Daily Cycling Facts 27.09.2014

Clara Hughes

Hughes at the Thüringen Rundfahrt, 2012

Born in Winnipeg, Canada on this day in 1972, Clara Hughes - in common with so many other riders - began her career as an athlete in speed skating, which she took up at the age of 16 after seeing Gaétan Boucher win gold at the 1988 Olympic Games. A year later she started cycling; only three years later, in 1992, she became National Road Race Champion. In 1994 she won the Women's Challenge, one of the hardest and most prestigious events in the sport, then in 1995 she was fourth overall at the Tour de France Féminin and won the National Individual Time Trial Championship and in 1996 she won bronze medals in the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial at the Olympics.

Hughes took a hiatus from cycling and returned to speed skating as the 1998 Winter Olympics approached, concentrating on it for several years and winning more Olympic medals - she thus became the second woman and one of only four athletes to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Games, and in 2006 became the only athlete to have won more than one medal at both Games. In 2005, she set a new 10,000m World Record at 14'19.73" - it has since been beaten, but remains a Canadian record at the time of writing. Following the 2006 Winter Games, she took inspiration from fellow speed skater Joey Cheek who had donated his gold medal to Right To Play and gave $10,000 of her own money to the humanitarian organisation.

Hughes at the 2012 Olympics

At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Hughes worked as a cycling commentator for CBC. This inspired her to make a return to cycling, which she did in 2010; less than a year later at the PanAmerican Games she won the Road Race with an advantage of 1'18" and the Individual Time Trial with 28", then the National Individual Time Trial Championship by 28". She also won the Tour of the Gila and La Visite Chrono du Gatineau, then came fifth at the World Individual Time Trial Championship, but for many fans her most impressive achievement was her long solo breakaway at the World Road Race Championship, enlivening a race that many found otherwise boring. Having won La Flèche Wallonne and another National ITT Championship in 2012, Hughes qualified for the Olympics and was fifth in the Individual Time Trial.

Alongside Cindy Klassen, another speed skater from Winnipeg, Hughes is the joint most successful Canadian Olympian of all time. In recognition of her athletic achievements and humanitarian activities she has been awarded the Order of Manitoba, is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has two honourary degrees from the Universities of Manitoba and New Brunswick.

Wouter Weylandt

Wouter Weylandt, 27.09.1984 - 09.05.2011

Born in Ghent, Belgium on this day in 1984, Wouter Weylandt scored some good results prior to 2004, then that year came third at the Under-23 Paris-Roubaix and earned himself a trainee contract with QuickStep-Davitamon. In 2005, riding with a full professional contract from the same team, he won the GP Briek Schotte after starting the season with mononucleosis; then in 2006 the Points competition at the Tour of Poland. In 2007 he won seven races and in 2008, having been third at Gent-Wevelgem, he rode the Vuelta a Espana - his first Grand Tour, where he won Stage 17. The following year started with a tragedy when his close friend Frederiek Nilf, aged just 21, died of a heart attack while he slept between stages at the Tour of Qatar; later in the season Weylandt nearly repeated his earlier Vuelta success when he was second on Stage 4 but he left the race after Stage 16, then in 2010 he won Stage 3 at the Giro d'Italia.

He was, in the opinion of his fellow riders and fans, a rider destined for greatness; if not a Grand Tour victory, at least a Grand Tour Points competition. When he signed for 2011 to LeopardTrek - a new team consisting of some of the most promising young riders in the world, including Andy Schleck who was hotly tipped to win the Tour de France that year, some of the established greats including Fabian Cancellara, and some highly experienced older riders such as the legendary Jens Voigt - it seemed that there really couldn't be a better place for a rider such as him to develop his talents and learn the fine art of winning bicycle races.

On the 9th of May, at the Giro d'Italia which just one year previously had been disrupted when riders protested against poor safety conditions, he was killed as he descended the Passo del Bocco at 80kph. According to Manuel Antonio Cardoso, who was behind him at the time, Weylandt had looked over his shoulder to see if other riders were catching him and lost control, hitting a guardrail before being catapulted 10m across the road and landing heavily on his face. The race's chief medical officer was nearby in a car and saw the accident take place: "he was already and clearly dead upon impact. I had never seen such a thing before, such a sudden death," he later told reporters. The impact when he hit the wall would have been sufficient to end his career even had he have fallen there - an autopsy found that his left leg had been so badly damaged it would have required amputation. His death was attributed to skull and facial injuries and massive damage to his internal organs - it was noted that the impact when he hit the road had stopped his heart instantaneously and there would not have been time for him to suffer. His girlfriend, An-Sophie, was five months pregnant when he died.

Pedro Horrillo
It's often said - with some truth - that academic qualifications are few and far between in the men's professional peloton (the same is very much not true among the women: since few female cyclists will ever make a living from their sport, few ever considered it as a future occupation and only took it up while at university). Pedro Horillo, born in Eibar on this day in 1974, is a retired Basque cyclist and an exception: he had already earned a degree in philosophy from Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, the Basque national university, when he became a professional rider with Vitalicio Seguros-Grupo Generali in 1998 and after his retirement he became well-respected for his intelligently-written articles on cycling and doping.

Horrillo at the 2009 Tour of California

Horrillo spent his first three years with Vitalico Seguros and, in his second, rode in the Tour de France for the first time and scored a handful of decent stage finishes for a debutant, including 18th on Stage 1, then came 135th overall. In 2001 he went to Mapei-QuickStep and finished four stages at the Vuelta a Espana in the top ten; then in 2002, with the same team, he won Stage 2 at Paris-Nice and was third on Stage 13 at the Vuelta. The following year he went to Rabobank, with which he would spend the remainder of his career; he won Stage 3 at the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya that year and Stage 1 at the Sachsen Tour the next. While he had many more good results (and rode the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta in 2007), they would be the final victories of his career.

He retired in 2009 following a horrific crash at the Giro in which he hit a railing and plunged over it into a ravine, falling 60m and suffering a broken neck, knee and thigh as well as a punctured lung. He was unconscious when the medics got to him, then awoke while in the ambulance and was placed in an induced coma. The following day - when riders mounted a protest at safety conditions in the race, just as they would the following year and again following the death of Wouter Weylandt in 2009 - he was brought back to consciousness for scans which, thankfully, revealed no brain injuries. He spent the next five weeks in hospital, then made a full recovery but never took part in another race, finding that he was no longer able to perform at his previous level. However, he still follows cycling and is especially keen on the Hell of the North, Paris-Roubaix: ""If I could only have ridden one race as a pro, that would have been it - and if possible, in the rain because that's the real Roubaix when it rains," he says.

Beth Heiden
Elizabeth Lee Heiden Reid, known as Beth Heiden, was born in Madison, Wisconsin on this day in 1959 and is probably the only World Road Race Champion who wasn't really a cyclist. She played tennis and soccer while at school, then also took up running in 1975 and set a national record for her age group that same year. She was also a speed skater and, the following year, qualified for the Olympics where she was 11th in the 3,000m. In 1979, she became World Speed Skating Champion after winning all four of the constituent races.

Left to right: Sara Doctor, Connie Carpenter, Beth Heiden

Many cyclists have competed in speed skating in the past, with Marianne Vos and Clara Hughes being perhaps the two most famous examples; but invariably they concentrated on cycling after discovering their proficiency at it. Heiden did not: she took up cycling as part of her cross-training preparation for the speed skating events at the 1980 Winter Olympics and never fell in love with the bike, nor became a true cycling, like Vos and Hughes did - in fact, when she became the first ever American to win the UCI World Road Race Championships in 1980, beating Greg Lemond by three years, she did so almost as an afterthought. Having done so, she returned to speed skating, then took up cross-country skiing and never went back to cycling again. Who knows what she might have achieved if she had done?


