Daily Cycling Facts 16.08.2014

Desgrange was a successful rider in his
own right and won many races - such as
the 1893 National Tricycle Championship

On this day in 1940 Henri Desgrange - Father of the Tour de France, its director from inauguration in 1903 until 1936 and the inventor of modern bicyce stage and Audax racing - died at his Mediterranean villa. He had undergone a prostate operation shortly before the Tour in 1936, then persuaded doctors to give him their permission to follow the race in a car filled with cushions; but suffered great agony during the first stage and gave up the next day, handing over control of the race to Jacques Goddet. (For more on Desgrange's life and why it might have been him - rather than, as many people claim, Géo Lefèvre - that first came up with the idea of holding a bike race to advertise the L'Auto newspaper, click here.)

Fabio Casartelli
Born in Como on this day in 1970, Fabio Casartelli started cycling when he was nine, encouraged by his father who was a good amateur rider. He won a gold medal at the Olympics during his own amateur career (road race 1992; the first Italian to win since 1968) and turned professional with Ariostea the following year, when he finished in the top three on three stages at the Tour de Suisse. A rider with enormous potential, Casartelli was a fine climber who also performed well on other stages - and was soon being tipped for future Grand Tour success. He moved to ZG Mobili in 1994, then to the US-based Motorola in 1995.

Fabio Casartelli
16.08.1970 - 18.07.1995

On the 18th of July 1995, during Stage 15 of the Tour de France, he lost control of his bike whilst descending the Col du Portet d'Aspet at high speed. Several other riders were also involved in the crash but got away with injuries of varying severity; Casartelli's head struck the low wall running alongside the road. Doctors reached him within ten seconds, but although television cameras showed him lying on the tarmac in a pool of blood for only a second or two it was obvious to fans that he had suffered massive head injuries and was very badly hurt indeed. Aged 24, he died in the helicopter on the way to hospital.

The next day, his Motorola team crossed the finish line together with the other riders following slowly behind them. Prizes were handed out as normal, then all recipients pooled them and donated them to Casartelli's family. Lance Armstrong, also with Motorola, dedicated his Stage 18 to him and there is now a memorial at the spot where he fell. Since 1997, the Youth category at the Tour has been known officially as the Souvenir Fabio Casartelli.

Katarzyna Pawlowska
Born in Przygodzice on this day in 1989, Katarzyna Pawlowska made her first mark on the cycling world when she won the bronze medal at the Polish Individual Time Trial Championship of 2009, and then proved that she had talent on the track too when she rode with the Team Pursuit squad that took 12th at the Worlds and sixth at the European Championships a year later.

2011 brought more excellent results on road and track with seventh place at the Puchar Prezesa race in Poland and a fine selection of medals at the European track championships including silver for the Under-23 Team and Individual Pursuits and another for the Elite Points race. In 2012 she became World Scratch Champion, then took her best road race victory thus far when she won the National Championship; later in the year she finished the road race at the Olympics in 11th place, then returned to the track for another silver in the Team Pursuit and a bronze in the Omnium at the European Championships.

Pawlowska won more track glory in 2013 and successfully defended her World Scratch Champion title, Over the course of the previous year, her results on the road had brought her to the attention of the Elite teams and she had accepted the offer of a contract from GSD Gestion-Kallisto - with them, she has shown exceptional promise: fifth at the Ronde van Gelderland, ninth at the Omloop van Borsele, fifth at the Dwars door Westhoek, fourth overall (and third on Stage 1) at the GP Elsy Jacobs, third at the Chrono des Gatineau, first on Stage 3 at the Tour de Bretagne (and second on Stages 2 and 4) and then her first General Classification victory when she won the Tour en Limousin, also taking Stages 3 and 4. She would enjoy more success at the National Championships that year too, winning the ITT and coming third in the road race; at the National Track Championships she won the Individual Pursuit and the Omnium.

2014 brought Pawlowska a contract with the Dutch team Boels-Dolmans, also home to Lizzie Armistead, Ellen van Dijk and Megan Guarnier; with them, she has continued to enjoy great success on road and track - at the Guadadajara round of the World Track Cup she won the Omnium and at the World Championships she came second in the Scratch; then she was fifth at the Boels Rental Hills Classic before going on to win the Scratch and Omnium at the Grand Prix Galychyna.

Éric Caritoux
Éric Caritoux, who was born on this day in 1960, had to become a cyclist - he came into the world at Carpentras on Provence, at the foot of cycling's holiest mountain Ventoux. Having begun his career with a local club, the old volcano became a regular feature of his training rides.

Eric Caritoux, Tour 1993

In 1982, Caritoux won the amateurs' Tour de Vaucluse, beating Laurent Fignon and getting noticed by Sem-France Loire boss Jean de Gribaldy, who signed him up for 1983. De Gribaldy was seen as something of an unorthodox character by other managers for his habit of offering contracts to riders that no other teams wanted, especially those reaching typical requirement age. However, Sean Kelly says "he was a long way ahead of his time. He had some great ideas. He was 10 years ahead of everyone else on diet. He was clear about what you could and couldn’t eat 10 years before the other teams started to think about it" - thus, aging riders discovered a new lease of competitive life with de Gribaldy, and good young riders became great (for the story of how de Gribaldy signed up Kelly, click here). Caritoux flourished; that same year he rode his first Tour de France and came 24th overall - a superb result for a debutant and one that elevated him from Kelly's domestique to a team leader.

Caritoux fulfilled that very role at the Vuelta a Espana in 1984, and won overall - a surprise not only because it was his second professional year, but because up until one week before the race began neither he nor the team - now re-named Skil-Reydem - had not planned to be there. De Gribaldy, in his usual eccentric fashion, had completely forgotten that he'd promised the race organisers that he would send a team. They, meanwhile, had not and threatened him with a breach of contract case worth £50,000; so he put a team together as rapidly as possible, phoning Caritoux, who was on holiday at the time, and asking him to fly to the south of Spain where the race was due to begin. In the circumstances, nobody expected Skil-Reydem to do well; but Caritoux unexpectedly found form and won the first mountain stage, then took the leader's jersey - which at that time was yellow, rather than gold as it is today - from Pedro Delgado during Stage 12. Caritoux was every bit as surprised as Delgado was when he then kept it for the rest of the race, especially when he did well enough in the final time trial to hold off nearest rival Alberto Fernández Blanco, who was by far the more talented time trial rider (and who, with his wife, was tragically killed in a car crash on the 14th of December that same year, one month before his 30th birthday). Caritoux's winning margin, 6", is the smallest in the history of the Vuelta.

In 1986, Caritoux joined Fagor, a team that looked set for considerable success but which suffered from its managers' lack of organisational skills; his results suffered as a result, which explains why he was 20th at the Tour - a good result, but not as good as might be expected of a rider who had won a Grand Tour in his second year. His two years with the team brought only one race win, the 1986 Trophée des Grimpeurs (which, first run in 1913 as the Polymultipliée, was last held in 2009 and seems sadly to have vanished forever), though 23rd at the 1987 Tour was another respectable enough result, if not quite up to his abilities. In 1988 he went to Kas-Canal 10, where he would once again ride with Sean Kelly, and his results improved immediately: he won the criteriums at Aulnat, Riom-en-Montagne, Toulouse and Lamballe,  18th place at the Tour and - best of all - the National Road Race Championship. Kas had returned to cycling in 1986, having been dissolved after twenty years in 1979; it would disappear again at the end of the 1988 season, leaving Caritoux in search of another team. This time, he chose R.M.O, where he would stay for four seasons during which he won another National Championship and more respectable Tour placings, then went to Chazal-Vetta-MBK when R.M.O was dissolved at the end of 1992. It was increasingly obvious that his best years were drawing to a close, but Caritoux remained a strong rider: he was 37th at the Tour in 1993, then 22nd in 1994. At the end of the year, he announced his retirement and returned to Carpentras where he now owns a holiday business and a vineyard. Just as it is for all the people who live around Ventoux, cycling remains part of his life.

