Daily Cycling Facts 07.08.2014

Steven Rooks

Rooks at the Tour, 1988

Steven Rooks, born in Oterleek, Netherlands on this day in 1960, turned professional with the legendary Ti-Raleigh team in 1982, then switched to Sem-France Loire the following year and won Liège-Bastogne-Liège. In 1985 he was 25th overall at the Tour de France; then ninth in 1986 and second in 1988 after winning Stage 12 on Alpe d'Huez - and he also won the King of the Mountains and was second overall in the Points competition. He would never do quite so well in the Tour again but remained competitive for a few more years, coming seventh overall and third in the King of the Mountains and Points in 1989, 33rd overall in 1990, 26th in 1991 and seventeenth in 1992. He rode it again in 1993 and 1994, failing to finish on both occasions.

Away from the Tour, Rooks won the Tour de Luxembourg and the Amstel Gold Race in 1986, the National Derny Championship in 1987 and the National Road Race Championship in 1991 and 1994 before retiring in 1995. In 1999, Rooks, Peter Winnen and Maarten Ducrot decided it was time to clear their consciences with regard to doping, doing so publicly on the Dutch TV show Reporter and saying that they were doing so to highlight how widespread the problem had become. Rooks admitted that he had used amphetamines and testosterone throughout his career; in 2009 he confessed in a book written by journalist Marc Smeets that he'd also use EPO since 1989 - around the time that the drug first found its way into the cycling world. "It was necessary [to do so in order] to finish high up in the classifications," he said.


Adriano Baffi, born in Vailate, Italy on this day in 1962, won Stages 2, 8, 18 and the Points competition at the Giro d'Italia in 1993 and Stage 19 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1995, along with numerous other races (including a National Points Championship on the track in 1999) before he retired in 2002. He then became a directeur sportif, working with various teams and was recruited by LeopardTrek for the 2011 season. His father, Pierino, was also a professional cyclist and in 1958 became the second man in history (after Miguel Poblet) to win stages in all three Grand Tours in a single season.

Edward Klabiński, more commonly known as Édouard Klabinski in France, was born in Herne, Germany on this day in 1920 but was of Polish nationality. He rode as an independent immediately after the Second World War before signing to Stanord-Wolber in 1946. In 1947, riding for Mercier-Hutchinson, he became the first Pole to ride in the Tour de France and came 34th overall; in 1948 he was eighteenth overall.

Andriy Hryvko, born in Simferopol, Ukraine on this day in 1983, was National Time Trial Champion in 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2012. In 2012, he also won the National Road Race Championship.

Michele Merlo was born in Casaleone, Italy on this day in 1984. He won Stage 8 at the 2009 Tour of Britain and finished Stage 2 of the 2011 Giro d'Italia in twelfth place.

Other cyclists born on this day: Francisco Chamorro (Argentina, 1981); Travis Brown (USA, 1969); Iryna Chuzhynova (Ukraine, 1972); Mario Scirea (Italy, 1964); Roberto Brito (Mexico, 1947); Francisco Coronel (Mexico, 1942); Suriya Chiarasapawong (Thailand, 1949); Werner Wägelin (Switzerland, 1913, died 1991); Yahya Ahmad (Malaysia, 1954).

Daily Cycling Facts 06.08.2014

Stuart O'Grady

Stuart O'Grady

Like many of the world's top cyclists, Stuart O'Grady - born in Adelaide on this day in 1973 - has cycling in his blood: his father rode for South Australia in both track and road events and an uncle represented the country at the 1964 Olympics. He himself began to compete on track in the 1980s and, in 1992, helped to win the silver medal for the Team Pursuit at the Olympics; four years later, when he was again selected, the team won the bronze for the Pursuit and he won the bronze for the Points race.

O'Grady made the transition to road cycling in 1995 after joining GAN, the team that later became Crédit Agricole, and showed great promise right from the start with three victories; he also continued to perform well on the track, riding with the winning Pursuit team and coming third in the Individual Pursuit at the World Championships. He concentrated on the Olympics in 1996, win bronze on the Team Pursuit and Points race, then won the Cottesloe and Subiaco criteriums and Stages 1, 6 and 8 at the Herald Sun Tour before going to the Tour de France in 1997 - where he finished in eight place on Stage 4 and second on Stage 5, completing the race in 109th place overall. The following year, he wore the yellow jersey in Stages 4, 5 and 6 and won Stage 14 before coming second behind Erik Zabel in the overall Points competition: Australia began to dream that, 84 years after Don Kirkham and Ivor Munro had been the first Australians to compete in the world's greatest race, their first winner had emerged - and then became sure that O'Grady was to be that man when he finished in the top ten on eleven stages in 1999, once again coming second on Points.

It would never happen, of course: he knew every bit as well as Mark Cavendish does today that he'd never win a Tour and, also like Cav, probably became heartily sick of explaining to new fans he attracted to the sport why this was. O'Grady was 1.73m tall and 73kg; giving him, like most sprinters, the wrong sort of body shape to be able to compete with the wiry climbers in the mountains: those eleven top ten finishes in 1999 were superb, but 135th, 109th, 104th and 130th in the mountains left him in 94th place in the overall General Classification.

O'Grady picked up good results in 2000, including second place at the Tour Down Under and three top ten finishes at the Tour de France, but his only victory was Stage 3 at the GP du Midi-Libre - when he left the Tour after Stage 6 and finished the Road Race at the Olympics in 77th place, it was evident that something was wrong: that he won the Tour Down Under, twice stood on the podium at Paris-Nice, finished another eleven Tour stages in the top ten and was again second in the Points competition in 2001 is remarkable because in April 2002 he underwent surgery on a narrowed pelvic iliac artery which, doctors had discovered, was limiting the power output of one leg. His recovery was swift and complete; he went to the Tour that year and finished seven stages in the top ten, including third place on Stage 10 and was third overall on Points. Later in the year, he won the Road Race at the Commonwealth Games.

2003 got off to a superb start with victory at the National Championships and eighteen podium placings before the Tour got under way, but in France he found himself unable to take on several very strong sprinters including fellow Australians Baden Cooke (who won the green jersey) and Robbie McEwen, finishing the Points competition in seventh place. He switched teams to Cofidis in 2004 and won Stage 9 at the Tour, but was beaten by McEwen, Thor Hushovd and Zabel in the Points competition. In 2005 he came second in the Points competition, then he joined CSC the following year.

O'Grady in 2008

At CSC, it was suggested that O'Grady might do well in the big one-day Classics and he began to train for them. This turned out to be a wise move because, in 2007, he scored the greatest victory of his career when he won the legendary Paris-Roubaix, a race that many riders consider to be the hardest and most dangerous of them all; as of 2012 he remains the only Australian to have won it. He also finished third at the Dwars door Vlaanderen, fourth at Milano-Torino, fifth at Milan-San Remo and the Omloop Het Volk, ninth at the E3 Harelbeke and tenth at the Ronde van Vlaanderen that year - a stunning Classics season by anybody's standards, but a year that ended with a serious crash at the Tour in which he suffered a punctured lung and fractures to three vertebrae, eight ribs, his right collarbone and right shoulder blade. He was badly injured in another crash at Milan-San Remo in 2009 when he collided with a rider who fell in front of him, that time puncturing a lung and breaking his right collar bone and one rib.

O'Grady raced with LeopardTrek in 2011, but announced in August that he would be joining the new Australian ProTour GreenEDGE team. With them, raced his sixteenth Tour de France in 2012 and then his seventeenth in 2013 - tying with George Hincapie for most participations (Hincapie, however, confessed in 2012 to doping and thus had his results from three Tours disqualified; Jens Voigt also rode seventeen but did not finish three). He announced his retirement after the race. O'Grady created and still financially supports a youth team, CSC O'Grady, and is involved with Champions for Peace - an organisation of athletes that attempts to use the international co-operation found in sport to demonstrate that there are alternatives to conflict.

O'Grady was and remains a vocal opponent of doping, yet in 2013 he was listed among riders believed to have doped with EPO during the 1998 Tour, in which he had come second in the Points Competition and worn the maillot jaune for three stages (in 1998, a test for EPO had not been developed; preserved samples were being tested now that one was - hence the long delay). Within 24 hours, O'Grady issued a press statement in which he confessed his guilt, but said that the arrests at the Tour that year as part of the notorious Festina Affair had scared him so much that he had never doped again.

