Daily Cycling Facts 16.05.2014

The 25th edition of La Flèche Wallonne took place on this day in 1961, running from Liège to Charleroi for a second consecutive year. However, the parcours had been altered and as such was 15km shorter at 193km - the shortest in the 76-year history of the event. The winner was Willy Vannitsen who won more than 110 races during his 13 professional years, including Stage 1 at the 1958 Giro d'Italia and Stages 10 and 15 at the 1962 Tour de France, yet is virtually forgotten outside his native Belgium.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the oldest and - according to some - greatest Classic of them all took place on this day in 1909. Eugène Charlier was the first over the line, but when officials discovered he hadn't finished the race on the same bike he started with his victory was disallowed - rather than being disqualified, as some sources claim, his time was recorded as being the same as that of Victor Fastre (and the next seven men, this being the first time that the race had ended with a bunch sprint) and he was relegated to second place. In third place was Paul Deman, winner four years later of the Ronde van Vlaanderen and then Paris-Roubaix in 1920 and Paris-Tours in 1923.

Alfredo Binda

The Giro d'Italia began on this day seven times - 1925, 1936, 1959, 1969, 1974, 1985 and 1998. The 1925 edition started and ended in Milan, with twelve stages covering a total of 3,520km. It is remembered - by those few people fortunate to have seen it and still be with us - as one of the most exciting ever due to an epic battle between Costante Girardengo, who fought long and hard through the mountains and won five stages, and Alfredo Binda who matched every attack he made to take the race lead from him and keep it for the final eight stages to win by 4'58".

1936 covered 3,745km in 19 stages, though Stages 15 and 17 were split - 15a was a short road stage, 15b an individual time trial, 17a and 17b were short road stages. Gino Bartali, who had won the Mountains classification the previous year, returned and performed even better to win the Mountains and his first General Classification, leading the race through the final twelve stages and winning two of them. Olimpio Bizzi won Stage 6 at the age of 18 years and 299 days, making him the youngest Giro stage winner ever.

Charly Gaul

1959 was made up if 22 stages and 3,657km - another epic year in which Luxembourg's Charly Gaul once again proved himself unbeatable in the mountains (or, as many will point out, proved himself capable of consuming larger quantities of la bomba), driving hard over the snowy peaks and continuing to push himself when others had exhausted themselves. Gaul was almost as good in a time trial as he was in the climbs, but he wasn't quite as good as Jacques Anquetil who took a 1'30" lead after Stage 2, then proceeded to slowly grind down his opponent's advantage until the race leadership passed to him in Stage 15. Going into Stage 20, the Frenchman still had the lead and many believed the race was as good as his. Then, in Stage 21, Gaul crushed him. Pushing so hard over three challenging mountain that nobody could get near him, he won by 9'48" and took back the leadership. Rolf Graf won the final stage, but Ancquetil may as well have not bothered - bettering what Gaul had done was far beyond even his capabilities.

1969 covered 3,851.3km in 22 stages and would be one of the most controversial editions ever due to a sample provided during Stage 16 by Eddy Merckx, found to be positive for N-ethyl-3-phenyl-norbornan-2-amine, a stimulant prescribed under the name Reactivan and still used, though rarely, in medicine today. For reasons that remain unknown, news of the sample and the rider's expulsion from the race was supplied to the press before he and his team management were notified and when he revealed that he had been offered money to throw the race by an un-named Italian rider the day before, suspicions that something nefarious was going on began to pick up speed. Prince Albert of Belgium sent his own aeroplane to bring him home and the government got involved, demanding an investigation from the Italian Foreign Minister. The Italian Federation continued to insist it had acted correctly and, while Merckx was subsequently given the go ahead to ride in that year's Tour de France, which he won, the official reason for his Giro expulsion has never been retracted. Many believe that the Belgian rider would have won but, with him out of the way, Felice Gimondi dominated the remainder of the race and took the overall General Classification. 43 years later, Merckx still says that the stage was such an easy one that he had no reason to resort to cheating, as does appear to be the case when we take his abilities into account, and to this day he insists he is innocent. So does the official who was in charge of the positive sample.

From left to right: Hinault, Maertens, Merckx and de Vlaeminck
(unknown copyright)

In 1974, Merckx won for the fifth time after 22 stages and 4,001km. While he led from Stage 14 to the end, it was noticeable at several points during the race, especially when Jose-Manuel Fuente and Gianbattista Baronchelli got into a duel in Stage 20 and raised the pace so high that Merckx nearly exhausted himself in his attempts to keep the leadership (in fact, Baronchelli was "leader on the road" for a while during the stage), that his reign was beginning to crumble. He would win the Tour as well that year, becoming for the fourth time one of the few riders to have won two Grand Tours in a season.

