Daily Cycling Facts 22.03.2014

Marcel Buysse

The second edition of the Ronde van Vlaanderen was raced on this day in 1914. Despite 47 riders taking part - an improvement on 1913 when only 37 showed up - the event was not a huge success and, years later, organiser Karel van Wijnendaele explained, "Sportwereld was so young and so small for the big Ronde that we wanted. We had bitten off more than we could chew. It was hard, seeing a band of second-class riders riding round Flanders, scraping up a handful of centimes to help cover the costs. The same happened in 1914. No van Hauwaert, no Masselis, no Defraeye, no Mosson, no Mottiat, no van den Berghe, all forbidden to take part by their French bike companies."

However, one rider from a French Team, Alcyon, insisted on being at the race - Belgian Marcel Buysse, brother of Lucien who won the Tour twelve years later. At 280km, the race was considerably shorter than the first edition which had been 324km; this reduction making a notable difference to the winning time of 10h20', compared to 12h3'10" the year before. The finish was moved from Mariakerke to Evergem for one year only.

Henri van Lerberghe - owner of cycling's greatest ever nickname, "The Death Rider of Lictervelde" (see the entry for the 29th of January to find out why he was called that) - took second place in 1914 and due to the outbreak of the First World War had to wait five years before his chance to win in 1919, when the race was again run on the 22nd of March. Van Lerberghe's race was remarkable for many reasons: first of all, he showed up with all the gear he'd need - clothing, spare parts, tools and so on, in short everything he could conceivably need in a bike race with one exception: he didn't have a bike. After asking around, he managed to find someone who was willing to lend him one and organisers let him take part. He was well-known for attacking far too early in races, using up his energy while other riders were pacing themselves for the final sprint; this, more often than not, forced him to abandon long before the finish line, so spectators were not at all surprised when he suddenly shot off with 120km still to go. Before too long, he was tired and hungry - but then, he came across a Bianchi-Pirelli official who was waiting with food for Marcel Buysse, and persuaded him that since Buysse had abandoned (Buysse did in fact abandon the race, but whether or not he'd done so at this point is unknown) he might as well have the food instead.

The Death Rider of Lichtervelde

Now revived, he rode off. Some way further on, he came to a level crossing as a train was passing through. Not fancying the wait, he simply shouldered his bike like a cyclo crosser, jumped up and pulled open a train door before running through the carriage and leaping out the other side where he remounted his bike and rode off. Towards the very end of the race, just before he entered the Evergem velodrome that hosted the finish line, van Lerberghe decided he was feeling thirsty. So - as if he hadn't already guaranteed his place as possibly the coolest rider in the history of cycling - our hero stopped at a pub and had a couple of leisurely pints of beer. He might have spent the rest of the afternoon in there too had word not reached his manager who came out to find him and ask him not to throw away the race. This, apparently, seemed a reasonable enough request so he finished his pint, left the pub and rode into the velodrome to win the race and complete his victory lap. Once done and with a completely straight face, he told the packed crowd to "Go home - I'm half a day in front of the field."

The next - and final - time the race was held on this date was in 1931 when it was won by Romain Gijssels, who would win again the next year to become the first man to win two editions.


Mario Cipollini
Mario Cipollini, who was born in Lucca, Italy on this day in 1967, had a career that extended from 1989 to 2004 - much longer than most but more remarkable in that he remained at the top of the sport for the majority of it, still winning races at a time when most other riders would have faded into the amorphous blur of the peloton and been hoping for an occasional lucky top ten finish. Like Fabian Cancellara and other riders we've looked at over the last few days, his name is the best response that can be given to fans who complain that modern cycling lacks the characters of earlier times.

The muscle skinsuit, later auctioned for 100,000,000 Italian
lira - then equal to US$43, 710
(image credit: Cyclostyle)

Cipo's height and weight guaranteed that he stood out among sprinters - at 190cm tall and 79kg, he appeared enormous when compared to rivals. He was also one of cycling's most flamboyant personalities, which won him many fans but frequently brought him into conflict with other riders and with race organisers. Like many sprinters, he suffered badly on mountain stages and would sometimes abandon races when the climbs became too tough - his habit of then releasing photographs to the press of himself relaxing on a sunny beach with a drink in his hand won him friends and enemies in equal habits. He had a fine sense of theatre, persuading the other members of the Saeco team to join him in dressing up as Roman soldiers and partying hard during a rest day at the 1999 Tour de France, guaranteeing press coverage and disapproving grumbles from race officials, and his dress during races was sometimes equally as noticeable - in 2004, when he became race leader, he eschewed the yellow jersey in favour of a yellow all-in-one skinsuit which could best be described as being bias-cut in a way designed to promote his sex-symbol image. Once again, organisers were not impressed and fined him. This led to him being banned from entering for two years - and his insistence that all future contracts included a stipulation that sponsors would pay his fines which, due to the headlines he guaranteed, they were happy to do. Other skinsuit designs included tiger stripes and - most notably of all - one printed with a lifelike representation of the human muscles which created an disturbingly realistic illusion that his skin had been peeled off.

He was widely rumoured to be a womaniser and to live a playboy lifestyle, once telling the world that he believed that "if I hadn’t been a professional cyclist, I’d probably have been a porn star." It was an image that he cultivated until it became legendary - some writers, most notably Lance Armstrong's biographer Daniel Coyle, have argued meanwhile that it was purely an image that he used it to demoralise opponents; well aware that rivals would feel crushed when a rider they believed to have been up partying all night easily sprinted past them the following day. That he possessed the intelligence to use psychological warfare is apparently in little doubt, for he is also widely regarded to have been the inventor of the now-common lead-out train that has seen Mark Cavendish win so many races and a World Championship, tucking in among a group of team mates who wear down the opposition by keeping the pace high, then emerging for an explosive sprint to victory when the finish line comes within a few hundred metres. It still works to this day, but when Cipo introduced the tactic it took the racing world by storm.

At Paris-Nice, 1997
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

Yet despite the glorious nicknames - Mario the Magnificent, the Lion King - and the Italian Stallion image, Cipollini was a likable character who could be surprisingly down-to-earth and deferential to those cyclists he considered heroes - in 2003 when he won his 42nd Giro d'Italia stage, breaking the record of 41 set by Alfredo Binda that had stood for seventy years, he told journalists that he would have considered himself fortunate just to polish Binda's shoes. He was also visibly upset by Marco Pantani's death. "I am devastated," he said,  "it's a tragedy of enormous proportions for everyone involved in cycling. I'm lost for words." He frequently became angry at what he saw as injustices in races, either those that resulted in a loss to himself or other riders, and threatened to retire from racing in protest many times. Finally, with a week to go before the 2005 Giro, he really did; saying that injuries sustained in a crash the day after he beat Binda's record were the cause - but just three years later he returned with Rock Racing to compete in the Tour of California. He was due to ride with them in Milan-San Remo that year too, but announced again that he would retire claiming disagreements with the team's management as his reason - perhaps his sartorial tastes were too garish even for them.

Among Cipo's 191 professional victories are the 2002 World Championship, the 1996 National Championship, his 42 Giro stage wins (a record that still stands and which, since it took to long for Binda's previous record to be broken, is likely to do for some time), three Points Classification Giro victories, 12 Tour de France stage wins, 3 Vuelta a Espana stage wins, 12 Tour de Romandie stage wins and one Points Classification win, three victories at Gent-Wevelgem, Milan-San Remo, 11 stage wins at the Volta a Catalunya, 14 stage wins at the Tour Méditerranéen and numerous prestigious one-day races.


Leontien van Moorsel

Van Moorsel conquered depression and anorexia to become
one of the most successful professional cyclists of all time
(image credit: Frans Meijer CC BY 2.0)

Leontien Martha Henrica Petronella van Moorsel, who was born in Boekel, Netherlands on this day in 1970, started racing at the end of the 1980s and rapidly established herself as one of the strongest riders of the day with a World 5km Pursuit Championship (1990) title on track and two World Road Race Championships (1991, 1993) and two Tour de France Féminin overall General Classification victories (1992 and 1993).

