Daily Cycling Facts 03.03.2014

Paris-Nice began on this day in 1985, and would be won that year for a fourth consecutive year by the Irish rider Sean Kelly - thus breaking the three consecutive wins record set by Eddy Merckx in 1971 (what's more, Sean would win the next year to equal Jacques Anquetil's five win record too. Then he won for the next two years as well, setting a seven consecutive victory record that is unlikely to be broken). The classification leadership jerseys of Paris-Nice have changed several times over the years and this year it was the turn of the King of the Mountains, which became blue.


Maurice Garin

Garin with masseur and son, 1903

Maurice-Francois Garin was born in Arvier, Italy on this day in 1871 - a tiny village of just seven families, five of them with the surname Garin - and died on the 19th of February 1957 in France. Garin's father was 36 and his mother 19 when they married and life was difficult - the cottage in which he was born can still be seen in Arvier, a short way from the French border, but it lies in ruins and must have been horrendously cramped when occupied by the couple and their nine children, this no doubt being one of the reasons they emigrated over the border when Maurice was 14. It seems that they did so illegally - legal emigration was possible, but the mayors on the French side had been instructed to make it as difficult as possible and the family members traveled separately to escape detection. According to legend, Maurice was exchanged for a round of cheese at some point along the way - a frequently recounted in support of the (often true) "desperate boys from a harsh background" stereotype that makes up a large part of early cycling's mythos.

In fact, the legend may be true. In those days, a 14-year-old boy was considered to be ready to make his own way in the world and, rather than displaying a lack of care, Garin's parents may have believed that they were doing the right thing. That he was working as a chimney sweep in Reims a year later suggests that they cheese may have been a sort of custody payment from an employer - Garin would, as a result, have been tied to the job for a certain number of years, but better that than no job at all in a world where the concept of state unemployment benefits was a long way off. Also, it paid enough for him to join forces with two of his brothers and set up a bike shop in Roubaix in 1895. The exact date at which he became a naturalised Frenchman is unknown, but is thought to have been either 1892 or 1901, by which time the other members of his family had dispersed around France and his father, having returned to Arvier, was dead.

The shop seems to have been quite successful as it paid Garin enough to buy his first bike in 1889 for 405 old francs, roughly €1,400 today. He had no interest in racing but became known locally for the high speeds at which he cycled around town and earned the nickname "Le Fou," The Madman, which brought him to the attention of a cycling club secretary who pleaded with him to race for the organisation. Garin not only agreed, he also finished a very respectable 5th - not bad at all for a first race and despite suffering from the great heat that day. He realised that racing was something he could be good at, and entered more races. His first win came in 1893 and he sold his bike, combined the proceeds of that with the money he'd won in the race and bought a newer, lighter model for the equivalent of €3,000. It was fitted with the newly-popular pneumatic tyres that had been patented by a Scots-Irish vet three and a half years earlier.

He became a professional that same year, and did so in typically unusual fashion: having turned up for a race in Avesnes-sur-Helpes, he was informed by officials that the event was open only to professional riders. Rather than going home or becoming a spectator, he waited until nobody was looking once the riders had set off and then jumped on his bike and went after them. He crashed twice but dropped them all, finishing the race far ahead of them. The crowd loved it - the organisers, meanwhile, were not so impressed and refused to pay him the prize money; so the spectator had a whip-round and gave him 300 francs, double what the professional winner received. It was not long until a sponsor approached him with a contract, and his first victory as a professional came a short while later at a 24-hour race in Paris during which he covered 701km. A record survives showing what Garin claimed to have eaten during the race and makes for impressive reading even when compared to the vast quantities of food (and, in some cases, intoxicating substances) consumed by rider since: 5 litres of tapioca, 2kg of rice, 45 cutlets of meat, 7 litres of tea, 8 eggs, 19 litres of drinking chocolate, some oysters, a mixture of champagne and coffee and "lots" of strong red wine.

Remarkable though his early life and career may have been, Garin will be forever remembered as the man who won the very first Tour de France in 1903 and then won the second one too but was stripped of the victory for cheating. Originally, the race had been planned as a mammoth five-week ordeal by organiser Henri Desgrange, but only 15 cyclists had liked the sound of that and expressed interest so it was reduced to a six-stage event over 2,428km. Garin won 3,000 francs, but the race had been hard - he told journalist Pierre Chany:

"The 2,500km that I've just ridden seem a long line, grey and monotonous, where nothing stood out from anything else. But I suffered on the road; I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was sleepy, I suffered, I cried between Lyon and Marseille, I had the pride of winning other stages, and at the controls I saw the fine figure of my friend Delattre, who had prepared my sustenance, but I repeat, nothing strikes me particularly.
But wait! I'm completely wrong when I say that nothing strikes me, I'm confusing things or explaining myself badly. I must say that one single thing struck me, that a single thing sticks in my memory: I see myself, from the start of the Tour de France, like a bull pierced by banderillas, who pulls the banderillas with him, never able to rid himself of them."

1904 was harder still. The race remained the same distance, but this time fans remembered the events of the previous year and started vendettas against riders they disliked, felling trees across the road to hold them up and physically beating them given the chance. Garin had apparently incurred their wrath at some point, because he was attacked under cover of darkness during a night stage as he climbed  the Col de la République, suffering  severe beating and being hit in the face with a stone. The mob were wild, braying "Up with local hero, André] Faure! Down with Garin! Kill them!" The Italian rider Paul Gerbi was punched and kicked until he became unconscious and had his fingers broken - which suggested that the death threats may well have been carried out had officials not arrived and dispersed the crows by firing their pistols into the air. Later on in the same stage, they ran into a gang of men on bikes and were attacked again - this time, Garin's arm was injured and he had to steer with one hand to the end of the stage.

As if the spectators hadn't been trouble enough, there was widespread cheating among the riders that year (some of them may even have paid for the nails that the spectators threw into the road to cause punctures). No fewer than nine had been kicked out during the race, mostly for "illegal use of cars and trains" (Lucien Petit-Breton said that he'd seen a rider he preferred not to name publicly getting towed by a motorbike, but when he tried to remonstrate with the man, he pointed a pistol at him) and more complaints came in when the race was over. The Union Vélocipédique Française started an investigation, details of which were lost when records were transported to the South of France for safe-keeping during the Nazi Occupation, and in the end a further 20 riders were disqualified. Among them were Garin, who had won the race, 2nd place Lucien Pothier, 3rd place César Garin (Maurice's brother) and 4th place Hippolyte Aucouturier. 19-year-old Henri Cornet, real name Henri Jardry, had been given an official warning after he was spotted getting a lift in a car during the race but, perhaps on account of his youthful inexperience, was not disqualified and thus his 5th place finish was upgraded to 1st. He remains the youngest winner in Tour de France history. However, Garin did not confess.

Retirement was good for Garin - he ran a garage in Lens and, though not rich and rarely recognised even though a velodrome was named in his honour in 1933 and he received a gold medal for his services to sport five year later, seems to have been happy with it and was comfortable (the garage still stands at 116 Rue de Lille, but is much modernised). He retained his interest in cycling throughout his life and started a professional team after the Second World War. He lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Tour, watching the finish from a special podium with several other stars of the races from days gone by, and died four years later at the age of 85. After his death, the world began to take an interest and film crews started to document his life. In the Nord-Pas-de-Calais cemetery where he is buried, they discovered that the cemetery attendant was from Lens and had been familiar with Garin and his garage during his boyhood - and revealed that, as an old man, Garin freely admitted to his cheating in the 1904 Tour.

Even without his Tour success, Garin was a phenomenally talented rider who more than lived up to the promise he showed when he was an amateur and beat the professionals. He won Paris-Roubaix twice (d came 3rd twice), Paris-Saint-Malo, Guingamp-Morlaix-Guingamp, Paris-Le Mans, Paris-Mons, Liège-Thuin, Paris-Royan, Paris-Cabourg, Tourcoing-Béthune-Tourcoing (twice), Valenciennes-Nouvion-Valenciennes, Douai-Doullens-Douai, Paris–Brest–Paris, Bordeaux–Paris and set a world record for riding 500km behind a human pacer (ie, a series of cyclists) in 15h2'32". The money he won would have bought his parents a lot of cheese.


Caroline Alexander, a mountain biker born in Millom, Great Britain on this day in 1968, won the British Cross Country Championship in 1999, 2000 and 2002. She also enjyed success in cyclo cross, winning the National Championship in 1995 and 1996, and on road where she won a silver medal at the 2000 National Championships and 2002 finished La Flèche Wallonne Féminine in 7th place overall. Alexander also competed for Scotland in the Mountain Bike Cross Country event at the Commonwealth Games in 2002, the first time mountain bike races had ever formed a part of the event. She retired two years later and was inducted onto the British Cycling Hall of Fame in 2009.

Raul Alcala
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY-SA 3.0) 

Raúl Alcalá
Born on this day in Monterrey, Mexico in 1964, Raúl Alcalá became the first Mexican to compete in the Tour de France in 1986. He won no stages and came 114th overall. The next year, however, he finished in 9th position overall and won the Youth Classification. 1988 wasn't so good with 20th overall, but 8th overall plus Stage 3 in 1989 and 8th again with Stage 7 in 1990 proved his earlier results were more than beginner's luck (for those with the peculiar belief that the Tour grants such favours to new riders, anyway).