Born in Australia on this day in 1974, Nigel Barley fell three metres from a roof and landed on a hammer; aged 26, he was a paraplegic. After spending a year learning what he could do - and techniques to do what he couldn't - he decided to take up handcycling, then two years later set a new handcycle World 24-hour record when he covered 462km; three years after that he rode the 4,437km between Perth and Sydney. In 2009 he won the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial at the National Championships. Silver and bronze at the 2011 World Cup and several good results during the first half of 2012, as part of the World Cup and the Paracycling Tour, qualified him for the Paralympic Games in London, where he won silver in the Individual Time Trial.

Alfred Haemerlinck, the most successful
rider you've never heard of

Alfred Haemerlinck, born in Assenede, Belgium on this day in 1905, won Stages 1 and 6 at the Tour de France in 1931, which earned him the maillot jaune for a single day. Those two stages were the most prestigious victories of his decade-long professional career, but he is chiefly remembered for the enormous number of smaller, less-well-known races that he entered and won: according to some apparently reliable estimates, as many as 493 - higher than some estimates for Eddy Merckx.

Benoni Beheyt, born in Zwijnaarde, Belgium on this day in 1940, won Gent-Wevelgem and the World Road Race Championship in 1963 and Stage 22a at the Tour de France, the General Classification at the Ronde van België and the National Road Race Championship in 1964.

Ángel Casero, born in Albalat dels Tarongers on this day in 1972, was Spanish Road Race Champion in 1998 and 1999. In 2000 he was second overall at the Vuelta a Espana, then in 2001 he won it.

Giovanni Fidanza, born in Bergamo, Italy on this day in 1965, won the overall Points competition at the Giro d'Italia and Stage 20 at the Tour de France in 1989, then Stage 2 at the Giro in 1990.

Heinz Wengler, born in Germany on this day in 1912, shared victory for Stage 17b (a 37km road race) at the 1937 Tour de France with the Adolph Braeckeveldt. His nickname was Herr Schmal on account of his diminutive stature and five years later, when he was 30, he was killed in action on the Eastern Front.

Enrico Zaina, born in Brescia on this day in 1967, won Stage 17 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1992, Stage 11 at the Giro d'Italia in 1995 and Stages 9, 20 and second place overall at the 1996 Giro.

Other cyclists born on this day: Raúl Saavedra (Colombia, 1969); Cosme Saavedra (Argentina, 1901, died 1967); Chartchai Juntrat (Thailand, 1951); Alexey Kolessov (Kazakhstan, 1984); Mauno Uusivirta (Finland, 1948); Rebecca Henderson (Australia, 1991); Mitsuteru Tanaka (Japan, 1971); Michael Andrew (Malaysia, 1943); Kris Gerits (Belgium, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 09.05.2014

Pino Cerami
(image credit: Ken's Bike Shop)

La Flèche Wallonne took place on this day in 1960, the 24th edition of the race. It ran from Liège to Charleroi for the first time, having been run in the opposite direction for the previous eleven years, and covered 208km. The winner was Giuseppe 'Pino' Cerami, who had taken Belgian citizenship in 1956 and as such was not the second Italian winner of the race despite being born in Sicily (the Italians didn't have to wait long, however - Roberto Poggiali won in 1965 and since then Italian riders have won another sixteen times, making them the second most successful nation in this race after the Belgians).

The Giro d'Italia began just once on this day, in 2009. The race took an unusual course around Italy's most historic cities and missed most of the climbs that have made it famous, yet it was marked by near-tragedy when the Basque rider Pedro Horrillo crashed into a ravine during Stage 8. He fell 60 metres, breaking his neck, knee cap, both femurs and puncturing a lung. After regaining consciousness in the ambulance as he was taken to hospital, medics placed him in an artificially-induced coma. In time, Horrillo made a full recovery; but has not returned to racing. The next day saw riders protesting at safety conditions, refusing to race until they came to the final sprint - which drew criticism from fans and organisers - and the stage was neutralised. Denis Menchov was overall winner, followed by Danilo di Luca who would subsequently be stripped of his result in a doping scandal.

Matthew Bushe
(image credit: Fanny Schertzer CC BY-SA 3.0)

The term "meteoric" doesn't do justice to American rider Matthew Busche's rise to the top levels of professional cycling: in August of 2008 he joined the ProContinental Kelly Benefit Strategies team and by the beginning of the next year he was riding with RadioShack, one of the best-financed and most successful teams in the history of the sport. Having enjoyed a successful career as a cross-country winner during which he won two NCAA National titles, he switched allegiance to cycling and joined the amateur ISCorp team in 2007 and finished in third place for Stage 2 at the St. Louis Gateway Cup with them. He then began racking up a series of top ten results in National Championships and other races before turning professional and moving on to European stage races, where he also did well. He then won the National Championship road race in 2011 and was entered into his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espana, where he came 113th overall. His contract was extended following RadioShack's merger with LeopardTrek late in 2011, and the world will be watching closely in 2012 to see if Johan Bruyneel's faith in him is deserved.

Vincenzo Borgarello was born in Cambiano, Piedmont on this day in 1884. In 1911, he won Stage 2 at the Giro d'Italia, followed by Stages 2, 7 and 9 at the Giro and 8 and 14 at the Tour de France the following year. He led the race after Stage 2 - and thus became the first Italian to lead the General Classification in the history of the Tour, though he eventually finished in 13th place overall.

Though Rubens Bertogliati - who was born in Lugano, Switzerland on this day in 1979 - has twice been National Time Trial Champion (2009/10), he is better known as an all-rounder; a combination which has seen him record some impressive results in the Grand Tours. He won the opening time trial at the 2002 Tour de France, then rode well enough the next day to keep the yellow jersey, and in 2010 he was second in the mixed-terrain Stage 6 at the Giro d'Italia.

Flavio Giupponi was born in Bergamo on this day in 1964. In 1989, he won Stage 14 at the Giro d'Italia and finished the overall General Classification in second place, 1'15" behind Frenchman Laurent Fignon.

Svein Tuft
Canadian cyclist Svein Tuft was born in British Columbia on this day in 1977. He would leave school at the age of 15 and spent the next few years mountain climbing and cycling, completing a 4,000km ride to Alaska and back whilst still a teenager, then began racing in 1999. His results were immediately good and he found himself with a contract to ride for Symmetrics team which, while virtually unknown in Europe, could be found competing in many of North America's most prestigious cycling events and which reached a wider audience when it was the subject of a Marvel comic, in which Tuft is portrayed as having enormous muscles. Upon seeing the picture, he told reporters "We're all a bunch of sissies really!"

Tuft has become highly respected as a time trial specialist, winning the National Championship in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010 - which earned him the offer of a contract with the ill-fated Team Pegasus which fell by the wayside after sponsorship issues. Instead, he joined Spidertech-C10 for 2011 and with them won another National Time Trial and the National Road Race for the first time. In August that year, he announced that he had been offered a place with the new Australian team GreenEDGE which was at that time hoping to be given a UCI ProTeam licence, which it subsequently received - so this year, we are likely to see how Tuft copes with a Grand Tour.

Iñigo Landaluze

Iñigo Landaluze
(image credit: McSmit CC BY-SA 3.0)

Basque rider Iñigo Landaluze was born on this day in 1977, turning professional with Euskaltel-Euskadi in 2001 and remaining with them for the rest of his career. He appeared on the cusp of making a breakthrough into the upper echelons of the sport with victory at the 2005 Critérium du Dauphiné, but shortly afterwards it was announced that anti-doping controls had discovered an unusually high level of testosterone in his samples.

