Daily Cycling Facts 10.06.2013

The Ronde van Vlaanderen was held on this day in 1945 - the latest in the year the race has ever been run and less than one year after Belgium was liberated from Nazi control. It had been the only Classic to continue on occupied home soil for the full duration of the War and a small number of German officers - cycling fans, presumably - had actually become involved in the organisation of the race.

This led to big problems once peace was declared as organisers faced accusations of collaboration. This was a serious issue for Karel Van Wijnendaele, who had set up the first edition right back in 1913 because he was also the editor of Sportwereld, the newspaper that ran the race, and journalists found guilty of collaboration were banned for life from their profession. Fortunately, he was able to have his ban overturned when he supplied a letter from none other than General Bernard Montgomery, thanking him for risking his life by providing a safe house to British pilots as they attempted to return to safety after being shot down.

Sportwereld's rival Het Volk saw the accusations as a prime opportunity to increase its own readership that year and announced that it would organise its own race, to be called the Omloop van Vlaanderen. In Flemmish, omloop has an identical meaning to ronde; which the Ronde's oganisers felt made the names too similar. Their concerns were supported by the Belgian Cycling Federation and Het Volk were ordered to change the name of their event to the Omloop Het Volk - and later, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, by which  name by which it's still known today. The Ronde finished that year at Wetteren, as it would do until 1961, and the winner was Sylvain Grysolle. Three years later, he won the Omloop Het Volk too.

Jean Robic

Jean Robic

Reading any book on cycling will soon reveal that, over its 150 years, cycling has produced a number of riders whom one might describe as the type to stand out in a crowd. In some cases, they do so for all the right reasons - Hugo Koblet, for example, or Charly Gaul when he wasn't doing one of his frothing-at-the-mouth rabid jackal death-faces, and Ben Swift and Mark Cavendish (Swifty and Cav included at the insistence of Mrs. Cyclopunk). There are also those who are "not conventionally attractive," the Cadels and Andys ("They've got something" - Mrs. C again) and there are those whose looks made small children burst into tears, none of whom will be listed here out of respect for the dead and the feelings of those still with us. Then there was Jean Robic, who looked as though he belonged on the side of a church tower with a drainpipe sticking out of his mouth. He also had a tendency to wear unusual glasses, weird bug-eyed goggles and, strangest of all for the times, a leather helmet; the combined effect made him look uncannily like he might be more used to traveling by flying saucer than by bicycle.

It would be wonderful to say that he made up for it with a kind, generous and endearing personality, but he didn't.

Robic was born on this day in 1921 in Vouziers, which is in the French Ardennes, but in common with most Celts he was proud of his ancient heritage and claimed to be a Breton like his father; which, combined with those odd looks, gave rise to his nickname Le Farfadet de la lande Bretonne, "the Hobgoblin of Brittany Moor." The family moved to Brittany when Jean was seven and set up home in Radenac, still a tiny village and the sort that the charitable might claim has rustic charm (locals probably think it's a bit of a dump), where his father - a keen racing cyclist himself - set up a bike shop and taught his son the trade, also encouraging him to become the sort of rider he'd probably once dreamed of being. It looked for a while as though fixing bikes was as close as Jean would get to making a living from racing, because he didn't make much of an impression when he got a job with the H. Sausin cycle factory. The New York-born journalist René de Latour was one of the few to remember him:

"If anybody had told you or me in 1939 that this skinny kid of 17, with ears large enough to be of help with a back wind blowing—if we had been told that here was a future winner of the Tour de France, we would just have laughed... His arrival in the Paris area was not sensational. Robic won a few races out in the villages but this did not mean much. We had hundreds of boys like him in France."

When war broke out and Northern France fell to Nazi occupation, many of the most important races were brought to a halt. This did Robic a huge favour, because it forced him into the sort of small, local race apprenticeship period that he badly needed if he was ever going to develop into a champion. In 1943, L'Auto, which had run a race between Le Mans and Paris when fighting brought a temporary end to Paris-Roubaix (and which would be accused of collaboration and shut down after the war) got permission to start running the race again. Robic entered the second wartime edition, which took place in 1944 (the Nazis, who used cycling events to try to convince the French that life was going on as normal and draw their attention away from all the millions of people they were murdering, made sure the race was filmed and widely shown. It can be seen here) - it was due to a crash in the race, and the fractured skull it left him with, that he adopted the leather helmet; hence his other nickname Tête de Cuir, Leatherhead.

Robic's advantage - he had the lightness to climb and the
strength to attack on the flat stages

Big-headed as ever, Robic had told his new wife Raymonde that he would be bringing back the maillot jaune as a wedding present when he entered the first post-war Tour in 1947, but nobody else expected him to even stand a chance despite the fact that, at 1.61m tall and a wiry 60kg in weight, he had the classic build of a climber (like many climbers, he loathed descending and would arrange for a soigneur to hand him a lead-filled bidon - or mercury, when solid bidons were banned - at the top of a climb in order to weight down his bike and help prevent it skipping around on the way down). Much to their surprise, he won three stages. De Latour still didn't think he could win because he was too inconsistent, but at the end of the Stage 19 time trial Robic had got himself into third place overall. He couldn't improve on that by the time the race reached the start of Stage 21 and, since the final stage is largely ceremonial and an unwritten law states that the leader must not be attacked on the way into Paris, it looked as though Pierre Brambilla would win. Robic, meanwhile, had no time for traditional niceties and bore respect for nobody but himself - with help from Edouard Fachleitner (it was later claimed that Robic told him, "Ride with me. You'll come second but I'll give you 100,000 francs") he attacked repeatedly and so savagely that Brambilla became ill. When the two men reached the Parc des Princes, they had an advantage of thirteen minutes and, for the first time, Robic was leading the race. Despite the ferocity of his attacking, Robic couldn't catch Briek Schotte (who was the only Flandrien, some say) but once time bonuses had been awarded he became the first man to have won a Tour without wearing the yellow jersey whilst competing for it, and legend has it that Brambilla was so disgusted he went home, buried his bike in his garden and swore he'd never ride again.

Brambilla did ride again, though; including another four Tours - which makes the story look rather as though it's probably just another one of those apocryphal, romantic tales that constitute a good quarter of all cycling history (and long may it remain thus -  journalist Jock Wadley knew Brambilla and said that his greatest regret was that he never thought to ask him if the buried bike story was true until after he'd died. We should be grateful for that, just in case it turned out to be a myth). What's more, the Fachleitner bribe might not have actually happened, either: Pierre Chany, L'Equipe's chief cycling journalist and a man who reported on no fewer than 49 editions of the Tour, said that the rumour was stared by René Vietto who hated Robic and would stop at nothing to blacken his reputation (Vietto, incidentally, is at the centre of two of cycling's romantic tales. You can read about both of them here).

With his hook nose and diminutive stature, Robic
bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Punch

Robic was almost universally hated by the other riders. The peloton in the heat of a race is not a place where polite language is always used, but Robic was said to be so foul-mouthed that he offended even the earthiest sons of the French soi. This also did little to endear him to race organisers - on at least one occasion, when he and others finished outside a time limit, his verbal response to the news would lead to him being the only rider not invited to continue if the judges then relented for some reason. He was also bad-tempered, always angry, fond of insulting others and a braggart, once claiming to have "a Coppi in each leg" and on another occasional dismissing Gino Bartali (who won two Tours de France and three Giri d'Italia, nine King of the Mountains and 29 stages) entirely. André Mahé, who finished in second place behind Ferdy Kübler in Stage 1 at the 1947 Tour, said that when Robic went to a restaurant he'd stand in the doorway and wait until all the diners had stopped eating and were looking at him, then proclaim "Oui! C'est moi - Robic!" ("Yes! It is I - Robic!") As is almost invariably the case, however, there was another side to him: when his father died in an accident (a branch that he was trying to saw off a tree fell on him), he spent a large portion of winnings on buying a haberdasher's shop and setting her up in business and he would also write to her while away on the Tour. He was brave, too: after the war, it was revealed that he had risked torture and execution at the hands of the Nazis by using his bike to transport secret messages between Resistance cells and even though he smashed several bones in his spine in a crash at the 1953 Tour, he was back on the start line in 1954. A very few people looked deeper and saw that side of him - one of them was Louison Bobet, who despite being a Breton himself was once Robic's arch-enemy (interestingly, Bobet also carried messages for the Reistance during the war). Perhaps it was because Bobet knew how it felt to be the most hated man in the peloton (find out why here) that he was waiting to pay his respects when Robic finished his last race in 1967, 24 years after his first professional contract.

Robic was also a talented cyclo cross
rider - he was National Champion in 1945
and World Champion in 1950

The general impression is that life always tasted sour to Robic, but in retirement it got worse. Raymonde's family owned a cafe called Au Rendez-vous des Bretons near Montparnasse Station, which he took over; but it failed. Then Raymonde - whom he seems to have loved deeply - left him for another man and he fell into depression. For a while he refereed wrestling events, a sort of "sports-based entertainment" version much like the American type popular today that relied heavily on crowd-pleasing stunts such as when "heels" who disagreed with his decisions would lift him above their heads and throw him out of the ring. For a man as full of himself and his abilities as Robic, that must have hurt even more than the damage it surely did to his injured spine. Then, he went for a long period without employment and took to walking the streets, hoping to meet somebody who might offer him any sort of paid work at all - or, some say, a drink.