He retired at the end of the 1994 season, but then resurfaced as a mountain biker with the GT team four years later before a second retirement. Then, in 2008 he popped up again at the Vuelta Chihuahua and began a third career that culminated in 2010 when he became National Time Trial Champion at the age of 46.


Samantha Cools has been Canadian National BMX Champion thirteen times and a World Champion at Junior level five times. She was born in Calgary on this day in 1986.

Romāns Vainšteins, born in Talsi, Latvia on this day in 1973, had an extensive but relatively undistinguished career for his first few years, then won a National Championship, Paris-Brussels, the GP Kanton Aargau, the Settimana internazionale di Coppi e Bartali, the World Championship, Coppa Bernocchi and stages in several classics all within a two-season period over 1999 and 2000. In 2001, he was 3rd at Paris-Roubaix but never achieved anything quite like those two years ever again.

Other births: Radoslav Rogina (Croatia, 1979); Jean Barnabe (Congo, 1949); Aleksandr Petrovsky (USSR, 1989); Ray Hicks (Great Britain, 1917, died 1974); Dimitar Kotev (Bulgaria, 1941); Rubén Darío Gómez (Colombia, 1940, died 2010); Per Sarto Jørgensen (Denmark, 1944); Paul Nyman (Finland, 1929); Lars Jensen (Denmark, 1964); Jürgen Schütze (East Germany, 1951, died 2000); Régis Ovion (France, 1949); Hussein Monsalve (Venezuela, 1969); Laurence Byers (New Zealand, 1941); Gennadi Simov (Bulgaria, 1907).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.02.2014

Maurice Garin

Garin with masseur and son, 1903

Maurice-Francois Garin was born on the 3rd of March 1871 in Arvier, Italy - a tiny village of just seven families, five of them with the surname Garin - and died on this day in 1957 in France. Garin's father was 36 and his mother 19 when they married and life was difficult - the cottage in which he was born can still be seen in Arvier, a short way from the French border, but it lies in ruins and must have been horrendously cramped when occupied by the couple and their nine children, this no doubt being one of the reasons they emigrated over the border when Maurice was 14. It seems that they did so illegally - legal emigration was possible, but the mayors on the French side had been instructed to make it as difficult as possible and the fact that the family members traveled separately to escape detection is evidence that they did not have permission. According to legend, Maurice was exchanged for a round of cheese at some point along the way - as is frequently recounted in support of the (often true) "desperate boys from a harsh background" stereotype that makes up a large part of early cycling's mythos.

In fact, the cheese legend may be true. In those days, a 14-year-old boy was considered to be ready to make his own way in the world and, rather than displaying a lack of care, Garin's parents may have believed that they were doing the right thing. That he was working as a chimney sweep in Reims a year later suggests that the cheese may have been a sort of custody payment from an employer who had taken him on in a sort of unofficial apprenticeship - Garin would, as a result, have been tied to the job for a certain number of years, but better that than no job at all in a world where the concept of state unemployment benefits was a long way off. Also, it paid enough for him to join forces with two of his brothers and set up a bike shop in Roubaix in 1895. The exact date at which he became a naturalised Frenchman is unknown, but is thought to have been either 1892 or 1901, by which time the other members of his family had dispersed around France and his father, having returned to Arvier, was dead.

The shop seems to have been quite successful as it paid Garin enough to buy his first bike in 1889 for 405 old francs, roughly €1,400 today. He had no interest in racing but became known locally for the high speeds at which he cycled around town and earned the nickname "Le Fou," The Madman, which brought him to the attention of a cycling club secretary who pleaded with him to race for the organisation. Garin not only agreed, he also finished a very respectable 5th - not bad at all for a first race and despite suffering from the great heat that day. He realised that racing was something he could be good at, and entered more races. His first win came in 1893 and he sold his bike, combined the proceeds of that with the money he'd won in the race and bought a newer, lighter model for the equivalent of €3,000. It was fitted with the newly-popular pneumatic tyres that had been patented by a Scots-Irish vet three and a half years earlier.

He became a professional that same year, and did so in typically unusual fashion: having turned up for a race in Avesnes-sur-Helpes, he was informed by officials that the event was open only to professional riders. Rather than going home or becoming a spectator, he waited until nobody was looking once the riders had set off and then jumped on his bike and went after them. He crashed twice but dropped them all, finishing the race far ahead of them. The crowd loved it - the organisers, meanwhile, were not so impressed and refused to pay him the prize money; so the spectator had a whip-round and gave him 300 francs, double what the professional winner received. It was not long until a sponsor approached him with a contract, and his first victory as a professional came a short while later at a 24-hour race in Paris during which he covered 701km. A record survives showing what Garin claimed to have eaten during the race and makes for impressive reading even when compared to the vast quantities of food (and, in some cases, intoxicating substances) consumed by rider since: 5 litres of tapioca, 2kg of rice, 45 cutlets of meat, 7 litres of tea, 8 eggs, 19 litres of drinking chocolate, some oysters, a mixture of champagne and coffee and "lots" of strong red wine.

Remarkable though his early life and career may have been, Garin will be forever remembered as the man who won the very first Tour de France in 1903, then won the second one too but was stripped of the victory for cheating. Originally, the race had been planned as a mammoth five-week ordeal by organiser Henri Desgrange, but only 15 cyclists had liked the sound of that and expressed interest so it was reduced to a six-stage event over 2,428km. Garin won 3,000 francs, but the race had been hard - he told journalist Pierre Chany:

"The 2,500km that I've just ridden seem a long line, grey and monotonous, where nothing stood out from anything else. But I suffered on the road; I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was sleepy, I suffered, I cried between Lyon and Marseille, I had the pride of winning other stages, and at the controls I saw the fine figure of my friend Delattre, who had prepared my sustenance, but I repeat, nothing strikes me particularly.
But wait! I'm completely wrong when I say that nothing strikes me, I'm confusing things or explaining myself badly. I must say that one single thing struck me, that a single thing sticks in my memory: I see myself, from the start of the Tour de France, like a bull pierced by banderillas, who pulls the banderillas with him, never able to rid himself of them."

1904 was harder still. The race remained the same distance, but this time fans remembered the events of the previous year and started vendettas against riders they disliked, felling trees across the road to hold them up and physically beating them given the chance. Garin had apparently incurred their wrath at some point, because he was attacked under cover of darkness during a night stage as he climbed  the Col de la République, suffering  severe beating and being hit in the face with a stone. The mob were wild, braying "Up with local hero, André Faure! Down with Garin! Kill them!" The Italian rider Paul Gerbi was punched and kicked until he became unconscious and had his fingers broken - which suggested that the death threats may well have been carried out had officials not arrived and dispersed the crows by firing their pistols into the air. Later on in the same stage, they ran into a gang of men on bikes and were attacked again - this time, Garin's arm was injured and he had to steer with one hand to the end of the stage.

As if the spectators hadn't been trouble enough, there was widespread cheating among the riders that year (some of them may even have paid for the nails that the spectators threw into the road to cause punctures). No fewer than nine had been kicked out during the race, mostly for "illegal use of cars and trains" (Lucien Petit-Breton said that he'd seen a rider he preferred not to name publicly getting towed by a motorbike, but when he tried to remonstrate with the man, he pointed a pistol at him) and more complaints came in when the race was over. The Union Vélocipédique Française started an investigation, details of which were lost when records were transported to the South of France for safe-keeping during the Nazi Occupation, and in the end a further 20 riders were disqualified. Among them were Garin, who had won the race, 2nd place Lucien Pothier, 3rd place César Garin (Maurice's brother) and 4th place Hippolyte Aucouturier. 19-year-old Henri Cornet, real name Henri Jardry, had been given an official warning after he was spotted getting a lift in a car during the race but, perhaps on account of his youthful inexperience, was not disqualified and thus his 5th place finish was upgraded to 1st. He remains the youngest winner in Tour de France history. However, Garin did not confess.

Retirement was good for Garin - he ran a garage in Lens and, though not rich and rarely recognised even though a velodrome was named in his honour in 1933 and he received a gold medal for his services to sport five year later, seems to have been happy with it and was comfortable (the garage still stands at 116 Rue de Lille, but is much modernised). He retained his interest in cycling throughout his life and started a professional team after the Second World War. He lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Tour, watching the finish from a special podium with several other stars of the races from days gone by, and died four years later at the age of 85. After his death, the world began to take an interest and film crews started to document his life. In the Nord-Pas-de-Calais cemetery where he is buried, they discovered that the cemetery attendant was from Lens and had been familiar with Garin and his garage during his boyhood - and revealed that, as an old man, Garin freely admitted to his cheating in the 1904 Tour.

Even without his Tour success, Garin was a phenomenally talented rider who more than lived up to the promise he showed when he was an amateur and beat the professionals. He won Paris-Roubaix twice (d came 3rd twice), Paris-Saint-Malo, Guingamp-Morlaix-Guingamp, Paris-Le Mans, Paris-Mons, Liège-Thuin, Paris-Royan, Paris-Cabourg, Tourcoing-Béthune-Tourcoing (twice), Valenciennes-Nouvion-Valenciennes, Douai-Doullens-Douai, Paris–Brest–Paris, Bordeaux–Paris and set a world record for riding 500km behind a human pacer (ie, a series of cyclists) in 15h2'32". The money he won would have bought his parents a lot of cheese.