Piet Rooijakkers

Piet Rooijakkers

Born in Gerwen, Netherlands on this day in 1980, Piet Rooijakkers completed a university degree in business in 2002, then decided to try to make a career from cycling rather than going straight into management. He joined the UCI Category 3 Löwik-Tegeltoko team in 2003 and went to the Olympia's Tour, but his season was ruined by a crash during Stage 5.

Rooijakkers remained with Löwik on 2004 and won the bronze medal at the National Championship for Elite riders without professional contracts, then went to the Continental-class AXA Procycling in 2005 and started showing some serious promise with stage wins at the Olympia's Tour and the Ronde van Midden-Brabant; which earned him a contract with Pro-Continental Skil-Shimano in 2006. That year passed without victory, as is often the case when a cyclist first moves into the upper ranks; 2007 brought him third place at the Berlare criterium. The following year he managed third place on Stage 3 at the Tour of Qatar which, along with tenth place overall at the 2009 Tour Méditerranéen will have helped persuade managers to select him for their Tour de France squad when the team received a wildcard entry - unfortunately, a crash during the Stage 4 time trial left him with a broken arm.

Rooijakkers was undoubtedly a good rider, but he was never able to live up to the promise he'd once shown. In 2010, when his best result was fifth for Stage 1 at the Giro Trentino, Skil decided not to extend his contract and he retired.

Daniel Willems
Daniel Willems, born in Herentals, Belgium on this day in 1956, won 75 professional victories between 1978 (when he joined IJsboerke-Gios) and 1983 (when he rode for Safir-Van de Ven) - he was also extremely successful before turning professional, winning the road races at the National Military Championship in 1976 and the National Amateur Championship a year later.

His professional career got off to an excellent start with victory in the Promises category at the Omloop Het Volk. He lived up to it, going on to win the Brabantse Pijl and Scheldeprijs and taking  third place at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1979; then in 1980 revealed that he was a stage racer of considerable note too when he won the Prologue and five consecutive stages at the Tour de Suisse and the General Classification at the Vuelta a Andalucia. In 1981 he won the Waalse Pijl, then went to the Tour de France where he finished third in the Prologue, won Stages 11 and19 and finished in the top ten on eight other stages before abandoning in the penultimate stage. The following year he was 23rd in the Prologue and won Stages 3 and 20 but only finished top ten on two stages - however, he did better overall and was seventh in the General Classification and fourth in the Points competition. In 1983 he was 17th in the Prologue and looked all set to do well again, perhaps even bettering his previous results, but after experiencing problems on several stages was in 61st place by the end of Stage 16 and abandoned soon afterwards. Sadly, he would never again find the form he had once enjoyed and began to be plagued by bad health; after going without victory in 1984 and 1985, he retired.

Aksel Gresvig

Aksel Gresvig

Born Aksel Johan Andersen in Græsvig, Norway on this day in 1875, Aksel Gresvig was the son of a village shopkeeper who died when he was six years old; after which the family moved first to Fredrikstad and then to Christiania in Oslo. He bought his first bike when he was 18 and fell in love with it, spending his free time training around the Akerhus Festning castle, which had become a popular spot with competitive cyclists - including World Champion Wilhelm Henie, with who Gresvig became friends - whilst the old race track at Bygdøy was being redeveloped into a proper velodrome. They invited to join their club and, once the new velodrome was complete, his road bike was exchanged for a track bike; he would go on to win three National and two Scandinavian Championships titles between 1897 and 1900.

Gresvig began working as an insurance clerk in 1893, but very soon decided he'd rather try to make his living by selling bikes and spent the next few years working in bike shops, learning how to run a retail business and bike mechanics. He opened his own shop in 1901, then seven years later began to produce bikes - he was a sufficiently gifted businessman and designer for the company to actually grow during the Great Depression, taking over failed shops and manufacturers and rejuvenating them.

Gresvig died on the 16th of December 1958. His company, now trading as G-Sport, Intersport and Super-G, has some 330 outlets and is now the largest chain of sports supplies shops in Scandinavia.

Jonathan Bellis, born in Douglas, Isle of Man on this day in 1988, became National Junior Individual Pursuit Champion in 2006 and rode with the winning pursuit team at the European Junior Championships, also winning Stage 4 at the Junior Tour of Wales for the second year running; then a year later won the European Under-23 Points and Scratch Race Championships. In 2009, Bellis was critically injured when he crashed his scooter near Team GB's training camp in Quarrata, spending four weeks in an induced coma. He returned to SaxoBank after recovering, but found the pressures of ProTour racing too great and transferred to the Continental An Post-Sean Kelly team for 2012.

Arnaldo Pambianco, born in Betinoro, Italy on this day in 1935, spent eight days in the maglia rosa before winning the 1961 Giro d'Italia - he had been seventh overall at the Giro and the Tour de France the previous year. Despite the old stereotype stating that Italian riders couldn't perform well in the often cold and wet races of Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Pambianco could: he won the Brabantse Pijl in 1964.

Six-time French National MTB Cross Country Champion (2003-2008) Julien Absalon was born in Remiremont on this day in 1980. He also won the European Championship in 2006, the World Championship 2004-2007, the World Cup in 2003, 2006 and 2007 and gold medals at the Olympics of 2004 and 2008. Still racing today, for Orbea (his home since 2008), he has won eight races thus far in 2012.

Alvaro Tardáguila

Uruguayan Alvaro Tardáguila, who was born on this day in 1975, won the Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay in 2005 - 33 years after his father, Walter, won the same race. Later that same year, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and EPO at Milwaukee's Great Downer Avenue Race and received a two-year ban; he returned to competition in 2008 and continues racing in South America to this day.

Jelle Nijdam, born in Zundert, Netherlands on this day in 1963, rode ten Tours de France between 1985 and 1995 - he won the Prologue in 1987,  Stage 5 in 1988, Stages 4 and 14 in 1989, Stage 6 in 1990 and Stage 5 in 1991. Other highlights of his career included the National Pursuit Championship and Tour of Luxembourg in 1985, the National Derny Championship and Postgirot Open in 1986, the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1987, the Amstel Gold Race in 1988, Paris-Brussels and Paris-Tours in 1989and numerous other stage races and criteriums.

Born in Springfield, Missouri on this day in 1947, John Kennedy Howard was US National Road Race Champion in 1968, 1972, 1973 and 1975, took part in the Olympics of 1968, 1972 and 1976, won the first two Red Zinger Classics and came second at the first ever Race Across America in 1982 (then known as The Great American Bike Race, only four riders took part). In 1985, Howard set a new motor-paced bicycle speed record at 245kph on the Bonneville Salt Flats; it would remain intact for ten years.

Marc Sergeant was born in Aalst on this day in 1959 and became Belgian Amateur Road Race Champion in 1981. The year after that he won the Vuelta a Andalucia, then in 1983 came third at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and then Elite National Champion in 1984, also entering the Tour de France that year and coming 48th. In 1986 he won the Nationals again, then won Stage 5 at the Tour a year later - his only stage win in twelve Tours. Following his retirement in 1996, Sergeant became a manager at Lotto-Belisol.

Other cyclists born on this day: Paul Deem (USA, 1957); Brian McDonough (USA, 1965); Richie Thomson (New Zealand, 1940, died 2012); Gheorghe Bădără (Romania, 1941); Johnnie Matthews (Great Britain, 1884, died 1969); César Daneliczen (Brazil, 1962); Teodor Vasile (Romania, 1947); Mario Beccia (Italy, 1955); Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 07.07.2014

The Tour de France started on this day four times - 1936, 1955, 2001 and 2007.

1936
21 stages (Stages 13, 14, 18 and 20 split into parts A and B, Stage 19 split into parts A, B and C), 4,418km.

Desgrange didn't invent the Tour, but he made it what it is.
1936 was his final year as director.