Arnie Baker
Arnie Baker, born in Montreal on this day in 1953, as a highly successful cycling coach - in that capacity, he has trained riders in preparation for around 140 National Championships, 40 record attempts and several Olympics. He was also a successful rider himself, setting eight US records in time trials.

Baker's reputation as a miracle worker looked to be in jeopardy when he was implicated in the Floyd Landis doping case. At the 2006 Tour de France, Landis cracked badly in Stage 16 and lost eight minutes, looking as though he was ready to abandon by the time the race reached the summit of the Alpe d'Huez at the end of the stage; yet the very next day set a blistering pace on Galibier that nobody could match. Both the A and B samples he provided at the end of Stage 17 tested positive for synthetic testosterone and abnormally high levels of epitestosterone, a natural steroid without performance-enhancing effects that can be used in an attempt to mask suspiciously-high testosterone levels. Landis was, eventually, stripped of his 2006 victory and banned from competition for two years.

On the 14th of April 2009, the French L'Express newspaper published a report claiming that information hacked from a French laboratory's network had been emailed from a computer registered to Baker to a Canadian doping lab, and he and Landis were "invited" to answer questions in a French court. Controversially in view of the lack of evidence it was able to find, the court gave Baker a one-year suspended sentence. Baker continues to state that the case against him had deep flaws and insists that he had no part in doping and has never knowingly received or sent on illegally-obtained documents.

Eros Poli, one history's most likable professional cyclists

Eros Poli
Eros Poli, born in Isola della Scala on this day in 1963, said that he only took up cycling because of the ban on using private cars for any purpose other than getting to work during the oil crisis of 1973 - he was given a choice, a bike or roller skates, and chose the bike. A talented sprinter in his own right, Poli became known as Mario Cipollini's lead-out man and was extremely successful in this role, not least of all because at 1.97m tall he was one of the very few riders big enough for the 1.89m Cipollini to be able to draft behind.

Like Cipollini and most large, heavy riders, Poli hated mountain stages - yet he attempted one of the most remarkable attacks ever seen in the Tour de France on Mont Ventoux in 1994. Having calculated that if he built up enough momentum on the flat approach his speed would carry him through and he'd reach the summit with a comfortable lead, he hit the infamous mountain at full speed and pedaled hard to the top. It worked: he was first to the summit, though Ventoux proved much harder than he'd anticipated (just as it invariably does) and his 20' lead dropped to 3'39". His efforts won him the Combativity award for the stage.

Cipollini was frequently accused of being arrogant during his career; yet while he shared Cipo's taste for flamboyant clothes and had the "Italian Stallion" looks that are considered sufficiently appealing by a sufficient number of people for him to have emulated Cipo's playboy lifestyle had he have chosen to do so, Poli was a far more humble and, as a result, likable character: despite many successes during his amateur career, he claimed he didn't believe until he was 28 that he could be a professional rider, and when asked during an interview which words he would like carved on his gravestone, he replied: "Here lies Eros Poli - famous for being tall and coming last in the Giro d'Italia." It was he who, in 1997, went to Tour director Jean-Marie Leblanc to announce that the riders had decided not to race for the first 45km of Stage 10 so that they could gather together and pay their respects at the memorial to Fabio Casartelli, who had been killed on the Tour two years earlier.

When asked by Cycling News about that remarkable stage win on Ventoux, Poli's answer was typical for him. Having explained that, for him, working for Cipollini was an honour, he talked briefly about himself before changing the subject to the success of a team mate: "Yes, that was the realisation of a dream. It was me, in the lead, all alone, the guy who people were applauding, like an actor on the stage. I was centre-stage, face to face with the public. Fantastic. That's why when I crossed the finish line I made a gesture of thanks. Me, the insignificant bike rider, the team rider of whom there are a hundred in the peloton. I had the chance to win a mythical stage with the Ventoux in the programme. And it's droll, because I felt the same sensation when Cedric [Vasseur] won his stage at La Chatre last week When I learnt that he'd won I was tearful with emotion, on the bike..."

Mickaël Delage

Mickaël Delage, born in Libourne, France on this day in 1985, was Junior National Champion in Team Pursuit and Madison in 2003, Under-23 National Champion in 2004 and Elite Team Pursuit Champion in 2006, when he also won Stage 1 at the Tour de l'Avenir. In 2011, he won the Combativity award for Stages 3 and 11 at the Tour de France.

Gabriele Bosisio, born in Lecco, Italy on this day in 1980, was a relatively unknown rider who enjoyed little success until he won Stage 7 at the Giro d'Italia in 2008, then finished fifth overall at the Tour of Britain later the same year. The next year, he was second at the National Time Trial Championship which took place in late June; then on the 6th of October news broke that a sample he provided on the 2nd of September had proven positive for EPO, an out-of-competition test carried out after suspicious blood values were detected on his biological passport. He was provisionally suspended by his LPR Brakes team, then banned from competition for two years on the 28th of April 2008 - as the ban was backdated to the announcement of the positive test, it expired on the 5th of October 2011 and he made his return with Utensilnord-Named - a team formed by his old managers after LPR Brakes dissolved in 2009 - in 2012.

érôme Coppel

Born in Annemasse on this day in 1986, Jérôme Coppel - along with Romain Sicard - was the subject of a 2011 four-page article in L'Equope titled Bientôt un crack française? ("Soon - a French champion?") His results to date certainly suggest he has the potential: he was National Under-19 Time Trial Champion in 2004 and National U-23 Time Trial Champion in 2006 and 2007, also managing podium finishes at the European and World Championships in the same period - and he performs very well on road too, having come fourth overall at the 2008 Tour de l'Avenir,  fifth at the 2010 Critérium du Dauphiné and fourteenth at the 2011 Tour de France (to which Saur-Sojasun was invited largely because of his high profile). In 2012, he was eleventh overall at Paris-Nice, twelfth at the Tour de Romandie and 21st at the Tour de France. Now aged 26 and about to enter his best years, he is a rider to watch and may yet prove to be the Tour winner that French fans have dreamed about for more than a quarter of a century.

Other cyclists born on this day: Erwin Thijs (Belgium, 1970); Yumiko Suzuki (Japan, 1960); Sebastian Kartfjord (Norway, 1987); Sören Lausberg (East Germany, 1969); Trần Văn Nen (South Vietnam, 1927); Gottlieb Amstein (Switzerland, 1906, died 1975); Roland Surrugue (France, 1938, died 1997); Francesco Bellotti (Italy, 1979).

Daily Cycling Facts 04.08.2014

Luc Leblanc
When Luc Leblanc was eleven, a drunk driver ploughed into him and his brother Gilles as the two boys rode their bikes near Limoge, where Luc had been born on this day in 1966. Gilles was so badly injured that he died a short while later, Luc spent the next six months in hospital and ended up with a weak leg that was noticeably shorter than the other.

Prior to the "accident," Leblanc's childhood ambition had been to become a priest. However, after a physiotherapist recommend cycling as a way to rebuild strength in his damaged leg, he was spotted by no less a figure than Raymond Poulidor who urged him to consider taking up more serious training with a view to becoming a professional rider. He began to do well in the early 1980s, culminating in a Stage 2 victory at the 1986 Circuit Cycliste Sarthe and earning a contract with the Toshiba-Look team for 1987 - and that year, he won the silver medal at the National Road Race Championship. A year later he won the GP Ouest France and came third overall at the Tour Méditerranéen.

Leblanc rode his first Tour de France in 1990 and finished two stages in the top ten, then in 1991 he finished Stages 12 and 17 in third place and came fifth overall. During Stage 12, he had joined a breakaway with Pascal Richard (Helvetia-La Suisse) and Charly Mottet (RMO). Mottet won the stage with Richard recording the same time, Leblanc was 2" behind them - but he was 6'55" ahead of previous race leader Greg Lemond, which put him into the yellow jersey (he presented it to Poulidor as a sign of gratitude) with an advantage of 2'35". Sadly, it couldn't last - the very next stage, Miguel Indurain beat him by 12'35" and led for the remainder of the race.

There were high hopes that Leblanc would get into the top three at the Tour in 1992 after he won the National Championship, but his leg - which had never fully recovered - started giving him problems. On top of that, he had a spell of bad luck with the bike and told team mates he was seriously considering retiring, then abandoned during Stage 14 en route to Alpe d'Huez. Fortunately, he was talked out of giving the sport up and, after medical attention and more physiotherapy, his leg began to improve and he was able to finish Stage 3 of the Giro d'Italia in third place. By 1994 he was even better than ever: he won the King of the Mountains at the Vuelta a Espana, then achieved his first Grand Tour stage win with victory on Stage 11 at the Tour - another five top ten finishes put him into fourth place overall, and later in the year he became Road Race Champion of the World.

