Daily Cycling Facts 16.01.2014

Roger Lapébie, 1911-1996

Roger Lapébie
In Tour de France director Henri Desgrange's view, gears compromised the "perfect union of man and machine against the forces of nature" ideal towards which he had always striven to steer the event. Yet even he realised that his riders would need some means of altering ratios if they were going to ride up the mountains and still maintain a reasonable pace on the flat roads, so bikes were permitted to be fitted with a cog on either side of the back wheel, one large and one small, so that the gear could be changed by flipping the wheel over and repositioning it in the drop outs to maintain chain tension. Other systems were in existence - hub gears had been around for some time, there was even one in which pedaling forwards gave a high gear and pedaling backwards a low gear, all of them but had been judged either too heavy or too complex and fragile for use in such a demanding event.

Derailleur gears had been in existence in one form or another for some forty years by the time that Desgrange stepped down after a prostate operation left him in agony. They had their champions, too, and those champions convinced Victor Goddet that such devices were the way forward, because one of the first things he did when he took over the Tour's directorship was change the rules to permit their use. Roger Lapébie, born in Pessac on this day in 1911, became the first rider to try them out when he used them at the 1937 Tour; other riders were more reluctant, considering them all very well for recreational cyclists and women but completely unnecessary for iron-hard athletes such as themselves - and when it became clear that Lapébie's decision to use derailleurs had given him a massive advantage, 1936 winner Sylvère Maes abandoned the race in protest.

Lapébie's advantage was indeed huge: other riders had not worried that he didn't need to stop t change gears because they believed it likely that his derailleurs would break, preventing him from completing the race, but in fact he won by more than seven minutes and the derailleur was largely credited for the victory. Next year, every bike on the start line was fitted with them.

Lapébie was perhaps not the most honest, honourable rider in the history of sport - judges warned him time and time again about his habit of being given a handy push through tough sections by fans. He claimed that he asked them to resist, but years later admitted that he'd secretly ask them to keep doing it. Maes claimed that this was the real reason he'd quit, but considerably more nefarious tactics had been in use for years and rarely led to protest - Lapébie had himself been the victim of enemy riders who would resort to far dirtier tricks, such as the person unknown, believed by Lapébie and others to have been a Belgian rider, who had booby-trapped his bike by sawing partway through the handlebars so they snapped, forcing him to swap to another pair without a bottlecage (in those days was bolted to the bars rather than the frame) so that he got penalised every time he accepted a bottle held out to him from the roadside. From that day onwards, he always took his bike into his hotel room with him at night.


Philippe Thys

Belgian Philippe Thys, the first man to win three Tours de France and whom Henri Desgrange believed could have won six had it not have been for the First World War, was born in Anderlecht, Belgium on the 8th of October 1889 and died on this day in 1971 at the age of 81.

Thys also won the inaugural Belgian Cyclo Cross Championship in 1910, then the Circuit Français Peugeot and stage races from Paris to Turin and Paris to Toulouse in 1911 before turning professional in order to enter the Tour - he came 6th overall after his first attempt, then won it in 1913, 1914 and 1920. His 1913 victory came after one of the most remarkable events in Tour history: after his fork broke, he was forced to find a bike shop and have it repaired (this being in the days before mechanical assistance and technical back-up) and for which judges penalised him ten minutes.

However, race leader Eugène Christophe's fork also broke later on, thus beginning the famous incident which saw him finding a forge and repairing the fork himself so as to avoid penalty - but judges later discovered that whilst carrying out the repair, he had allowed a young lad named Corni to pump the bellows for him, which they deemed as being the recipient of outside help and penalised him ten minutes too (it was later reduced to three). This allowed Thys to claw his way back and win the stage. He would later lose his lead, but then Christophe's fork broke for a second time and the Belgian secured his lead, despite being knocked unconscious in a crash on the way to Dunkirk. Gustave Garrigou was 8'37" behind him, whereas 3rd place Marcel Buysse crossed the line with a 3h30'55" disadvantage after his handlebars snapped.