However, he was cleared on a technicality when it was shown that correct laboratory procedure had not been followed during the test - whereas the Court of Arbitration for Sport concluded that the rider "probably had" intentionally doped, it found that there was no grounds to prosecute as the UCI had failed to satisfy the burden of proof by failing to provide evidence to support claims that procedure violations would not affect the outcome of the test. Since he became free to return to racing in 2006, anti-doping laws and regulations have changed considerably and it is believed that had the case have been tried today Landaluze would have been sanctioned.

On the 17th of July 2009, he failed two anti-doping tests, one at the Critérium du Dauphiné again and another a few days after the race ended - this time for Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator or CERA, a blood-boosting drug that combines the notorious EPO with other drugs designed to increase its effectiveness and longevity within the body. He was provisionally banned by the UCI pending investigation and has not yet returned to the sport.


François Faber
Though François Faber was born in France (Aulnay-sur-Iton, 26th January 1887), his father was from Luxembourg and as a result François had Luxembourgian nationality. However, he insisted throughout his life that he was French, despite his Luxembourg passport and as such would not have been at all pleased had he have known he would find his place in history as the first foreigner to win the Tour de France.

When he began cycling, he rapidly gained the nickname The Giant of Colombes because, at 1.88m tall and weighing 88kg, he was considerably larger than the average man of his day and enormous in comparison to most cyclists. Photographs show a man who looks phenomenally strong - as indeed he was, his natural physique honed by hard labour as a removal man and docker. He began his professional cycling career with Labor in 1906 and entered his first Tour with them, but did not finish. Two years later, he moved on to Peugeot and entered again, this time winning four stages and achieving 2nd overall, then won the Giro di Lombardia. He departed for the mighty Alcyon in 1909, the most successful team in Tour history and it was with them that he not only won the race but, battling through some of the worst weather ever recorded during the event before or since, also won five consecutive stages (six in total) - a record that has not yet been broken after more than a century.

He remained with Alcyon through 1910 and won three stages at the Tour that year, coming 2nd overall behind team mate Octave Lapize and also winning Paris-Tours. Now one of the most respected and sought-after riders in the world, he was tempted away to Automoto and spent a quiet two years with them and Saphir Cycles before returning to Peugeot for the next two years, winning Paris-Roubaix, one stage at the Tour of Belgium and a total of four at the Tour de France during the period. The First World War put paid to European racing until conflict came to an end, and Faber signed up with the Foreign Legion almost as soon as hostilities were declared. He was attached to the 2nd Régiment de Marche of the 1st Regiment, FFL, promoted to the rank of corporal.

Faber was 28 years old when he died on this day in 1915 at the Battle of Artois. His regiment came under attack and lost 1,950 men from a total of 2,900, and though Faber survived the first waves of the attack unharmed he saw that one of his comrades was lying injured in no-man's land. He climbed out of the trench, went to the fallen man and had carried him part of the way to safety when he was fatally shot in the back. Later, he was posthumously awarded the Médaille militaire for his bravery. That very morning, he had received a telegram informing him that his wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter.

Wouter Weylandt
On this day in 2011, at the Giro d'Italia which just one year previously had been disrupted when riders protested against safety conditions, LeopardTrek's 26-year-old Belgian rider Wouter Weylandt was killed as he descended the Passo del Bocco at 80kph. According to Manuel Antonio Cardoso, who was behind him at the time, Weylandt had looked over his shoulder to see if other riders were catching him and lost control, hitting a guardrail before being catapulted 10m across the road and landing heavily on his face. The race's chief medical officer was nearby in a car and saw the accident take place: "he was already and clearly dead upon impact. I had never seen such a thing before, such a sudden death," he later told reporters. The impact when he hit the wall would have been sufficient to end his career even had he have fallen there - an autopsy found that his left leg had been so badly damaged it would have required amputation. His death was attributed to skull and facial injuries and massive damage to his internal organs - it was noted that the impact when he hit the road had stopped his heart instantaneously and there would not have been time for him to suffer. His girlfriend, An-Sophie, was five months pregnant when he died.

The following stage was neutralised and church bells rang along the route, riders wearing black armbands taking turns to lead the peloton. Weylandt's race number, 108, is no longer assigned to riders in the Giro and became an integral part of the team's kit design, as well as a common sight at many races where fans and riders alike display it to show their respects.

Wouter Weylandt, 27.09.1984 - 09.05.2011
(image credit: Dzipi CC BY-SA 2.0)

Other cyclists born on this day: René Rillon (France, 1892, died 1956); Jean-Marie Joubert (France, 1932); Nobuhira Takanuki (Japan, 1938); Karl-Dietrich Diers (East Germany, 1953); Hans Michalsky (West Germany, 1949); Constantin Stănescu (Romania, 1928); Vid Cencic (Uruguay, 1933).

Daily Cycling Facts 27.09.2013

Clara Hughes

Hughes at the Thüringen Rundfahrt, 2012

Born in Winnipeg, Canada on this day in 1972, Clara Hughes - in common with so many other riders - began her career as an athlete in speed skating, which she took up at the age of 16 after seeing Gaétan Boucher win gold at the 1988 Olympic Games. A year later she started cycling; only three years later, in 1992, she became National Road Race Champion. In 1994 she won the Women's Challenge, one of the hardest and most prestigious events in the sport, then in 1995 she was fourth overall at the Tour de France Féminin and won the National Individual Time Trial Championship and in 1996 she won bronze medals in the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial at the Olympics.

Hughes took a hiatus from cycling and returned to speed skating as the 1998 Winter Olympics approached, concentrating on it for several years and winning more Olympic medals - she thus became the second woman and one of only four athletes to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Games, and in 2006 became the only athlete to have won more than one medal at both Games. In 2005, she set a new 10,000m World Record at 14'19.73" - it has since been beaten, but remains a Canadian record at the time of writing. Following the 2006 Winter Games, she took inspiration from fellow speed skater Joey Cheek who had donated his gold medal to Right To Play and gave $10,000 of her own money to the humanitarian organisation.

Hughes at the 2012 Olympics

At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Hughes worked as a cycling commentator for CBC. This inspired her to make a return to cycling, which she did in 2010; less than a year later at the PanAmerican Games she won the Road Race with an advantage of 1'18" and the Individual Time Trial with 28", then the National Individual Time Trial Championship by 28". She also won the Tour of the Gila and La Visite Chrono du Gatineau, then came fifth at the World Individual Time Trial Championship, but for many fans her most impressive achievement was her long solo breakaway at the World Road Race Championship, enlivening a race that many found otherwise boring. Having won La Flèche Wallonne and another National ITT Championship in 2012, Hughes qualified for the Olympics and was fifth in the Individual Time Trial.

Alongside Cindy Klassen, another speed skater from Winnipeg, Hughes is the joint most successful Canadian Olympian of all time. In recognition of her athletic achievements and humanitarian activities she has been awarded the Order of Manitoba, is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has two honourary degrees from the Universities of Manitoba and New Brunswick.

Wouter Weylandt

Wouter Weylandt, 27.09.1984 - 09.05.2011

Born in Ghent, Belgium on this day in 1984, Wouter Weylandt scored some good results prior to 2004, then that year came third at the Under-23 Paris-Roubaix and earned himself a trainee contract with QuickStep-Davitamon. In 2005, riding with a full professional contract from the same team, he won the GP Briek Schotte after starting the season with mononucleosis; then in 2006 the Points competition at the Tour of Poland. In 2007 he won seven races and in 2008, having been third at Gent-Wevelgem, he rode the Vuelta a Espana - his first Grand Tour, where he won Stage 17. The following year started with a tragedy when his close friend Frederiek Nilf, aged just 21, died of a heart attack while he slept between stages at the Tour of Qatar; later in the season Weylandt nearly repeated his earlier Vuelta success when he was second on Stage 4 but he left the race after Stage 16, then in 2010 he won Stage 3 at the Giro d'Italia.