In 1994 she was forced to put her promising career on hold as she battled anorexia and depression. Thankfully, the strength that let her beat Jeannie Longo was a match for her inner demons too and she returned to competition in 1997 to win the GP Boekel, the National Track Pursuit Championship and the National Individual Time Trial Championship. She was better still a year later, taking the National titles for the Pursuit, Points Race on the track, the World Individual Time Trial Championship and the National Individual TT and Road Race Championships. She retained them all in 1999 and added the World Road Race Championship, the Greenery International, another GP Boekel and the Holland Ladies' Tour. Over the years until retirement at the end of 2004, she would win 196 professional races, and six Olympic medals (four gold, one silver, one bronze) and in 2000 alone took 34 victories. She remains one of the most successful Dutch athletes of all time.

 Jakob Fuglsang

Jakob Fuglsang
Jakob Fuglsang was born on this day in 1985 in Geneva, to Danish parents and of Danish nationality. He began his professional cycling career as a mountain biker with the Cannondale-Vredestein team, winning two Danish Juniors Cross Country Championships (2002, 2003), a National Cross Country Championship at Elite level in 2006 and then the World Under-23 Cross Country Championship in 2007 before switching to road cycling.

He announced his move in memorable style by winning the Danmark Rundt in 2008, then repeated it in 2009 and added overall victory at the Tour of Slovenia, three podium finishes at the Vuelta a Espana and 6th overall at the Critérium du Dauphiné, then a year later won hi National Time Trial Championship, a third Danmark Rundt, 3rd place at the Tour de Suisse and 4th at the Giro di Lombardia. Later that year, he was given the honour of announcing the formation of Leopard Trek to the world and would ride with them in 2011 and it was with them that he won his first Grand Tour stage -  the Stage 1 Team Time Trial at the Vuelta a Espana. Fuglsang joined the Schlecks and other Leopard team mates at the new RadioShack-Nissan-Trek team formed by Leopard and Radioshack's merger in 2012 and went on to win the National Time Trial Championship, the Tour de Luxembourg and the Tour of Austria; however, the team soon found itself surrounded by controversy when manager Johan Bruyneel was accused of trafficking prohibited substances in a doping ring centred about him and Lance Armstrong. This, combined with criticism of his management techniques (Fuglsang was by far the most vocal critic on the team), resulted in Bruyneel being removed from his position as general manager; nevertheless, Fuglsang elected not to stay at the team and announced that he had signed a three year contract with Astana at the the end of the season. With his new team, he was sixth at the Vuelta a Andalucia, fourth at the Critérium du Dauphiné, seventh at the Tour de France (where he was also second on Stage 9) and won the Hadsten Criterium in Denmark.

At RadioShack-Nissan-Trek, Fuglsang rode alongside Ben King, with whom he shares his birthday (though King was born in 1989). King won the Junior titles at the US Road and Time Trial Championships in 2007, then became National Road Race Champion in 2007 at Elite and Under-23 level along with Under-23 National Criterium Champion. In 2011, he won the Youth Category at the inaugural Tour of Beijing.


On this day in 1819, the English Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle printed a short article describing a new machine named a Velocipede. "The crowded state of the metropolis," it said, "does not admit of this novel mode of exercise; and it has been put down by the Magistrates of Police; but it contributes to the amusement of the passengers in the street."


Ludovic Turpin, winner of Stage 5 at the 2006 Critérium du Dauphiné, was born in Laval, France in 1975.

Other cyclists born on this day: Asmelash Geyesus (Ethiopia, 1968); Johanna Hack (Austria, 1957); Martina Růžičková (Czechoslovakia, 1980); Viola Paulitz (Germany, 1967); Gilberto Chocce (Peru, 1950); Jan Hugens (Netherlands, 1939, died 2011); Zain Safar-ud-Din (Malaysia, 1938); Harold Ade (USA, 1912, died 1988); Gunhild Ørn (Norway, 1970); Aleksey Petrov (USSR, 1937, died 2009); Rudolf Baier (Germany, 1892).

Daily Cycling Facts 21.03.2014

Jules Vanhevel

The Ronde van Vlaanderen was held on this day in 1920, 1926 and 1937. The 1920 winner was Jules Vanhevel, whose name is very often wrongly spelled Van Hevel and who had been a very successful amateur in 1913, then Independent in 1914 and went on to win several races while in the Army during the First World War until he was injured and sent to Great Britain to recover. After the war, he became professional and enjoyed an extraordinarily productive career until his retirement in 1936 when, at the age of 41, he came 6th in the Six Days of Brussels. (There's a lot more information on him and a remarkable museum about him housed in an Ichtegem pub in the entry for the 6th of April, the anniversary of his Paris-Roubaix win in 1924.)

1926 was won by Denis Verschueren, nicknamed The Giant of Itegem on account of his phenomenal strength. That same year, he won Paris-Brussels and he won Paris-Tours in both 1925 and 1927.

In 1937, the race was won by Michel D'Hooghe who raced for Van Hauwaert, the team with which he spent the entirety of his career from 1933 when he turned professional to 1940, the year he was killed at the age of 28 during the German bombing of Lokeren railway station. During the early years of the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Karel Van Wijnendaele - a racing cyclist turned journalist who had organised the race to advertise the Sportwereld newspaper - expressed grave concern at the event's lack of popularity and small entry numbers: "We had bitten off more than we could chew. It was hard, seeing a band of second-class riders riding round Flanders, scraping up a handful of centimes to help cover the costs," he would later remember. However, in the years following the First World War and helped no end by Flemmish domination of the podium, the Ronde had become a symbol of Flemmish nationhood and as such was increasingly popular. By 1937, around half a million spectators showed up to see the race - and many of them now had cars, which meant they could chase the riders en masse over the entire parcours, frequently zooming off at high speed to take a short cut through tiny villages in order to see the peloton pass by at a later point. This led to widespread chaos, being far beyond the sort of public excitement Belgium had ever before experienced, and so organisers decided that in future they were going to need the assistance of the police. The gendarmerie had had some limited involvement since 1933, but had done little other than keep an eye on things - now, drastic action was needed if the race was not to be banned. The next year, Van Wijnendaele used his newspaper to publish the following message: "To control as far as possible the plague of race-followers and assure the dependable running of our races, we have sent an exceptional request to the roads ministry to have our race followed by several gendarmes on motorbikes... They will have the right to penalise anybody following the race without permission" and from that point onwards it was run along similar lines to any other major race, with large numbers of police and private security officers controlling crowds and providing rolling roadblocks.

Hugo Koblet

Hugo Koblet was born in Zürich on this day in 1925. Like Louison Bobet, who was born a week earlier and whom he would race against (and beat) on many occasions, Koblet was the son of a baker. His widowed mother Héléna concentrated on training her oldest son to take on the business while Hugo, as the youngest, was made to carry out more menial tasks such as cleaning work surfaces, sweeping the floor - and delivering bread on a heavy utility bicycle.

He must have found cycling to his liking, because when he was 17 he left the bakery and found a job as a trainee bike mechanic at Zürich's Oerlikon Velodrome. Before long, he started to enter races - his first was a 10km hill climb, and that heavy delivery bike had evidently put some muscle on his legs because he won. Léo Amberg, who had come 3rd overall in the 1937 Tour de France, saw him race and was impressed. Afterwards, he sought out the young rider and persuaded him that he stood a good chance of making a living as a track cyclist. By the age of 20, he was National Amateur Pursuit Champion.

In 1946, Koblet turned professional with Amberg's team on track and with Mercier-R. Lapebie on troad, travelling to the USA to compete in the Six Days of New York and Chicago. Road cycling had already begun its long downward spiral into the obscurity that wouldn't end until the Polish coach Eddie Borysewicz single-handedly rescued it in the 1980s, but velodrome racing remained popular in the USA just as it was in Europe at the time, and the American crowds that watched the races were as impressed by the dashing Swiss rider with his movie-star good looks as he was by their country - and he was very impressed by their country, driving all the way to Florida and California, teaching himself American English from films and falling completely in love with the place and the good life that, in the 1940s and 1950s, had ceased to be a promise and had become reality.


In 1950, Koblet won a gold medal at the National Road Race Championship and then the General Classification at the Giro d'Italia - the first foreigner to win the race - along with the Mountains Classification and Stages 6 and 8. Back at home, he won Stages 4a, 4b and the General Classification at the Tour de Suisse and the GP Suisse 100km time trial. That was a good year, but it paled into insignificance in comparison to the next - 1951 was nothing short of phenomenal: he won the Criterium des As, the Geneva Criterium, numerous other one-day races, another National Championship, Stages 2 and 7 at the Tour de Suisse, Stage 19 at the Giro and Stages 7, 11, 14, 16 and the General Classification of the Tour de France.