Thys may have been the first man to wear the maillot jaune. Officially, it was first given to Eugène Christophe when he led the race in 1919 - and he wasn't at all happy about it, complaining that the other riders called him "canary" (which might not be considered quite so terrible an insult in the modern peloton). However, when he was 67 Thys recalled that when he led the race in 1913, his team manager Alphonse Baugé had given him a maillot jaune to mark him out as leader more effectively than the green armband that had previously been used. Tour director Henri Desgrange apparently had no part in this, suggesting that Baugé had been encouraged to find some means of highlighting the fact that the race was led by a rider on a bike made by Peugeot, the team's main sponsor; Thys remembered that it had been purchased from the first bike shop Baugé could find, which rather suggests he'd been told to buy any jersey that would stand out in the pack. Thys remembered that although it was the correct size, "we had to cut a slightly larger hole for my head to go through."

It has been suggested that, some 43 years after the event, Thys' memory might have been playing tricks on him and there are no contemporary mentions of the jersey; however, he remained mentally sharp right up until his death and was known to be an exceptionally honest rider, so there is little reason to doubt him. If what he said is true, then it might be the case that when Desgrange decided to introduce the maillot jaune in 1919, he was inspired to do so by the yellow jersey of 1913 and chose yellow for the same reason, rather than to match the paper upon which Le Velo was printed as official Tour history states.


Koldo Gil, a Spanish rider who won a stage at the 2005 Giro'd'Italia, was born on this day in 1978. He won two stages in the 2006 Tour de Suisse and led the General Classification until Jan Ullrich won the final stage time trial, finishing the race in second place as a result. After a disappinting season in 2008 he was unable to secure a contract for 2009 and announced his retirement.

1976 Amateur Road Race and 1983 Professional Road Race Champion of Switzerland Serge Demierre was born today in 1956 in Burlata, Spain. 1983 was his best year - in addition to his National title, he won one stage and the Combativity award at the Tour de France. He retired in 1991 and now runs a bike shop near Geneva airport in Vernier.

Other cyclists born on this day: Steven De Neef (Belgium, 1971);  Carlos Jaramillo (Columbia, 1961); Raúl Marcelo Vázquez (Cuba, 1948); Mauricio Bolaños (El Salvador, 1939); Rudi van Houts (Netherlands, 1984); Gerald Koel (Netherlands, 1941); Roger Ludwig (Luxembourg, 1933); Radosław Romanik (Poland, 1967).

Daily Cycling Facts 03.01.2014

Lucien Buysse

Lucien Buysse, 1892-1980

Lucien Buysse, winner of two stages and the overall General Classification at the 1926 Tour de France - at 5745km, the longest in history (it was also the first Tour that didn't start in Paris) - died on this day in 1980. He was born in Wontergem, Belgium on the 11th of September 1892 and counted the 1913 Tour of Belgium for Amateurs as his first major success.

During Stage 3 at the 1926 Tour, Buysse received news that his daughter had died. His immediate instinct was to leave the race and return home; but his family insisted he continued, realising that if her father could win a stage and dedicate his victory to her it would make a very fine memorial indeed.

Stage 10 was billed as the hardest in the history of the Tour. It began at midnight and, by 18:00, only ten men had arrived at the finish line. Possibly fearing that Desgrange's early concerns that riders in the Pyrenees were at risk of being eaten by bears, the organisers sent out cars in search of the missing men and began finding them, in various states of exhaustion, strung out along the route. A full 24 hours after the stage had begun, 47 of the 76 starters had crossed the line, at which point it was decided that all riders would be permitted an extra 40% of the winning time (6 hours and 48 minutes) in which to finish as the standard cut-off time in which all riders must finish in order to escape disqualification would leave a field so depleted it would reduce competition; the remaining 22 - incredibly, only one rider had abandoned - being disqualified. The stage had been so difficult that judges had turned a blind eye when some of the riders had arrived at the end of the stage by bus and when a member of the public confessed that he had carried some riders to the finish line in his car but insisted they'd been in such a poor state he had done so through altruism rather than for financial gain, officials declined to disqualify the riders - and paid the man for helping them.

Buysse on Tourmalet

Buysse, meanwhile, proved to be made of sterner stuff. Showing a similar ability to that later displayed by Charly Gaul, a capacity to withdraw into himself and keep going hard whilst those around him were reduced to their lowest ebb by the sheer suffering involved in what they were attempting to do, he made use of a storm on the Col d'Aspin and, accompanied by his brothers Jules (winner of Stages 1 and 2) and Michel, attacked the peloton so savagely that he took the yellow jersey from previous leader Gustave van Slembrouck and a lead just short of an hour from his own Automoto team captain Ottavio Bottecchia, winner in 1924 and 1926, who subsequently abandoned. By the time he crossed the finish line, after seventeen hours and 326km of solid riding, he was 25 minutes ahead of the next man and two hours ahead of van Slembrouck. The next stage, two days later, was also mountainous and only 3km shorter; when Buysse won that one too his overall victory was all but guaranteed Wisely, he conserved his energy from that point onwards; taking care not to over-exert himself and deliver consistent good results so that he held the race leadership all the way to Paris six stages later.