Eventually, an old friend took pity and gave him a job; allowing him to begin piecing his life back together. He even learned to moderate his language and behaviour, in time making friends with other cyclists in addition to Bobet and developing a social network, which is why he was driving home from a party given in honour of Joop Zoetemelk, just after the Dutchman's 1980 Tour victory, when he was killed in an accident. The street on which he lived as a child in Radenac has been renamed after him and a room in the village hall has been converted into a museum of his achievements.

Christophe Bassons
Christophe Bassons was born in Mazamet, France on this day in 1974 and started to race mountain bikes in 1991, when he was sixteen. A year later, he took to road racing and in 1995, while studying for his degree in civil engineering, he won the Tour du Tarn et Garonne and the Military World Time Trial Championship. He signed a contract to ride professionally for Force Sud in 1996 and then, when the team broke up in March, Festina-Lotus, where he remained until Willy Voet's mobile pharmacy was stopped by customs and the cycling world was torn apart by the Festina Affair of 1998.

Christophe Bassons

Thus began one of the worst scandals ever to hit cycling, sparking off a cycle of admissions, denials, investigations, accusations and counter-accusations. Yet two of Festina's convicted riders, Christophe Moreau and Armin Meier, both of whom wisely decided the best option was to confess shortly after they were arrested, were vociferous in their insistence that Bassons was entirely innocent. Opened up for all to see, professional cycling was reminiscent of Bosch's scenes of Hell, but Bassons was an angel far removed from the rotteness - Jean-Luc Gatellier, a writer who studied the Affair for L'Equipe, agreed: "It's true he's not one of them and he hasn't come out of the same mould... it's true that Christophe Bassons doesn't belong to the family of cheats and the corrupted," he said. As a result, the rider had little difficulty in securing a contract with La Française des Jeux when the Festina team died.

Bassons was among the lowliest of domestiques and, had be not have been singled out as the sole innocent man among a gang of criminals, he's probably have come out of the Affair no less anonymous than he had been before the story broke and would have been able to get on with his career. However, while subjected to intense scrutiny by some (his good character remained steadfastly intact), he was hailed as a hero by others and was chosen as something of an unofficial figurehead for the new, clean cycling that fans hoped would emerge when the scandal finally ebbed - assuming, of course, that cycling survived, which looked far from certain at some points. He was invited first to write for Vélo, in which he referred to riders who opposed quarterly medical checks (then used in an effort to catch dopers, or at least to be seen to be doing something to catch dopers) as hypocrites, then for Le Parisien. Basson's articles were generally considered harmless, amusing fripperies that shed a little light on the fit-for-public-consumption inner workings of the peloton; but once in a while they revealed a glimpse of its dark heart, stretched to over-capacity as it laboured to keep the EPO-thickened blood flowing through the sport. In one, he mentioned Lance Armstrong's rise back to the top of cycling after his recovery from cancer, which he said had been viewed as highly suspicious by many riders.

One day, Bassons claimed that as the Tour was climbing Alpe d'Huez, Lance Armstrong rode alongside him and delivered what sounded very much like a warning. It had been, the Texan said, a mistake to keep talking about doping. Bassons replied that he was concerned about future generations and what might happen to them if doping continued. "Why don't you go home, then?" Armstrong asked, which many took to be a politer way to say "if you don't like it, go." Armstrong confirmed later that the exchange had in act taken place, but explained it differently: "His accusations aren't good for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody," he said. "If he thinks cycling works like that, he's wrong and he would be better off going home." He's still sticking to that story.

Bassons had either seriously misjudged the peloton's mood with regard to doping or he was simply far too angelic to survive in such as dirty world as late 1990s cycling. Whichever it was, the sport was not yet willing to clean up its act - after all, the Festina Affair wasn't the first scandal that had been survived. When Tom Simpson died, ranks were closed, a few new measures put into place to make it look as though steps had been taken and riders reminded one another to be a bit more careful in the future; the journalists went away and nothing much changed. Seven years earlier, when Knud Enemark Jensen collapsed, fractured his skull and later died at the Olympics, the same thing happened; and five years before that when Jean Malléjac came close to dying on Mont Ventoux, the same mountain where Simpson died. It had been that way ever since the days of Choppy Warburton, in the 1890s, and it remained so until Operación Puerto in 2006 when cycling finally realised something had to be done - and that time, set about doing it. Also, he had made a powerful enemy in Armstrong, who was well on his way to winning a Tour and beginning to put together a marketing and public representation team far beyond anything cycling had ever before seen - he may not have been liked by all the riders, but if they were going to have to pick sides there was no doubt they'd be on his, where the money was.

Very soon, he found that riders he once thought were friends would completely blank him. If he tried to instigate a breakaway, nobody would go with him. When he walked into a room, he was ignored. Sometimes, when he was surrounded by 200 men in a peloton, the atmosphere was distinctly threatening. It wasn't long until he cracked and, the morning after Stage 11 at the Tour that year, he got up at 05:30 and packed his bags. He took the time to say goodbye to his team mates ("one rider didn't look at me and refused to shake my hand," he said. "That hurt.") On his way out, he met team manager Marc Madiot, who had admitted to using amphetamines during his own career, and was told that he was letting down the squad.

Bassons has turned his back on cycling - or
cycling turned his back on him - but he
remains active in sport

His team mates, old and new, were almost unanimous in their condemnation: "I was the only one to talk to Bassons [at Force Sud]... He doesn't listen to anyone. Bassons is an individualist. Even in a race he doesn't easily lend a hand. He rides for himself," said an uncharacteristically serious Thierry Bourguignon, usually the (somewhat tediously) zany clown of the peloton. He found a handful of new friends, some of them powerful figures - "His solitude was the living proof that nothing fundamental has changed in the morals of the milieu, "said the journalist Jean-Michel Rouet. "Christophe Bassons died at the stake, burned by his passion. On official communiqués, he left two words: non partant. The peloton had already forgotten rider number 152."

The French Minister of Sports Marie-George Buffet was another to take his side. "Rather than fighting against doping, they're fighting its opponent," she said and wrote to him to let him know he had her support, congratulating for having the courage to speak up, but the ProTour remained too hostile an environment - in 2000, he went to the second-category Jean Delatour team; then at the end of 2001, when he was still only 26 and would have been about to begin his best years, he retired. That same year he qualified as a sports teacher and took up a job with the Ministry of Sports and Youth in Bordeaux, where he is now in charge of anti-doping. In a 2012 interview with Bicycling magazine he revealed that in his early years as a professional, team manager Bruno Roussel (who was later given a one-year suspended sentence and fined 50,000 francs for his part in the Affair) had approached him and said, "You’re a young rider, so in the first couple of years we’d prefer that you don’t do any heavy doping with EPO or human growth hormones. But you can you lighter things such as cortisone." He also said that, later on, he'd been given the choice of a 30,000 francs-per-month contract if he remained clean or 300,000 if he would take EPO - and had opted for the former.

Lance Armstrong, who was called the greatest Tour rider of all time by some, has since been declared guilty of doping, is charged with playing a part in the greatest sporting conspiracy to have ever taken place and has been stripped of all of his seven Tour victories.

Andy Schleck

Andy Schleck at the prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné,
2012

Born in Lëtzebuerg on this day in 1985, Andy Raymond Schleck comes from a Luxembourgish cycling dynasty - his older brother Frank is also a professional cyclist (and rides for the same team), his father Johny was National Road Race Champion in 1965 and 1973 and rode six Tours de France and his grandfather Auguste came third in the GP Faber of 1926 and 1927 and in the Independents National Road Race Championship of 1928. Oldest brother Steve is a politician. A little-known fact about Andy is that during his youth he was a cyclo cross rider of considerable promise, winning the National Junior Championship in 2002.

In 2004, Andy joined the amateur Vélo Club de Roubaix and was spotted immediately by Tour veteran turned directeur sportif par excellence Cyrille Guimard, a man whose proteges have won numerous prestigious races including seventeen Grand Tours. Among them was Laurent Fignon, of whom he said Andy reminded him, adding that the Luxembourgish rider was one of the greatest natural talents he had ever seen. When he won the Flèche du Sud that same year, he was noticed also by Bjarne Rijs, manager of Frank's team CSC, and offered a trainee contract. Just a year later he was a full professional and got his first taste of a ProTour at the Volta a Catalunya and won the time trial at the National Championships (Frank won the road race).