For the very first time, teams from the Netherlands, Romania and Yugoslavia took part - there had also been a team made up of Italians resident in France but, very shortly before the race was due to begin, it was decided that they would not be permitted to take part. It was very noticeable that many more spectators turned out than in previous years, largely due to fine weather and the introduction of a summer public holiday.

Now aged 71, Tour director Henri Desgrange underwent surgery on his prostate a few weeks before the Tour and was due to have another one afterwards, but convinced his reluctant surgeon to agree to him attending in a car padded out with cushions and with a doctor in attendance. At that time, many roads outside of the centre of Paris were primitive, at best cobbled and at worst, unsurfaced tracks full of potholes and gulleys (in rural areas, they would remain as such until the Tour became televised, at which point local mayors began to find the money to modernise them so that the world wouldn't think their communities backward) and even in the first stage it became apparent that he wouldn't be able to continue. He attempted to continue through Stage 2, with a fever and in great pain, but was forced to give up. He retired that day, handing over L'Auto's editorship and the role of Tour director to Jacques Goddet, then traveled to his chateau. He died four years later at his villa on the Mediterranean.

Theo Middelkamp, 1936

Paul Egli won Stage 1 in torrential rain and thus became the first Swiss rider to have ever led the Tour; after that the first week was uneventful until Stage 7 when Theo Middelkamp became the first ever Dutch rider to win a stage - prior to this Tour, he had never left the Netherlands and Ballon d'Alsace in Stage 4 was the first mountain he'd ever seen. During Stage 7, 1935 winner Romain Maes abandoned with bronchitis; 1930 winner Georges Speicher also left a short while later. Maurice Archambaud took the maillot jaune in Stage 4 but, with the race still at an early point, could not defend it for long and it passed to Sylvère Maes (who wasn't related to Romain) in Stage 8. French team leader Antonin Magne expected Maes to beat him in the Stage 13b and 14b individual time trials but he lost a lot more time that he'd hoped - after 13a he was 3'49" behind overall, after 14b the gap had risen to 8'90". Then he tried to attack in the mountains, but Maes was better than expected there as well: Magne moved into second place overall from third in Stage 16 but by the end of Stage 17 he was 26'13" behind. Belgium would also win the two remaining team time trials so, by the end of the race, Maes' lead was 26'55".

Sylvere Mais

The Dutch team finished the race with three riders, the minimum number that permitted them to remain in the teams competition. The Swiss ended up with one remaining rider, Leo Amberg in eighth place; the entire Austrian, Yugoslavian, German and Romanian teams abandoned.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Sylvère Maes (BEL) Belgium 142h 47' 32"
2 Antonin Magne (FRA) France +26' 55"
3 Félicien Vervaecke (BEL) Belgium +27' 53"
4 Pierre Clemens (LUX) Spain/Luxembourg +42' 42"
5 Arsène Mersch (LUX) Spain/Luxembourg +52' 52"
6 Mariano Cañardo (ESP) Spain/Luxembourg +1h 03' 04"
7 Mathias Clemens (LUX) Spain/Luxembourg +1h 10' 44"
8 Leo Amberg (SUI) Switzerland +1h 19' 13"
9 Marcel Kint (BEL) Belgium +1h 22' 25"
10 Léon Level (FRA) Touriste-routier +1h 27' 57"


1955

Miguel Poblet

22 stages (Stage 1 split into parts A and B), 4,495km.
Unusually, the prologue was replaced with a two-parter first stage featuring a 102km mass start road race and a 12.5km team time trial. For the first time, photo finish technology was used, finally replacing the mirador tower from which judges watched the riders crossing the finish line, the opportunity for human error - and good old-fashioned corruption - having caused many an argument in the past. It was also the first time since the Second World War that German riders took part, not so much due to any hatred the organisers felt for German riders after the war but because riders and organisers alike knew that their safety could not be guaranteed should any members of the public wish to attack them. Now that it had been a decade since the war, the majority realised that any German rider would have been either a child or of very junior rank in the military and, thankfully, no such attack took place. They rode as part of a mixed team that was also home to riders from Australia, Austria and Luxembourg. In addition to them and the French national team there were five French regional teams and one team each from Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and - for the first time in Tour history - Great Britain (the 1937 team made up of Britons Charles Holland and Bill Burl, along with Canadian Pierre Gachon, represented the British Empire rather than just Great Britain).

Miguel Poblet won Stage 1a and became the first Spaniard to have ever worn the maillot jaune, which is quite remarkable considering Spain had sent a team as long ago as 1930 and the enormous popularity of the sport over the Pyrenees, but then he lost it that very afternoon when the Netherlands won the Stage 1b team time trial and the leader's jersey passed to Wout Wagtmans. He kept it after Stage 3, which French team leader and popular favourite for overall victory Louison Bobet won, but lost it the next day to France's Antonin Rolland who got away with a group that finished five minutes ahead of the first favourites (and nine-and-a-half minutes ahead of Bobet) and earned an overall advantage of 9'21". He lost it the next day when Wim van Est joined a break that managed to finish 17'33" ahead of the bunch, but with only 25" to make up he had little difficulty winning it back on Stage 8 - not least of all because van Est was hopelessly outclassed in the mountains which made their first appearance that day.


The mountains were what Charly Gaul had been waiting for - because when the weather was cold enough for him, nobody in the world could climb like he did. He attacked early and was the first man over Les Aravis and the Cols du Telegraphe and Galibier, finishing the stage with 13'47" over second place Ferdinand Kübler; though he was now third overall he'd started the stage 25' behind Rolland and so remained 10'17" down in the General Classification. If he'd been able to do the same on Stage 9 he might well have won the Tour: he came close, attacking early again and being the first over Vars, Cayolle and Vasson but, because of a crash, he lost time and dropped to fourth overall with a disadvantage of 11'53". Meanwhile, Bobet moved into third, 11'33" behind Rolland.

Bobet was favourite - he'd won in 1953 and 1954, was World Champion and had trained aggressively, using the Classics as preparation; his campaign unexpectedly began on Stage 11 when the race climbed Mont Ventoux for the second time in its history. Three years later, when Gaul came to the Tour with the best form he would ever realise, he was so good that Ventoux seemed to welome his presence and he won the Tour; this time it did not and he came 13th, dropping to fifth overall. The old volcano wasn't in the mood to go easy on anyone that day - as Jean Malléjac and  Kübler discovered: Malléjac hadn't even realised he'd collapsed when the doctors got to him, lying flat on the stony ground with one leg still trying to turn the pedals; and he didn't regain consciousness for a quarter of an hour (he was one of six men to collapse that day). Kübler had believed himself able to tame the mountain. Raphaël Géminiani tried to warn him: "Watch out, Ferdy - the Ventoux is not like any other col." Kübler, with his curious habit of referring to himself in the third person, replied: "Ferdy is not like any other rider." Then he tried to sprint to the summit, and hadn't got very far before he was reduced to begging for a push from spectators to get over. On the way down, ashen-faced and in a cold sweat, he found a bar and started drinking heavily. "Ferdy has killed himelf on the Ventoux," he told a press conference that night, then abandoned and never returned to the Tour. Bobet, though, was able to deal with the heat, and he was cleverer than Malléjac and  Kübler - when he saw that Gaul was suffering he realised that an unmissable opportunity had come his way and that if he rode calmly and carefully he could win the stage. He finished in second place overall, now 4'53" behind Rolland, and then waited as his batteries recharged.

Louison Bobet

As a result, Bobet was the only man able to stay anywhere near Gaul when he attacked hard on Aspin and Peyresourde in Stage 17, finishing 1'24" after him while the rest came in with +3'18" or more and becoming race leader with an advantage of 3'08" on Rolland. Gaul attacked again the next day, but this time Bobet recruited a small chase group rather than trying to work alone and after following him over the Aubisque was able to catch and then pass him; his lead now grew to 6'04" - and with only four stages to go, the Tour was his even when he lost time in the time trial.