1985 came during the reign of the man commonly considered the second greatest cyclist after Merckx, Bernard Hinault who won for a third time. Taking third place after the 22 stages and 3,998km was Greg Lemond, who would slay the Badger the following year when he became the first American to win the Tour de France. When Hinault won the Tour later in the year, he won two Grand Tours in a season for the third time. Strangely, when the Giro next started on this date in 1998, winner Marco Pantani took the first step in adding his name to the list too because he also won the Tour that year. 1998 covered 3,868km in 22 stages.

Simon Gerrans
Simon Gerrans, born in Melbourne on this day in 1980, took up cycling after injuring his knee during childhood; the sport having been recommended to him by his neighbour, who was a reasonably successful rider himself - Phil Anderson, the first non-European to wear the maillot jaune at the Tour de France. It soon turned out that he wasn't bad at it either and he was awarded a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport, where he began to develop into a world-class road racer.

Simon Gerrans
(image credit: GreenEDGE)

Gerrans' first major success was the Under-23 title at the National Championships of 2002, where he also took 5th in the Elite race. The big European teams were not slow in taking note and in 2003 he was invited to join Carvalhelhos-Boavista as a trainee after spending a short while with the Norwegian team Ringerike, then a year later AG2R Prévoyance with whom he turned professional in 2005 and entered the Tour de France for the first time, surprising many by coming third in Stage 17 and leaving no doubt that he was a new talent - one that could very easily have been ended in February the next year with a crash at the GP d'Ouverture la Marseillaise which left him with pins in his collarbone and shoulder as well as several stitches to repair flesh wounds to his head. He recovered quickly and rode his second Tour that year, improving his General Classification result from 126th to 79th, then dropped to 94th in 2007.

In 2008, having moved on to Crédit Agricole, he won Stage 15 after sprinting to the finish without challenge from the other surviving two riders of a four-man break that had escaped early in the stage and managed to stay out in front. The next year he joined the legendary Cervelo Test Team, but managers mystified fans by failing to pick him for the Tour squad. However, he did go to the Giro d'Italia, where he won Stage 14 (Cervelo's first Grand Tour stage win), and the Vuelta a Espana where he won Stage 10; thus becoming the first Australian rider to have won a stage at all three Grand Tours. 2010 saw him depart for the new British team Sky, with whom he went back to the Tour. Another crash ended his chances in Stage 8 and left him with a broken arm. He stayed with Sky through 2011 and began to show promise as a Classics rider, taking third at the Amstel Gold, second at the Waalse Pijl and 12th at Liège-Bastogne-Liège, then third for Stage 2 at the Tour.

In 2011, it was announced that a new team, GreenEDGE, was being put together and stood a very good chance of being the first Australian team to receive a ProTour licence from the UCI. Gerrans was invited join and did so - which, in 2012, looked to have been a very wise decision. With them, he became National Champion for the first time, won a second Tour Down Under and then added the highlight of his career so far - victory at the legendary Milan-San Remo Monument when he beat Fabian Cancellara. The following year, Gerrans won stages at the Tour Down Under, Volta a Catalunya and Tour of the Basque Country before going to the Tour de France, where he achieved another career highlight by winning Stage 3 and then the Stage 4 team time trial. In 2014, he became National Road Race Champion and won Stage 1 and the overall General Classification and Points competition at the Tour Down Under, then enjoyed more Classic s success with a victory at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

Matthias Kessler

The German rider Matthias Kessler, born in Nuremburg on this day in 1979, was little known outside his own nation until 2000 when he turned professional with Deutsche Telekom. In 2001 he finished in the top 5 for two stages at the Giro d'Italia but remained little known - until he was widely proclaimed an outside favourite for the Classics in 2003 on the strength of 6th place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2002 and soon caught the public's attention for his habit of unzipping his jersey and deliberately ripping his undershirt to keep cool. He finished the Amstel Gold Race in 5th place in 2003, then La Flèche Wallonne in 3rd a year later.

Unfortunately, what could have been a great career was marred by bad luck and doping. In the 2004 Tour de France he was left in agony after a bad crash and, while he finished the stage, didn't start the next day. In 2007, he provided a sample that was shown to contain unusually high levels of testosterone; leading to his dismissal from Astana a short while later. Things began to fall apart from that point on and he experienced difficulty in finding a new contract once his two-year ban came to an end. In 2010, while on a training ride in Algaida, Mallorca, he accidentally collided with a cat. The resulting crash left him with serious head injuries., ending his career.

Other cyclists born on this day: Roger de Beukelaer (Belgium, 1951); Roberts Plūme (Latvia, 1897, died 1956); Im Sang-Jo (South Korea, 1930); Pål Henning Hansen (Norway, 1953); Juan Reyes (Cuba, 1944); Wilhelm Rabe (Germany, 1876); Antonio Hernández (Mexico, 1951); Lennie Kristensen (Denmark, 1968); Gustavo Guglielmone (Argentina, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 15.05.2014

Carlo Galetti

The Giro d'Italia has started on this date seven times - 1911, 1926, 1927, 1948, 1965, 1980 and 1999. The 1911 edition was the third and marked the 50th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, starting and ending in Rome to mark the occasion and covering 3,526km in twelve stages - an increase on the first two editions when it had been eight and then ten stages. Carlo Galetti won for a second consecutive year (he would have won again in 1912, but the organisers decided that year that only team results would be counted) and Lucien Petit-Breton, who headed the General Classification during Stage 9, became the first French rider to have led the race. 86 riders started, only 24 finished.