That year, Gino Bartali was drawing towards the end of his career and Coppi was not at his best - and never would be again - following the tragic death of his younger brother Serse, but still Koblet faced stiff competition from the likes of Raphaël Géminiani, Fiorenzo Magni, Stan Ockers and Louison Bobet who was desperate to prove those who had labeled him a "crybaby" wrong by winning a Tour. Koblet began to attack the moment the peloton set off in the first stage and hardly let up, later being declared the winner of the Stage 7 time trial after it was discovered - following Koblet's protestation - that the original winning time attributed to Bobet had been mis-recorded, taking a whole minute off the Frenchman's actual time. Stage 11 has become one of the most legendary in the history of the race: Koblet literally dominated, attacking after 32km and then riding the remaining 145km alone to win the stage by three minutes despite Bobet, Bartali and Coppi doing everything within their combined power to stop him.

During one stage of the 1951 Tour de Suisse, when François Mahé was attempting to attack him in the mountains, Koblet calmly sat up and took his hands off the handlebars before retrieving a comb from a jersey pocket and tidying his hair. The story goes that Mahé was instantly, devastatingly demoralised and abandoned the race there and then, which the spectators, naturally, adored; but there are some who say that in actual fact Mahé was suffering from terrible haemorrhoids that he'd been keeping secret, and was glad of an excuse to give up). Stunts along these lines became a bit of a Koblet trademark and he began to always carry his comb, a small sponge and a bottle of cologne in a special pocket in his custom-made jerseys during races, using them to freshen up as he rode towards the finish line so he'd be ready to meet the reporters on the other side. In a lesser rider, this sort of thing would be considered detestable arrogance - but Koblet had the go to go with the show and when the Tour came to an end, he was a full 22 minutes ahead of second place Geminiani, almost half an hour ahead of Bartali and more than 45 minutes ahead of Coppi. Bobet, meanwhile, was more than an hour and 24 minutes down, languishing in 20th place overall after he'd been unable to keep up the pace in the mountains and had cracked badly.

Despite forming such an unbeatable obstacle, Koblet enjoyed near-universal popularity among the riders. Journalist René de Latour remarked on this in 1964, when he wrote in Sporting Cyclist: "[He] had not an enemy at all. His ready and kindly smile came from deep down inside, and one knows from the start that this was a man without rancour, a rare thing to say of anybody who has raced in top competition on the road where the intense physical struggle often leads to jealousy and dispute." Those good looks that had endeared him to American fans, combined with his charming manners and habit of always dressing impeccably, meant that he was extremely popular with women, too (Jacques Goddet, directeur of the Tour, was certainly rather taken with Koblet too - he wrote that he was nothing less than "the perfect specimen for demonstrating the miraculous power of the human race"); and he lived something of a playboy's lifestyle, spending money like his income was guaranteed forever, enjoying the company of beautiful women - one of whom, a 23-year-old model named Sonja Buhl, he married in 1923. Yet, fun as that lifestyle was, Koblet was the son of a widowed baker, completely unsuited to it and it took a heavy toll.

Despite winning two more National Championships, another Tour de Suisse and further stages at both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, Koblet was visibly a different rider in the years after his Tour victory. He remained strong through to 1955 and even in 1956 was capable of winning a stage at the Vuelta a Espana, but it was plainly obvious that 1951 was the pinnacle. Prize money began to tail off as a result, but he was fortunate enough to find promotional work with Alfa-Romeo in South America for a while, but then that began to fail too. He has begun to look much older, confused and pre-occupied by some mysterious concern of his own. By the time he and Sonja returned to Europe, he also seemed to be showing signs of memory loss - most notably, he completely forgot that he had signed a contract worth seven million lire (a vast amount, even in lire, at the time) for his name to be attached to a range of combs in Italy. The marriage suffered, then broke up, and Koblet set up home in an apartment over a garage he'd opened within sight of the velodrome where he'd worked as a mechanic. He retired from racing in 1958.

Knowing what we now know about clinical depression, it seems obvious that the rider suffered an emotional breakdown - the confusion, the emotional and physical change, the memory loss all stand in support. As we have seen so many times, this is a phenomenon experienced all too frequently by those who have fame ad fortune thrust upon them in a short space of time - especially when the dream begins to crack and fall apart. We have already noted that Koblet came from a poor background - the life he led was not the one he had been raised to live, and it overloaded him. The 2010 film Hugo Koblet: Pédaleur de Charme (which, incidentally, in an absolute must-see for all fans of the Tour's golden age) attributes his decline to doping, though Koblet was never caught using performance-enhancing drugs (and would probably would not have faced any penalty even if he had been). In the light of what we have seen time and time again - with popular celebrities and cyclists (Pantani is the first to spring to mind) who raced since Koblet's day - and with knowledge of the cavalier attitude towards drugs among riders who would merrily swallow or inject just about anything with little or no consideration for the consequences provided they might offer an advantage in a race, we cannot rule out the possibility that unknown drugs played a major part in his downfall.

In 1964, Koblet asked Buhl if she might be willing to consider giving their marriage another go. By this time his money was gone, he was in debt and he faced prosecution for unpaid taxes; she refused. Later that year, he died four days after a car crash that was declared to have been an accident following investigation and is still officially documented as such. However, a man named Émile Isler swore that he had seen Koblet driving his white Alfa-Romeo at between 120-140kph on a road between Zürich and Esslingen, then turn around and drive back at a slightly slower speed past a pear tree at the roadside. Then, he turned around again and drove at high speed straight into it. He was 39 years old.


Jesper Skibby

Jesper Skibby
(image credit: Heelgrasper CC BY-SA 3.0)

Aging fans - such as your esteemed author - can commonly be heard complaining that the modern peloton doesn't contain the characters that populated cycling in days gone by. It's rubbish, of course - people said the same thing in the 1920s and in every decade since; it's just that today's cyclists haven't completed their careers and said all the things they'll say and done all the things they'll do yet. Once they do, we'll decide who amused us (except for David Zabriskie, who has already proved he's got personality by the bucketful) and turn them into heroes, then we'll start saying the same things about the riders of the 2020s. That this is the case can be proven by the fact that we moaned in the 1990s that the Tour de France was lacking the sort of personalities it had in the 1980s - even though the 1990s was the time that Jesper Skibby was riding.

Skibby, who was born in Silkeborg, Denmark on this day in 1964, is that rare thing: a character who thinks he's funny and genuinely is, lacing clown-like behaviour and silly jokes with a rare, razor wit that, when required, could burst pomposity like a needle bursts a balloon. He was even funny when he lay in a hospital bed recovering from a double skull fracture sustained in a crash at the 1993 Tirreno–Adriatico and when he lost his balance and came inches from a potentially career-ending injury under the wheels of a race director's car on the cobbles of Koppenberg in the 1987 Tour of Flanders.

What's more, he could really ride. He won National Championship titles whilst still an amateur and then managed podium places at numerous prestigious races during his professional career, including 1st place for Stage 19 at the 1989 Giro d'Italia, Stages 3 and 7 at the 1991 Vuelta a Espana and Stage 5 at the 1993 Tour de France. In 1999 and 2000, he rounded things off by forming part of the winning teams in the National Team Trial Championships.

In 2006, six years after he retired, Skibby published his autobiography. In it, he confesses that he doped through much of his career, stating that he began with anabolic steroids in 1991, then added testosterone supplements and growth hormones a year later and by 1993 was using EPO. Though he had never been caught using drugs while racing, he claimed that he had wanted the book to be brutally honest so that his daughters would know the truth - the unmissable undercurrent is that he didn't want them to believe he had been a hero when in fact he was cheat.

Unlike the majority of riders and cycling figures who have been caught red-handed or come clean as a result of their own consciences, Skibby does not try to implicate others, name names or even suggest un-named individuals had anything to do with his doping in his book, never once trying to excuse his actions with an "everyone else was doing it, so I was pressurised into doping simply to remain competitive" argument. Instead, he says that he heard about doping products that were available, purchased them himself and administered them to himself, taking full responsibility for his actions. Perhaps, then, he is a sort of hero after all.


Brooke Miller

Brooke Miller (orange sunglasses) with Alison Rosenthal
(image credit: Richard Masoner CC BY-SA 2.0)

Brooke Miller, born in Huntingdon Beach, California on this day in 1976, was cycling simply for reasons of fitness in 2005 as her successful Elite Women's Volleyball career began to wind down. That year, she attended a USA Cycling conference and learned that female cyclists have a tendency to reach their athletic peak later in life than their male counterparts. Still hungry for competition, she realised that she could have a second career. Two years later,, after gaining her PhD in evolutionary biology, she was selected for the National Team.