Bobet thus became the second man to have won three Tours (the first had been Philippe Thys, in 1913, 1914 and 1920) and the first to have won three consecutively, but he suffered for it: a saddle sore that had plagued him throughout the race led to necrosis, and after the race a large quantity of rotting flesh had to be cut away from his groin, in some cases stopping just short of "important organs." He knew that he had destroyed his chances of winning again and while he entered again in 1958 he was visibly unwell throughout the race, yet drove himself on and somehow finished in 7th place overall. He never finished another Tour after that.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Louison Bobet (FRA) France 130h 29' 26"
2 Jean Brankart (BEL) Belgium +4' 53"
3 Charly Gaul (LUX) Luxembourg/Mixed +11' 30"
4 Pasquale Fornara (ITA) Italy +12' 44"
5 Antonin Rolland (FRA) France +13' 18"
6 Raphaël Géminiani (FRA) France +15' 01"
7 Giancarlo Astrua (ITA) Italy +18' 13"
8 Stan Ockers (BEL) Belgium +27' 13"
9 Alex Close (BEL) Belgium +31' 10"
10 François Mahé (FRA) France +36' 27


2001

Jan Ullrich

20 stages + prologue, 3,455.2km.
French fans had complained that there were too few French teams in the 2000 Tour, so the selection procedure was altered slightly so as to admit more whilst also continuing to admit teams that had earned their places. It was one of the hardest Tours for some time - though it had only one Alpine stage, this was followed by an individual mountain time trial, then a rest day transfer straight to the Pyrenees; this meant that were five consecutive summit finishes. Two of the time trials were also longer than usual - Stage 5, contested by the teams, was 67km; Stage 18, contested by individuals, was 61km (the prologue would nowadays have to be classed as Stage 1 - at 8.2km it was longer than the maximum length currently permitted for a prologue, 8km).

Lance Armstrong was widely expected to win for the third time and, since Marco Pantani's Mercatone-Uno team hadn't be invited after a police raid turned up a syringe containing traces of insulin in his room (the eight-month ban he received as a result was later overturned when it was shown that the syringe couldn't be proven to be his), Jan Ullrich was considered the only man capable of challenging him and it was noted that the German was looking fitter than he had done since he'd won in 1997.

Armstrong sat back and took it easy for the first nine stages - a plan that could very easily have become a disaster because a 14-man break got away during Stage 8, driven on by a desire to get out of the appalling weather as much as a desire for victory: as a result, he ended Stage 9 35'19" down in the General Classification, which was far greater than he'd have liked. What was more important, however, was that he was ahead of Ullrich who was 35'46" down - after all, many a Tour has been won in the mountains, and the mountains didn't start until the next day. On Stage 10, he began playing mind games, hovering around the back of the peloton and looking as though he was sick; knowing full well that the other team's managers would be watching with great interest on the televisions fitted inside their team cars. He did nothing as Laurent Roux led over La Madeleine and the Col du Glandon. For a while, he allowed the bunch to get a short way ahead of him; then when the race began climbing the Alpe d'Huez, he caught up and looked Ullrich in the eyes before dropping the entire Tour and winning the stage by 1'59". His time on the Alpe that day - 38'01" - was the third fastest ever recorded, eleven years later it remains fourth fastest ever (and the man who beat it since then was... Lance Armstrong, in 2004).

Armstrong on hairpin #5, Alpe d'Huez, 2001

He was, though, still 20'07" behind overall, and that meant that there was work to do. Fortunately, the next day was the mountain time trial and while he wasn't the last man down the ramp (as riders prefer, since they then know the times they need to beat and how much they can hold back, saving energy), he won with a 1' lead on Ullrich and shaved seven minutes off his overall time. He beat Ullrich by a minute again on Stage 13 and this time the maillot jaune was his - Andrei Kivilev was second overall, 3'54" behind him. Ullrich trailed in fourth with +5'13" and knew that despite his form he was beaten, yet the next day when they crossed the finish line atop Luz-Ardiden he held out his hand and the two men finished with arms linked. During that stage Jonathan Vaughters - who is now the manager of the Garmin-Sharp team but was then a rider for Crédit Agricole - was stung on the face by a wasp and suffered a reaction that caused his right eye to swell so much he couldn't open it. He was prescribed a medicated cream but team manager Roger Legeay was told by the UCI that it couldn't be used as it contained cortisone - a steroid that has no recognised performance-enhancing of its own but, since it can be used to mask the presence of other steroids that do, is on the list of banned drugs. In most cases, medical exemption will be given provided a genuine prescription can be shown; this time, for reasons not entirely clear (more than one argument suggests that it was prejudice on the part of Tour organisers towards an American rider because they were angry at Armstrong's domonation of the race), it was refused. Vaughters had no option but to abandon the race.

From this point, Armstrong's lead was unassailable, especially once he increased it to 6'44" in the Stage 18 time trial. The rest of the race, therefore, passed without incident; his final advantage was 6'44".

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Lance Armstrong (USA) US Postal Service 86h 17' 28"
2 Jan Ullrich (GER) Telekom +6' 44"
3 Joseba Beloki (ESP) ONCE +9' 05"
4 Andrei Kivilev (KAZ) Cofidis +9' 53"
5 Igor González (ESP) ONCE +13' 28"
6 François Simon (FRA) Bonjour +17' 22"
7 Óscar Sevilla (ESP) Kelme +18' 30"
8 Santiago Botero (COL) Kelme +20' 55"
9 Marcos Antonio Serrano (ESP) ONCE +21' 45"
10 Michael Boogerd (NED) Rabobank +22' 38"


2007

Cancellara, 2007

20 stages + prologue, 3,569.9km.
For the third time in its history, the Tour visited Britain - this time, the prologue took place in London (and was held in memory of the victims of the 7th of July bombings two years earlier) and was followed by a road race from London to Canterbury the following day. Unfortunately, this edition was hit hard by doping scandals with three riders and two teams being withdrawn. Michael Rasmussen, who had been leading the race, was removed by Rabobank in line with the team's strict zero-tolerance doping policy after evidence was found to suggest that he'd lied about his whereabouts during tests prior to the Tour.

Fabian Cancellara won the prologue by 13", then survived a large crash in Stage 2 before increasing his overall advantage to 33" by winning Stage 3. He managed to maintain it at about that level with consistent good results through the first week, only letting go of the maillot jaune when the race reached the mountains in Stage 7 and he came 148th, dropping to 108th overall with a disadvantage of 22'15". Linus Gerdemann, who would later become Cancellara's team mate at Leopard Trek, became race leader with an advantage of 1'24". He didn't have it for long - Rasmussen won the next day and took the jersey from him.

Stage 13 was won by Alexander Vinokourov, who had started the race as favourite but then injured both his knees in a crash and lost a lot of time in the Alps: this placed him 5'10" behind Rasmussen and fans began to wonder if he might just win after all. However, the sample he provided to doping control after his victory turned out to have a suspiciously high level of red blood cells, evidence that he might have had a homologous transfusion (ie, one using his own preserved blood). He was, therefore, removed from the Tour and disqualified from his Stage 13 and 15 wins(later, he was banned from competition for one year; there are those, however, who still argue that he might also have been innocent - he knew that he was already under suspicion due to his links with the infamous Dr. Michele Ferrari and would be tested regularly, they point out, so why would be cheat?)

Alberto Contador

Rasmussen remained in yellow all the way through the Alps and into the Pyrenees despite an attempt Alberto Contador to take it from him in Stage 14. At the end of Stage 15, Contador was 2'23" behind overall; this rode to 3'10" when Rasmussen won Stage 16, meaning that it's possible he'd have won the Tour had he not then have been removed. However, several riders were judged likely to beat him in the Stage 19 time trial - the biggest threats being Contador and, especially, Cadel Evans and Levi Leipheimer - it's also very possible that he would not, even if he was cheating (Evans has never been connected to any doping case. Contador was later banned for doping in a highly controversial case, Leipheimer had "unintentionally doped" in 1996 - and, if rumours surrounding the investigation into Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel at the time of writing are to be believed, may be about to reveal more; but there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that either man was cheating in the 2007 Tour. For the majority of fans, then, there is no question of whether Rasmussen might have won or not - he doped, therefore he could never have been a true winner).

