Daily Cycling Facts 11.04.2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pat Hanlon

(image credit: Retrobike)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Cycling Facts 11.04.2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pat Hanlon

(image credit: Retrobike)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cycling Evening News 03.05.12

Swift end to the Giro for Sky's Ben - Tour of the Gila - Brailsford will select Millar - Italy drops National Team lifetime ban for ex-dopers - Surprise success for Afghan team at Pakistan Women's Nats - Weylandt's girlfriend to attend Giro - Kampenhout honours Impanis - Yorkshire CX series - Leipheimer uncertain for Tour of California - Hulsmans will miss Giro - Yawn: another "I ride a bike but I'm still a lady" story - Cancellara's recovering - Other racing news - Addison Lee damage limitation exercise - Cycling newswire

Racing
Swift end to the Giro for Sky's Ben
It's looking unfortunately as though the Giro d'Italia is already over for Team Sky's Ben Swift - the 24-year-ol reported via his Twitter feed that he had a heavy crash during training on Thursday and will have to undergo tests. British Cycling reports that he has suffered a fractured shoulder..

Ben Swift ‏ @swiftybswift well that is my Giro over, had a very heavy crash out on the bike today very disappointed not to be able to start. further checks tomorrow

He will be replaced by Jeremy Hunt (born on the 12th of March in 1974, Hunt does not become the oldest man in the race as has been reported elsewhere - Luca Mazzanti was born on the 4th of February in the same year).

Tour of the Gila

Kristin Armstrong, now with Exergy Twenty12

Kristin Armstrong (Exergy Twenty12) rode a remarkable stage to finish no less than 2'18" faster than second place Carmen Small yesterday, grabbing herself a considerable lead in the General Classification.

Alison Powers ‏ @alpcyclesThe Mo-ge-on and @k_armstrong hurt my legs today. Team did great and I was 4th.

Top Ten
  1.  Kristin Armstrong Exergy Twenty12 3h15'39"
  2.  Carmen Small Team Optum Presented By Kelly Benefit Strategies +2'18"
  3.  Jade Wilcoxson Team Optum Presented By Kelly Benefit Strategies +2'42"
  4.  Alison Powers NOW and Novartis for MS +2'48"
  5.  Janel Holcomb Team Optum Presented By Kelly Benefit Strategies +3'35"
  6.  Robin Farina NOW and Novartis for MS +3'39"
  7.  Emily Kachorek Primal/MapMyRide +3'43""
  8.  Tayler Wiles Exergy Twenty12 +3'54"
  9.  Catherine Johnson Panache Boulder +4'00"
  10.  Olivia Dillon NOW and Novartis for MS +4'16"
Full results and GC

Rory Sutherland (UnitedHealthcare Presented By Maxxis) was the fastest man on the challenging climb into the Mogollon Mountains at the end of Stage 1 at the Tour of the Gila yesterday, winning the stage after cruising over the finish line with a 12" advantage over a three-man chase group.

Top Ten
  1.  Rory Sutherland UnitedHealthcare Presented By Maxxis 4h45'43"
  2.  Joseph Dombrowski Bontrager Livestrong +12"
  3.  Chad Beyer Competitive Cyclist Racing Team +14"
  4.  Sebastian Salas Team Optum Presented By Kelly Benefit Strategies ST
  5.  Christopher Baldwin Bissel +33"
  6.  Marc De Maar UnitedHealthcare Presented By Maxxis +39"
  7.  Francisco Mancebo Competitive Cyclist Racing Team +52"
  8.  Luis Enrique Davila +1'02"
  9.  Cesar Grajales Competitive Cyclist Racing Team ST
  10.  Carlos Lopez Gonzalez +1'14"
Full results and GC

For the men, 128.7km Stage 2 both starts and finishes at Fort Bayard - a historic frontier fort that was once home to the Buffalo Soldiers (known also as "The Negro Cavalry," they were one of several troops made up of black soldiers and not fully integrated into other units until the 1950s) who, in the 1890s, were elected to be the first "bicycle troop" because bikes were cheaper than the horses supplied to other (white) troops. On their first test ride, over 3,056km from Montana to Missouri, they proved themselves able to cover the distance more quickly than the horses.