Victories came her way right from the start, including stage wins at the Tour de Toona, Mount Hood Classic and Nature Valley Grand Prix in 2006. 2007 brought 13 podium finishes, five of them wins, then in 2008 she became National Champion in both Road Race and Criterium. 2009 was similarly successful with sixteen podium finishes, six of them 1st place, then 2010 got off to an excellent start. However, that year she announced her retirement; citing difficulties in spending so much time away from home and a desire to concentrate on the 2012 Olympics as her reasons. She supports her new amateur career by working as a software development engineer and as marketing director at Team Tibco, with whom she rode when professional.

Andrey Kashechkin
Andrey Kashechkin, born on this day in Kyzyl-Orda, Kazakhstan, moved to Belgium in 2001 and turned professional with the Domo-Farm Frites team. He began achieving good results almost immediately, this putting himself in a good position to negotiate a contract with Quick Step-Davitamon two years later and, after a season with them moved on to Crédit Agricole and then Liberty Seguros-Würth. He did well throughout the season and was signed to Astana in 2007 with an agreement that he would ride in the Tour de France that year.

By the end of Stage 15, he was in 8th place and heading towards a respectable result. However, team leader Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for illegal blood transfusions and the team withdrew from the event. As part of its investigation, Astana put all their riders through a rigourous  testing programme and samples provided by Kashechkin were also shown to display evidence of doping - when his B-sample confirmed the result, he was sacked from the team and received a two-year suspension, announcing that he would return to competition in 2009 after the ban was upheld at an appeal.

However, as is often the case when riders return from a high profile suspension - and so soon after Operación Puerto, all suspensions were high profile - he was unable to find a team willing to give him a contract and had to sit out for another year. Halfway through 2010 he signed to Lampre-Farnese Vini, then negotiated a release during the 2011 season so that he could be free to return to Astana and ride the Vuelta a Espana with them - his best placing was 28th on Stage 21 and he was 89th overall. In 2012 he took an impressive third place on Stage 1 at the Critérium du Dauphiné and managed a handful of respectable results at the Tour de France, then broke into the top ten with eighth place on Stage 15 at the Vuelta a Espana.

Ray Eden, winner of the 1995 RTTC National 100-mile Championship, died on this day in 2011 as a result of serious head injuries sustained during an assault near his Doncaster home. His attacker was subsequently charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm, the found guilty of manslaughter and imprisoned on the 12th of August that year.

Regina Schleicher, born in Würzburg, Germany on this day in 1974, probably couldn't have become anything other than a professional cyclist because her father, a qualified cycling coach, saw to it that she was immersed in the culture throughout her childhood. With his help, she became national Road Race Champion at Elite level in 1994 when she was still only 20, then won the Under-23 European Championship a year later. She began to ride to a high level in stage races early in the 21st Century, winning Stage 5 at the 2002 Giro Donne and Stages 4, 5, 6 and 7a in 2003 - and would almost certainly have won the General Classification over the next few years had it not have been for the domination of first Edita Pucinskaite and then Nicole Brändli, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg, Mara Abbott and Marianne Vos since then. In 2005, she won both the National and World Championships before concentrating on stage races in subsequent years.

Other births: Sébastien Chavanel (younger brother of Sylvain, France, 1981); Mohammad Reza Bajool (Iran, 1960); Linda Gornall (Great Britain, 1964); Franco Fanti (Italy, 1924, died 2007); Viktor Kunz (Switzerland, 1968); Antonio Salvador (Spain, 1968); Otar Dadunashvili (USSR, 1928, died 1992); Abas Ismaili (Iran, 1967); Hirotsugu Fukuhara (Japan, 1945); Netai Bysack (India, 1921, died 2005).

Daily Cycling Facts 20.03.2014

Zajicek
(image credit: Cycling Shots)

Phil Zajicek
Phil Zajicek, born in Eugene, Oregon on this day in 1979, had already claimed a National Criterium title and an Arizona State Road Cycling Championship when he turned professional with Mercury-Viatel in 2001 - results that suggested he might have the makings of a great rider, and he continued adding impressive results during his first years.

In 2004, now riding with the Navigators Insurance Team, he failed an anti-doping test after winning the Tour of Qinghai Lake. The test revealed traces of d-norpseudoephedrine, a psychoactive stimulant, for which his victory was disallowed and he was fined 666 Swiss francs - however, he maintained that he had not knowingly doped and suggested that the drug had metabolised in his body from chemicals contained in an over-the-counter cold remedy he had used either during or shortly before the race and, since it is known that certain legal dietary supplements can metabolise into d-norpseudoephedrine, the United States Anti-Doping Agency felt that the argument was feasible and did not suspend him from competition, later changing its rules regarding the presence of the drug in samples in an effort to prevent athletes being unfairly banned in the future.

During his first year riding for Fly V Australia at the 2009 Tour of Gila, Zajicek sensationally beat both Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong to the finish line of Stage 5 - a route that has earned the name Gila Monster and which is said to be the most difficult road race stage in North America. The two superstar riders were at the event to prepare for the Tour de France later that year, which Armstrong would finish in third place, and on paper appeared to be far beyond Zacijek's level. Yet he matched them all the way through five hours of hard, aggressive racing, surviving repeated attempts to drop him and even attacking in response. Finally, he powered past them on a tough uphill sprint to the finish line - apparently one of the most impressive instances of giant-slaying in recent years.

Unfortunately, we'll never know if it truly was an impressive victory. In 2011, Zajicek signed up to the Pegasus Professional Cycling Team Project with what were rumoured to be lucrative terms. However, the team failed to be granted a UCI ProTour licence and folded shortly afterwards when it turned out that its finances were not quite as solid as had at first appeared and the rider was left without a team. Later in the year, he found himself accused of purchasing EPO and did not contest the charge, also pleading no contest to an accusation that he had tried to encourage witnesses to provide false testimony and provided false testimony himself to the American Arbitration Assocation  during a civil dispute. The court found against him and he received a $5,000 fine and a lifetime suspension. Whether he was using EPO when he beat Armstrong is unknown - though of course, following the revelations concerning Armstrong's own doping history (which led to him being stripped of all of his seven Tour de France victories), there will be those who will say it doesn't matter.

Intxausti
(image credit: Euskal Bizikleta CC BY-SA 2.0)

Beñat Intxausti was born on this day in 1986 in Amorebieta-Etxano which, as one might suspect from his name and that of the town, is in Euskadi, the Basque Country. He turned professional in 2008 with Saunier Duval-Scott, then moved on to Scott-American Beef when his first team folded during their first season and then went to Fuji-Servetto when Scott-American Beef also folded at the end of 2008. Fuji-Servetto also lasted just a year, so in 2010 he signed up with the natural home of all Basque riders Euskaltel-Euskadi and remained with them for a year before departing for Movistar - the other Basque team - and took second place at the Tour of the Basque Country. In 2011 he was fourth at the Tour of the Basque Country and fifth at the Tour de Romandie, then picked up form in 2012 to win the General Classification and Points competition at the Vuelta a Asturias before finishing the Vuelta a Espana in tenth place overall. He remained with Movistar for 2013 and, having won Stage 4 (the only mountainous stage) took first place in the General Classification; later in the season he was fourth at the Klasika Primavera and eighth overall at the Giro d'Italia (where he won Stage 16) and at the Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco. He remains with Movistar for 2014.

Other cyclists born on this day: Luvsandagvyn Jargalsaikhan (Mongolia, 1959); Václav Tintěra (Bohemia, 1893); Johari Ramli (Malaysia, 1949); Manuel García (Guam, 1964); Jan Hijzelendoorn (Netherlands, 1929, died 2008); Henri Fin (France, 1950).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.03.2014

Leon de Vos

The Ronde van Vlaanderen was held on this date in 1922 and won by Leon de Vos (no relation to Marianne Vos and sometimes spelled Devos) who had also been victorious at Liege-Bastogne-Liege in 1919. Other than that he was born on the 17th of January in 1896 and died on the 23rd of August in 1963 - in both cases in Ardooie - and rode as a professional between 1919 and 1927 precious little is known about the rider, who took 8h55'20" to finish the course and beat 2nd place Jean Brunier - a Frenchman and the first non-Belgian to stand on the winners' podium - by 7'40". 92 riders started the race and only 32 finished.