The World Championship brought lucrative offers from a variety of teams. He settled for the French Le Groupemont, but disaster struck when the team's sponsors withdrew a week before the Tour and left them unable to take part. He then went to the Italian team Polti, but new problems with his leg resulted in an unsuccessful season and more surgery; once again he made a good recovery and in 1996 he won Stage 7, came sixth overall and fifth in the King of the Mountains at the Tour. It would be his last really good year - he won the Giro del Trentino and finished Stage 5 at the Giro d'Italia in second place in 1997 but failed to break into the top 20 at the Tour, then abandoned after Stage 13. In 1998 he finished stage 10 in 11th place, then abandoned after Stage 16.

Polti sacked Leblanc in 1999: his leg was causing problems again and the team decided that he was no longer competitive. An Italian court decided that this constituted unfair dismissal and ruled that Polti would have to pay him up until the date the contract was originally due to expire; by 2007 the money had still not been paid and Leblanc had to sue the UCI and Italian and French federations in order to get it. He admitted during Richard Virenque's trial in 2000 to using EPO when training for the Tour and the Vuelta.

Yvonne Reynders, born in Schaarbeek, Brussels on this day in 1937, won a total of three Track World Championships (Pursuit 1961, 1964, 1965), four World Road Championships (1959, 1963, 1965, 1966), three National Track Championships and seventeen criteriums as well as taking numerous silver and bronze medals during her career. She is frequently listed as the second most successful female cyclist of the 1960s after Beryl Burton.

José Vicente García, born in San Sebastián, Spain on this day in 1972, joined Banesto in 1994 as a trainee. He was still with them when the team became iBanesto in 2001, Illes Balears-Banesto in 2004, Illes Balears-Caisse d'Epargne in 2005 and Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears and year later, then  Caisse d'Epargne a year after that. He finally announced his retirement in 2011, by which time it had become Movistar - eighteen seasons with the same team. He won a stage at the Vuelta a Espana in 1997 and another in 2002 as well as one at the Tour de France in 2000.

Gilbert Bauvin, born in Lunéville, France on this day in 1927, led the Tour de France for one stage and came eighth overall in 1951; won Stages 10 and 12, led for two days and came tenth overall at the Tour in 1954; won Stages 1 and 2 at the Vuelta a Espana in 1955; won Stage 10b and came seventh overall at the Vuelta, then finished in second place behind Roger Walkowiak at the Tour in 1956; won Stage 11 at the Vuelta and Stage 5 at the Tour in 1957 and won Stage 3 and led the race for one day at the Tour in 1958

Born in Cardiff, Wales on this day in 1913, Reg Braddick's interest in cycling began with a job as a butcher's delivery boy, riding around on a heavy utility bike. He represented his country - Wales, not Great Britain - at the British Empire Games (the predecessor to the Commonwealth Games) in 1938 but won no medals and won the National Road Race Championship in 1944. Braddick opened a bike shop in Cardiff, and it's still trading today (51°29'17.55"N 3° 9'19.19"W), now run by his son, daughter-in-law and grand-daughter, who also maintains the company website - he started the Cardiff Ajax CC in the rooms above the shop in 1945. Among many other riders to have been members over the years are Sally Hodge, who became the very first Women's Points Race World Champion in 1988, and Nicole Cooke - ten-time British Road Race Champion, 2008 World Road Race Champion and twice winner of the Tour de France Féminin.

Edwig van Hooydonck, who was born in Ekeren, Belgium on this day in 1966, marked himself out as a future Classics great when he won the Under-23 Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1986 and the Brabantse Pijl a year later. He also rode well in stage races, winning the Vuelta a Andalucia and Stage 4 at the Tour Méditerranéen in 1988, stages at the Étoile de Bessèges, Tour of Ireland and the Vuelta a Espana (his only Grand Tour stage win) in 1990 and at the Tours de Romandie and Luxembourg in 1993, but the Classics remained his speciality: he won Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne and the Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1989, the Dwars door Vlaanderen in 1990, the Dwars door Vlaanderen, Brabantse Pijl and Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1991 and the Brabantse Pijl for a third time in 1993 and a record fourth in 1995. He retired that year, saying that doping was now so prevalent in cycling that he was unable to remain competitive unless he too cheated - something he refused to do.

Ricardo Serrano, born in Valladolid on this day in 1978, won a stage, the Points competition and the General Classification at the Vuelta a la Rioja in 2006, finished Stage 16 at the 2007 Giro d'Italia in third place and won Stage 1 at the Tour de Romandie in 2009. Later that year he was suspended from competition and his Fuji-Servetto team pending an investigation into abnormal blood values revealed by his biological passport. The suspicious values were believed to have dated from the previous year when he rode for the Tinkoff Credit Systems team.

Thomas Stevens, who was born in Berkhamsted, Great Britain in 1854 and emigrated to the USA in 1871, completed the first ever transcontinental ride across the country on this day in 1884. He had begun the journey in San Francisco on the 22nd of April, equipped with his trusty penny-farthing, a spare shirt, several pairs of socks, a revolver and a raincoat that also served as a tent.

Other cyclists born on this day: David Chauner (USA, 1948); Ángel Edo (Spain, 1970); Nina Søbye (Norway, 1956); Jonas Romanovas (Lithuania, 1957); Rony Martias (Guadeloupe, 1980); John Millman (Canada, 1930); Gianluca Capitano (Italy, 1971); Marco Serpellini (Italy, 1972); Rolf Furrer (Switzerland, 1966); Neville Hunte (Guyana, 1948); Yunus Nüzhet Unat (Turkey, 1913); Mamdooh Al-Doseri (Bahrain, 1971).

Daily Cycling Facts 20.07.2014

Giovanni Lombardi

Giovanni Lombardi

Born in Pavia on this day in 1969, Giovanni Lombardi suffered from the same problem that many sprinters suffer from today - in almost any other era, he'd have been the best in the world. Whereas modern sprinters are eclipsed by the incredible talent of Mark Cavendish, Lombardi found himself unable to compete with Erik Zabel and the mighty Mario Cipollini. A sufficiently wise man to realise that his skills could be put to good and productive use even if he was unlikely to ever attain the glory he's undoubtedly have liked, he ended a five-year stint with Italian teams in 1997 and went to Telekom to become Zabel's lead-out man. In return, the team supported him when opportunity arose for him to win, which he did with respectable regularity during the five years he spent with them - including stages at the Volta a Catalunya, the Österreich Rundfahrt, Bicicleta Vasca, Tirreno–Adriatico, the Vuelta a España, the Ronde van Nederland, the Vuelta a Burgos and the Danmark Rundt.

In 2002, he received what was then the ultimate accolade for any lead-out man in the form of an invitation to join Cipollini's Acqua e Sapone, and with them he won another stage at the Vuelta a Espana, two more at the Giro d'Italia and others at the Tour de Romandie, Tour Méditerranéen and Vuelta a Aragón. However, by 2003 Cipollini's powers were already fading; so after two more seasons working for the Lion King Lombardi moved on to Bjarne Riis' CSC team in Denmark and a new job leading out Ian Basso and Carlos Sastre. He was an instrumental part in Basso's second place at the Tour and overall victory at the Giro as well as in Sastre's second place overall and third in the Points competition in 2005, the year in which Lombardi was the only rider to complete all three Grand Tours.


Born in Kortezubi, Basque Country on this day in 1960, Federico Echave won stages in a variety of smaller stage races, then took Stage 5 at the 1985 Vuelta a Espana. Two years later he achieved the greatest ride of his life, one that any rider would love to have on his palmares: Stage 20, finishing at the summit of Alpe d'Huez, at the Tour de France. Another few years of stage wins in less prestigious races followed, then he came 6th and 5th overall at the Vuelta a Espana and Giro d'Italia respectively in 1990. In 1992 he was fifth at the Vuelta, but then began to fade away - another rider who got close enough to see the very top level of the sport, but could never quite get there.

On this day in 1985, John Kennedy Howard set a motor-paced bicycle speed record of 245kph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. It would not be bettered for ten years.