Albert White

Few riders have ever won as many trophies - including Olympic medals - as Albert "Lal" White, who was born in Scunthorpe in Great Britain on this day in 1890, but even fewer have had an opera written about their lives. Little was known about the cyclist, who died in 1965, other than that he had been awarded the Muratti Vase after achieving a string of prestigious race wins in the 1920s (the whereabouts of the Vase, said to have been made of solid gold and estimated to be of enormous value, are unknown).

White was employed at a steelworks, and his incredible palmares is due at least in part to an exceptionally understanding (and presumably, very keen on cycling boss) who saw to it that he was given only work to justify his pay packet. The skills he learned there came in handy, because according to cycling legend Lal invented the static training bike.

Cycle Song, the opera about White's life, was created by the Scunthorpe Opera and performed as part of the 2012 London Festival. Excerpts can be found here.

The British Cultural Olympiad Committee appealed for information from the public on Olympians from days gone by, including Lal, through the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2010, and several people who remembered him came forward, including an elderly man whose brother had trained with the rider and had been told that the Vase, which was named after the Italian cigarette company that sponsored it in the days when sport and cigarettes were considered an acceptable partnership, was kept in a bank vault. Nobody, it seems, knows any more than that.


Jean Majerus
Jean Majerus was a Luxembourgian cyclist born on this day in 1914 who would be twice National Junior Road Race Champion (1935 and 1935) and would go on to become a reasonably successful rider in the Tour de France. In 1937 he won Stage 1 and wore the yellow jersey for two days, then in 1938 he won Stage 2 and wore yellow for four days - the latter equating to seven stages in total, as those days included Stages 2, 3, 4a, 4b, 4c, 5, 6a and 6b (he lost the jersey in 6b). Following the Nazi Occupation of his country, he continued to race within the German Empire and won the Dortmund Rundfahrt twice, along with some other races - successes, but not especially admirable ones because many riders in Nazi occupied lands refused to compete until after the War.

Majerus died on the 16th of June 1983. He is often confused with two other Luxembourgian riders - Jean Michel Majerus, born in 1891, and another Jean Maerus who was born in 1904. It would seem that he was not related to either, nor to Christine Majerus who is racing now; he was, however, the older brother of Jacques Majerus who became National Independents Champion in 1939.


Jelle Vanendert
Born in Neerpelt on this day in 1985, Belgian rider Jelle Vanendert has been racing for Lotto-Belisol since 2012 and, prior to that, Omega Pharma-Lotto in 2010 and 2011 and Silence-Lotto in 2009. His first Pro Tour contract was with La Française des Jeux in 2008, and he had earlier ridden for various Pro Continental teams.

Jelle Vanendert

The biggest victory of Vanendert's early career was the Under-23 GP van Waregem in 2006. While he didn't pick up any wins for a few seasons following his move up to the Pro Tour he did achieve some impressive results that suggested he might one day achieve great things, including an 11th place stage finish at the Vuelta a Espana in 2008, ninth overall at the Österreich-Rundfahrt in 2009, a tenth place stage finish at the Vuelta in 2010. Unfortunately, he was often prevented from reaching his full potential due to injury: a hernia in 2008, then a fractured pelvis, then a damaged knee.

2011 was to be his breakout year - having gone to the Tour de France as a domestique, his team lost leader Jurgen Van Den Broeck in a crash and Vanendert was given free rein to race as he pleased. Seeing an opportunity on Stage 14 in the Midi Pyrenees he attacked the favourites and won the stage, finishing 14" ahead of Samuel Sanchez, 46" ahead of Andy Schleck, 48" ahead of a chase group that contained, among others, Cadel Evans, Alberto Contador and most of the other leading riders. He had not won by a sufficient margin to take the yellow jersey, but he did become the leader in the King of the Mountains and he retained the polka dot jersey all the way to Stage 19 when Sanchez took it from him. He finished the race in 20th place overall.

As a result, he was selected as team leader for Lotto's Spring Classics campaign, going on to take seventh at the Brabantse Pijl, second at the Amstel Gold Race, fourth at La Flèche Wallonne and tenth at Liège-Bastogne-Liège. More good performances came at the stage races and he was 29th overall at the Tour, then in 2013 he was 13th at the Amstel Gold Race and 18th at Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

In 2014 Vanendert rode at the Tour de San Luis. After the race, he revealed that he had ridden several stages with a broken elbow.


Italian rider Fabio Battesini was born on this day in Virgilio in 1912. He won Stage 3 at the Tour de France in  1931 and, at the Giro d'Italia, Stage 3 in 1932, Stage 15 in 1934 and Stage 4 in 1936. He died in Rome on the 17th of June 1987.

On this day in 2002, bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased the mountain bike suspension manufacturer RockShox.

Other cyclists born on this day: Viktor Bykov (USSR, 19450; Park Hyeon-Gon (South Korea, 1968); Roland De Neve (Belgium, 1944); Esteban Espinoza (Ecuador, 1962); Chow Tai Ming (Hong Kong, 1959); Bernd Gröne (Germany, 1963); Heinz Isler (Switzerland, 1960); Reno Olsen (Denmark, 1947); Raymond Bley (Luxembourg, 1939); Jorge Gaday (Argentina, 1968); Gwon Ik-Hyeon (South Korea, 1920); Józef Oksiutycz (Poland, 1904, died 1965); Warwick Dalton (New Zealand, 1937); Jorge Gaday (Argentina, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 30.11.2013

Tommy Simpson, 1937-1966

Tom Simpson
Today is a holy day in cycling, for all the cycling nations and not just in Britain - it would have been the birthday of legendary, tragic Tom Simpson. Born in Haswell, Co. Durham in 1937, Simpson seemed for many years to have been Britain's best ever hope for a Tour de France overall General Classification winner and was the only British rider to win the men's World Road Racing Championship until Mark Cavendish took the title in 2011.

Tom died on the 13th of July in 1967, during the 13th stage of the Tour de France. There were 22 stages that year and they covered a total of 4,708km; for the first time there was also a prologue, and the race had been designed to be the hardest Tour ever. It cannot, therefore, have been an uneventful race all the way until it reached Mont Ventoux that day - but because of what happened there, everything else has been forgotten.

Simpson was rated by many as the finest rider Britain had ever produced and, thanks largely to him, the Tour was increasingly popular on the English side of the Channel. He was also intelligent and funny, making him popular with the other riders; those that might not have liked him (and not one surviving rider from his era will admit to that) learned to respect him, because he had the legs to go with it. Many believed that he could win.

It was hellishly hot when the riders woke up that morning and forecasters warned it would get worse, reaching as high as 45C. That worried official race doctor Pierre Dumas - when he went for a walk at 06:30, he met some friends. "If the riders take something today, we'll have a death on our hands," he told them. They may have shared his concerns, but Dumas - who had come to cycling almost by chance, with no previous background in the sport - was well known for taking doping far more seriously than anybody else; needlessly so, it was commonly thought, as many people accepted it a simply a part of the sport - and something that was better not discussed..

It seems odd that, only 45 years ago, medical science believed that drinking the amount of water now recommended during athletic activity was actually harmful; but that was the case and, as a result, race organisers permitted riders no more than four standard bidons (about two litres) of water per stage. The riders, meanwhile, knew that they got thirsty and mounted cafe raids in which they would descend en masse upon rural bars and shops and guzzle down any fluids they could find, not caring about the large bills that showed up on their managers' desks months later. The riders hadn't long started the stage when the first raids took place, and one of Tom's domestiques had obtained a bottle of brandy. Tom had been seen gulping it down.

He'd been up Ventoux before and was well aware, as Raphaël Géminiani had tried to warn Ferdinand Kübler more than a decade earlier, that the unearthly summit is "not like any other col." Kübler thought he could prove himself greater than the mountain, so Ventoux ended his career to prove him wrong. Tom knew all this - he described an earlier ascent thus:

"It is like another world up there among the bare rocks and the glaring sun. The white rocks reflect the heat and the dust rises, clinging to your arms, legs and face. I rode well up there doing about five miles to the gallon in perspiration. It was almost overwhelming hot up there and I think it was the only time that I have got off my bike and my pants have nearly fallen down. They were soaked and heavy with sweat which was running off me in streams and I had to wring out my socks because the sweat was running into my shoes."

He knew, then, that Ventoux demanded respect. At Chalet Reynard, near the point where riders emerge from the weird and airless forests of the lower slopes and come out into the blast furnace of a road that leads to the top, the heat and alcohol was already giving his problems and several riders passed him. Team manager Alec Taylor wondered briefly if this might be a psychological trick designed to make his rivals think he couldn't cope, but when he drew close to Tom he could see that it wasn't. A little further up he was even worse, unable to concentrate and wondering about all over the road in a place without barriers to prevent a plunge over the side. At this point, Taylor and team mechanic Harry Hall still didn't doubt Tom would make it up the mountain and were far more concerned about what he might do to try to make up the time he was losing once he was over the summit - he'd long ago earned a reputation for being a lunatic descender, apparently relishing the thrill of high-speed corners that would have had most other riders reducing their speed by half. Then he crashed.