Giovanni Pelizzoli
Legendary Italian frame builder Giovanni Pelizzoli was born in Curno on this day in 1942. The son of a bike mechanic, he began racing at the age of 14 and achieved good results but always dreamed of building bikes rather than racing them. He became manager of a junior team whilst still a teenager and managed to land an apprenticeship with an artisan frame builder in Bergamo, where he learned his craft and in 1969 set up his own workshop building bikes under his CIÖCC brand, while also working as a mechanic for the GS Zonca team, then home to Gianni Motta. In 1977, Claudio Corti won a World Cup aboard a CIÖCC bike.

Pelizzoli's hand-built frames combine the best of old and
modern production techniques.

Pelizzoli sold the company in 1980 but continued building bikes and in 1993 was put in charge of the frame design division at Cicli F.lli Masciaghi, where he was responsible for the development of the firm' top-end Fausto Coppi-branded machines. The firm's pro team of the day included names such as Gianni Bugno, Richard Virenque and Davide Rebellin - at that time, among the best riders in the world. In 1995, Bugno won the Italian National Championship on a bike Pelizzoli hand-built specifically for him. A year later, Pascal Richard, Max Sciandri and Ralf Sorensen took the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympic road race, each of them aboard a Pelizzoli bike. Fabiana Luperini won five editions of the Giro Donne (the record) and three consecutive Tours de France Féminin (equaling Jeannie Longo's record) on hers.


Born in Gwndy, a village near Caldicot in Wales, on this day in 1991, Hannah Rich found her way into cycling via a roundabout route - in 2006, when she was 15, she took part in trampoline sessions held at Newport Velodrome and decided she liked the look of the track cycling she saw there. Later that same year, she won a silver medal in the Junior Points race at the National Track Championships, then two years later she became National Scratch race Champion. A year after that she was Welsh Road Race Champion and Junior British Points race Champion, then in 2011 she became Welsh Road Race Champion for a second time and came third in the British Circuit Race Championship.

Alessandro Petacchi
(image: CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Born in La Spezia on this day in 1974, Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi won an incredible 51 Grand Tour stages during his 15 year professional career - even with the stage wins that were later disqualified, he is the third most successful Grand Tour stage winner after Eddy Merckx and Mario Cipollini. He also won the Points Classification in all three races. Petacchi's results prior to 2007 have been disallowed after he tested positive for a controlled substance, though his positive result was due to incorrect use of his anti-asthma medicine rather than deliberate doping - while the Court of Arbitration in sport cleared him of intentionally doping, it ruled that in committing "human error" he had failed to exercise the utmost caution that is expected of all athletes. On the 23rd of April 2013, Petacchi announced via the Lampre-Merida website that he had retired but, at the age of 39, hinted that his decision might not be permanent. "My career has been full of satisfactions and enriched by all the most important victories that a rider like me could ever have aimed for," he said. "At the threshold of 200 victories in my career, I feel my life reaches a particular moment, a turning point, in which I perceive the need to find a new dimension and to have more time to dedicate to my family. These considerations conclude me to the decision to pause my career."

In 2013, Omega Pharma-QuickStep manager Patrick Lefevre announced that Pettachi would be joining the team on a14-month contract beginning in August, the rider having said previously that he would like to act as lead-out man for the team's star sprinter Mark Cavendish.


More cyclists born on this day: Kevin Morgan (Australia, 1948); Les Wilson (Great Britain, 1926, died 20.01.2006); Morgan Schmitt (USA, 1985); Álvaro González de Galdeano (Spain, 1970);  Robert Oliver (New Zealand, 1950); Ross Edgar (UK, 1983); Ján Lepka (Slovakia, 1977); Vittorio Algeri (Italy, 1955); Juan Carlos Haedo (Argentina, 1948); Ole Byriel (Denmark, 1958); Karel Paar (Czechoslovakia, 1945); Gino Lori (Italy, 1956); Arturo Cambroni (Mexico, 1953); Ceris Gilfillan (Scotland, 1980); Marcel Gobillot (France, 1900, died 1991); Angie González (Venezuela, 1981).