Cyclists born on this day: Peter Smessaert (USA, 1908, died 2000); Volker Winkler (East Germany, 1957); Washington Díaz (Uruguay, 1954); Károly Teppert (Hungary, 1891).

Daily Cycling Facts 18.06.2014

Nicole Brändli-Sedoun

Born on this day in 1979, Nicole Brändli (as she's more commonly known) won the Giro Donne in 2001, 2003 and 2005 (as well as coming second in 2006 and 2007 and third in 2008) - which makes her Switzerland's most successful Grand Tour rider after Tony Rominger, who won three editions of the Vuelta a Espana and one Giro d'Italia.

Brändli first came to note when she won the silver medal in the Individual Time Trial at the Junior National Championships in 1996, then in 1997 she won silver for the Junior Road Race. In 1999, having gained her first professional contract courtesy of the Italian Acca Due O team, she was third at the Under-23 European Road Race Championship and second at both the European U-23 Time Trial Championship and the Elite National Road Race. The following year she became National Time Trial Champion at Elite level and represented her country at the Olympics, though she won no medals there, and in 2001 she won the Trofeo Alfredo Binda, the Giro della Toscana, the Elite National Road Race Championship and became European U-23 Time Trial Champion in addition to winning her first Giro Donne.

2002 was another good year with overall victory at the Vuelta Castilla y Leon, a stage win at the Tour de France Feminine and a second National Road Race title - a third came in 2003, along with the Gracia Orlova and her second Giro Donne. She won another Gracia Orlova and the GP Carnevale d'Europa the next year, then her third Giro Donne in 2005, then the GP Ouest France and a second Giro della Toscana in 2006. 2007's victories were limited to stage wins at the Giro Donne (Stage 5) and Trophée d'Or Féminin (Stage 2). In 2008 she once again rode at the Olympics, coming 18th in the Road Race, also winning the Giro del Lago Maggiore-GP Knorr , GP Brissago and the Leo Wirth Strassenrennen, then called it a day after achieving just one victory (the GP Raiffeisen) in 2009.


André Leducq

André Leducq

André Leducq, who died on this day in 1980, amassed considerable success during his youth - he came 3rd in the National Amateur Championships when he was just 19 and won the event the following year - which set him on a path that would lead to him becoming one of the most popular riders in cycling history, both at home and in England.

Leducq's Tour de France record of 25 stage wins held for a quarter of a century until it was finally broken by Eddy Merckx. He rode his first Tour in 1927 and won Stages 6, 23 and 24, coming 4th overall, then came 2nd in 1928 after winning Stages 2, 10, 11 and 16, having already won Paris-Roubaix that year. In 1929, he won Stages 2, 11, 17, 18 and 21 and wore the yellow jersey for one day (this being the famous incident when he, Victor Fontan and Nicolas Frantz had the same time following eventual winner Maurice Dewaele's loss of the race leadership due to a series of punctures, thus becoming the only time that three riders all wore yellow - an event that is extremely unlikely to happen again, since times can now be measured to thousandths of a second if need be) but this time dropped to 11th overall.

His second Tour victory came the following year when he took Stages 5 and 16 and wore the yellow jersey for 13 days, making him the first rider to win a Tour ridden by National rather than trade teams. In 1931, he won Stage 20 and was 10th overall but won the General Classification at Paris-Tours, then won a second Tour in 1932 along with Stages 3, 11, 13, 15, 20 and 21, spending 19 days in yellow. That was the last of his top 5 finishes - in 1933 he was 31st overall with wins for Stages 13 and 14, then he was 17th the next year when he won the Stage 18b time trial and in 1938 he shared victory for Stage 21 with Antonin Magne and came 30th overall. (For much more on Leducq, why he was popular with the English and his incredible good fortune whilst facing almost certain execution at the hands of the Nazis, click here.)

Geoff Wiles

Geoff Wiles, born in Strood, Kent on this day in 1944, was the son of cycling parents who would take him and his sister on long distance rides in sidecars fitted to their bikes. Before too long, the bug bit and he joined the Youth Hostels Association in order to meet other young cyclists. When he was fifteen he entered his first 10-mile time trial, riding a heavy and antiquated fixed gear bike - his time, 26'47", is still a respectable time for an amateur aboard any bike today. A few years later on, when he'd left school and was working at an oil refinery on Kent's Isle of Sheppey, he made friends with a colleague who rode with the Medway Road Club. He joined up and at the age of 18 came third in his first race, then a year later won the Vectis three-day on the Isle of Wight.

Aged 22, Wiles was selected to compete with the South of England team in the 1966 Tour of Britain, at that time known as the Milk Race, and he won Stage 6. The next year, he took part in the famous Peace Race through East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia with a team sponsored by the Clive Stuart bike maker, then moved on to the Holdsworth-Campagnolo team in 1971 and won the National Madison Championship with Dave Nie. Geoff won numerous criteriums in the following years before becoming National Roasd Race Champion in 1976.

In 1977, Holdsworth went to the Vuelta a Espana, the Ronde van Vlaanderen, the Amstel Gold Race and Paris-Roubaix. They were, like almost all British riders of those times with the exception of Tom Simpson, hopelessly outclassed by the French and Belgian riders but appear to enjoyed the experience. At Paris-Roubaix they finished well behind the leaders and main field, arriving at the velodrome to find that as the first twenty riders had already got there the gates had been closed and nobody else was allowed in. Having ridden it for themselves, they knew that the legendary Hell of the North is in an entirely different category to all other racers and that completing the parcours is every bit as impressive as winning; they were, therefore, determined to get to the very end. "So we bunked over the wall and did our lap," Geoff said. "We could then say we'd completed the course, even though we were not included on the official list of finishers."

In the late 1970s and early 1980s when BMX first began to appear in Britain, many cyclists hated it with a passion and thought that if they became popular they'd kill off "proper" cycling for good. Wiles was a far wiser man; he realised that any kind of cycling should be encouraged and also knew that BMX would attract youngsters who might otherwise never have developed an interest in cycling at all, became a very vocal advocate for the new sport, wrote books and magazine articles and was perhaps the person who did most to popularise it in Britain. In 2012, when Wiles was 67, he took part in the Alf Buttler Peace Race Tribute Ride during which he and Alf's son Alan retraced the 2,414km and thirteen stages taken by the inaugural 1955 race.


Freddy Excelino González Martínez, more commonly known as Fredy González, won the King of the Mountains at the Giro d'Italia in 2001 and 2003. He was born in La Ceja, Colombia on this day in 1975.

Other cyclists born on this day: Anthony Biddle (Australia, 1975); László Orczán (Hungary, 1912, died 1992); Arnolds Ūdris (Latvia, 1968); Georgius Damen (Netherlands, 1887, died 1954); Stephen Farrell (Great Britain, 1965); Teun Mulder (Netherlands, 1981); Rudolf Rasmussen (Denmark, 1918, died 1993 ); Vasily Fedin (USSR, 1926, died 2005); Lau Veldt (Netherlands, 1953); Hansrüdi Märki (Switzerland, 1960); Christian Andersen (Denmark, 1967); Teófilo Toda (Peru, 1935); Maxwell Cheeseman (Trinidad and Tobago, 1962); Fernando Louro (Brazil, 1962); Margaret Bean (Guam, 1953).

Daily Cycling Facts 15.06.2014

The Giro d'Italia set off on this day in 1946, the first edition since the Second World War and latest start date in the history of the race. It covered 3,199km in 20 stages, three of them won by Fausto Coppi - however, he was not able to hold off Gino Bartali who led the race through the final six. This would be the last of Bartali's three Giro victories and his penultimate in a Grand Tour, as he won a second Tour de France the following year; but it marked the end of one era and the beginning of another. Stage 13 had to be stopped and cancelled when the race came under attack - stones were thrown at the peloton and shots fired into the air from the crowd.

Peter Kennaugh

Kennaugh at the Tour di Romandie, 2010

Born on this day in 1989 at Douglas on the Isle of Man,  Peter Kennaugh was a childhood friend of Mark Cavendish. Like Cav, Kennaugh began racing at a young age and competed in local BMX competitions from the age of 6; but he would later come to concentrate on track cycling and became World Scratch Race Junior Champion in 2006. The next year, he held the Junior National titles for Pursuit and Points and returned to road racing, winning the Junior National Championship for that too. In 2008, he won the Under-23 National Road Race title and then took the silver medal in the Elite class for good measure before making his first mark on the European road race scene with first place at the GP Capodarco criterium.