He was, in the opinion of his fellow riders and fans, a rider destined for greatness; if not a Grand Tour victory, at least a Grand Tour Points competition. When he signed for 2011 to LeopardTrek - a new team consisting of some of the most promising young riders in the world, including Andy Schleck who was hotly tipped to win the Tour de France that year, some of the established greats including Fabian Cancellara, and some highly experienced older riders such as the legendary Jens Voigt - it seemed that there really couldn't be a better place for a rider such as him to develop his talents and learn the fine art of winning bicycle races.

On the 9th of May, at the Giro d'Italia which just one year previously had been disrupted when riders protested against poor safety conditions, he was killed as he descended the Passo del Bocco at 80kph. According to Manuel Antonio Cardoso, who was behind him at the time, Weylandt had looked over his shoulder to see if other riders were catching him and lost control, hitting a guardrail before being catapulted 10m across the road and landing heavily on his face. The race's chief medical officer was nearby in a car and saw the accident take place: "he was already and clearly dead upon impact. I had never seen such a thing before, such a sudden death," he later told reporters. The impact when he hit the wall would have been sufficient to end his career even had he have fallen there - an autopsy found that his left leg had been so badly damaged it would have required amputation. His death was attributed to skull and facial injuries and massive damage to his internal organs - it was noted that the impact when he hit the road had stopped his heart instantaneously and there would not have been time for him to suffer. His girlfriend, An-Sophie, was five months pregnant when he died.

Pedro Horrillo
It's often said - with some truth - that academic qualifications are few and far between in the men's professional peloton (the same is very much not true among the women: since few female cyclists will ever make a living from their sport, few ever considered it as a future occupation and only took it up while at university). Pedro Horillo, born in Eibar on this day in 1974, is a retired Basque cyclist and an exception: he had already earned a degree in philosophy from Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, the Basque national university, when he became a professional rider with Vitalicio Seguros-Grupo Generali in 1998 and after his retirement he became well-respected for his intelligently-written articles on cycling and doping.

Horrillo at the 2009 Tour of California

Horrillo spent his first three years with Vitalico Seguros and, in his second, rode in the Tour de France for the first time and scored a handful of decent stage finishes for a debutant, including 18th on Stage 1, then came 135th overall. In 2001 he went to Mapei-QuickStep and finished four stages at the Vuelta a Espana in the top ten; then in 2002, with the same team, he won Stage 2 at Paris-Nice and was third on Stage 13 at the Vuelta. The following year he went to Rabobank, with which he would spend the remainder of his career; he won Stage 3 at the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya that year and Stage 1 at the Sachsen Tour the next. While he had many more good results (and rode the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta in 2007), they would be the final victories of his career.

He retired in 2009 following a horrific crash at the Giro in which he hit a railing and plunged over it into a ravine, falling 60m and suffering a broken neck, knee and thigh as well as a punctured lung. He was unconscious when the medics got to him, then awoke while in the ambulance and was placed in an induced coma. The following day - when riders mounted a protest at safety conditions in the race, just as they would the following year and again following the death of Wouter Weylandt in 2009 - he was brought back to consciousness for scans which, thankfully, revealed no brain injuries. He spent the next five weeks in hospital, then made a full recovery but never took part in another race, finding that he was no longer able to perform at his previous level. However, he still follows cycling and is especially keen on the Hell of the North, Paris-Roubaix: ""If I could only have ridden one race as a pro, that would have been it - and if possible, in the rain because that's the real Roubaix when it rains," he says.

Beth Heiden
Elizabeth Lee Heiden Reid, known as Beth Heiden, was born in Madison, Wisconsin on this day in 1959 and is probably the only World Road Race Champion who wasn't really a cyclist. She played tennis and soccer while at school, then also took up running in 1975 and set a national record for her age group that same year. She was also a speed skater and, the following year, qualified for the Olympics where she was 11th in the 3,000m. In 1979, she became World Speed Skating Champion after winning all four of the constituent races.

Left to right: Sara Doctor, Connie Carpenter, Beth Heiden

Many cyclists have competed in speed skating in the past, with Marianne Vos and Clara Hughes being perhaps the two most famous examples; but invariably they concentrated on cycling after discovering their proficiency at it. Heiden did not: she took up cycling as part of her cross-training preparation for the speed skating events at the 1980 Winter Olympics and never fell in love with the bike, nor became a true cycling, like Vos and Hughes did - in fact, when she became the first ever American to win the UCI World Road Race Championships in 1980, beating Greg Lemond by three years, she did so almost as an afterthought. Having done so, she returned to speed skating, then took up cross-country skiing and never went back to cycling again. Who knows what she might have achieved if she had done?


Born in Australia on this day in 1974, Nigel Barley fell three metres from a roof and landed on a hammer; aged 26, he was a paraplegic. After spending a year learning what he could do - and techniques to do what he couldn't - he decided to take up handcycling, then two years later set a new handcycle World 24-hour record when he covered 462km; three years after that he rode the 4,437km between Perth and Sydney. In 2009 he won the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial at the National Championships. Silver and bronze at the 2011 World Cup and several good results during the first half of 2012, as part of the World Cup and the Paracycling Tour, qualified him for the Paralympic Games in London, where he won silver in the Individual Time Trial.

Alfred Haemerlinck, the most successful
rider you've never heard of

Alfred Haemerlinck, born in Assenede, Belgium on this day in 1905, won Stages 1 and 6 at the Tour de France in 1931, which earned him the maillot jaune for a single day. Those two stages were the most prestigious victories of his decade-long professional career, but he is chiefly remembered for the enormous number of smaller, less-well-known races that he entered and won: according to some apparently reliable estimates, as many as 493 - higher than some estimates for Eddy Merckx.

Benoni Beheyt, born in Zwijnaarde, Belgium on this day in 1940, won Gent-Wevelgem and the World Road Race Championship in 1963 and Stage 22a at the Tour de France, the General Classification at the Ronde van België and the National Road Race Championship in 1964.

Ángel Casero, born in Albalat dels Tarongers on this day in 1972, was Spanish Road Race Champion in 1998 and 1999. In 2000 he was second overall at the Vuelta a Espana, then in 2001 he won it.

Giovanni Fidanza, born in Bergamo, Italy on this day in 1965, won the overall Points competition at the Giro d'Italia and Stage 20 at the Tour de France in 1989, then Stage 2 at the Giro in 1990.

Heinz Wengler, born in Germany on this day in 1912, shared victory for Stage 17b (a 37km road race) at the 1937 Tour de France with the Adolph Braeckeveldt. His nickname was Herr Schmal on account of his diminutive stature and five years later, when he was 30, he was killed in action on the Eastern Front.

Enrico Zaina, born in Brescia on this day in 1967, won Stage 17 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1992, Stage 11 at the Giro d'Italia in 1995 and Stages 9, 20 and second place overall at the 1996 Giro.

Other cyclists born on this day: Raúl Saavedra (Colombia, 1969); Cosme Saavedra (Argentina, 1901, died 1967); Chartchai Juntrat (Thailand, 1951); Alexey Kolessov (Kazakhstan, 1984); Mauno Uusivirta (Finland, 1948); Rebecca Henderson (Australia, 1991); Mitsuteru Tanaka (Japan, 1971); Michael Andrew (Malaysia, 1943); Kris Gerits (Belgium, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 09.05.2013

Pino Cerami
(image credit: Ken's Bike Shop)

La Flèche Wallonne took place on this day in 1960, the 24th edition of the race. It ran from Liège to Charleroi for the first time, having been run in the opposite direction for the previous eleven years, and covered 208km. The winner was Giuseppe 'Pino' Cerami, who had taken Belgian citizenship in 1956 and as such was not the second Italian winner of the race despite being born in Sicily (the Italians didn't have to wait long, however - Roberto Poggiali won in 1965 and since then Italian riders have won another sixteen times, making them the second most successful nation in this race after the Belgians).