Having won two stages of the 2006 Sachsen Tour, Rijs deemed his young rider ready for a Grand Tour in 2007 and sent him to the Giro d'Italia, where he finished four stages in third place, won the Youth category and took second place in the General Classification - a stunning result for a Grand Tour debut. The following year he rode his first Tour de France, finishing the Alpe d'Huez stage in third place and proving to the world that a rider destined to be remembered as one of the great climbers had arrived. He was twelfth in the General Classification and won the Youth category, but more importantly had been an instrumental part of CSC's efforts to win the Teams competition - their total prize money equalled €621,210, not far off €0.4 million more than second place Silence-Lotto's €233,450.

Schleck is known as one of the peloton's nice guys. Here,
he awards a medal to Didi Senft, The Devil - who is not as
popular with riders as he is among the fans

In 2009, Schleck won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, one of the toughest and most prestigious Classics - and thus established himself as many people's favourite for the Tour. In fact, there was only one thing in his way, and that was his friend Alberto Contador. Schleck is, without a doubt, one of the top General Classification contenders of his generation and on a good day in the mountains no man alive can beat him, Contador included; Contador, meanwhile, is one of the greatest of all time, and unlike Andy he time trials almost as well as he climbs. That gave him the advantage he needed, Andy had to settle for second place and the Youth category once again. When July in 2010 rolled around, a lot of people looked at Andy and thought it was to be his year. Contador, who by that point had alread won four Grand Tours, was still very much in his prime; but Andy had grown up. His form had always been good, but a year earlier he still had the unformed, softer look of a boy; now he was chiseled, harder and purposeful - when the race got to the high mountains in the Pyrenees and Alps, would Contador be able to hold him off? For a long time it looked as though he might not: whenever he attacked and looked over his shoulder to see who'd followed him, there was Andy smiling back. Then, the Luxembourger won Stage 8, took the maillot jaune from Cadel Evans and held it for six stages through the Alps and the flat stages en route to the Pyrenees, where many expected him to increase his lead, perhaps even prove himself a better climber than Contador, and win the race.

It was not to be. During Stage 15, as the race climbed the last mountain of the day on the way to Bagnères-de-Luchon, Schleck dropped his chain. Contador chose that moment to attack, assisted by Denis Menchov, Samuel Sanchez and a number of other climbers looking to improve their times. By the time he'd set off again he was alone with nobody able to help him make up the gap. Contador took the maillot jaune at the finish line, along with a 39" advantage - the exact same time by which he would win overall five stages later. It remains one of the most controversial incidents in recent Tour history, attacked and defended by equal numbers: Sean Kelly was disgusted with what he saw as a total lack of sportsmanship and Gerard Vroomen said that while Contador had gained a great chance to win, he'd lost his chance to win greatly; meanwhile, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain saw nothing wrong in what he'd done. Contador said that he hadn't realised Schleck was in trouble and apologised (but even those who want to believe him, this writer included, have difficulty accepting his claims: the video of the incident makes it look very unlikely that he didn't know). Schleck says that he accepts the explanation and the apology; they remain friends.

In the Leopard Trek kit

Four days after the 2010 Tour, Andy and Frank gave a press conference in which the announced they would be leaving CSC at the end of the season and would ride with a new Luxembourg-based team managed by Brian Nygaard and Kim Andersen. The team was to be called Leopard True Racing, but when the young Danish rider Jakob Fuglsang announced that he too would be joining, he revealed that it would be Leopard Trek. The announcement of Team Sky was one of the biggest things to ever hit British cycling, but the buzz surrounding Leopard Trek was worlwide and in a different league altogether and kept growing as some of the most popular and talented figures in professional cycling were confirmed for the squad, many of them asset-stripped from CSC; among them was Stuart O'Grady, Oliver Zaugg, Joost Posthuma, Wouter Weylandt, Brice Feillu, Maxime Monfort, Lunis Gerdemann, the legendary Fabian Cancellara and, perhaps most popular of all, Jens Voigt; thier combined UCI points made the team number one in the world before it even officially existed. They also took media-savviness to a whole new level, like a multi-platinum selling rock band making maximum and effective use of social network websites, their own excellently-designed site, TV and magazines. One of the most recognisable and stylish team kits, tour buses that looked like space shuttles, Mercedes team cars and the gorgeous Trek Madones the team rode were the icing on the cake - Leopard Trek meant business, and they had the talent and the budget to take on the world and win.

There are those who say that Leopard Trek never delivered what they promised, but that's just because many fans expected them to win everything. In fact they were highly successful during the single year for which the team existed with numerous victories in the one-day events and the stage races. One of the most impressive was Andy's spectacular Stage 18 triumph at the Tour, when he rode away from the peloton on the 2,645m Col du Galibier. Nobody could get anywhere near him that day and, once again, it looked as though the Tour was his. In the following stages, however, his avantage was gradually eroded and by the time the Stage 20 time trial came around, he had just 57" on second place Cadel Evans. He lost, and Evans because the first Australian to win a Tour.

In August 2011, Geox team manager Joxean Fernandez Matxin claimed on Twitter that he'd heard Leopard Trek and RadioShack were to merge for 2012, but few believed him and when officials from both teams denied it the story seemed dead in the water. Then, further information began to leak out - Leopard Trek's Brian Nygaard was apparently none the wiser, but there were persistent tales of mysterious meetings between Leopard owner Flavio Becca and RadioShack manager Johan Bruyneel. Gazzetto dello Sport, the reliable Italian newspaper that owns the Giro d'Italia, said that it had received confirmation the new team would be called RadioShack-Trek; if that was a guess it was a good one, because when the team was confirmed it was RadioShack-Nissan Trek.

Andy follows Cadel on the Alpe d'Huez

Though Andy became the official winner of the 2010 Tour after Contador's controversial two-year ban in the wake of a failed anti-doping test (an honour he was reluctant to accept, having remained a steadfast supporter of the beleaguered Spanish rider throughout the long and drawn-out trial), 2012 didn't get off to a good start. His performances in the Classics was so poor that Bruyneel packed him and Frank off to an extra training camp. Frank then became a last-minute choice for the Giro after Fuglsang was injured; he abandoned with an injured shoulder but, for three weeks the spotlight was not on Andy, giving him excellent opportunity to train. Tour organisers announced that there would be more than 100km of time trials and less emphasis on the mountains, which in the opinion of many fans ruled him out of contention. However, sometimes - when he really needs to - Andy can ride time trials. He did so in Stage 19 at the 2010 Tour, looking for a while like he might even beat Contador (though ultimately, he didn't). The 2012 Tour, in which the mountains played less of a part than in previous years, was never going to be Andy's race and RadioShack's problems (Bruyneel was involved in the same legal case that saw Lance Armstrong lose his seven Tour victories, as outlined in the section on Bassons above) added to his woes, then a crash in the time trial during June's Critérium du Dauphiné left him with injuries that forced him to abandon that race and, a short while later, announce that he would not be riding in the Tour. Brother Frank did go to the Tour, but a failed doping test (and a subsequent one-year ban, declared when the court ruled he was unlikely to have deliberately doped) didn't help matters either.

In the first half of 2013 Schleck finished the Gran Premio Città di Camaiore, the first ProTour event he had completed in almost a year, but would abandon several more races - he failed to finish due to mechanical problems, illness or injury in the Tour Down Under (dropping out in the last stage when he was 40' behind leader Tom-Jelte Slagter of Blanco, it looked rather as though he'd have been in last place had he have finished), Tour of Oman, Tour Méditerranéen, Tirreno–Adriatico and the Amstel Gold Race. Results from races he did finish - 91st at the Città di Camaiore, 57th at the Critérium International, 86th at La Flèche Wallonne and 46th at Liège–Bastogne–Liège - were far from promising, with only 25th at the Tour of California hinting that there was any of the talent he'd once shown left.

So - what happened to Andy Schleck? Is he finished? Only time will tell - Andy was such a prodigious talent that he became a household name (even among some non-cycling households) at an age when most riders are still anonymous domestiques and for that reason it's very easy to forget how young he is: in 2013 he will turn 28, the age that throughout the history of the sport has seen many riders begin the best years of their careers. Perhaps age will bring with it a new toughness, a greater ability to deal with the pain, brutality and cruelty of professional cycling and professional cyclists, and perhaps Andy will win a Tour by his own merits after all.


On this day in 1899, 44-year-old composer Ernest Chausson lost control of his bicycle while riding down a hill on his estate in Limay, Yvelines, crashed into a wall and died instantly. Chausson's father made his fortune working with Baron Haussmann, whose 1850s redevelopment of Paris gave us much of the grand architecture that is familiar to cycling fans from the last stage of the Tour de France as it rolls along the Champs-Élysées each year. He was buried in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, not far from the graves of Albert Champion (who won Paris-Roubaix the same year Chausson died and set up the Champion spark plug firm), Laurent Fignon (winner of two Tours and one Giro) and Félix François Faure, who was president of France from 1895-1899 and whose determination to see the Dreyfus Affair permanently declared res judicata indirectly gave rise to the events that led to the creation of the Tour de France.