In 2009, Kennaugh won Stage 3 at the Baby Giro, then towards the end of the year announced that he would be riding as a professional in 2010 with the all-new British-based Team Sky (it was widely believed at that time that Cavendish would also join Sky for 2010; but as he explains in his autobiography he never had any intention of dishonouring his contract with Bob Stapleton's Highroad). He finished in second place behind Sky team mate Geraint Thomas at the Nationals that year, then made his Grand Tour debut at the Vuelta a Espana the next before the team left the race as a sign of respect for their soigneur Txema Gonzalez who died of sepsis during the event.

Kennaugh completed the Giro on his first attempt in 2011, then came third overall at the Route du Sud. He was also third at the National Championships behind team mates Bradley Wiggins and Geraint Thomas, later haring victory with the latter (and Steven Burke, Ed Clancy and Andrew Tennant) after the British team won the Pursuit at the World Track Championships. In 2012, he has once again concentrated on track cycling in preparation for the London Olympics - it paid off because, riding with Thomas,Clancy and Burke in the Team Pursuit, he won a gold medal. The following year, Kennaugh returned to the road with Sky to help win the team time trial at the Giro del Trentino, then also won the Lincoln International. In 2014, he won the Settimana Internazionale di Coppi e Bartali.

Yuliya Martisova

Yuliya Martisova, born in the USSR on this day in 1976, was third at the Russian National Road Race Championships in 2000 and second at the 2001 Trophée d’Or Féminin when only Edita Pucinskaite could beat her. She won the National Road Race title in 2005, 2007 and 2010 and was fifth at the World Championships in 2011, finishing behind Giorgia Bronzini, Marianne Vos, Ina-Yoko Teutenberg and Nicole Cooke - which is nothing to be ashamed about. At the end of 2011 Martisova announced that she would ride for Be Pink in 2012 and, with them, won Stage 1 at the Tour of Adygeya before coming 8th overall. In 2013, riding with Chirio Forno d'Asolo, she was tenth in the Chongming Island round of the World Cup.

Marzio Bruseghin, born in Conegliano on this day in 1974, was Time Trial Champion of Italy in 2006 and won Stage 13 (an individual time trial) at the Giro d'Italia in 2007, also coming eighth overall. In 2008 he won Stage 10 (another ITT) and was third overall, later coming tenth overall at the Vuelta a Espana. That same year, he also completed the Tour de France - he was 27th overall, but completing all three Grand Tours in a single year is a major achievement and one that he shares with only 30 other riders. He completed both the Giro (ninth overall) and the Tour (80th overall) again in 2009, then came 22nd overall at the Vuelta in 2010 and 14th in 2011. At the 2012 Giro he finished in 17th place overall, suggesting that at the age of 37 his career was not over yet.

Chris Lillywhite, who was born in East Molesey, UK on this day in 1966, won the Milk Race (which is now known as the Tour of Britain) in 1993 and the Tom Simpson Memorial in 1994 and 1997. He competed for England at the Commonwealth Games in 1984, 1994 and 1998; in 1994 he was disqualified from the Men's Road Race after grabbing a hold of Australian Grant Rice's shorts and pulling him back in the final sprint. Lillywhite was a professional rider between 1987 and 1999, ending his career with the Linda McCartney team.

Other cyclists born on this day: Ivan Vrba (Czechoslovakia, 1977); Bailón Becerra (Bolivia, 1966); Małgorzata Wysocka (Poland, 1979); Muhammad Shafi (Pakistan, 1933); Jo Ho-Seong (South Korea, 1974); No Yeom-Ju (South Korea, 1968); Jack Disney (USA, 1930); George Nayeja (Malawi, 1946); Ernest Meighan (Belize, 1971); Shue Ming-Shu (Taipei, 1940); Maksym Polishchuk (USSR, 1984); Fang Fen-Fang (Taipei, 1981); Jean Alexandre (Belgium, 1917).

Daily Cycling Facts 02.2014

Pascale Jeuland

Jeuland (dark blue) and Giorgia Bronzini

Pascale Jeuland, born in Rennes on this day in 1987, is one of France's best-known female road and track cyclists and has spent her entire professional career to date with the Vienne Futurscope team (renamed Poitou-Charentes.Futuroscope.86 in 2014). Her first notable successes came in 2004 when she won the National Junior Pursuit Championship, then retained it and added the Points the following year, a well as winning two silver medals and a bronze at the European Championships. In 2006, she moved up into the Elite class and won bronze for the 500m and silver for the pursuit at the Nationals.

In 2007, Jeuland became Elite National Points Champion, a title she won again in 2008 and 2009, and made her first mark in road racing with second place in the Calan criterium (won by team mate and older sister Nathalie). A silver medal in the Under-23 European Championships and third place in the Gran Prix de France International Féminin road race came in 2008, then gold at the National Pursuit  and World Scatch Championships in 2010 along with good results at the Tour of Qatar and GP Ciudad de Valladolid. In 2011, she concentrated on track but was 6th at Tielt-Winge, beating Amy Pieters, Liesbet de Vocht, Elisa Longo Borghini and several other names from the very top level of women's cycling, and in 2012 she took second place at the GP Cholet-Pays de Loire when she beat Emilie Moberg, Maaike Polspoel and 31 others in a final sprint.

In 2013 and 2014, Jeuland has concentrated on road racing. She was tenth on Stage 4 at the Tour of Qatar, ninth on Stage 1 and eighth on Stage 3 at the Tour of Chongming Island, fifth on Stages 3 and 4 and then fourth on Stage 5 and tenth on Stage 6 at the Route de France in 2013; then sixth on Stage 1 and seventh on Stage 4 at the Tour of Qatar in 2014.

Tyler Farrar
Born in Wenatchee, USA on this day in 1984, Tyler Farrar began racing at the age of 13 and showed enormous potential whilst still a young amateur, winning the Junior National Championship titles for Individual Pursuit, Team Pursuit and Olympic Sprint, the Tour L-Abitibi (along with Stage 4) and the Three Days of Axel in 2002. Unsurprisingly, these victories showed up on team radar and he turned professional with Jelly Belly for 2003, repaying them by winning the Four Bridges of Albin and a Madison world cup qualification round.

Tyler Farrar, 2011

In 2004, he signed to HealthNet-Maxxis and won Stage 7 at the Tour de l'Avenir, a race designed to reveal young riders who have may have the potential to distinguish themselves in the Grand Tours - which he confirmed when he won Stage 2 the next year, also becoming National Criterium Champion and earning an invitation to move up a gear and ride with Cofidis. As is often the case when a rider makes the jump to the top level (Cofidis, since relegated to Pro Continental status, were then a Pro Tour team), his first year with them was quiet and passed without wins while he concentrated on upping his performance; then in 2007 he won a stage at the GP CTT Correios de Portugal before leaving for Slipstream-Chipotle, the team that would become Garmin-Barracuda and where he remains to the present day.

With Garmin, Farrar has developed from a promising hopeful to one of the most successful sprinters of his generation with a number of Grand Tour stage wins and excellent results in other races to his name. The first of those came in 2009 when he won the Vattenfall Cyclassics, Stages 1, 2 and 4 at the Eneco Tour, Stage 3 at Tirreno-Adriatico, Stages 1, 2 and the Points competition at the Circuit Franco-Belge, the prologue, Points competition, Young Rider category and General Classification at the Delta Tour Zeeland, six top five finishes at the Tour de France and - the icing on a very satisfactory cake - Stage 11 at the Vuelta a Espana. 2010 brought more Grand Tour victories - this time, he added first place for Stages 5 and 21 at the Vuelta to the Stages 2 and 10 he'd won at the Giro d'Italia earlier in the year, as well as revealing himself to have what it takes for the Classics when he was fifth in the Ronde van Vlaanderen. In 2011, Farrar decided to join Leopard Trek in withdrawing from the Giro following the death of his friend Wouter Weylandt. Later, Garmin won the Stage 2 team time trial at the Tour, then he won Stage 3 as well before adding three more top five places.

Farrar in 2008

There is little doubt that, had Farrar have been born in any other era, he'd almost certainly have been hailed as the fastest man in the peloton and would have dominated sprint finishes - however, his career has coincided with that of Mark Cavendish, perhaps the only man in the history of cycling with an ability to consistently sprint ever faster. It's little surprise, then, that the two have not always seen eye-to-eye - after Stage 15 at the 2011 Tour, Farrar seemed dubious (in front of US TV news cameras) if Cav's powers of recovery might be down to something other than natural talent, but later said "I should have kept my mouth shut."