The Giro d'Italia began just once on this day, in 2009. The race took an unusual course around Italy's most historic cities and missed most of the climbs that have made it famous, yet it was marked by near-tragedy when the Basque rider Pedro Horrillo crashed into a ravine during Stage 8. He fell 60 metres, breaking his neck, knee cap, both femurs and puncturing a lung. After regaining consciousness in the ambulance as he was taken to hospital, medics placed him in an artificially-induced coma. In time, Horrillo made a full recovery; but has not returned to racing. The next day saw riders protesting at safety conditions, refusing to race until they came to the final sprint - which drew criticism from fans and organisers - and the stage was neutralised. Denis Menchov was overall winner, followed by Danilo di Luca who would subsequently be stripped of his result in a doping scandal.

Matthew Bushe
(image credit: Fanny Schertzer CC BY-SA 3.0)

The term "meteoric" doesn't do justice to American rider Matthew Busche's rise to the top levels of professional cycling: in August of 2008 he joined the ProContinental Kelly Benefit Strategies team and by the beginning of the next year he was riding with RadioShack, one of the best-financed and most successful teams in the history of the sport. Having enjoyed a successful career as a cross-country winner during which he won two NCAA National titles, he switched allegiance to cycling and joined the amateur ISCorp team in 2007 and finished in third place for Stage 2 at the St. Louis Gateway Cup with them. He then began racking up a series of top ten results in National Championships and other races before turning professional and moving on to European stage races, where he also did well. He then won the National Championship road race in 2011 and was entered into his first Grand Tour, the Vuelta a Espana, where he came 113th overall. His contract was extended following RadioShack's merger with LeopardTrek late in 2011, and the world will be watching closely in 2012 to see if Johan Bruyneel's faith in him is deserved.

Vincenzo Borgarello was born in Cambiano, Piedmont on this day in 1884. In 1911, he won Stage 2 at the Giro d'Italia, followed by Stages 2, 7 and 9 at the Giro and 8 and 14 at the Tour de France the following year. He led the race after Stage 2 - and thus became the first Italian to lead the General Classification in the history of the Tour, though he eventually finished in 13th place overall.

Though Rubens Bertogliati - who was born in Lugano, Switzerland on this day in 1979 - has twice been National Time Trial Champion (2009/10), he is better known as an all-rounder; a combination which has seen him record some impressive results in the Grand Tours. He won the opening time trial at the 2002 Tour de France, then rode well enough the next day to keep the yellow jersey, and in 2010 he was second in the mixed-terrain Stage 6 at the Giro d'Italia.

Flavio Giupponi was born in Bergamo on this day in 1964. In 1989, he won Stage 14 at the Giro d'Italia and finished the overall General Classification in second place, 1'15" behind Frenchman Laurent Fignon.

Svein Tuft
Canadian cyclist Svein Tuft was born in British Columbia on this day in 1977. He would leave school at the age of 15 and spent the next few years mountain climbing and cycling, completing a 4,000km ride to Alaska and back whilst still a teenager, then began racing in 1999. His results were immediately good and he found himself with a contract to ride for Symmetrics team which, while virtually unknown in Europe, could be found competing in many of North America's most prestigious cycling events and which reached a wider audience when it was the subject of a Marvel comic, in which Tuft is portrayed as having enormous muscles. Upon seeing the picture, he told reporters "We're all a bunch of sissies really!"

Tuft has become highly respected as a time trial specialist, winning the National Championship in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010 - which earned him the offer of a contract with the ill-fated Team Pegasus which fell by the wayside after sponsorship issues. Instead, he joined Spidertech-C10 for 2011 and with them won another National Time Trial and the National Road Race for the first time. In August that year, he announced that he had been offered a place with the new Australian team GreenEDGE which was at that time hoping to be given a UCI ProTeam licence, which it subsequently received - so this year, we are likely to see how Tuft copes with a Grand Tour.

Iñigo Landaluze

Iñigo Landaluze
(image credit: McSmit CC BY-SA 3.0)

Basque rider Iñigo Landaluze was born on this day in 1977, turning professional with Euskaltel-Euskadi in 2001 and remaining with them for the rest of his career. He appeared on the cusp of making a breakthrough into the upper echelons of the sport with victory at the 2005 Critérium du Dauphiné, but shortly afterwards it was announced that anti-doping controls had discovered an unusually high level of testosterone in his samples.

However, he was cleared on a technicality when it was shown that correct laboratory procedure had not been followed during the test - whereas the Court of Arbitration for Sport concluded that the rider "probably had" intentionally doped, it found that there was no grounds to prosecute as the UCI had failed to satisfy the burden of proof by failing to provide evidence to support claims that procedure violations would not affect the outcome of the test. Since he became free to return to racing in 2006, anti-doping laws and regulations have changed considerably and it is believed that had the case have been tried today Landaluze would have been sanctioned.

On the 17th of July 2009, he failed two anti-doping tests, one at the Critérium du Dauphiné again and another a few days after the race ended - this time for Continuous Erythropoietin Receptor Activator or CERA, a blood-boosting drug that combines the notorious EPO with other drugs designed to increase its effectiveness and longevity within the body. He was provisionally banned by the UCI pending investigation and has not yet returned to the sport.


François Faber
Though François Faber was born in France (Aulnay-sur-Iton, 26th January 1887), his father was from Luxembourg and as a result François had Luxembourgian nationality. However, he insisted throughout his life that he was French, despite his Luxembourg passport and as such would not have been at all pleased had he have known he would find his place in history as the first foreigner to win the Tour de France.

When he began cycling, he rapidly gained the nickname The Giant of Colombes because, at 1.88m tall and weighing 88kg, he was considerably larger than the average man of his day and enormous in comparison to most cyclists. Photographs show a man who looks phenomenally strong - as indeed he was, his natural physique honed by hard labour as a removal man and docker. He began his professional cycling career with Labor in 1906 and entered his first Tour with them, but did not finish. Two years later, he moved on to Peugeot and entered again, this time winning four stages and achieving 2nd overall, then won the Giro di Lombardia. He departed for the mighty Alcyon in 1909, the most successful team in Tour history and it was with them that he not only won the race but, battling through some of the worst weather ever recorded during the event before or since, also won five consecutive stages (six in total) - a record that has not yet been broken after more than a century.

He remained with Alcyon through 1910 and won three stages at the Tour that year, coming 2nd overall behind team mate Octave Lapize and also winning Paris-Tours. Now one of the most respected and sought-after riders in the world, he was tempted away to Automoto and spent a quiet two years with them and Saphir Cycles before returning to Peugeot for the next two years, winning Paris-Roubaix, one stage at the Tour of Belgium and a total of four at the Tour de France during the period. The First World War put paid to European racing until conflict came to an end, and Faber signed up with the Foreign Legion almost as soon as hostilities were declared. He was attached to the 2nd Régiment de Marche of the 1st Regiment, FFL, promoted to the rank of corporal.

Faber was 28 years old when he died on this day in 1915 at the Battle of Artois. His regiment came under attack and lost 1,950 men from a total of 2,900, and though Faber survived the first waves of the attack unharmed he saw that one of his comrades was lying injured in no-man's land. He climbed out of the trench, went to the fallen man and had carried him part of the way to safety when he was fatally shot in the back. Later, he was posthumously awarded the Médaille militaire for his bravery. That very morning, he had received a telegram informing him that his wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter.

