Daily Cycling Facts 11.04.2014

1909 victor Octave Lapize, pictured at the
1910 Tour de France

Paris-Roubaix was held on this date in 1909, 1954, 1965, 1976, 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2010. The 1909 edition - the last in which riders were allowed to be paced by another bike or tandem (they'd been allowed to be paced by cars and motorbikes too between 1898 and 1901) - was won by Octave Lapize, the first of the three victories that would make him the only man to have won in three consecutive year until Francesco Moser repeated the feat nearly seven decades later in 1980. Lapize would go on to become French National Champion in 1911, 1912 and 1913 and, after Stages 5, 9, 10, 14 and the overall General Classification at the Tour de France in 1910, would win Stage 6 in 1912 and 8 in 1914. When the First World War broke out, Lapize became a pilot in the French Army but was shot down on Bastille Day 1917 near Flirey. He survived the crash but succumbed to appalling injuries in hospital shortly afterwards. He was 29.

Raymond Impanis, winner in 1954, was another rider who also did well in the Tour (and the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d'Italia too, for that matter) - he did even better, meanwhile, in the Classics; winning the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1949 and 1951, Gent-Wevelgem in 1952 and 1953 and the Tour of Flanders in the same year as his Paris-Roubaix victory (he also won Paris-Nice for the first time that year too, repeating it in 1960). All in all, he rolled across the Paris-Roubaix start line sixteen times - a record that was not equaled until Servais Knaven made his own 16th appearance in 2010, the same year that Impanis died.

Rik van Looy - first man to win all five Monuments
(image credit: Velorunner)

1965 brought the record-equaling third win for Rik van Looy. His previous victories, however, had been in 1961 and 1962, so he could not equal the three consecutive wins set by Lapize all those year before. However, by winning both Paris-Roubaix and Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1961 and having already won  Milan-San Remo (1958) and the Tour of Flanders and the Giro di Lombardia (1959), he became the first rider in history to win all five Monuments, the toughest and most prestigious of the Classics (only two other riders - Roger de Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx - have been able to repeat the achievement).

Belgian Marc Demeyer won in 1976 - the year in which the race was twice disrupted by angry protestors demonstrating against redundancies at Le Parisien, a newspaper that sponsored the race. Both incidents were filmed by a Danish crew for A Sunday In Hell, a movie that is considered one of the finest ever made on the subject of cycling and which is mandatory viewing for all historians and fans of the sport and which does an admirable job of depicting the sheer suffering involved in the race for those who have not been sufficiently fortunate as to have seen it for themselves. Less than six years later, on the 20th of January 1982, Demeyer died when he suffered a heart attack while sitting down doing a crossword at his home circumstances that would nowadays immediately suggest EPO (a synthetic version known as Epogen was undergoing clinical trials at the time, but was not available except to pharmaceutical laboratories). No link to doping has ever been proven, but as Willy Voet points out in his 1999 book Massacre á la Chaine, tests in the early 1980s were extremely rudimentary and, with the increasing elapsed time, any link to a drug available to Demeyer - if indeed such a link exists - is unlikely to ever be found.

Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1993 the race was won by Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle who had formed part of a breakaway group with Francesco Moser (winner in 1978, 1979 and 1980), Marc Madiot (winner in 1985 and 1991) and Hennie Kuiper ten years earlier in 1983, when Kuiper won. 1999 was won by Andrea Tafi, who made such a name for himself in hard, dangerous races like this one that he was nicknamed Il Gladiatore. He won wearing the jersey of the Italian National Champion, thus achieving his greatest ambition - repeating the same feat that had been accomplished by his hero Francesco Moser in 1979. In 1993, race organisers reversed the direction in which the riders tackled the Trouée d'Arenberg: with the speed offered by modern bikes ever increasing, the notorious cobbles that are considered the hardest section of the entire race had become too dangerous even by the standards of Paris-Roubaix.