In 2012, Farrar was second at Scheldeprijs - another excellent Flanders Classic result that, combined with his friendship with and respect for Weylandt, his fluent Dutch and decision to make his home in Ghent has won him the love of the Flemish fans. He won Stage 4 at the Tour of California in 2013 and managed four top five places at the Vuelta a Espana, including second place on Stage 21, but was 124th overall due to his typical sprinter tendency to suffer in the mountains, but later in the season won Stage 3 and was third overall at the Circuit Franco-Belge. In 2014 he further delighted his Belgian fans with second place at the Dwars door Vlaanderen, eighth at the E3 Harelbeke and second at Scheldeprijs, then went to the Giro d'Italia where, at the time of writing, he had managed four top ten finishes. The race would finish the day before his birthday.

Early days with Vibor

Roberto Visentini
Born in Gardone Rivera on this day in 1957, made it clear while he was still a teenager that he was going to be a great cyclist when he  won the Junior National and World Championships in 1975. Two years later, he was third overall at the Tour de l'Avenir, and the year after that - his first as a professional, riding for Vibor - he took second place for three stages and was 15th overall at the Giro d'Italia, which also earned him the Young Rider victory.

In 1979, having moved onto the CBM Fast team that would last just one season Visentini was 10th overall at the Giro and won the Elite National Pursuit Championship on the track, then in 1980 he was 9th at the Giro and won the Prologue and Stage 16 at the Vuelta a Espana and a year later upped his Giro performance to 6th, making it apparent that, sooner or later, he was probably going to win a Grand Tour - as would have been the case in 1983 had Giuseppe Saronni not pulled out all the stops and ridden the race of his life to take first. In 1984, he won another stage at the Giro, then abandoned so as not to ruin his chances in his first Tour de France, where he seemed to find himself out of his depth, finishing Stage 7 in 7th place and snatching a handful of other good placings, but in general finishing outside the top 50 before abandoning in Stage 14. The 1985 Giro got off to a better start with second place in the Prologue, but then fell ill and abandoned: a crushing blow, as he had promised the tifosi he'd win - but less crushing than the defeat he'd almost certainly have suffered at the hands of Bernard Hinault, who won. Later that year, he once again found that the Tour operates on an entirely different level to all other races and could only manage 49th overall.

1986 was his year. The competition at the Giro was tough, with Saronni, Francesco Moser and Greg Lemond all in absolute peak physical condition, each of them also displaying that mysterious related-yet-other quality excellent form too - especially Lemond, who had come second at the Tour the previous year and was the easy favourite to win this race. Luck was on Visentini's side, however; Lemond and Moser lost time in crashes and, while Saronni took the lead in Stage 6 and kept it to Stage 15, gradually things came together for Visentini and he crept up the leadership tables, then donned the maglia rosa for Stage 16. From that point onwards, he rode intelligently and without unnecessary risk, making sure he retained a sufficient lead to not lose everything in the Stage 18 individual time trial where he knew Moser would beat him.

Visentini in 1987, the year of the infamous
Marmalade Massacre

Visentini might have won a second Giro in 1987, had he not have become involved in a clash of personalities with team mate Stephen Roche - a clash that led to one of the most notorious incidents in the history of professional cycling, the Marmalade Massacre. Visentini arrived at the race with every intention of winning and looked more than capable of doing so in the Prologue and Stage 1a, but Roche beat him the Stage 1b individual time trial and then took the leadership when their Carrera Jeans-Vagabond won the Stage 3 team time trial. In Stage 13, by which time Visentini was again in the lead, Roche was ordered to ride for him by team management, but chose to ignore it. Instead, he attacked his leader throughout the stage, the savage onslaught regaining him the GC leadership.

Roche incurred the wrath of the tifosi for ever more, but earned the eternal friendship of many others - especially as he'd pulled off the Massacre with virtually no support, Eddy Schepers being the only team member who took his side against Visentini. Instead, he enlisted the aid of old friends Millar and Phil Anderson (both with Panasonic-Isostar, but with whom he had ridden when the trio were first trying to break into European cycling with the legendary Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt). Millar and Anderson broke ranks and joined forces with Schepers, then encircled Roche on the ascent of Marmaloda, protecting him from attacks and ensuring that he finished with a time sufficient to guarantee his victory. A few days later, Visentini crashed. His injuries were not major, but with his spirit crushed he abandoned the race


Michał Kwiatkowski
Born in Poland on this day in 1990, Michal Kwiatkowski turned professional in 2009 for MG Kvis-Norda Pacific after winning the European Junior TT Championship in 2008, then joined Caja Rural for 2010 (and was third place overall at the 2010 Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen) before he made his way into the upper echelons with RadioShack in 2011. At the end of that season, he was one of the riders whose contracts were not renewed to make room for those from Leopard Trek when the two teams merged to form RadioShack-Nissan and he moved on to Omega Pharma-QuickStep.

Kwiatkowski won the prologue at the Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen in 2011 and again in 2012, when he also finished 10th on Stage 6 at the Giro d'Italia before taking a string of impressive second place results at home in Poland - in the National Individual Time Trial Championship and on Stage 2 (along with fourth on Stage 3, sixth on Stage 5 and third on Stage 6), in the General Classification and in the Points Competition at the Tour of Poland. In 2013, Kwiatkowski was second at the Volta ao Algarve and fourth overall at Tirreno-Adriatico, then enjoyed considerable success in the Spring Classics with fourth place in the Amstel Gold Race and fifth in the Flèche Wallonne before coming second at the National Individual Time Trial Championship and winning the National Road Race Championship. At the Tour de France he was third on Stage 2, fourth on Stage 3 and second on Stage 4, then fourth on Stage 7, third on Stage 9, fifth on Stage 11 and seventh on Stage 17 - he was 11th overall and third in the Youth category after losing time in the brutal, mountainous third week to the Colombian pure climber Nairo Quintana and the American all-rounder Andrew Talansky; a stunning result for a rider in his first Tour. Late in the season, his team won the World Team Time Trial Championship.

In 2014, he won the Trofeo Serra de Tramuntana and dominated the Volta ao Algarve when he won Stages 2 and 3 and the General Classification. He also won Strade Bianche, a race that partially takes place on rough gravel tracks and has become known as Italy's answer to the infamously dangerous Paris-Roubaix, then won the Points competition and was second overall after four third place finishes at the Tour of the Basque Country, was fifth at the Amsteal Gold Race, third at the Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and won the Prologue at the Tour de Romandie.

Now 24, Kwiatkowski is a very talented all-rounder who, unusually, can hold his own in the mountains as well as in the sprints - a combination that in the future might very well see him win a Grand Tour.


Kurt Hovelijnck, born in Eeklo, Belgium on this day in 1981, achieved numerous good results in races at home and in France between 1999 and 2007, when he took third place in Stage 6 at the Tour of Britain. 2008 and 2009 were quieter, then his career was nearly brought to an end when his rear wheel collapsed during a training run and left him critically ill with a fractured skull. Fortunately, he made a full recovery and returned to racing the following year; then once again began achieving excellent results.

Daily Cycling Facts 01.06.2014

Arthur Markham, with what probably wasn't a very
typical bike even in 1868

On this day in 1868, Britain's first organised bike race took place at the Welsh Harp Reservoir in North West London (correctly the Brent Reservoir), one day after "the world's first bike race" (it probably wasn't; see yesterday's Daily Cycling Facts for more) had been held in the Parc St. Cloud, Paris. The winner was Arthur Markham, who was awarded a silver cup supplied by the landlord of the Old Welsh Harp Hotel that gave the reservoir its popular name and used his prize money to travel by coach to Bath four weeks later, where he won another race (and saved a man from drowning). Coincidentally, the winner of the race at Parc St. Cloud, James Moore, is believed to be buried next to the reservoir.

The race was the beginning of a long association between cycling and the park surrounding the reservoir, which as a result became home to one of Britain's first cycle race tracks. Today, it's overgrown and almost forgotten, though it can just be made out from the air at the northern end of the reservoir, and cycling is banned almost everywhere within the park.