On this day in 1978 the 200km Omloop van het Waasland took place at Kemzeke in East Flanders. The winner was Frans van Looy. In twelfth place was Eddy Merckx and it would be the last race he ever entered.

Hanka Kupfernagel

The German rider Hanka Kupfernagel, who was born in Gera on this day in 1974, announced her arrival in the cycle racing world in style in 1991 when she won the Tour de Bretagne, World Junior Sprint Championships and World Junior Road Race Championships, then proceeded to win just about everything before turning professional in 1999 (1995 - Nation Pursuit and Road Championships, two stages and the General Classification at the Gracia-Orlova and ten one-day races; 1996 - another Gracia-Orlova GC, the Elite National Time Trial, the European Under-23 Road Race Championship, the Krasna Lipa Tour Féminine and seven one-day races; 1997 - a third Gracia-Orlova, a second Tour de Bretagne and Krasna Lipa Tour Féminine, the Emakumeen Bira, the Elite National Road Race Championship and six one-day races; 1998 - a third Tour de Bretagne, a second Emakumeen Bira and Elite National Road Championship and six one-day races).

One she turned professional, she got even better. In 1999 alone, she won another Emakumeen Bira (beating Elena Barillová's previous record of two), her fourth Gracia-Orlova, the RaboSter Zeeuwsche Eilanden and Thüringen-Rundfahrt der Frauen, a third Krasna Lipa Tour Féminine, La Flèche Wallonne Féminine and another National Road Race Championship. A list of her victories since becomes rather boring - it's just a long succession of first places punctuated by occasional seconds and thirds.

In 2012, 21 years since she came to international attention with a silver medal for the Pursuit at the 1991 World Junior Track Championships, Kupfernagel signed to Rusvelo. With them, she won the Albstadt road race and was second overall at the Tour de Free State in May, won the Prologue at the Thüringen-Rundfahrt in July and the GP Oberbaselbiet in August, then the Lorsch and Frankfurt a/Main cyclo cross races in November and December respectively.

Like Marianne Vos, with whom she frequently competes, Kufernagel is talented in several forms of cycling. In addition to her domination of road racing, she won the World Cyclo Cross Championship in 2000, 2001 and 2005 with silver medals in 2002 and 2003 and a bronze in 2004; also winning the National title in 2000, 2001, 2002 and every year between 2004 and 2011, and continues to compete in both track cycling and mountain biking. In 2013, she won the Stadel Paura and Lorsch cyclo cross races in Austria and Germany, then suffered a three-week bout of 'flu that finished her season but returned in 2014 to win the National Cyclo Cross Championship for the twelfth time.

She is the older sister of Stefan - a professional rider between 2000 and 20005 and National Under-23 Cyclo Cross Champion in 1998.

Scieur in the 1921 Tour de France

Léon Scieur
Léon Scieur, born in Florennes, Belgium on this day in 1888, found work as a glassmaker after completing his education and had never ridden a bike until he was 22. However, he got off to  good start - he was taught to ride by his neighbour, who just happened to be Firmin Lambot, a professional rider who would go on the win two Tours de France.

Just one year later, he turned professional for Armor and entered his first Tour de France (Lambot was riding his third Tour, having signed to Le Globe in 1911 and Griffon in 1913) but didn't finish. He then came 14th in 1914 but enjoyed some glory as winner Philippe Thys, also a resident of Florennes, returned to a hero's welcome and both men were celebrated.

He worked as a mechanic during the war, then returned in 1919. During Stage 3, he suffered a series of punctures - reports vary between five and six - which used up all his spares, so he had to mend them himself because in those days mechanical assistance was strictly forbidden and so he couldn't wait for a team car to arrive, and as repairing a punctured tubular tyre required the tyre to be peeled away from the rim and slit open along the stitches that hold them together to allow access to the inner tube before being sewn back up again and re-glued to the rim, this was a major undertaking. The weather was awful and he had to knock on doors to find a needle and thread, eventually finding an elderly lady who took pity on him and allowed him to carry out the repair in the shelter of her porch. As his hands were numb with the cold, he asked if she would help with the stitching, but officials told him that this would count as illegal assistance and that he would be penalised if she so much as threaded the needle for him. Eventually, he completed the repair but lost more than two hours and Lambot won the race.

He was 4th again in 1920 (when he also won Liège - Bastogne - Liège), but this time he won the difficult Stage 11 - 362km through the mountains from Grenoble to Gex. Then, in 1921, he was back with a new pedaling style - keeping to a lower gear than other riders, he pedaled hard at a higher cadence. This technique, since used by Miguel Indurain and Lance Armstrong, allowed him to keep going at a high pace come what may, and he took the yellow jersey in the first stage and kept it throughout the remainder of the race. Spectators, impressed by his unstoppable ride, nicknamed him The Locomotive.

Stage 10 that year was a particular highlight: when his fellow Belgian Hector Heusghem committed the cardinal sin of attacking while the race leader was sorting out a puncture, Scieur set off in hot pursuit once his bike was repaired. When he caught the offender, he rode alongside him for a while to deliver a stiff lecture on the importance of etiquette and respect for tradition before powering away and winning the stage with an extra six minutes added to his advantage.  By Stage 12, Scieur's victory seemed so certain that most of the other riders gave up trying to beat him and competed among themselves for second place. Realising that this would make for a less interesting race, an angry Henri Desgrange decided that in Stage 13, the independent touriste-routier cyclists - whom he termed the "second class riders" - would set off two hours before the professional riders. The independent Félix Sellier won the stage, but to no avail: Scieur and Heusghem finished together and with a good enough time to still be leading the race.

Scieur leading in the mountains

Race organisers then decided that the next day the touriste-routiers would set off two hours after the professionals, but the riders had had enough of being played about by this time and threatened to strike; so they set off together as normal. During that stage, Scieur broke a wheel. Since the rules stated that a rider had to finish each stage with his original equipment unless an official had declared the broken part beyond repair and granted permission for it to be replaced, he looked around for someone who could give him the go ahead to fit a replacement from the team car; but there were no officials anywhere nearby. However, a new rule demanded that a rider had to finish each stage with his original equipment, but didn't specify that the broken part had to be in use or even fixed to the bike - so, he fitted a replacement wheel and strapped the broken one to his back. He then rode for more than 300km to the finish line, continuing even when the wheel dug deeply into his flesh and left his jersey soaked in blood. The scars were visible for fifteen years.

Scieur entered the Tour three more times, but failed to finish each of them. In 1922, he abandoned in Stage 3  with a broken fork, perhaps out of bitterness for what had happened the previous year as much as due to the difficulties in getting it replaced and Lambot won his second Tour. He then abandoned in Stage 6 in both 1923 and 1924 before he retired in 1924, opening a garage and fuel distribution business in Florennes where he remained right up until his death on the 7th of October 1969.

Serse (left) with Fausto

Serse Coppi
Born on this day in Castellania, Italy in 1923, Serse was the younger brother of Fausto and himself a cyclist of considerable talent. The greatest win of his career came in 1949 when he was declared joint winner at Paris-Roubaix after a breakaway led by the Frenchman André Mahé were misdirected into the velodrome by race officials. Mahé was first over the line and originally declared winner, but since Serse had been the first of those who took the correct route judges later decided the victory should be shared.

In 1951, when Serse was 28 and Fausto was 31, they entered the Giro del Piemonte. The older brother was having one of his rare off-days and riding awkwardly, so Serse pulled alongide him to offer encouragent as they rode through Turin. While they talked, Serse's front wheel caught in a tramline and he fell. He abandoned the race, but after an initial inspection was able to ride back to their hotel. Later that day, he began to feel unwell and was taken to hospital where a cerebral haemorrhage was diagnosed. He died in his brother's arms before an operation could carried out.


Steve Cummings, born in Clatterbridge, Great Britain on this day in 1981, won the 1999 Junior National Road Race Championship, one gold and one silver Olympic medal, numerous National Track Championship titles and came 2nd in the 2008 Tour of Britain before signing with Team Sky in 2010. In the 2011 Vuelta a Algarve he beat Alberto Contador to the mountaintop finish of Stage 3 and, later in the year, came 4th at the Tour of Beijing. At the end of the season, he confirmed that he would ride for US-based Team BMC in 2012.