Magnus "Maximus" Bäckstedt became the first Swedish rider to win Paris-Roubaix in 2004 after beating Tristan Hoffman, Roger Hammond and Fabian Cancellara in a final sprint - Johan Museeuw, the favourite, had been robbed of his chances at becoming the second man to win four editions when he suffered a puncture on the crucial section at Hem. After the race, Jo Planckaert, who had come 2nd in 1997, told reporters: "This is a race that suits me when I'm having a good day. On the other hand, if you don't have the legs, this is the worst place you could possibly be." Cancellara - nicknamed "Spartacus" - won for the second time in 2010, thus becoming the most successful Swiss rider in the history of the race.

La Flèche Wallonne took place on this date in 1974 and 1990. 1974 was 38th edition of the race and ran for the first time as a loop, starting and finishing at Verviers; as it would for a total of six years. The total distance was 225km, 24km shorter than the previous year, and the winner was Frans Verbeeck. The 54th edition in 1990 ran for a fifth consecutive year between Spa and Huy, covering 208km - 45km down on the previous year. Moreno Argentin won for the first time, but in the coming years he would manage another two victories and equal the record.

Pat Hanlon

(image credit: Retrobike)

A decade and a half after her death, Pat Hanlon's name remains one of the most hallowed in the cycling world. However, few younger riders and fans know how she achieved her fame, let alone anything about her.

Prissie Jane Howell (as she was then known) was born on this day in 1915 and spent her early childhood in her native Cardiganshire, doing well academically but suffering a series of lung complaints due to the damp Welsh weather, so her parents decided to move her to Somerset. The drier weather suited her and she became healthy; however, as Welsh was her first language her studies went downhill fast. When she was 14, she was given a bicycle as a gift and discovered a talent for repairing it - a skill that in those days, despite the work carried out by women during the First World War when they had maintained machinery on farms and in factories while the men were away fighting, was considered most unbefitting a young lady.

Two years later, Pat went to live with an aunt in London and spent the next decade working as a "nippy," a waitress in a Lyon's Cornerhouse teashop. Often, she would wake at 3am to join the local cycling club for a 150km ride before returning to London in time to work the afternoon and evening shift. At weekends, she would ride to Somerset and back again to visit her parents - around 36 hours of riding in total. Soon, she was covering more than 24,000km each year and began to enter races; immediately enjoying some success which encouraged her to seek out a quality racing bike and finding one at McLean's, a famous bike manufacturer and shop based at 362 Upper Street, Islington (it closed in 1962), and she began to hang around the shop badgering the owners for a job. They would occasionally give her a job to do, but rarely if ever paid her for it.

The cellar at McLean's was the domain of the shop's elderly wheel builder - a man who, like many of those of achieve expertise in the art, gave the impression of being as much a wizard as a mechanic. She pestered him, too, trying to persuade him to teach her the skill, but he refused and told her that "women don't do jobs like that." Just as the First World War had forced Britain to give women the chance to prove they were equal to men, so the Second World War proved to be the opportunity Pat needed: one day, with the male shop staff all away fighting the Nazis, the boss told her that somewhat gruffly that as of the coming Monday she would be the on-site wheel builder. She remained there for almost twenty years.

At first - and as one might suspect - Pat faced awful prejudice, with many of the shop's customers making it perfectly plain that they would not be buying nor even trying wheels built by a woman. Pat, meanwhile, knew her wheels were good and refused to give up. In time, reports began to filter back from the more enlightened customers and those who bought their wheels without knowing who had built them - Pat's wheels were not good, they were excellent; magnitudes better than anything those who were fortunate enough to own them had ever ridden, light and strong and staying true on even the harshest roads.