1926 retained the twelve stage format and covered 3,429km. The winner, Giovanni Brunero, became the first rider to three Giro victories after gaining 20' on 1925 winner Alfredo Binda, winning Stage 8 and then working hard to keep Binda from the General Classification leadership for the remainder of the race after Costante Girardengo - then drawing towards the end of his career but still very capable of winning races, including two stages in this one) - abandoned having led for three days. Binda was unstoppable the next year, 1927, when he won twelve of the fifteen stages and led the General Classification throughout the full 3,758km starting and ending in Milan, beating Brunero by 27'24".

Fiorenzo Magni

Fiorenzo Magni won in 1948, covering the 19 stages and 4,164km in 124h51'52", but it was not a popular victory. For a start, he was never a popular figure among other riders on account of his political views - he was, it is said, a fascist; though in recent years evidence has come to light suggesting he was active with anti-fascist partisan movements in Italy towards the end of the Second World War. Secondly, he received a little bit of assistance from his fans who had been seen pushing him up some of the climbs, which in turn caused a third factor - furious at the cheating, Italian cycling's new darling Fausto Coppi withdrew in protest. The 1965 edition was held five years after Coppi's death. To mark it, organisers introduced the Cima Coppi prize which is still awarded for the fastest rider to the top of each edition's highest point - Graziano Battistini won it, being the first man over the Stage 20 finish line on the Passo Stelvio. The race covered a total of 4,051km in 22 stages and the overall winner was Vittorio Adorno, a victory termed the finest since Coppi by the press.

1980 was again 22 stages and covered 4,025km. Attention was immediately turned to a new rider in the race, Bernard Hinault who had already won two editions of the Tour de France. Having won Stage 14, Hinault proved what he was capable of by gaining 8' with help from team mate Jean-Rene Bernaudeau on Stelvio and thus took the race lead - which he kept for the rest of the race, becoming the first man to have won all three Grand Tours on his first attempt.

Marco Pantani
(image credit: Aldo Bolzan CC BY-SA 3.0) 

1999 had 22 stages over 3,757km and saw controversy when Marco Pantani - who had won the Giro and the Tour the year before - recorded a suspiciously high haematocrit reading prior to Stage 21; indication of a blood transfusion or (more likely in this case) EPO for which he was ejected from the race. His entire Mercatone Uno-Bianchi went with him. In Stage 13, Pantani's chain had come off as he climbed the Dolomites, causing him to lose 30" - however, once he'd fixed it he got back on and powered straight past the other riders to win the stage, leading Laurent Jalabert to claim, "Pantani is too strong!" and the press to dub the race The Pantani Show. With him and his team out of the way, the race became a free-for-all as numerous riders and squads realised that all of a sudden they were back in contention. Ivan Gotti won with a 3'35" advantage over Paolo Salvodelli, but to this day there are many who will argue that the race should have been Pantani's.

Yvonne Hijgenaar
(image credit: Nicola CC BY-SA 3.0)

Yvonne Hijgenaar
Like so many Dutch cyclists, Yvonne Hijgenaar - born in Alkmaar on this day in 1980 - came to cycling from speed skating, a sport in which she represented her nation. She made the switch in 2001, having taken up track cycling as a training regime and realising that she was able to beat male opponents and that same year became Dutch 500m Champion. In 2002 she added the Sprint title, then kept both in 2003 and took the Keirin too. Retaining all three in 2004, she went to the Olympics with high hopes but with track cycling a relatively minor sport in the Netherlands found herself outclassed, missing out on medals.

2005 brought bronze medals for the 500m and Keirin at the World Championships and she once again won 500m, Sprint and Keirin the Nationals. Realising that she was a serious talent, the National Federation gave her permission to train with the Australian team. However, 10th place in the qualifying round prevented her going through to the Sprint final at the 2008 Olympics, but a bronze for the Omnium at the Worlds in 2009 - the first time the event had featured - showed she still had form.

Hijgenaar won a total of twelve National Championships, but has not regained them in the years since - though a selection of silver and bronze medals illuminate her palmares. In 2012, having said that if she didn't win a medal at the Olympics she would retire, she ended her career.


