his staff came up with the idea of holding a bicycle race. None of them could have guessed that, more than a century later, it would still be held annually; nor could they have known that it would grow to become the biggest and, as far as millions of people worldwide are concerned, the greatest and most important sporting event in history - the Tour de France.

Marcel Molinès
Marcel Molinès is frequently listed as the only black winner of a Tour de France stage. That there had been one would be wonderful, since professional pelotons in Europe and the USA are even to this day strangely white.

Marcel Molinès

Unfortunately, there's a slight issue in that he wasn't black, as can be seen very clearly in photographs. He was, however, the first African-born stage winner (the probable reason behind the error), having been born in Chibli in French Algeria on this day in 1928. The stage he won was Stage 13 in 1950, a 215km flat route between Perpignan and Nimes on a day that was searingly hot with temperatures reaching as high as 40C. Molinès and his team mate Abdel-Kader Zaaf (who was black, but neither won a stage nor finished this one), being accustomed to the heat of Algeria, were not so badly affected as the European riders and, for a while, Zaaf even led the race when the pair managed to build up a 20 minute lead.

Later on, they began to suffer and stopped for a drink; Zaaf was handed a bottle of wine and drank it. As he'd never consumed alcohol before due to his Muslim faith, he was entirely unprepared for its effects and began to wobble dangerously, so he lay down in the shade under a tree to sleep it off (some say a race official ordered him to stop and have a break; when he woke up, he set off in the wrong direction and became a celebrity) while Molinès continued and was able to win the stage by four minutes. However, back down the road was a peloton powered by the fearsome Ferdy Kübler (often spelled Ferdi, but here spelled how Ferdy himself spells it - the big Swiss rider is now a charming elderly gent who bears little resemblance to the rider he once was), Louison Bobet, Antonin Magne and Gino Bartali: a peloton like that isn't going to allow a virtual unknown to take all the prizes and, though Molinès won the stage, Kübler retained the race lead and kept it for the rest of the race.

Happy birthday Siobhan Dervan!
(image credit: Fanny Schertzer CC BY-SA 3.0)

Molinès finished the Autun criterium two years later and retired in 1954; many books claim that he then vanished and some even say that it's not known whether or not he has died. In fact, he returned to his previous job as a taxi driver but continued to race as an amateur. In 1980 he won a veteran's race against 60 other competitors - and, at the time of writing, he is still very much alive.


Italian cyclist Bruno Pellizzari, winner of a bronze medal at the 1932 Olympics, died on this day in 1991. He was born on the 5th of November in 1907.

Five-time Irish National Road Champion Siobhan Dervan was born on this day in 1978. In 2012, she was third in the Individual Time Trial and second in the Road Race at the Nationals.

Louise Moriarty, born in Dublin on this day in 1978, first came to prominence with fifth place in the Irish National Individual Time Trial Championship of 2001, then a year later improved to second place and took third in the Road Race Championship too. She then had a couple of quieter years before coming third again in the National Road Race; then in 2006 and 2007 she became National Individual Time Trial Champion. 2008 would be a remarkable year - first she set a new national record in Individual Pursuit at the Newport Velodrome, shaving three seconds from the previous best time, then became Irish champion in the 500m Time Trial, Individual Pursuit, Scratch and Points race champion before going on to win two stages and the overall General Classification at the Ras na mBan road race in addition to coming second and third at the National Road Race and Individual Time Trial Championships respectively.

Jacques Bossis, winner of the Intermediate Sprints classification at the 1978 Tour de France, was born in Jonzac, France on this day in 1952.

On this day in 1900, Oscar Aaronson died a few days after he was injured in a crash at New York's Madison Square Garden Six Day Race. Before his death, other riders expressed concern that the crash "might prove fatal to six-day racing itself."

Other cyclists born on this day: Albert Kägi (Switzerland, 1912); José Jaime Galeano (Colombia, 1945); Scott McGrory (Australia, 1969); Leif Lampater (Germany, 1982); Aleksandar Milenković (Yugoslavia, 1967); Marcus Hurley (USA, 1883, died 1941); John Dean (New Zealand, 1947); Barbara Blatter (Switzerland, 1970).