Other cyclists born on this day: Alois Wacha (Austria, 1888); Donna Gould (Australia, 1966); Natsue Seki (Japan, 1966); Lucien De Brauwere (Belgium, 1951); Nico de Jong (Netherlands, 1887, died 1966); Carlo Bomans (Belgium, 1963); Luigi Roncaglia (Italy, 1943).

Confirmed: Schleck to miss Tour

No 2012 Tour for Andy?

Luxembourg's RTL broadcaster carried a report this morning stating that Andy Schleck will not take part in this year's Tour de France due to a spinal injury suffered at the Criterium du Dauphine last week. There have been widespread doubts about the Luxembourger's form in the run up to the Tour, following poor performances in the Classics and his decision to abandon first Paris-Nice and then the Volta a Catalunya - leading to rumoured ruptions with team boss Johan Bruyneel.

RadioShack-Nissan conducted a press conference at 16:00CEST today, which many took as confirmation that the story was true as soon as it was announced. Andy, accompanied by a team doctor and Bruyneel, explains that he has a fractured pelvis and will not be able to cycle for four to six weeks, ruling him out of the Tour which begins on the 30th of June. He may have recovered in time for the Vuelta - in which case, a head-to-head battle with a returning Alberto Contador could make it the most fascinating of the 2012 Grand Tours.

Schleck had previously explained his decision to abandon the Dauphine as being down to the worst pain he has ever suffered. "Already in the first two hundred meters I had pain in the right leg and the lower back," he told reporters shortly after abandoning. "It just got worse. I've never suffered like that in a race. I couldn’t use my right leg any more. I had no other option than to quit the race."

Daily Cycling Facts 10.06.12

The Ronde van Vlaanderen was held on this day in 1945 - the latest in the year the race has ever been run and less than one year after Belgium was liberated from Nazi control. It had been the only Classic to continue on occupied home soil for the full duration of the War and a small number of German officers - cycling fans, presumably - had actually become involved in the organisation of the race.

This led to big problems once peace was declared as organisers faced accusations of collaboration. This was a serious issue for Karel Van Wijnendaele, who had set up the first edition right back in 1913 because he was also the editor of Sportwereld, the newspaper that ran the race, and journalists found guilty of collaboration were banned for life from their profession. Fortunately, he was able to have his ban overturned when he supplied a letter from none other than General Bernard Montgomery, thanking him for risking his life by providing a safe house to British pilots as they attempted to return to safety after being shot down.

Sportwereld's rival Het Volk saw the accusations as a prime opportunity to increase its own readership that year and announced that it would organise its own race, to be called the Omloop van Vlaanderen. In Flemmish, omloop has an identical meaning to ronde; which the Ronde's oganisers felt made the names too similar. Their concerns were supported by the Belgian Cycling Federation and Het Volk were ordered to change the name of their event to the Omloop Het Volk - and later, the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, by which  name by which it's still known today. The Ronde finished that year at Wetteren, as it would do until 1961, and the winner was Sylvain Grysolle. Three years later, he won the Omloop Het Volk too.

Jean Robic

Jean Robic

Reading any book on cycling will soon reveal that, over its 150 years, cycling has produced a number of riders whom one might describe as the type to stand out in a crowd. In some cases, they do so for all the right reasons - Hugo Koblet, for example, or Charly Gaul when he wasn't doing one of his frothing-at-the-mouth rabid jackal death-faces, and Ben Swift and Mark Cavendish (Swifty and Cav included at the insistence of Mrs. Cyclopunk). There are also those who are "not conventionally attractive," the Cadels and Andys ("They've got something" - Mrs. C again) and there are those whose looks made small children burst into tears, none of whom will be listed here out of respect for the dead and the feelings of those still with us. Then there was Jean Robic, who looked as though he belonged on the side of a church tower with a drainpipe sticking out of his mouth. He also had a tendency to wear unusual glasses, weird bug-eyed goggles and, strangest of all for the times, a leather helmet; the combined effect made him look uncannily like he might be more used to traveling by flying saucer than by bicycle, and earned him the nickname Le Farfadet de la lande Bretonne, "the Hobgoblin of Brittany Moor." Bicquet, "The Kid," was his nickname among more charitable acquaintances. Not friends, though; Robic didn't have any friends, because while it would be wonderful to say that he made up for his strange looks with a kind, generous and endearing personality, he didn't.

Robic was born on this day in 1921 in Vouziers, which is in the French Ardennes, but in common with most Celts he was proud of his ancient heritage and claimed to be a Breton like his father. The family moved to Brittany when Jean was seven and set up home in Radenac, still a tiny village and the sort that the charitable might claim has rustic charm (locals probably think it's a bit of a dump), where his father - a keen racing cyclist himself - set up a bike shop and taught his son the trade, also encouraging him to become the sort of rider he'd probably once dreamed of being. It looked for a while as though fixing bikes was as close as Jean would get to making a living from racing, because he didn't make much of an impression when he got a job with the H. Sausin cycle factory. The New York-born journalist René de Latour was one of the few to remember him:

"If anybody had told you or me in 1939 that this skinny kid of 17, with ears large enough to be of help with a back wind blowing—if we had been told that here was a future winner of the Tour de France, we would just have laughed... His arrival in the Paris area was not sensational. Robic won a few races out in the villages but this did not mean much. We had hundreds of boys like him in France."

When war broke out and Northern France fell to Nazi occupation, many of the most important races were brought to a halt. This did Robic a huge favour, because it forced him into the sort of small, local race apprenticeship period that he badly needed if he was ever going to develop into a champion. In 1943, L'Auto, which had run a race between Le Mans and Paris when fighting brought a temporary end to Paris-Roubaix (and which would be accused of collaboration and shut down after the war) got permission to start running the race again. Robic entered the second wartime edition, which took place in 1944 (the Nazis, who used cycling events to try to convince the French that life was going on as normal and draw their attention away from all the millions of people they were murdering, made sure the race was filmed and widely shown. It can be seen here) - it was due to a crash in the race, and the fractured skull it left him with, that he adopted the leather helmet; hence his third nickname Tête de Cuir, Leatherhead.

Robic's advantage - he had the lightness to climb and the
strength to attack on the flat stages

Big-headed as ever, Robic had told his new wife Raymonde that he would be bringing back the maillot jaune as a wedding present when he entered the first post-war Tour in 1947, but nobody else expected him to even stand a chance despite the fact that, at 1.61m tall and a wiry 60kg in weight, he had the classic build of a climber (like many climbers, he loathed descending and would arrange for a soigneur to hand him a lead-filled bidon - or mercury, when solid bidons were banned - at the top of a climb in order to weight down his bike and help prevent it skipping around on the way down). Much to their surprise, he won three stages. De Latour still didn't think he could win because he was too inconsistent, but at the end of the Stage 19 time trial Robic had got himself into third place overall. He couldn't improve on that by the time the race reached the start of Stage 21 and, since the final stage is largely ceremonial and an unwritten law states that the leader must not be attacked on the way into Paris, it looked as though Pierre Brambilla would win. Robic, meanwhile, had no time for traditional niceties and bore respect for nobody but himself - with help from Edouard Fachleitner (it was later claimed that Robic told him, "Ride with me. You'll come second but I'll give you 100,000 francs") he attacked repeatedly and so savagely that Brambilla became ill. When the two men reached the Parc des Princes, they had an advantage of thirteen minutes and, for the first time, Robic was leading the race. Despite the ferocity of his attacking, Robic couldn't catch Briek Schotte (who was the only Flandrien, some say) but once time bonuses had been awarded he became the first man to have won a Tour without wearing the yellow jersey whilst competing for it, and legend has it that Brambilla was so disgusted he went home, buried his bike in his garden and swore he'd never ride again.

Brambilla did ride again, though; including another four Tours - which makes the story look rather as though it's probably just another one of those apocryphal, romantic tales that constitute a good quarter of all cycling history (and long may it remain thus -  journalist Jock Wadley knew Brambilla and said that his greatest regret was that he never thought to ask him if the buried bike story was true until after he'd died. We should be grateful for that, just in case it turned out to be a myth). What's more, the Fachleitner bribe might not have actually happened, either: Pierre Chany, L'Equipe's chief cycling journalist and a man who reported on no fewer than 49 editions of the Tour, said that the rumour was stared by René Vietto who hated Robic and would stop at nothing to blacken his reputation (Vietto, incidentally, is at the centre of two of cycling's romantic tales. You can read about both of them here).