Niklas Axelsson
Niklas Axelsson, born in Västerås on this day in 1972, finished in sixth place at the 1999 Giro d'Italia; a remarkable result since it was his first Grand Tour. When he was third at the Giro di Lombardia a year later, it began to look as though a serious new Swedish talent was on the scene - and the next year he won a silver medal at the National Road Race Championship, apparently confirming it. Unfortunately, he didn't attain those early victories entirely through his own effort. At the World Championships in 2001, he became one of the first athletes to be caught out by the then-new cyclelectrophoresis and isoelectric focusing methods of detecting EPO and confessed. His honestly was not viewed favourably by the Svenska Cykelförbundet, which handed him an unusually long four-year ban.

In time, the National Federation relented and allowed him to return to competition in 2004. He then experienced two dry years without wins before coming second at the 2006 Giro della Romagna and third at the following year's GP Industria Artigianato e Commercio Carnaghese. This did not prove to be a sign that his luck had returned, because in 2007 he was diagnosed with testicular cancer - thankfully, the disease was detected sufficiently early for therapy to enable him to make a full recovery, and he once again began racing.

This time, his results were immediately better. He came third in two stages at Tirreno-Adriatico, won a stage at the GP Industria Artigianato e Commercio Carnaghese and outright at the Swedish Solleröloppet race, then took a silver medal at the National Championships in 2008. In 2009 he was 7th overall at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, then 9th at the GP Industria & Commercio di Prato - the race that would be his downfall. Apparently worried that, as had been the case after his first ban, he once again turned to EPO; and it was announced in 2010 that he had failed a test on the 20th of September, the day the race had been held.

As a four-year ban hadn't taught him a lesson, the Svenska Cykelförbundet banned him for life.

Anna Blyth

Anna Blyth
(image credit: Prendas Cyclismo)

Anna Blyth, born in Leeds on this day in 1988, began track racing in childhood and was good enough to come to the attention of British Cycling during a race at her school, Benton Park. Having been invited to join their development program, it wasn't long before she began to repay them - in 2005 she won the National Junior 500m Time Trial and sSprint titles and took a silver medal for the Sprint and bronze for Keirin at the Junior Worlds.

She kept her British titles in 2006 and added gold for the Scratch race, took three silver medals in the Nationals racing at Elite level and a bronze in the 500m TT at the European Championships  - and, better still,  silver for the Sprint and gold for the Keirin at the Junior Worlds. 2007 brought gold in the Keirin at the Under-23 European Championships along with two silver medals at the Nationals and another at the Track World Cup, then she won the National 500m TT and Team Sprint in 2008 and the Under-23 Scratch at the European Championships in 2009. 2010 and 2011 have been quieter, her best result a bronze medal for the Scratch at the Commonwealth Games in India; but as she now moves into Elite level racing we are likely to see more victories in the coming years.


Bruno Pires, born in Redondo, Portugal on this day in 1981, had ridden for numerous UCI Continental teams before moving up a level when he was invited to join the emergent LeopardTrek at the end of 2010. LeopardTrek had been founded around the Luxembourgian Schleck brothers, Andy and Frank, who took several riders with them when they departed their previous home SaxoBank. When LeopardTrek merged with RadioShack for 2012, Pires was not one of the riders to make the transition and instead moved to SaxoBank. His best results to date have been winning the 2006 National Road Race Championship and third place overall at the 2008 Vuelta Ciclista Asturias.

Pierre Trentin, a French cyclist born in Créteil on this day in 1944, started racing at the age of 14. Having set up a leather-working business when he left school, he won a Junior National Championship title when he was 17 and a bronze medal for the 1km TT at the 1964 Olympics, then two golds in 1968 - also setting a new Amateur 1km World Record - and another bronze in 1972.

Edy Schütz, born in Tetange, Luxembourg in this day in 1941, won the 1964 Österreich-Rundfahrt and then two years later the Tour of Luxembourg, Stage 18 at the Tour de France and the National Road Race Championship - which he retained for the next five years until 1971.

Other cyclists born on this day: Maurizio Casadei (San Marino, 1962); Hussain Mahmoudi Shahvar (Iran, 1962); Gustaaf de Smet (Belgium, 1935); Anton Gerrits (Netherlands, 1885, died 1969); Masamitsu Ehara (Japan, 1969); Alain van Lancker (France, 1947); Ivan Trifonov (USSR, 1948); Jørgen Marcussen (Denmark, 1950); Tomas Pettersson (Sweden, 1947); Sergey Lavrinenko (Kazakhstan, 1972); Ferdinand Duchoň (Czechoslovakia, 1938); Jaramillo (Colombia, 1951); Piotr Przydział (Poland, 1974); Francisco Valada (Portugal, 1941); Henry Kaltenbrunn (South Africa, 1897, died 1971); Jan Chlístovský (Czechoslovakia, 1934); Alain Moineau (France, 1928, died 1986).