Wouter Weylandt
On this day in 2011, at the Giro d'Italia which just one year previously had been disrupted when riders protested against safety conditions, LeopardTrek's 26-year-old Belgian rider Wouter Weylandt was killed as he descended the Passo del Bocco at 80kph. According to Manuel Antonio Cardoso, who was behind him at the time, Weylandt had looked over his shoulder to see if other riders were catching him and lost control, hitting a guardrail before being catapulted 10m across the road and landing heavily on his face. The race's chief medical officer was nearby in a car and saw the accident take place: "he was already and clearly dead upon impact. I had never seen such a thing before, such a sudden death," he later told reporters. The impact when he hit the wall would have been sufficient to end his career even had he have fallen there - an autopsy found that his left leg had been so badly damaged it would have required amputation. His death was attributed to skull and facial injuries and massive damage to his internal organs - it was noted that the impact when he hit the road had stopped his heart instantaneously and there would not have been time for him to suffer. His girlfriend, An-Sophie, was five months pregnant when he died.

The following stage was neutralised and church bells rang along the route, riders wearing black armbands taking turns to lead the peloton. Weylandt's race number, 108, is no longer assigned to riders in the Giro and became an integral part of the team's kit design, as well as a common sight at many races where fans and riders alike display it to show their respects.

Wouter Weylandt, 27.09.1984 - 09.05.2011
(image credit: Dzipi CC BY-SA 2.0)

Other cyclists born on this day: René Rillon (France, 1892, died 1956); Jean-Marie Joubert (France, 1932); Nobuhira Takanuki (Japan, 1938); Karl-Dietrich Diers (East Germany, 1953); Hans Michalsky (West Germany, 1949); Constantin Stănescu (Romania, 1928); Vid Cencic (Uruguay, 1933).

Daily Cycling Facts 27.09.12

Clara Hughes

Hughes at the Thüringen Rundfahrt, 2012

Born in Winnipeg, Canada on this day in 1972, Clara Hughes - in common with so many other riders - began her career as an athlete in speed skating, which she took up at the age of 16 after seeing Gaétan Boucher win gold at the 1988 Olympic Games. A year later she started cycling; only three years later, in 1992, she became National Road Race Champion. In 1994 she won the Women's Challenge, one of the hardest and most prestigious events in the sport, then in 1995 she was fourth overall at the Tour de France Féminin and won the National Individual Time Trial Championship and in 1996 she won bronze medals in the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial at the Olympics.

Hughes took a hiatus from cycling and returned to speed skating as the 1998 Winter Olympics approached, concentrating on it for several years and winning more Olympic medals - she thus became the second woman and one of only four athletes to have won medals in both the Summer and Winter Games, and in 2006 became the only athlete to have won more than one medal at both Games. In 2005, she set a new 10,000m World Record at 14'19.73" - it has since been beaten, but remains a Canadian record at the time of writing. Following the 2006 Winter Games, she took inspiration from fellow speed skater Joey Cheek who had donated his gold medal to Right To Play and gave $10,000 of her own money to the humanitarian organisation.

Hughes at the 2012 Olympics

At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Hughes worked as a cycling commentator for CBC. This inspired her to make a return to cycling, which she did in 2010; less than a year later at the PanAmerican Games she won the Road Race with an advantage of 1'18" and the Individual Time Trial with 28", then the National Individual Time Trial Championship by 28". She also won the Tour of the Gila and La Visite Chrono du Gatineau, then came fifth at the World Individual Time Trial Championship, but for many fans her most impressive achievement was her long solo breakaway at the World Road Race Championship, enlivening a race that many found otherwise boring. Having won La Flèche Wallonne and another National ITT Championship in 2012, Hughes qualified for the Olympics and was fifth in the Individual Time Trial.

Alongside Cindy Klassen, another speed skater from Winnipeg, Hughes is the joint most successful Canadian Olympian of all time. In recognition of her athletic achievements and humanitarian activities she has been awarded the Order of Manitoba, is an Officer of the Order of Canada and has two honourary degrees from the Universities of Manitoba and New Brunswick.

Wouter Weylandt

Wouter Weylandt, 27.09.1984 - 09.05.2011

Born in Ghent, Belgium on this day in 1984, Wouter Weylandt scored some good results prior to 2004, then that year came third at the Under-23 Paris-Roubaix and earned himself a trainee contract with QuickStep-Davitamon. In 2005, riding with a full professional contract from the same team, he won the GP Briek Schotte after starting the season with mononucleosis; then in 2006 the Points competition at the Tour of Poland. In 2007 he won seven races and in 2008, having been third at Gent-Wevelgem, he rode the Vuelta a Espana - his first Grand Tour, where he won Stage 17. The following year started with a tragedy when his close friend Frederiek Nilf, aged just 21, died of a heart attack while he slept between stages at the Tour of Qatar; later in the season Weylandt nearly repeated his earlier Vuelta success when he was second on Stage 4 but he left the race after Stage 16, then in 2010 he won Stage 3 at the Giro d'Italia.

He was, in the opinion of his fellow riders and fans, a rider destined for greatness; if not a Grand Tour victory, at least a Grand Tour Points competition. When he signed for 2011 to LeopardTrek - a new team consisting of some of the most promising young riders in the world, including Andy Schleck who was hotly tipped to win the Tour de France that year, some of the established greats including Fabian Cancellara, and some highly experienced older riders such as the legendary Jens Voigt - it seemed that there really couldn't be a better place for a rider such as him to develop his talents and learn the fine art of winning bicycle races.

On the 9th of May, at the Giro d'Italia which just one year previously had been disrupted when riders protested against poor safety conditions, he was killed as he descended the Passo del Bocco at 80kph. According to Manuel Antonio Cardoso, who was behind him at the time, Weylandt had looked over his shoulder to see if other riders were catching him and lost control, hitting a guardrail before being catapulted 10m across the road and landing heavily on his face. The race's chief medical officer was nearby in a car and saw the accident take place: "he was already and clearly dead upon impact. I had never seen such a thing before, such a sudden death," he later told reporters. The impact when he hit the wall would have been sufficient to end his career even had he have fallen there - an autopsy found that his left leg had been so badly damaged it would have required amputation. His death was attributed to skull and facial injuries and massive damage to his internal organs - it was noted that the impact when he hit the road had stopped his heart instantaneously and there would not have been time for him to suffer. His girlfriend, An-Sophie, was five months pregnant when he died.

Pedro Horrillo
It's often said - with some truth - that academic qualifications are few and far between in the men's professional peloton (the same is very much not true among the women: since few female cyclists will ever make a living from their sport, few ever considered it as a future occupation and only took it up while at university). Pedro Horillo, born in Eibar on this day in 1974, is a retired Basque cyclist and an exception: he had already earned a degree in philosophy from Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, the Basque national university, when he became a professional rider with Vitalicio Seguros-Grupo Generali in 1998 and after his retirement he became well-respected for his intelligently-written articles on cycling and doping.

Horrillo at the 2009 Tour of California

Horrillo spent his first three years with Vitalico Seguros and, in his second, rode in the Tour de France for the first time and scored a handful of decent stage finishes for a debutant, including 18th on Stage 1, then came 135th overall. In 2001 he went to Mapei-QuickStep and finished four stages at the Vuelta a Espana in the top ten; then in 2002, with the same team, he won Stage 2 at Paris-Nice and was third on Stage 13 at the Vuelta. The following year he went to Rabobank, with which he would spend the remainder of his career; he won Stage 3 at the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya that year and Stage 1 at the Sachsen Tour the next. While he had many more good results (and rode the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta in 2007), they would be the final victories of his career.