Word of mouth is the best advertisement available, and in 1957 after her first marriage failed Pat left McLean's to set up her own shop in Tottenham (where, in the 1960s, she would employ a young man named John Berrisford; the very same one that taught your humble author how to build a wheel in the late 1990s). By this time, she was famous among cyclists throughout Europe and the great riders of the day would travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to buy Hanlon wheels. She was rarely seen in the shop, preferring to pay shop staff to deal with the likes of Jean Stablinksi, Jacques Anquetil, Tom Simpson and Rik Van Looy (who may well have been riding on Hanlon wheels when he won Paris-Roubaix on this day in 1965 - see above) when they showed up to buy the wheels she built in her private workshop. They sold as quickly as she could produce them: Mr. Berrisford told me that, in an attempt to meet demand, Hanlon would take her work home with her and build wheels while sitting down and watching television in the evenings, just as many women of her generation would knit. However, demand outstripped supply, and winning a Tour de France was by no means a guarantee that stock would be available when a hopeful cyclist visited in search of them.

Pat remarried in 1979 at the age of 64, sparking rumours that she would soon retire and sending shockwaves through cycling as riders realised that the supply of Hanlon wheels would soon dry up forever. She continued for four years, finally calling it a day in 1983 - sadly, husband Jim died soon afterwards. She outlived him by fourteen years, dying in Majorca on the 29th of December in 1997.

Supplies of new Hanlon wheels may have dried up, but many of those riders fortunate enough to have been able to lay their hands on a set still have them, and some still use them. Mr. Berrisford's dated to 1964, and he claimed that he had never had to true them.

Przemysław Niemiec
(image credit: WR100Mio CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ron Kiefel, who was born in Denver on this day in 1960, became the first American cyclist to win a Grand Tour stage when he was first over the finish line after Stage 15 at the 1985 Giro d'Italia. His career began in cyclo cross, coming 5th in the National Championships of 1980 and 1981 before he turned to road cycling and won the National Road Race, Individual Time Trial and Team Trial in 1983. Following his Giro stage win, he won stages in the 1986 Coors Classic, then the General Classification at the Tour of Tuscany and a second National Road Race title in 1988. Kiefel rode in six Tours de France and finished them all, with his best result being 69th overall in 1988 - however, two years later, he was 3rd in Stage 8.

Przemysław Niemiec, born in Oświęcim, Poland on this day in 1980, is a climbing specialist who won the Tour of Slovenia in 2005, the Tour of Tuscany in 2006, the Route du Sud in 2009 and the Mountains Classification and 2nd place overall in the 2010 Settimana internazionale di Coppi e Bartali, later taking the Mountains Classification and 3rd overall at the Settimana Ciclistica Lombarda that same year.

Other cyclists born on this day: Will Clarke (Australia, 1985); Marvin Angarita (Colombia, 1989); Franck Rénier (France, 1974); Rick Flens (Netherlands, 1983); Franck Dépine (France, 1959); Gonzalo Aguiar (Spain, 1966); Antipass Kwari (Zimbabwe, 1975); Toni Tauler (Spain, 1974); Gino Pancino (Italy, 1943); René van Hove (Netherlands, 1915); Frans de Vreng (Netherlands, 1898, died 1974); Benedykt Kocot (Poland, 1954); Anikó Hódi (Hungary, 1986); Thanos Mantzouranis (Greece, 1982); Aleksandr Averin (USSR, 1954).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.03.2014

Leon de Vos

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

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

Hanka Kupfernagel

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

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

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

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

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

Scieur in the 1921 Tour de France

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

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

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

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

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

Scieur leading in the mountains

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

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

Serse (left) with Fausto

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Daily Cycling Facts 18.03.2014

Heiri Suter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(image credit: Fliedermaus CC BY-SA 1.0)

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

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

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

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

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

(image credit: kei-ai CC BY 2.0)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


Miguel Poblet

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Cycling Facts 11.04.2013

1909 victor Octave Lapize, pictured at the
1910 Tour de France

Paris-Roubaix was held on this date in 1909, 1954, 1965, 1976, 1993, 1999, 2004 and 2010. The 1909 edition - the last in which riders were allowed to be paced by another bike or tandem (they'd been allowed to be paced by cars and motorbikes too between 1898 and 1901) - was won by Octave Lapize, the first of the three victories that would make him the only man to have won in three consecutive year until Francesco Moser repeated the feat nearly seven decades later in 1980. Lapize would go on to become French National Champion in 1911, 1912 and 1913 and, after Stages 5, 9, 10, 14 and the overall General Classification at the Tour de France in 1910, would win Stage 6 in 1912 and 8 in 1914. When the First World War broke out, Lapize became a pilot in the French Army but was shot down on Bastille Day 1917 near Flirey. He survived the crash but succumbed to appalling injuries in hospital shortly afterwards. He was 29.