Daily Cycling Facts 13.05.2014

Stefano Garzelli
(image credit: Sebastián García CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Giro d'Italia started on this date five times - 1909 (see below), 1981, 1982, 1995 and 2000. In 1981, the race consisted of 22 stages and covered 3,895km. The winner was Giovanni Battaglin who had also won the amateur version of the race nine years earlier and would go on to win the Vuelta a Espana five months later, one of only three men to have won both races in a single season. The 1982 edition was again 22 stages, but it had grown to 4,010.5km. Bernard Hinault won, then won the Tour de France - the Giro/Tour double being considered a more impressive achievement than the Giro/Vuelta though seven men have achieved it, three of them twice (Hinault became one of them in 1985) and one three times (that, as tends to be the case with unique road racing achievements, being Eddy Merckx).

By 1995, the race had shrunk down to 3,736km but retained the 22 stage format. Marco Pantani had been a favourite but was kept away by injury, which left the unusual spectacle of sprinter and a climber battling one another for victory: Mario Cipollini was the sprinter and Tony Rominger was the climber, and they fought one another tooth and nail but on different stages all the way to the end. In the end, Rominger's secondary ability in the time trials stood him in good stead and he won the race. In 2000 there were 21 stages and a prologue, adding up to 3,676km in total. Stefano Garzelli won with 98h30'14".

The First Giro d'Italia

Luigi Ganna, photographed
shortly after finishing Stage 8
at the first Giro d'Italia

1909 was the very first edition of the Giro d'Italia. Organised like most races of the day to advertise a newspaper (La Gazzetta dello Sport on this case; which like L'Auto, the paper that organised the Tour de France, wanted to out-sell and ideally completely crush a rival title - the difference being that whereas L'Auto's rival Le Vélo was dead and buried within a year of the first Tour, Corriere della Sera sells around 220,000 more copies each day than La Gazzetta.

The race covered 2,445km over eight stages which, despite the daunting prospect of stages an average of 306km in length (the longest was in fact 397km, Stage 1), makes it the shortest edition ever held. Stage racing was a new concept when the Tour started in 1903 and as a result only 60 riders took part - and then only because director Henri Desgrange halved the entry fee and increase the prizes - but six years later the idea was both established and popular with a number of smaller events having sprung up in the intervening years (sadly, none have survived. The Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, first run in 1911, is the world's third oldest stage race), so 123 Italians and four Frenchmen showed up at the start line. Another similarity with the Tour was that the results were decided on points in early editions, rather than on overall elapsed time as is the case today, with the lowest number of points getting the win. Luigi Ganna, born in Induno Olana in 1883, was declared victor with 25 - had it have been decided in the modern manner, his time of 89h48'14" would have seen Giovanni Rossignoli (third place with 40 points) take the honour.

The race started and finished in Milan, the riders setting off on Stage 1 at 02:53 in the morning. Ganna's prize was 5,325 lira, while La Gazzetta editor and race director Eugenio Costamagna was paid the princely sum of 150 lira. La Gazzetta, incidentally, was and still is printed on pink paper - which is why the race leader's jersey, known as the maglia rosa and first adopted in 1931, is pink; just as the Tour de France's maillot jaune is yellow to reflect the yellow paper used by L'Auto.

Marianne Vos - very possibly the greatest
cyclist in the history of the sport
(image credit: Maarten Thys CC BY 3.0)

Marianne Vos
If you've been reading these Daily Cycling Facts and wondering, as I did while writing them, why it is that an apparently smaller number of notable professional professional cyclists were born in May than any other month, here's the reason: when Marianne Vos was born on this day in 1987, she was given the entire month's-worth of talent for several years in either direction.

A native of 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, Vos' father and brother were both keen cyclists and, when she was five, she decided that she'd like to have a go too. Her first bike was too big for her, but even then she refused to give up. By the time she was six she was out training two nights a week. A few years later, she was taken to see the Alpe d'Huez stage of the Tour de France and spent much of her time hanging around the hotels to meet riders - it's tempting to wonder any of them remember the little Dutch girl who asked them for their autograph, now that her career has eclipsed all of theirs. In fact, and with the arguable exception of Eddy Merckx, Vos has now eclipsed all those who came before her; she is quite simply a phenomenal athlete and very welcome to younger fans who missed out on seeing the greats of days gone by, riders such as Hinault, Ancquetil, Burton, Bartali, Coppi and, of course, Merckx himself.

Vos has won all of the most prestigious races in women's road cycling including three World Road Race Championships (2004 Junior Championships, 2006 and 2012 Elite Championships, two European Championships, six National Championships and an Olympic Road Race gold medal in 2012. In addition, she has won two National Time Trial championships (despite claiming not to be very good at time trials), more than 70 stages, 18 criteriums and 30 general classifications. By her 27th birthday, on this day in 2014, her total number of victories in road racing, cyclo cross, track and mountain biking added up to 307. Merckx clocked up 525 by the time he retired shortly before his 33rd birthday: the great Belgian has been asked for his thoughts on her by several journalists and makes it clear that he admires her enormously, perhaps even expecting her to beat his tally sooner or later.