Leipheimer and Evans both beat Contador in the time trial, Leipheimer by 2'18" (which won him the stage) and Evans by 1'27", which left the Spaniard in first place overall but with an advantage of just 23" over Evans and 31" over Leipheimer. There was still one stage to go but, by gentleman's agreement, the Tour is decided at the end of the penultimate stage, the final run into Paris is largely ceremonial for everyone except the domestiques and also-rans who try to grab any last opportunity to please their sponsors while the main contenders mug it up for the press. It could have been contested and the eventual outcome could have changed completely, but neither Evans nor Leipheimer were about to break with tradition and they accepted Contador as winner.

Top Ten Final General Classification
1 Alberto Contador (ESP) Discovery Channel 91h 00' 26"
2 Cadel Evans (AUS) Predictor-Lotto + 23"
3 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Discovery Channel + 31"
4 Carlos Sastre (ESP) Team CSC + 7' 08"
5 Haimar Zubeldia (ESP) Euskaltel-Euskadi + 8' 17"
6 Alejandro Valverde (ESP) Caisse d'Epargne + 11' 37"
7 Kim Kirchen (LUX) T-Mobile Team + 12' 18"
8 Yaroslav Popovych (UKR) Discovery Channel + 12' 25"
9 Mikel Astarloza (ESP) Euskaltel-Euskadi + 14' 14"
10 Óscar Pereiro (ESP) Caisse d'Epargne + 14' 25"

Llangollen-Wolverhampton

Percy Stallard

Britain's first modern-era mass start cycling road race took place on this day in 1942, organised by Percy Stallard and without the approval of the National Cycling Union which had strictly banned all racing (other than time trials) on British roads since 1890 due to a belief that racing would lead to a ban on all bicycles on public roads. Stallard was inspired by a race on the Isle of Man (which, having its own parliament and passports, was not subject to NCU rules) and approached the police to gauge their reaction: contrary to the NCU's fears, the police were supportive and offered to help.

The NCU were livid, especially when the race passed without incident and was even quite successful - Stallard and fifteen others involved in organising the race were handed a sine die ban: one without a specific date upon which it would end but which could be lifted at any time if the subject either successfully appealed or, as the organisation presumably hoped would be the case in this instance, apologised and did as he or she was told. Yet still Stallard would not back down, especially now that he had proved mass-start races could be held on British roads, so in November he helped launch the British League of Racing Cyclists - an organisation of like-minded riders that act as an umbrella body co-ordinating a number of pre-existing groups and would go head-to-head with the cycling establishment. In 1945 they organised the Victory Race to celebrate the end of the war - after growing, vanishing, reappearing and growing once again, it eventually became the modern Tour of Britain.

Cyclists born on this day: Sharon Laws (born Kenya, British nationality, 1974); Werner Riebenbauer (Austria, 1974); Nigel Donnelly (New Zealand, 1968); Elizabeth Hepple (Australia, 1959); Brian Smith (Great Britain, 1967); Fabrizio Trezzi (Italy, 1967); Mirco Gualdi (Italy, 1968); Sergey Klimov (USSR, 1980); Sataporn Kantasa-Ard (Thailand, 1950); Fernand Decanali (France, 1925); Erik Zabel (East Germany, 1970); Robert Vidal (France, 1933); Hans-Jürgen Geschke (East Germany, 1943); Angelo Ciccone (Italy, 1980); Guido Fulst (West Germany, 1970); Børge Gissel (Denmark, 1915); Héctor Pérez (Mexico, 1959).

Daily Cycling Facts 31.01.2014

Henri Desgrange

Father of the Tour de France - some would say not its inventor, despite the impression he liked to give once it became apparent that the race was going to be successful beyond anybody's wildest dreams - Henri Desgrange was born on this day in 1865 in Paris, one of twins and into an affluent, upper-middle-class family. His brother George is described as having been "totally devoid of all ambition," but the same was not true of Henri who, it appears, may have been qualified to practice as a lawyer - this has not been proved but the first edition of his L'Auto newspaper states that he was "a former advocate of the Court of Appeal," and he was most certainly employed at a law office owned by a firm named Depeux-Dumesnil, based near the Place de Clichy in the North-West Quadrant. Legend has it that he was threatened with dismissal for wearing tight socks that showed his thighs as he cycled to work and, as a result, was given the choice of finding another means of transport or finding employment elsewhere. He saw this as an opportunity and walked out, dedicating the rest of his life to the sport he loved.

Desgrange set a number of cycling
records as a young man and became
National Tricycle Champion in 1893

Degrange was a cyclist of considerable note in his own right. He had been inspired to take it up when he went to watch the inaugural Bordeaux-Paris race in 1891 and bought his first bike soon afterwards, originally hoping to make a name as a track rider. However, he found that he wasn't able to accelerate as quickly as other riders, which gave him a serious disadvantage. Endurance events suited his physique far better and in 1893 he set the world's first ratified Hour Record by riding 35.325km at the Vélodrome Buffalo, the first of twelve records he would set during his career. Four years later, he became the director of the new Vélodrome Parc des Princes, a facility that had been so badly built that spectators had to be kept out of the stands when it first opened for fear of structural collapse. However, he proved a wise choice for the job and made good use of the central area surrounded by the 666m track; making it available for other events which brought in much-need extra income so that he was able to improve the building and develop it to a point where it became the city's premier sports stadium. Towards the end of 1903, he also took over the directorship of Paris' first indoor track, the Vélodrome d'Hiver, which would later be hired out by Desgrange's successor Jacques Goddet for fascist rallies and handed over to the Nazis as a temporary prison for Jews before they could be transported to concentration camps.

Desgrange is frequently remembered
as a humourless tyrant - but was that
description entirely deserved?

At the turn of the last century, France was divided over the Dreyfus Affair and Desgrange was an avowed anti-Dreyfusard. Dreyfus was an Army captain, the highest Jewish military figure in the country, who had been accused of selling state secrets to Germany - treason, no less, for which the maximum penalty was death. The charges against him were trumped up, partly due to the antisemitism of some of his opponents; but it should be realised that Desgrange was not necessarily an antisemite himself (Goddet's beliefs, as we have seen, were questionable) - indeed, it seems quite likely that he was not when one takes into account his passionate admiration for the writer Émile Zola, whose style he tried to emulate in his own writing and who, as one of the most vocal Dreyfusards, attacked antisemitism and was instrumental in the Captain's eventual complete exoneration of all charges. His opposition to Dreyfus is perhaps more likely to have stemmed from the fact that the Captain was from Alsace, which had passed into German hands in 1871 as a result of the Franco-Prussian war to the very great embarrassment of France, leading to a deep suspicion of all Germans and anybody who might favour them. It was Desgrane's opposition to Dreyfus that landed him his next job, however, when wealthy anti-Dreyfusard industrialists the Comte de Dion and Adolphe Clément were looking for somebody to edit the L'Auto newspaper that they were setting up in the hope of driving the existing paper Le Vélo and its Dreyfusard editor Pierre Giffard (who had told them he was no longer willing to carry their advertisements on account of their differences) into bankruptcy.