Raymond Impanis, winner in 1954, was another rider who also did well in the Tour (and the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d'Italia too, for that matter) - he did even better, meanwhile, in the Classics; winning the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1949 and 1951, Gent-Wevelgem in 1952 and 1953 and the Tour of Flanders in the same year as his Paris-Roubaix victory (he also won Paris-Nice for the first time that year too, repeating it in 1960). All in all, he rolled across the Paris-Roubaix start line sixteen times - a record that was not equaled until Servais Knaven made his own 16th appearance in 2010, the same year that Impanis died.

Rik van Looy - first man to win all five Monuments
(image credit: Velorunner)

1965 brought the record-equaling third win for Rik van Looy. His previous victories, however, had been in 1961 and 1962, so he could not equal the three consecutive wins set by Lapize all those year before. However, by winning both Paris-Roubaix and Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 1961 and having already won  Milan-San Remo (1958) and the Tour of Flanders and the Giro di Lombardia (1959), he became the first rider in history to win all five Monuments, the toughest and most prestigious of the Classics (only two other riders - Roger de Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx - have been able to repeat the achievement).

Belgian Marc Demeyer won in 1976 - the year in which the race was twice disrupted by angry protestors demonstrating against redundancies at Le Parisien, a newspaper that sponsored the race. Both incidents were filmed by a Danish crew for A Sunday In Hell, a movie that is considered one of the finest ever made on the subject of cycling and which is mandatory viewing for all historians and fans of the sport and which does an admirable job of depicting the sheer suffering involved in the race for those who have not been sufficiently fortunate as to have seen it for themselves. Less than six years later, on the 20th of January 1982, Demeyer died when he suffered a heart attack while sitting down doing a crossword at his home circumstances that would nowadays immediately suggest EPO (a synthetic version known as Epogen was undergoing clinical trials at the time, but was not available except to pharmaceutical laboratories). No link to doping has ever been proven, but as Willy Voet points out in his 1999 book Massacre á la Chaine, tests in the early 1980s were extremely rudimentary and, with the increasing elapsed time, any link to a drug available to Demeyer - if indeed such a link exists - is unlikely to ever be found.

Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0)

In 1993 the race was won by Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle who had formed part of a breakaway group with Francesco Moser (winner in 1978, 1979 and 1980), Marc Madiot (winner in 1985 and 1991) and Hennie Kuiper ten years earlier in 1983, when Kuiper won. 1999 was won by Andrea Tafi, who made such a name for himself in hard, dangerous races like this one that he was nicknamed Il Gladiatore. He won wearing the jersey of the Italian National Champion, thus achieving his greatest ambition - repeating the same feat that had been accomplished by his hero Francesco Moser in 1979. In 1993, race organisers reversed the direction in which the riders tackled the Trouée d'Arenberg: with the speed offered by modern bikes ever increasing, the notorious cobbles that are considered the hardest section of the entire race had become too dangerous even by the standards of Paris-Roubaix.

Magnus "Maximus" Bäckstedt became the first Swedish rider to win Paris-Roubaix in 2004 after beating Tristan Hoffman, Roger Hammond and Fabian Cancellara in a final sprint - Johan Museeuw, the favourite, had been robbed of his chances at becoming the second man to win four editions when he suffered a puncture on the crucial section at Hem. After the race, Jo Planckaert, who had come 2nd in 1997, told reporters: "This is a race that suits me when I'm having a good day. On the other hand, if you don't have the legs, this is the worst place you could possibly be." Cancellara - nicknamed "Spartacus" - won for the second time in 2010, thus becoming the most successful Swiss rider in the history of the race.