Daily Cycling Facts 16.01.2013

Roger Lapébie, 1911-1996

Roger Lapébie
In Tour de France director Henri Desgrange's view, gears comprised the "perfect union of man and machine against the forces of nature" ideal towards which he had always striven to steer the event. Yet even he realised that his riders would need some means of altering ratios if they were going to ride up the mountains and still maintain a reasonable pace on the flat roads, so bikes were permitted to be fitted with a cog on either side of the back wheel, one large and one small, so that the gear could be changed by flipping the wheel over and repositioning it in the drop outs to maintain chain tension. Other systems were in existence - hub gears had been around for some time, there was even one in which pedaling forwards gave a high gear and pedaling backwards a low gear and another which allowed the rider - but had been judged either too heavy or too complex for use in such a demanding event.

Derailleur gears had been in existence in one form or another for some forty years by the time that Desgrange stepped down after a prostate operation left him in agony. They had their champions, too - who had apparently convinced Victor Goddet that such devices were the way forward, because one of the first things he did when he took over the Tour's directorship was change the rules to permit them and it was Roger Lapébie, born in Pessac on this day in 1911, who became the first rider to try them out. Other riders were more reluctant, considering them all very well for recreational cyclists and women but completely unnecessary for iron-hard athletes such as themselves.

Lapébie was perhaps not the most honest, honourable rider in the history of sport - judges warned him time and time again about his habit of being given a handy push through tough sections by fans. He claimed that he asked them to resist, but years later admitted that he'd secretly ask them to keep doing it (and to be fair to him, there were riders who would resort to far dirtier tricks, such as the person unknown - believed by Lapébie and others to have been a Belgian rider - who had booby-trapped his bike by sawing partway through the handlebars so they snapped, forcing him to swap to another pair without a bottlecage so that he got penalised every time he accepted a bottle held out to him from the roadside.

However, he won by more than seven minutes and, even though he might not have done had Sylvère Maes not have left the race and taken his team with him in protest, the derailleur was largely credited for the victory. Next year, every bike on the start line was fitted with one.

Philippe Thys

Belgian Philippe Thys, the first man to win three Tours de France and whom Henri Desgrange believed could have won six had it not have been for the First World War, was born in Anderlecht, Belgium on the 8th of October 1889 and died on this day in 1971 at the age of 81.

Thys also won the inaugural Belgian Cyclo Cross Championship in 1910, then the Circuit Français Peugeot and stage races from Paris to Turin and Paris to Toulouse in 1911 before turning professional in order to enter the Tour - he came 6th overall after his first attempt, then won it in 1913, 1914 and 1920. His 1913 victory came after one of the most remarkable events in Tour history: after his fork broke, he was forced to find a bike shop and have it repaired (this being in the days before mechanical assistance and technical back-up) and for which judges penalised him ten minutes.

However, race leader Eugène Christophe's fork also broke later on, thus beginning the famous incident which saw him finding a forge and repairing the fork himself so as to avoid penalty - but judges later discovered that whilst carrying out the repair, he had allowed a young lad named Corni to pump the bellows for him, which they deemed as being the recipient of outside help and penalised him ten minutes too (it was later reduced to three). This allowed Thys to claw his way back and win the stage. He would later lose his lead, but then Christophe's fork broke for a second time and the Belgian secured his lead, despite being knocked unconscious in a crash on the way to Dunkirk. Gustave Garrigou was 8'37" behind him, whereas 3rd place Marcel Buysse crossed the line with a 3h30'55" disadvantage after his handlebars snapped.


Koldo Gil, a Spanish rider who won a stage at the 2005 Giro'd'Italia, was born on this day in 1978. He won two stages in the 2006 Tour de Suisse and led the General Classification until Jan Ullrich won the final stage time trial, finishing the race in second place as a result. After a disappinting season in 2008 he was unable to secure a contract for 2009 and announced his retirement.

1976 Amateur Road Race and 1983 Professional Road Race Champion of Switzerland Serge Demierre was born today in 1956 in Burlata, Spain. 1983 was his best year - in addition to his National title, he won one stage and the Combativity award at the Tour de France. He retired in 1991 and now runs a bike shop near Geneva airport in Vernier.