Vos is also known for being one of the most personable professional cyclists around. Highly intelligent and articulate, she regularly talks to fans on Twitter and is as popular among the riders who race against her as she is with her supporters. If you don't already follow women's cycling, Vos is one of many reasons to start doing so - all indications suggest that we have not seen her like in professional cycling before, one who is limited not by her own abilities but by the number of races available to her.

Johnny Hoogerland 

Johnny Hoogerland
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet
CC BY-SA 3.0)

Born in Yerseke, Netherlands on this day in 1983, Johnny Hoogerland became one of the stars of the 2011 Tour de France for his repeated attacks, five days in the polka dot jersey as leader of the King of the Mountains classification and a horrific crash that could very easily have ended his career.

Nicknamed The Bull of Beveland due to a large tattoo depicting a bull on his arm, Hoogerland came to international attention when he won the Junior Tour of Flanders in 2001 and then followed it up with numerous wins over the next few years, including the tough GP Briek Schotte - a race designed to reveal those riders who can be aid to be Flandriens, the toughest cyclists of them all, of which Schotte is considered to be the definitive example.

Hoogerland - a Flandrien to the core
(unknown copyright, believed public domain due to widespread use)

It was at the 2011 Tour that Hoogerland proved just how tough he is. During Stage 9, as he cycled alongside Sky's Juan Antonio Flecha, an inattentive driver in France Télévisions official car realised he was about to hit a tree. Rather than slamming on the car's brakes - as all drivers at the Tour are trained to do - he swerved right, hitting the two riders. Flecha hit the road hard and received extensive bruising, but Hoogerland was catapulted into a barbed wire fence hard enough to smash a wooden fence post and become entangled in the wire, which tore his shorts to shreds and left him with deep lacerations to his buttocks and legs.

Both men got back on their bikes and finished the stage. Organisers extended the maximum permitted time so that they could do without being disqualified, then jointly awarded them what must have been the most-deserved Combativity Award for many years. Afterwards, Hoogerland was given 33 stitches.

Peter Longbottom
Peter Longbottom, born in Huddersfield on this day in 1959, was one of those cyclists whom were there any justice in this world would have been a household name. Respected among cyclists for his superb tactical mind, he was for many years in high demand among Tour of Britain teams for his ability to re-organise a team "on the road" according to rider performance, terrain, weather, opponents and a host of variable factors; frequently getting it correct and driving his team mates on to victory even when aware that he himself could not win. His skills saw him ride with Chris Boardman, assisting him at the Commonwealth Games, yet he chose never to turn professional and worked a full-time job even during the racing season.

Longbottom retired from competition in 1996 and spent the remaining two years of his life encouraging young people to take up the sport. On the 10th of February 1998, he was hit by a car on the A64 near York, the impact throwing him onto the opposite carriageway where eye-witnesses say he was hit by several vehicles


Gerrit de Vries, born in Oldeberkoop, Netherlands on this day in 1967 (and, so far as we can tell, no relation to Marijn de Vries of AA Drink-Leontien.nl) shared victory in the 1986 Amateur World Team Time Trial Championship. A a professional rider he took part in six editions of the Tour de France, his best result being 34th overall in 1991.

Eugène Van Roosbroeck was born in Antwerp on this day in 1928. At the time of writing, he is the oldest of the three surviving members of the gold medal-winning road race team at the 1948 Olympics.

Nino Schurter, born in Tersnaus, Switzerland on this day in 1986, was World Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion in 2009.

Other cyclists born on this day: David López García (Euskadi, 1981); Tony Gowland (Great Britain, 1965); Fitzgerald Joseph (Belize, 1967); Morten Sæther (Norway, 1959); Marc Blouin (Canada, 1953); Josef Landsberg (Sweden, 1890, died 1964); Domenico Cecchetti (San Marino, 1941); Eugène Van Roosbroeck (Belgium, 1928); Pavel Cherkasov (USSR, 1972); Edoardo Severgnini (Italy, 1904, died 1969); Thomas Harrison (Australia, 1942); Mark Barry (Great Britain, 1964).

Daily Cycling Facts 12.05.2014

Alfredo Binda

The Giro d'Italia has begun on this date five times; 1928, 1953, 1983, 1986, and 2007. 1928 covered 3,044km over twelve stages, six of them won by Alfredo Binda who led the General Classification from the fourth stage to the end. Albino Binda won Stage 8 after Alfredo, his brother, urged him to attack as the peloton slowed to wait for him to change a tyre. By 1953 the race had adopted the 21-stage format that it has today and covered a total of 4,035km - it also saw the first inclusion of the Passo di Stelvio, at 2,757m the second-highest pass in the Alps, which Fausto Coppi used to his tactical advantage by attacking leader Hugo Koblet and going on to win outright.