With his hook nose and diminutive stature, Robic
bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Punch

Robic was almost universally hated by the other riders. The peloton in the heat of a race is not a place where polite language is always used, but Robic was said to be so foul-mouthed that he offended even the earthiest sons of the French soil; and this also did little to endear him to race organisers - on at least one occasion, when he and others finished outside a time limit, his verbal response to the news would lead to him being the only rider not invitd to continue f the judges then relented for some reason. He was also bad-tempered, always angry, fond of insulting others and a braggart, once claiming to have "a Coppi in each leg" and on another occasional dismissing Gino Bartali entirely. André Mahé, who finished in second place behind Ferdy Kübler in Stage 1 at the 1947 Tour, said that when Robic went to a restaurant he'd stand in the doorway and wait until all the diners had stopped eating and were looking at him, then proclaim "Oui! C'est moi - Robic!" ("Yes! It is I - Robic!") As is almost invariably the case, however, there was another side to him: when his father died in an accident (a branch that he was trying to saw off a tree fell on him), he spent a large portion of winnings on buying a haberdasher's shop and setting her up in business and he would also write to her while away on the Tour. He was brave, too: after the war, it was revealed that he had risked torture and execution at the hands of the Nazis by using his bike to transport secret messages between Resistance cells and even though he smashed several bones in his spine in a crash at the 1953 Tour, he was back on the start line in 1954. A very few people looked deeper and saw that side of him - one of them was Louison Bobet, who despite being a Breton himself was once Robic's arch-enemy (interestingly, Bobet also carried messages for the Reistance during the war). Perhaps it was because Bobet knew how it felt to be the most hated man in the peloton (find out why here) that he was waiting to pay his respects when Robic finished his last race in 1967, 24 years after his first professional contract.

Robic was also a talented cyclo cross
rider - he was National Champion in 1945
and World Champion in 1950

The general impression is that life always tasted sour to Robic, but in retirement it got worse. Raymonde's family owned a cafe called Au Rendez-vous des Bretons near Montparnasse Station, which he took over; but it failed. Then Raymonde - whom he seems to have loved deeply - left him for another man and he fell into depression. For a while he refereed wrestling events, a sort of "sports-based entertainment" version much like the American type popular today that relied heavily on crowd-pleasing stunts such as when "heels" who disagreed with his decisions would lift him above their heads and throw him out of the ring. For a man as full of himself and his abilities as Robic, that must have hurt even more than the damage it surely did to his injured spine. Then, he went for a long period without employment and took to walking the streets, hoping to meet somebody who might offer him any sort of paid work at all - or, some say, a drink.

Eventually, an old friend took pity and gave him a job; allowing him to begin piecing his life back together. He even learned to moderate his language and behaviour, in time making friends with other cyclists in addition to Bobet and developing a social network, which is why he was driving home from a party given in honour of Joop Zoetemelk, just after the Dutchman's 1980 Tour victory, when he was killed in an accident. The street on which he lived as a child in Radenac has been renamed after him and a room in the village hall has been converted into a museum of his achievements.

Christophe Bassons
Christophe Bassons was born in Mazamet, France on this day in 1974 and started to race mountain bikes in 1991, when he was sixteen. A year later, he took to road racing and in 1995, while studying for his degree in civil engineering, he won the Tour du Tarn et Garonne and the Military World Time Trial Championship. He signed a contract to ride professionally for Force Sud in 1996 and then, when the team broke up in March, Festina-Lotus, where he remained until Willy Voet's mobile pharmacy was stopped by customs and the cycling world was torn apart by the Festina Affair of 1998.

Christophe Bassons

Thus began one of the worst scandals ever to hit cycling, parking off a cycle of admissions, denials, investigations, accusations and counter-accusations. Yet two of Festina's convicted riders - Christophe Moreau and Armin Meier, both of whom wisely decided the best option was to confess shortly after they were arrested, were vociferous in their insistence that Bassons was entirely innocent. Jean-Luc Gatellier, a writer who studied the Affair for L'Equipe, agreed: "It's true he's not one of them and he hasn't come out of the same mould... it's true that Christophe Bassons doesn't belong to the family of cheats and the corrupted," he said. As a result, he had little difficulty in securing a contract with La Française des Jeux when Festina died.

Bassons was among the lowliest of domestiques and, had be not have been singled out as the sole innocent man among a gang of criminals, he's probably have come out of the Affair no less anonymous than he had been before the story broke and would have been able to get on with his career. However, while subjected to intense scrutiny by some (his good character remained steadfastly intact), he was hailed as a hero by others and was chosen as something of an unofficial figurehead for the new, clean cycling that fans hoped would emerge when the scandal finally ebbed - assuming, of course, that cycling survived, which looked far from certain at some points. He was invited first to write for Vélo, in which he referred to riders who opposed quarterly medical checks (then used in an effort to catch dopers, or at least to be seen to be doing something to catch dopers) as hypocrites, then for Le Parisien. Basson's articles were generally considered harmless, amusing fripperies that shed a little light on the fit-for-public-consumption inner workings of the peloton; but once in a while they revealed a glimpse of its dark heart, stretched to over-capacity as it laboured to keep the EPO-thickened blood flowing through the sport. In one, he mentioned Lance Armstrong's rise back to the top of cycling after his recovery from cancer, which he said had been viewed as highly suspicious by many riders.

One day, Bassons claimed that as the Tour was climbing Alpe d'Huez, Lance Armstrong rode alongside him and delivered what sounded very much like a warning. It had been, the Texan said, a mistake to keep talking about doping. Bassons replied that he was concerned about future generations and what might happen to them if doping continued. "Why don't you go home, then?" Armstrong asked, which many took to be a politer way to say "if you don't like it, go." Armstrong confirmed later that the exchange had in act taken place, but explained it differently: "His accusations aren't good for cycling, for his team, for me, for anybody," he said. "If he thinks cycling works like that, he's wrong and he would be better off going home." He's still sticking to that story.

Bassons had either seriously misjudged the peloton's mood with regard to doping or he was simply far too angelic to survive in such as dirty world as late 1990s cycling. Whichever it was, the sport was not yet willing to clean up its act - after all, the Festina Affair wasn't the first scandal that had been survived. When Tom Simpson died, ranks were closed, a few new measures put into place to make it look as though steps had been taken and riders reminded one another to be a bit more careful in the future; the journalists went away and nothing much changed. Seven years earlier, when Knud Enemark Jensen collapsed, fractured his skull and later died at the Olympics, the same thing happened; and five years before that when Jean Malléjac came close to dying on Mont Ventoux, the same mountain where Simpson died. It had been that way ever since the days of Choppy Warburton, in the 1890s, and it remained so until Operación Puerto in 2006 when cycling finally realised something had to be done - and that time, set about doing it. Also, he had made a powerful enemy in Armstrong, who was well on his way to winning a Tour and beginning to put together a marketing and public representation team far beyond anything cycling had ever before seen - he may not have been liked by all the riders, but if they were going to have to pick sides there was no doubt they'd be on his, where the money was.

Very soon, he found that riders he once thought were friends would completely blank him. If he tried to instigate a breakaway, nobody would go with him. When he walked into a room, he was ignored. Sometimes, when he was surrounded by 200 men in a peloton, the atmosphere was distinctly threatening. It wasn't long until he cracked and, the morning after Stage 11 at the Tour that year, he got up at 05:30 and packed his bags. He took the time to say goodbye to his team mates ("one rider didn't look at me and refused to shake my hand," he said. "That hurt.") On his way out, he met team manager Marc Madiot, who had admitted to using amphetamines during his own career, and was told that he was letting down the squad.

Bassons has turned his back on cycling - or
cycling turned his back on him - but he
remains active in sport

His team mates, old and new, were almost unanimous in their condemnation: "I was the only one to talk to Bassons [at Force Sud]... He doesn't listen to anyone. Bassons is an individualist. Even in a race he doesn't easily lend a hand. He rides for himself," said an uncharacteristically serious Thierry Bourguignon, usually the (somewhat tediously) zany clown of the peloton. He found a handful of new friends, some of them powerful figures - "His solitude was the living proof that nothing fundamental has changed in the morals of the milieu, "said the journalist Jean-Michel Rouet. "Christophe Bassons died at the stake, burned by his passion. On official communiqués, he left two words: non partant. The peloton had already forgotten rider number 152." The French Minister of Sports Marie-George Buffet was another to take his side. "Rather than fighting against doping, they're fighting its opponent," she said and wrote to him to let him know he had her support, congratulating for having the courage to speak up, but the ProTour remained too hostile an environment - in 2000, he went to the second-category Jean Delatour team; then at the end of 2001, when he was still only 26 and would have been about to begin his best years, he retired. That same year he qualified as a sports teacher and took up a job with the Ministry of Sports and Youth in Bordeaux, where he is now in charge of anti-doping.

Andy Schleck

Andy Schleck at the prologue of the Critérium du Dauphiné,
2012

Born in Lëtzebuerg on this day in 1985, Andy Raymond Schleck comes from a Luxembourgish cycling dynasty - his older brother Frank is also a professional cyclist (and rides for the same team), his father Johny was National Road Race Champion in 1965 and 1973 and rode six Tours de France and his grandfather Auguste came third in the GP Faber of 1926 and 1927 and in the Independents National Road Race Championship of 1928. Oldest brother Steve is a politician. A little-known fact about Andy is that during his youth he was a cyclo cross rider of considerable promise, winning the National Junior Championship in 2002.