Other cyclists born on this day: Steven De Neef (Belgium, 1971);  Carlos Jaramillo (Columbia, 1961); Raúl Marcelo Vázquez (Cuba, 1948); Mauricio Bolaños (El Salvador, 1939); Rudi van Houts (Netherlands, 1984); Gerald Koel (Netherlands, 1941); Roger Ludwig (Luxembourg, 1933); Radosław Romanik (Poland, 1967).

Daily Cycling Facts 03.01.2013

Lucien Buysse

Lucien Buysse, 1892-1980

Lucien Buysse, winner of two stages and the overall General Classification at the 1926 Tour de France - at 5745km, the longest in history (it was also the first Tour that didn't start in Paris) - died on this day in 1980. He was born in Wontergem, Belgium on the 11th of September 1892 and counted the 1913 Tour of Belgium for Amateurs as his first major success.

During Stage 3 at the 1926 Tour, Buysse received news that his daughter had died. His immediate instinct was to leave the race and return home; but his family insisted he continued, realising that if her father could win a stage dedicate his victory to her it would make a very fine memorial indeed.

Stage 10 was billed as the hardest in the history of the Tour. It began at midnight and, by 18:00, only ten men had arrived at the finish line. Possibly fearing that Desgrange's early concerns that riders in the Pyrenees were at risk of being eaten by bears, the organisers sent out cars in search of the missing men and began finding them, in various states of exhaustion, strung out along the route. A full 24 hours after the stage had begun, 47 of the 76 starters had crossed the line, at which point it was decided that all riders would be permitted an extra 40% of the winning time (6 hours and 48 minutes) in which to finish as the standard cut-off time in which all riders must finish in order to escape disqualification would leave a field so depleted it would reduce competition; the remaining 22 - incredibly, only one rider had abandoned - being disqualified. The stage had been so difficult that judges had turned a blind eye when some of the riders had arrived at the end of the stage by bus and when a member of the public confessed that he had carried some riders to the finish line in his car but insisted they'd been in such a poor state he had done so through altruism rather than for financial gain, officials declined to disqualify the riders - and paid the man for helping them.

Buysse on Tourmalet

Buysse, meanwhile, proved to be made of sterner stuff. Showing a similar ability to that later displayed by Charly Gaul, a capacity to withdraw into himself and keep going hard whilst those around him were reduced to their lowest ebb by the sheer suffering involved in what they were attempting to do, he made use of a storm on the Col d'Aspin and, accompanied by his brothers Jules (winner of Stages 1 and 2) and Michel, attacked the peloton so savagely that he took the yellow jersey from previous leader Gustave van Slembrouck and a lead just short of an hour from his own Automoto team captain Ottavio Bottecchia, winner in 1924 and 1926, who subsequently abandoned. By the time he crossed the finish line, after seventeen hours and 326km of solid riding, he was 25 minutes ahead of the next man and two hours ahead of van Slembrouck. The next stage, two days later, was also mountainous and only 3km shorter; when Buysse won that one too his overall victory was all but guaranteed Wisely, he conserved his energy from that point onwards; taking care not to over-exert himself and deliver consistent good results so that he held the race leadership all the way to Paris six stages later.




Giovanni Pelizzoli
Legendary Italian frame builder Giovanni Pelizzoli was born in Curno on this day in 1942. The son of a bike mechanic, he began racing at the age of 14 and achieved good results but always dreamed of building bikes rather than racing them. He became manager of a junior team whilst still a teenager and managed to land an apprenticeship with an artisan frame builder in Bergamo, where he learned his craft and in 1969 set up his own workshop building bikes under his CIÖCC brand, while also working as a mechanic for the GS Zonca team, then home to Gianni Motta. In 1977, Claudio Corti won a World Cup aboard a CIÖCC bike.

Pelizzoli's hand-built frames combine the best of old and
modern production techniques.

Pelizzoli sold the company in 1980 but continued building bikes and in 1993 was put in charge of the frame design division at Cicli F.lli Masciaghi, where he was responsible for the development of the firm' top-end Fausto Coppi-branded machines. The firm's pro team of the day included names such as Gianni Bugno, Richard Virenque and Davide Rebellin - at that time, among the best riders in the world. In 1995, Bugno won the Italian National Championship on a bike Pelizzoli hand-built specifically for him. A year later, Pascal Richard, Max Sciandri and Ralf Sorensen took the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympic road race, each of them aboard a Pelizzoli bike. Fabiana Luperini won five editions of the Giro Donne (the record) and three consecutive Tours de France Féminin (equaling Jeannie Longo's record) on hers.