Hall was the first one to reach him. "That's it for you, Tom," he said, preparing himself for the emotional outpouring that was sure to come when the rider sat out the remainder of the stage in the team car, following his comrades. But Tom wanted to go on. Both men wished later that they'd stopped him.

For a man suffering as Tom was, he made it a very long way - it's 5.35km along the road and not far from 400m upward (which is an average gradient of 7.5%, not too bad for a professional cyclist - but as Géminiani knew and so many have found out, Ventoux is different) to the place where he fell for the second time. This time he wasn't going on, though he didn't know it because he was already unconscious, his hands locked in a deathgrip to the bars and his legs still trying to pedal. Hall was first to him again and said later that he knew it was too late as soon as he got there. With the help of another mechanic, Ken Ryall, they prised his hands loose and laid him down at the side of the road. One of the Tour's police outriders summoned Dr. Dumas, who was there in moments. He, his deputy and a nurse took turns administering heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and oxygen until the helicopter arrived and took him to hospital, where he was declared dead. His last words, spoken as Hall reached him, were not "Put me back on my bike!" - that was made up by a journalist who wasn't there. Hall and Taylor say they were "Go on! Go on!" What he meant by that we'll never know, but the most obvious explanation is that he thought he was still riding.

The Simpson memorial, Mont Ventoux

The cause of death was given as a heart attack but Dumas, knowing that there was more to it than that and realising that Tom had bequeathed him a chance to prevent more stupid deaths, refused to sign the death certificate until an approved poisons expert had carried out an autopsy. Five days later, it confirmed that he had been taking the amphetamines that were also found in the pockets of his jersey - the drugs had stopped him being able to know when his body was unable to take any more, so that he carried on until he destroyed himself. Tom' story has become one of professional cycling's most-told; the memorial on the mountain where he died is a place of pilgrimage for cyclists from around the world. He was enormously popular both with British fans and those from abroad, as such he did not die in vain: thanks to Dumas, his death was the wake-up call that alerted the world to the prevalence and dangers of doping and forced organisers to begin to consider ways to control it.

When Cavendish was awarded an MBE by the Queen following his World Championship victory, Tom was remembered also - the honour was bestowed on the 74th anniversary of his birth.

Laurent Jalabert
Laurent Jalabert, born in Mazamet on this day in 1968, is a retired French cyclist and one of the few to have become a well-known character among the non-cycling public outside the cycling nations of France, Italy, Spain and the Benelux. As a result, it frequently comes as a surprise to many when they learn that Jaja never won cycling's most famous race, the Tour de France. However, stage wins on Bastille Day in 1995 and 2001 earned him the thanks of French fans, restoring to them some of the pride lost during the long years since Bernard Hinault last took overall Tour victory.

The outcome of The Policeman's Crash

Jalabert - whose nickname Jaja came into being because he continued drinking wine when he became professional (it's slang for a glass of wine) - began racing with the Toshiba team in 1989, having come to their attention due to his rocket-like sprinting capabilities. He moved on to ONCE in 1992 and would remain with them for nine seasons. Having won a wide variety of stages and one-day races, he was involved in a dramatic crash in the sprint finish of Stage 1 at the 1994 Tour de France when a policeman's love for the sport got the better of his common sense and caused him to step into the road, where Belgian rider Wilfried Nelisson and Jalabert piled straight into him - an incident that has gone down into cycling history, known as The Policeman's Crah. The policeman was thrown backwards into the crowd and Nelissen concussed. Jalabert was most injured, requiring reconstructive surgery to repair his smashed teeth and face.

Sylvie, Jalabert's wife to whom he is still married, was understandably concerned that her husband had been so badly hurt in such an unpredictable accident. He promised her that he would find a way to continue racing that didn't require him to be in the high-speed tussle of a final sprint. Thus began his transformation into one of the finest all-rounders of his generation, a change that turned him from a sprinter able to grab glory in individual sprints to a rider who had a real chance at topping general classifications. Just a year later, he proved his new status at the Vuelta a Espana when he won the Points classification, the King of the Mountains and the General Classification - the trifecta, the only man to have done so in the Vuelta and an honour he shares in the Grand Tours with only Tony Rominger and the legendary Eddy Merckx. In that same Vuelta, he cemented his popularity among fans by allowing a little-known German rider named Bert Dietz to win the sought-after summit finish at Sierra Nevada: Dietz had ridden much of the race in a solo break but, after chasing for many kilometres, Jalabert caught him on the mountain. The outcome of the stage was, apparently, settled - but then Jaja was seen to hold back, refusing to overtake. "I never thought we'd catch him, and when I saw he was ready to drop I felt sorry for him," he later told reporters.

Jaja
(image credit: Cycling Art)

His generosity was repaid in good fortune, because in the coming years he won  string of races including prestigious events such as the Giro di Lombardia (1997), Paris–Nice (1995, 1996, 1997), the Classique des Alpes (1996, 1998), Milano-Torino (1997), the Vuelta a Asturias (1998), the Tour de Romandie (1999), the Tour Méditerranéen (2000), the Clásica de San Sebastián (2001, 2002) and many others before retiring after 14 years at the top. He has continued in sport since, becoming a consultant for Look who had used their experience as a ski manufacturer to develop clipless pedals and move into the bike market and acting as a commentator for French television - he can often be seen at the Tour providing race reports from the back of one of the motorbikes that follow the peloton. He also competes in triathlon and has entered numerous Ironman events, at which he unsurprisingly excels in the cycling sections - in the 2007 Swiss Ironman, he was in 966th place after the swimming section, then rose through 857 places in the cycling section to put himself into 91st overall. He also runs and has completed several marathons - something else that has stood him in good stead for triathlon, of course; in that same Swiss Ironman, he rose another 69 places during the running section.

Maurice Garin in 1897

Maurice Garin stripped of Tour win
On this day in 1904, four months after the end of the race, the Union Velocipedique de France announced that it would be stripping Maurice Garin of his Tour de France win and banning him for two years as part of its disciplinary action against 30 riders found to have cheated. Second place Lucien Pothier was also disqualified, as were several other riders, allowing Henri Cornet (real name Henri Jardry)  to become the youngest winner in Tour history at 19 (Henri Paret, at 50 the oldest rider to have completed a Tour, also rode that year). Such were the severity of the punishments that some historians have suggested that riders were not banned for taking trains, as is the official reason, but due to a major scandal that was covered up; this theory has been fueled by research carried out by Jason Jellick, who argues that riders would not have been able to take trains and finish when and where they did (but does not suggest that any scandal took place) and by the fact that official records have vanished.

Garin had also won the first Tour in 1903, but spectators claimed to have seen him take a train rather than ride one stage the following year - he denied doing so at the time, but admitted it in old age according to a man who had once run errands for his garage and later ended up working as the gravedigger and attendant at the Cimetiere Est where Garin was buried in 1957. The organisers, despite suspicions that they had permitted Garin to cheat because his personal sponsor was also a race sponsor, appear to have had grounds to have banned him immediately and would have been keen to do so had not angry spectators been likely to turn into a lynch mob if they'd done so.

In fact, aggression and cheating by spectators had been rife throughout the race that year - they'd felled trees to block riders they disliked and at one point Garin was savagely beaten by a crowd thgat had to be dispersed with pistol shots. This, combined with cheating among the entrants, was sufficient for Henri Desgrange to announce that the 1904 Tour would be the last. Thankfully, he was convinced to run the event again the following year with different, stricter rules.

Knud Enemark Jensen
Knud Enemark Jensen, born in Århus, Denmark on this day in 1930, achieved cycling fame in the very worst way possible - he was one of the earliest cyclists whose death was connected to doping when he collapsed in the 42C heat and fractured his skull during the team time trial event on the 26th of August at the 1960 Olympics. He went into a coma and died a few hours later in hospital.

Witnesses claimed that Jensen had swallowed eight pills believed to be phenylisopropylamine, an amphetamine-like drug, and another fifteen containing amphetamine and caffeine in the run-up to the race. His trainer initially said that he had administered Roniacol (nicotynol alcohol), a vasodilator, to the team but formally retracted his statement soon after. An autopsy confirmed the presence of both Roniacol and amphetamines in his body, but doctors concluded that his collapse had been caused by the heat rather than the drugs and his family were awarded one million lire compensation.

There are obvious comparisons between the deaths of Jensen and the British rider Tom Simpson, with whom he shared his birthday. Jensen's death encouraged the International Olympic Committee to accept that there was a problem with doping in sport and to establish a medical council in 1967, the year that Simpson died. Anti-doping controls would be put into place the following year, paving the way for similar controls to be introduced at the Tour de France and other races.

Pierrick Fédrigo, a French rider born in Marmande on this day in 1978, has been National Champion (2005) and has won the Tour du Limousin twice (2004, 2006), the Four Days of Dunkirk (2005), the Critérium International (2010) and stages at the Critérium du Dauphiné (Stage 6, 2011) and Tour de France (Stage 14, 2006, Stage 9, 2009, Stage 16, 2010, Stage 15, 2012). In 2013, he recorded very good results in all of his early season races and won Paris-Camembert. As a result, he probably feels a little disappointed that he is chiefly famous - and most likely to be remembered - for his nose, a prominence that gave rise to his nickname "le Nez de Marmande" and which is best described as "splendid."