They reach the first Cat 3 climb at 16km and climb to 2,164m, then the second begins at 24km and climbs to 2,361m. After crossing the Continental Divide (with an uncategorised climb of, oh, only 2,045m) they head to a final and very steep Cat 3 at 100km, climbing to 2,070m before the descent and last 16km back to Fort Bayard. The women use a similar parcours but miss the first 25.4km and climb, beginning instead at Pinos Altos. The remainder of the route is identical to the men's.


Brailsford will select Millar

The only thing that can now keep
David Millar from the Olympics is
David Millar

Dave Brailsford says he will select David Millar for the British Olympic team as long as he's fast enough. "He's available and that's the key thing, it's not my decision to make policy," he told reporters at a press conference yesterday in the wake of the Court for Arbitration in Sport's decision to end the British Olympic Association's lifetime ban on athletes who have been banned for doping.

However, it's still not clear if the rider will accept. Millar, who served a two-year suspension for EPO, has said that he has no wish to compete as a "black sheep," but hoped the CAS would block the law so that he can represent Scotland at the 2014 Commonwealth Games.

Italy drops its own National Team doping ban
The FCI, Italy's cycling federation, has lifted its own lifetime ban on riders riding on the National team after a doping conviction, despite having already survived one legal challenge from Danilo di Luca. The policy had come under attack again recently with an appeal mounted by Annalisa Cucinotta, who served a two-year suspension after testing positive for Boldenone - an anabolic steroid not approved for human use and primarily prescribed by veterinarians to horses. The recent CAS decision in the BOA case will have been received by the FCI as an indication that they had little chance of continuing the policy.

Annalisa Cucinotta

In Britain, as far as cycling is concerned David Millar has been the biggest name in the case (though he chose not to play an active part in the appeal). In Italy, the end of the rule frees up a number of high-profile riders who may now be selected for their nation's Olympic team, including Davide Rebellin, Stefano Garzelli, Alessandro Petacchi and Ivan Basso as well as di Luca.


Surprise success for Afghan women at Pakistan Nationals
The Pakistan Railways team won two of three medals on offer in Day 2 at the Pakistan National Women's Championships after winning the 20km team time trial and 1km sprint. Punjab took gold for the 1km individual time trial. A surprise success was the Afghanistan National Team, competing for the first time after receiving an invitation to the race due to the lack of events in their own nation - they won two bronze medals by coming third in the same events won by the Railways team. Further races will be held today at Lahore's open-air velodrome.

An-Sophie to attend Giro
Wouter Weylandt's girlfriend Ann-Sophie de Graeve will visit two stages of the Giro d'Italia. "I've never spoken about Wouter's death because I haven't been able to find the words to do so," she told Gazzetta dello Sport. "I was looking for reasons and explanations, not places, but I couldn't find them."

Weylandt, a rider with Leopard Trek, died on the 9th of May last year during Stage 3 as he descended the Passo del Bocco after his pedal touched a wall running alongside the road, throwing him to the other side of the road. A doctor working with the Garmin-Cervélo team administered CPR in an attempt to revive him, but an autopsy later found he had died immediately upon impact from a fractured skull and massive internal injuries.

An-Sophie, who gave birth to their daughter on the 1st of September 2011, will visit Stage 3 in Denmark and the following time trial stage in Verona.

Kampenhout honours Impanis

Raymond Impanis, 19.10.1925 - 31.12.2010

The council of Kampenhout unveiled a commemorative bust of Raymond Impanis in the town's Sint-Servaaskerk last week. A winner of the Ronde van Vlaanderen, the Waalse Pijl, Paris-Roubaix and two editions of Gent-Wevelgem and Paris-Nice, Impanis was considered one of the finest Classics riders of the 1950s but also did well in stage races with third place in the 1956 Vuelta a Espana, finished in the top ten of the Tour de France three times and once at the Giro d'Italia.