In 2004, Andy joined the amateur Vélo Club de Roubaix and was spotted immediately by Tour veteran turned directeur sportif par excellence Cyrille Guimard, a man whose proteges have won numerous prestigious races including seventeen Grand Tours. Among them was Laurent Fignon, of whom he said Andy reminded him, adding that the Luxembourgish rider was one of the greatest natural talents he had ever seen. When he won the Flèche du Sud that same year, he was noticed also by Bjarne Rijs, manager of Frank's team CSC, and offered a trainee contract. Just a year later he was a full professional and got his first taste of a ProTour at the Volta a Catalunya and won the time trial at the National Championships (Frank won the road race).

Having won two stages of the 2006 Sachsen Tour, Rijs deemed his young rider ready for a Grand Tour in 2007 and sent him to the Giro d'Italia, where he finished four stages in third place, won the Youth category and took second place in the General Classification - a stunning result for a Grand Tour debut. The following year he rode his first Tour de France, finishing the Alpe d'Huez stage in third place and proving to the world that a rider destined to be remembered as one of the great climbers had arrived. He was twelfth in the General Classification and won the Youth category, but more importantly had been an instrumental part of CSC's efforts to win the Teams competition - their total prize money equalled €621,210, not far off €0.4 million more than second place Silence-Lotto's €233,450.

Schleck is known as one of the peloton's nice guys. Here,
he awards a medal to Didi Senft, The Devil - who is not as
popular with riders as he is among the fans

In 2009, Schleck won Liège-Bastogne-Liège, one of the toughest and most prestigious Classics - and thus established himself as many people's favourite for the Tour. In fact, there was only one thing in his way, and that was his friend Alberto Contador. Schleck is, without a doubt, one of the top General Classification contenders of his generation and on a good day in the mountains no man alive can beat him, Contador included; Contador, meanwhile, is one of the greatest of all time, and unlike Andy he time trials almost as well as he climbs. That gave him the advantage he needed, Andy had to settle for second place and the Youth category once again. When July in 2010 rolled around, a lot of people looked at Andy and thought it was to be his year. Contador, who by that point had alread won four Grand Tours, was still very much in his prime; but Andy had grown up. His form had always been good, but a year earlier he still had the unformed, softer look of a boy; now he was chiseled, harder and purposeful - when the race got to the high mountains in the Pyrenees and Alps, would Contador be able to hold him off? For a long time it looked as though he might not: whenever he attacked and looked over his shoulder to see who'd followed him, there was Andy smiling back. Then, the Luxembourger won Stage 8, took the maillot jaune from Cadel Evans and held it for six stages through the Alps and the flat stages en route to the Pyrenees, where many expected him to increase his lead, perhaps even prove himself a better climber than Contador, and win the race.

It was not to be. During Stage 15, as the race climbed the last mountain of the day on the way to Bagnères-de-Luchon, Schleck dropped his chain. Contador chose that moment to attack, assisted by Denis Menchov, Samuel Sanchez and a number of other climbers looking to improve their times. By the time he'd set off again he was alone with nobody able to help him make up the gap. Contador took the maillot jaune at the finish line, along with a 39" advantage - the exact same time by which he would win overall five stages later. It remains one of the most controversial incidents in recent Tour history, attacked and defended by equal numbers: Sean Kelly was disgusted with what he saw as a total lack of sportsmanship and Gerard Vroomen said that while Contador had gained a great chance to win, he'd lost his chance to win greatly; meanwhile, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain saw nothing wrong in what he'd done. Contador said that he hadn't realised Schleck was in trouble and apologised (but even those who want to believe him, this writer included, have difficulty accepting his claims: the video of the incident makes it look very unlikely that he didn't know). Schleck says that he accepts the explanation and the apology; they remain friends.

In the Leopard Trek kit

Four days after the 2010 Tour, Andy and Frank gave a press conference in which the announced they would be leaving CSC at the end of the season and would ride with a new Luxembourg-based team managed by Brian Nygaard and Kim Andersen. The team was to be called Leopard True Racing, but when the young Danish rider Jakob Fuglsang announced that he too would be joining, he revealed that it would be Leopard Trek. The announcement of Team Sky was one of the biggest things to ever hit British cycling, but the buzz surrounding Leopard Trek was worlwide and in a different league altogether and kept growing as some of the most popular and talented figures in professional cycling were confirmed for the squad, many of them asset-stripped from CSC; among them was Stuart O'Grady, Oliver Zaugg, Joost Posthuma, Wouter Weylandt, Brice Feillu, Maxime Monfort, Lunis Gerdemann, the legendary Fabian Cancellara and, perhaps most popular of all, Jens Voigt; thier combined UCI points made the team number one in the world before it even officially existed. They also took media-savviness to a whole new level, like a multi-platinum selling rock band making maximum and effective use of social network websites, their own excellently-designed site, TV and magazines. One of the most recognisable and stylish team kits, tour buses that looked like space shuttles, Mercedes team cars and the gorgeous Trek Madones the team rode were the icing on the cake - Leopard Trek meant business, and they had the talent and the budget to take on the world and win.

There are those who say that Leopard Trek never delivered what they promised, but that's just because many fans expected them to win everything. In fact they were highly successful during the single year for which the team existed with numerous victories in the one-day events and the stage races. One of the most impressive was Andy's spectacular Stage 18 triumph at the Tour, when he rode away from the peloton on the 2,645m Col du Galibier. Nobody could get anywhere near him that day and, once again, it looked as though the Tour was his. In the following stages, however, his avantage was gradually eroded and by the time the Stage 20 time trial came around, he had just 57" on second place Cadel Evans. He lost, and Evans because the first Australian to win a Tour.

In August 2011, Geox team manager Joxean Fernandez Matxin claimed on Twitter that he'd heard Leopard Trek and RadioShack were to merge for 2012, but few believed him and when officials from both teams denied it the story seemed dead in the water. Then, further information began to leak out - Leopard Trek's Brian Nygaard was apparently none the wiser, but there were persistent tales of mysterious meetings between Leopard owner Flavio Becca and RadioShack manager Johan Bruyneel. Gazzetto dello Sport, the reliable Italian newspaper that owns the Giro d'Italia, said that it had received confirmation the new team would be called RadioShack-Trek; if that was a guess it was a good one, because when the team was confirmed it was RadioShack-Nissan Trek.

Andy follows Cadel on the Alpe d'Huez

Though Andy became the official winner of the 2010 Tour after Contador's controversial two-year ban in the wake of a failed anti-doping test (an honour he was reluctant to accept, having remained a steadfast supporter of the beleaguered Spanish rider throughout the long and drawn-out trial), 2012 didn't get off to a good start. His performances in the Classics was so poor that Bruyneel packed him and Frank off to an extra training camp. Frank then became a last-minute choice for the Giro after Fuglsang was injured; he abandoned with an injured shoulder but, for three weeks the spotlight was not on Andy, giving him excellent opportunity to train. Tour organisers announced that there would be more than 100km of time trials and less emphasis on the mountains, which in the opinion of many fans rules him out of contention this year. However, sometimes - when he really needs to - Andy can ride time trials. He did so in Stage 19 at the 2010 Tour, looking for a while like he might even beat Contador (though ultimately, he didn't). If he can in 2012 and also does well in the mountains (although the 2012 Tour has been termed less mountainous than preceding years, it still takes in La Planche des Belles Filles, Col du Grand Columbier, Madeleine, Croix du Fer, La Toussure, d'Aubisque, Tourmalet and others for a total of 25 peaks), Andy might surprise us yet.


On this day in 1899, 44-year-old composer Ernest Chausson lost control of his bicycle while riding down a hill on his estate in Limay, Yvelines, crashed into a wall and died instantly. Chausson's father made his fortune working with Baron Haussmann, whose 1850s redevelopment of Paris gave us much of the grand architecture that is familiar to cycling fans from the last stage of the Tour de France as it rolls along the Champs-Élysées each year. He was buried in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, not far from the graves of Albert Champion (who won Paris-Roubaix the same year Chausson died and set up the Champion spark plug firm), Laurent Fignon (winner of two Tours and one Giro) and Félix François Faure, who was president of France from 1895-1899 and whose determination to see the Dreyfus Affair permanently declared res judicata indirectly gave rise to the events that led to the creation of the Tour de France.

Other births: Alois Wacha (Austria, 1888); Donna Gould (Australia, 1966); Natsue Seki (Japan, 1966); Lucien De Brauwere (Belgium, 1951); Nico de Jong (Netherlands, 1887, died 1966); Carlo Bomans (Belgium, 1963); Luigi Roncaglia (Italy, 1943).

He's not a GC contender, he's a very naughty boy!

Is Andy Schleck turning into a badass hooligan with the kind of attitude his dad Johny always thought he'd need if he was ever going to win a Tour de France?

It's possible - it turns out that he's not only quick when riding his bike up a mountain, he's also a mean boy racer: he was clocked doing 101kph (nearly 63mph) recently in his home nation Luxembourg, and since the speed limit on the open road is 90kph that's very naughty. As a result Andy, who has had us all convinced that he's one of the nicest boys in cycling for the last few years, is being fined 350 euros and may have his driving licence suspended for a month.

The yobbo!

Meanwhile, local resident Lottie Faber says this isn't the first time the crazed tearaway cyclist has got himself in trouble.