Michael Rasmussen
Born in Tølløse, Denmark on this day in 1974, Michael Rasmussen rose to fame in 1999 when he won the World Cross Country Mountain Biking Championships, then for abandoning mountain biking in favour of road racing, then for his two Tour de France King of the Mountains victories, then for being kicked out of the 2007 Tour by his own team due to irregularities concerning the details of his  whereabouts supplied to anti-doping officials and finally for the two-year ban he received as a result. His decision to resort to doping was unfortunate both for cycling and for him, because he would undoubtedly have remained a great talent had he have ridden clean.

Michael Rasmussen

Rasmussen's nickname is The Chicken, due to his scrawny physique - at just 60kg, he was the lightest rider in his category; the name dating from his mountain biking days when his team mates named him after a character in Danish TV show Bamses Billedbog, about a chicken and a bear (the team's large and hairy mechanic became The Bear). It's a build naturally suited to climbing, in which every excess gram of weight translates into unnecessary effort, reduced speed and, ultimately, pain on the challenging slopes found in races, something that he understood very well: he was obsessed with keeping his own weight down, counting the grains of rice he ate and pouring water rather than milk on his cereal at breakfast, as well a reducing that of his bike, from which he peeled stickers and removed a water carrier. The Colnago Extreme-C machine he favoured is a light bike anyway, but when he'd finished with it the weight was reduced to 6.91kg - 10g above the minimum limit set by the UCI.

Rasmussen was at the centre of a famous and much retold controversy dating from 2002, the year  mountain biker Whitney Richards claims Rasmussen asked him to take a box containing his favourite cycling shoes through customs and deliver them to an Italian training bases. Richards says he became suspicious and opened the box, finding within it numerous doses of Hemopure - a bovine haemoglobin-based oxygen carrier, at that time approved only for veterinary use in Europe and, since no test had been developed to detect it, of very obvious interest to those athletes willing to resort to doping. Richards also says that he destroyed the drug and that Rasmussen was angry when he found out, asking "Have you any idea how much that shit cost?" Whether the incident really  happened has never been proved nor disproved.

Alf Engers
Alfred Robert Engers, born in Southgate on this day in 1940, won numerous time trial titles from the late 1950s through to the late 1970s and set several world records - including being the first man to complete 25 miles (40km) on road in under fifty minutes.

Alf Engers

During childhood, Engers showed athletic promise as a runner but was forced to give the sport up after a bike crash left him minus one kneecap - finding that cycling, as a non-impact activity, suited him he joined Barnet CC in 1952. Fortunately, he turned out to be good enough to make some money from it because, a rebellious teen, he was expelled from school and turned out into the wide world without a qualification to his name. Of course, racing didn't bring in enough to live on and so he worked nightshifts in bakery to make ends meet; however, a dose of reality wasn't enough to prevent bad behaviour and he received the first of numerous warnings from the Road Time Trials Council (now known as Cycling Time Trials, the governing body of the sport in Britain) whilst still only sixteen.

His reputation as a trouble-maker would prove problematic - after spending two years as an independent (which permitted him to enter both amateur and professional races), he applied to British Cycling and the Road Time Trials Council for amateur status (ex-professionals were not allowed to compete against amateurs even after retirement, meaning that their racing days were effectively over when they could no longer remain competitive in the professional classes - a factor that seriously limited the number of professional cyclists Britain produced until the rule was eventually repealed); both would refuse for the next seven years. He stuck it out, finding a sponsor in bike shop Ted Gerrard (the first bike shop offer a mail order service), winning races and setting record times, until he was finally granted an amateur licence in 1968. Over the next ten years, during which he became the most respected rider in British time trialing, he would clash with organising bodies time and time again with most rows caused by his tendency to read rule books and form conclusions that varied considerably from theirs regarding what was and was not permitted in races. Nevertheless, his was a talent too great for them to push him out of racing - his 1978 25-mile record, the fifth he set for the distance - stood until 1990, and he was National 25-mile TT Champion six times.

Engers was added to the Golden Book of Cycling in 1991. He still competes in triathlons, but now spends more of his time fishing.

Marino Basso
Born in Italy on this day in 1945, Marino Basso was one of the most respected sprinters in professional cycling during the 1970s and won a total of 15 stages in his thirteen Giri d'Italia, six in a single edition of the Vuelta a Espana (1975) and six in his four Tours de France. He won the Giro' Points competition in 1971 and became World Road Race Champion in 1972.

Sylvester Howard Roper

Sylvester Howard Roper, who was born on the 24th of November in 1823, was an inventor and proponent of steam-powered bicycles and, later, cars. Something of a child prodigy, he built his first steam engine when he was twelve years old, despite having never seen one. On this day in 1896, he rode one of his own steam bikes to the Charles River racing track at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where some of the greatest track riders of the day attempted to beat it - among them was Tom Butler, who three years later would be beaten in the World 1-mile Championship by Marshall Taylor, but even he couldn't beat Roper's machine.

When he attempted to compete a flying mile (and recorded an average speed of 64kph), he got into difficulties and crashed, dying instantly from a head wound. A post mortem also discovered that he had suffered a heart attack, though it was not known if the heart attack caused or a result of the crash. His Steam Velocipede, built in 1867, is widely considered to be the world's first motorcycle.


The 1st of June is, it seems, a good day to aim for if you happen to be Swedish and hope that your offspring will become professional cyclists: Erik Bjurberg (1895, died 1976), Erik Bohlin (1897, died 1977) and Roger Persson (1974, still alive) were all born on this day.

On this day in 2011, just four months after a self-administered blood transfusion nearly killed him, it was reported in the press that Riccardo Ricco was about to sign a contract with the Meridiana-Kamen team and would ride for them at the Tour of Serbia - despite his previous claims to have given up cycling for good. Ten days later, he was formally suspended from competition by the Italian Olympic Committee and ten days after that he was banned from professional cycling for twelve years.

Daily Cycling Facts 28.05.2014

The second edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the oldest of the five Monument races, took place on this day in 1893 - the only time it has fallen on this date and, since it's now held between mid to late April, it never will again. Run for a second and final year as an amateur event, it was won for the second of three consecutive years by Léon Houa; it took him 10h42" to complete the 250km parcours - almost seven minutes faster than the previous year. 30' behind him was Michel Borisowski, who is sometimes incorrectly said to have been Russian but was in fact Belgian. There are only two known photographs of Houa - one can be seen on the right; the other will appear tomorrow, the anniversary of the first edition of the race.

Michael Boogerd
Michael Boogerd, who was born in The Hague on this day in 1972 and was later - somewhat unsurprisingly - nicknamed The Boogeyman, became a professional cyclist with the WordPerfect team in 1994 and remained with them for his entire career as the squad found new sponsors and changed its name, first to Novell and then to Rabobank.

Boogerd's speciality was the Ardennes Classics, the hilly courses suiting his wiry physique very well, yet he was frequently outclassed by riders such as Michele Bartoli, Johan Museeuw and Erik Dekker, which saw him earn a reputation as an "eternal second." Shortly after his retirement in 2007 he dismissed the claim, and with some justification: after all, he had won an Amstel Gold Race in 1999 and two editions of the Brabantse Pijl (2001, 2003). Not all Classics specialists can carry their talent over into the stage races, but Boogerd enjoyed some success here too - including a stage win at his very first Tour de France (Stage 6, 1996), fifth overall at the Tour two years later, another stage victory at the 2002 Tour (Stage 16) and numerous other good results. His greatest achievement, meanwhile, were his three National Championships: he won the title in 1997, 1998 and 2006.

An enormously popular rider among the Dutch public, not least of all on account of his dazzling white smile and boy band looks, Boogerd was 50% of the inspiration for the book Michael & Erik - which covers the his and Erik Dekker's careers.

Diana Žiliūtė

Diana Žiliūtė
Diana Žiliūtė, born in Rietavas on this day in 1976, is a Lithuanian cyclist who first appeared on the international scene in 1994 when she won the Junior World Road Race Championship. Three years later she won the European Under-23 Time Trial Championship and then in 1998 the Elite World Road Race Cup and Championship.

Thus began the career of Lithuania's most successful cyclist of all time - she would go on to build up one of the most impressive palmares of any cyclist during the late 1990s and first decade of the 21st Century with a series of victories at the Giro Donne (Stage 3, 2000; Stage 13, 2001; Prologue and Stage 6, 2004), the Tour de France Féminin (GC, 1999; Prologue, Stages 1, 5, 6 and 7, 2006; Stages 1, 2b and 3, 2008; Prologue, 2009), the Women's Challenge (Stage 3, 1998; Stages 3 and 6, 2000), the Holland Ladies' Tour (Stages 1, 2 and 7, 2003) and the Vuelta Ciclista a Navarra (GC and Stages 1, 2, 3 and 4, 2000). In addition, she won a second World Cup in 2000, the Trofeo Alfredo Binda in 2003, the GP Liberazione and the Giro di San Marino in 2006, the Tour de Prince Edward Island in 2007 and the Giro della Toscana in 2009.