He retired in 2009 following a horrific crash at the Giro in which he hit a railing and plunged over it into a ravine, falling 60m and suffering a broken neck, knee and thigh as well as a punctured lung. He was unconscious when the medics got to him, then awoke while in the ambulance and was placed in an induced coma. The following day - when riders mounted a protest at safety conditions in the race, just as they would the following year and again following the death of Wouter Weylandt in 2009 - he was brought back to consciousness for scans which, thankfully, revealed no brain injuries. He spent the next five weeks in hospital, then made a full recovery but never took part in another race, finding that he was no longer able to perform at his previous level. However, he still follows cycling and is especially keen on the Hell of the North, Paris-Roubaix: ""If I could only have ridden one race as a pro, that would have been it - and if possible, in the rain because that's the real Roubaix when it rains," he says.

Beth Heiden
Elizabeth Lee Heiden Reid, known as Beth Heiden, was born in Madison, Wisconsin on this day in 1959 and is probably the only World Road Race Champion who wasn't really a cyclist. She played tennis and soccer while at school, then also took up running in 1975 and set a national record for her age group that same year. She was also a speed skater and, the following year, qualified for the Olympics where she was 11th in the 3,000m. In 1979, she became World Speed Skating Champion after winning all four of the constituent races.

Left to right: Sara Doctor, Connie Carpenter, Beth Heiden

Many cyclists have competed in speed skating in the past, with Marianne Vos and Clara Hughes being perhaps the two most famous examples; but invariably they concentrated on cycling after discovering their proficiency at it. Heiden did not: she took up cycling as part of her cross-training preparation for the speed skating events at the 1980 Winter Olympics and never fell in love with the bike, nor became a true cycling, like Vos and Hughes did - in fact, when she became the first ever American to win the UCI World Road Race Championships in 1980, beating Greg Lemond by three years, she did so almost as an afterthought. Having done so, she returned to speed skating, then took up cross-country skiing and never went back to cycling again. Who knows what she might have achieved if she had done?


Born in Australia on this day in 1974, Nigel Barley fell three metres from a roof and landed on a hammer; aged 26, he was a paraplegic. After spending a year learning what he could do - and techniques to do what he couldn't - he decided to take up handcycling, then two years later set a new handcycle World 24-hour record when he covered 462km; three years after that he rode the 4,437km between Perth and Sydney. In 2009 he won the Road Race and the Individual Time Trial at the National Championships. Silver and bronze at the 2011 World Cup and several good results during the first half of 2012, as part of the World Cup and the Paracycling Tour, qualified him for the Paralympic Games in London, where he won silver in the Individual Time Trial.

Alfred Haemerlinck, the most successful
rider you've never heard of

Alfred Haemerlinck, born in Assenede, Belgium on this day in 1905, won Stages 1 and 6 at the Tour de France in 1931, which earned him the maillot jaune for a single day. Those two stages were the most prestigious victories of his decade-long professional career, but he is chiefly remembered for the enormous number of smaller, less-well-known races that he entered and won: according to some apparently reliable estimates, as many as 493 - higher than some estimates for Eddy Merckx.

Benoni Beheyt, born in Zwijnaarde, Belgium on this day in 1940, won Gent-Wevelgem and the World Road Race Championship in 1963 and Stage 22a at the Tour de France, the General Classification at the Ronde van België and the National Road Race Championship in 1964.

Ángel Casero, born in Albalat dels Tarongers on this day in 1972, was Spanish Road Race Champion in 1998 and 1999. In 2000 he was second overall at the Vuelta a Espana, then in 2001 he won it.

Giovanni Fidanza, born in Bergamo, Italy on this day in 1965, won the overall Points competition at the Giro d'Italia and Stage 20 at the Tour de France in 1989, then Stage 2 at the Giro in 1990.

Heinz Wengler, born in Germany on this day in 1912, shared victory for Stage 17b (a 37km road race) at the 1937 Tour de France with the Adolph Braeckeveldt. His nickname was Herr Schmal on account of his diminutive stature and five years later, when he was 30, he was killed in action on the Eastern Front.

Enrico Zaina, born in Brescia on this day in 1967, won Stage 17 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1992, Stage 11 at the Giro d'Italia in 1995 and Stages 9, 20 and second place overall at the 1996 Giro.

Other cyclists born on this day: Raúl Saavedra (Colombia, 1969); Cosme Saavedra (Argentina, 1901, died 1967); Chartchai Juntrat (Thailand, 1951); Alexey Kolessov (Kazakhstan, 1984); Mauno Uusivirta (Finland, 1948); Rebecca Henderson (Australia, 1991); Mitsuteru Tanaka (Japan, 1971); Michael Andrew (Malaysia, 1943); Kris Gerits (Belgium, 1971).

Evening Cycling News 09.05.12

Giro d'Italia Stage 4 - Tour of Chongming Island Stage 1 - 2004 Olympic dope samples may be retested - Tchalykh wins controversial Azerbaijani TT - Best evidence yet for Contador return to SaxoBank - Other racing news (links) - Cycling:  Fahrradi Farfall FFX supercar...er...bike - News you might have missed - RIP 108

Racing
Giro d'Italia Stage 4

Ramūnas Navardauskas, now with
Garmin-Barracuda

On Wednesday, the Giro returned to Italy for a 33.2km team time trial around Verona - another fast, flat course with only a little pimple of a hill shortly after the first time check and several long straights on the outward and return journeys, followed by a flat and a straight 800m section to the finish line.

Verona, a World Heritage Site, has a great deal of history and monuments even by the standards of ancient Italian cities. Not all of the history makes pleasant reading - it has been ruled by blood-thirsty tyrants, suffered an earthquake and numerous plagues and, in the Second World War, was the site of unspeakable horror when large numbers of captured enemy soldiers, anti-fascists, left-wingers and Jews were tortured at what was then a fortress and has since been converted into a church, the Santuario della Madonna di Lourdes.

Garmin-Barracuda, many fans' favourite today, performed sufficiently well to both win the stage and put their 24-year-old Lithuanian Ramūnas Navardauskas into the maglia rosa with an advantage of 10", bringing the four-day reign of BMC's Taylor Phinney - who is no doubt still in pain following the crash caused by Robert Ferrari in Stage 3 - to an end. Navardauskas' team mates Tyler Farrar, Robert Hunter and Ryder Hesjedal take 2nd, 3rd and 4th places behind him.

"The jersey is a very big thing for me," a smiling Navadauskas told the cameras during his post-race interview. "I really love this team. They take care of me."

Top Ten
1 Garmin-Barracuda 37'04"  
2 Katusha +5"  
3 Astana +22"  
4 SaxoBank ST  
5 Omega Pharma-QuickStep +24"  
6 Orica-GreenEDGE +25"  
7 Liquigas-Cannondale +26"  
8 RadioShack-Nissan +28"  
9 Sky +30"  
10 BMC +31"
(Full stage results and GC)

Stage 5 is the last flat parcours for a few days as 6, 7 and 8 all rate as medium mountain stages. Beginning in Modena, it's a strange sort of stage being 209km in length with hardly any corners - the first 172km looks rather like a massively scaled-up sprint with the only sizable deviation from the line being made necessary by the existence of Bologna. There's a little Category 4 hill at 172.1km, rising to 109m, then three gentle and uncategorised climbs in the 16km after it before the final 14km, which are as flat and as straight as the earlier part of the race all the way to the last kilometre when the terrain rises almost imperceptibly. (History along the route)

Stages 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21

Tour of Chongming Island Stage 1
It's funny, really, that the UCI pour so much money into their efforts to "globalise" cycling (which really means "globalising" the UCI) and refuse to put more into women's cycling, because women's cycling has been blazing a trail in the Far East ever since 2007 and the first Tour of Chongming Island - athree-stage event that has become one of the most important fixtures on the calendar and is followed by the Tour of Chongming Road World Cup.