Desgrange at the 1913 Tour (second from right with
cigarette and long coat). Rural roads would not have
been much better when he set out to follow the race
for the final time in 1936

Still not entirely convinced that the event would be a success, Desgrange decided to stay away from the race so that he couldn't be blamed if it all went wrong (he would do the same a few years later when mountains were first introduced, fearing that the riders would die of exhaustion, be attacked by bandits or eaten by bears and not wanting to shoulder responsibility if any of these happened) and sent Geo Lefèvre instead (Lefèvre had been the man who thought up the race in the first place when Desgrange was ordered by L'Auto's owners to improve circulation figures). It was an immediate hit, with all of France turning out to watch the heroic riders battle 2,428km in six stages around the country. It had the desired effect on L'Auto's sales figures, too, which increased to more than 60,000 (some sources put the figure even higher, sometimes as much as double this). Twenty years later, it sold half a million copies a day. Desgrange's reputation was made, and he spent the rest of his life more than happy to let people believe that it was he who had thought up the whole thing in the first place. However, while Lefèvre is often called the true father of the Tour (or so the story goes - for an alternative take on the birth of the race, click here), it was Desgrange who raised it and developed it into the largest sports event on the planet - and in doing so, he invented the sport of bicycle stage racing.

Desgrange underwent surgery on his prostate in 1936, requiring two operations either side of the Tour, and convinced his reluctant surgeon to agree to him attending in a car padded out with cushions and with a doctor in attendance. At that time, many roads outside of the centre of Paris were primitive, at best cobbled and at worst, unsurfaced tracks full of potholes and gulleys (in rural areas, they would remain as such until the Tour became televised, at which point local mayors began to find the money to modernise them so that the world wouldn't think their communities backward) and even in the first stage it became apparent that he wouldn't be able to continue. He attempted to continue through Stage 2, with a fever and in great pain, but was forced to give up. He retired that day, handing over L'Auto's editorship to Jacques Goddet and his daily column to a journalist named Charles Faurous, then traveled to his chateau. He died four years later at his villa on the Mediterranean.


Harry Hill

Harry Hill, a record-breaking British cyclist and bronze-winning Olympian, died on this day in 2009. Hill's Olympic appearance came at the infamous 1936 Games, held in Nazi Germany, and he may have won silver or even gold were it not for the fact to get to Germany, he needed to first get from his home near Sheffield to London. He had no money, and nor did his mother who had raised him alone after his father was killed while fighting in Africa in the First World War. So, he rode the 200 miles (322km) on the bike with which he planned to enter.

Once back in Britain after the race, he faced the same problem - but this time it was worse. On the way there he'd had just enough money to buy food and had carefully saved enough to do the same on the way there, but whilst in Germany temptation had got the better of him and he'd spent it all on a souvenir jacket. There was no alternative: he'd have to ride the rest of the journey without eating. He couldn't, of course, and "only" managed 170 miles before he cracked and had to thumb a lift.

The following year, Hill set a new Hour Record for an outdoor track in Milan, covering 25 miles (40.23km). In 1976, when he was 60 years old, he cycled across North America. He claimed to have never smoked or consumed alcohol in his life. He rode his bike every day from the age of 13 until 2004, when he fractured his hip. He was Britain's oldest winner of an Olympic medal when he died aged  92 of pneumonia.


Annett Neumann, born in Lauchhammer, Germany on this day in 1970, won a silver medal for the Elite Sprint at the World Track Championships in 1991 and another in the same event at the 1992 Olympics, then two more for the Sprint and the 500m at the World Championships of 1996.

Wilfried Wesemael, winner of the General Classification at the 1979 Tour de Suisse, was born on this day in 1950 in Aalst, Belgium.

Lisa Mathison, born in Brisbane on this day in 1985, was Junior Cross Country Mountain Bike Champion in 2001 and 2002, then Elite Champion in 2003 and 2004 and Under-23 Champion in 2006. In 2013, following several years out of the public eye, she was third at the National Downhill MTB Championships.

Other cyclists born on this day: Ted King (USA, 1983); Georges Augoyat (France, 1882, died 1963); Anthony Williamsen (USA, 1880, died 1956);  Mario Gentili (Italy, 1913, died 1999); Luigi Borghetti (Italy, 1943); Camilla Larsson (Sweden, 1975); Mikhail Kountras (Greece, 1952); Rolf Järmann (Switzerland, 1966); Craig Adair (New Zealand, 1963); Jaap ten Kortenaar (Netherlands, 1964); Niels van der Steen (Netherlands, 1972); Marcelo Greuel (Brazi, 1963); Walter Pérez (Argentina, 1973).

Daily Cycling Facts 22.12.2013

On this day in 1894, Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason in France - thus beginning the Dreyfus Affair that inspired Jules Albert De Dion to join forces with other wealthy anti-Drefusards and establish the L'Auto newspaper as opposition to the pro-Dreyfus Le Velo newspaper. L'Auto did not sell well during its first few years and its owners demanded that the editor, an ex-professional cyclist named Henri Desgrange, came up with a scheme to improve circulation; on the 20th of November in 1902, he and his staff came up with the idea of holding a bicycle race. None of them could have guessed that, more than a century later, it would still be held annually; nor could they have known that it would grow to become the biggest and, as far as millions of people worldwide are concerned, the greatest and most important sporting event in history - the Tour de France.

Marcel Molinès
Marcel Molinès is frequently listed as the only black winner of a Tour de France stage. That there had been one would be wonderful, since professional pelotons in Europe and the USA are even to this day strangely white.

Marcel Molinès

Unfortunately, there's a slight issue in that he wasn't black, as can be seen very clearly in photographs. He was, however, the first African-born stage winner (the probable reason behind the error), having been born in Chibli in French Algeria on this day in 1928. The stage he won was Stage 13 in 1950, a 215km flat route between Perpignan and Nimes on a day that was searingly hot with temperatures reaching as high as 40C. Molinès and his team mate Abdel-Kader Zaaf (who was black, but neither won a stage nor finished this one), being accustomed to the heat of Algeria, were not so badly affected as the European riders and, for a while, Zaaf even led the race when the pair managed to build up a 20 minute lead.

Later on, they began to suffer and stopped for a drink; Zaaf was handed a bottle of wine and drank it. As he'd never consumed alcohol before due to his Muslim faith, he was entirely unprepared for its effects and began to wobble dangerously, so he lay down in the shade under a tree to sleep it off (some say a race official ordered him to stop and have a break; when he woke up, he set off in the wrong direction and became a celebrity) while Molinès continued and was able to win the stage by four minutes. However, back down the road was a peloton powered by the fearsome Ferdy Kübler (often spelled Ferdi, but here spelled how Ferdy himself spells it - the big Swiss rider is now a charming elderly gent who bears little resemblance to the rider he once was), Louison Bobet, Antonin Magne and Gino Bartali: a peloton like that isn't going to allow a virtual unknown to take all the prizes and, though Molinès won the stage, Kübler retained the race lead and kept it for the rest of the race.

Happy birthday Siobhan Dervan!
(image credit: Fanny Schertzer CC BY-SA 3.0)

Molinès finished the Autun criterium two years later and retired in 1954; many books claim that he then vanished and some even say that it's not known whether or not he has died. In fact, he returned to his previous job as a taxi driver but continued to race as an amateur. In 1980 he won a veteran's race against 60 other competitors - and, at the time of writing, he is still very much alive.


Italian cyclist Bruno Pellizzari, winner of a bronze medal at the 1932 Olympics, died on this day in 1991. He was born on the 5th of November in 1907.

Five-time Irish National Road Champion Siobhan Dervan was born on this day in 1978. In 2012, she was third in the Individual Time Trial and second in the Road Race at the Nationals.

Louise Moriarty, born in Dublin on this day in 1978, first came to prominence with fifth place in the Irish National Individual Time Trial Championship of 2001, then a year later improved to second place and took third in the Road Race Championship too. She then had a couple of quieter years before coming third again in the National Road Race; then in 2006 and 2007 she became National Individual Time Trial Champion. 2008 would be a remarkable year - first she set a new national record in Individual Pursuit at the Newport Velodrome, shaving three seconds from the previous best time, then became Irish champion in the 500m Time Trial, Individual Pursuit, Scratch and Points race champion before going on to win two stages and the overall General Classification at the Ras na mBan road race in addition to coming second and third at the National Road Race and Individual Time Trial Championships respectively.