Born in Gwndy, a village near Caldicot in Wales, on this day in 1991, Hannah Rich found her way into cycling via a roundabout route - in 2006, when she was 15, she took part in trampoline sessions held at Newport Velodrome and decided she liked the look of the track cycling she saw there. Later that same year, she won a silver medal in the Junior Points race at the National Track Championships, then two years later she became National Scratch race Champion. A year after that she was Welsh Road Race Champion and Junior British Points race Champion, then in 2011 she became Welsh Road Race Champion for a second time and came third in the British Circuit Race Championship.

Alessandro Petacchi
(image: CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Born in La Spezia on this day in 1974, Italian sprinter Alessandro Petacchi won an incredible 51 Grand Tour stages during his 15 year professional career - even with the stage wins that were later disqualified, he is the third most successful Grand Tour stage winner after Eddy Merckx and Mario Cipollini. He also won the Points Classification in all three races. Petacchi's results prior to 2007 have been disallowed after he tested positive for a controlled substance, though his positive result was due to incorrect use of his anti-asthma medicine rather than deliberate doping - while the Court of Arbitration in sport cleared him of intentionally doping, it ruled that in committing "human error" he had failed to exercise the utmost caution that is expected of all athletes. On the 23rd of April 2013, Petacchi announced via the Lampre-Merida website that he had retired but, at the age of 39, hinted that his decision might not be permanent. "My career has been full of satisfactions and enriched by all the most important victories that a rider like me could ever have aimed for," he said. "At the threshold of 200 victories in my career, I feel my life reaches a particular moment, a turning point, in which I perceive the need to find a new dimension and to have more time to dedicate to my family. These considerations conclude me to the decision to pause my career."

More cyclists born on this day: Kevin Morgan (Australia, 1948); Les Wilson (Great Britain, 1926, died 20.01.2006); Morgan Schmitt (United Healthcare, born USA, 1985); Álvaro González de Galdeano (Spain, 1970);  Robert Oliver (New Zealand, 1950); Ross Edgar (Team Sky, born UK, 1983, winner of National Team Sprint Championships in 2010); Ján Lepka (Slovakia, 1977); Vittorio Algeri (Italy, 1955); Juan Carlos Haedo (Argentina, 1948, father of Saxobank rider and 2011 Vuelta a Espana stage winner Juan José Haedo); Ole Byriel (Denmark, 1958); Karel Paar (Czechoslovakia, 1945); Gino Lori (Italy, 1956); Arturo Cambroni (Mexico, 1953); Ceris Gilfillan (Scotland, 1980); Marcel Gobillot (born France 1900, died 12.01.1991, won gold at 1920 Olympics); Angie González (Venezuela, 1981).

Daily Cycling Facts 16.01.12

Roger Lapébie, 1911-1996

Roger Lapébie
In Henri Desgrange's view, gears comprised the "perfect union of man and machine against the forces of nature" ideal towards which he had always striven to steer the event. Yet even he realised that his riders would need some means of altering ratios if they were going to ride up the mountains and still maintain a reasonable pace on the flat roads, so bikes were permitted to be fitted with a cog on either side of the back wheel, one large and one small, so that the gear could be changed by flipping the wheel over and repositioning it in the drop outs to maintain chain tension. Other systems were in existence - hub gears had been around for some time, there was even one in which pedaling forwards gave a high gear and pedaling backwards a low gear and another which allowed the rider - but had been judged either too heavy or too complex for use in such a demanding event.

Derailleur gears had been in existence in one form or another for some forty years by the time that Desgrange stepped down after a prostate operation left him in agony. They had their champions, too - who had apparently convinced Victor Goddet that such devices were the way forward, because one of the first things he did when he took over the Tour's directorship was change the rules to permit them and it was Roger Lapébie, born in Pessac on this day in 1911, who became the first rider to try them out. Other riders were more reluctant, considering them all very well for recreational cyclists and women but completely unnecessary for iron-hard athletes such as themselves.