Born in Berg on about the 19th of October 1925 and abandoned as a baby on the steps of the village church, Impanis was found by a priest and raised by the local baker - his surname being based on the Latin plural "panis," plural of bread. He lived around Kampenhout for the rest of his life, was made an Honourary Citizen in 1999 and died in the 31st of December 2010 at the age of 85.


Yorkshire CX Summer Series off to a good start
The Yorkshire Pedalsport Cyclo Cross Summer Series got underway yesterday at Oakbank School in Keighley with Ian Taylor (Craven Energy) making good use of a parcours made very tough by recent heavy rain to battle his way through to the front on the very first lap and a ten second advantage. He then continued to add to it all the way to the end of the race, finishing with a lead of 2'41" over second place Ed McParland (GT Racing).

Leipheimer uncertain for Tour of California

Kevin Hulsmans, now with Farnese Vini-Selle Italia

Levi Leipheimer, who was involved in a collision with a car one day before he was due to start the Tour of the Basque Country, is worried that he may not have sufficiently recovered in time for the Tour of California. The rider sustained a broken leg in the accident, leading some to wonder if - at the age of 38 - his career might be over, though he has not yet given any indication that he has considered retiring.

Hulsmans will miss the Giro
Kevin Hulsmans, who had been chosen for the Farnese Vini-Selle Italia Giro team, will miss the race due to an inflamed knee he's been suffering since Paris-Roubaix. Instead, he'll concentrate on recovering in time for the Ronde van België.

Yawn - another "I ride a bike but I'm still a lady" story
On the morning of her Olympic appearance in London this summer," says the The Toronto Star, "Emily Batty will first attend to her own appearance." The newspaper then goes on to describe how she will put on her make-up, fasten a string of pearls about her neck and diamonds in her ears before she tackles the cross country course.

"I’m a cyclist, that’s my profession, my passion, but I’m definitely a woman first," she says. OK Emily, that's fair enough. You can ride in whatever you like, even a frilly pink frock and high-heels if you choose (provided the UCI allow it, and you can find high-heels with pedal cleats). That's your business and nobody has the right to tell you otherwise. It's the fact and way that this is presented as news that is an issue.

Apparently, "the emerging mountain bike superstar has a supermodel-like appeal for young male fans of the sport" - a comment that does women's cycling no favours at all, because we most definitely do not want any young women considering taking up cycling to think that they need to impress male fans if they're going to get anywhere. It's a hard and, often, ugly sport, and those women who compete do so because they are competitive athletes, not to look good - which is precisely how it should be.

"Batty, just 5-foot-2, says the sport has always been a male bastion, but that her emergence as a top draw star may be helping to erode its machismo," the article continues (in actual fact, she doesn't say that at all - she says that "carrying feminine ways" into cycling makes her easy for fans to recognise). Bullshit. Women such as Alfonsina Strada, Elsy Jacobs, Beryl Burton, Jeannie Longo, Missy Giove, Leontien van Moorsel, Caroline Alexander, Judith Arndt, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg and Marianne Vos have been eroding the machismo of cycling and making inroads for other women to follow them for years; not by looking pretty out on the parcours but by being excellent cyclists. Batty may well do the same if she's good enough (and going by her palmares to date, she probably is), but not because of how she looks.

Nobody worth listening to has ever believed that cycling (or any other sport) in some way reduces a woman's femininity, nor that femininity is the measure of a woman's value. Once again, Emily Batty can wear whatever the hell she likes, but reporting the fact that she slaps on a bit of lippy before a race is categorically not news, nor do cycling fans - nor those who are going to become cycling fans and/or riders - care. Worst of all, reporting it in the way that The Star did may damage the sport.

Cancellara's getting better
Fabian Cancellara, whose Spring Classics campaign was brought to a sudden halt by the quadruple collarbone fracture he suffered at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, says that recovery is taking more time than expected but it won't be longer.