"Not two weeks ago he was parked outside McDonalds with his mates," she told us after we'd promised there was a bottle of whisky for her if she talked to us. "They were blaring out Perry Como and talking about ponies and butterflies. I ignored it that time, but they kept it up until nearly 19:30 in the evening. Next day they were back again, so this time when it got round to 18:00 I rang his mum. I don't know what she said to him, but he hasn't been back since."

Tour de France: Stage 18 Debrief - fading star turns supernova!

"If you don't risk, you don't win. That's my attitude." (Andy Schleck)

If you missed the stage today beg, borrow, steal or even pay good money for a recording otherwise you  risk missing one of the greatest stages in modern times.

Andy Schleck, the man for whom so many of us had given up hope, attacked on the second climb with 60km to go - and never stopped, dropping all before him and leading up the mighty Col du Galibier; crossing the finish line more than two minutes before the next rider, brother Frank.

If he can do the same tomorrow, the time trial may as well not be raced - he'll not only have won the Tour but achieved possibly the greatest victory since Eddy Merckx.

Meanwhile, it looks like the road to the finish was also the road to the end for Alberto Contador. The champion tried in the early stages but he was simply unable to match Andy's superior skill and strength, leaving it down to Cadel Evans to go on the hunt. Cadel reduced the gap - at one point four minutes - to a little over two, but when it came down to it his enormous brute strength and power couldn't compete with Andy's graceful pedaling style. As the finish line drew near, Frank swung out from the back of the chase group and overtook, coming in 2'07" behind his little brother. Cadel was 8" later and was followed across by Ivan Basso 3" behind him.

Another star of the day was Thomas Voeckler who, thanks partially to Cadel who dragged him up in his slipstream, retains his yellow jersey for an incredible ninth day making him the greatest Frenchman in the Tour for years.

Only 78 riders in - meaning approximately 90 were at risk of disqualification. However, if 20% or more of the riders finish outside the limit, race organisers have the right under UCI rules to extend the permitted time so as to avoid decimating the competition - this decision was, unsurprisingly, taken with each rider finishing outside the time being docked points equivalent to those on offer for winning the race.

This puts Mark Cavendish in a precarious place - having looked like the definite winner of the points competition, he's now only 15 points ahead of Jose Joaquin Rojas. With Rojas a much better climber, it's now very possible that the Manx sprinter won't be the first Briton to wear the green jersey in Paris after all. Everything depends on his performance in tomorrow's intermediate sprint and Saturday's time trial, if that doesn't work in his favour - which, with the sprint coming towards the end of the stage and after the climb up the massive Col du Galibier which almost finished him off for good today and Cavendish's lack of time trial ability, it likely won't - the final result could even depend on the last stage into Paris. This is undoubtedly one of the most exciting final weeks since the Tour began.

"There was no "letting them have time" today. It was flat out behind....SmartOpard was just better. Period." (Jonathon Vaughters, @Vaughters, manager of Garmin-Cervelo, Twitter)

Stage 18 Results:

1. SCHLECK Andy 6h 07' 56"  

2. SCHLECK Frank + 02' 07"

3. EVANS Cadel + 02' 15"

4. BASSO Ivan + 02' 18"

5. VOECKLER Thomas + 02' 21"

6. ROLLAND Pierre + 02' 27"

7. CUNEGO Damiano + 02' 33"

8. TAARAMAE Rein + 03' 22"

9. DANIELSON Tom + 03' 25"

10. HESJEDAL Ryder + 03' 31"

Overall General Classification results following Stage 18:

1. VOECKLER Thomas 79h 34' 06"  
2. SCHLECK Andy + 00' 15"
3. SCHLECK Frank + 01' 08"
4. EVANS Cadel + 01' 12"
5. CUNEGO Damiano + 03' 46"
6. BASSO Ivan + 03' 46"
7. CONTADOR Alberto + 04' 44"
8. SANCHEZ Samuel  + 05' 20"
9. DANIELSON Tom + 07' 08"
10. PERAUD Jean-Christophe + 09' 27"


Points: Mark Cavendish; Climbers: Jelle Vanendert; Youth: Rein Taaramae; Team: Garmin-Cervelo; Combativity: Andy Schleck.

Tour de France: Stage 12 Debrief

"I just wanted to get stuck in, I just gave it everything to try to stay away." (Geraint Thomas)

Is Frank going to beat Andy to
a Tour de France win?

When we suggested earlier today that Stage 12 was going to be an entirely different sort of race, we were more right than we could even have hoped to be. In fact, it was so different that it wasn't just different to the earlier stages, it was completely different to the stage we expected. We were most certainly not the only ones to expect Andy Schleck and the LeopardTrek boys to emerge out of the peloton and dominate the moment the parcours turned pointy - and to be fair, they did for a while and Schleck rode extremely well, putting the wind up quite a few. Thing is, they tried to dominate too early and after an admittedly very impressive show of strength fell back, unable to keep up with their own style.

Oh, and the Schleck who rode well wasn't Andy - it was Frank.

One rider really shone today, defying all expectations after what hasn't been a good start for his team and in the process of doing so revealed himself to be the next top dog on the roster. If you haven't seen the results yet, chances are it's not someone you'd have expected, so all we'll say right now is he won a very well deserved Combativity prize for his efforts.

One other rider, predicted likely to outclass the bunch, had an absolutely dismal day: that man was Alberto Contador, favourite (until recently) for the overall General Classification win. Who knows what's got into Bertie this year? Not that it matters - the one thing we all know is that a lot of people are going to be wondering if it's more a case of what hasn't got into him, now that he's anti-doping control's number one target. For the record, we'll be sticking with him and considering him innocent unless the day comes when he is proven beyond doubt guilty; but, well, makes you fink, dunnit?

Unfortunately Romain Feillu, who has spent so much of the last 11 days wowing the crowds as part of some spectacular breakaways, is no longer with the race after being forced to abandon overnight due to the tendinitis from which he's been suffering for some time. However, anyone who has experienced this ailment will concede he's done brilliantly well to have kept going for as long as he has, never mind lead the race so often as he has.

Romain Feillu abandoned overnight.

Monsieur Prudhomme waved his flag to signal the end of the rolling neutral zone and the race got underway at 11:19 and within two kilometres Ruben Moreno, Laurent Mangel, Blel Kadri, Jose Ivan Gutierrez, Jeremy Roy and Geraint Thomas were testing the pack to see if there was any chance of escaping the peloton. Having decided they fancied their chances, they went for it and had an advantage of 20" by the time another two klicks were up. This is the sort of breakaway that can get the peloton worried because Thomas, despite having never won a stage in the Tour, is an outside contender for General Classification success, especially now he doesn't have to support team leader Bradley Wiggins who crashed out back in Stage 7 and even more so when they need to conserve energy for upcoming mountains. With today's mountains including the mighty Col du Tourmalet, the main pack decided energy saving was the best option and the escapees were left to get on with it - after all, there was a high probability that those same mountains would defeat them.

Thomas: brilliant now, stupendous
next year.

By 11.5km as the leaders reached Saint-Clar-de-Rivière, they were 2'35" out in front and still going strong, managing to build it up to a full four minutes shortly after entering the department of Gers. The peloton were ambling along quite happily, content to take this flatter first section easy at 35kmph. Had the race have stopped at this point, the G-Man would have taken the yellow jersey - which makes him far and away the best male Welsh Tour rider in history (we've italicised "male" because Swansea-born Nicole Cooke won two Tours de France Féminin).

This breakaway was beginning to look a bit too much like a successful one, meaning that the peloton's worries became outright anxiety. With the escapees fast approaching Castéra-Vignoles 7' minutes ahead, yellow jersey Thomas Voeckler was heard informing his team's directeur-sportif Dominique Arnould that he didn't want the gap to get any greater than 8'. Yet by the time they'd passed Nizan-Gesse they'd added another half-minute and the same again at Boudrac, which would normally result in a chase. However, Arnould advised patience, stating that in his opinion a gap of as much as 10' wouldn't be an issue. Calmness prevailed and the peloton cruised into the feeding station at Lannemezan 8'30" after the escapees had been through.

Their advantage meant that the lead group were unchallenged by the big-hitters when they reached Sarrancolin and the intermediate sprint, but they didn't hand about on the way and added another 30". Laurent Mangel of Saur-Sojasun was the first through for 20 points. 2. Jeremy Roy (FDJ) 17pts; 3. Blel Kadri (ALM) 15pts; 4. Ruben Perez Moreno (EUS) 13pts; 5. Jose Ivan Gutirrez (MOV) 11pts; 6 Geraint Thomas (SKY) 10pts.

Cav wants points, Cav gets
points. Such is the Natural
Order of Things.