Lapébie was perhaps not the most honest, honourable rider in the history of sport - judges warned him time and time again about his habit of being given a handy push through tough sections by fans. He claimed that he asked them to resist, but years later admitted that he'd secretly ask them to keep doing it (and to be fair to him, there were riders who would resort to far dirtier tricks, such as the person unknown - believed by Lapébie and others to have been a Belgian rider - who had booby-trapped his bike by sawing partway through the handlebars so they snapped, forcing him to swap to another pair without a bottlecage so that he got penalised every time he accepted a bottle held out to him from the roadside.

However, he won by more than seven minutes and, even though he might not have done had Sylvère Maes not have left the race and taken his team with him in protest, the derailleur was largely credited for the victory. Next year, every bike on the start line was fitted with one.

Philippe Thys

Belgian Philippe Thys, the first man to win three Tours de France and whom Henri Desgrange believed could have won six had it not have been for the First World War, was born in Anderlecht, Belgium on the 8th of October 1889 and died on this day in 1971 at the age of 81.

Thys also won the inaugural Belgian Cyclo Cross Championship in 1910, then the Circuit Français Peugeot and stage races from Paris to Turin and Paris to Toulouse in 1911 before turning professional in order to enter the Tour - he came 6th overall after his first attempt, then won it in 1913, 1914 and 1920. His 1913 victory came after one of the most remarkable events in Tour history: after his fork broke, he was forced to find a bike shop and have it repaired (this being in the days before mechanical assistance and technical back-up) and for which judges penalised him ten minutes.

However, race leader Eugène Christophe's fork also broke later on, thus beginning the famous incident which saw him finding a forge and repairing the fork himself so as to avoid penalty - but judges later discovered that whilst carrying out the repair, he had allowed a young lad named Corni to pump the bellows for him, which they deemed as being the recipient of outside help and penalised him ten minutes too (it was later reduced to three). This allowed Thys to claw his way back and win the stage. He would later lose his lead, but then Christophe's fork broke for a second time and the Belgian secured his lead, despite being knocked unconscious in a crash on the way to Dunkirk. Gustave Garrigou was 8'37" behind him, whereas 3rd place Marcel Buysse crossed the line with a 3h30'55" disadvantage after his handlebars snapped.


Koldo Gil, a Spanish rider who won a stage at the 2005 Giro'd'Italia, was born on this day in 1978. He won two stages in the 2006 Tour de Suisse and led the General Classification until Jan Ullrich won the final stage time trial, finishing the race in second place as a result. After a disappinting season in 2008 he was unable to secure a contract for 2009 and announced his retirement.

1976 Amateur Road Race and 1983 Professional Road Race Champion of Switzerland Serge Demierre was born today in 1956 in Burlata, Spain. 1983 was his best year - in addition to his National title, he won one stage and the Combativity award at the Tour de France. He retired in 1991 and now runs a bike shop near Geneva airport in Vernier.

Other birthdays: Steven De Neef (Belgium, 1971);  Carlos Jaramillo (Columbia, 1961); Raúl Marcelo Vázquez (Cuba, 1948); Mauricio Bolaños (El Salvador, 1939); Rudi van Houts (Netherlands, 1984); Gerald Koel (Netherlands, 1941); Roger Ludwig (Luxembourg, 1933); Radosław Romanik (Poland, 1967).

Tomorrow: The birth of GreenEDGE

Daily Cycling Facts 03.01.12

Lucien Buysse

Lucien Buysse, 1892-1980

Lucien Buysse, winner of two stages and the overall General Classification at the 1926 Tour de France - at 5745km, the longest in history (it was also the first Tour that didn't start in Paris) - died on this day in 1980. He was born in Wontergem, Belgium on the 11th of September 1892 and counted the 1913 Tour of Belgium for Amateurs as his first major success.

During Stage 3 at the 1926 Tour, Buysse received news that his daughter had died. His immediate instinct was to leave the race and return home; but his family insisted he continued, realising that if her father could win a stage dedicate his victory to her it would make a very fine memorial indeed.

Stage 10 was billed as the hardest in the history of the Tour. It began at midnight and, by 18:00, only ten men had arrived at the finish line. Possibly fearing that Desgrange's early concerns that riders in the Pyrenees were at risk of being eaten by bears, the organisers sent out cars in search of the missing men and began finding them, in various states of exhaustion, strung out along the route. A full 24 hours after the stage had begun, 47 of the 76 starters had crossed the line, at which point it was decided that all riders would be permitted an extra 40% of the winning time (6 hours and 48 minutes) in which to finish as the standard cut-off time in which all riders must finish in order to escape disqualification would leave a field so depleted it would reduce competition; the remaining 22 - incredibly, only one rider had abandoned - being disqualified. The stage had been so difficult that judges had turned a blind eye when some of the riders had arrived at the end of the stage by bus and when a member of the public confessed that he had carried some riders to the finish line in his car but insisted they'd been in such a poor state he had done so through altruism rather than for financial gain, officials declined to disqualify the riders - and paid the man for helping them.