Joseba Zubeldia, born in Euskadi on this day in 1979, rode for Euskaltel-Euskadi throughout his career from 2001 to 2007. He turned professional in 2002 and is the younger brother of Haimar who left Euskaltel for Astana at the end of 2008 and has since signed to Radioshack.

Claudio Bortolotto, an Italian rider born on this day in 1952, won the Mountains Classification of the Giro d'Italia in 1979, 1980 and 1981. He was 9th in the General Classification in 1977 and 1978.

Mirko Celestino was born in Albenga, Italy on this day in 1974. His first major success was the Giro di Lombardia in 1999 and he went on to do well in several classics, including victory at the Milano-Torino in 2001 and 2003. He entered the Tour de France in 2004 and 2006 but failed to finish on both occasions - his best Grand Tour results were 4th in Stages 3 and 7 at the 2005 Giro d'Italia. Celestino has also competed in mountain bike events in recent years, finishing the 2010 European MTB Marathon in 2nd place.

Other cyclists born on this day: Gregorio Bare (Uruguay, 1973); Aart Vierhouten (Netherlands, 1970); Alberto Trillo (Argentina, 1939); Gaston Dron (France, 1924, died 2008); Alan Newton (Great Britain, 1931); Josef Steger (Germany, 1904); Camillo Arduino (Italy, 1896, died 1988); Pete Sanders (Great Britain, 1961); Merilyn Phillips (Cayman Islands, 1957); Josef Zilker (Austria, 1891); Alwin Boldt (Germany, 1884, died 1920); Winston Attong (Trinidad and Tobago, 1947); Fritz Inthaler (Austria, 1937).

Daily Cycling Facts 18.03.2014

Heiri Suter

The Ronde van Vlaanderen was held on this day in 1923 and 1934. In 1923 it was won for the first time by a rider who wasn't Belgian - Heiri Suter, who would be the only Swiss to stand on the podium until Hugo Koblet came 2nd - and the last Swiss winner for 87 years until Fabian Cancellara's victory in 2010 (see below). Suter finished the 243km parcours in 9h16'15", setting the slowest winning average speed in the history of the race at 26.21kph, but would also win Paris-Roubaix two weeks later and was thus the first man to have won both the races in a single year. Precisely half of the 86 starters finished the event.

1934 was won by Gaston Rebry, who also won Paris-Roubaix two weeks later to become the second man to have repeated Suter's achievement (Romain Gijssels had done it in 1932).

Fabian Cancellara
A common complaint among both fans and historians of cycling is that the modern sport seems to lack the magic and wonder that once surrounded it. A decision on whether it truly has changed or not will have to wait for a few decades or so until we can look back on the current era with the same rose-tinted spectacles with which we look at the 1950s and 1960s, the same sort that fans at the time wore when they no doubt told one another that Simpson and Gaul were perfectly good riders but lacked the panache of Leducq and Maes (either one will do), just as those who were lucky enough to see Leducq and Maes race probably didn't find them as heroic as Defraye and Christophe. However, the story of the young boy who found an old bike in his Italian immigrant parent's Swiss garage and later became the greatest time trial rider in the world more than satisfies the romantic soul that can be found within every cycling fan.

Seconds before claiming the 2010
Time Trial World Championship
(image credit: jjron GFDL 1.2)

Fabian Cancellara was born on this day in 1981 in Wohlen bei Bern, a typically Swiss town where a world-famous 18th Century watermill (now colonised by artists) sits side-by-side with modern concrete tower blocks that, because this is Switzerland, are clean and equipped with lists that both work and don't smell of urine; though it probably wouldn't matter too much if the tower blocks looked as ugly and neglected as the ones in Britain because the stunning natural beauty of the surrounding forests and lakes. He fell in love with cycling the first time he rode that old bike, giving up football there and then, and he revealed his talent almost immediately by dominating junior races.

Before long, he had been invited to join the Junior National Team, where coach Yvan Girard remembers him as having been "head and shoulders above everyone else." He became Junior World Time Trial Champion in 1998 and 1999, came 2nd in the 2000 Under-23 competition and then turned professional with Mapei after spending a very short time as a stagiaire. Team manager Giorgio Squinzi would explain that he'd fast-tracked Cancellara and team mate Filippo Pozzato so they wouldn't have to spend time riding in the Under-23 categories where, he said, doping was an even bigger problem that it was higher up - however, that Girard also claimed the Cancellara was "the future Migual Indurain" reveals his wish to get the young rider straight in at the top level where he could win important races.

Mapei came to an end in 2002, at which point Cancellara moved to Fassa Bortolo and served as lead-out man for Alessandro Pettachi. During his second year with the team, he beat Lance Armstrong in the prologue of the Tour de France, winning the yellow jersey with which Armstrong - having won the previous five Tours - had worn at the start and then keeping for two days. Earlier in the year, he'd come a surprise 4th place at Paris-Roubaix which saw him among the favourites in 2005 when he finished a respectable 8th despite a flat tyre some 46km from the finish line.

(image credit: Fliedermaus CC BY-SA 1.0)

Fassa Bortolo also folded at the end of 2005, at which point Cancellara was offered a contract with CSC;  the team that would become Saxo Bank-Sungard and with which he would spend the next four seasons, during which he first rode alongside the Schleck brothers - he would leave the team with them at the end of 2010 to become a part of Leopard Trek. In his first year with the new team, he also revealed himself as a clever tactician at Paris-Roubaix. With 100km still to go, he accelerated hard on the infamous and highly dangerous pavé of the Trouée d'Arenberg - one of the most challenging sections of any race and a place most riders try to survive rather than attack. The plan worked with a field of seventeen riders battling one another to avoid being left behind. Then, with 17km to go on Le Carrefour de l'Arbre, Vladimir Gusev attacked; but Cancellara stayed with him, the dropped him, then mounted a solo break that saw him gain 30 seconds advantage before entering the last few kilometres which he rode like he had fresh legs at the start of a time trial on a smooth road. Flecha, Ballan, van Petegem and Boonen tried to stop him, but for that last stretch Cancellara was the best rider in the world and nobody could take the victory from him. He was more than a minute ahead of the next rider when he crossed the line, the first Swiss rider to win the race for 83 years.

Since turning professional, Spartacus - his nickname due to his large, muscular physique - has been National Time Trial Champion eight times (2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011), World Time Trial Champion four times (2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010) and Olympic Time Trial Champion (2008, also second in the road race). He also won another Paris-Roubaix in 2010, Milan-San Remo in 2008, the Tour de Suisse in 2009, the Tour of Oman and the Tour of Flanders in 2010, a total of six stages at the Tour de France and four at the Vuelta a Espana. In 2011, it looked as though his time trial crown was finally slipping as the German rider Tony Martin launched a concerted onslaught on his reign, but continued good results suggested that his career is far from over, as proved to be the case in 2012 when he won the difficult Strade Bianche - a 190km race that includes some 70km of gravel roads, thus drawing comparisons to the harsh roads of Paris-Roubaix - with a comfortable 42" advantage over second place Maxim Iglinsky; Cancellara had also won in 2008, whereas Iglinsky had won in 2010. He then became popular favourite for Milan-San Remo and looked set to meet fans' expectations with a superb performance descending the Poggio but was ultimately bettered by mere fractions of a second by Simon Gerrans in the final sprint. Nevertheless, his characteristically excellent form left him a favourite for the subsequent classics, especially the Ronde van Vlaanderen; however, a crash and a series of mechanical failures both ruined his prospects at the E3 Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem and turned out to be an omen for the future - more bad luck led to a serious crash at the Ronde and left him with a complex quadruple fracture of the collarbone, an injury that had some experts wondering if his racing days might have reached an early end. Fortunately, he made a full recovery in time for the Tour of his homeland, then he won the prologue at the Tour de France for the fifth time and retained the maillot jaune until the end of Stage 7 (along the way ending René Vietto's claim to be the man to have worn the yellow jersey the most times yet never to have won the Tour) when it passed on to overall winner Bradley Wiggins. Following Stage 11, Cancellara announced via Twitter that he would be withdrawing from the race in order to be with his wife Stefanie as she gave birth to their second child.

He returned to racing at the Olympics, where he was favourite in the Time Trial and considered to be in with a fighting chance in the Road Race. Once again, he was struck with bad luck - a surprisingly amateurish-looking mistake on an easy right-hander bend caused him to crash and, whilst he was able to finish the race, he did so in very visible pain and some 5'53" after winner Alexander Vinokourov for 106th place (only four riders finished within the time limit after him). Having been examined by doctors, he revealed that he had escaped serious injury and would therefore be contesting the Time Trial; he finished in seventh place more than two minutes down on winner Bradley Wiggins and, soon afterwards, announced that he would be ending his season in order to undergo further surgery on his collarbone.