La Flèche Wallonne took place on this date in 1974 and 1990. 1974 was 38th edition of the race and ran for the first time as a loop, starting and finishing at Verviers; as it would for a total of six years. The total distance was 225km, 24km shorter than the previous year, and the winner was Frans Verbeeck. The 54th edition in 1990 ran for a fifth consecutive year between Spa and Huy, covering 208km - 45km down on the previous year. Moreno Argentin won for the first time, but in the coming years he would manage another two victories and equal the record.

Pat Hanlon

(image credit: Retrobike)

A decade and a half after her death, Pat Hanlon's name remains one of the most hallowed in the cycling world. However, few younger riders and fans know how she achieved her fame, let alone anything about her.

Prissie Jane Howell (as she was then known) was born on this day in 1915 and spent her early childhood in her native Cardiganshire, doing well academically but suffering a series of lung complaints due to the damp Welsh weather, so her parents decided to move her to Somerset. The drier weather suited her and she became healthy; however, as Welsh was her first language her studies went downhill fast. When she was 14, she was given a bicycle as a gift and discovered a talent for repairing it - a skill that in those days, despite the work carried out by women during the First World War when they had maintained machinery on farms and in factories while the men were away fighting, was considered most unbefitting a young lady.

Two years later, Pat went to live with an aunt in London and spent the next decade working as a "nippy," a waitress in a Lyon's Cornerhouse teashop. Often, she would wake at 3am to join the local cycling club for a 150km ride before returning to London in time to work the afternoon and evening shift. At weekends, she would ride to Somerset and back again to visit her parents - around 36 hours of riding in total. Soon, she was covering more than 24,000km each year and began to enter races; immediately enjoying some success which encouraged her to seek out a quality racing bike and finding one at McLean's, a famous bike manufacturer and shop based at 362 Upper Street, Islington (it closed in 1962), and she began to hang around the shop badgering the owners for a job. They would occasionally give her a job to do, but rarely if ever paid her for it.

The cellar at McLean's was the domain of the shop's elderly wheel builder - a man who, like many of those of achieve expertise in the art, gave the impression of being as much a wizard as a mechanic. She pestered him, too, trying to persuade him to teach her the skill, but he refused and told her that "women don't do jobs like that." Just as the First World War had forced Britain to give women the chance to prove they were equal to men, so the Second World War proved to be the opportunity Pat needed: one day, with the male shop staff all away fighting the Nazis, the boss told her that somewhat gruffly that as of the coming Monday she would be the on-site wheel builder. She remained there for almost twenty years.

At first - and as one might suspect - Pat faced awful prejudice, with many of the shop's customers making it perfectly plain that they would not be buying nor even trying wheels built by a woman. Pat, meanwhile, knew her wheels were good and refused to give up. In time, reports began to filter back from the more enlightened customers and those who bought their wheels without knowing who had built them - Pat's wheels were not good, they were excellent; magnitudes better than anything those who were fortunate enough to own them had ever ridden, light and strong and staying true on even the harshest roads.

Word of mouth is the best advertisement available, and in 1957 after her first marriage failed Pat left McLean's to set up her own shop in Tottenham (where, in the 1960s, she would employ a young man named John Berrisford; the very same one that taught your humble author how to build a wheel in the late 1990s). By this time, she was famous among cyclists throughout Europe and the great riders of the day would travel hundreds or even thousands of miles to buy Hanlon wheels. She was rarely seen in the shop, preferring to pay shop staff to deal with the likes of Jean Stablinksi, Jacques Anquetil, Tom Simpson and Rik Van Looy (who may well have been riding on Hanlon wheels when he won Paris-Roubaix on this day in 1965 - see above) when they showed up to buy the wheels she built in her private workshop. They sold as quickly as she could produce them: Mr. Berrisford told me that, in an attempt to meet demand, Hanlon would take her work home with her and build wheels while sitting down and watching television in the evenings, just as many women of her generation would knit. However, demand outstripped supply, and winning a Tour de France was by no means a guarantee that stock would be available when a hopeful cyclist visited in search of them.