"I thought, 'hey, it's my collarbone, that heals quickly,'" the Swiss rider explains, "but the breaks were just a part of it. There's also the damage around the bone - my shoulder, the ligaments, the muscles, it was all damaged. It still feel strange and painful. I could take painkillers, but I prefer to do without. I felt hopeful after the surgery and the pain disappeared quickly, so I stopped taking painkillers then. Everything was going well, sensation returned - then I had another ultrasound and they found another tear in the ligaments

"What I have to do now is find a new position on the bike. The handlebars and saddle are different to what I'm used too because I have to sit as upright as possible, which is uncomfortable. I feel like a cyclotourist!"(More from Het Nieuwsblad)


Other News
"Youth circuit racing is popular" (Stratford Observer, London)

"Brit Stannard ready for Grand Tour outing" (British Cycling)

"Giro d'Italia with a future start in Germany?" (Cycling News)

"Porte tries Dauphine route to Games" (Brisbane Times)

"Waikato's Jaime Nielsen won the bragging rights over her Olympic teammates on the first day of the national club cycling road race championships today" (NZHerald)

"Amateur cyclists will attempt “America’s Toughest Stage Race” in Utah" (Examiner)


"Utah welcomes the USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals" (Daily Peloton)

"Cyclists storm Maple Ridge streets" (Maple Ridge News, Canada)

Stephen de Jongh on Sky's Giro squad (Gazzetta dello Sport)

"Second Edition Of National Cycling Tour Of Ghana Launched In Accra" (Government of Ghana)

Cycling
Addison Lee to introduce cyclist awareness training for drivers

Addison Lee - the London minicab firm that found itself in a real-life PR nightmare last month after chairman John Griffin claimed that the capital's cyclists have only themselves to blame if they're killed or injured on the roads - has announced that its drivers will be given special training to increase their awareness of cyclists.

The news was revealed to BikeBiz editor Carlton Reid in an interview with Addison Lee's PR director Alistair Laycock, who claims to have started cycling to work and that the company is looking into the practicalities of installing video cameras in its fleet to provide a record of what happens in a crash and take action against a driver if he or she is found to be at fault. (More from road.cc)

So that's alright then, isn't it?

Erm - well, no, actually. It'd be wonderful if it was, but this sounds suspiciously like a company desperately trying to claw its way back out of the big hole dug by Mr. Griffin after discovering that cyclists are numerous, proactive and in possession of considerable political clout rather than failed loners who can't afford to drive or take cabs, as he apparently previously believed. Only by keeping an eye on Addison Lee in the future will we know for certain if the company - and Griffin - genuinely do wish to help prevent injury to cyclists or whether this is just an attempt to placate an enemy who turned out to be much more formidable than they had initially assumed. Are these long-term plans or will they be forgotten as soon as the media furore dies down? We'll be watching you, Addison Lee.

Newswire
Britain
"Cycling safety fears are stopping more hitting the saddle" (The Courier)

"How cycle safety has gone up the election agenda in London" (BBC)

Worldwide
"The Union of cyclists held the demonstration on the Earth's Day" (Dalje, Croatia)

"Cyclists accuse Toronto mayor Ford of 'war on bikes'" (BBC)

"A man who allegedly helped his friend flee a hit-and-run collision with a cyclist has been charged" (WA Today, Australia)

"Once downright hostile to cyclists, Fresno has come a long way" (Fresno Bee)

"Bicycles, coffee, and beer: the next generation of bicycle shop hits Carytown" (RVANews, Virginia)

"There's room for more bicyclists in Yuba-Sutter" (AppealDemocrat, California)

"Pedals turning on cycling plan" (Woodstock Sentinel Review, Ontario)

Daily Cycling Facts 11.04.12

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pat Hanlon

(image credit: Retrobike)

Even 15 years after her death, Pat Hanlon's name remains one of the most hallowed in the cycling world. However, few younger riders and fans know how she achieved her fame, let alone anything about her.

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

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

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

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

Hanlon's own bike, built for her by Tom Board
(photo used with the kind permission of Peter Underwood)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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