Jacques Bossis, winner of the Intermediate Sprints classification at the 1978 Tour de France, was born in Jonzac, France on this day in 1952.

On this day in 1900, Oscar Aaronson died a few days after he was injured in a crash at New York's Madison Square Garden Six Day Race. Before his death, other riders expressed concern that the crash "might prove fatal to six-day racing itself."

Other cyclists born on this day: Albert Kägi (Switzerland, 1912); José Jaime Galeano (Colombia, 1945); Scott McGrory (Australia, 1969); Leif Lampater (Germany, 1982); Aleksandar Milenković (Yugoslavia, 1967); Marcus Hurley (USA, 1883, died 1941); John Dean (New Zealand, 1947); Barbara Blatter (Switzerland, 1970).

Daily Cycling Facts 16.08.2013

Desgrange was a successful rider in his
own right and won many races - such as
the 1893 National Tricycle Championship

On this day in 1940 Henri Desgrange - Father of the Tour de France, its director from inauguration in 1903 until 1936 and the inventor of modern bicyce stage and Audax racing - died at his Mediterranean villa. He had undergone a prostate operation shortly before the Tour in 1936, then persuaded doctors to give him their permission to follow the race in a car filled with cushions; but suffered great agony during the first stage and gave up the next day, handing over control of the race to Jacques Goddet. (For more on Desgrange's life and why it might have been him - rather than, as many people claim, Géo Lefèvre - that first came up with the idea of holding a bike race to advertise the L'Auto newspaper, click here.)

Fabio Casartelli
Born in Como on this day in 1970, Fabio Casartelli started cycling when he was nine, encouraged by his father who was a good amateur rider. He won a gold medal at the Olympics during his own amateur career (road race 1992; the first Italian to win since 1968) and turned professional with Ariostea the following year, when he finished in the top three on three stages at the Tour de Suisse. A rider with enormous potential, Casartelli was a fine climber who also performed well on other stages - and was soon being tipped for future Grand Tour success. He moved to ZG Mobili in 1994, then to the US-based Motorola in 1995.

Fabio Casartelli
16.08.1970 - 18.07.1995

On the 18th of July 1995, during Stage 15 of the Tour de France, he lost control of his bike whilst descending the Col du Portet d'Aspet at high speed. Several other riders were also involved in the crash but got away with injuries of varying severity; Casartelli's head struck the low wall running alongside the road. Doctors reached him within ten seconds, but although television cameras showed him lying on the tarmac in a pool of blood for only a second or two it was obvious to fans that he had suffered massive head injuries and was very badly hurt indeed. Aged 24, he died in the helicopter on the way to hospital.

The next day, his Motorola team crossed the finish line together with the other riders following slowly behind them. Prizes were handed out as normal, then all recipients pooled them and donated them to Casartelli's family. Lance Armstrong, also with Motorola, dedicated his Stage 18 to him and there is now a memorial at the spot where he fell. Since 1997, the Youth category at the Tour has been known officially as the Souvenir Fabio Casartelli.

Katarzyna Pawlowska
Born in Przygodzice on this day in 1989, Katarzyna Pawlowska made her first mark on the cycling world when she won the bronze medal at the Polish Individual Time Trial Championship of 2009, and then proved that she had talent on the track too when she rode with the Team Pursuit squad that took 12th at the Worlds and sixth at the European Championships a year later.

Pawlowska at the 2013 Trofeo Binda

2011 brought more excellent results on road and track with seventh place at the Puchar Prezesa race in Poland and a fine selection of medals at the European track championships including silver for the Under-23 Team and Individual Pursuits and another for the Elite Points race. In 2012 she became World Scratch Champion, then took her best road race victory thus far when she won the National Championship; later in the year she finished the road race at the Olympics in 11th place, then returned to the track for another silver in the Team Pursuit and a bronze in the Omnium at the European Championships.

Pawlowska won more track glory in 2013 and successfully defended her World Scratch Champion title, Over the course of the previous year, her results on the road had brought her to the attention of the Elite teams and she had accepted the offer of a contract from GSD Gestion-Kallisto - with them, she has shown exceptional promise: fifth at the Ronde van Gelderland, ninth at the Omloop van Borsele, fifth at the Dwars door Westhoek, fourth overall (and third on Stage 1) at the GP Elsy Jacobs, third at the Chrono des Gatineau, first on Stage 3 at the Tour de Bretagne (and second on Stages 2 and 4) and then her first General Classification victory when she won the Tour en Limousin, also taking Stages 3 and 4. She would enjoy more success at the National Championships that year too, winning the ITT and coming third in the road race.

Éric Caritoux
Éric Caritoux, who was born on this day in 1960, had to become a cyclist - he came into the world at Carpentras on Provence, at the foot of cycling's holiest mountain Ventoux. Having begun his career with a local club, the old volcano became a regular feature of his training rides.

Eric Caritoux, Tour 1993

In 1982, Caritoux won the amateurs' Tour de Vaucluse, beating Laurent Fignon and getting noticed by Sem-France Loire boss Jean de Gribaldy, who signed him up for 1983. De Gribaldy was seen as something of an unorthodox character by other managers for his habit of offering contracts to riders that no other teams wanted, especially those reaching typical requirement age. However, Sean Kelly says "he was a long way ahead of his time. He had some great ideas. He was 10 years ahead of everyone else on diet. He was clear about what you could and couldn’t eat 10 years before the other teams started to think about it" - thus, aging riders discovered a new lease of competitive life with de Gribaldy, and good young riders became great (for the story of how de Gribaldy signed up Kelly, click here). Caritoux flourished; that same year he rode his first Tour de France and came 24th overall - a superb result for a debutant and one that elevated him from Kelly's domestique to a team leader.

Caritoux fulfilled that very role at the Vuelta a Espana in 1984, and won overall - a surprise not only because it was his second professional year, but because up until one week before the race began neither he nor the team - now re-named Skil-Reydem - had not planned to be there. De Gribaldy, in his usual eccentric fashion, had completely forgotten that he'd promised the race organisers that he would send a team. They, meanwhile, had not and threatened him with a breach of contract case worth £50,000; so he put a team together as rapidly as possible, phoning Caritoux, who was on holiday at the time, and asking him to fly to the south of Spain where the race was due to begin. In the circumstances, nobody expected Skil-Reydem to do well; but Caritoux unexpectedly found form and won the first mountain stage, then took the leader's jersey - which at that time was yellow, rather than gold as it is today - from Pedro Delgado during Stage 12. Caritoux was every bit as surprised as Delgado was when he then kept it for the rest of the race, especially when he did well enough in the final time trial to hold off nearest rival Alberto Fernández Blanco, who was by far the more talented time trial rider (and who, with his wife, was tragically killed in a car crash on the 14th of December that same year, one month before his 30th birthday). Caritoux's winning margin, 6", is the smallest in the history of the Vuelta.

In 1986, Caritoux joined Fagor, a team that looked set for considerable success but which suffered from its managers' lack of organisational skills; his results suffered as a result, which explains why he was 20th at the Tour - a good result, but not as good as might be expected of a rider who had won a Grand Tour in his second year. His two years with the team brought only one race win, the 1986 Trophée des Grimpeurs (which, first run in 1913 as the Polymultipliée, was last held in 2009 and seems sadly to have vanished forever), though 23rd at the 1987 Tour was another respectable enough result, if not quite up to his abilities. In 1988 he went to Kas-Canal 10, where he would once again ride with Sean Kelly, and his results improved immediately: he won the criteriums at Aulnat, Riom-en-Montagne, Toulouse and Lamballe,  18th place at the Tour and - best of all - the National Road Race Championship. Kas had returned to cycling in 1986, having been dissolved after twenty years in 1979; it would disappear again at the end of the 1988 season, leaving Caritoux in search of another team. This time, he chose R.M.O, where he would stay for four seasons during which he won another National Championship and more respectable Tour placings, then went to Chazal-Vetta-MBK when R.M.O was dissolved at the end of 1992. It was increasingly obvious that his best years were drawing to a close, but Caritoux remained a strong rider: he was 37th at the Tour in 1993, then 22nd in 1994. At the end of the year, he announced his retirement and returned to Carpentras where he now owns a holiday business and a vineyard. Just as it is for all the people who live around Ventoux, cycling remains part of his life.