Born in Rabat, Morroco on this day in 1922, Custodio Dos Reis had Portuguese nationality but became a French citizen at the age of nine - and turned out to be a  worthwhile catch by France, because he won Stage 14 of the Tour de France in 1950.

Charles Henry Bartlett died on this day in 1968 in Enfield, London. In 1908, he rode 100km in 2h41'48.6" on the track at the Olympics in London and won a gold medal for his achievement. He was born on the 6th of February 1885 in Bermondsey, also in London, making him 85 when he died.

Other cyclists born on this day: Domenico Pozzovivo (Italy, 1982); Arthur Griffiths (Great Britain, 1881); Martin Hvastija (Slovenia, 1969); István Liszkay (Hungary, 1912); Armand Putzeyse (Belgium, 1916, died 2003); Franck Perque (France, 1974); Kyriaki Konstantinidou (Greece, 1984); Andrés Torres (Guatemala, 1966); Álvaro Pachón (Colombia, 1945).

Daily Cycling Facts 01.05.2013

La Flèche Wallonne, perhaps the most prestigious of the Classics after the Monuments, fell on this day in 1938 - the third edition of the race. At 280km - not, as some sources claim, 300km - it shares the honour of being the longest ever edition with the previous year. It started at Tournai, as had 1937, but followed a different route to end at Rocourt and the winner was Émile Masson Jr., who would also win a stage at the Tour de France that year. Masson was the son of Émile Masson Snr., who won two stages at the Tour in 1922. The 14th edition, held in 1950, also took place on this date. Running for the third of twelve consecutive years between Charleroi and Liège, it covered 235km and was won by Fausto Coppi - the second Italian to achieve victory. For the first time that year it was held the day before the Liège-Bastogne-Liège Monument to create Le Weekend Ardennais.

Henri Pélissier

Pelissier in 1919, the year he won his first
Paris-Roubaix

On this day in 1935, Henri Pélissier died. Aged 46, he had been the the second of four cycling brothers, of whom three (himself, Charles and Francis) would become professional (Jean, the oldest, died at Argonnes in the First World War). Henri would race in all but two of the peace-time Tours de France between 1912 and 1925, failing to finish all of them except for 1914 when he came second to Phillipe Thys and 1923, which we won after Ottavio Bottechia failed to change his gear in time (in those days, gear shifts were achieved by getting of the bike, removing the rear wheel, flipping it around and placing the chain over the differently-sized cog on that side before retightening the wheel and continuing; so a missed gear change could result in the loss of many minutes rather than seconds) and Jean Alvoine abandoned after a crash.

He also won the Giro di Lombardia three times, Paris-Roubaix twice, Milan-Torino, Milan-San Remo, Bordeaux-Paris, Paris-Tours and Paris-Brussels and used his exalted position to protest against the harsh conditions riders of his day were expected to endure and, as result, became embroiled in a long feud with Tour director Henri Desgrange - surprisingly, he didn't always enjoy popular support and many other riders apparently found him rather annoying. However, for all the concern he showed for their welfare he was by no means a likable man - his wife, Léonie, suffered much at his hands and entered a deep depression, leading to her suicide in 1933 when she shot herself with his revolver. Three years following her death, he took a new lover named Camille "Miette" Tharault, 20 years younger than he was. It appears that he treated her no better better - during a row one day, he attacked her with a knife and slashed her face. She, however, was made of sterner stuff than poor Léonie: she ran upstairs and grabbed the very same gun with which her unfortunate predecessor had committed suicide but, instead of turning it on herself, took it back down to kitchen and shot Henri five times. After the killing was investigated, she was given a 12-month suspended sentence which, court officials said, was the closest they could come to releasing her without charge under the laws of the time. (For more on Pélissier, click here.)


On this day in 1998, Lance Armstrong married Kristin Richard - and thus set in motion several years of confusion for sports commentators, those of whom with little knowledge of cycling could never quite tell the difference between the new Kristin Armstrong and the one who won a total of five National and two World Road Race and Time Trial Championships and is not related to Lance in any way.

Daily Cycling Facts 18.04.2013

Maurice Garin was the second winner of Paris-Roubaix, but
was he French or Italian at the time?

Paris-Roubaix took place on this date in 1897, 1949, 1971 and 1982. 1897 was the second edition ever held and the first of two to be won by Maurice Garin, who would also win the first Tour de France six years later (and he would have been credited with winning the second Tour too, if he hadn't been disqualified for cheating). Jules Rossi's 1937 win is usually said to have been the first by an Italian rider, but this might not in fact be the case: Garin had been born in Italy, sneaking into France with his family when he was still a child as what we now term an illegal immigrant. He later became naturalised French, but the year that he did so has never been proven beyond doubt - it could have been 1892, in which case the second and third editions of Paris-Roubaix were won by a Frenchman, but it might have been 1901, in which case they were won by an Italian. 1897 was also the first year in which we know for certain that the race was held on Easter Sunday - it had been scheduled to do so in 1896 but the Catholic Church took offence, pointing out that riders wouldn't have time to attend Mass before the race started and distributed notices in Roubaix outlining their opposition; so the race was postponed for two weeks. Considering the furore and the power the Church then held over people's everyday lives, it seems odd that the race went ahead on Easter Sunday only a year later.

André Mahé
(image credit: Veloptimum)

1949 saw the first use of bikes designed specifically for Paris-Roubaix, including an apparently anachronistic  return to wooden wheel rims which were more forgiving on the rough cobbles. Deciding the winner that year took several months and two conferences: André Mahé had been first over the line after reaching the velodrome in a three man breakaway with Frans Leenen and Jacques Moujica (the latter working so hard to keep up that he broke his bike), but it was subsequently discovered that an official had given them incorrect directions and they'd arrived via a shorter route. A few minutes after the declaration, Serse Coppi (brother of Fausto) arrived among another group and sprinted over the line. Mahé, speaking in 2007 (56 years after Serse and 47 years after Fausto had died), apparently still believed that he was the fair winner and appeared to suggest that Serse had initially accepted that result:

"It's too stupid to talk about. There was a break. Coppi attacked. His brother Fausto gave him a push to get him away. He wanted his brother to win. I waited a bit and then I attacked and I caught him and the break. Then I went off by myself. I was going to win Paris–Roubaix. It wasn't like nowadays, when there's television and everything. Then it was more chaotic and the whole road was blocked. People said I should have known the way into the track. But how do you know a thing like that at the end of Paris–Roubaix, when you've raced all day over roads like that? A gendarme signalled the way to go and that's the way I went.It was a journalist on a motorbike who managed to get up to me. He was shouting 'Not that way! Not that way!' And I turned round in the road and I rode back beneath the outside wall of the grandstand and I saw a gateway that went into the track, a gateway for journalists. And that's the way I went, except that it came out on the other side of the track from the proper entrance. The bunch came in and Serse won the sprint. But then his brother told Serse to go to the judges to object. He told Serse that I hadn't ridden the entire and precise course and that therefore I should be déclassé. But that was below him. Coppi wanted his brother to have a big victory. He was a great champion, Coppi, but to do what he did, to protest like that to get a victory for his brother, that wasn't dignified for a champion. That was below him. A champion like that should never have stooped that low."

By August, the UCI decided the best course of action was to simply declare the race null and without a winner. By November, the judges decided that the two men would share the victory, and it remains the only time that the race has been tied.

Jan Raas
(image credit: Cyclisme en Images)

1971 was won by Roger Rosiers, who seems little-remembered these days despite also winning Stage 17 at the Vuelta a Espana one year previously and the Tour of Luxembourg and Three Days of De Panne in the years afterwards. In 1982 the winner was Jan Raas, who had won Milan-San Rem in 1977 then a first Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1979 and another in 1983, the Omloop Het Volk in 1981 and Paris-Tours in 1978 and 1981, thus earning him a place among the greatest Classics specialists in history; five editions of the Amstel Gold Race and ten stages at the Tour de France also earning him a place among the most successful Dutch riders of all time. Bernard Hinault, probably France's greatest ever with the possible and arguable exception of Jacques Anquetil, returned to Paris-Roubaix in 1982 as defending champion but finished ninth and was furious (actually, le Blaireau was furious much of the time when racing; nowadays he's far more relaxed and merely simmers unless anybody gives him sufficient excuse for an explosion); refusing from then on to have anything whatsoever to do with the race that even when he won he'd called "bullshit." That year, the full 2.4km Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes to Sars-et-Rosières cobbled section was used for the first time, the initial 1.4km having been used two years earlier.

Briek Schotte

The Ronde van Vlaanderen was held on this day in 1948, when it was won for a second time by Briek Schotte, the rider who is considered by many Flemmish cycling fans to be the ultimate example of a Flandrien - that is, someone who continues to ride hard and fast, repeatedly attacking come what may. That year, a prize of 100 francs was provided for the Lanterne Rouge.

La Flèche Wallonne has also fallen on this date, as it did in 2001 - the 65th edition. The 198km course between Charleroi and Huy was short by modern standards, as since 2000 the race has averaged 199.5km. The winner was Rik Verbrugghe, who had been second the previous year. The 76th edition of the race will be held on this day in 2012.