Buysse on Tourmalet

Buysse, meanwhile, proved to be made of sterner stuff. Showing a similar ability to that later displayed by Charly Gaul, a capacity to withdraw into himself and keep going hard whilst those around him were reduced to their lowest ebb by the sheer suffering involved in what they were attempting to do, he made use of a storm on the Col d'Aspin and, accompanied by his brothers Jules (winner of Stages 1 and 2) and Michel, attacked the peloton so savagely that he took the yellow jersey from previous leader Gustave van Slembrouck and a lead just short of an hour from his own Automoto team captain Ottavio Bottecchia, winner in 1924 and 1926, who subsequently abandoned. By the time he crossed the finish line, after seventeen hours and 326km of solid riding, he was 25 minutes ahead of the next man and two hours ahead of van Slembrouck. The next stage, two days later, was also mountainous and only 3km shorter; when Buysse won that one too his overall victory was all but guaranteed Wisely, he conserved his energy from that point onwards; taking care not to over-exert himself and deliver consistent good results so that he held the race leadership all the way to Paris six stages later.

Alessandro Petacchi
(image: CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Happy birthday to Alessandro Petacchi, the Italian sprinter who has won an incredible 51 Grand Tour stages during his 15 year professional career, as well as the Points Classification in all three. Petacchi's results prior to 2007 have been disallowed after he tested positive for a controlled substance, though his positive result was due to incorrect use of his anti-asthma medicine rather than deliberate doping.

Giovanni Pelizzoli
Legendary Italian frame builder Giovanni Pelizzoli was born in Curno on this day in 1942. The son of a bike mechanic, he began racing at the age of 14 and achieved good results but always dreamed of building bikes rather than racing them. He became manager of a junior team whilst still a teenager and managed to land an apprenticeship with an artisan frame builder in Bergamo, where he learned his craft and in 1969 set up his own workshop building bikes under his CIÖCC brand, while also working as a mechanic for the GS Zonca team, then home to Gianni Motta. In 1977, Claudio Corti won a World Cup aboard a CIÖCC bike.

Pelizzoli's hand-built frames combine the best of old and
modern production techniques.

Pelizzoli sold the company in 1980 but continued building bikes and in 1993 was put in charge of the frame design division at Cicli F.lli Masciaghi, where he was responsible for the development of the firm' top-end Fausto Coppi-branded machines. The firm's pro team of the day included names such as Gianni Bugno, Richard Virenque and Davide Rebellin - at that time, among the best riders in the world. In 1995, Bugno won the Italian National Championship on a bike Pelizzoli hand-built specifically for him. A year later, Pascal Richard, Max Sciandri and Ralf Sorensen took the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympic road race, each of them aboard a Pelizzoli bike. Fabiana Luperini won five editions of the Giro Donne (the record) and three consecutive Tours de France Féminin (equaling Jeannie Longo's record) on hers.

Other birthdays: Kevin Morgan (Australia, 1948); Les Wilson (Great Britain, 1926, died 20.01.2006); Morgan Schmitt (United Healthcare, born USA, 1985); Álvaro González de Galdeano (Spain, 1970);  Robert Oliver (New Zealand, 1950); Ross Edgar (Team Sky, born UK, 1983, winner of National Team Sprint Championships in 2010); Ján Lepka (Slovakia, 1977); Vittorio Algeri (Italy, 1955); Juan Carlos Haedo (Argentina, 1948, father of Saxobank rider and 2011 Vuelta a Espana stage winner Juan José Haedo); Ole Byriel (Denmark, 1958); Karel Paar (Czechoslovakia, 1945); Gino Lori (Italy, 1956); Arturo Cambroni (Mexico, 1953); Ceris Gilfillan (Scotland, 1980); Marcel Gobillot (born France 1900, died 12.01.1991, won gold at 1920 Olympics); Angie González (Venezuela, 1981).

Tomorrow: David Millar, one of cycling's most irrepressible characters and probably the brightest mind in the modern peloton.