Piet Rooijakkers

Piet Rooijakkers

Born in Gerwen, Netherlands on this day in 1980, Piet Rooijakkers completed a university degree in business in 2002, then decided to try to make a career from cycling rather than going straight into management. He joined the UCI Category 3 Löwik-Tegeltoko team in 2003 and went to the Olympia's Tour, but his season was ruined by a crash during Stage 5.

Rooijakkers remained with Löwik on 2004 and won the bronze medal at the National Championship for Elite riders without professional contracts, then went to the Continental-class AXA Procycling in 2005 and started showing some serious promise with stage wins at the Olympia's Tour and the Ronde van Midden-Brabant; which earned him a contract with Pro-Continental Skil-Shimano in 2006. That year passed without victory, as is often the case when a cyclist first moves into the upper ranks; 2007 brought him third place at the Berlare criterium. The following year he managed third place on Stage 3 at the Tour of Qatar which, along with tenth place overall at the 2009 Tour Méditerranéen will have helped persuade managers to select him for their Tour de France squad when the team received a wildcard entry - unfortunately, a crash during the Stage 4 time trial left him with a broken arm.

Rooijakkers was undoubtedly a good rider, but he was never able to live up to the promise he'd once shown. In 2010, when his best result was fifth for Stage 1 at the Giro Trentino, Skil decided not to extend his contract and he retired.

Daniel Willems
Daniel Willems, born in Herentals, Belgium on this day in 1956, won 75 professional victories between 1978 (when he joined IJsboerke-Gios) and 1983 (when he rode for Safir-Van de Ven) - he was also extremely successful before turning professional, winning the road races at the National Military Championship in 1976 and the National Amateur Championship a year later.

His professional career got off to an excellent start with victory in the Promises category at the Omloop Het Volk. He lived up to it, going on to win the Brabantse Pijl and Scheldeprijs and taking  third place at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 1979; then in 1980 revealed that he was a stage racer of considerable note too when he won the Prologue and five consecutive stages at the Tour de Suisse and the General Classification at the Vuelta a Andalucia. In 1981 he won the Waalse Pijl, then went to the Tour de France where he finished third in the Prologue, won Stages 11 and19 and finished in the top ten on eight other stages before abandoning in the penultimate stage. The following year he was 23rd in the Prologue and won Stages 3 and 20 but only finished top ten on two stages - however, he did better overall and was seventh in the General Classification and fourth in the Points competition. In 1983 he was 17th in the Prologue and looked all set to do well again, perhaps even bettering his previous results, but after experiencing problems on several stages was in 61st place by the end of Stage 16 and abandoned soon afterwards. Sadly, he would never again find the form he had once enjoyed and began to be plagued by bad health; after going without victory in 1984 and 1985, he retired.

Aksel Gresvig

Aksel Gresvig

Born Aksel Johan Andersen in Græsvig, Norway on this day in 1875, Aksel Gresvig was the son of a village shopkeeper who died when he was six years old; after which the family moved first to Fredrikstad and then to Christiania in Oslo. He bought his first bike when he was 18 and fell in love with it, spending his free time training around the Akerhus Festning castle, which had become a popular spot with competitive cyclists - including World Champion Wilhelm Henie, with who Gresvig became friends - whilst the old race track at Bygdøy was being redeveloped into a proper velodrome. They invited to join their club and, once the new velodrome was complete, his road bike was exchanged for a track bike; he would go on to win three National and two Scandinavian Championships titles between 1897 and 1900.

Gresvig began working as an insurance clerk in 1893, but very soon decided he'd rather try to make his living by selling bikes and spent the next few years working in bike shops, learning how to run a retail business and bike mechanics. He opened his own shop in 1901, then seven years later began to produce bikes - he was a sufficiently gifted businessman and designer for the company to actually grow during the Great Depression, taking over failed shops and manufacturers and rejuvenating them.

Gresvig died on the 16th of December 1958. His company, now trading as G-Sport, Intersport and Super-G, has some 330 outlets and is now the largest chain of sports supplies shops in Scandinavia.

Jonathan Bellis, born in Douglas, Isle of Man on this day in 1988, became National Junior Individual Pursuit Champion in 2006 and rode with the winning pursuit team at the European Junior Championships, also winning Stage 4 at the Junior Tour of Wales for the second year running; then a year later won the European Under-23 Points and Scratch Race Championships. In 2009, Bellis was critically injured when he crashed his scooter near Team GB's training camp in Quarrata, spending four weeks in an induced coma. He returned to SaxoBank after recovering, but found the pressures of ProTour racing too great and transferred to the Continental An Post-Sean Kelly team for 2012.

Arnaldo Pambianco, born in Betinoro, Italy on this day in 1935, spent eight days in the maglia rosa before winning the 1961 Giro d'Italia - he had been seventh overall at the Giro and the Tour de France the previous year. Despite the old stereotype stating that Italian riders couldn't perform well in the often cold and wet races of Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Pambianco could: he won the Brabantse Pijl in 1964.

Six-time French National MTB Cross Country Champion (2003-2008) Julien Absalon was born in Remiremont on this day in 1980. He also won the European Championship in 2006, the World Championship 2004-2007, the World Cup in 2003, 2006 and 2007 and gold medals at the Olympics of 2004 and 2008. Still racing today, for Orbea (his home since 2008), he has won eight races thus far in 2012.

Alvaro Tardáguila

Uruguayan Alvaro Tardáguila, who was born on this day in 1975, won the Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay in 2005 - 33 years after his father, Walter, won the same race. Later that same year, he tested positive for anabolic steroids and EPO at Milwaukee's Great Downer Avenue Race and received a two-year ban; he returned to competition in 2008 and continues racing in South America to this day.

Jelle Nijdam, born in Zundert, Netherlands on this day in 1963, rode ten Tours de France between 1985 and 1995 - he won the Prologue in 1987,  Stage 5 in 1988, Stages 4 and 14 in 1989, Stage 6 in 1990 and Stage 5 in 1991. Other highlights of his career included the National Pursuit Championship and Tour of Luxembourg in 1985, the National Derny Championship and Postgirot Open in 1986, the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1987, the Amstel Gold Race in 1988, Paris-Brussels and Paris-Tours in 1989and numerous other stage races and criteriums.

Born in Springfield, Missouri on this day in 1947, John Kennedy Howard was US National Road Race Champion in 1968, 1972, 1973 and 1975, took part in the Olympics of 1968, 1972 and 1976, won the first two Red Zinger Classics and came second at the first ever Race Across America in 1982 (then known as The Great American Bike Race, only four riders took part). In 1985, Howard set a new motor-paced bicycle speed record at 245kph on the Bonneville Salt Flats; it would remain intact for ten years.

Marc Sergeant was born in Aalst on this day in 1959 and became Belgian Amateur Road Race Champion in 1981. The year after that he won the Vuelta a Andalucia, then in 1983 came third at the Ronde van Vlaanderen and then Elite National Champion in 1984, also entering the Tour de France that year and coming 48th. In 1986 he won the Nationals again, then won Stage 5 at the Tour a year later - his only stage win in twelve Tours. Following his retirement in 1996, Sergeant became a manager at Lotto-Belisol.

Other cyclists born on this day: Paul Deem (USA, 1957); Brian McDonough (USA, 1965); Richie Thomson (New Zealand, 1940, died 2012); Gheorghe Bădără (Romania, 1941); Johnnie Matthews (Great Britain, 1884, died 1969); César Daneliczen (Brazil, 1962); Teodor Vasile (Romania, 1947); Mario Beccia (Italy, 1955); Kiril Georgiev (Bulgaria, 1971).