2013 got off to a good start with third place at Milan-San Remo and fourth at the Strade Bianche marking his return to form. He then won the E3 Harelbeke and thus became the favourite for the Ronde van Vlaanderen - and when he attacked, first on Oude Kwaremont where only Peter Sagan could stay with him and then on the Paterberg where he went solo, his victory was secured. He crashed during the Scheldeprijs but was able to finish as well as start Paris-Roubaix the following day, crashing again on the Hornaing to Wandignies-Hamage. Rrival riders, incorrectly believing him to be weaker than he in fact was, began to attack but with 16km to go he launched an attack of his own and rode away with Zdeněk Štybar and Sep Vanmarcke; the unfortunate Štybar collided with a fan and was left behind, leaving Vanmarcke and Cancellara to ride together into the velodrome where the Swiss was strongest in a sprint to the line. Having announced that he would forego the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France in favour of the Vuelta a Espana, Cancellara raced the Tour de Suisse and was sixteenth in the time trial, which some observers claimed as evidence that his reign as the king against the clock was over; however, just days later he became National ITT Champion for a sixth time and then, following a short break, won the ITT at the Tour of Austria by 22" over second-placed Marco Pinotti. Radioshack-Leopard took second in the Team Time Trial at the Vuelta, a place largely attributed to Cancellara's efforts, and he beat Tony Martin in the ITT by 37" - a notable result, as Martin was popularly supposed to have taken his place as the best time trial rider in the world - before abandoning the race in preparation for the World Championships: however, Martin beat him by 48" and he won bronze, having also been beaten by Bradley Wiggins.

2014 started less successfully when he finished the ITT at the Tour of Dubai 25" slower than Taylor Phinney, but he managed a respectable fifth overall. At the Tour of Qatar he took a fourth place stage finish but was 67th overall, then 31st at the Tour of Oman. European racing seemed to suit him more and he was sixth at the Strade Bianche, the Italian race that makes use of dirt roads, suggesting he is finding form. In December 2013, Radioshack-Leopard's manager revealed that Cancellara was planning to attempt the UCI Hour Record in 2014. Details are sketchy, but he is widely believed capable of beating the (contested, due to holder Ondrej Sosenko's subsequent doping violation in 2008) current record (at the time of writing) of 49.7km.

(image credit: kei-ai CC BY 2.0)

Cancellara has never been the subject of any serious doping allegation, nor have any of his test results ever been called into doubt. However, in 2009 he became the centre of an unusual and - once the frankly rather ridiculous details emerged - amusing accusations of cheating for many years when an amateur video appeared on YouTube claiming that his bike had an electric motor concealed within the seat tube. The UCI never took the allegation very seriously, but recognised that such a device might be feasible, either at the time or in the near future, and stated that they would look into methods to detect them should there be any suggestion that similar technology was in use. Cancellara, meanwhile, said that the allegation was "so stupid I'm speechless." Absolutely no proof that he - nor any rider - had competed on bikes equipped with the rumoured mechanism was ever found, and after examining videos of races in which the devices had supposedly been used several experts said that in their opinion the acceleration and attacks that the video claimed were made possible by the device would in fact be more likely hampered by the added weight of the motor and batteries.

Fabian has an older sister, Tamara, who is also a cyclist. Born on the 18th of January 1979, she was third in the Junior National Road Race Championship of 1995.

On the 5th of July 2012, after Stage 5 at the Tour de France, Cancellara put on the maillot jaune for the seventh time - the record for riders who have never won overall.

He is also a regular on Twitter, where Fabianese - his unique version of English - has won him many new fans...

"The earphones i won true an quiz. Forgot to put it in befor.... Good night to all tom. Last training day. Specialguest the sponsors."

"Have found one other art painting.... @StueyOG what you think about my paint i have found in the hotelroom"

"Lenny Kravitz runs.....the man in the black clothing...."

"Ouch... Wardrobe i dont like you...... Just got kissed by an heavy roof piece..."

The man is, without shadow of a doubt, a genius.


Costante Girardengo
Costante Girardengo, who was born Novi Ligure, Italy on this day in 1893, is regarded as one of the greatest Italian cyclists of all time, by some more so that Gino Bartali or even Fausto Coppi. Veteran fans still maintain that he was more popular than Mussolini prior to the Second World War and claim that whereas children in Italy's remote villages could not recognise the fascist dictator when shown a photograph, they all knew Girardengo. His successes were so many and so admired that all express trains passing through his hometown Novi Ligure would stop, a peculiar Italian honour reserved usually for the upper echelons of great statesmen. Had he not been robbed of his best years by the First World War, which broke out just a few years after he turned professional and during which he very nearly died after contracting Spanish 'Flu (he had a battle getting a racing licence afterwards, as his team manager believed that a rider who had been so ill would no longer be competitive), he might well have become known as the greatest road racer of all time.

During the early years of his career, exceptionally long at 24 years, he was nicknamed "The Ligure Runt" on account of his diminutive stature. Later, he became "Campionissimo," the champion of champions, and had a range of motorbikes named after him. Born on the 18th of March in 1893, his first major win was in 1913 when be became National Champion, a title he would retain for two years, then hold again from 1919 through to 1925.

As was commonly the case in his time, due to the difficulties involved in foreign travel, most of Girardrengo's wins were in his own country. He competed in the Tour de France just once, in 1914 when he was involved in numerous crashes during Stages 5 and 6 and abandoned the race. His record at home, meanwhile, was spectacular overall even though he had bad years as well as good in the Giro d'Italia - that same year, he won the longest stage the race has ever seen, 430km from Lucca to Rome. Racing came to a halt during the war, but he returned in 1918 and won Milan-San Remo - the first of six occasions that he claimed that victory, a record that would remain unbroken until Eddy Merckx topped it five decades later.

All in all, he would win the Giro d'Italia twice, Milan-Torino five times, Milan-San Remo six times, the Giro dell'Emilia five times, the Giro di Lombardia three times, the Giro del Piemonte three times, the Giro del Veneto four times. He began racing professionally with the Maino team, remaining with them for a year before riding with a number of other outfits over the next eleven years and then returning to them for 1923, his best year when he won 15 major races. He then went to Wolsit-Pirelli for three years from 1925, returning to Maino from 1928 to his retirement in 1936. Afterwards, he stayed on as the team's coach; later performing the same role for the Italian national team and coaching Gino Bartali to his 1938 Tour de France win. Girardengo died on the 9th of February, 1978.


Miguel Poblet

Miguel Poblet, born in Barcelona on this day in 1928, has two impressive "firsts" to his name - he was the first Spanish rider to wear the yellow jersey of the Tour de France and the first rider in the world (and is still one of only three) to win stages in all three Grand Tours in a single season.

Poblet first wore the yellow jersey some eleven years into his career, having been fortunate enough to have been sponsored by his father's bike shop from the age of 16, after winning Stage 1 in 1955. He lost it the next day to Wout Wagtmans, but also won the final stage. In 1956, he won Stages 5, 10, 16 and 18 at the Giro d'Italia, then Stage 8 at the Tour de France and Stages 3, 5, 6 at the Vuelta a Espana.

The secret to Poblet's success was firstly his explosive sprint and secondly his extremely detailed preparation. The Spanish had long been known for producing talented climbers, but Poblet was small in stature yet very strong - a similar build to today's Mark Cavendish and which offers two advantages: he had the power to accelerate away from the pack as the finish line drew within sight and there was no shelter behind him for anyone hoping to get into his slipstream for the final few metres (unlike Cavendish, he could also hold his own in the mountains). His preparation for the 1957 Milan-San Remo went far beyond the standards of the day: he scrutinised maps of the parcours, then created a training course that matched it a closely as possible with a large climb of roughly equal height and gradient to Milan-San Remo's Passo del Turchino, in those days the section that frequently decided the outcome of the race in those days, followed by a series of smaller climbs. However, he almost didn't get to enter - early in the year, he was told that his Faema-Guerra team would not be competing. Fortunately, Ignis offered him a contract, and he both won the race for them and remained faithful to them for the rest of his career.