Back in the pack, a certain Manxman was seen to be nonchalently making his forward. Cavendish, as we all know, is probably the best sprinter in professional cycling but with the remainder of the Tour being for the most part mountain stages - which, to be honest, he's pretty dreadful at -  he'll be wanting to grab what he can in the intermediate sprints from now on. Which means he was the first of the peloton to get through, of course, because when Cav wants to win a sprint he almost invariably does. 8. Mark Renshaw (THR) 8pts; 9. Jose Joaquin Rojas (MOV) 7pts; 10. Matt Goss (THR) 6pts; 11. Francisco Ventoso (MOV) 5pts; 12. Borut Bozic (VCD) 4pts; 13. Philippe Gilbert (OLO) 3pts; 14. Mikael Delage (FDJ) 2pts; 15. Bernhard Eisel (THR) 1pt.


The peloton's speed as it tackled the sprint took a big chunk out of the lead group's advantage, reducing it to 5'50" as they became the first Tour de France riders to set out up the slopes of Hourquette d'Ancizan, making its debut in this year's race. It soon claimed its first victim when Katusha's 24-year-old Denis Galimzyanov found himself unable to match the pace, dropping off the back and laying the foundations for the grupetto that was sure to come just as QuickStep's Sylvain and Vacansoleil's Johnny Hoogerland - still swathed in bandages to protect his 33 stitches - attacked the peloton. Astana's Roman Kreuziger went after them a little later, but the only reaction the peloton made was spitting Cavendish, Bak, Eisel and a few others out the back into the grupetto.

The race leaders reached the top with Mangel taking the top allocation of ten points, in accordance with the new Cat 1 climb rules which state that the first rider takes 10 points, the second 8pts, third 6pts, fourth 4pts,  fifth 2pts and sixth 1pt. As was the case with the new intermediate sprint rules, it's not yet entirely clear why the rules had to be changed but even those of us who remained dismissive of the sprint changes will have to admit that it turns out the old UCI knew what they were about after all; so let's hold on for a moment before we accuse them of fixing something that ain't broke - because if something ain't broke, there's no harm in taking it apart and making it go faster.

Another disaster, in a Tour riddled with disasters, very nearly got the better of Thomas shortly after he crested the top of the mountain - rounding a switchback in front of a fan waving the Welsh flag, he suddenly veered off the road and through a gap between a car and a quad bike coming to a stop on the grassy verge, 20cm from a steep slope which while unlikely to be lethal could very easily have sent him the way of Wiggins. Early explanations suggested he'd seen the flag and lost concentration, but following the race the G-Man said that he thought there may have been something on the road surface. We suspect that, if someone were to have a close look, they might find a few spots of diesel - the several rather ropy-looking old campervans arranged about the bend being likely culprits. This theory is apparently strengthened by the fact that not only did Thomas nearly do the same thing again seconds later, suggesting either another patch or contaminated tyre/brake pad rubber, but another crash involving other riders happened in precisely the same place once the peloton showed up.

Now, LeopardTrek moved up to the front of the peloton. Andy Schleck, known as one of the nicest men in the sport, has earned himself an army of fans in the last couple of years and many believe that 2011 is going to be his year - this seemed likely to be the moment that he would begin winning. As they started on the long, hard climb up Tourmalet they looked almost impossibly good, pulling like a train - even Fabian Cancellara, though he was back in the autobus rather than with his team, looked reasonably comfortable considering he's Cancellara and this was Tourmalet. Europcar were unceremoniously outclassed as LeopardTrek took full control, dominating the front of the main group. Meanwhile, out at the front, Kreuziger finally managed to catch and drop Sylvain Chavanel.

Andy Schleck: arsing about, on
bad form or playing a very long
and intricate mind game?

Out at the front, something quite remarkable had happened: the pursuit specialist Geraint Thomas was leading the breakaway. What's more, he was looking perfectly comfortable while doing so, still pulling strongly and showing no signs of stopping. Kreuziger was dropping rider after rider - Gutierrez was the first go, then Mangel and before long the Welshman was out on his own as he passed through La Mongie, two thirds of the way to the top. Could be keep going?

Andy Schleck remained calm and collected as a team mechanic changed his front wheel. Andy is Andy, so laid-back it's a wonder his blonde hair doesn't get tangled in his rear derailleur, but I'm not convinced even Gandhi would have stayed so calm if forced to wait during such a career-defining moment. Is it possible that he didn't want to win the stage? If not, we can only guess at what the hell he's playing at but as we've said before he's a clever rider and we're not convinced that a little bit of his famous niceness isn't used to hide a very sharp and ruthless understanding of psychology. Only a fool would write him off just yet.

Marmot!!!

There are two cute, cuddly creatures which thrive at altitude in the Pyrenees. One of them is the Schleck, the other is the Marmot. There's also a fierce predator that savagely hunts down its prey up there - it's called a Contador. Some people think Contador isn't as dangerous as he once was, but the Saxobank riders know better and sent out Jesus Hernandez to up the tempo in an effort to increase the pressure. Was El Pistolero about to come out with all guns firing?

Further up the mountain, Thomas had finally dropped behind Roy who took the 20 points for being the first to conquer the mountain. The Welshman had failed, but was awarded the Combativity award for his efforts - which ought to keep him happy for the time being, especially since by this time next year he'll be a race-hardened 26-year-old. We will never know if Britain had a Tour winner in Wiggins this year, but it looks very much as though the next one is already primed and in the chamber. By the time they reached the last climb, another Hors-Categorie ordeal provided this time by Luz-Ardiden, they were still over 3' ahead of the pack.

Prior to the start, Euskaltel-Euskadi's Sammy Sanchez had left no doubts that he wanted the stage. He may have been born in Asturias, far to the west of the Basque country, but he's long been an adopted son of the tiny mountain nation and the Haute-Pyrenees are his training ground so it was no surprise when he broke out of the peloton and surged ahead for a 13" lead - but with 13km of hard slog still to go, had be moved too soon? But he's wiser than that - reaching a group including his team-mate Ruben Moreno some 20" ahead, he rode with them, thus placing himself in an ideal position for future attacks. Back down the road, it had become obvious that Frank and Andy had driven their team too hard: their LeopardTrek comrades had given all they could and fallen back, leaving the brothers riding alone.

Sanchez had now joined forces with Omega-Pharma's Jelle Vanendert, himself a highly-respected climber, and the two were united in hot pursuit of Thomas and Roy who were fighting to keep a lead of around a minute on them with 10km to go. They soon caught them, and Roy gave up the fight. It wasn't long for Thomas, either, and the pair fell back to the chase group lead by yellow jersey Thomas Voeckler. With 5km to go, they were over a minute ahead and the strain was showing, but the honourary Basque wasn't running on empty yet. Standing up, he pushed himself even harder and attacked Vanendert.

In the peloton, more proof that Andy has a dark side: he was playing his favourite game, Trying To Rile Up Contador. We've all seen him at it - he did it all the way through the Pyrenees and the Alps last year, waiting until his old rival is starting to suffer and then riding up behind him with a big friendly grin on his face. Now he'd stomped on the pedals for a bit of a jump forward, forcing Contador to do the same. But poor Bertie's outnumbered this year because Frank is in the best form of his life, so he had to respond again when the older brother did it too before shooting off to attack the race leaders and leaving the pair of them behind. Others  gave chase, but he crossed the line just behind Sanchez and Vanendert alone, taking a very impressive third place.

Sammy Sanchez

One thing is as clear as the alpine lakes that the peloton will be passing in a few days' time in this stage: Andy Schleck and Alberto Contador are obsessed with one another. Every second of every race is spent examining one another, probing the other rider's form for cracks and testing strengths. It is enormously entertaining to watch, but Andy's ever going to win this damn race he needs to move on: last year, Contador was the only thing that stood in Andy's way - but now, Contador's reign may be over; he just no longer has what he used to have, actually losing time in this stage where he was once unbeatable.

What Andy needs to do now is forget his old enemy. It's time to concentrate on the mountains, time to turn his attention to winning stages.

Stage 12 Results:

1. SANCHEZ Samuel 6h 01' 15"  
2. VANENDERT Jelle + 00' 07"
3. SCHLECK Frank + 00' 10"
4. BASSO Ivan + 00' 30"
5. EVANS Cadel + 00' 30"
6. SCHLECK Andy + 00' 30"
7. CUNEGO Damiano 161 + 00' 35"
8. CONTADOR Alberto + 00' 43"
9. VOECKLER Thomas + 00' 50"
10. ROLLAND Pierre + 00' 50"


Overall General Classification results following Stage 12:

1. VOECKLER Thomas 51h 54' 44"  
2. SCHLECK Frank + 01' 49"
3. EVANS Cadel + 02' 06"
4. SCHLECK Andy + 02' 17"
5. BASSO Ivan + 03' 16"
6. CUNEGO Damiano + 03' 22"
7. CONTADOR Alberto + 04' 00"
8. SANCHEZ Samuel + 04' 11"
9. DANIELSON Tom + 04' 35"
10. ROCHE Nicolas + 04' 57"


Points: Marl Cavendish (260); Mountains: Sammy Sanchez (40); Youth: Arnold Jeanesson (52h00'34"); Team: LeopardTrek (155h09'18"); Combativity: Geraint Thomas.