30 years later in 1983, the race had increased to 22 stages but shrunk to 3,916km. The winner was Giuseppe Saronni, who had also won Milan-San Remo that year; however, had Saronni not have won stage bonuses, Roberto Visentini would have won - as he did in 1986 when he beat Saronni by more than a minute. Once again, there were 22 stages and the length shrunk to 3,858km; the race being shaken by controversy when the American Greg Lemond made an official complaint to organisers that Italian riders had illegally drafted behind him in the Stage 11 individual time trial and the (Italian) organisers chose to overlook the incident.

The 2007 Giro d'Italia
In 2007, the race was held for the 90th time. Back down to 21 stages, it covered 3,486km and included three stages on Sardinia. Danilo di Luca won the General Classification while Andy Schleck took second place and won the Youth Category. Three doping scandals hit the race that year: Iban Mayo was found to have abnormally high testosterone levels, but the Basque rider was rapidly cleared when his Saunier Duval-Prodir team produced evidence to show that not only was this natural, they'd also already informed the UCI of it and provided evidence from a doctor confirming it.

Danilo di Luca
(image credit: Pitert CC BY-SA 3.0)

A sample provided by Swiss-born Italian Leonardo Piepoli was found to contain 1,800 nanograms per milliliter of the asthma drug Salbutamol, a considerably higher level than would be expected through normal medical usage (the maximum amount permitted in samples provided by athletes who have a genuine medical reason to use the drug is 1,000 nanograms per milliliter), but he was cleared by the Italian Federation (two years later, he would be banned for two years after he confessed to using EPO). Alessandro Pettachi was not so fortunate - he too tested positive for an abnormally high level of Salbutamol with 1,352 nanograms per milliliter. The Italian Federation also refused to sanction him, but although the figure was lower and the Court of Arbitration in Sport found that he had probably not intentionally doped (while declaring him negligent in not observing the "utmost caution" required of all athletes when using medicines), he was stripped of his five stages wins and banned for one year. He was subsequently fired by his Milram team, but would later make a triumphant return to professional cycling with three stage wins at the 2008 Tour of Britain and then, in 2009, two at the Giro. One year after that, he won the Points Competition at the Tour de France.

Winner Danilo di Luca also provided a suspicious sample. Having been found to be clean in a test taken immediately after Stage 17, he was then subjected to a random control some hours later. Doctors claimed that hormone levels in the second sample were like "those of a child," thus leading them to suspect that he was either using a masking agent to disguise the presence of some other, unknown drug or that he had received a blood transfusion in the intervening time after the first test. However, they could not provide sufficient evidence for him to be disqualified and his results remained intact - but 2008 would be a quiet year as many races, loathe to risk scandal, chose not to invite his LPR Brakes-Ballan team to take part. In 2009, they received a wildcard entry to race in the Giro and his luck ran out - he tested positive for EPO after Stages 11 and 18, which led to a two-year ban (reduced on appeal to nine months and seven days) and a €280,000 fine (reduced to €106,400).

Beryl Burton, one of the greatest British athletes of all time
(unknown copyright)

Beryl Burton
On this day in 1937, Beryl Charnock was born in Halton near Leeds. She was not a healthy child and suffered a series of chronic illnesses, once remaining in hospital for fifteen months with rheumatic fever, a  sometimes fatal disease that can leave patients permanently disabled.

However, Beryl got better and, having been introduced to the sport by her husband Charlie Burton, began cycling. She turned out to have quite a considerable talent for it, too - in fact, she won seven World Championships and more than 90 National titles, in addition to winning a World title in track cycling almost every year for 30 years. In the British time trial scene, Burton was quite literally unbeatable when she was at her best and she remained at her best for a very long time, winning the Road Time Trials Council’s British Best All-Rounder Competition for an incredible 25 consecutive years.

Beryl Burton, 12.05.1937 - 08.05.1996

As well as racing, Burton set new records with around 50 to her name, including 10, 25 and 50-mile records that would not be broken for 20 years, a 100-mile record that stood for 28 years and in 1967 a 12-hour record that still stands today. Whilst setting it, she caught and passed Mike McNamara as he was riding to a new men's 12-hour record and passed him a licorice allsort. McNamara covered 276.52 (445.02km) miles for his record. Burton covered  277.25 miles (446.19km). No man would beat her for two years.

In common with many people who have suffered rheumatic fever, Burton experienced heart complaints throughout her life and had to learn to live with arrhythmia. Yet, it was not in the heat of competition that she died - while out on her bike delivering birthday party invitations on the 8th of May in 1996, four days before she turned 59, she had a heart attack.

Burton was added to the Cycling Weekly's Golden Book of Cycling - a single-copy manuscript that pays homage to Britain's best cyclists - in 1960. By 1991, she had won so many races that it became necessary to give her a second page, something that had never happened before in the book's six-decade history nor in the 21 years since. She is now widely recognised as the greatest athlete Britain has ever produced.