In 1958, he finished Paris-Roubaix in second place, thus becoming the first Spaniard to achieved a podium place in the race's 62 year history. He would be the last Spaniard to do so for 47 years, too, until Juan-Antonio Flecha - who was born on Argentina but took Spanish citizenship - finished in 3rd place in 2005.


Rudi Altig
The German rider Rudi Altig, born on this day in Mannheim in 1937, began as a track rider, frequently pairing up with his older brother Willi to compete in madisons, and in 1956 took part with a rider named Hans Jaroszewicz at an event held at the famous Herne Hill velodrome in London. Race promoter Jim Wallace, who had taken a risk booking the riders at a time when German nationals - even those who had been young children during the Second World War - could expect a frosty reception from the British public. He remembered, " They just about slaughtered a top-class field of international riders, with all our best home lads. Only Michel Rousseau, later that year to become world sprint champion, was able to take a points sprint from them. That was in the first sprint, too; thereafter the German pair gained not only every sprint for points but every prime as well." One year later, Altig became National Sprint Champion.

Rudi Altig at Paris-Roubaix - one of the iconic images of
the race
(image credit: CardiffGP)

In 1960, he turned professional. Jim Wallace saw his first races afterwards and was again impressed: "No man ever settled down better or quicker to a pro career than the able Altig. In the hurly-burly world of indoor track racing. Rudi never seemed a novice. Settling down at once, tearing strips off established stars, he soon started to fill indoor tracks which had long forgotten the welcome sight of a 'house full' sign." That year and the next, the rider became World Sprint Champion.

Altig says that he became a track rider because that's where the money was, but Raphaël Géminiani persuaded him to give road racing a go - at first by convincing him that it would be a way to increase his fame and thus put himself in a position to charge higher fees to appear at track meets. In 1962, he wore the yellow jersey of the Tour de France for five days, won Stages 1, 3 and 17 and the overall Points classification. Later the same year, he won Stages 2, 7 and 15 and the overall General Classification at the Vuelta a Espana - convincing him that his future was on the road, as proved to be the case in 1966 when he won the World Championships. That year he would also win Stages 1, 12 and 22b at the Tour and Stages 7 and 11 at the Giro d'Italia.

At the time of writing, Altig is in his mid-70s but still has the look of a professional cyclist - he has not, as many do, continued eating like a professional and thus developed the well-padded look of Eddy Merckx and others. He also retains a keen interest in the sport and can frequently be seen around the Grand Tours for which he acts as a commentator for German television and often gives his insights into the races for networks from other nations.


Eddie Borysewicz
Many writers have claimed that Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer and Floyd Landis were responsible for making the American public fall in love with road cycling, but they merely took advantage of the work already done by Eddie Borysewicz (known as Eddie B due to the difficulties many Americans have in pronouncing his surname), the man who made it possible for the US team to win nine gold medals at the 1984 Olympics - their first for 72 years. What's even more remarkable is that he did this despite being unable to speak English beyond a few basic words when he started.

Bor-rear-SHAY-vits!
(image credit: Angela 1999
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Borysewicz was born on this day in 1939 in a part of Poland that is now a part of Belarus and showed athletic prowess as a runner during childhood before switching to cycling and winning two National Junior Champion titles before he completed his obligatory national military service, during which time he was prevented from joining one of the army's specialist sports battalions as his father was suspected of not supporting Communism. He would be diagnosed with tuberculosis after leaving the army, but then won another two National Championships. As such an achievement would suggest, the diagnosis had been wrong - however, the treatment he received for the disease left him with permanent liver damage and forced him to give up competition.

Instead, he studied at the University of Warsaw and gained a degree in physical education, later finding new employment as coach to the Polish national team and helped them win more than 30 national and world championships in a range of disciplines. His first experience of North American cycling came in 1976 when he attended the Montreal Olympics with the team and struck up a friendship with members of the North Jersey Bicycle Club, and it when he happened to wear one of their jerseys while visiting a bike shop one day that he found himself in conversation with Mike Fraysse - the man in charge of the US Cycling Federation's competition committee. At that time, sports organisations in the USA were benefiting enormously from an injection of funds made available by the famously communism-phobic President Jimmy Carter and Fraysse realised that by highlighting Borysewicz's considerable knowledge of Eastern Bloc sports politics, the government would facilitate his immigration - and American cycling would also benefit from his considerable skills as a coach.

When he got there in 1978, he started a training school in California. With cycling then almost a forgotten sport in the US, he had to literally start from the ground up: "When I started, there was nothing. No office, nothing. I was the first guy, who don't speak English. I have only a telephone and have even to buy a desk," he would later say. He then set about informing the entire team - with one exception - that they were too fat, informing that America was a land of fat people, then dismissed several of the team's star riders whom be believed were too obsessed with their own celebrity as part of an effort to introduce the remaining members to the idea that cycle races are won by teams rather than individuals. This, understandably, did not make him popular; but did help to assert the authority that might otherwise have been lost due to the fact that the only interpreter available to him was the 12-year-old son of a friend. However, the newly hardened team began to get results almost immediately - with his help, first Sue Novara and then Connie Capenter won World Championship silver medals. He also saw promise in one junior rider who would become a sort of special project. That rider's name was Greg Lemond.

The rest is history. In 1987, with his methods still resulting in accusations that he failed to understand the mindset and ethics of American riders, he simply resigned and started his own team - this time, working with amateurs who were hungry for success and didn't expect respect to be handed to them on a silver plate. Within a few years, he had developed the team to a state where it could field professional riders and secured new sponsorship from the US Postal Service and, later, the Discovery Channel - the team that became the home of Lance Armstrong and with which he won seven Tours de France.

Following the 1984 Olympics, suspicions arose that the US team had received what French coach Daniel Morelon termed "extremely elaborate" preparation - an investigation revealed that at least seven athletes had received blood transfusions to increase their red blood cell populations, thus boosting their blood's ability to transport oxygen to the muscles, and four of those athletes had won medals. It's important to realise that at the time, blood transfusions were strongly discouraged by the IOC for reasons of athlete's health as well as in the interest of fair competition, but were not banned: Fraysse said, "we've been looking into this stuff for years and years and years. We weren't gonna fall behind the Russians or East Germans any more." Borysewicz claimed to have no knowledge that the transfusions had taken place and the investigation found no reason to suggest he'd had any part in or knowledge of a make-shift clinic set up in a hotel room at the Games by Ed Burke, a retired professional hammer thrower and US flag bearer at the event, but believed evidence that he had suggested transfusions to his athletes and he was fined one month's salary.

Jayne Parsons was born on Lower Hutt, New Zealand on this day in 1962. She won a bronze medal in the Tandem Time Trial event at the 2008 Paralympics with her sighted pilot Annaliisa Farrell.

Vincent Barteau, born in Caen on this day in 1962, won no stages in the 1984 Tour de France, but after a multi-rider breakaway in Stage 5 he wore the race leader's yellow jersey for no less than twelve days. He could not hold up against the onslaught that Laurent Fignon and Bernard Hinault launched upon the race as they battled with one another for victory, however, and finished 28th overall - just over an hour behind eventual winner Fignon. His proudest moment came in 1989 when he won Stage 13 - on Bastille Day, which to the French is the next best thing to an overall General Classification win.

Phil Griffiths, a British rider born on this day in 1949, won the season-long Best British All-Rounder Award in 1971, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1979; thus making him the fourth most successful rider in the history of the competion after Ian Cammish (9 wins) Kevin Dawson (11 wins) and Beryl Burton (24 wins).

Albert van Vlierberghe was born in Belsele on this day in 1942. The Belgian professional rider - who won three stages in the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia - scored a controversial sixth place result after one stage of the 1979 Deutschland Tour, during which Willy Voets claimed that he gave the rider a lift in his car so as to avoid a hilly section. Since Vlierberghe died on the 20th of December 1991, we will probably never know for certain whether or not this really happened and personal opinions on it depend entirely upon personal opinions on Voet's ability to tell the truth.

Other cyclists born on this day: Arie van Vliet (Netherlands, 1916, died 2001); Henk Ooms (Netherlands, 1916, died 1993); Hector Edwards (Barbados, 1949); Henri Mveh (Cameroon, 1951); Luis Zubero (Spain, 1948); Jim Copeland (USA, 1962); Fritz Siegenthaler (Switzerland, 1929); Brendan McKeown (Great Britain, 1944); Ferrer Dertonio (Brazil, 1897); Leif Hansson (Sweden, 1946); Stefano Allocchio (Italy, 1962).