Tom Southam, born in Penzance on this day in 1981, was the rider who, along with Charlie Wegelius, caused controversy at the 2005 World Championships when they chose to ride in support of the leader of the Liquigas-Bianchi trade team rather than Team GB leader Roger Hammond. Like Wegelius he paid a high price for doing so, becoming persona non grata in the eyes of many fans for some years after the incident.

Rohan Dennis, an Australian cyclist born on this day in 1990, has won several gold medals at the National Track Championships and the World Track Cup. In 2010 he began to make his mark on the road, too, winning the Under-23 National Time Trial title after coming first overall at the Geelong Tour. In 2012, he won the U-23 National TT and road race, then came fifth overall at the Tour Down Under - and look to be on the verge of beginning a great career.

Cees van Espen, a Dutch rider born in Arnhem on this day in 1938, was one of that vast majority of cyclists who middle along, winning a provincial race here and there but never quite finding what it takes to make it into the upper echelons. Among his modest victories were Culemborg in 1961, the Ronde van Twente in 1962, Ossendrecht two years later - and Stage 5a at the 1965 Tour de France.

Other cyclists born on this day: Mickaël Bourgain (France, 1980); Luke Madill (Australia, 1980); Wim van Huffel (Belgium, 1979); Vagn Bangsborg (Denmark, 1936); Arve Haugen (Norway, 1943); Bjørnar Vestøl (Norway, 1974); Scott Richardson (South Africa, 1971); Chris Koberstein (Canada, 1968).

Daily Cycling Facts 27.05.2014

Michele Bartoli

Michele Bartoli

Michele Bartoli, born in Pisa on this day in 1970, turned professional with Mercatone Uno-Medeghini-Zucchini in 1992 and developed into one one of the greatest Classics specialists of the late 1990s and first five years of the 21st Century.

His first Classics win was the Brabantse Pijl of 1994, the year he also won Stage 14 at the Giro d'Italia. In 1997 and 1998 he won the World Cup, earning him an invite to join Mapei for 1999 - his time there being marked by a clash with Paolo Bettini who had won Liège-Bastogne-Liège as team aleader after Bartoli was injured at the Tour of Germany. By 2001, the year that Bartoli departed for Fassa Bortolo, the feud has escalated to such a point that the two men refused to work together during the World Championships and allowed Oscar Freire to take the title.

Bartoli won Liège-Bastogne-Liège twice (1997, 1998), the Giro di Lombardia twice (2002, 2003), the Brabantse Pijl twice (1994, 1999), La Flèche Wallonne (1999), the Omloop Het Nieuwesblad (2001), the Amstel Gold Race (2002) and numerous other one-day races, stages and stage races. He may have won many more had he not have become disillusioned with cycling following injury in 2004: "I just wasn't motivated to continue...I can't be a top level rider any more and that was a major influence on my decision, rather than my recent physical problems," he told Cycling News.

In 2007, Bartoli was connected to Operacion Puerto by La Gazzetta dello Sport who claimed that the code name "Sansone" - the name found on an IV bag of blood in the laboratory of Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes - referred to him, saying that it was the name of his dog.

Freddie Grubb
Freddie Grubb, who was born on Kingston in Surrey on this day in 1887, was called "the most talked-of cyclist in Great Britain" in 1910 after he set a new 100 mile time trial record, covering the distance in under five hours - on road, riding a fixed-wheel bike without normal brakes. One year later he entered a 12-hour competition on a 210 mile course near Liverpool, that distance being judged impossible by the event's organisers. They had to extend it by 10.5 miles because Grubb ran out of road.

Review of an F.H. Grubb bike, 1920

Grubb could be seen as one of the forefathers of the Straight Edge movement that has many followers among BMX and mountain bike riders - he never smoked, refused to consume alcohol and was strictly vegetarian at a time when few had even heard of such a concept and the general wisdom was that cyclists should consume vast amounts of meat before a race (Maurice Garin famously got through 45 cutlets of meat during a 24-hour race 17 years earlier).

In 1912, he competed in the Olympics and won two silver medals, then turned professional in 1914. Cycling wrote, "He is 25 years of age, and scales 12st stripped, and when he gets accustomed to the Continental methods there is no reason he should not shine as a star of the very first order in the professional ranks." However, his professional racing career (which - who knows? - might have led to the first British success in the Tour de France) didn't last long - not, as was the case with so many riders of the day, due to war; but because he found European ways not at all to his liking - he said that the Continental riders would "stick an inflator [pump] in your spokes as quick as look at you" - and hankered to return home. He must really have hated it, because the National Cycling Union had banned road racing in Britain and the rules of the time stated that once a rider had competed as a professional, he or she could not downgrade to amateur status nor compete against amateurs. Thus, a return to Britain effectively spelled the end of his competitive career, yet he did it anyway.

Perhaps that made him bitter. After the First World War (during which he abandoned a bike shop he'd set up in 1914 and had to give up his vegetarianism or starve while serving in the Royal Navy), he went into business with a man named Ching Allin and, supported by funds from a member of his cycling club, the two men set themselves up as Allin & Grubb, a bike manufacturer based at 132 Whitehorse Road in Croydon, South London (the building, much altered, is still there and is now occupied by a firm of safe engineers. According to historian Mick Butler, Grubb was an intensely dislikable man who, among other things, demanded to be given sole credit for the quick release system they'd invented since he was the firm's chief designer and despite the fact that the system appears to have actually been invented by Charley Davey, the man who had provided the funds to start the business (incidentally, the quick release was the first example of its kind, predating better-known systems by several years). Customers found Grubb hard to deal with, so before long Allin was handling sales and relations while his partner concentrated on design.

Advert for Grubb bikes (£12!) from
Cycling, 22.05.1925

Nevertheless, the pair fell out: by 1920 Allin & Grubb had changed its name to A. H. Allin and was selling bikes under the Davey brand. Grubb, meanwhile, set up a new business based at 250 London Road in West Croydon (an advert in Cycling, 04.03.1920, lists F.H. Grubb at the address as having "no connection to any other company," suggesting that the split had been far less than amicable and that the two men were keen to distance themselves from one another - the very imposing building is still there, but is now an ice cream shop), moving to Twickenham in 1926, and by 1924 had a shop in Brixton. That company produced what is believed to be the first British recumbent bike and lasted until 1934 when it went into liquidation - not only had it lasted fourteen years, it must also have been financially successful because when Grubb set up a new company under the name FHG, he re-employed 20 of his old staff at a new premises located at 147a Haydon's Road in Wimbledon, South-West London (that building is long gone, replaced by ugly low-rose flats). His family kept the business going after his death, then sold it in 1952 to Holdsworth, one of the most famous British bike manufacturers of the times. Holdsworth continued to produce Freddie Grubb-branded bikes right up until 1978 (Holdsworth, incidentally, are still in operation and can be found at 132 Lower Richmond Road in Putney), 29 years after his death on the 6th of March 1949.


Heather Albert, born in Sandy, Utah on this day in 1968, was a cross-country runner in high school before taking up duathlon whilst at Brigham Young University, where she earned a PhD in microbiology. She was inspired to take up cycling by her brother and entered her first race in 1994 - two years later, she won silver in the National Road Race Championships. Albert was involved in a serious crash at Houston's Alkek Velodrome in 2004, breaking her collar bone and dislocating her thumb; several other riders at the meeting claimed that the crash had been caused intentionally by Rebecca Quinn. She made a full recovery and, in 2007, won silver in the Points race at the National Track Championships.


Other cyclists born on this day: Ingmar De Poortere (Belgium, 1984); Lode Wouters (Belgium, 1929); Maryan Hary (France, 1980); Rogelio Arango (Colombia, 1959); Yang Hsiu-Chen (Taipei, 1968); Joseph De Bakker (Belgium, 1934); Karl Köther (Germany, 1905, died 1986); Jan Blomme (Belgium, 1959); David Rhoads (USA, 1932); Michael Glöckner (Germany, 1969); Gregorio Caloggero (Peru, 1917, died 1995); Nataliya Kyshchuk (Ukraine, 1968).