Cath Swinnerton
Burton was not the only successful female British cyclist born on this day - 21 years after she was born, Cath Swinnerton came into the world at Fenton in Staffordshire. Swinnerton was twice a bronze medal winner at the National Road Race Championships and twice silver - and won the gold in 1977 and 1984.

With her brother Paul (a racing cyclist himself) and their extended cycling family, she now runs Swinnerton Cycles - a chain of bike shops established by their grandparents in 1915. The first shop is still in business and can be found at 69 Victoria Road, Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent (53° 0'6.74"N 2° 9'41.86"W).

Adelin Benoit, 12.05.1900 - 18.06.1954

Belgian Adelin Benoit, born in Châtelet (where René Magritte spent much of his childhood) on this day in 1900, was an all-but-unknown newcomer at the 1925 Tour de France. The peloton was therefore surprised when he held the maillot jaune through stages 3, 4, 5 and 6, then  took eleven minutes from the great Ottavio Bottecchia in the Pyrénées to wear it for a fifth and final day. He never managed anything quite so spectacular again, though three stage wins in later editions and one victory at the 560km one-day Bordeaux-Paris are impressive.

On this day in 2002, Frenchman Eric Barone set a new record for highest downhill speed achieved on a standard production bicycle at 163kph on the slopes of Cerro Negro, a volcano in Nicaragua. The record would not be beaten until 2011, and then by less than 2kph. Barone holds the current record for custom-built bikes too, having reached 222kph in 2000.

Damian McDonald was an Australian cyclist born in Wangaratta, Victoria in 1972 and a gold medalist in the 2004 Commonwealth Games. He died on the 23rd of March 2007 in the Burnley Tunnel Explosion that occurred after a crash and fire in the Melbourne tunnel.

On this day in 2012, rumours began to circulate in public that RadioShack-Nissan boss Johan Bruyneel had served with a subpoena as he stepped off his plane and onto US soil this week on his way to the Tour of California. Many people believed that the subpoena was part of an ongoing investigation into doping at the US Postal team during the time of Lance Armstrong's Tour de France victories - as in fact turned out to be the case when Armstrong was stripped of his seven victories. As of this date in 2013, the case is still ongoing.

Other cyclists born on this day: Andreas Hestler (Canada, 1970); Suwan Ornkerd (Thailand, 1941); Lieselot Decroix (Belgium, 1987); Jozef Schoeters (Belgium, 1947); Gunnar Andersen (Denmark, 1911, died 1981); Zeragaber Gebrehiwot (Ethiopia, 1956); Gustaaf Hermans (Belgium, 1951); Héctor Palacio (Colombia, 1969); Jürgen Barth (Germany, 1943, died 2011).

Daily Cycling Facts 11.05.2014

Paolo Savoldelli
(image credit: Tony Rocha
CC BY 2.0)

The Giro d'Italia started on this date in 2002, the last year that riders were not required to wear helmets (the UCI changed the rules following the death of Andrei Kivilev at Paris-Nice in 2003). The race had an especially international flavour with a prologue in the Netherlands, Stage 2 in Germany and Belgium, Stage 3 in Belgium and Luxembourg and Stage 4 in Luxembourg and France before the riders travelled south to Italy. The winner was Paolo Savoldelli, a climber with a (rare among climbers) talent for descending fast - a combination that would also win him the Giro in 2005.

Bruno Neves, 05.09.1981 - 11.05.2008
(image credit: Oxiclista)

Portuguese sprinter Bruno Neves died on this day in 2008 at the Classica de Amarante following a horrific crash. It was initially thought that the injuries he sustained in the crash had killed him, but an autopsy revealed that he'd been suffered a heart attack which then caused the crash. He died on the way to hospital, aged 26.

Paulo Ferreira, born in Vialonga, Portugal on this day in 1962, won Stage 5 at the Tour de France in 1984. He was the second Portuguese rider to achieve a stage win in the history of the race (the first was Joaquim Agostinho with Stages 5 and 14 in 1969.)

Jason Queally, born in Great Haywood, Staffordshire on this day in 1970, enjoyed a successful track career after coming close to death in an accident at Edinburgh's Meadowbank Track when a 45cm piece of wood broke off the track when he crashed and passed through his armpit into his chest. He made a full recovery and won a gold medal for the 1km Time Trial at the 2000 Olympics, then set a new European Human-Powered Speed Record at 103.55kph a year later.

Other cyclists born on this day: Kanji Kubomura (Japan, 1943); Thomas Mühlbacher (Austria, 1974); Glen Mitchell (Great Britain, 1958); James Joseph (Guyana, 1957); Serhiy Ushakov (USSR, 1968); Vito Da Ros (Italy, 1957); Zhao Haijuan (China, 1971); Liu Hong (China, 1969); Jean Bernard Djambou (Cameroon, 1947); Lubor Tesař (Czechoslovakia, 1971); Stanisław Gazda (Poland, 1938); Marcel-Ernest Bidault (France, 1938).