Melissa Hoskins

Melissa Hoskins (Orica-GreenEDGE) faced stiff competition in the bunch sprint to the finish line with both Rochelle Gilmore (Faren-Honda) and Monia Baccaile (MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss) chasing her all the way, but proved the fastest of the three on the first of the three pancake-flat stages that are ideally suited to a sprint specialist such as herself - she also won the first intermediate sprint and took second place on the second, picking up useful points for her team.

Despite the near-inevitability of a sprint finish, Hitec Products-Mistral Home and AA Drink-Leontien.nl fired off numerous attacks during the race. None got far as the teams with the best sprinters kept things under control, making sure the race ended how they wanted it to end. In the last couple of kilometres, as they got the sprinters into a position, a crash back in the pack threw Sarah Düster (Rabobank) high into the air and for a second looked horribly like a repeat of the crash at the 2010 Herald Sun Cycling Classic which left her with a broken pelvis. A rider from the Taiwan team also went down, creating a domino effect that saw several others also crash - fortunately, it appears that nobody was badly hurt; but as of yet there has been no confirmation.

Stage 2 (Stage 1 here)

"The girls positioned me out of the wind an they protected me extremely well," Hoskins said after the race. "Two kilometers out, they pushed it to front. Judith [Arndt] took the final left-hand turn and then handed things over to Jessie [MacLean]. Judith had taken us to the bottom of a small bridge, and Jessie took us over the bridge. Jessie gave a final push on the bridge, and then a MCipollini Giambenini attacked. I sat on her wheel for about 250-meters before stepping out of her draft with 150-meters to go. Once I was out front, I was able to hold on for the win." After bonification, Hoskins leads the General Classification with a 7" advantage over Baccaile.

There was some confusion after the race when the UCI accidentally published the General Classification results complete with bonification adjustments instead of the stage results.

Top Ten

  1.  Melissa Hoskins Orica GreenEdge 1h49'01"
  2.  Rochelle Gilmore Faren-Honda ST
  3.  Monia Baccaile MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss ST
  4.  Liesbet De Vocht Rabobank ST
  5.  Charlotte Becker Specialized-Lululemon ST
  6.  Marta Bastianelli MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss ST
  7.  Lucy Martin AA Drink-Leontien.nl ST
  8.  Elena Cecchini MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss ST
  9.  Emilie Moberg Hitec Products-Mistral Home ST
  10.  Evgenia Romanyuta RusVelo ST
(Full stage result and GC)

2004 Olympic doping control samples may be re-tested
The International Olympic Council has announced that it may oblige WADA's request to re-test samples taken at the 2004 Games, utilising new procedures developed in the intervening time, prior to preserved materials being destroyed in August in line with the standing 8 year policy. The number of samples liable to be re-tested has not yet been set, but it is believed likely to between one hundred to several hundred chosen from athletes competing in what IOC medical commissioner Arne Ljungqvist terms "high risk" sports - which we can obviously assume to include cycling.

When samples taken at the 2008 Games were re-tested, five samples were found to contain traces of CERA, an EPO variant undetectable with tests available at the time. Since doping was widespread in cycling and other sports before the Operacion Puerto scandal of 2006, there's a high chance that more cases will come to light if WADA's request is successful.

Tchalykh wins in Azerbaijan

Tchalykh wins Azerbaijan TT
Elena Tchalykh (Dolmans-Boels) won the Azerbeidzjan de Heydar Aliyev Anniversary Time Trial, the first UCI women's event in Azerbaijan and one that has been controversial, not least of all because police and government authorities reportedly regular use rape (and threats of rape) against defendants and defendants' families as a means of coercing confessions from prisoners.

In fact, since the country's human rights record is extremely questionable overall (political prisoners are routinely imprisoned without proof of wrongdoing, prisoners are tortured and beaten, the media is strictly controlled by the authoritarian government, religious minorities suffer persecution despite token equality laws and thousands of citizens have been illegally evicted to make way for urban renewal in capital city Baku - more of this in the news in the coming weeks, since Baku is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest this month), organisations from any democratic nation shouldn't really be promoting anything in Azerbaijan except for popular uprising. Anyway, that's enough of that. Back to cycling...

Top Ten
  1.  Elena Tchalykh Dolmans-Boels 34'37"
  2.  Olena Pavlukhina +34" 15
  3.  Aleksandra Sosenko Vaiana-Tepso +1'00"
  4.  Maria Mishina +1'06"
  5.  Olena Sharpa +1'16"
  6.  Nicole Hanselmann +1'21"
  7.  Oksana Lesnyk +1'26"
  8.  Katarína Hranaiova +1'40"
  9.  Emma Trott Dolmans-Boels +1'48"
  10.  Katarzyna Sosna Vaiana-Tepso +2'10"
(Full result)

Daniel Navarro, now with SaxoBank:
"Alberto needs me"

Best evidence yet for Contador return to SaxoBank
According to Asturian newspaper Elcomercio, Alberto Contador - whose two-year backdated ban is due to end early in August - has confirmed that he plans to ride this year's Vuelta a Espana. What is more interesting is that SaxoBank rider Daniel Navarro told the same paper he won't take part in the Tour de France this year because: "Alberto needs me and I want to have good form for August."

Neither Contador nor SaxoBank have yet confirmed that he will return to the team, but he is widely expected to do so. Could Navarro's comments have been an accidental revelation of something he knows and we don't?



Other News
Ferrari apology a "clear PR exercise," says Cycling News

"Team Type 1-Sanofi secures repeat invite to the Tour de Suisse" (Velonation)

"Jody Cundy aims to inspire at London Paralympics" (British Cycling)

"French federation tests for corticoids at 4 Jours de Dunkerque, One rider did not start final stage as a result, says L’Équipe" (Cycling News)

"Garner happy with place on podium" (This Is Leicestershire)

Jelejah 1Malaysia - Jai Crowford wins Stage 2 as Yusup Abrekov takes GC (Bernama)

Cycling
Fahrradi Farfall FFX is not what it seems
If you opened up the bonnet of the Fahrradi Farfall FFX, what would you expect to find? A V8? A V12? A W16? What you probably wouldn't expect is what's actually in there...

Road legal in Austria, the Fahrradi FFX cost £1.2 million to build - £200,000 more than it would cost to buy the Ferrari FXX that inspired it.

The news you might have missed
Britain
"Wales gets tough over green travel" (The Guardian)

"Give pupils more room on road, says cyclist Beaumont" (The Scotsman)

"'Britain's dumbest cycle lane' isn't actually a cycle lane at all" (road.cc)

"Hotel installs bicycle-powered television" (Telegraph)

Worldwide
"Cyclofemme: A Global Day of Women's Cycling" (Huffington Post)

"Calgary hires its first cycling co-ordinator" (Calgary Herald, Canada)

"In Bibwewadi and Hadapsar, two-wheelers [motorcycles] zoom into cyclists’ space" (The Indian Express)

"New York’s Five Boro Bike Tour: We Hit the Road with 32,000 Happy Cyclists" (Wired)

"ABC 24 presenters are embroiled in controversy after claiming on Monday morning that car “doorings” of cyclists aren’t always solely the driver’s fault – they reckon sometimes the cyclist is at fault too" (Crikey)

Tweets

Giorgia Bronzini ‏ @GiorgiaBronziniTime to relax :) (pic)

Cycleboredom ‏ @CycleboredomLocal pub radio piece on Bike to School Day (loosely): "Drive gently out there today." So, the rest of the time drive like asses? #phrasing

RIP 108

Wouter Weylandt - born 27th of September 1984, Ghent, Belgium; died 9th of May 2011, Mezzanego, Italy.