The fourth edition of La Flèche Wallonne Féminine took place on this date in 2001 too, starting and finishing at the same points as the men's race but taking a different route to reduce it to 93km. The winner, Fabiana Luperini, had also won the first edition; and she would win again the following year - thus equalling the men's record of three victories. The 15th edition takes place on this date in 2012.


Maxim Iglinsky was born in Astana, Kazakhstan on this day in 1981 and has spent most of his professional career riding for the team named after his place of birth. He won the Kazakh Time Trial Championship in 2006, then the Road Race a year later before winning the Mountains Classification at the Tour de Suisse in 2008.

Luciano Pagliarini
(image credit: Thomas Fanghaenel CC BY-SA 3.0)

Luciano Pagliarini
Luciano Pagliarini is widely regarded as the most successful Brazilian cyclist of all time. Born in Ararpongas on this day in 1978, his first notable win was Stage 3 at the 1998 Vuelta Ciclista de Chile; followed five years later with victories for Stages 2, 3 and 4 at the Tour de Langkawi, then Stages 7 and 8 at Langkawi and Stage 5 at the Vuelta a Murcia in 2004. After abandoning the road race at the Olympics in 2004 when he experienced mechanical trouble, 2005 looked set to be his breakthrough year as he rode his first Tour de France and finished 5th in Stage 2 - however, he abandoned after Stage 9. 2007 started badly due to illness, but then less than two weeks after the birth of his first child he won Stage 5 at the Eneco Tour of the Benelux, thus becoming the first Brazilian to win a stage in a UCI ProTour event.

In 2008, he won Stage 6 at the Tour of Calfornia and was once again entered for the Olympics, but finished last in his event two days after being diagnosed with renal calculi (kidney stones). The following year was worse still as, soon after he'd signed a new contract with TelTech H2O, the team announced that it had not been granted a UCI licence and folded. After spending several months unable to race and putting on weight, he announced that he would stage a comeback at the Tour of Brazil and begin preparations for the 2012 Olympics. However, it was not to be: in the latest set-back of a career that somehow never quite took off despite coming so close on so many occasions, his new Scott-Marcondes Cesar-São José dos Campos found itself experiencing financial difficulties and, when it failed to pay him, Pagliarini decided he'd had enough and retired to become coach to the national track team.

Denis Verschueren was a Belgian rider born in Berlaar on the 11th of February in 1897. He won some excellent results during the 1920s and 1930s, including two National Interclubs Champioships (1926 and 1929), the Tour of Flanders in 1926, Paris-Brussels in 1926 and Paris-Tours in 1925 and 1928. He died at the age of 57 on this day in 1954.



It's well-known that LOOK invented the clipless pedal (or clip-in, since they have clips - but not toe-clips) in the 1980s, and that Bernard Hinault made them popular by winning the Tour de France on a bike equipped with them. However, that's only partially true - Look invented the first successful clipless pedals; other designs having been around for a very long time.

The first that we know about is covered by a patent filed on this day in 1895 by an inventor named Charles M. Hanson, who lived in Rhode Island; the patent and design were published on the 26th of November that same year. Compared to modern designs, Hanson's device looks decidely clunky and heavy with a large number of moving parts ready to go wrong - which is the probable reason it never caught on.


Other cyclists born on this day: Bernt Johansson (Sweden, 1953); Lucas Sebastián Haedo (Argentina, 1983); Imtiaz Bhatti (Pakistan, 1933); Frederick Hamlin (Great Britain, 1881, died 1951); Lenka Valová (Czechoslovakia, 1983); Kévin Sireau (France, 1987); Yevgeny Vakker (Kyrgyzstan, 1976); Leon Daelemans (Belgium, 1949); Vladimir Kaminsky (USSR, 1950); Frank Small (USA, 1895, died 1971); René Lotz (Netherlands, 1938); Milan Puzrla (Czechoslovakia, 1946); Joslyn Chavarria (Belize, 1959); Elio Juárez (Uruguay, 1942); Trevor Gadd (Great Britain, 1952).

Daily Cycling Facts 19.02.2013

Maurice Garin

Garin with masseur and son, 1903

Maurice-Francois Garin was born on the 3rd of March 1871 in Arvier, Italy - a tiny village of just seven families, five of them with the surname Garin - and died on this day in 1957 in France. Garin's father was 36 and his mother 19 when they married and life was difficult - the cottage in which he was born can still be seen in Arvier, a short way from the French border, but it lies in ruins and must have been horrendously cramped when occupied by the couple and their nine children, this no doubt being one of the reasons they emigrated over the border when Maurice was 14. It seems that they did so illegally - legal emigration was possible, but the mayors on the French side had been instructed to make it as difficult as possible and the family members traveled separately to escape detection. According to legend, Maurice was exchanged for a round of cheese at some point along the way - a frequently recounted in support of the (often true) "desperate boys from a harsh background" stereotype that makes up a large part of early cycling's mythos.

In fact, the legend may be true. In those days, a 14-year-old boy was considered to be ready to make his own way in the world and, rather than displaying a lack of care, Garin's parents may have believed that they were doing the right thing. That he was working as a chimney sweep in Reims a year later suggests that the cheese may have been a sort of custody payment from an employer - Garin would, as a result, have been tied to the job for a certain number of years, but better that than no job at all in a world where the concept of state unemployment benefits was a long way off. Also, it paid enough for him to join forces with two of his brothers and set up a bike shop in Roubaix in 1895. The exact date at which he became a naturalised Frenchman is unknown, but is thought to have been either 1892 or 1901, by which time the other members of his family had dispersed around France and his father, having returned to Arvier, was dead.

The shop seems to have been quite successful as it paid Garin enough to buy his first bike in 1889 for 405 old francs, roughly €1,400 today. He had no interest in racing but became known locally for the high speeds at which he cycled around town and earned the nickname "Le Fou," The Madman, which brought him to the attention of a cycling club secretary who pleaded with him to race for the organisation. Garin not only agreed, he also finished a very respectable 5th - not bad at all for a first race and despite suffering from the great heat that day. He realised that racing was something he could be good at, and entered more races. His first win came in 1893 and he sold his bike, combined the proceeds of that with the money he'd won in the race and bought a newer, lighter model for the equivalent of €3,000. It was fitted with the newly-popular pneumatic tyres that had been patented by a Scots-Irish vet three and a half years earlier.

He became a professional that same year, and did so in typically unusual fashion: having turned up for a race in Avesnes-sur-Helpes, he was informed by officials that the event was open only to professional riders. Rather than going home or becoming a spectator, he waited until nobody was looking once the riders had set off and then jumped on his bike and went after them. He crashed twice but dropped them all, finishing the race far ahead of them. The crowd loved it - the organisers, meanwhile, were not so impressed and refused to pay him the prize money; so the spectator had a whip-round and gave him 300 francs, double what the professional winner received. It was not long until a sponsor approached him with a contract, and his first victory as a professional came a short while later at a 24-hour race in Paris during which he covered 701km. A record survives showing what Garin claimed to have eaten during the race and makes for impressive reading even when compared to the vast quantities of food (and, in some cases, intoxicating substances) consumed by rider since: 5 litres of tapioca, 2kg of rice, 45 cutlets of meat, 7 litres of tea, 8 eggs, 19 litres of drinking chocolate, some oysters, a mixture of champagne and coffee and "lots" of strong red wine.

Remarkable though his early life and career may have been, Garin will be forever remembered as the man who won the very first Tour de France in 1903 and then won the second one too but was stripped of the victory for cheating. Originally, the race had been planned as a mammoth five-week ordeal by organiser Henri Desgrange, but only 15 cyclists had liked the sound of that and expressed interest so it was reduced to a six-stage event over 2,428km. Garin won 3,000 francs, but the race had been hard - he told journalist Pierre Chany:

"The 2,500km that I've just ridden seem a long line, grey and monotonous, where nothing stood out from anything else. But I suffered on the road; I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was sleepy, I suffered, I cried between Lyon and Marseille, I had the pride of winning other stages, and at the controls I saw the fine figure of my friend Delattre, who had prepared my sustenance, but I repeat, nothing strikes me particularly.
But wait! I'm completely wrong when I say that nothing strikes me, I'm confusing things or explaining myself badly. I must say that one single thing struck me, that a single thing sticks in my memory: I see myself, from the start of the Tour de France, like a bull pierced by banderillas, who pulls the banderillas with him, never able to rid himself of them."

1904 was harder still. The race remained the same distance, but this time fans remembered the events of the previous year and started vendettas against riders they disliked, felling trees across the road to hold them up and physically beating them given the chance. Garin had apparently incurred their wrath at some point, because he was attacked under cover of darkness during a night stage as he climbed  the Col de la République, suffering  severe beating and being hit in the face with a stone. The mob were wild, braying "Up with local hero, André Faure! Down with Garin! Kill them!" The Italian rider Paul Gerbi was punched and kicked until he became unconscious and had his fingers broken - which suggested that the death threats may well have been carried out had officials not arrived and dispersed the crows by firing their pistols into the air. Later on in the same stage, they ran into a gang of men on bikes and were attacked again - this time, Garin's arm was injured and he had to steer with one hand to the end of the stage.