Pat remarried in 1979 at the age of 64, sparking rumours that she would soon retire and sending shockwaves through cycling as riders realised that the supply of Hanlon wheels would soon dry up forever. She continued for four years, finally calling it a day in 1983 - sadly, husband Jim died soon afterwards. She outlived him by fourteen years, dying in Majorca on the 29th of December in 1997.

Some of those riders fortunate enough to have been able to lay their hands on a set of Hanlon wheels still have them, and some still use them. Mr. Berrisford's dated to 1964, and he claimed that he had never had to true them.

Przemysław Niemiec
(image credit: WR100Mio CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ron Kiefel, who was born in Denver on this day in 1960, became the first American cyclist to win a Grand Tour stage when he was first over the finish line after Stage 15 at the 1985 Giro d'Italia. His career began in cyclo cross, coming 5th in the National Championships of 1980 and 1981 before he turned to road cycling and won the National Road Race, Individual Time Trial and Team Trial in 1983. Following his Giro stage win, he won stages in the 1986 Coors Classic, then the General Classification at the Tour of Tuscany and a second National Road Race title in 1988. Kiefel rode in six Tours de France and finished them all, with his best result being 69th overall in 1988 - however, two years later, he was 3rd in Stage 8.

Przemysław Niemiec, born in Oświęcim, Poland on this day in 1980, is a climbing specialist who won the Tour of Slovenia in 2005, the Tour of Tuscany in 2006, the Route du Sud in 2009 and the Mountains Classification and 2nd place overall in the 2010 Settimana internazionale di Coppi e Bartali, later taking the Mountains Classification and 3rd overall at the Settimana Ciclistica Lombarda that same year.

Other cyclists born on this day: Will Clarke (Australia, 1985); Marvin Angarita (Colombia, 1989); Franck Rénier (France, 1974); Rick Flens (Netherlands, 1983); Franck Dépine (France, 1959); Gonzalo Aguiar (Spain, 1966); Antipass Kwari (Zimbabwe, 1975); Toni Tauler (Spain, 1974); Gino Pancino (Italy, 1943); René van Hove (Netherlands, 1915); Frans de Vreng (Netherlands, 1898, died 1974); Benedykt Kocot (Poland, 1954); Anikó Hódi (Hungary, 1986); Thanos Mantzouranis (Greece, 1982); Aleksandr Averin (USSR, 1954).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.03.2013

Leon de Vos

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

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

Hanka Kupfernagel

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

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

In 2012, 21 years since she came to international attention with a silver medal for the Pursuit at the 1991 World Junior Track Championships, Kupfernagel signed to Rusvelo - the team with which she remains at the time of writing in 2013. With them, she won the Albstadt road race and was second overall at the Tour de Free State in May, won the Prologue at the Thüringen-Rundfahrt in July and the GP Oberbaselbiet in August, then the Lorsch and Frankfurt a/Main cyclo cross races in November and December respectively - proof that, at 39 years old and if she chooses, she has many racing kilometres still ahead of her.

Like Marianne Vos, with whom she frequently competes, Kufernagel is talented in several forms of cycling. In addition to her domination of road racing, she won the World Cyclo Cross Championship in 2000, 2001 and 2005 with silver medals in 2002 and 2003 and a bronze in 2004; also winning the National title in 2000, 2001, 2002 and every year between 2004 and 2011, and continues to compete in both track cycling and mountain biking. She is the older sister of Stefan - a professional rider between 2000 and 20005 and National Under-23 Cyclo Cross Champion in 1998.

Scieur in the 1921 Tour de France

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

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

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

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

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

Scieur leading in the mountains

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

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

Serse (left) with Fausto

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

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


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

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

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

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

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