As if the spectators hadn't been trouble enough, there was widespread cheating among the riders that year (some of them may even have paid for the nails that the spectators threw into the road to cause punctures). No fewer than nine had been kicked out during the race, mostly for "illegal use of cars and trains" (Lucien Petit-Breton said that he'd seen a rider he preferred not to name publicly getting towed by a motorbike, but when he tried to remonstrate with the man, he pointed a pistol at him) and more complaints came in when the race was over. The Union Vélocipédique Française started an investigation, details of which were lost when records were transported to the South of France for safe-keeping during the Nazi Occupation, and in the end a further 20 riders were disqualified. Among them were Garin, who had won the race, 2nd place Lucien Pothier, 3rd place César Garin (Maurice's brother) and 4th place Hippolyte Aucouturier. 19-year-old Henri Cornet, real name Henri Jardry, had been given an official warning after he was spotted getting a lift in a car during the race but, perhaps on account of his youthful inexperience, was not disqualified and thus his 5th place finish was upgraded to 1st. He remains the youngest winner in Tour de France history. However, Garin did not confess.

Retirement was good for Garin - he ran a garage in Lens and, though not rich and rarely recognised even though a velodrome was named in his honour in 1933 and he received a gold medal for his services to sport five year later, seems to have been happy with it and was comfortable (the garage still stands at 116 Rue de Lille, but is much modernised). He retained his interest in cycling throughout his life and started a professional team after the Second World War. He lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Tour, watching the finish from a special podium with several other stars of the races from days gone by, and died four years later at the age of 85. After his death, the world began to take an interest and film crews started to document his life. In the Nord-Pas-de-Calais cemetery where he is buried, they discovered that the cemetery attendant was from Lens and had been familiar with Garin and his garage during his boyhood - and revealed that, as an old man, Garin freely admitted to his cheating in the 1904 Tour.

Even without his Tour success, Garin was a phenomenally talented rider who more than lived up to the promise he showed when he was an amateur and beat the professionals. He won Paris-Roubaix twice (d came 3rd twice), Paris-Saint-Malo, Guingamp-Morlaix-Guingamp, Paris-Le Mans, Paris-Mons, Liège-Thuin, Paris-Royan, Paris-Cabourg, Tourcoing-Béthune-Tourcoing (twice), Valenciennes-Nouvion-Valenciennes, Douai-Doullens-Douai, Paris–Brest–Paris, Bordeaux–Paris and set a world record for riding 500km behind a human pacer (ie, a series of cyclists) in 15h2'32". The money he won would have bought his parents a lot of cheese.

Albert White

Few riders have ever won as many trophies - including Olympic medals - as Albert "Lal" White, who was born in Scunthorpe in Great Britain on this day in 1890, but even fewer have had an opera written about their lives. Little was known about the cyclist, who died in 1965, other than that he had been awarded the Muratti Vase after achieving a string of prestigious race wins in the 1920s (the whereabouts of the Vase, said to have been made of solid gold and estimated to be of enormous value, are unknown), until the British Cultural Olympiad Committee appealed for information from the public on Olympians from days gone by through the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2010.

Several who remembered White came forward, including an elderly man whose brother had trained with the rider and had been told that the Vase was kept in a bank vault. Nobody, it seems, knows any more than that.

Jean Majerus
Jean Majerus was a Luxembourgian cyclist born on this day in 1914 who would be twice National Junior Road Race Champion (1935 and 1935) and would go on to become a reasonably successful rider in the Tour de France. In 1937 he won Stage 1 and wore the yellow jersey for two days, then in 1938 he won Stage 2 and wore yellow for four days - the latter equating to seven stages in total, as those days included Stages 2, 3, 4a, 4b, 4c, 5, 6a and 6b (he lost the jersey in 6b). Following the Nazi Occupation of his country, he continued to race within the German Empire and won the Dortmund Rundfahrt twice, along with some other races - successes, but not especially admirable ones because many riders in Nazi occupied lands refused to compete until after the War.

Italian rider Fabio Battesini was born on this day in Virgilio in 1912. He won Stage 3 at the Tour de France in  1931 and, at the Giro d'Italia, Stage 3 in 1932, Stage 15 in 1934 and Stage 4 in 1936. He died in Rome on the 17th of June 1987.

On this day in 2002, bike component manufacturer SRAM purchased the mountain bike suspension manufacturer RockShox.

Other cyclists born on this day: Jelle Vanedert (Belgium, 1985); Viktor Bykov (USSR, 19450; Park Hyeon-Gon (South Korea, 1968); Roland De Neve (Belgium, 1944); Esteban Espinoza (Ecuador, 1962); Chow Tai Ming (Hong Kong, 1959); Bernd Gröne (Germany, 1963); Heinz Isler (Switzerland, 1960); Reno Olsen (Denmark, 1947); Raymond Bley (Luxembourg, 1939); Jorge Gaday (Argentina, 1968); Gwon Ik-Hyeon (South Korea, 1920); Józef Oksiutycz (Poland, 1904, died 1965); Warwick Dalton (New Zealand, 1937); Jorge Gaday (Argentina, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 30.11.2012

Tommy Simpson, 1937-1966

Tom Simpson
Today is a holy day in cycling - it would have been the birthday of legendary, tragic Tom Simpson. Born in Haswell, Co. Durham in 1937, Simpson seemed for many years to have been Britain's best ever hope for a Tour de France overall General Classification winner and was the only British rider to win the World Road Racing Championship until Mark Cavendish took the title in 2011.

Tom died on the 13th of July in 1967, during the 13th stage of the Tour de France. There were 22 stages that year and they covered a total of 4,708km; for the first time there was also a prologue, and the race had been designed to be the hardest Tour ever. It cannot, therefore, have been an uneventful race all the way until it reached Mont Ventoux that day - but because of what happened there, everything else has been forgotten.

Simpson was rated by many as the finest rider Britain had ever produced and, thanks largely to him, the Tour was increasingly popular on the English side of the Channel. He was also intelligent and funny, making him popular with the other riders; those that might not have liked him (and not one surviving rider from his era will admit to that) learned to respect him, because he had the legs to go with it. Many believed that he could win.

It was hellishly hot when the riders woke up that morning and forecasters warned it would get worse, reaching as high as 45C. That worried official race doctor Pierre Dumas - when he went for a walk at 06:30, he met some friends. "If the riders take something today, we'll have a death on our hands," he told them. They may have shared his concerns, but Dumas - who had come to cycling almost by chance, with no previous background in the sport - was well known for taking doping far more seriously than anybody else. Many people accepted it a simply a part of the sport, one that was better not discussed, so they may also have not.

It seems odd that, only 45 years ago, medical science believed that drinking the amount of water now recommended during athletic activity was actually harmful; but that was the case and, as a result, race organisers permitted riders no more than four standard bidons (about two litres) of water per stage. The riders, meanwhile, knew that they got thirsty and mounted cafe raids in which they would descend en masse upon rural bars and shops and guzzle down any fluids they could find, not caring about the large bills that showed up on their managers' desks months later. The riders hadn't long started the stage when the first raids took place - Tom had found a bottle of brandy.

He'd been up Ventoux before and was well aware that, as Raphaël Géminiani had tried to warn Ferdinand Kübler more than a decade earlier, it's "not like any other col." Kübler thought he could prove himselfgreater than the mountain, so Ventoux ended his career to prove him wrong. Tom knew all this - he described an earlier ascent thus:

"It is like another world up there among the bare rocks and the glaring sun. The white rocks reflect the heat and the dust rises, clinging to your arms, legs and face. I rode well up there doing about five miles to the gallon in perspiration. It was almost overwhelming hot up there and I think it was the only time that I have got off my bike and my pants have nearly fallen down. They were soaked and heavy with sweat which was running off me in streams and I had to wring out my socks because the sweat was running into my shoes."

He knew, then, that Ventoux demanded respect. At Chalet Reynard, near the point where riders emerge from the weird and airless forests of the lower slopes and come out into the blast furnace of a road that leads to the top, the heat and alcohol was already giving his problems and several riders passed him. Team manager Alec Taylor wondered briefly if this might be a psychological trick designed to make his rivals think he couldn't cope, but when he drew close to Tom he could see that it wasn't. A little further up he was even worse, unable to concentrate and wondering about all over the road in a place without barriers to prevent a plunge over the side. At this point, Taylor and team mechanic Harry Hall still didn't doubt Tom would make it up the mountain and were far more concerned about what he might do to try to make up the time he was losing once he was over the summit - he'd long ago earned a reputation for being a lunatic descender, apparently relishing the thrill of high-speed corners that would have had most other riders reducing their speed by half. Then he crashed.

Hall was the first one to reach him. "That's it for you, Tom," he said, preparing himself for the emotional outpouring that was sure to come when the rider sat out the remainder of the stage in the team car, following his comrades. But Tom wanted to go on. Both men wished later that they'd stopped him.

For a man suffering as Tom was, he made it a very long way - it's 5.35km along the road and not far from 400m upward to the place where he fell for the second time. This time he wasn't going on, though he didn't know it because he was already unconscious, his hands locked in a deathgrip to the bars and his legs still trying to pedal. Hall was first to him again and said later that he knew it was too late. With the help of another mechanic, Ken Ryall, they prised his hands loose and laid him down at the side of the road. One of the Tour's police outriders summoned Dr. Dumas, who was there in moments. He, his deputy and a nurse took turns administering heart massage, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and oxygen until the helicopter arrived and took him to hospital, where he was declared dead. His last words, spoken as Hall reached him, were not "Put me back on my bike!" - that was made up by a journalist who wasn't there. Hall and Taylor say they were "Go on! Go on!"

The Simpson memorial, Mont Ventoux

The cause of death was given as a heart attack but Dumas, knowing that there was more to it than that and realising that Tom had bequeathed him a chance to prevent more stupid deaths,  he refused to sign the death certificate until an approved poisons expert had carried out an autopsy. Five days later, it confirmed that he had been taking the amphetamines that were also found in the pockets of his jersey - the drugs had stopped him being able to know when his body was unable to take any more, so that he carried on until he destroyed himself. Tom' story has become one of professional cycling's most-told; the memorial on the mountain where he died is a place of pilgrimage for cyclists from around the world. He was enormously popular both with British fans and those from abroad, as such he did not die in vain: thanks to Dumas, his death was the wake-up call that alerted the world to the prevalence and dangers of doping and forced organisers to begin to consider ways to control it.

When Cavendish was awarded an MBE by the Queen following his World Championship victory, Tom was remembered also - the honour was bestowed on the 74th anniversary of his birth.

Laurent Jalabert
Laurent Jalabert, born in Mazamet on this day in 1968, is a retired French cyclist and one of the few to have become a well-known character among the non-cycling public outside the cycling nations of France, Italy, Spain and the Benelux. As a result, it frequently comes as a surprise to many when they learn that Jaja never won cycling's most famous race, the Tour de France. However, stage wins on Bastille Day in 1995 and 2001 earned him the thanks of French fans, restoring to them some of the pride lost during the long years since Bernard Hinault last took overall Tour victory.

The outcome of The Policeman's Crash

Jalabert - whose nickname Jaja came into being because he continued drinking wine when he became professional (it's slang for a glass of wine) - began racing with the Toshiba team in 1989, having come to their attention due to his rocket-like sprinting capabilities. He moved on to ONCE in 1992 and would remain with them for nine seasons. Having won a wide variety of stages and one-day races, he was involved in a dramatic crash in the sprint finish of Stage 1 at the 1994 Tour de France when a policeman's love for the sport got the better of his common sense and caused him to step into the road, where Belgian rider Wilfried Nelisson and Jalabert piled straight into him - an incident that has gone down into cycling history, known as The Policeman's Crah. The policeman was thrown backwards into the crowd and Nelissen concussed. Jalabert was most injured, requiring reconstructive surgery to repair his smashed teeth and face.

Sylvie, Jalabert's wife to whom he is still married, was understandably concerned that her husband had been so badly hurt in such an unpredictable accident. He promised her that he would find a way to continue racing that didn't require him to be in the high-speed tussle of a final sprint. Thus began his transformation into one of the finest all-rounders of his generation, a change that turned him from a sprinter able to grab glory in individual sprints to a rider who had a real chance at topping general classifications. Just a year later, he proved his new status at the Vuelta a Espana when he won the Points classification, the King of the Mountains and the General Classification - the trifecta, the only man to have done so in the Vuelta and an honour he shares in the Grand Tours with only Tony Rominger and the legendary Eddy Merckx. In that same Vuelta, he cemented his popularity among fans by allowing a little-known German rider named Bert Dietz to win the sought-after summit finish at Sierra Nevada: Dietz had ridden much of the race in a solo break but, after chasing for many kilometres, Jalabert caught him on the mountain. The outcome of the stage was, apparently, settled - but then Jaja was seen to hold back, refusing to overtake. "I never thought we'd catch him, and when I saw he was ready to drop I felt sorry for him," he later told reporters.

Jaja
(image credit: Cycling Art)

His generosity was repaid in good fortune, because in the coming years he won  string of races including prestigious events such as the Giro di Lombardia (1997), Paris–Nice (1995, 1996, 1997), the Classique des Alpes (1996, 1998), Milano-Torino (1997), the Vuelta a Asturias (1998), the Tour de Romandie (1999), the Tour Méditerranéen (2000), the Clásica de San Sebastián (2001, 2002) and many others before retiring after 14 years at the top. He has continued in sport since, becoming a consultant for Look who had used their experience as a ski manufacturer to develop clipless pedals and move into the bike market and acting as a commentator for French television - he can often be seen at the Tour providing race reports from the back of one of the motorbikes that follow the peloton. He also competes in triathlon and has entered numerous Ironman events, at which he unsurprisingly excels in the cycling sections - in the 2007 Swiss Ironman, he was in 966th place after the swimming section, then rose through 857 places in the cycling section to put himself into 91st overall. He also runs and has completed several marathons - something else that has stood him in good stead for triathlon, of course; in that same Swiss Ironman, he rose another 69 places during the running section.

Maurice Garin in 1897

Maurice Garin stripped of Tour win
On this day in 1904, four months after the end of the race, the Union Velocipedique de France announced that it would be stripping Maurice Garin of his Tour de France win and banning him for two years as part of its disciplinary action against 30 riders found to have cheated. Second place Lucien Pothier was also disqualified, as were several other riders, allowing Henri Cornet (real name Henri Jardry)  to become the youngest winner in Tour history at 19 (Henri Paret, at 50 the oldest rider to have completed a Tour, also rode that year). Such were the severity of the punishments that some historians have suggested that riders were not banned for taking trains, as is the official reason, but due to a major scandal that was covered up; this theory has been fueled by research carried out by Jason Jellick, who argues that riders would not have been able to take trains and finish when and where they did (but does not suggest that any scandal took place) and by the fact that official records have vanished.

Garin had also won the first Tour in 1903, but spectators claimed to have seen him take a train rather than ride one stage the following year - he denied doing so at the time, but admitted it in old age according to a man who had once run errands for his garage and later ended up working as the gravedigger and attendant at the Cimetiere Est where Garin was buried in 1957. The organisers, despite suspicions that they had permitted Garin to cheat because his personal sponsor was also a race sponsor, appear to have had grounds to have banned him immediately and would have been keen to do so had not angry spectators been likely to turn into a lynch mob if they'd done so.

In fact, aggression and cheating by spectators had been rife throughout the race that year - they'd felled trees to block riders they disliked and at one point Garin was savagely beaten by a crowd thgat had to be dispersed with pistol shots. This, combined with cheating among the entrants, was sufficient for Henri Desgrange to announce that the 1904 Tour would be the last. Thankfully, he was convinced to run the event again the following year with different, stricter rules.

Knud Enemark Jensen
Knud Enemark Jensen, born in Århus, Denmark on this day in 1930, achieved cycling fame in the very worst way possible - he was one of the earliest cyclists whose death was connected to doping when he collapsed in the 42C heat and fractured his skull during the team time trial event on the 26th of August at the 1960 Olympics. He went into a coma and died a few hours later in hospital.

Witnesses claimed that Jensen had swallowed eight pills believed to be phenylisopropylamine, an amphetamine-like drug, and another fifteen containing amphetamine and caffeine in the run-up to the race. His trainer initially said that he had administered Roniacol (nicotynol alcohol), a vasodilator, to the team but formally retracted his statement soon after. An autopsy confirmed the presence of both Roniacol and amphetamines in his body, but doctors concluded that his collapse had been caused by the heat rather than the drugs and his family were awarded one million lire compensation.

There are obvious comparisons between the deaths of Jensen and the British rider Tom Simpson, with whom he shared his birthday. Jensen's death encouraged the International Olympic Committee to accept that there was a problem with doping in sport and to establish a medical council in 1967, the year that Simpson died. Anti-doping controls would be put into place the following year, paving the way for similar controls to be introduced at the Tour de France and other races.

Pierrick Fédrigo, a French rider born in Marmande on this day in 1978, has been National Champion (2005) and has won the Tour du Limousin twice (2004, 2006), the Four Days of Dunkirk (2005), the Critérium International (2010) and stages at the Critérium du Dauphiné (Stage 6, 200) and Tour de France (Stage 14, 2006, Stage 9, 2009, Stage 16, 2010). As a result, he probably feels a little disappointed that he is chiefly famous - and most likely to be remembered - for his nose, a prominence that gave rise to his nickname "le Nez de Marmande" and which is best described as "splendid."

Born in Rabat, Morroco on this day in 1922, Custodio Dos Reis had Portuguese nationality but became a French citizen at the age of nine - and turned out to be a  worthwhile catch by France, because he won Stage 14 of the Tour de France in 1950.

Charles Henry Bartlett died on this day in 1968 in Enfield, London. In 1908, he rode 100km in 2h41'48.6" on the track at the Olympics in London and won a gold medal for his achievement. He was born on the 6th of February 1885 in Bermondsey, also in London, making him 85 when he died.

Other cyclists born on this day: Domenico Pozzovivo (Italy, 1982); Arthur Griffiths (Great Britain, 1881); Martin Hvastija (Slovenia, 1969); István Liszkay (Hungary, 1912); Armand Putzeyse (Belgium, 1916, died 2003); Franck Perque (France, 1974); Kyriaki Konstantinidou (Greece, 1984); Andrés Torres (Guatemala, 1966); Álvaro Pachón (Colombia, 1945).